A Cup of Steaming Camera

We’ve recently discovered a new feature on our Netflix account which offers internet radio. To our delight, we can select various genres of music we enjoy and voila! the music piped into our home is to our taste. As an added bonus, there are no commercials or distracting talk and the name of the artist, song and album appears on our television screen at the touch of a button, allowing us to add more music to our playlist.

No, this is not an ad for Netflix. The reason I mention it is because a new song came on and the lyrics were oddly familiar while the tune was one we’d never heard before. Something about a girl “being a drama queen and only seventeen.” Flashbacks of Abba circa 1976 “You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen.”

My how times have changed. While disco fever raged “back in the day,” songs were written about dancing queens. Now they are written about “drama queens.” There is a lot of talk about people being drama queens and kings these days, but Kimmmm recently echoed my mother and described my story-arc as a sitcom rather than a melodrama and this week was no exception.

But first, I must follow up on last week’s entry. Thank you for all your feedback. If I was running my life as a democracy, then the votes are in and the proposed trip to the South in August has been nixed. Can’t say for sure, but plans are afoot right now for spending our air miles getting to New York in the fall.

The idea is for Groom and me to meet up with King Zolo, the moniker given to our friend who mistook my handwritten date of 2010 for Z0L0. He’s originally from upstate New York and hasn’t been to Manhattan for quite some time. The idea of wandering about The City in autumn, poking around antique stores and flea markets, giving our cameras a hearty workout and attending a Broadway show tickles all of our fancies.

As a trial run, to see how the three of us handle spending long hours together, we took a road trip to Portland last Thursday and did a mini-version of our ideal day. We stopped in Aurora, a small town filled with antique stores (24 miles south of Portland on Highway 99), then meandered through the Sellwood neighborhood in Portland, ate a fantastic dinner on the waterfront and capped the evening with, guess what? A Broadway Musical, The Lion King.

Apparently the trip was successful because we received a phone call the next day from King Zolo suggesting that we “go for it!” Details forthcoming as they get clearer and nearer.

But how does this scenario tie into my sitcom story-arc, you ask? I’m getting to that. But first, what is it with beards this week? As you’ll notice from some of the photos, I’ve been surrounded by them in the last few days.

Take a look at the fellow in the red pin-striped suit. He appeared at the booth long enough for a fun photo-op and then poof! Disappeared. To get a closer look at the photos, which I know you’ll want to do, simply click on them to enlarge and then hit the back button to return to the blog. Don’t our outfits complement each other fairly well, as though it was planned? I don’t even know the guy.

Then there’s Zolo with his white beard. Depending on his chapeau du jour, he can resemble a salty sea cap’n, a mountain man or Santy Claus.

Have cameras will travel is our motto, so naturally we had our dueling shooting apparatuses ablazin. Here are some of the pictures we took while roaming about. It never ceases to amuse us that what we see is both so similar and yet different.

For example, we both took aim at mannequin heads with dark beards, were drawn to horsie heads, hands, feet, numbers and letters.

After browsing for a bit, it was coffee time. We asked the advice of a local where to get “a good cup of coffee,” and we were confidently pointed in the right direction. Peshaw! It was a weak and bitter cup, so nasty that I could not drink it. “Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble;” a handy quote from MacBeth to mumble under one’s breath instead of swearing when one is disappointed. And “one” would be me.

I left bereft. Okay, I admit, that’s overstating things a bit (not really). And so, because of the sad, sad, sad, sad coffee affair, I was primed and ready to notice the man carrying a large and sturdy cup of coffee high over his head at the next antique store. He was holding it like it was something very precious and valuable, which I understood deeply and profoundly. I almost stopped him as we passed on the steep staircase to ask where he’d found his cuppa God’s blessing, but he seemed intent on a mission.

A few moments later, we heard bursts of laughter and went to the front of the store to suss out the source of amusement. Oh my, it turns out the owners had been punked by a professional actress and a man with a hidden camera, can you guess where? Inside his “coffee” cup. I knew that dude was protecting it like it was liquid gold, but I never guessed there was a camera inside and that he was holding it up high to film the store. There’s probably images of me on the cutting room floor drooling.

The practical joke was sponsored by Dodge, a commercial in the making about “cars and freedom.” I’ve added a link here so you can watch a 60 second clip and get the gist of their Challenger campaign. http://lybio.net/dodge-challenger-2010-cars-and-freedom/autos-vehicles/

The tag line is “Here is a couple things America got right, cars and freedom.” In the clip, it’s a battle scene with the Red Coats. In comes the cavalry to save the day with George Washington at the wheel.

In the upcoming Dodge commercial, the premise is to have the professional actress (you can see her and the coffee cup filmographer caught on digital by moi in the throes of caffeine withdrawal) act like a woman who is trying to sell her family’s heirloom pictures. She claims that her relatives knew George Washington and has documentation to prove it. Of course, this intrigues the antique dealer and when she has him hooked, she pulls out beautifully rendered aged and sepia-toned photographs with supposed family members, all in period clothing, standing next to George Washington. Next to a 2010 Dodge Challenger. Yeah….right.

The appraiser instantly knows this is impossible and tries gently to inform the “old lady” that they did not have cameras or cars in the 1770’s. Oh, but this actress can act! She is insulted, swears those are her relations, etc. etc., making the job of refusing to buy her “valuable” photographs more difficult by the minute.

Meanwhile, all of this is being secretly filmed for the commercial including the moment when the shopkeeper knows he’s the happy victim of a practical joke. Hence all the laughter and ruckus. I took a photo of the souvenir the Dodge folks left on the counter. While it is a promotional shot of George and the car, it is not the one with all the ancestors in it, but you can still get the idea. This commercial is not finished yet, so shhhh, you heard about it here first.

I think this is what Kimmmm meant by my story-arc being more comical than dramatical. I’m just wandering about, minding my own business, hanging out with friends, shopping, taking photos, trying to sip coffee and we run across a delightful practical joke/commercial in the making.

A fun afternoon, a wonderful evening and hopefully, an impending trip to the Big Apple.

Oh, and speaking of ads, our jewelry and my mug is featured in this week’s Saturday Market ad for the Eugene Weekly and the Register-Guard and the upcoming Bach Festival. Here is a close-up of the rotary phone dial plate necklace I’m wearing in the ad that I designed out of the beautiful piece my father sent me. How about that? It was Father’s Day and my dad sends me a unique item to create with. Thank You!