www.HappyLOLDay.com
For a :) Almost Every Day with a few Cupcakes thrown in..
Click here for the TLLT "Things Look Like Things" site
A Google Blog of Note Link to my illustrated stories, Happily Ever Over, Fire Maiden, and Alix here
Computer Monkeys Originally uploaded by ChrisL_AK. Yeah where have all of you been? Oh wait it was ME that was/is/still gone.. :) My laptop croaked.. Thanks to wonderful Rick a new one is on it's way and I will be back up and running as soon as it gets here from the magical land of ebay.. Stringing two pieces of cardboard together and drawing keyboard squares on one and saying "If you can dream it you can be it!" won't work in this case.. not that I tried.. (maybe I needed to say "A'la Peanut Butter Sandwiches!" afterward..?) I am able to use my Flintstones era behemoth for simple stuff and sneak onto this one when no one is looking :) I can't really spend the quality time needed to do whatever it is I do, well, so I am just going to pretend to be patient and wait for the buzzer to announce the arrival of my new computer BFF. Shouldn't be that long.
In the meantime my new lil' company is online, that was also taking up time and still has a couple of things left to do but it is there up and running I will do a more offical sounding email about it soon. It's already had some wonderful things happen so it's been great I wish I could have a website warming party and invite you.
What is more interesting to me is where is he going to go when he walks out the door with just his clothes on his back his wallet and a passport! He says he is going to get on the first plane with a free seat and just take off! I hope he finds a great adventure and I hope the person that takes over his lifestyle at least lets him stay over when he comes back to visit! :)
Check out his auction here, and his website here and see all the activity that lead up to this moment now about to come to completion in about 6 days!
Bidding begins on 'entire life' Mr Usher plans to make a fresh start
An ex-pat who decided to make a clean break after splitting with his wife has so far attracted 70 bids for his "entire life". Ian Usher, from Darlington, who emigrated to Australia six years ago, is selling his house, friends and job on internet auction site eBay.
The 44-year-old said he hoped to earn about £185,000 for his Perth lifestyle. About five hours after bidding opened on Sunday, the highest offer was just over £314,000. Up for auction is his three-bedroom home in the western Australian city and everything inside it, including his car, motorcycle, jet ski and parachuting gear. He is also selling an introduction to his friends and a trial run at his job. Mr Usher said: "Everything that I have - the furniture in the house - all has memories attached to it. It's time to shed the old, and in with the new.
"On the day it's all sold and settled, I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all.
"My current thoughts are to then head to the airport and ask at the flight desk where the next flight with an available seat goes to, and to get on that and see where life takes me from there."
'Complete lifestyle'
Joy Jones, who co-owns the rug store in Perth where Mr Usher worked as a shop assistant, said she supported the auction idea. Her company is offering the successful bidder a two-week trial, which could be extended for three months and then become permanent. She said: "When Ian came up with this idea, because we had seen him go through a break-up of marriage and pain and bits and pieces, I thought it was really exciting.
"We thought, why not give it a go?"
Mr Usher said his friends in Perth were willing to be introduced to the highest bidder, allowing him to advertise his auction as offering a complete lifestyle. Bidding closes on 29 June. Read the whole article here
Maybe some of you are familiar with Trippy.. "Trippy is Pastilla the Mannequin’s world-traveling emotionally disturbed plastic lizard"... I have only just discovered this creature's adventures and felt the need to share them with you :) Start Here and have fun following the travels and tribulations.
He might be ugly but he sure is cute! :) Congratz Gus!!!!
A three-legged, one-eyed, cancer-afflicted dog named Gus has been crowned the World's Ugliest Dog at a fair in California. Gus, a Chinese Crested dog, beat allcomers to take the title at the Sonoma-Marin Fair. Owner Jeanenne Teed, from Florida, said she would spend the $1,600 prize on treatment for Gus's skin cancer. The competition has been running for 20 years, and is one of the fair's top attractions, organisers said. Vicki DeArmon, marketing director of the fair, said that in the past few years, winners had been dogs that had been abandoned or neglected before being adopted by dog-lovers.
Jeanenne Teed and Gus
"They may look hard to love, but apparently they are not. I've never seen dogs better cared for," she added. Gus was rescued from a bad home. One of his legs was amputated as a consequence of his skin tumour. He lost an eye to a tomcat in a fight. Read the article Here
Check out this Gallery Here of other "Ugly" contestants!
