It’s pitiful…

I am sorry, dear website… For your struggles, I shall show you some love.

Jen and I spent this past Saturday (the 5th) at Cony High School, in Augusta, helping judge the 2008 Odyssey of the Mind Tournament. We judged Division I & III of the DynoStories problem.

Talk about some intelligent Elementary School kids!

I used the experience to test out my new(ish) Holga. Came out of it with about 6 usable images, for the low low price of only $20! Jeezze… I am finding cheaper film, and a cheaper lab!

Unfortunately, I ran out of film (so, 12 frames per roll? fun) and was unable to get any shots of the solutions. But I did get this priceless shot off between sessions.

This weekend I am going home for a bit, and I am pretty excited. My studio equipment finally arrived. I’ll be sure to tell you all about it… You know. Next month.

For those of you not in-the-know (my readership of what, 6?), you can check the whole article on how T-Mobile is suing mobile blog Engadget-Mobile for the use of Magenta in it’s blog. This isn’t an April Fools day joke, it’s real, and really stupid. I hope I get a Cease and Desist too.

Can someone PLEASE tell me what the HELL she was thinking when she bought this dress?

[EDIT:] Yeah, it was that hideous… They removed it… (post moved to side)

Historically, when it came to intimate relationships with a certain gender, that isn’t mine, I’ve been able to see the future.

I know, I know, “impossible, no one can see the future!” You say. But I insist. Give me one, maybe two months, at the longest half a year, and I can tell you the very quality of the relationship that will have it ripping at the seams, given time. And thus far, I’ve never been wrong. Take Jen and I. I’ve got nothing… And you know what? Still strong after a year and a half.

But I’m not talking about certain significant others here. I’m talking about the Miss America Pageant.

A few days ago I blogged about a certain Reality TV show Miss America lowered themselves into recently, Miss America: Reality Check. Now, my gut instinct is to toss you a link to the show’s website, and I’m going to (you can find it here), but that’s not without a cacophony of protest from my better judgment.

By now you already know I am not a fan of the idea.

Take a piece of America’s history, an icon, if you will, and exploit it. Great idea. One of the toughest stereotypes for the Miss America Organization to overcome has been the idea that we are nothing more than a “Beauty Pageant,” it’s a struggle as old as time, and now TLC wants turn MAO into a reality TV show. So now, not only is it still a Beauty Pageant to most, but now it’s cliche.

But its not just that. Over the years the Miss America Pageant has remained primarily unchanged, largely unmolested by time. Timeless.

So what do we do? We take something that is Timeless and we make it better, we make it Modern. Brilliant.

One of the wonderful things about tradition, about “timelessness,” is if something is timeless, it can’t truly die. Something that is timeless exists in it’s own little world, it’s own bubble of protection. It’s the reason why nothing will beat the original Dracula. It can be remade and remade to high heavens, but we will always look back to the original for the inspiration, while remakes come and go with the wind.

Remakes, remasters, remixes can be forgotten. Sure, they can be popular for a time, but because they are “modern,” tailored to a generation, they are a fad, and fads fade when modern moves on.

Yet it gets worse. If Reality Check were one of a kind, without competition, it would at least thrive for a short time, a season or two in the lime-light. But we aren’t so lucky. Sure, we have the “original” thing going for us, but now we have to compete again (as if competing against Miss USA wasn’t bad enough), now we have Crowned pushing in on us.

So now we not only have to fight the stereotype of the Beauty Pageant, but heads with Miss USA, and conform to the Modern appeal, but now we have to bend over backwards to struggle for network TV ratings against a free form “pageant” that, unlike us, doesn’t have traditions or morals to consider in it’s programming.

Mark my words, this is the beginning of the end of the Miss America of old. This is the end.

Enough with the sentence fragments; I like pageantry. That said, I just about shit myself when the executive director of Miss Maine asked me to post the following video on the Miss Maine front page.

