surf trip

In the beginning of September we went on a little trip. We started off by going to Vermont for a wedding and then we headed over to Rhode Island, Maine and up to Nova Scotia for some surfing.


Our trusty ride


Things you might see on the road to Nova Scotia


Surf recon.


View the rest of the images by clicking here.

circle pit

During Sick of it All at the Bouncing Souls, Sick of it All, Grey Area show at Terminal 5 - Friday, 19 September 2008.

Pick up 3

Now that the summer season has come to it's unofficial close and the towns in my area aren't staffing the beaches full-time - I thought it would be a good idea to pass this on to visitors.

It's called Pick up 3. It basically asks that any person visiting the beach pick up (at least) three pieces of trash when they leave. If each person did this our beaches and ocean would be SO much cleaner. It doesn't take much effort or time and I ask that you consider it the next time you happen to be at the beach.

Let McCain speak for himself

Every single person sitting on the fence about whether to vote for McCain or OBAMA, needs to watch this little ad.

lost his marbles

If you happen to be in Denver for the Democratic Convention, please go see Rik Clay.

For $5 you can send a few marbles back to Bush with the help of Clay, owner of a Boulder, CO ruler company by trade.

Clay says, "Be a part of history; for never before has one man lost so many marbles and been so in need of collective help to recover them."

now why didn't i think of this?

Top 10 Creative Responses To Junk Mail.
Borderline brilliant!

I'm pretty partial to #7.

it's about time

Since I sit at a computer most days and work on photos, I'm not always all that enthusiastic about working on my own images in my free time. I know I'm doing myself a huge disservice by neglecting my own work over that of the work paying the bills, but sometimes I can't help it. I simply can't bring myself to turn on the computer during the 48 blissful hours I'm not at the office.

However, sometimes I am inspired by the thought of my friend Mike... who is a comic book artist and has a job he loathes but takes time every day to make his own work. That's really something. And while you're at it, check out some of Mike's amazing work here.

So here are a few photos I shot LAST YEAR on my way out to South Dakota for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. It's not much, but it's a start... and as a fortune cookie once said to me "Begin. The rest is easy."

jelly donut cupcake masacre

This is what happens when you fill the cups too high and forget to put a cookie sheet under your cupcake pan (Thankfully fixed half-way through baking when I smelled the overflow jam burning the bottom of the oven).
The recipe for these cupcakes (which I made in a mini-bundt pan & added cocoa powder) comes from Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

Finished product:

grilled cupcakes

I wanted to try baking on the grill. It's something I've been talking about to Stephanie for months now.
I finally decided to do it Friday night and invited Kate over to join me.
We didn't bake a whole dozen on the grill in case the experiment was a disaster. The rest of the was batter baked in the conventional oven in the house.
This is what we came up with;


I think they came out pretty good.

Our recipes came from Veganomicon (those cupcakes are not pictured) and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

says a lot

It don't Gitmo better!

This photo appears courtesy of the New York Times.

actually makes me kind of like her

I never thought I'd say that I like Paris Hilton but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the snark in this response to McCain's attack ad on Obama.

books

If you're remotely into food (where it comes from and how it's grown) the way I am, then you need to check out this book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. I'm 70 pages into it and really looking forward to reading some more, if only my damned work day didn't have to get in the way.

In brief, Kingsolver and her family move from Tuscon, AZ back east to live on a small farm in Appalachia, VA and for one year they would only buy and eat food "raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it." Interspersed in the main story are sidebars written by Kingslover's husband Steven L. Hopp and their eldest daughter Camille. Their youngest daughter Lilly also contributes, but as Kingsolver notes, "is too young to sign a book contract."

In concert with "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" I would highly recommend reading "It's a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life" by Keith Stewart.
The title kind of says it all, however to be kind I'll summarize... Keith Stewart, who worked in corporate America for many years quit his job and bought a farm in Orange County, NY. The book is a bunch of essays detailing what it takes to be a small organic farmer, also selling his goods in an urban market, in this day and age. The book also has beautiful illustrations by his wife Flavia Bacarella.
An interesting side note: Keith Stewart has one of the longest running stands at the Union Square Green Market and grows some of the area's best garlic.

I know it's not quite your breezy summer book list, but given that in this particular part of the country it is the best time of year for local, fresh fruits and veggies, I thought I'd try to inspire you (all three of you that read my blog that is) to loftier aspirations. Plus, how wrong can you go in supporting your local, family farm? It can surely only win you good karma points.

UPDATE: I meant to say you can purchase these fine tomes from this independent book seller in Portland, OR called Powells Books.

the walls must come down

catchin' a feature or two

Sunday evening we went to the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park to see two surf films - Bustin' Down the Door and Surfwise, hosted by the Jersey Shore Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.

Even cooler was, Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew and Shaun Tomson, two of the stars of the first movie, Bustin' Down the Door, were there to introduce the film and then do a post-feature Q+A. (I even got Rabbit to sign our copy of his book - he seemed pretty chuffed that we owned and read it!)

Rabbit and Shaun had a HUGE impact and blazed THE trail to what is known today as professional surfing. It's really quite incredible when you think about what they did. Even if you're not a surfer or into surfing, it's still a compelling movie to watch from an historical and cultural stand point.

