Yes, That's a Tractor Parade

Warning, even though today's post is about the fair and the parade, it is also about relieving my build-up of snark. If you judge the photography show at the fair, are a Shriner, wear a creepy puppet mask, or ride a firetruck in the parade, you might want to leave now. I am not very nice to you. :p

So the fair is over. Actually it's been over for a week, it just took me that long to recover emotionally from the stinging blows dealt by the cruel, merciless judges. Not really. I could care less what those half-wits have to say. Half the time they don't even know how to spell. If their opinion was worth anything they'd be judging an art show in New York instead of a county fair in the middle of nowhere in a land of cornfields.

I did not do well at the fair, but I'm not really that upset about it. The people that matter think my pictures are great. I did win 3rd place on my picture of the two Barn Swallows, but they didn't bother to give me a ribbon, so I spent the entire fair thinking I didn't win anything.

If you'd like a reminder of which pictures I entered, you can click HERE.

The judges did not have much to say in the way of nice comments. If I could sum up their thoughts about all of the pictures it would be, "Center everything and only use black mat-board." They thought that the beanie baby picture should have been zoomed out to show they whole body of the "Dead" dinosaur, and they thought that I should have zoomed in and completely cropped the sky out of the firework picture. The only criticism I agreed with was the one they gave to the picture of the girl and the giraffe, which was that it was slightly blurry. I knew that, and I didn't expect to win anything with that one, I just liked it, and I didn't have any other good pictures to enter in the "People" category.

Now onto the "Crazy" criticism. The seahorse. I entered it under miscellaneous. They told me that I put it in the wrong category. Miscellaneous could be anything, so why they were upset by the sea horse is beyond me. I suppose I could have understood if they felt it should have been in the animals and birds category, even though I think it is incredibly stupid that the category is animals AND birds. (Not Fish) They need to have separate categories for animals, birds, fish, etc. And don't get me started on how stupid it is that they put the insects in the same category as plants and flowers.

ANYway... They did not say that the seahorse should have been categorized as an animal photograph, they said it should have been with the PLANTS! *Face-palm**Face-palm**Face-palm* Plus, they said that it needed to be a close-up of the seahorse. First of all, if I had wanted it to be a close-up, it would have been a close-up. It was a picture of a dwarf seahorse, and I wanted it to look small, besides, in the print I made, it was THREE TIMES the size it was in real life.

Anyway, I think I should move on before I develop high blood pressure. :p

I did not spend much time at the fair, there is never anything new, it's basically the same fair every single year. The most time I spent at the fair wasn't even AT the fair, it was watching the parade in town.

Yes, this about sums up your average parade in Iowa. :p

Cue the horror movie music. Mr. Creepy, purple, dead-eyes shows up every year. What in the name of burnt meatloaf and rice pudding this thing has to do with the hospital is beyond me. It's just an embarrassment is what it is.

Awe, look at the adorable little cult! It's like the 7 dwarves traded in their diamond mine for a secret society, clown cars, and fezzes.



And the most annoying part of the entire parade. The screaming emergency vehicles full of people who want nothing more than to blow the ear-drums out of your head, and the firetrucks, which are full of rotten little children (And adults with the mentality of children) who are armed with squirt guns and hoses and mercilessly soak the crowds who just wanted to watch a parade in peace.

And now we come to the good part. The snarkiness is over. :)

I love horses. :)

And Cowgirls on horses. :)

The parade is probably the best part of the fair, so if I see anything of the fair I usually try to at least make it to the parade. Though, they could make it 100 times better if they replaced the firetrucks, police cars, and anything else that's annoying with a few more horses. Actually, just make the parade all horses. I'd be ok with that. :)

Epic Bravery

 Last night I finally saw Brave. After hours of getting lost in Omaha, we finally came to a theater with a late showing, and got there just as the previews were starting. It was worth the wait. :)

Brave was epic. I would have loved it even if it was just the music and the scenes of Scotland. It was so incredibly detailed, that it didn't even need the story to be a work of art all on its own. But it had the story, and it had the humor. Pixar has done it again, and it was amazing.

