Right now in central park it’s a lovely fall scene. Only the yellow leaves are still hanging on. Another couple days and fall will be OH-VER.

I am posting this unseasonal Spring video to get me through. Winter is coming fast. Hold on to your hats.

I filmed a bunch of textures in Central Park last year — sky, grass, cobblestone, tree tops, tree trunks, asphalt, etc. It’s mesmerizing to watch the footage. I think I was mesmerizing myself as I filmed it. Anyway, I ended up spending way too much film stock on the idea. At one point I remember walking around a Sycamore tree very fast with the camera because the bark is so variegated — it makes a beautiful texture when you’re going by fast. I caught on the audio track an elderly woman say “you never know what they’re teaching them in film school these days.” I didn’t go to film school, but if I had, I’m sure this footage would have been a hit with the pot heads in the dorm.

This is just the sky, and really only about 1/4 of my footage of it. Maybe I’m crazy, but it’s so nice just to see it by itself. Sometimes when I’m sad I pull up the sky footage and watch it without any sound. It’s very bright and self-contained. Like there’s no land at all.

The other textures are probably more interesting, but the sky is the most soothing. Too bad YouTube had to go and pixelate everything. They do love their compression.

The lyric of this song is a poem, which I often think of when the light starts to fail earlier, but the weather is still warm. It is stolen without remorse from Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I was reminded today that winter is coming. I am hoping it is a nice guest this year.

The weather has been so golden this last week. I want to be outside every minute. It’s a dry 70 degrees and it’s practically begging you to come out and play. A couple days ago I was out around sunset and there were beautiful angled beams coming through the ferns near Stranger’s Gate. I only got a couple snaps off before my battery ran out. But that’s my battle cry lately- -get what you can before your battery runs out; the summer is nearly over.

Yesterday I went for a picnic with a bunch of friends in the park. Amsterdam stood guard to protect us from mean dogs and errant frisbees.

We became jealous of our picnicking neighbor’s Frisbee and were trying to figure out mannerly ways of offering to buy it off them. Since we couldn’t come up with anything we ended up playing Frisbee football with a pita. That works pretty well, if you don’t mind your food getting grass stains on it. The Pita Frisbee ™ only has a 23 minute playing life, though, before it disintegrates completely.

Amsterdam watched the Pita Frisbee with unerring attention.

Another super lo-fi video of the Tea Tree making me a cup of tea. This was another thing I was worried people wouldn’t know what to do with. But they drank 3 gallons of hot tea (in Phoenix!) so, I guess it was successful. It was fun to see full-grown adults wandering around with doll tea cups and saucers. I had full-sized cups on there, but people wanted to drink teeny tea. I’m glad. It added to the Seussy surreality of the event.

Here’s a full-sized pic of it:

Photo by Ken Balcom

Notice the umbrella handles coming out of the corduroy bark roots. My sister sewed the bark/roots. It was my nephew’s idea to put the umbrella handles at the end. I don’t have a picture of the giant zipper in the back. I like a tree with a good zipper tab.

Here’s Caralie drinking from a doll-sized cup:

I especially liked it when people chose the doll cups and a standard saucer. Good times:

Photo by Ken Balcom

Right now I’m reporting (slowly) on how everything worked out at the opening in Mesa last Friday. Overall things went swimmingly well. Everyone participated and a huge amount of people came out. The thing I was most worried about, the live grass, was the biggest hit, and people spread out on it just as I had hoped. But I’m getting off track–right now I’m just going to report about the Yarn Tree and the Tavern on the Green that’s attached to it.

Here’s a wee video of Johnnie Warfield on top of the yarn tree looking at the menu for Tavern on the Green. In order to see the Tavern menu, you must climb the tree and look through the binoculars at the menu posted on the roof of the green kiosk. It’s in tiny letters, so you can’t read it any other way. Then you write your order on a card and send it by bird to the kiosk. I somehow didn’t get Johnnie actually sending the bird down…

Here’s a picture of the Kiosk (Tavern on the Green) before any customers came:

I am very pleased to say that around 100 people came and they all ordered food by bird. There was a line for the yarn tree (which you have to climb to order food). Before the opening I was afraid that people would be too cool to actually climb the tree and put their order in the bird’s claws. Caralie (who was the Tavern Wench) was perfect, telling everyone, that she was sorry, they had to order by bird. That did the trick.

Here’s the bird in question. One comment was that the alligator clip feet were a little hard to use. I’ll have to replace them with something else.

Here’s a cute blond ordering:

Here’s Caralie waiting for an order. She said that people were also sending her notes by bird. I wish I had some of them to show you, but they got cleaned up and put in the trash somehow.

