A White Boxing Day

And the snow kept falling! I really should give a plug for the lightweight New Zealand Merino long underwear, which was perfect for lumbering around in the snow of the streets of Ann Arbor, while staying comfortably warm.

Day 4 photos:

Ian and Olivia: in the snow!

We were satisfied to wander the paths of County Farm Park, and to ignore the Straddle jump.

Squirrel nest!

Nature trail squirrel

Remember the wings of Day 3's homemade Christmas angels? Milkweed pods, growing wild!

Snowfall in Ann Arbor's CBD.

Reed and Olivia in the Vault of Midnight!

Squirrel attempts to enter Jeffrey Pickell's amazing Kaleidoscope Books & Collectibles!

Kaleidoscope Books - and my haul! Thanks so much Jeffrey! What a great shop!

Either the vats through the glass are a microbrewery, or I found JJ Abrams' Engineering set
for the new "Star Trek" sequel. Enjoying Arbor Brewing Company's Milestone Cask Porter beer.

Snowfall in Olivia's street.

CBD

DAY 21

Thanks so much to Sue Tuckett and Graham "Garfield" Barnard for the kind invitation to preview "Captain America: The First Avenger" tonight at the Paramount Pictures theatrette. I wasn't expecting it to be in 3D in such an intimate venue. Excellent film - and great to see some friends from decades ago, such as Craig Walker and Quentin Saville!

Sydney Tower

DAY 10

Sydney Tower over Centrepoint, now a Westfield shopping centre.

Chess master/busker

DAY 3

Spotted today at the QVB in the CBD. The chequerboard hat really makes it, I reckon!

Yukk in the box

Anyone over forty remember gonks and other fluffy funfair creatures? Well, here's my Yukk (above right), as sold in a wonderful, now long-gone, souvenir, giftware and ceramic ornament store in the old Imperial Arcade in the Sydney CBD in the late 1960s.

Yukks were essentially balls of brightly coloured acrylic "fur" - the fabric was glued to very squat plastic legs, with bulbous "Mr Potato Head"-like eyes poked into the core. They also featured long, thin, leathery arms. My Yukk was blue, and I recently rediscovered him in a box in the garage. My brothers once had one each, too, in Dayglo orange (or green?) and crimson, if I remember correctly - and my youngest brother's Yukk actually sported an actual mismatched "Mr Potato Head" eye after an encounter with our pet dog.

A few years later, a cheaper version of such creatures, usually armless and with wiggly eyes, were very common, usually on the "every child wins a prize shelf" of carnival sideshows.

But a recent viewing of an old episode of "The Magic Circle Club" reminded me of where my childhood fascination for gonks and Yukks probably derived:


Gaspar, Oscar and Sir Jasper in the episode, "Claude Clumsy: A Smashing Time".



Mmmm. Oscar had a nose like a regular gonk. Yukks didn't have a visible nose.

Lion around

Lion Island, as seen from Paul Landa Park, Pearl Beach (2011).

And a recent trip with the school choir, into the recently-revamped Sydney Town Hall in the CBD, had me noticing these stone "lion head" gargoyles (below). I guess I'd always known they were there but I hadn't really examined them closely before, nor noticed that each one had a different expression!







Then, of course, there are two lions in the school library:


Alex from "Madagascar" and "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa"


Alex and friends

/>
Library lion

And, it's almost Chinese New Year!

Superman (It's not easy)

Five for Fighting sing "Superman (It's Not Easy)"

GJoves put this great Five for Fighting song together with images from the 2006 movie, "Superman Returns" to create a very cool Youtube music video. The distinctive Martin Place fountain, in the Sydney CBD, is glimpsed.

A hungry giraffe?

Okay, this giraffe was actually a giant-sized poster I passed (in Sydney's CBD on Saturday), but that plant was on the wrong side of the glass, and it was pretty dead anyway. Cruel!

Ironman goes shopping?

Ironman browsing at Kings Comics, Sydney. Shoplifters beware!






Ironman: the new security guard at at Kings Comics?

"Ironman 2", coming to DVD near you soon!

Ian and Andrew - Gee!

Some days it really is like I've stumbled into the Twilight Zone, and an alternate universe Ian is lucky enough to have an whirlwind adventure or celebrity encounter that seems totally surreal when compared to my usual life.

I was heading into the city today, simply because I'd had to forfeit my usual comic-buying jaunt on Thursday night to attend Night #2 the annual Year 6 musical. Suddenly, a Twitter message came through, reminding me that TV celebrity Andrew Günsberg's "365: A Year of Self Portraits" exhibition was coming to a close... today! I had intended trying to get to this, not really realising that I'd totally run out of days! Had I not already been on a train, I probably would have just admitted defeat.

My trusty iPhone helped me triangulate on the location of MART Gallery in Surry Hills - and off I went. A cheery Andrew G greeted us warmly as each browser entered the gallery. Many new arrivals seemed to be old acquaintances. Typically, Andrew was setting up his beloved, overworked camera to take a new self portrait!

Although he and I have a mutual friend (in Andrew Mercado), I'd never had the chance to meet Andrew G before. His long-running hosting stint on "Australian Idol" makes it seem like he's a part of everyone's furniture (esp. that flickering, rectangular piece in the corner!) I'd been closely following his progress on his "365 Days" photographic project on Flickr, as I'd started my own version (not self portraits, though) just a few weeks before his.

The exhibition was great! Compared to the demanding work involved in Andrew's year of self-portraits (lugging a huge camera, lenses and two lights all over the world), my own "365 Photos" project now feels like a bit of a cheat. I simply snapped off a pic a day on my trusty iPhone. (I was thrilled with the result, and it's fun looking back at a year of memories. Good self discipline, too.) But it was great meeting Andrew at the exhibition today.



I was excited that the very first photo I'd seen of his on the Internet - Day 91, of Andrew encountering an ancient television camera at the ABC studios - was still available for sale. Yeeha! I ended up selecting two smaller prints as well: Day 29 (a casually-dressed Andrew leaping into the air) and Day 120, working with musician James Morrison on an episode of "Australian Idol".

Saying my farewells to Andrew, Mel and little Pippet (the Gallery's resident canine, who loved the smell of Jack on my trouser hems), I wandered off to have a late lunch, and to wait until the exhibition closed and I could collect my purchases straight off the wall. While munching on my sandwich, I began to wonder if I should have asked to take my own photo of Andrew, or with Andrew - or whether taking pictures in a gallery of photos was simply not the done thing. Just then, I happened to notice that Andrew had sent an image to his Twitter account, via his Blackberry, and when I opened the shot... I was right in the middle of it!


Click on this thumbnail to see the larger Twitpic.

Certainly not my most flattering angle. Had I known the photo was being taken, I'd have surely sucked in my gut!

But the fun was not over! As I was preparing to upload this blog entry, Andrew posted to his own blog the self-portrait that he was taking as I entered the gallery today. Lo and behold, I'm in that one, too, just over gallery owner Mel's shoulder!


Pippet, Andrew Günsberg and Mel (and I!) at the Mart Gallery.

FLASHBACK:


Day 125 of my own "365 Photos" project - 12 September 2009.

Omigosh! I only just found out that Andrew G's wife, Israeli model/actress Noa Tishby, was MACO Corporal Amanda Cole in "Star Trek: Enterprise"!