Mom Says I’m Running Away

Waiting for Beer-Thirty:

“They’re cold chillin’ like a pack of villains.” The announcer screamed, I giggled at the idiocy of the statement; People jumped from the sky with trails of smoke.

Ed and I had headed down to San Diego to see the Red Bull Air Races and found ourselves pressed against a steel railing amongst a group of photographers with lenses far more phallic than my own. We listened to the national anthem and watched planes fly around in circles (30feet off the water, weaving in and out of cones at 230mph) for a while, shooting some pictures and finally making our way through the mobs to find some $6 beers.

After a few hours of high speed “World Championship” air racing we wandered into downtown for an Irish pub for happy hour food and Guinness.

I don’t know what we were hoping for, but realizing that we could see the races from the whole bay, we felt kinda screwed that we paid $25 to get into the audience area with 20,000 other people to be crushed in the throngs of humanity.

Mid September: 2007

So the canceled work has been replaced with 4 days of video camera operating (i.e. most money in the least amount of time) next week. It makes me far less worried about the budget, but I still have most of this week off and I have already repaired my sisters roof and built her shelves in the garage. I spent most of the afternoon building lightboxes for my flashes out of foam core, lighting gel and gaff tape; the last two of which were left over from the production last week, possibly making these one of the worlds cheapest lighting instruments.

Oh, and in the past few weeks I have accomplished one more of those “Must Do in my Lifetime” list items. I learned to ride a motorcycle and now am licensed in the state of California. Yaay Me.

Sometime Before Bavaria:

With an effort to gather up a sizable beer drinking fund for Oktoberfest in two weeks, it’s been back to work in the Theater for Rob. I did some video camera work on George Lopez, a Lexus corporate event, then spent last weekend working backstage at an evangelical crusade, and I am currently sitting backstage at HBO’s Def Comedy Jam. The Entire season is being shot in three (long) days. I am itching for some travel…

In other news, next week was supposedly going to be work heavy; yet unfortunately a show got canceled and now I have a number of days off. With the declining dollar, it would be nice to have some reserves towards future travel, so if you want to get some portraits or photography work done in the next couple of weeks, email me at robertcpaetz [at] yahoo [dot] com. Ill give you a fair prices and let you keep the originals.

Day: 305 1/8

So the eye infection of Argentina and China has made another return trip to my optical orbs. Getting sick of this, I gave up my hope of it curing on its own with a little time and brought my uninsured ass to the optometrist. Of course costing me way too much.

$60 for Eye Doctor consultation
+
$65 for 3ml of drops
+
$5 for 2 gallons of gas to and from the Doc’s and Pharmacy

One drop in each eye/ 3 times a day for seven days
=

Day: 305

Like any proper world traveler, I have missed ever seeing many of the spots listed in the assorted travel guides of my home state. Without any true motivation to remedy this I was invited by blog reader, Randy, to get out and spend an afternoon shooting somewhere in Southern California.

We picked Venice Beach, and I am making this a travel day post because its a tourist hotspot listed in my Lonely Planet: Coastal California. Besides, I had to drive like 75 miles to get here.

Day: 304

In an effort to finish their Masters thesis’, my mother and sister rented a beach house in San Diego to have a place to get away and get focused.  Unfortunately for them (for this particular endeavor) my nieces exist,  Which make the thesis writing process much harder.

Fortunately for me, I am currently excessively skilled at recreation and in exchange for food, a few nights at the beach and the entrance fees to some local tourist attractions I agreed to hang out with the little ones during the day.

Todays highlight: Legoland, San Diego.  A place of my childhood dreams. The land of Lego-everything; Animals, Cities, Walls, Birds, Monuments, Gambling, Pandas and Dragons.
A self proclaimed “Lego-Maniac” (as the advertising of my childhood went) I used to read about Legoland, Denmark, after spending hours manipulating tiny bricks into every possible form from my imagination.  Although I did finally make it to the park in Denmark (twice, actually, in 1996 and 2001), I have never got to the one that has been 75minutes from my house for the last 7 years.  With two small children and the Matt/Nicki Combo in tow, living it up on someone else’s dime (or $176 for all of us) today was the day.

Needless to say I spent the day running amok, acting like a bigger kid that the two little ones with me.

Day: 303.5

So on the slight hint of the idea of Camera tossing from regular reader Randy, I did a little research and found there is a whole group of people out there who practice “Camera Tossing“.  Basically you set up a long exposure and toss you camera up in the air hoping it will return to your hands.  Most people try this with tiny digitals, but I don’t have a point and shoot, my only camera is my 5D.  So, with a immense amount of unemployment boredom, and  my normal amount of worry-less-ness with which I face most things in my life I attached my fisheye to my camera and gave it a shot. This is what I ended up with.