Photo by Mark Converti

Here you can see some of the food we served–bruschetta, black bean salsa with chips, and a cheese plate. Austin was the Kiosk Dude and also the chef.

Photo by Mark Converti

Here are the delicious cupcakes that my friend Chanelle made to put into the tree. I love that I never saw anyone take a cupcake, but they were all eaten by the end of the evening. I hope that people thought they were stealing them. There is nothing so delicious as a forbidden cupcake.

Photo by Chanelle

My friend and webmaster Ray pointed out to me that there’s not a hell of a lot of explanation about this movie I’m up to my eyeballs in editing right now. It’s on the site, but there’s nothing about it, see?

OK. Here goes:

This is a movie about magical people who live in Central Park. These people keep nature from taking over–they kind of allow for NYC to exist. There used to be a lot of them, but now there are just a handful. They operate below the radar, but are well known (unofficially) to the Parks Department.

Our movie is from the perspective of one 16 year old member of their ranks, Verna:

Verna is pretty much a normal 16 year old, except that she has very little contact with the world outside of Central Park, except for those regulars whom she’s befriended. She is in love with this gardener (actually a summer landscaping intern), Mike:

Verna is forbidden by the Grandmother to have liaisons with people who are not Park People. Mike does not qualify because he doesn’t live in the park.

Here is the Grandmother:

She’s a tough one. In fact, she’s one of the reasons that there are so few of the Park People left–she regularly kicks people out for not following rules. One such person was Verna’s aunt who left well before Verna was born. Unknown to Verna is the fact that this aunt had a daughter who is drawn to the park, but knows nothing about her inheritance. She and Verna strike up an acquaintance.

This is Ruth:

There are a few other characters who come in and out. I’ll tell you about them at another time…

Did I tell you I’m editing a movie? I guess it’s not actually a movie–it’s more like a serial. It’s around 16 episodes of a fairy tale about (you guessed it) Central Park. In the movie the park is filled with magical people who live there, including this girl, who is, for lack of a modern term, a Brownie, or perhaps a Pixie. This pixie does the evil bidding (mostly lurking, spying and message-carrying) for the main antagonist of the film, an old woman called The Grandmother.

Right now I’m looking for footage of the Pixie spying on the protagonist. Also–footage of the pixie running with messages all through the park. This is very entertaining because:

1) The pixie is extremely photogenic.
2) She runs in this way that is very pixie-like and makes me laugh every time.
3) The evil director (me) keeps forgetting to give her clear running directions. Sometimes when I just want her to run out of the frame, she keeps running full bore till she’s a tiny dot on the horizon. Then the evil director tells her to do something else and she’s totally out of earshot. Then then the evil director looks through the camera to find her. Then the Brownie-actor must run full bore back to make it to the next shot. No one is getting fat on my watch.
4) Then the evil Brownie (who is actually a super nice 15 year old kid named Johnnie Warfield) is panting and sweating. I guess that part’s not funny if you’re the super nice 15 year old kid, and I felt bad at the time, but man is it funny from here.

One thing that’s not funny (as an editor) is watching yourself act on film. Let this be a lesson to would-be filmmakers: leave yourself out of it–you’ll thank me later. I have edited out almost all of my own speaking parts so that I’m even more of a bit part then the script called for. Oh the terrible sound of your own voice! Every time I hear myself talk I start writhing around like those characters on old Star Trek.

You can see episode 1 here, btw. And soon you’ll be able to see episode 5, which will act as a sort of a trailer.

Sunday I went to the wedding of two good friends. They got married at Hearnshead in Central Park. Their permit only allowed for 20 or so people to actually be in the gazebo-like structure thingy:So the rest of us rowed out in boats:It was raining and that made things cold but fun. Our excellent hosts provided us with flasks of bourbon and other goodies like wax lips:

Bourbon + wax lips = We don’t notice the rain.

Never had wax lips at a wedding before. I’ve also never attended a wedding in a boat. It was a banner day.

Wish I had a better pic of the bride and groom to show you. Oh here’s a funny vid of their civil ceremony; 1.25 minutes courtesy of NY City Hall.

I just got a wonderful package full of these needle books. I’m going to use the needles to make nests for my yarn tree. I didn’t realize I was getting these beautiful little old-fashioned folders complete with antique-y threader and bright foil backings.

Here’s the front:

I just had this kooky idea that the first person to subscribe to my band-new RSS feed (I’m putting that in today) will be able to receive one in the mail from yours truly. If you are someone who is a non-sewer or a masculine type who won’t admit to being a sewer, I’ll send you something else that you’ll like.

Leave me a message if you’ve subscribed and I’ll send it on over.

I’m going to have a hard time disemboweling these. I love them too much.