Welcome to the weekly post of place-holding photographs. Usually this is where unloved snapshots from the rest of the week come to live. This week, however, it is taking on an autumnal theme. Enjoy:
weekend
2
Nov 13
Auburn at Arkansas
Had a few people over. Had the televisions on. Had a fine time. In the evening Auburn played a vanilla game against a struggling Arkansas team. They threw eight passes. (The lowest total since 1984.) They just ran the ball right at Arkansas. They won 35-17.
It is easy to marvel at how long ago last year’s season feels. Auburn, now 8-1, will be in the BCS top 10 after this game. No one expected it. Not sure anyone really believes it.
They are fun to watch.
27
Oct 13
Catching up
The weekly post of extra pictures. They didn’t show up elsewhere, so they are showing up here.
It got cold last night …
I always want to ask people who have toys like this what they majored in. Sometimes, when I consider the disposable income of others, I wonder if I studied the wrong thing.
Sunset over Auburn:
Cameron Artis-Payne rushed for 96 yards on 13 carries and scored a touchdown against Florida Atlantic:
Nick Marshall is deadly with his feet. You have to bring more than two guys to tackle him. The quarterback had 81 yards and a score on six carries in limited action. He left in the first quarter with a minor shoulder injury.
The offense continued on with no problem. True freshman Jeremy Johnson was 10 of 16 (with one interception) for 162 yards and two touchdowns, including this 67-yard bomb, his first pass of the game.
The problem for everyone chasing Tre Mason is that everyone is so often just chasing Tre Mason. He had 60 yards and a score on 10 carries in limited action:
Corey Grant was hurt. Now he’s better. And he looks even faster, which is a frightening thing to say about a three time state track sprint champion. He had 75 yards and a touchdown on seven carries:
A Holga shot of an oak tree just starting to hint at turning. I wish it could stay just like that for about eight more weeks, and then just suddenly bloom anew.
Another tree, about ready to sigh, sneeze and give up.
Our cardinal is still around. He spent some time with us this afternoon:
I’ve been hanging on to this one for a while. This is the first leaf on the dogwood that has signaled the changing season. The maple gave up in record time, but this one is hanging on:
Here’s the other side of the dogwood today:
26
Oct 13
Football fans — Florida Atlantic at Auburn
Auburn hosted overmatched Florida Atlantic today. So instead of worrying about football, here’s an opportunity to concentrate on the important people surrounding it. The Yankee approves:
I’m using a Holga lens, a gift from a friend who was cleaning off his shelf and sent the thing to me. The premise behind the Holga lens is to emulate the poor quality of the Holga, a cheap, plastic camera marketed in China. Even the lenses on some of those cameras were plastic, which allowed for a lots of soft focus, fuzzy edges and showed off whatever was happening in the emulsion of your film. (Remember film?) So Holga shots became hip, or hipster depending on how you see it, and now we have a niche lens. These are my first shots with it.
This first set are some of the people with whom we tailgate.
These are the hosts of our tent, Kim and Murphy. You’d have to look hard to find sweeter people:
In the stadium they’re running this feature before the game begins. The winner tonight was a guy who was unaware he was on the screen for 44 seconds. We saw him eat a fair amount of his hot dog. These guys were all on their phones, so the name of the feature was apropos. The young woman on the left was singing along, but she had no idea …
A few people inside the stadium:
Auburn won 45-10, in a game that was truthfully under control after the first two scores within the first five minutes.
20
Oct 13
Catching up
For whatever it means, and whatever it is worth, everything about today has been like this picture:
I woke up eight minutes before the alarm. The donut shop had all of the donuts I wanted. And when I ate them I wished I had one less. We had an Internet connection problem but that was going to require a tech. And the tech couldn’t come for several days. So what are you gonna do? And then they called back and said, yes, they could come out today. I had this nice ride, getting home just as it got dark. We had a delicious dinner and I’ve enjoyed terrific snacks today. I had to make a trip to Walmart, but they had everything I needed. The only problem was in waiting in line to check out. And when that’s the worst part of your day, well, everything has been like that photo.
Anyway, this is the weekly post of extra photos and videos from the week that was. They didn’t find a home, I need content for the day, it all works out well.
More of the art I discovered last week. This is called The Mediator, by Bill Brown, who was working in steel. There is a QR code on the nearby sign, it will take you to this page which discusses more about the artist than the work. So we’ll never know what this is mediating. There is an audio recording, too. Brown says the arch, as a strong architectural piece, is symbolic of addressing a modern lack of communication. So there you go. It earned second place in this juried show.
In the background there’s a solar panel and one of the campus emergency call posts. Those aren’t art. In the foreground there’s a phone booth. Only it isn’t a phone booth. If you saw just the side panel, as I did at first glance, you might think it was a hand washing station, which would be both odd and random on a sidewalk. Then you read that sign.
And then you read this sign. The fine print of which discusses facilitating and controlling prayer, which is an odd formulation. Anyway, you flip down the bench and pray fast. Because the bench isn’t that comfortable on the knees:
Ahh. “There is no literal affiliation with any particular faith per se, rather the piece aims to question the idea of prayer in the public domain. The piece fuses humor, sarcasm and sincerity, and aims to highlight and spark further discussion about the contemporary expression of religion within the public community.”
Seems the artist has been trying to sell this for a few years. Maybe if the bench was more comfortable.
It is a house. A framework of a house. A set piece from the Beetlejuice movie. Who knows.
It was inspired, I’m guessing, by episodes of Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner. Walk inside and you can feel the world closing in on you. And good luck getting out the other side.
Says the artist: “With my Bridge sculpture I created a tunnel where viewers experience the shotgun house at a human scale that then expands to the outer limits of the building, activating space outside the structure. I want the viewer to be part of an intimate space defined by walls and of another type of space defined by implied limits and exterior devices.”
Looking at this photo of a previous installation, I’m sticking with the Roadrunner explanation.
One of the bluegrass bands that played at Syrup Sopping yesterday:
