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Saturday, July 11, 2009

Sketcrawl 23: Results

Mazda Dealership / Echo Park









LA ZOO







What a day, up at 7 to get an oil change, then straight to Echo park followed by a quick zoo trip all the while drawing my various destinations. Could my day have gotten better...? Only if I remembered to get a strawberry lemonade.
Had an amazing time today and met some great new friends and possibly some future zoo buddies :]

Happy 23rd Sketchcrawl everybody!

if you didn't go this time you better make it next time!

11 Lightning Strikes on July 11th...


Lightning Strikes Delay Endeavour's Launch

"Twice delayed in June, NASA again scratches its mission to the International Space Station after 11 lightning strikes are recorded in the launch area. After a check of all systems, NASA hopes to finally get the mission under way July 12."


"NASA called off the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour for a third time July 11 after lightning strikes in the 'C'ape 'C'anaveral area prompted the space agency to move the liftoff to July 12. The mission to deliver equipment to the International Space Station was scratched twice in June due to a mysterious launch pad hydrogen gas leak that appears to be resolved."

Do you see what I see? Lightning never strikes the same place twice right?




Richard:

On Thorsday the 2nd of July the Highlands of Scotland encountered a pretty amazing Thunder Storm (we don't get many so any loud noise from a skyward direction is considered 'amazing'). I watched the spectacle unfold above my hometown of Thurso (named after Thor, the Norse God of Storms) as a beautiful scorching Summers day suddenly turned into torrential rain and booming thunder. While at work earlier on in the day we had warning that an electrical storm was arriving because all the PC's in the office kept shutting down. I like how Father Zeus/Jupiter/Thor, or Mother Earth, gives us subtle warnings before She/He strikes.
Someone in Thurso caught a snippet of the storm on camera and published it on Youtube. The clip starts off with the words 'Oh Jesus' before we get a glimpse of a chequerboard floor followed by the Lightning strike:

Notice that the Lightning illuminates the sky exactly 42 seconds into the vid:

Numerous properties were flooded during the storm and the roof of one house was split wide open (with the occupants still inside) due to a lightning strike. The unlucky owners watched as their property burned, gone in the blink of an eye. I take this as a reminder that life can suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, change in a flash.

11 Lightning Strikes on July 11th...


Lightning Strikes Delay Endeavour's Launch

"Twice delayed in June, NASA again scratches its mission to the International Space Station after 11 lightning strikes are recorded in the launch area. After a check of all systems, NASA hopes to finally get the mission under way July 12."


"NASA called off the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour for a third time July 11 after lightning strikes in the 'C'ape 'C'anaveral area prompted the space agency to move the liftoff to July 12. The mission to deliver equipment to the International Space Station was scratched twice in June due to a mysterious launch pad hydrogen gas leak that appears to be resolved."

Do you see what I see? Lightning never strikes the same place twice right?




Richard:

On Thorsday the 2nd of July the Highlands of Scotland encountered a pretty amazing Thunder Storm (we don't get many so any loud noise from a skyward direction is considered 'amazing'). I watched the spectacle unfold above my hometown of Thurso (named after Thor, the Norse God of Storms) as a beautiful scorching Summers day suddenly turned into torrential rain and booming thunder. While at work earlier on in the day we had warning that an electrical storm was arriving because all the PC's in the office kept shutting down. I like how Father Zeus/Jupiter/Thor, or Mother Earth, gives us subtle warnings before She/He strikes.
Someone in Thurso caught a snippet of the storm on camera and published it on Youtube. The clip starts off with the words 'Oh Jesus' before we get a glimpse of a chequerboard floor followed by the Lightning strike:

Notice that the Lightning illuminates the sky exactly 42 seconds into the vid:

Numerous properties were flooded during the storm and the roof of one house was split wide open (with the occupants still inside) due to a lightning strike. The unlucky owners watched as their property burned, gone in the blink of an eye. I take this as a reminder that life can suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, change in a flash.

Love Aaj Kal Movie Wallpapers, Pictures & Photo Gallery






















Reel Thoughts: Less Than Meets the Eye

Putting clunky political screeds in a summer blockbuster is like digging into your hot buttered popcorn and finding some sour, spoiled broccoli in your bucket. I don’t know what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen director Michael Bay’s politics are and couldn’t care less, but he dumped a bad batch of Obama-bashing into his loud and obnoxious, but otherwise brainlessly entertaining sequel to Transformers.

Once again, Shia LeBeouf plays Sam Witwicky, owner of a sometimes-petulant Camaro/robot named Bumblebee. Sam’s heading off to college, leaving his smokin’ hot girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) and his hilarious and hysterical mother Judy (Tony-winning goddess Julie White) behind. Of course, the centuries-old conflict between the Transformers and the not-so-vanquished Decepticons isn’t going to wait for his Ivy League education, and it turns out Sam has a Homer Simpson-like chunk of AllSpark (that transformative block of whatever it was) stuck to his jacket and the Transformers history tattooed on his brain.

Of course, although the story makes no sense, and people enter a museum in Virginia only to come out in the Pinal County desert in one scene, Bay has a comic secret weapon in Julie White, whose pot brownie-fueled freak-out is worth the ticket price. He also fills the movie with endless scenes of cool machines blowing up. LeBeouf is maturing nicely into an off-beat leading man (like a young Richard Dreyfus), and you’d have to be made of ice not to steam up when Megan Fox hits the screen, but other charismatic actors like Josh Duhamel are adrift in vacuous dialogue and unnecessary plot tangents.


Why oh why is John Benjamin Hickey even in this film except as an irritating distraction? He’s thrown into the mix as an effete, officious government dick who aggressively goes after the Autobots in the name of the president. In case you thought, “Oh, they must mean some fictitious movie president — now that Bush is gone, who’d be such an idiot? Transformers helpfully has Hickey spout idiocy about using “diplomacy,” not robots, before a news flash identifies the president specifically as Obama. It’s a cheap shot pandering to Red State mouth-breathers and Fox News lovers that is totally unnecessary.

Now, if Bay wants to get all political, why isn’t he tweaking the GM bailout or why the last administration let carmakers evade any substantial strides in electric vehicles or major fuel efficiency improvements over the last eight years? Wouldn’t a benevolent race of robots that look like American-made vehicles have some interest in keeping the human race from baking itself to death?

Although it has proven to be a box office blowout, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen falls flat.

UPDATE: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is now available on DVD and Blu-rayfrom Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Painted woman





























Aircraft aerography
























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