After Cars 2 came out, Pixar got a lot of flack. They were accused of hitting their high point with Toy Story 3, and that they were pretty much through. Some just flat out called it an awful movie. Where all that hate came from I don't know, I loved Cars 2. It was hilarious and exciting. I found it to be even better than the first Cars. Not every movie has to be a huge roller coaster of emotions to be a good movie. It wasn't supposed to be that kind of a movie. It was just plain fun, so to all those critics: Go soak your heads.

Hopefully with Brave, those critics will be appeased. It had the emotion, it had the drama, it had the humor. It had pretty much everything, and it was great. There are plenty of plot twists if you haven't over-analyzed the trailers and figured them out like I did, but even though I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen, there was still plenty of suspense, because it's impossible to figure everything out from a few two minute clips. My friends were very surprised by a few of the twists that I had already suspected were coming, so if you haven't been "Spoiled" you'll be pretty surprised by more than one turn of events.

Most people who know what I like in a sci-fi or fantasy movie, know that it's the creatures, and in this case the creatures were of the real variety, rather than the fantasy variety. Horses and bears being the two main animals featured. Merida's horse is a Clydesdale, Angus, and he is just gorgeous. I love horses to begin with, but I really love giant horses like that. :) The other creatures were the bears, and the design on the "Demon" bear was pretty horrific. I expected it to be ugly, but man did its face look hideous. All the better for it to be the "Bad Guy" of the film.
One last thing on creatures, I love a good creature brawl, and the bear fight near the end was just epic. :)

The character of the witch turned out to be an unexpected gem for me. Her role in the film was so small, probably 5 minutes max, but aside from Merida's 3 brothers, she was one of the funniest characters of all. When the witch put on her welding mask, I about died laughing, and her "Answering Machine" cauldron was a hilarious bit of genius. :D

I also loved how they crafted the tension between Merida and her mother. Too often a story will be geared towards one audience, and the stupid adult is proved to be wrong in the end, and the headstrong child is the hero for defying them. Or the disobedient child is completely in the wrong, and if they'd listened to their wise, all-knowing parents in the first place, nothing bad would have happened, proving that parents know everything and you should never question them. Neither one is a realistic scenario, and neither one was the case here.

Instead of making a film to empower rebellious children, or a film to preach to kids to always listen to their parents, the film told a much more realistic story, geared toward both kids and adults, where the parents try their best, but aren't perfect, and the child's disobedience is not praised, but causes multiple terrible things to happen. The trailer seemed to glorify how "Headstrong" Merida is, but by the end of the film, she realized that she had been in the wrong and her tearful apology was heart-wrenching, especially when you consider that it seemed that her actions had cost her her mother's life.

One of the key "Morals" to the story was the importance of communication. You can shout at each other all you want, but that is not communication. It takes listening on the count of BOTH parties involved, with BOTH parties willing to concede that they don't know everything. "Because I said so," arguments are pretty much the height of arrogance, and that never gets anyone anywhere. A response like that only fuels the flames of rebellion. In my opinion that's one reason our country is in such a mess. It's not just a problem with parents acting like they know everything and children are expected to unquestioningly obey, but it's also the government. Politicians act like they know everything and the people are supposed to unquestioningly obey. Neither situation ever ends very well.

Okay, well, that took a very strange political detour that I really didn't intend to make, but I guess it just goes to show that you can get a lot of things out of a good story, even if that wasn't what the author intended. :)

In conclusion, go see Brave. It hilarious, it's exciting, it's gorgeous. In short, it's Pixar. :)

Brave Scene

As most of you know I don't get too excited about very many movies. There are a few that I want to see, but I only go to the theater if it works out. Rarely do I MAKE time to go to see a film. However anything by Pixar automatically is a "Make Time" film, and this summer they are releasing what people are calling their first "Princess" film. Brave is no ordinary "Princess film" however, as it is set in ancient Scotland. From what I've seen, the film looks amazing. The thing that strikes me every time is Merida's hair. It has got to be the most amazing hair in any film ever.

