Robot Claw

Ten Things We Saw At The Fair

August 22nd, 2021

We went to Altamont fair the other day. It was fun, especially since things are getting like 2020 all over again and activities like this may be diminishing. Here’s a selection of what we saw:

There are some cages scattered around the fairgrounds that usually hold small animals or birds. This year they were empty, except for this one that had a velociraptor reminding us to wear a mask. We did. Most didn’t (which was ok, since the fair is almost entirely outdoors).

I saw this fellow taking a ride in an old truck in the automotive museum. A timely inclusion, given the situation? It’s not easy to see in the photo but someone had cleverly added red lights to his eyes, making him look ever-so-slightly sinister.

I always like the art contests, and this year there were many weird and wonderful entries worthy of this blog. But this saucy one caught our eye the most, both because it was life-sized and because I myself had recently created Marilyn art. The glass door was a few inches away from her, and I peeked behind. What did I see? I’ll never say 🙂

Speaking of art, this embroidery was an entry in the ‘craft’ section. What did you see when you first looked at it? Look again…

While there weren’t as many animals as previous years, there was still a lot of the usual farmland assortment to visit. This guy is a ‘Beatrix Potter’ sheep, so named because the author kept a flock of over 1000 that she bequeathed to England upon her death. I learned they’re a very handsome breed, and their hardy nature makes them well suited to the Scottish highlands.

The army was recruiting as always, and this year they brought some of their bigger guns to show off. This was one of three tanks, and there were several cannons and vehicles as well. This is of course an old and obsolete model, and I was surprised by how small and ramshackle it looked close up.

We had eaten before we went, but it was fiendishly hot and we had to get a drink. Needless to say I couldn’t resist a cinnamon donut from the same seller, and I’m glad I tried them since they were fantastic! We went back and bought a half dozen more 🙂

The police were recruiting as well, and they had this 9 meter wall to climb. I surprised myself by deciding to do it. They put me in a harness and up I scampered. The only real difficulty was the arthritis in my right hand which made holding the grips a little difficult, but overall it was easier than I expected. Pushing off and falling down on the auto-rappelling rope at the end was scarier than actually climbing.

Speaking of heat, here’s a couple of lemurs in the little zoo for kids. As you can see they’re both in a near-comatose state of heat exhaustion. Take a good look at the face of the guy on the right:

I should have tossed him a frosty beverage!

And lastly – as ever – the rides! I could watch them all day. I’m too prone to dizziness to ride most of them these days, but we went on the rollercoaster and I would have done the Ferris wheel if KLS wouldn’t have had to wait in the heat. The fair was very busy when we were there and the midway was full of people. It was a nice sight after this last one-and-a-half years.

Let’s hope next time the fair is in town, we may be able to leave our masks at home.

Posted in Blog, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

Rain Of Frogs

August 16th, 2021

I sent Bernard fifty frog postcards at the same time!

I started by numbering them all. The cards were, of course, unique:

I then hand-addressed and stamped all fifty:

At first I was unsure what to write on each of them, but a quick amazon search gave a handy alternate solution:

The (exactly fifty!) frog stickers were then applied, and I wrote the lyrics to Rainbow Connection across all fifty cards:

This took some time as you may imagine, and the cost was about $40 for the cards, stamps and stickers. Given Bernard only paid $20, he got quite a deal.

“Paid?”, you ask? This was part of a deal i offered him: 50 frogs for $20. I never mentioned it was postcards (or indeed any details at all), but he gladly accepted regardless 🙂

I sent them all on the same day from a variety of post offices and mailboxes. Four days later he received 43 in the mail, and I expect the remaining 7 will arrive today. I hear they were a hit with him and Lakshmi. Overall I deem Operation Rain of Frogs to be a grand success!

I’ve still got a few frogs – and many toads – left. If you want one, indicate as much in the comments!

Posted in Animals, Art, Blog, Family, Miscellaneous, Postcards, Stamps | 2 Comments »

Portrait Contest: Results!

