Out Of The Blue

Chances are, you'll recognize the above image as that of a Hot Wheels diecast toy car. It seems like they've been around forever, but in reality, they were only introduced in 1968. I had a few of those original releases, but sadly they're no longer in my collection. I do still have a collection of Hot Wheels, but only one that I started later on in the mid-1970's. They have released thousands of varieties it seems like and they never cease to amaze me at their creativity in coming up with those new designs. Of course, they always have the perennial classics such as this 1932 Ford Roadster:

And some such as this 1940 Ford 2-Door Sedan:

But, what many people may not realize, the good folks at Hot Wheels have designers hard at work to come up with vehicles that are not based on real cars. These are cars you won't find anywhere else, such as the Street Scorcher:

What amazes me the most is where they are able to come up with these futuristic vehicles such as this way cool surfing mobile called the Deora II. They apparently just pull designs like these from out of the blue:

Sometimes, though, I think these far-out, futuristic designs are all too common in their basic nature, and that the draftsmen at Hot Wheels just fall back on something they've seen in real life. They just try to pass it off as something you've never seen before. What prompted me to think this was I was sitting at my computer bidding on a Deora II on eBay one day and looked out the window at my Ford Taurus station wagon sitting below. I saw the back end of it in a whole new light and realized where the inspiration for the Deora II had come from. See if you don't think so, too:

On the Deora II, the way to get inside the vehicle is through the front - the whole nose of the car lifts up like a gullwing door. Kind of like the hatch on my station wagon. Maybe I should apply at Mattel as a designer. I think I could do work like that.

Meet Me In St. Louis

To most people, St. Louis, Missouri begins and ends with the famous Arch. True, the Gateway Arch, completed in 1965 and towering 630 feet above the banks of the Mississippi River is an inspiring monument, but the city of St. Louis has much more to offer if you only look around.
To start out with, my first suggestion would be to visit the world-class St. Louis Zoo. I've been there several times and find it fascinating each time I go. The cost to enter this zoo is free! The bald eagle below was photographed on a trip I took there in 1991:

Another fine place to visit is the St. Louis Science Center. It is a complex of buildings spread around on both sides of the interstate with a connecting covered walkway that takes you right over 8 lanes of speeding traffic. The clear floors to look straight down always give me vertigo, though. In the IMAX Dome across the interstate from the James S. McDonnell Planetarium pictured below, are more great things to see, including the original Gemini 6 space capsule that took Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford into orbit, December 1965:

If you're sports-minded, there are several national teams located in St. Louis. Of course, there's the 2006 World Series Baseball Champions, the St. Louis Cardinals. I was in town the day after they won the pennant and let me tell you, the place was a madhouse! Remind me not to book a trip there in October again. Below is their new stadium, that as you can see, was still partly under construction last October while I was there, but they were able to still play games in it:

St. Louis is also the home of the St. Louis Blues hockey team and the NFL franchise St. Louis Rams. I'm a huge Rams fan and always catch their games on television. This is their new facility, the Edward Jones Dome, and it opened in 1995:

There are lots of other places of interest, the Botanical Gardens, a tour of the Anheuser-Busch breweries, Knot's Berry Farm is close by, Union Station, a great place to shop, and many more too numerous to mention. (Or for me to remember right now, apparently.)

But, don't forget to see the Arch. A trip to the city should include a ride up into the Gateway Arch where one can see the entire St. Louis skyline:

While visiting the Arch, there are several other points of interest right by it to also take in. There is the Basilica of St. Louis, a lovely, towering cathedral in the heart of the downtown area; the historical Old Courthouse, pictured below; and the riverfront is where one can take cruises and go back in time riding an authentic riverboat! One I rode on was called the Becky Thatcher and we went for miles up and down the Mississippi River. It is pictured just below the Old Courthouse:

Or you can just take a leisurely stroll along the riverfront and see the sights. While I was there this past October 2006, the weather was so mild that there were still artists practicing their skills along the water:

Another place that has begun to put itself on the entertainment map, as far as I'm concerned, is the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center. It is located just off I-70 on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. They hosted Bob Newhart there last October and that was what took me there. He stills puts on a great show, let me tell you! Don Rickles was appearing there this October 2007, but I had already made trip plans to see the 1910 Fruitgum Company in Tennessee later in November. (They sang the Number 2 smash hit song "Simon Says," back in 1968.) This is the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center below:

I have to relate an amusing story that happened to me while I was there this past October, although it wasn't very amusing at the time. I had stopped on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River to get some shots of the Arch from across the water and I managed to get them, but just as I was finishing up, along comes this vehicle that looked very official. It had "Police" written all over the side of it. Turns out it was just the Railroad Police and they had this silly rule about not climbing on their tracks or something like that. I got away with nothing other than a stern warning. You can see me below as the guy was running a check on me:

All in all, St. Louis is a great to place to visit and I would highly recommend it to everyone. One place that, sadly, is no longer available to see is the old Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals used to play up until the end of the 2005 season. I took in many games there throughout the years and loved the graceful curves of the old stadium. That's it pictured in the lower-right hand corner below:

Yabba Dabba Do Watch This Show

Well, a new show premiered on ABC-TV tonight, October 2nd, 2007. And, let me tell you, I was highly anticipating it! If you've ever seen a commercial on TV lately, you're probably familiar with the ads featuring cavemen, run by the Geico car insurance company. I find those ads very intelligent and witty. Well, whoever comes up with new television ideas picked a lulu when they decided to bring these characters to life with their own show. The show is named Cavemen and the premise is that somehow Cro Magnon man has survived and lives in the modern world alongside Homo sapiens. They're not as stupid as the historians led us to believe, and in fact, the modern version is quite cosmopolitan. They go to clubs, work in malls and even play squash! How more integrated into society can you be than that?

