Drawing Blind
Anya
and Marianne started playing what will forever be known as "The
Best Game in the World" at the
fireworks
last
monday.
They would take a piece of paper, draw a head, and then fold the paper
down so that you could only see the very bottom of the neck. The next
person had to draw the torso, repeat the process, and repeat the
process. The art that came out of these was so spectacular, you've just
got to see it for yourself.
Marianne's holding a naming contest over at her blog - go
check it
out
and name your favorite, you might end up with your entry printed on
some cafepress schwag!
12:14 pm | permalink |
/life/art |
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Delayed Gratification
Thanks to iWOOT (I Want One Of
Those,) Jon and I got bit by the
gadget bug this week, and we've been eying the remote control planes
since Saturday. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This story really
starts about 15 years
earlier, in the slightly
musty basement of my Uncle Joe.
Uncle Joe was a wiry, pipe smoking man and a wicked sense of
humor whose mouth opened diagonally in a funny (and slightly but
wonderfully insane) way when he laughs. My impression of him as a kid
was
always mixed with a caricature of "old age." His skinniness,
leathery skin, and fungus encrusted nails made him seem just about as
old as anyone was supposed to get.
15 years later, he is still beating us all at horseshoes and swinging
from the branches of our neighbors tree. Like many of the older
generation of my family, he's seeming younger and younger as our
age-difference ratio shrinks.
The world is a bit distorted when you're young, though, and
almost universally, everyone has a "you didn't get me that pony"
moment - the moment when (often irrationally) you felt the world was
utterly unjust. Mine centers around Uncle Joe.
Uncle Joe made the most magnificent RC planes; giant wing-spanned models
that looked as though they could fly 1000 feet, and hung them from the
rafters in that musty basement. He showed them to us sometime around
1989, and I immediately asked what every 9 year old would.
"Can we fly them?"
Even then, I knew it was unfair and irrational to feel cheated when the
answer was no. He'd put countless hours into building and perfecting
these beautiful things, and explained that the two times that he'd taken
them out, they'd crashed And been shattered to smithereens.
But I was 9, and it all seemed horribly unfair at the time. I would
never get to know what it was like to be at the helm of a something that
was flying effortlessly above.
So, 15 years later, when the prospect of getting an RC plane up in the
air for under $50
became a possibility, it's easy to understand why I jumped at it.
Jon felt the same, and there was no time to order and have them
delivered while he was here in NY, so we went out and made our purchase.
I
remembered seeing a shop wit all sorts of RC planes and boats in the
window somewhere near my work, and indeed we
found one on 30th and
8th.
The proprietor was a bit brash, but after listening to his spiel for a
while, we walked out happy in our purchase of 2
MegaTech
Firefly's.
The color choices were green and orange. This is "always wearing at
least some orange" Jon we're talking about here, so it's no surprise that
I got the green one, and its neon glow appealed to my late
nineties design sensibility.
We immediately took them up to central park and few them around in
sheep
meadow. Jon's transmitter was bad, so it would only fly about 20
feet before spiraling to the ground in "safe landing" mode, but mine
climbed and climbed up into the sky.
They work much like the mini-RC cars, charging off the transmitter and
making 4-6 minutes flights off of a 2 minute charge. They're amazing fun
and I think I've got the RC bug. Even with their limited
controls, there's something about the feeling of flying that's
incredibly
freeing, and there's no denying the satisfaction in realizing a
childhood fantasy.
We exchanged Jon's faulty model right after going to the park, (American
Hobby Center was slightly grumpy but ultimately very accommodating) and
will
probably break them out again tomorrow. I can't wait! Ahh the beauty of
delayed gratification.
1:22 am | permalink |
/technology/gadgets |
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