Dallas AFI International Film Festival

Buena Vista Studios Steak-bed film truck

Some of the film companies trailers parked in Deep Ellum.
Michael, you have come a long ways from the old painted  bus: California or Bust.

Star Trailers



The Dallas AFI Film Festival is scheduled to begin April 4 and run through the 14th. It's always fun to have the excitement of seeing film crews in town filming and all the theatre venues filled with patrons screening many,many films in those 10 days.

 

So be on the look-out for the film crews filming on the streets and off and be sure to get your tickets early for the films that you want to review. And the parties will be mostly closed but you can still see some of the starts in town if your lucky.

Have fun and enjoy the shows.

 





Hot Rolled Coil Steel in Texas

A train load of steel coils. That's a lot of slitting and leveling and stamping.

The destination of this load is uncertain, although there are large truck plants and other industry that uses this material in the area. It's a bit unusual for me in as much as this is a structural area, not a manufacturing and stamping operation area. Still, it's something that thrills me.

The tags on the coils show that it is .241-.256 gauge hot rolled which would make it fit the quarter inch gauge range  and that is great for leveling into plate or fabrication for containers and dumpster bins.

Each coil is approximately 48,000 lbs. loaded three to a flat bed rail car. There is  as many flatbeds behind this photographer than there is in front.Just think, Andrew Carnegie made this all possible.

Selling these make me so happy. This is prime material. The secondary market is just as good.

A Little Isle Across the Pond

 

The Dallas St.Patrick's Day Parade 2011


This parade is every bit as large as the Chicago,New York or Boston Parade. Who would have thunk !!
This year, the parade will officially be know as the Dallas St. Patrick's Parade but it all started where it continues today--on Greenville Avenue in the M Streets and Lower Greenville Section.

 

This year's parade is set to step off on Saturday, March 16,2013. It looks to be a good day weather wise, though weather can change. Since the parade has taken on the Dallas name....... and a new logo make-over ---there is a big push to take the focus toward a "family style" parade now.

 

That means the drinking and a bit of rowdiness is being tamed down or attempted to be tamed down. It often seems people try to tamper with things that are successful and  the power-mongers-to-be  suddenly want to try to standout with their attitude  --hey, look at me--and suck attention from the fun and the things that made the parade as big and as large and as successful as it has been for more than 30 years.

 

Yes, everyone understands the "family style" atmosphere, but in past years, that didn't stop the parents from bringing their kids to the parade, either. Lower Greenville is (besides being a residential area)  restaurants and bars and clubs.  It's a typical political issue  with the homeowners. They don't want the traffic, the parking issue, the noise, the trash, or an occasional urination on the back side of a building.  The Park Cities has that too.

 

It never fit my fancy for those that tried to hop on the band waggon when  everything was fine, but couldn't be found when the road got a bit rough. The fake smiles, the fake attitudes, the back stabbing, never makes a person, short-term or long-term, win anything.

 

 It would not like make me happy to see the parade move to another part of town or to see over thirty years of work go down the tubes because of a few belly achers either. That almost happened last year because the home owner associations pressure on city hall about the parking issue.

 

Across the pond, on that little isle they call Ireland, this kind of bickering would not be an issue. It would have been settled long before it got started and the party just keeps the tradition going and going and going.





Meet an Old Friend at the Drug Store!

When I was growing up there was not a Walgreen's in our town. There was a Rexall Drug Store. When we went for serious shopping, we went to a bigger town. They had a Walgreen's Drug Store and it had a lunch counter. The fountain drinks were tasty and the food was a treat even though you might have had some of it at home,too. But back at home, I still remember going to the grocery store to get a six-pack of coke. The six-pack was just that......but, it was six-six ounce green bottles.Here was the best part. They cost five-cents per bottle with a two-cent bottle deposit because the bottles were glass. You could put them in the freezer and when the caps were removed, you only got some brown cola foam because the neck of the bottle was frozen solid. It would take several minutes before the frozen plug thawed enough that you could drink the coke and it was cold and a fun treat all at the same time.

Today, I went to the new Walgreen's near my house. I like having a Walgreen's that close. I like to buy the Russell Stover maple eggs at Easter, Halloween, Christmas and St. Valentine's Day. The new Walgreen's does not have a lunch counter, though. But, I wish that it did. There isn't many Rexall Stores like I remembered around anymore. So, over the years, things have changed from a business stand point. As I left the Walgreen's on my way to the grocery store, as I came around the side of Walgreen's to the curb-cut for the street, there sat my old friend. It just struck me---I was hungry again for a toasted tuna sandwich with lettuce and pickle and a big paper cone in a stainless steel cup holder filled with crushed ice and Coke! Oh, somethings change but I'm sure glad my old friend Coke has stayed the same--pretty much!