August 8th, 2021

It’s time for the portrait contest results. If you’ve forgotten, the first half can be seen here. After the first five topics, Bernard was ahead 3-2!

The contest has now concluded. Let’s see how the judges voted on the remaining five…

Queen Elizabeth II

This was Lakshmi’s choice, and it was a subject I had considered selecting myself. Bernard’s is to the left, mine on the right. I went with a young Queen from 1952 and was quite proud of the texturing I got on her hair and the metallic look of the crown achieved only using a grey marker.

But… the judges apparently forgot the young Queen, and Bernard’s win of 3.5 to 1.5 (one judge gave a tie) was accompanied with some comments that only his pic looked like the Queen! Did these people forget the Queen’s coronation was almost 70 years ago?!? Lesson learned: create contemporary portraits only 🙂

Ronald McDonald

The famous clown (he is a real person isn’t he?) was my next pic. This was a risky one since there’s not many variations of his look but… Bernard’s pic (on the right)… well I’ll quote a judge here: “Do I really have to say which one is best?”

I won this one 5-0, which was timely since Bernard’s lead had become significant. After 7 subjects, the score was Bernard 4, me 3.

Barrack Obama

This was Bernard’s choice, and it was an obvious one I had been avoiding since I knew I didn’t have the right markers for his skin tone! He’s also a very handsome man with a strongly symmetric face, which means it would be very easy to create a portrait that didn’t look like him. But Obama it was, and I did my best!

Bernard’s is on the left, and mine on the right. The judges commented on the difficulty of judging this one, and ultimately gave me the win (3.5 to 1.5, with another tied judge) because Bernard’s “looks too old” or “has a weird chin“! One judge commented that neither looked like Obama. Regardless, the contest was now tied!

At this point I was making the observation that Bernard, on average, was strong with faces but weak with heads and hair, whereas I was the latter. Look at all the entries and see if you agree! One judge who is an artistic prodigy herself (JK) created this composite Obama from both our portraits to illustrate our respected strengths:

It looks more like him than either of ours doesn’t it?!?

Albert Einstein

My final choice was a bad one. I should have chosen Gene Simmons, or David Bowie (which I deferred since I assumed he would be Bernard’s last). But for some weird reason I went with Einstein, and he was a real challenge to draw.

Mine is on the left, Bernard’s on the right. The judges gave Bernard the win in another 3.5 to 1.5 split, although the comments weirdly praised mine more (one said “Your hair and shading is better but I choose right“)! By now I had gotten used to the arbitrary decisions of the judges, and even though I question whether Bernard’s actually looks like Einstein I concede mine was weaker and expected a greater blowout in the scores.

Nine subjects completed and the score is Bernard has 5 wins over my 4. I had to win the last one to tie!

Marilyn Monroe

Bernard’s final choice was not Bowie. Instead, surprisingly, he chose Marilyn! And she was easily the hardest of the entire contest. This was magnified by the pressure on me to win.

My entry was the right, Bernard’s the left. He went with realism, me with a stylistic approach. The only problem: neither of them look like Marilyn Monroe! Four of the five judges said this, and commented how their decision was therefore based on artistic style. Two judges (and myself) commented how Bernard’s strongly resembled someone other than Marilyn (although we can’t quite place who), and two admired the bold colours of my piece.

Perhaps unsurprisingly considering these responses, the vote was a complete tie: 2.5 points each! The first tie in the contest was the last entry, and both our non-Marilyns were deemed equal 🙂

Incidentally I can now reveal that I actually made four Marilyn’s, rejecting each of them until I found one I liked. I knew my stylistic choice would work against the judges, but I greatly preferred it to the previous three, which were these:

I wonder how the judges would have liked the above?

Final Results!

Ten portraits done and judged. Fifty individual votes! It’s time for the results. And they are…

Bernard won, with 5.5 wins to my 4.5!

