Sign Painters

Kyle, Matthew, and I went to the movie Sign Painters at the Trylon Microcinema tonight which was, not surprisingly, a documentary about the art of sign painting.  There are articles about it all over the web: HuffPost, NPR, Boing Boing.  It was very well done and captured how sign painting had once been a common job that, over the decades, became the domain of a few, found its renaissance, and then took a hit again when computer-generated vinyl signs became popular.

Walking to the train afterward, you could see the whole movie laid out in the Hiawatha area, from Kaufman just around the corner, to the huge painted ADM sign and beautiful stalks of wheat on the side of the grain silos, to the nasty looking faded vinyl and plastic that decorate the walls of Simply Self Storage and the other storage facilities on the street.

Two of the painters in the movie, Forrest and Phil, were at the showing to answer questions for a while after the movie.  They were interesting to listen to and talked about how the city now has rules about signage, and that it can't be more than one square foot per front display footage, unless an existing sign is in place that can be replaced foot for foot, because it allows them to sidestep some of the rules around permits and the "sphincter" of the city bureaucracy.  Phil noted that he likes to be the one to kill his old signs, either painting over them, or replacing them with new signs.

A beautiful movie about an art few people think about but encounter on a daily basis.

""The documentary accomplishes what many films that consist of mostly talking heads do not. Through the individual stories, a larger narrative surfaces about this art form and its fate over time. In many ways, it is more than that. It is a cautionary tale about the head-long rush into a technology-driven time and a meditation on what’s lost along the way. It is a reminder to look around and recognize the physical history in our presence every day." -Mary Louise Schumacher

Are they wishing me a happy holidays?

I don't think they are...

Learning to Read...

A little fuzzy, but you can read it, "PLEASE RETURN YOUR OWN DISHES TO THE CAFETERIA.  Janitorial does not do this."  Obviously we need to start a remedial reading program at work.  As they say on The Chive, some people just like to watch the world burn.

Blue Springs and the Manatees

Our last full day in Orlando, we rented a car and went to Blue Springs State Park. When I was younger, let's say it wasn't 25 years ago, Kyle, Ben and I did a summer trip from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., then down the coast to Florida, and back to Minnesota.  We were poor and operating mostly out of a car with a tent and some bicycles, so we did a lot of camping at ad hoc locations.  One place we stopped was Blue Springs, renowned as a wintering area for manatees.  Around mid-November they shut down the swimming because hundreds of manatees swim into the spring area to enjoy the relatively warm 72 degree water coming from the spring.  But on November 1 swimming was still open and there was a chance we'd see a few.  You're supposed to stay away from them as the rangers have had problems with teenagers carving their initials into them (yes, really) and pushing the babies away from their mothers, but even when you don't go near them, they like to come give you a shove and swim under you, and roll around in your space.

There are alligators in the area as well, although for the most part they seem to stay away from where the manatees are.  I suspect they lose to the manatees in any shoving match.  And the water in the spring area is so clear you can see everything in your space.  Over the "boil", the spring, which is like 120 feet deep and has a constant stream of scuba divers going to and from it even on a slow day like the day we were there, you can see down to where all the water is welling up to push you around which is a bit creepy.

Near the entrance to the spring area, where it joins the river and the water is more brackish and full of weedy places to hide, there are many warnings about the alligators.  They don't want you to miss them.


Although Eryn's not scared of any damn sign.  I think I see some eyes in the water to her right.


The water is even clearer than it looks in this picture.  All those brown things are big three foot long gars.


The staff pointed us at a geocache that doesn't seem to be in geocaching.com.  Perhaps it's because it's full of two kilos of cocaine?  I jest. Those are two bags of rock/sand, and the cache was some sort of Sea World cache.  Eryn grabbed a coin and bracelet, but there was no way to log the find.


Let us get to the actual manatees.  Here are the two that were swimming with Eryn and I.  A mother and her pup.


It's not well known that manatees are particularly susceptible to mind control.  Here I do my best to start my manatee army of evil by implanting the mental suggestion that they go forth and do my bidding.  If you're an enemy of mine, I'd stay away from any temperate waters and avoid any manatees dressed as mermaids.


They seemed to particularly like Eryn and would follow her around.  She was a little nervous when she was out in the open water where she couldn't touch the bottom, but there was a nice set of steps you could sit on, as well as some shallow areas with rocks.  In this picture she wasn't going under to look at them first.  They were definitely coming over to stare at her.


Go forth!  Do as I command!  In this picture do I look as cold as I felt?  72 degrees isn't freezing, but it's not exactly swimming pool warm, and there was a good breeze blowing branches out of the trees that added to the chill and called up goose bumps on my pasty white Minnesota skin.


Pooteewheet checking out the manatees.  They made it a point to wander back and forth underneath her.


The steps I was referring to and the manatees getting a close look at Eryn.  She says this was her favorite part of vacation.  Even better than the roller coasters and Harry Potter world.


My favorite picture was one I could have taken in Minnesota.  SQUIRREL!!!  I think it lends itself to putting a word bubble on it so I can add silly captions.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Are Signs

Friday night I went to an ash spreading for a friend's brother out Monticello way. I had played games with the brother in the past, even without my friend around, so I knew him, although he wasn't a close friend in any sense. There was a nice, although strange, ceremony that involved putting a lot of his things onto a bonfire, which was nice with his favorite chair and the knife and compass he always carried, but a little more peculiar when they started burning a small sapling of every kind of tree and plant on the property where he lived, and his father, confused at what he was holding in his hand at one point, announced after plum, oak, maple, wild rice..."various plants". The urn with his ashes was taken around for everyone to say goodbye, and then rowed out onto the lake where he had lived to be spread at his favorite fishing spots.

Afterwards, we took my friend back to his aunt and uncle's house for the evening, where I got to see this sign:

Which I thought would be the most peculiar sign I'd see all evening (although fair warning to Kyle who's been known to flush My Little Ponies and American Doll accessories), until Kyle and I got to the Hilltop Bar in Hanover and saw this:


Whew!

Strange Signs

I saw two strange and amusing signs on my way back from St. Peter.

1.) "Captive Tan". This is either funny or offensive if you know the right Malaysians.

2.) "Think Opportunity. Think Bethany." With a large picture of a presumably college-age woman to the right on the billboard. I read this and the first several meanings that crossed my mind had nothing to do with going to Bethany the Lutheran school. They don't have this one on their website that I can find. Perhaps they realized they were engaging in a bit of entendre.

Stay Off the Wall

Addendum: The picture is from New Orleans several years ago. There was a lot of crime then (presumably still a lot of crime) and houses in some areas had walls around them where they'd poured some cement along the top and embedded the bottoms of glass bottles. Not exactly razor wire, but I can't imagine it's not effective unless you're willing to slowly sand them off over several weeks before you make your move.

I think I made myself abundantly clear...the wall is not for climbing. Particularly not the wall with hair plugs, it just got done with an operation and it's scalp is very sore.