“Audrey,” I said, after I got over my slack-jawed terror, “um… this doesn’t really… I don’t… get it.”

“Haha,” comes the voice of reason, “yeah, it’s a joke, they’re trying to make fun of-”

“US!” I exclaimed. “They did a good job, what is this all about?” I inquired, even more confused now than before I had called.

“No, they want to make fun of the old ways, the way Pageantry used to be.”

“Uh… Are you sure?”

“Yes,” was all the reassurance she could muster.

I’m not convinced, “that’s not even Tara, with the Miss Maine sash.”

“No, it’s Tara, but most of the other girls aren’t real. If you can’t read their full state, they’re just models, doing stand-ins,” comes more reason…

“Uh… What? Is this real? Like…” I couldn’t speak. All I was hearing was “joke,” “make fun of,” make an ass of is more like it… “Audrey… Are you sure this is legit, like, good for us? Do the girls make asses out of them selves?”

She assured me that it was the real deal, that even Tara thought it was “hilarious.” Well if thats not the final word, then I don’t know what is… Oh wait…

But I was too tired to argue… and up went the video…

Oh right, theres another one too. Do enjoy.

Be sure to tune in, watch a good old American pastime go down in flames…

Business and Legal Forms for Photographers

Trying to write up a contract today and I ran into this. Very nice. Doesn’t help in the here and now though. Back to work…

And it’s block-color sibling.

Back story:

A few months ago I designed a new header for the Miss Maine Pageant that uses the Maine State seal and the Miss America crown in a way not yet done by the other states, with the seal floating inside of the crown. Even back then I needed a high resolution image of the seal, but settled on a very upscaled version of a small one instead.

This worked for the initial run, as it only made it’s appearances on the Miss Maine website and the Crown Connections newsletter. But now they want t-Shirts… Slightly bigger than a letterhead…

So I searched high and low for a high(ish[er]) resolution image to use on a T-Shirt, and quickly found there there was no such thing… GAH!!!

Well, I take that back, I found high(er) resolution images of the center portion of the image, but not the whole seal. Until, that is, I thought like a child…

So, after several hours of touch-up, here you have it. The highest resolution, full-color Maine State seal on the inter-webs.

Thats right, I sat down in Photoshop with the coloring-book version of the seal (oddly, the largest version of the seal I could find) for a good long while, and this is what I came up with.

It’s mostly correct, and if you want to touch up the textures and burning yourself, I even gave you the block-color version to play with on your own.

So, for those of you with the same needs as I, remember who loves you.

I really am a slacker…

We went to Jen’s house this weekend, seeings how we are going to mine, this coming weekend.

It was pretty relaxed, for the most part.

Before we left, I made the mistake of asking what we were going to be doing a few too many times. Alone, it’s an innocent question, but in mass… well… I guess it gets pretty trying…

That said, I made the second mistake of asking what was on the docket while sitting in Jen’s living room, and next thing I knew we were in the car, headed to some park in Saco that none of us had ever heard of.

It was cold. It was wet. It was windy. But it wasn’t half bad.

Sure, in the moment it was mildly miserable, but it was good to get out, and she was right, it was better than sitting on the couch all afternoon…

Other than that, it was a pretty simple weekend. Which was good.

Jen got some much needed sleep, after two weeks of intense tests in some of the hardest undergrad classes Husson offers. We got to see Jens parents, and I got a few pictures.

We also go the opportunity to work out some things that have been bugging us. We got into a bit of an argument over a game of Bull Shit. Primarily about how we handle conflict, and how I support (or don’t) Jen.

At one point it got pretty heated. Luckily, Jen’s family is pretty laid back, and they actually helped us out a bit. Mediated, if you will, and in the end, we were better for it.

Now we’re going through the “what the hell is going on next semester!?” phase, as Jen finds out she needs 19 credits int he spring, plus and additional 3 credit Open Elective course. Basically, its going to be hell.