Pixar just released their latest trailer for Brave, and it's not so much a trailer as it is an entire scene from the movie. Watching this makes me want to see it even more.

 I've gotten so excited for this film that I did something I haven't done since Tim Burton released his version of Alice In Wonderland - Used a promotional image as my desktop background!

Second only to her hair, I LOVE her horse!

June 22 can't get here soon enough!

Something Odd…

I was going through my pictures from last months fair parade, picking out the best ones for my photo blog, which you can find HERE, and I came across this one. I thought it was a bit too weird to go on my photo blog, but I still wanted to share it, so here it is.

What’s up with the horse wearing pants? I think the second horse is looking at them thinking that the first horse is some kind of a weirdo.

“Dude, you’re wearing pants? That’s, like, so unnatural, dude.”

Marshmallow Lasers!

Okay, if you read my posts on facebook, you may remember a few days ago I posted a video, because it contained a song I couldn’t get out of my head. I’ll post it here in case you need a reminder, or if you don’t have a facebook account. It’s called “Space Unicorn,” by Parry Gripp.

That song really cracks me up. I’m not quite sure why, it’s just so funny! I downloaded it from the artist’s website, and I listened to it repeatedly while exercising at the wellness center a couple days ago, and I used it to block out annoying noises coming from my brothers bedrooms. Once I listen to it once, it just won’t go away. It plays in my head over and over. The rest of the day after I found it, I kept posting little bits of the lyrics to my facebook. I’m sure people must have thought I’d gone crazy. Maybe I have.
So now my mind has been filled up with an surplus of “Space Unicorn” and it needs to come out. I am planning on doing a large piece of art later, when I have more time, but last night I couldn’t wait anymore and decided to draw up a small sketch, just to tide me over. I am pretty much rubbish at drawing real looking animal poses without a reference of some kind first, so I went to Google and found a great picture of a horse.

And from that, came this.

The dust cloud is supposed to be a rainbow colored nebula, since he “Delivers the rainbows all around the world.”
Just don’t ask me about his marshmallow laser. I haven’t been able to think of any good design for that without anthropomorphizing him too much.

Animals

Okay, confession time. I’ve been wasting a bunch of time on the cheezburger network. Mainly on the “Daily Squee” site. What is it about cute animals that draws my mouse pointer in like a magnet? So after posting two in a row to facebook, I decided that maybe I should just put together a blogpost with my favorites. You all wanted to see a bunch of baby animals today anyway right?

First off was a mama and baby giraffe. Yeah. I’m quite predictable aren’t I?

I’m in love with this picture.
Next was this animated gif. I seriously laughed out loud. Is that bad of me? Poor bird…

This next picture is for mom. HOW CUTE IS THAT FROG?!?

Mom gave me a weird look when she saw this next one and said “Now I’ve seen everything.”

Love the cheeks.

Ok, I knew sugar gliders were cute on their own, but I never knew how cute they were as babies until I saw this picture!

Pigs are some of the ugliest nastiest, filthiest creatures to ever walk the planet. Unless they’re teeny.

Another for mom:

Another giraffe!

The caption under this next one said that this is what happens when an Easter egg hatches. I think they were right.

How adorably smelly.

This picture is just amazing. That is one lucky photographer!

People who think sloths are ugly might have to rethink their position on such matters after seeing this next picture. Who couldn’t love that little face?

This one just made me laugh. The first thing I thought of was the echidna from The Legend of the Guardians. “I FORETOLD YOU SO!”

And speaking of owls… I love this one.

Second only to my love of giraffes and relatives, is my love of horses and relatives.

Like this Somali Wild Ass. No I did not just make a swear. That’s its real name. And I want one. Bad.

Okay, I think that will be enough for now. It is just after midnight. I’d better put away the cutes and get ready for bed.