Hogwarts

Amazing use of perspective almost makes you feel as if you're in the book.  Hope y'all aren't sick of my Harry Potter pics yet. Lots of good fun

Last night, I attended Jazz on Edge, a wonderful event produced by Joseph Hayes and Jennifer Greenhill Taylor, featuring creole cooking from the Roux Memories cookbook by Belinda Hulin, who was on-hand to share stories with us, and phenomenal Django Reinhardt-style Gypsy guitar music from Jason Cook and  The Cook Trio. Poet Sharon Hoffmann rounded out the bill, filling in ably for Summer Rodman, who was unable to attend.

Great night! Great food! Great people! Great fun! Thanks Joe and Jennifer.


The good stuff:

A full weekend of local entertainment
Frogen Yozurt
Squirrel Honey
Colombian Burger with Pineapple
Coffee, coffee, coffee, starts with C
Elaborate inside jokes - that you keep to yourself.
eggs and grits
guacamole
The Cook Trio
Django Reinehardt

Got butterbeer?

Cheers! And speaking of cheers, Darlyn and I ventured to New Smyrna yesterday for the 7th Annual Wham Bam Poetry Slam -- a crazy-good event put on by the great folks at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Fifteen poets, three judges, no preparation, and five minutes to compose an original piece, based on a prompt drawn from a brandy snifter. Three rounds, and cash prizes. Darlyn had been asked to judge this year. I was a tag-along, who decided, at the last minute, to sign up and compete. What fun! The event was conducted in three rounds, with us writing and performing each piece before continuing to the next round. Each performance was scored, and three winners were selected based on total combined score. This year's prompts were: "Turning the tide," "That's money," and, "Washing my hands."

Here's my favorite, of the three I wrote:

Bard

Washing my hands

I turn and churn the bar of soap

Slip, sloppy suds

And I wonder

As the bar erodes

How much of that is soap

And how much is me

Swirling and gurgling down the drain

10 times a day

for 48 years

365 days each

plus 12 leaps

There must be a whole me down there

collected in the bend

And I wonder what my doppleganger would be like

If I were to crack open the works

And gather me up

All those soapy bits

And squeeze them together

Into a new clean and shiny person

99 and 44/100ths percent pure

Bar Brad

I'll call him Bard.

The good stuff:

k.d. lang singing about the big-boned gal

poetry under pressure

cardinals dogfighting in the crape myrtle

Atlantic Center for the Arts

Bonfires at biker karaoke bars on U.S. 1.

crazy, quirky poets getting their muse on

tiny, cozy cabins amid the palmetto and cabbage palm

deer on the swale

dressing up - for a radio show . . .

biscuits and gravy at It's All Good, New Smyrna.

 

Queue-riosity

Here's something you don't see everyday -- an empty queue line at Islands of Adventure. Oh, sure, everyone was lined up waiting to buy a wand at Olivander's, but still, you have to appreciate the beauty of it. This was taken at 11 a.m.

The good stuff:

Cold beer

Hot deadlines

Old friends

Bold type

Rold Gold Pretzels

Shiner Bock

Finer rock

No socks

Talk

Spock

Sidewalk chalk

Hang on

More random beauty from my trip to Islands of Adventure. Yeah, I know, there are other things to take pictures of, but few as worthy as this lone hibiscus flower, the only sign of life on a leafless skeleton of a tree. I felt as if I were photographing the last star in a dying galaxy. I wondered if this one flower was all that stood between this plant and the compost heap. As an entrepreneur, gritting it out through sometimes sparse cash flow, I could relate. I thought, "Hang in there, Buddy." I suspected this heroic effort would be for nought. In tourist world, even the foliage is expected to perform. Still, like the tiny wrens in yesterday's post, this close encounter of the wonderful kind made my heart race in a way that Spider Man and Harry Potter never could.

The good stuff:

Faith in success

Random peacocks

Ends meeting

Meetings ending :)

Arlo Guthrie's City of New Orleans

Creative noise

Local heroes

Dinner delivered

Time in a bottle

A Wrinkle in Time

Two in the bush

As much as I liked the new Hogsmeade area at Islands of Adventure, it's this picture I keep coming back to -- two wrens, keeping house next to the exit to the High In The Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride. They're right there at eye level, and easily within reach. I guess there's so much going on all around that two small brown birds don't peg anyone's whoopee meter.  

The good stuff:

Doing it all, and then some

Shopping for comic book illustrators

Date night

1,000 pictures . . . that's what, like a million words?

Lions, and tigers, and beers

The first Christmas song of the season

The LAST Christmas song of the season

low-hanging fruit

double coupons

village squares

Instant bestseller - just add writer

Dear literary agent,

As you can see, my next best seller has all the makings of a classic -- a manual typewriter, strong coffee, and lots of leather-bound notebooks. I've even thrown in a clipboard and an uncomfortable chair, to show the quality of my research, and my ascetic work ethic. I have yet to write the first word. But having assembled the essentials, the rest is merely a matter of putting letters on the page and moving them around until they form sentences. There are only 26 letters. How hard could it be? I'll be sure to send you a copy, as soon as I know what it's about.

p.s.: I would prefer direct deposit for all my royalty checks.

The good stuff:

The hundreds of drivers who DIDN'T almost hit me on my bicycle yesterday

Going to bed early

Leftovers

The serenity of a quiet house, when even the dust motes hold their breath

The Dalai Lhama speaking at the University of Miami

The question: Does a designated deity have "human" rights?

The first fire in the fireplace

Austerity

Private sector cheese

Self-portrait

Mama always told me it was important to make a good impression. Here's an impressionistic interpretation of your blogger.

The good stuff:

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey

Butterbeer at Hogsmeade Universal Orlando

Pumpkin Juice

The Three Broomsticks

Hogwarts castle

69 degrees and sunny

Chocolate Frogs

The Incredible Hulk roller coaster

Spiderman, the ride

Short lines at theme parks