Surfwise is an interesting film about the Paskowitz family, headed by Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz and the family's VERY unconventional way of living. The entire family, all 11 of them (yes, you read that correctly 11) lived and traveled in a 24-foot camper. The film chronicles what it was like growing up in America in the 60s and 70s in such a unique way. To quote the movie's site, "The Paskowitz Family proved that America may be running out of frontiers, but it hasn’t run out of frontiersman."

Here are the trailers to both movies, so you can judge for yourself.

BUSTIN' DOWN THE DOOR


SURFWISE

i love these photos

I love these photos by Tara Gorman. They're really clever and quite hilarious. If you see something you like, you can purchase it here.
You can also check her out on the google for more info.
I just wanted to share her images with you. I hope you like them.

Please also check out these photos.
I found them while looking at Tara's photos.

ADIDAS

A- all
D- day
I- i
D- dream
A- about
S- surfing

The gist of my days for the last several weeks:

wake up around first light
bicycle down to the beach to check the surf
rush back to the house, wake up M. and get my gear together
surf
rush to get ready for work, usually in about 20 minutes
commute
work
commute
surf until dark
eat
sleep
Rinse. Repeat.

Weekends have seen visitors at the house, us visiting others, projects - but mostly surfing. I've left little time for anything else. Not food shopping, not cleaning the house, not doing laundry, not editing promised photos, not e-mailing, not tending to my general responsibilities. Who knows when the waves will be gone?
I can do all that other stuff when it's flat.

I'm not complaining - it just makes me tired in the best possible way, lazy and out of touch. Now if I could just dispense with the commuting/working part, life would be perfect and I'd have a whole lot more time to get my chores done between surf sessions.

10pm BBQ

Since it's still light out until well after 9pm, we don't usually get done surfing until it's dark. This means, we don't eat until it's rather late. On the weekend that doesn't matter so much. BBQ - Saturday night - well after 10pm.


Grill Master


Crushin' the beef


Good company/Good food


Grilled corn and pineapple

wild strawberries

growing in the backyard of our friends' new home.

hey man

home of the dirt lot

Porkchop's handy work... first they arrested him and then they painted over it. Stooges!

r.i.p.

I meant to post about this the other day. I'm a little slow on the up-take, what can I say?

The Asbury Park fortune teller, Madam Marie, who became a figure of rock ’n’ roll mythology thanks to Bruce Springsteen, died on Friday (27 June 2008).

Madame Marie is pictured here, in a 2004 Asbury Park Press File Photo, waiting for a client at her boardwalk Temple of Knowledge.

Her obit, courtesy of the Asbury Park Press:

July 2, 2008

Madam Marie, 93, passes away

Made famous by Springsteen

By MICHAEL RILEY
STAFF WRITER

It was one line from a Bruce Springsteen song that made the boardwalk fortuneteller world famous. And now, Madam Marie has passed away.

Marie Castello, who had told fortunes since the 1930s and became famous for her presence and predictions on the Asbury Park boardwalk, died Friday, her great-granddaughter, Sally Castello said Tuesday. Family members attended morning services Tuesday, Castello said.

She was such a part of the Asbury Park boardwalk; she was the longest-running tenant, according to Gary Mottola, president of investments for developer Madison Marquette, the lead partner in a joint venture with Asbury Partners to restore or rebuild the boardwalk's entertainment buildings.

"She's an Asbury Park tradition," Mottola said. "We felt that honoring her by lowering the Convention Hall flag to half-staff is the right thing to do."

The psychic reader and adviser was 93. She became known worldwide from Bruce Springsteen's homage to her in his 1973 song "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)":

"Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do."

"That was just The Boss," said Asbury Park Deputy Mayor Jim Bruno. "She was never arrested. But Springsteen turned her into an icon."

Bruno remembers his own run-in with the psychic.

"I was a 12-year-old kid. And I don't remember what I was doing, but I remember her chasing me away from her shack," he said. "Her death is a real loss."

It also was somewhat unexpected.

"She really wasn't sick. She just wasn't feeling well," Castello said. "She was very, very strong until the day she died."

Madam Marie bragged that she had told the fortunes of everyone from Judy Garland to Springsteen himself. Legend has it that she told Springsteen he was going to be a success. Springsteen later joked that she told all the musicians that.

Springsteen, though, never forgot Madam Marie.

"He always comes by to say hello," she told Asbury Park Press columnist Bill Handleman in May. "He knows where he came from."

Marie Castello closed down her regular seer operations on the boardwalk in the mid-1990s after a drop-off in business. She continued telling fortunes in Ocean Township.

However, Sally Castello is one of the family members who still does readings at the Madam Marie booth not far from Convention Hall on the boardwalk.

"The booth will always be there," Marie Castello told Handleman. "The Temple of Knowledge, that's a landmark, that's nostalgia. They'll never tear it down."

In that interview, she also said she saw better times ahead for Asbury Park.

And she would know. As she told Handleman: "I've seen it all."

Maybe she did.

Gary Froonjian, a former Middletown resident who moved to Florida but is operating a mobile espresso bar on the boardwalk this summer, sought her services once.

"After a fun night at the Stone Pony, I staggered in there one time," Froonjian recalled.

"I can't remember what she told me. It had to be 28 years ago," he said. But he added that he found the experience "very, very eerie."