New art

Last year my colleague and friend Garrett went to visit his father who lives/works in Cuba.  Garrett noticed that most Cubans drive old American cars from the 1950s, and knowing how much I love 1950s cars, Garrett brought me back some beautiful matted, signed photos.  What a thoughtful gift!!

I'm embarrassed to say that those photos have been sitting in my house unframed for nearly a year now.  I anticipated that getting them custom-framed would be really expensive so I put it off.  But yesterday (my day off work) I came across the photos again and decided I would check my local HomeGoods store to see if they had any standard frames that would work.  So I measured the matted photos and headed over to HomeGoods.  Sure enough, I found terrific black frames for only $16.99 each!  

Two have black mats and one has a white mat.  At first this distressed me, but as I looked at my photos I noticed that two were portrait style and one was landscape style, so I decided that if I put the one landscape style photo into the white matted frame it might look intentional.  So I trimmed the mats slightly to fit, secured them in the frames, and here are the results:

#1

#2

#3

All 3 together

First off, I think the photos are amazing.  They are partially black-and-white and partially color.  I don't know how they do that but its cool.  Obviously the cars are super cool as well.  But I think the photos look so terrific in these frames, all 3 of which only cost me $50. 

I haven't decided yet where to hang them so for the time being they are on our living room sofa.  Maybe this weekend Spouse & I will agree on a place to showcase our new art.

New York in 1941 & 1942

A friend sent me this cool article about an Indiana man who took photos of New York in 1941 & 1942. The unusual thing is that he used expensive color film which was not readily available then so the photos appear to be much newer than they actually are.

Many of the buildings have been demolished or replaced since, but some still remain like McSorley's Old Ale House, then...
and now...

Have a look at these interesting photos!

Make love to the camera

RuPaul may be the "Supermodel of the World", but today I went for a photo shoot for the "Legends" show where I "made love to the camera"!

When I arrived at the dressing room to change into my Neil Diamond costume and wig I was reminded that I had forgotten to shave off my goatee! Fortunately a quick scramble through the drawers of the dressing room produced a razor and a small can of shaving cream, and I was off to the bathroom to quickly shave off my facial hair. It was a little bittersweet.

After returning to the dressing room freshly shaven, I put on my Neil Diamond costume and was fitted with my 70s shag wig. Before I knew it I was being wisked off to the studio.

The photographer gave me some general instructions and tried to make me comfortable. I admitted that I had never been photographed like this before. Plus, the point was not for me to be comfortable being me, it was to look as much like Neil Diamond as possible.

I did a lot of posing with slight adjustments to the tilt of my head, smiling a little, not smiling, hands in pockets, arms crossed in front of me, tugging my white satin scarf - it was crazy. I truly did think of the phrase "make love to the camera", which made me laugh. The photographer wanted to know why I was laughing all the sudden so I explained the source of laughter. By then we were both laughing!

The photos will be Photoshopped together to look as though all 6 of us were together and a single photo was taken, which will be used on the promotional posters and advertisements. How fun is that?!?!

Oh, and did I mention I'm getting PAID to be in this show?

Cruise photos

I shared a summary of our cruise, then shared some of the things that happened which we laughed about over and over. Now I'll share a selection of photos. I mean, nobody wants to see all 100+ photos, right? Well, if you do, I'll provide a link to all of them later.

Here's the ship: the Crown Princess. It was enormous and luxurious.
Here we are, hanging out on one of the balconies overlooking the rear pool.
Me and my buddy Steven at the bar by the pool.
Spouse and Thad at the bar.

The Bobs on formal night.

Thad & Steven on formal night.

Spouse & me on formal night.

The chair lift on Roatan, Honduras.

Me next to a LIVE bronze sculpture. Also notice the "Goodmark" sign.

Our ship from one of our ports.

Spouse & me on our ship, with another ship in the background.

The rear pool where we hung out all week, and the ship's wake.

Eddy, Spouse, Chris and Thad form a "waffle".

We met Jorge & Don and found that they live in the city where Spouse & I used to live in VA. Once we became friends on Facebook we discovered we had several mutual friends.

Spouse having some fun with the boys!

The beautiful Grand Piazza.

The dual spiral staircases in the Grand Piazza.

Just in case these photo highlights aren't enough, you can view all our cruise photos here.

Back in the day

Today I am at my company's headquarters in Richmond, VA. I'm seeing a few of my colleagues and working at my regular duties in the morning, then meeting my boss' new boss in the afternoon. The meeting is scheduled for 3 hours and my colleagues and I have to give presentations. I'm not really looking forward to this, but will put a smile on my face and try not to get ticked off. You know how a new boss can be, with all their ideas about how to change things even though they have little knowledge of what we do.

So I'm sharing with you today some great vintage photos of celebrities a friend sent to me. I bet there are quite a few you've never seen before. Enjoy!
































Crush du Jour: Josh Walsh