Hopefully, I'm able to keep up with my blog a little better if I like the way it looks more. Head on over to my new blog and let me know what you think about the new, cleaner design. It'll be easier to post, which will in turn make it easier to go through with a "Photo a Day" Project that I've attempted in the past. That in turn will give you more to read!
Sorry for the infrequency of posts. Actually, the complete and utter lack of posts at all should be what I'm apologizing for. Quite a bit has been going on in my life lately, and getting photos and updates up on the Web has kinda fallen toward the back of the priority list. Hopefully I'll be able to give some nice thorough updates here in the near future.
I was trying to figure out how far back it's been since I've actually added photos to Flickr. Pretty far, which isn't any fun because it seems to take forever to catch up, especially if I want to keep on shooting.
I decided to start off with a selection of photos from the Easter Sunday crawfish boil(s) we had at Amy's dad's house in Denham Springs (and again on our back patio in Mobile). I learned a lot about boiling those tasty little suckers up and look forward to trying my hand at it next year. The experience made for some great photos by Amy, who Amy was diligently snapping away throughout the day.
The crawfish wait for their unhappy fate
Preparation Begins
Mushrooms are washed
I add spice as Wiley laughs at me
I stir, and Wiley continues to laugh
We purge the second batch
And the first batch is done
Enjoying the first batch
For more photos of the great Easter Sunday crawfish boil, visit the Crawfish! set on Flickr.
Hello readers of this blog. I try not to send along links for causes and whatnot because I'd rather not come across as someone constantly asking for help.
But today, I ask for some help. Follow this link and sign your name. Make some comments if you wish, but the name and e-mail are the important part.
Mobile, the city in which I've lived for nearly four years now, is on the brink of some really great things. The recent news of the Air Force's decision to have Northrup-Grumman and EADS build its next generation of air refueling tankers is the second piece of incredible economic news to come down the pipes in the last year. And lawmakers in Kansas and Washington (the homes of Boeing) are working hard to overturn the contract. Their motives are self-serving and arrogant; this decision was made over a 6-year period. Where were the outcries in the last 6 years? Boeing was so certain they would get the contract that they didn't make a big deal of it until after they failed to give better results in 4 of the Air Force's 5 criteria set forth at the beginning of the bidding process.
There are plenty of stories and facts to peruse on the site. Please take a moment to support American workers constructing and American aircraft for American fighters on American soil.
Thanks.
Dan
Some really great news from the Press-Register today:
The U.S. Air Force today named Northrop Grumman Corp. and EADS North America to build its next-generation fleet of aerial refueling tankers, spurning a bid from rival Boeing Co. with a decision that could bring an aircraft assembly plant to Mobile.
"This is really a historic and great day for Mobile and our entire region," Mobile Mayor Sam Jones said at a Friday news conference. "This is a community-changing industry and we will see our community change for the better."I came across this rather amusing story from the Associated Press and I thought I'd share. It put a smile on my face and took me back to the good ole days at the KFC in the Beach Shopping Center parking lot. Good times.
Hands up! I've got a spork!
Published 2/28/08
ANCHORAGE — (AP) The Anchorage police have arrested a man in an armed robbery. Now they are trying to determine if the weapon was a spork, a hybrid of a spoon and fork found at fast-food restaurants. The police say a man tried to grab another man’s watch on Monday night. The victim says the assailant swung a pocketknife at him, but four parallel scratches on his side make the police suspect that the wound was administered with a spork. Peter Albert, 52, was arrested near the scene and charged with robbery. The police say Mr. Albert was carrying a pocketknife and a backpack containing sporks.
Just a quick catch-up blog. Won't take much time.
A weekend in Louisiana
Amy and I went to New Orleans Friday and saw the North Mississippi Allstars at Tipitina's, the legendary Uptown nightclub at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon. Sean came down from Vicksburg, Austin was in from Houston, and Manda now lives in New Orleans and was happy to come meet us out for a great time. Sadly, we never did meet up with my buddy and next-door neighbor Justin, who was in town for a medical conference and didn't realize just how far down Tchoupitoulas Street that Tip's was. We met up at Cooter Brown's, ate some burgers and Po Boys (mine was an alligator sausage po boy ... yum!) and drank a few pitchers of Smithwicks to get us ready for the show. As we were sitting in our booth, a friend who we've met at a bunch of shows and who records them to share with other fans came up and joined us. Then, another guy who has seen us at a bunch of shows stopped over to say hello. You'd think we go to a lot of shows or something. Anyway, I took my camera in and got some really nice shots. The light in that place is awesome. Click the image above for more photos from the show.