Parking Lot Carnival Is Back In Spite of LBJ's Construction

Looks beautiful but there was a 40 MPH wind blowing!

The Tea Cup Ride still shows up at Carnivals

Part of the main midway

A regional carnival and amusement company is back at a redefined Mall parking lot in spite of the LBJ Construction between Preston Road and North Dallas Tollway segment. The project stretches 11 plus miles from the Dallas High Five to the North South connection to I-35E.

The spot where the carnival usually sets up is covered in steel, pipe,wire,forms,gravel,chunks of torn up pavement and all the orange barrels that goes with such a project. The HOV lanes will be below grade level in the middle with the East West lanes at grade level. When done in 2015, one of the worse congested corridors of traffic will be well ahead of the traffic for the next several decades. When connected to the High Five on the East and the busy I-35E Corridor on the West, new flyways and HOV lanes up in the air along the right and left side of the main traffic lanes going South and North.

However, even with the Valley View Mall about to undergo redevelopment, in the shadows of the Galleria Mall that is less than three or four football fields down the block, the carnival draws a large crowd of families, especially on the weekends,.because of the toll way and  635 LBJ.

 

Looking Backward: New Discoveries

An old rail car going to a museum.



One of the carriage horses that pulls the flower laced carriages in downtown for the visitors and even locals that take the ride.



 

It will soon be time for the annual Dragon Boat Races in Las Colinas

 

 

Looking backwards will always turn up new discoveries. That's why photography really is "a moment in time" because sometimes months will pass before you see an image from an old shoot. Once the image falls behind the shutters, it's still that exact moment when you clicked the shutter. But, the excitement isn't lost. It's still just as exciting as if you had just shot the image only hours ago. Indexing images is very important and I don't always index a shoot like I should. So looking backwards will turn
up lost images. Here are a few examples of a three month period of lost indexes.

Churchill and Napoleon: A Lesson in Two Dogs--Well,Three

The White Rock Boat House c.1934

The French and the English are connected through bloodlines that bind them  for more than two thousand years through  tribes of  Kelt's. Rome tried to conquer England in what? 46 BC by building Roman alters over the Kelt's alters. The Kelt's worshiped at those alters with little difficulty. When the Romans pulled back to Rome, the Kelt's torn down the Roman alters and continued to worship at their own alters as they had done, during and after the Roman occupation. Rome thought they had conquered the Kelt's, but what they had really done was to enforce the power of worship on the Kelt's more than ever before. Had the Kelt's been a race of people, they would have conquered the Romans in battle, spirit and mind. Riding naked on horseback with their long blond hair flowing in the wind, they had prepared for the battle by having days of drunken orgies before riding off into battle. The Druids knew how to prepare their warriors and did so regularly.

During the reign of Napoleon, the little man knew his history well. He prepared and he lead with determination. His determination. Unlike the Kelt's warriors, he dressed impressively, but his determination was none-the-less much the same and he never lost that desire to be bigger in deeds than he was in statue, though some of his statues in bronze are pretty impressive in size.

Churchill, a tenured statesman and Prime Minister, had a statesman attitude and mindset. While Churchill had some American blood, he still was that Englishman's gentleman at nature and cigar's did, indeed, make the man, but it never changed his beliefs.

Growing up, our number 3 and number 4 dogs drew their names from their personalities. Mine was a German red dachshund  named Napoleon and my brothers had a  French brown and white basset hound  named Churchill. To this day, when I see either breed, I recall easily the fun we had with those dogs in names alone. People would just walk away shaking their heads after stopping to talk and asking their names. You could see the fake smiles melt away  as they realized the dogs and the brothers were not kidding. They just didn't know how to respond to such real but shockingly unexpected answers. Their minds were not ready for what they got in honest reply. That's the way my two brothers and I are today. We laugh about it. My nephew thinks I'm hard on his dad I know, but his dad, my youngest brother, just take the banter and quips in stride as we have always done.

So, don't you see, name you dogs with a distinction in modern history A name that is or can be enshrined. I once had a friend who's dad was a big burly man with a deep voice and had that distinction of a boss-- if you know what I mean. One Christmas, she got a little white puddle puppy. When it came time to name the dog, they--the family--named it "Cheers" When asking Guido what he thought of the name---he paused and said:" The neighbors already think I'm crazy. Can't you see them when I open the door and yell out,'Cheers!' ".