glue guns and gourmet burgers
Tonight I spent the better part of the evening working on a photo album. Yes, it's true...the same photo album I've been slaving over for weeks. It's just one glue gun short of an out and out scrapbook. To paraphrase my friend Maureen, I'm running the risk of morphing into a soccer mom! Of course, the photos are from my trip to Glacier National Park this summer, so perhaps the fact that the pictures show me scaling mountains will negate the suburban-housewife stigma! And you will not see THIS guy get anywhere near buttons or bows or beads. So let's get one thing straight...this is a PHOTO album, not a scrapbook!
Truth be told, I think I'll be really happy I did this several years down the road. It's a great record of the trip, and I like the fact that I can also include ephemera such as trail maps, business cards, and the like...stuff that usually sits in the bottom of my overfull filing cabinet. It's a hell of a lot of work - I won't lie. I probably spent at least 12 hours putting this mutha together. And it wasn't cheap either. But it's tangible. I like that.
Even though all the pics started out digital, this is the first time I've made an effort to actually print them out and collect them. It's gratifying in a way that sharing pictures online isn't. A different way. It's kind of a shame, really...I have a ton of digital pictures that I really like, but most of them haven't been printed. I need to make some oversized prints and frame some around the apartment. Maybe I'd be more committed to printing the pictures if I was involved in the printing process. But with digital, that's not really a part of the creative equation (unlike film). You either send it to your printer or you send them to someone else, like Kodak or Shutterfly, to print them for you. Not quite as romantic as playing around with developer in a darkroom, to be sure. You don't get that magic moment of seeing your picture emerge from nothingness, like some kind of mystery.
Speaking of mystery, tonight Nicky and I went to Red Robin - Dubuque's newest entry in the "gourmet burger" line - for dinner (see also: Hudson's). I like the place - I went once several years ago in Appleton. The burgers are good, and the atmosphere is bright and exuberant, if a bit on the loud side. But damn - how can anyone justify spending upwards of $25 for a couple of bacon cheeseburgers and a Coke? It's not about the food, clearly. My theory is that it's about the atmosphere and, to a lesser degree, the service. And, I will say that our waitress was very good, which counters the larger Dubuque trend of lousy customer service (a potential rant for another day). Perhaps the Red Robin execs think we're stupid enough to fall for the "bottomless fries" gimmick (bleah!) But whoever's stupid, it's not the owners and managers. The place was packed. Can you imagine the profit margin on an eight dollar burger and four dollar lemonade? Just a little shy of their seven and eight dollar margaritas!
Oh, and by the way, I predict Red Robin will trounce Hudson's when it comes down to the West Side Battle of the Burger. They're definitely more savvy when it comes to marketing. Hudson's web site looks like it was designed in 1994 (their menu accent icons are cheeseburgers, for crying out loud!)
On another note, last night I watched One Day in September, a 1999 documentary about the terrorist attack at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich. I had read somewhere that Spielberg was making a movie about this, and since I was woefully ignorant of the actual story (I was three at the time), the documentary seemed like a good place to start. I enjoyed it, too, if "enjoy" is the right word. The filmmakers scored a huge coup by interviewing the last surviving Palestinian terrorist who participated in the attack on the Israeli athletes. He comes across as proud and unrepentant. What is more surprising is how incredibly ill-prepared the event organizers and German authorities were for handling the Palestinian terrorists and their demands. Definitely worth seeing.
Truth be told, I think I'll be really happy I did this several years down the road. It's a great record of the trip, and I like the fact that I can also include ephemera such as trail maps, business cards, and the like...stuff that usually sits in the bottom of my overfull filing cabinet. It's a hell of a lot of work - I won't lie. I probably spent at least 12 hours putting this mutha together. And it wasn't cheap either. But it's tangible. I like that.
Even though all the pics started out digital, this is the first time I've made an effort to actually print them out and collect them. It's gratifying in a way that sharing pictures online isn't. A different way. It's kind of a shame, really...I have a ton of digital pictures that I really like, but most of them haven't been printed. I need to make some oversized prints and frame some around the apartment. Maybe I'd be more committed to printing the pictures if I was involved in the printing process. But with digital, that's not really a part of the creative equation (unlike film). You either send it to your printer or you send them to someone else, like Kodak or Shutterfly, to print them for you. Not quite as romantic as playing around with developer in a darkroom, to be sure. You don't get that magic moment of seeing your picture emerge from nothingness, like some kind of mystery.
Speaking of mystery, tonight Nicky and I went to Red Robin - Dubuque's newest entry in the "gourmet burger" line - for dinner (see also: Hudson's). I like the place - I went once several years ago in Appleton. The burgers are good, and the atmosphere is bright and exuberant, if a bit on the loud side. But damn - how can anyone justify spending upwards of $25 for a couple of bacon cheeseburgers and a Coke? It's not about the food, clearly. My theory is that it's about the atmosphere and, to a lesser degree, the service. And, I will say that our waitress was very good, which counters the larger Dubuque trend of lousy customer service (a potential rant for another day). Perhaps the Red Robin execs think we're stupid enough to fall for the "bottomless fries" gimmick (bleah!) But whoever's stupid, it's not the owners and managers. The place was packed. Can you imagine the profit margin on an eight dollar burger and four dollar lemonade? Just a little shy of their seven and eight dollar margaritas!
Oh, and by the way, I predict Red Robin will trounce Hudson's when it comes down to the West Side Battle of the Burger. They're definitely more savvy when it comes to marketing. Hudson's web site looks like it was designed in 1994 (their menu accent icons are cheeseburgers, for crying out loud!)
On another note, last night I watched One Day in September, a 1999 documentary about the terrorist attack at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich. I had read somewhere that Spielberg was making a movie about this, and since I was woefully ignorant of the actual story (I was three at the time), the documentary seemed like a good place to start. I enjoyed it, too, if "enjoy" is the right word. The filmmakers scored a huge coup by interviewing the last surviving Palestinian terrorist who participated in the attack on the Israeli athletes. He comes across as proud and unrepentant. What is more surprising is how incredibly ill-prepared the event organizers and German authorities were for handling the Palestinian terrorists and their demands. Definitely worth seeing.
posted by Mike Willis @ 8:40 PM
1 Comments:
At 9:46 AM,
Nicky Story said…
you know I agree... you are turning into a soccer mom! :)
as for Red Robin - I think with a group of people - or with kids, the atmosphere wouldn't have bothered me... Oh well the burgers where good... :)
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