We crashed at the Marriott on Canal Street for free, thanks to Austin, who had an extra room, and got up to meet Manda for a breakfast at the Oak Street Cafe. The breakfast spot is quickly becoming a favorite of ours; they always have live piano music and the food is out of this world. We split after that — Amy and Manda got pedicures, Sean and I went beer shopping at Whole Foods — and the four of us eventually met up again at Cooter Brown's, where everything had started the night before. It seemed fitting that it ended there, too. Sean took off for the homestead and his waiting dog, Cali. Amy and I departed for Denham Springs, where we'd spend the rest of the weekend with Amy's parents. The visit was fantastic, and as always, too short, but it was nice to see them.
A few new beers that I like
New York-bound
I don't know if anyone back home reads this at all, but Amy and I are going to be up in New York in a week. We'll be in the City on Thursday, Peekskill on Friday, Nyack on Saturday, back to Peekskill Sunday, Albany Monday, Peekskill Tuesday until our flight outta Newburgh. That's tentative, but a good place to start. Anyway, we hope to see some fine folks while we're there. Drop me a note for my number if you don't have it and want to get in touch.
We didn't have the greatest weather this weekend, but that just gave us an excuse to listen to our new records, paint some canvas and take some pictures. I used one of the bigger canvases we got as a "soft box" of sorts and set my camera up on the tripod. I shot a whole bunch just to get this shot, but I was really happy with how it turned out. The light hits the record just right.
I realized recently that I don't take credit a lot of times when the work I produce at my job is below average. I'm more than happy to post the good pages to my online portfolio, but I rarely even acknowledge the ones into which I don't really feel I put my best effort.
I think because of that, I'm more prone to just put a page together when the muse hasn't visited me on any given day. Mediocrity at work is not my goal. Therefore, I'm planning to start posting all of my weekly pages on this blog along with, on occasion, any sort of description of the page, what I think I did right and what I think didn't work all that well. This way, even if no one reads this or even looks at my pages, I can at least pretend that I'm making myself accountable to someone, even if that someone is just me.
So, the first installment comes from Sunday. It's a bit of a stray from my original intent for this blog — I'm actually quite proud of this design — but I think it's a good start just the same. The main story was about a new art gallery at South Alabama, the first one that's been dedicated solely as a gallery of their own. They call it their "dedicated space," and the photography wasn't all that great, so I decided to interpret what I thought "dedicated space" might be. Each element's space was thought out in great detail, and I think the final product turned out nice. Any thoughts?
Amy took some fantastic photos Saturday of the Japanese Magnolia trees on our street. They're blooming like crazy right now, and Amy was really able to capture their beauty with the camera, so if you're interested in seeing them, check out her photo set on Flickr.
For the second New Year's Eve in a row, and just the second we've had together, Amy and I scored some awesome VIP tickets to a great concert. While last year was spent in the front row at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis at the Bluff City Ball, this year found us in a VIP opera box at Mobile's historic Saenger Theater with two of Amy's bosses and their wives. We had an incredible view, all the dancing room we could ask for, and some fantastically funky New Orleans tunes from the doctor himself, Doctor John. Jamie McLean from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band was playing when we arrived, but I forgot my memory card in the car, so we didn't have any shots of him. John Cleary was up next on the grand piano, and he played some rockin' boogie woogie tunes to warm us up. But it was Doctor John that everyone was there to see, and it was Doctor John who rocked us out of 2007 and into what's shaping up to be an incredible '08. Above is a link to photos from the night. Let me know what you think!
It's sad, but Apple has the uncanny ability to throw a commercial on the TV and make me suddenly want something I didn't so much care about before I saw the silly ad. For instance, their most recent commercial, the one about Facebook, made me actually want to go check out Facebook and sign up for one. Thankfully, it's free. I'm hooked already. As my friend Shane put it, it's like MySpace for grownups. I'm not enlightened by any means — if anything, I'm way behind the curve — but between the blog here, my pictures on Flickr, music on Pandora, shared items from Google Reader, and now all of it tied together in one handy spot, I'm gonna be hooked on updates, I'm afraid.
Anyway, all that to suggest that if you haven't checked out some of these sites, you should — you might enjoy them. There are links over on the right to each of the services I use, so go explore! The more I explore, the cooler I discover all this stuff really is. And now I'll stop babbling about the InterWebs. More posts to come!
You may want to clear your afternoon before you click on this link that my Dad sent along earlier this week. There's a lot about Guinan's Pub to be discovered there. I barely scratched the surface before I had to stop reading, afraid that I might not get any work done at all today.
... since an update here, and I've got a bit to catch up on, so hopefully there will be some exciting new posts coming in the near future. But first, I'd like to share some interesting tidbits that have been sent along from my Dad up in Peekskill.
First, I received a great letter in the mail the other day with a map of Ireland attached and some photos photocopied over them pointing to significant spots in County Cork, where my ancestors on my Grandpa Murphy's side were from. I've made a Google Map of the same items and am linking to it below. Each of the three markers represents one of the photos my dad sent down, and if you click on them, there's some interesting info he included in the letter.