Hope everybody is having a great weekend!! I am in the final stages of being able to launch officially my new biz so that and other crazy things have taken up my time and brain! I will back a'bloggin' soon just have to tie up some loose ends and get up and running (amazing how many details there are to running even a wee lil biz! I even filed tax papers already!! I am a tiny cog now in the big ma-cheen!) SO have a wonderful weekend I will be back! :)
I may have loved Alien the best but Aliens had some of the most beautiful Alien effects and one of the greatest one on one battles of all film history. Ripley vs the Alien Queen
Stan Winston was one of the greats, like another amazing man, Jim Henson, he will be missed. He is the one that always sparked the conversation that even if the movie was not one of your all-time favorites you couldn't help but be amazed and inspired by the effects.
Stan Winston, 62; By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer June 17, 2008 Stan Winston, the renowned makeup, creature- and visual-effects wizard whose memorable work on "Aliens," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "Jurassic Park" earned him four Academy Awards, has died. He was 62.
Winston died of complications from multiple myeloma Sunday at his home in Malibu, said his son, actor Matt Winston.
"The entertainment industry has lost a genius and I lost one of my best friends," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, of "Terminator" fame, said in a statement Monday. "Stan's work and four Oscars speak for themselves and will live on forever."
In a nearly four-decade career that began on television in the early '70s, Winston earned five Emmy Award nominations and shared Emmys for his makeup on "Gargoyles" (1972) and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" (1974), for which actress Cicely Tyson was aged into a 110-year-old woman.
Winston, who segued into the movies the same decade -- he was the special makeup designer on "The Wiz" -- became a seminal figure in special makeup effects and animatronics.
"Stan has been involved in landmark, blockbuster movies for decades," J. Alan Scott, an animatronic effects supervisor at the Stan Winston Studio in Van Nuys, told The Times on Monday. "He was an innovator and a groundbreaker with new technology and new techniques for creating fantastical characters."
Winston, as the New Yorker magazine described several years ago, was known for "almost single-handedly elevating the craft of creature making from the somewhat comic man-in-a-rubber-suit monsters of the 1950s and '60s to animatronics -- electronically animated, part-robot, part-puppet creatures that have terrified millions of moviegoers."
Indeed, among the creations to come out of the Stan Winston Studio: the menacing, 14-foot-tall Alien Queen in "Aliens," the extraterrestrial jungle creature in "Predator," the futuristic cyborg assassins in the "Terminator" movies, and the life-size dinosaurs in the " Jurassic Park" movies, which included a frightening life-size Tyrannosaurus rex.
Winston and his team also designed and created the makeup and the scissors and blade appendages for "Edward Scissorhands."
Among his other film credits are "Interview With the Vampire," "Lost World," "Batman Returns" and "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence."
He shared Oscars for best effects, visual effects for "Aliens" (1986) and "Jurassic Park" (1993) and shared Oscars for best effects, visual effects and for best makeup for "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991).
More recently, Winston and his team created the crystal skeletons for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and the character suits for the superhero Iron Man and the 10-foot-tall super-villain the Iron Monger in "Iron Man."
"He was a giant in the industry of practical visual effects," Jon Favreau, director of "Iron Man," told The Times on Monday.
Favreau, who first worked with Winston on the 2005 film "Zathura: A Space Adventure," said he was "lucky to have him work on my first effects film and then to be there for 'Iron Man,' which is clearly an important moment in my career, and Stan's contribution to the success of that film is unquestionable."
Noting that Winston "went from being a hero of mine to somebody who was a mentor," Favreau added that "while he was definitely a legend in the industry, he never lost his childlike enthusiasm."
Steven Spielberg, who worked with Winston on numerous films, said in a statement: "Stan was a fearless and courageous artist/inventor, and for many projects, I rode his cutting edge from teddy bears to aliens to dinosaurs. My world would not have been the same without Stan.
"What I will miss most is his easy laugh every time he said to me, 'Nothing is impossible.' "
For Winston, his job was to get the audience "involved" with the characters he and his colleagues created.
"We use the tools and techniques of special effects to create characters for films," he told the Orange County Register in 1997.
"Special effects, by themselves, don't mean diddly squat in a movie. If the characters I created can't perform, can't act and aren't interesting, it just isn't going to work. It doesn't matter how good the technique is if you have not created interesting characters."
Jody Duncan, author of the 2006 book "The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio," said Winston "brought a lot of class and respect to the art form of creating makeup and creature effects for movies.
"No. 1, he ran a beautiful and clean and high-class shop," Duncan told The Times. "Instead of it being something done in a dirty warehouse somewhere, he created a beautiful place. Another thing he did was he campaigned for makeup artists to be recognized both in credits and financially. They just became more prominent, partly through his efforts."
And, she said, "he did almost a one-man campaign to create a makeup-effects category for the Academy Awards. It used to be they'd give one out every once in a while as a special thing. He went on talk shows, he wrote letters to the editor -- he did all kinds of things to get that to happen."