The first episode, which was entitled "Woman Embarrassed By Caveman," introduced the main characters: The lead caveman, Nick, his best friend Joel and Nick's brother Andy, who all share an upscale apartment. In the opening, Nick is afraid to tell his roommates about his new girlfriend because she's a Homo Sapiens and he knows that Joel says they should date within their own species and would not approve. Andy is trying to get over his ex-girlfriend Susan, so he doesn't really care who his brother dates. We see that Nick works in a Swedish furniture store and that the roommates all belong to a health club where they play squash together alot with a caveman friend of theirs.

All in all, I found this comedy, which didn't have a laugh-track, to be intelligent and funny. No lowbrow humor here, even though the main characters have lowbrows! I don't know how the general public will feel about this show, and whether or not it will last very long, but I plan to enjoy it and watch it as long as it's on the air. I only hope that all the bad press it's been getting doesn't prevent people from even giving it a chance and have it cancelled before it had an opportunity to be viewed. I'm even recording the episodes to my computer so that I can burn them to dvd and preserve them. We'll just have to see what the ratings turn out to be like - whether they start strong and fall off, start low and stay there or build gradually as the weeks go by and it turns into a hit. I'll keep you posted.

My New Car

On Friday, I took possession of what Ricardo Montalban would have called, "My new car." It's a wonderfully roomy 1996 Ford Taurus GL Station Wagon. Now it will make it much easier to get my musical equipment to the next gig - with the rear hatch, everything just fits right in the back. I have other plans for this automobile, but more on that later. For now, it will just take over the shuttling duties from my other car.

This isn't the first station wagon I've owned. In fact, it's the third. My first one was purchased in 1980 and it was a huge land-yacht of a machine, a 1971 Dodge Polara behemoth that must have been forty feet long. At least it seemed like it. And to the other extreme, my second station wagon, acquired in 1999, was a tiny, almost too small for me 1984 Ford Escort. The back seat did lay down, however, and I was able to stuff my musical equipment into the back of it somehow.

But, the main reason I got this present station wagon is because there's a car club near my town that I've been wanting to join for a few years, but never had a car. Well, I finally got the car of my dreams, a swoopy, rounded cutie that has a lot of potential for turning it into a great street cruiser. The first thing I'll do to it is to lower it closer to the ground. Right now, it sits much too high in the sky for my liking. Then, after it's way down on the ground, wider tires and custom wheels of some kind. I'm thinking brushed aluminum S/T's. My ultimate goal is to rip out the V-6 it currently has, which is wedged in sideways making it a front-wheel drive and replacing it with something a lot more peppier. Perhaps a 351 and converting it to rear-wheel drive. I always wondered why that if they designed this car as a front-wheel drive, why it had the hump through the middle of cockpit, even though there wasn't a driveshaft under there. Well, I guess they put it there for people like me who would want to go the trouble to convert it back to "normal."

One final thing I'd like to do to it someday, but this would be a lot of work, and that is to convert it into a two-door station wagon instead of four. Kind of like the old Chevy Nomads of the mid-50's. As I make progress on my customization process, I'll keep everything posted for all those enquiring minds out there. Here is the car as it looked when I first brought it home on Friday:

Oh, and just so my other car doesn't feel left out, here is my beautiful 1991 Ford Thunderbird LX:

Being There

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I cover all sorts of newsworthy events, photographically speaking of course. Some of the shots I take make it to the front pages, some don't. Here are a few recent ones from both categories.

Now, here's one that I really worked hard to get published. But it happened to come on a weekend that was rife with local news items. So many so, that there just wasn't room for this Life Flight Helicopter action shot. Such is the newspaper game - old news is not important any more. Still, I thought it was a good picture and should see the light of day. Therefore, here it is.

Previously I have shown some automobile accidents that were published in my local papers. Well, here are two more, one that got published and one that didn't. The one above almost resulted in my death. Shocking!? Well, as regular readers of my blog know, I am an avid Butterfly photographer. It doesn't show in this picture, but just on the other side of this car is a culvert that I had been in earlier that day because it seems to attract several different species of Butterflies. The smashed car pictured was involved in an accident four blocks up the road on the left and it had lost it's braking ability. So, as it careened faster and faster out of control, the teenage girl driving it felt that the only way to get it stopped was to pull it into a ditch off the side of the road. Well, she hit the culvert and flipped her car over until it was almost facing the way from which it had come. I was about a hundred feet on the other side of the road by this time, along the edge and happened to look up as it pounded into the culvert and came to rest like it sits. Naturally, I had my camera in my hands. It was a story that literally fell into my hands.

