You can fool the fans - but not the players.... John Cage

ROADTRIP-VIDEO - Clothes - Anthropologie.com

via www.anthropologie.com

This little gem of a video was filmed right in our own backyard - the lovely Alabama Hills and Lone Pine. Check it out.

A farewell (but see you later) to Mexico

We're home now and struggling to transition back into daily life and work.... but we wouldn't trade the week away for anything. It was a good trip, a very good trip.

The last morning in Puerto Vallarta we took a stroll around towards the ruins of the set for "Night of the Iguana", a film directed by John Huston that propelled Mismaloya into the spotlight.

I haven't even seen the movie but am adding it to the Netflix queue as we have to watch it now and try and identify locations, then maybe we'll go back and look for those very places. You know, just to stand where Richard Burton and Ava Gardner once stood.

 

It is an easy walk out on to the beach and across the little river that flows into the ocean here... past the lazy peros waiting for some scraps or a pat, past the fishing and tour boats.

 

JC loves these boats and is deep into research on how to buy one for the lake now... our final taxi driver has a fishing boat like this and he raved about how wonderful they are. We watched the guys maneuver past the waves, time it just right, gun the motor and then kill and pull it out of the water just as the boat beached itself in the sand. We also watched as the crews pushed these boats in and out of this shallow channel every morning and evening.

 

The water is so clear and warm...

 

We cruised past the vendors setting up for the day and the guys who run these beach front businesses with umbrellas, chairs, and tables for rent.

 

Cafes and bars all ready for the day.

 

Most of the buildings for "Night of the Iquana" are in ruin now and the entire property is fenced off with plenty of warnings about danger and dogs. It looked so intriquing - we both wished we could go inside and poke around the buildings. The locals told us it had been locked up a few years ago and no one seemed to know if there were any plans for re-opening it.

 

What we could see was so tempting...

 

But we weren't about to tempt fate and cross that fence.

 

So we stuck to the ruined road and imagined.

 

There's an old rusty pier,

 

and the iguana still climbs this big pole.

 

He's lookin' a little weathered at this point and I don't think he's getting any maintenance.... so one day even this will be gone.

 

The view towards this little valley in the jungle is beautiful and we can only imagine what it looked like before John Huston found it....

 

We cruised back and wondered some more about the filming and the sets and the movie itself... we really know nothing about it.

 

 

Fishing boats were returning and our day (and time) was running out.

 

Until our next trip....

 

Hasta luego.

 

New iphone apps

Every once in awhile I go hog wild on some new apps and I'm going to show you a look at two I got recently. I've been envious of those with the iphone 4 as it comes with a video recording camera, but not so envious that I'm willing to run right out and buy one. I found a camcorder app that seems to work well with the iphone 3G and, well, I'll let you be the judge of it. Remember, it was taken with a phone.

Many thanks to mom, Becky, Rhonda and Rick for the finishing piece of our outdoor cocktail area... now you guys have to come up here and enjoy it!

The other app is Camera+ and it is an improvement over the built in camera app, but still has some glitches. First off, it is slow to load and when you want the photo, you want the photo, right? You have to go through a couple of steps to get the camera but once you finally take the shot then you have some cool options. I think maybe the key is to just take the photo with the native camera, then import the ones you want to edit into Camera+'s lightbox, and then apply the effects you want.

Once the image is in the lightbox there are some very cool effects you can use, plus you can crop, correct some basic exposure problems, frame with a variety of borders, even play with color effects. All very arty.

From the grunged out look to

stylized to

multiple effects layered one over the other. Obviously some experimenting is in order.

The iphone is a wondrous thing... I love just carrying one little device around and being able to do so much with it.