Looking at total points, of the 50 available, the final tally was Bernard 26.5 to my 23.5. That means that ultimately the final decision came down to only 1.5 votes out of 50! That’s extremely close 🙂

Looking back at all the portraits now, it’s obvious that our skills increased as the contest went on, and many times I felt I was presenting the judges with a difficult choice! Alas they were only human; it’s obvious Bernard’s Elvis win was a flagrant mockery of the (then) rules and my Queen was much better than his. But at the same time he claims his Obama was the better and (I suspect) will say the same about his ~~Margot Robbie~~ Marilyn.

I’m packing up Bernard’s prize right now – which is a quality item indeed – and wondering if we’ll ever do this again. And if we do, what we should draw. Any ideas?

Posted in Art, Blog, Celebrity, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

Laconia

August 4th, 2021

Yesterday we drove to Laconia, New Hampshire. We chose this place due to the mega-arcade Funspot, one of my favourite locations (and one I’ve shown on this blog several times before).

Yesterday we only ate there, as well as played a few games and ticket machines. The plan was to return today and spend much more time enjoying the games.

But first, this morning, we went on the mail cruise once again! The weather was wonderful and we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the breeze and the views as the boat made the mail deliveries. I may have even sent a few postcards from one of America’s only floating post offices…

Then we went back to Funspot to spend the afternoon playing games and ticket machines. It’s been a few years since we last visited and it was nice to see the place had updated with quite a few new games (the focus is still on the classic era, up to the mid 80s). I played dozens including many I’ve never seen or even heard of before, and it was a real treat seeing (and playing!) original cabinets of some very rare arcade games. The art on some of the machines was fantastic, such as this example of the bezel art on Lady Bug:

I could just go on and on about Funspot, and truly wished it was closer to where we lived so I could visit whenever I wished.

I love seeing and playing all the games, and just being surrounded by the lights and sounds. The nostalgia is sky-high at Funspot, and I wish you could all visit.

Oh and the ticket machines? We invested about $30 in them and won just over 2000 tickets. This was enough to get an LED light strip with an MSRP of about $25, which isn’t bad at all given most the machines themselves are fun to play! I’d say it was a big success 🙂

Tomorrow we head home, which means this is the last post from this trip. We’ve had a great time and these posts have only partially described what we saw and done. There’s more on postcards, of which I sent over 100! Most of you will receive several, some will receive too many. Please look forward to them 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous, Trip | Comments Closed

Bangor

August 3rd, 2021

There’s a place just outside of Bangor called Bangor Forest that contains about a dozen miles of hiking trails. One of them leads to something quite special: the Orono Bog Boardwalk.

This is a floating one-mile boardwalk through a peat bog! It starts in dense swampy forest – the ground here is very wet with lots of standing water – and after a few hundred feet emerges into a very different type of landscape.

This is the peat bog, where only very hardy plants can survive and the ground is covered in moss. To our great surprise one of the more common plants here is the carnivorous pitcher plant, and the ground was covered in them:

It takes about an hour to walk the entire boardwalk, and despite not seeing any of the animals mentioned on the information boards – such as snowshoe rabbits, cougars or leopard frogs! – we found the experience fascinating and even spent about 15 (unsuccessful) minutes trying to spot a sundew plant 🙂

Afterwards we went to a ‘museum of land transportation’, which was a giant warehouse filled with an insanely large collection of vehicles and paraphernalia from the last 120 or so years of American life. From roller skates to trains, this place had it all.

You could spend days here reading all the info sheets just for the vehicles alone, but the museum has so much more including rooms of WW2 artifacts and an encyclopedic history of road shipping in Maine. It’s the work of one man (who owned a trucking company) and is one of the most impressive private museums I’ve ever visited.

Shortly after we left it started raining, which was somewhat appropriate since we then (after a visit to a casino where I won $23!) went to visit Stephen King!

Yes that’s his home, but no he no longer lives there. As Bangor’s most famous resident his house has become a tourist attraction, and while it’s gated and doesn’t do tours, there’s an endless stream of people stopping briefly for a quick photo. One lady we saw yesterday had a red balloon with her as well, an obvious nod to King’s novel It 🙂

I write this from our final destination on this trip… but you’ll have to wait for the next post to see where that is!

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