This is another accident that I heard about over my scanner and hopped over to cover it. It didn't result in a sale, because I think it involved the local police. The other vehicle was our town cop car and although it doesn't show, was damaged even more than this car. I have since found out that the editor of my hometown paper quit her job because of differences with City Hall. And City Hall hires the police officers here. I wonder if there is any correlation between these two facts and the fact that this story didn't get picked up? The world may never know. You decide.

The two pictures, above and below, were part of the massive fire that struck the "biggest little furniture store in Southern Illinois," in tiny Omaha, Illinois. It was so big, it took out the buildings and businesses along a whole city block. The coverage it got spanned several different local papers, and the one that picked up my two pictures also had photographs from a couple other photographers to suppliment the story because it was so big.

This was another fire I covered, and I found out about it because the fire trucks went screaming right past in front of my house. I naturally followed them and arrived at this scene. Fire departments from four or five neighboring communities were involved, but unbeknownst to me, my local paper had sent a photographer, too, which I didn't notice and therefore they didn't need my shots. They were just too good to waste, though. And their shots didn't turn out near as good as mine - what can I say?

I seem to attract danger. The reason I say this is that the above house fire happened right across the street from my home. Naturally I got full coverage of it. This picture was carried by one nearby newspaper, but not by my local one. They sent somebody else late in the event and I thought their pictures weren't near as good as mine. But, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

This was another fire that happened just about 3 blocks from my home, and although the photo didn't get picked up, I still wanted to publish it here in my blog so that our local fire fighters can get the recognition they so justly deserve. They are an all-volunteer group and are always there on the spot in record time. They keep our small town very safe! I have shown their smiling mugs on a previous post, so you can see them if you'd like to know what they look like.

This picture was of one of our local events, the annual Fairfield Bluegrass Festival. I just posted it to show that death and destruction isn't the only thing I cover.

Well, that's it for another exciting post! Be sure to stay tuned for more. I might post something just a little less intense the next time, though.

Death By Tumbling

Readers of this blog, (if there are any....) know that I am an avid photographer of wildlife, specifically of Butterflies. But, every now and then, I'll see an interesting bug and shoot it, too. At this point, I'd like to mention that there is this wonderful website out there where anybody can post a picture of an unknown insect and the good folks that frequent the place, all volunteers of course, will give it a name for you. This is especially good if you've just seen a weird-looking bug that has crawled into your house or one that flew by your head while you were in the backyard working on your tan. This website is called Bugguide.net. I have a page on that site where I post my Butterfly pictures, but it is also a repository of my other kinds of insects - beetles, moths, ants and bees, etcetera. I know you'll just want to click on this link and rush right over to see all the wonderful insects there, but please try to wait until the end of the blog. Here's the link to my page.

When you go there, just remember that the newest pictures I've posted show first and older ones are found by clicking on the page numbers.

One particular bug you'll see there is a beetle I was mighty proud of when it was first posted. It was eventually identified as a Tumbling Flower Beetle, and it's scientific name is Glipa hilaris. Here is what it looks like:

And another view:

The reason I was so proud of this particular insect over others I had photographed was because at the time I posted it, there were no other photographs of this elusive insect known to be in existence. That's anywhere in the world. It had been described a few times, but never photographed. Naturally, after I had posted the first one on Buguide.net, it caused quite a furor for a few days afterwards. Then, a couple weeks later, another photograph of one turned up, this one in Florida, and my euphoria was tempered somewhat. But, I like to think my picture was better because it was the first. So, if there are any Insect Guide Book publishers out there looking to purchase a good photo of this rare insect for your next textbook, you know who you have to see.

And to top it all off, I even saw another one of these beetles and got an even better shot of it. It is pictured below. Isn't it just the greatest beetle you ever saw? Now you can click on that link and go see all the wonderful insects that await!

Stop The Presses!

Back in my early career as a budding photographer, I got my start capturing newsworthy events around my area as they unfolded. To find out exactly how and why this began, one would have to recall that old program called Lou Grant, which was on television in the late 1970's/early 1980's. In it, there was one character, the staff news photographer, who was simply called Animal. It was also along about this time, 1978 or so, that I began freelancing and my pictures were used by most of the local papers around me. I even became intimately acquainted with a handful of different said local newspaper's darkrooms, too. So, naturally, I acquired the nickname of Animal, which suited me fine, and I started following my nose to any newsworthy events I could find.

Daryl Anderson as Animal

Something that will always liven up the front page of a small, hometown paper, is the sight of a burning house or automobile accident. Of which, there have always been, and forever will be, too many. I have scoured my files and chosen just a few of the noteworthy images that have made the front pages and that, to this day, has somebody somewhere still calling me Animal. Maybe in a future blog, I'll post some more recent events that I have captured with one or the other of my cameras I use and have sold to one of those same local newspapers.

Before.... (above) And after.... (below)