The Shire at Long Beach

The other day on a trip to the beach I created an art installation using driftwood and other stick debris. I was trying to figure what I wanted to call it: "Sherwood Forrest on the Beach" or "The Beach's Shire Wood", a play on the origins of my last name.



People started checking it out as they rode by on the bike path, and pedestrians did as well. I'm not sure what motivated me, but it started with a single stick, and moved from there. Here's the progression:





Enjoyment and provocation, right? Pretension, at least...

A Quote and a Picture

In my first post of the year on the original site I was making my case for why I was deciding to switch up the nature of my posts. The switch lasted only the month of January.

A line in that post located past the halfway point, one that I would have edited for grammar had I been more focused on the task at the time, is one that now I feel like discussing further. Here's the quote: "I'm avoiding the post about a crazy billboard or cool sidewalk crack pattern I took a picture of."

Well, because it's my birthday, I'm sharing the picture today:



It's the famous Sidewalk Crack Shark of Long Beach.

(I didn't take any pictures of the weird billboard, which has since been changed. D'Oh.)

"Outta my way, jerkass!"

Of all the quotes to use as a title for a post...

While doing a little research for a long piece for my new sports blog, I went out with my camera and explored the race preparations for our very own Long Beach Grand Prix. I try to get as close as I can before I'm officially shooed, and we perform a special ballet, the fence minders and I.

But in this picture, I actually got in my car and sped around the still-open-but-nearly-race-ready Shoreline Dr. Besides almost crashing, which tends to happen when I'm taking pictures and driving, I felt almost like a real racer. It was exciting.

New Bike at the Edge of the Continent

I think I just like this picture:

Is "73" the Best Number?

This discussion was sparked by a t-shirt worn by a character, er, a nerd stereotype, on a show, but the idea is worth looking at. I suppose we'd have to qualify the question of the above title as integer, to specify, since we do have a pair of transcendentals, pi and e, that would be hard to ignore.

The case for 73:

It is the 21st prime number;
7 x 3 = 21;
its mirror, 37, is the 12th prime number, which is itself a mirror.

I'm sure other cases could be made by a number or numbers. After writing the argument down here, it seems a little thin.

It's nice, I 'spose...

Random "Married...with Children" Notes Part 2

I was troving the internet for different things and heard about David Faustino having started a web television show. Davis Faustino played Bud Bundy in Married...with Children.

The impetus for the show, called Starv-ing, is rooted in the fact that David was called by various producers with various ideas about exploitative reality shows that utilize (see: make fun of) his Bud Bundy identity.

He, and his good friend Corin Nemec--former star of Parker Lewis Can't Lose--decided to do one better than those exploitative shows; they decided to make their own comedic exploitation show, one that was obviously fake and exploitative.

It's pretty great, if you like David Faustino. Here's a link.

I found it on my DVD's channel for Crackle. I really enjoy all seven or eight episodes.

Random "Married...with Children" Notes Part 1

For some reason I was up late looking up information about the old Fox television show Married...with Children. It turns out that the idea of the show was exported nearly as much as the show itself.

Here's something: Счастливы вместе

That Cyrillic is Russian, and phonetically it spells Sсhastlivy Vmeste, which is the name of their Married...with Children entity. It means "Happy Together".

Here's something else: Она ленива и беспечна, при этом неисправимая оптимистка. У Даши есть два природных таланта — она умеет выбить у Гены всё, что ей нужно, и может в огромных количествах поглощать шоколадные конфеты из коробок.

I only put that passage up because it illustrates a few things. One, it doesn't look like the Cyrillic alphabet has upper case letters, rather, they use enlarged members when necessary. Also, the passage, when translated directly, shows a bit about 1) how their show was set up; and 2) how Russian works in reference to itself:

"She is lazy and careless, and the incorrigible optimist. Dasha has two natural talent - she is able to knock out genes of all that she needs and can absorb huge amounts of chocolate candy from the box."

In America it was Al Bundy, but in Russia the character is named Gene, which is the impetus for "...knock out genes...", which should probably be "...knock out Gene's..."

In any case, the miserableness of marrying too young and then perpetually resenting your spouse and family apparently runs deeper than just apple pie and baseball.