View Larger Map
Next, a bit of sad news. Guinan's pub/country store/deli officially closed this week. When I was a kid, my dad would take me up to Garrison on the Metro North Hudson Line, just for the ride. We'd get off the train, stop into Guinan's for a soda and a chat with Jim Guinan, then hop back on the next southbound train for the two-stop trip back to Peekskill. For an 8-year-old, it was a magical experience. Guinan's was the subject of a fantastic book called "Little Chapel on the River," which can be found at Amazon.com. Also, there's a great story about the final "official" Irish Night from the New York Times here. I got some photos e-mailed from the final final night of music at Guinan's, a decidedly quieter affair, from the looks of the photos. Some of those are below, courtesy of my Dad.
I took a stroll through downtown after getting my haircut and a bite to eat for lunch. As I rounded the corner onto Adams Street, what do I see? The frickin Budweiser Clydesdales. How cool is that? I'm not yet sure why they are here, but I made sure to snap a few photos with the new phone.
I set out Sunday evening to shoot one of the houses along Dauphin Street that I'd seen all decked out in Christmas lights. As is my luck, only half the lights were lit that night, but I got some fun stuff nonetheless. Click on the photo for more.
Amy and I got away to our country getaway, also known as my brother's Mississippi "plantation," this past weekend and really had a blast just sitting around the fire, enjoying a party pig of Amberjaque beer from Lazy Magnolia and staying up all night to catch a foggy sunrise along the railroad tracks near Edwards. Here are some shots from the morning.
I shared some videos the other day from 13-plus years ago, when a young Danny Murphy was behind the camera at Continental Cablevision studios in Peekskill for the classic string of "Sinzer Reports" television shows. As promised, here's some more George goodness, although this seems a little more recent, yet decidedly just as disturbing. Enjoy.
Take me to the USS PEEKSKILL!!!!
I've been playing around with the more advanced features of my camera lately, and at the same time I've been shooting some stuff at night. Anyway, here are some recent shots I've taken in RAW format with my camera. I'm definitely diggin it. :-)
Mobile's Skyline, taken from the Fort Conde Neighborhood
A spooky house and tree in Fort Conde
Many special thanks go out to my old friend Corinne, who passed along some of the greatest e-mails I've gotten in quite some time.
Recorded live on Park Street in downtown Peekskill on March 1, 1994, was the one and only Sinzer Reports, where prank callers were the order of business and a 14-year-old Danny Murphy got a shoutout at the end of the show for being the camera operator.
If you ever thought something could be lost forever, look no further than YouTube for the answer. By the miracle of some blessed saint, Sinzer Reports is back on the air and, thanks to the camera man, I present parts 1 and 2 to you here.
Check back soon for more Geoge Sinzer goodness.
My drive to work each morning is a short one, usually accomplished in under 10 minutes. It has about five lights along the way, and there's rarely any traffic to deal with. It's nice. But I'm reminded sometimes that I do live in Mobile, where the popular saying is that "driving in Mobile means never having to say you're sorry."
Today was one of those mornings.
As I neared the light at Broad Street and Martin Luther King I noticed a late-model Chevrolet something-or-other to my right, lurching its way forward into the intersection — and into my lane. Thankfully, having lived here for more than three years now, I was prepared; I hit the brakes, checked the lane next to me and shot over, narrowly missing the Chevy's protruding bumper. In my mind there was part of me that was screaming to honk at the dumb turkey who pulled out in front of me. "Honk at that turkey! HONK!"
But I didn't.
I didn't honk, or give him the finger, or stare him down. I didn't do anything but keep on keeping on. It reminded me of a few weeks back, when Amy and I were in New York, riding with my mom through Peekskill. An idiot driver, much like this morning's turkey, pulled out in front of my mom's car. It was a dumb move, no doubt, but after my mom had stopped and this girl realized she was out in the middle of the street, my mom drove around her, honking a really long, drawn-out, I'm a New Yorker so get the hell out of my way kind of honk that in a way made me yearn for the idiots of Mobile.
Here, you know that they're on the road, likely to cut you off as they fly down Dauphin Street, or stop in the middle of a traffic lane to let their cousin/sister/grandmama out at the corner store. So, because you're prepared, I think it makes us all less likely to get mad. If I got mad at every turkey that pulled out in front of me every day, I'd be a madman. My blood pressure would be through the roof and I'd be having anxiety attacks at every red light. But instead I shrug my shoulders and say, "Oh, you whacky Mobile drivers. You make me feel so competent."
So, thank you, almost surely uninsured driver of Mobile. You nearly cost me unneeded stress and a new bumper, but instead, you've made me, in some weird way, appreciate the turkey that you are. Gobble gobble.