Born April 7, 1946, in Arlington, Va., Winston as a child developed an interest in drawing, puppetry and classic horror films. He graduated from the fine arts and drama programs of the University of Virginia in 1968. After heading to Hollywood in 1969 with a dream of an acting career that was quickly dashed, he entered a three-year makeup apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios and launched Stan Winston Studio in the garage of his Northridge home in 1972.
Stan Winston Studio, which now has a staff of about 50, has contributed characters and effects to more than 75 feature films, several music videos and numerous commercials, including those featuring the Aflac duck, the Budweiser frogs and lizards, and Burger King's king. The energetic Winston was always looking to the next project.
"The audience expects more each time, but I expect more than they do," he told the Washington Times in 1992. "It's very important -- so that I don't get bored -- that I do more the next time than I did the last. It has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with wanting to be dazzled and excited."
"If I can dazzle myself, I'm pretty sure I can dazzle you."
Winston's illness kept him out of the studio for some time, but colleagues said the company plans to stay in business and current projects will continue.
In addition to his son Matt, Winston is survived by his wife, Karen; his daughter, Debbie; his brother, Ronnie; and four grandchildren. Instead of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research in West Hollywood, Free Arts for Abused Children in Los Angeles, or United States Fund for UNICEF in New York.
dennis.mclellan@latimes.com Times staff writer Chris Lee contributed to this article. Read the article here, see more pictures and info.
Images from National Pigeon Day. On June 13th I went to Central Park's Pilgrim Hill for the event. I was only able to get there for the last hour and a half but there were still songs and art being shared. Earlier had been speakers and classes, cookies and music. You can read what this is all about here on the National Pigeon Day Blog and get more info and pictures too!
The Day is in honor of Cher Ami the hero pigeon. You can read about how he saved the Lost Battalion in World War 2 here. It is also a day to honor our pigeon friends in cities and towns because they are gentle sweet birds and do not deserve to be called flying rats and have had so many lies spread about them. Yes there are "other things" going on in the world and I am fully aware of those too and have been or am involved and many of those have mega stars heading them- this small sweet cause has no such star (yet), so I am helping in this way.. and if we lose our ability to care for small creatures here where we live then we have in my opinion, lost a big part of our souls.
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players did a wonderfully sweet performance complete with music and art and their great happy spirits- they have to be the cutest family I have ever met! Adopt me please :)
(Check out their website here ) I have a video of the lovely Nellie McKay playing too but You Tube is under maintenance at the moment so I will upload it later.. :)
Child among pigeons Originally uploaded by damonlynch. Whoo Hoo.. or rather Coo Coo! Actually what my pijjies say sounds more like LOOkitThaPOOL! (What pool?!) :) From an email from the NY Bird club, congratz to Anna Dove and everyone who care for the little creatures with feathers :) ******************* New York Magazine - Pro-Pigeonism Article New York Bird Club
Hello pigeon friends,
Pigeons have received some nice comments and a lovely article in the New York Magazine Children's Section. You can add some comments to the article if you wish.
It is time that pigeons finally receive good press, and we hope that the goodwill toward pigeons will follow in other media.
Thank you to all who defend and continue to advocate for our pigeon friends, and I hope to see you on Friday at our first National Pigeon Day.
Anna
http://nymag.com/family/kids/47515/
Pigeons are nature’s ambassadors to many young New Yorkers. Kids may grow up singing about Old McDonald, imitating farm animals, and reciting their “this little piggy”s, but those animals aren’t city dwellers. What parent hasn’t gotten a whine-free afternoon thanks to some birds and a few crackers? Nonetheless, pigeons have enemies: landlords, the bird-poop-phobic, and Woody Allen, who dubbed them rats with wings. But on June 13, bird lovers will spring to the underdog’s defense by hosting National Pigeon Day in Central Park. “We’re trying to promote a positive image,” says New York Bird Club founder Anna Dove via telephone, rescued canaries tweeting in the background. “There’s such negativity for no reason. They’re harmless, defenseless. They can’t attack; their beak is very soft.” Other members of the crusade against “anti-pigeonism” include Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns and Valerie Sicignano of In Defense of Animals. The day is equal parts class and party: Kids will learn cool pigeon facts (e.g., how the birds acted as wartime carriers and how they’re smart enough to recognize alphabet letters) as they nibble on pigeon-shape cookies, view pigeon-inspired children’s art, and take part in a candlelight prayer service. (Dove worries there might not even be urban pigeons in five years.) Meanwhile, she urges all New York families to “carry a bit of bread crumbs in your bag, a few seeds to show kindness and respect. The pigeon isn’t a threat or an enemy. It goes along with quality of life to show kindness and compassion to all living things.” That’s a lovely lesson for the children.
6/13, 4 to 8 p.m. Pilgrim Hill in Central Park, enter on Fifth Ave. at 72nd St. (212-369-1293 or nationalpigeonday.com); free.
