My very first blog post using joie de vivre (this blog) was a response to an  Illustration Friday prompt. To date, there have been 278 total IF prompts. In my compulsive, archivist fashion, I’ve listed them below.

With IF, a new word is posted every Friday and participants create a response piece and link it from IF to their own blog or Web site.

I try to remember to at least look at the prompt, if not make something during my commute. It’s a totally fun thing to do on a Family Art Night, and the kids like it.

It might be fun to go back and do some of these – it’s not like they go stale. They might even work for someone looking to do a sketch a day for a year or so, or a themed sketchbook swap. Just a “What if…”

Breaking News (get it? HA!)!

There was a water main break in Owings Mills today, not far from where I live.  The water is out and I could REALLY use a shower after this morning’s Kung Fu workout. Ahem.

According to ABC news,  the break was located at 3:00PM this afternoon. And, here’s where it gets interesting:

“The leak has drained two water tanks nearby that contained a total of 1.3 million gallons of water. ” source

I bet you are wondering the same thing I was wondering…could those water tanks be the same towers I’ve written about before?

I conducted some exhaustive  research which will surely get me nominated for this year’s Excellence in Blogging Journalism award and conclude that, YES, most likely, my towers ARE the tanks in question.

As I’ve reported in the past, the bigger tower holds 1.5 million gallons of water. So, either both towers were not completely full, or maybe they stopped the leak before they were completely emptied. While I’m on the subject, I’ll also add that the renovation of the big tower is complete. I’ve been looking for a reason to mention it.

Previously, I covered these towers here:

Water Tower Watch, part 1
Water Tower Watch, part 2
Water Tower Watch, conclusion

This excellent post brought to you by Baltimore’s Best Water Tower Blogger,

Jim Doran from jimdoran.net

I came up with a whole series of things from Melissa’s haiku, and I’m still working on ‘em. Here’s rabbit hole I ventured into:

My other response went like this, which is something I’ve been thinking about lately, in addition to skeletons.

Don’t eat acrylic paint – it’s isn’t good for you. Or your bum.

Love,

Jim

In an attempt to balance our kids’ urges to practice corporate accounting, financial law and quantitative decision making for business, we make art as a family. For the second year in a row, we participated in the National Arts Program Exhibit at Johns Hopkins (December ‘09).

Lily made this painting specifically for the event. She started off painting pictures of Coraline and arrived at the Solar System. It has shooting stars.

Cocoa entered her Oscilloscope, which usually hangs in my studio. I LOVE this painting.

Dawn entered Mi Corazón, a mixed media piece painted on a board from our house. It features skulls, a fiber-made heart and some skeleton keys – we all have a soft spot for skeleton keys, it seems.

My friend and colleague RJ entered a photo, too. It’s the one of himself, taken alone with an old, manual camera. We haven’t worked out how he did it.

To my astonishment, I took home a first place prize. Dr. Ed Miller, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine and Dean of the School of Medicine handed me an envelope.

Here’s me and the drawer…

Finally, a better photograph of  the Mystery of the Loaves and Fishes, an  impossible-to-photograph-well piece. Click the one below for larger.

Thanks to Fred Dubs for the last three pics here.

Acrylic and India ink in a sketch book.

Chas and I caught a Fishbone/English Beat show in DC.  Fishbone remains a hurricane of loud, sweaty, mosh-pit dance fun, while English Beat satisfied the easy listening, feel-good swaying needs of gray haired dudes in blazers and their wine sipping dates. Dave Wakeling was in fine voice, and his backing band of slick, highly polished fellows were precise, if not too young to remember when the English Beat records actually came out.

Upon taking the stage, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore walked out into the middle of the audience on the floor and MADE everyone dance like ska-monkeys (which we did) before Fishbone would start their engine. Then it was on to Ma & Pa, Lying Ass Bitch (pointed directly at “anti-Obama, Tea Party mother-f*ck*rs who should just let the man do his job”), Bonin’ in the Boneyard, Cholly, Party at Ground Zero among others.  At one point, HR from Bad Brains joined the band on stage  – words cannot describe the awesome. I’m so happy I got to experience that.

Post sweaty fun.

@ 9:30

Angelo Moore after coming off stage.

Angelo has long been one of my heroes – he’s unstoppable. Chas is, too, really. It was a great night.  Completely Awesome.

Set list as I remember it:

1. Skankin’ To The Beat
2. Ma & Pa
3. Cholly
4. ?
5. Suffering
6. Alcoholic
7. Give It Up
8. Bonin’ in the Boneyard
9. Behind Closed Doors
10. Let Dem Ho’s Fight
11. Lyin’ Ass Bitch
12. Banned In DC (Bad Brains cover with HR)
13. Party At Ground Zero

My basement had an orange linoleum floor, brown wood paneling and very bright florescent office lighting.  It had ample bookshelves,  a filing cabinet for comic books and a long chemistry cabinet that Dad brought home from a job site. That Cabinet became the cornerstone of my Universe.

For Christmas one year, I received the Navarone play set.  For a birthday, I was given a pre-historic dinosaur play set (both by Marx toys). These were permanently stationed on top at either side of the cabinet. They were completely awesome.

I found the above picture on e-bay – I can’t seem to find an actual photo of the play set.

I had a handful of Star Wars figures – Chewbacca, Darth Vader, C3PO, R2D2 and a Storm Trooper. I eventually acquired a Jawa, a Tuskin Raider, the Death Star Droid and Boba Fett.

Chewy is still with me

Then, I discovered the Micronauts.

The Micronauts were my all-time absolute favorite toys. The Time Travelers were fully pose-able and made the Star Wars guys seem like ridiculous manikins. Needless to say, the Star Wars guys always lost in a fight (well, except Darth Vader because he could use the force – he was practically a wizard and wizards always win).  With the Micronauts, you could use parts from some toys and make new ones – they were “interchangeable.”  They also had a variety of architectures and styles for different ships, robots, aliens, good guys and villains.  The Micronauts were endlessly interesting.

Biotron

The Astro Station – portable and clever

Acroyear was a villain, according to Mego, but a hero if you read the comics

Baron Karza, the Micronaut equivalent of Darth Vader, is held together with magnets and had fists that fire.

Repto

Antron

Centaurus

Membros (all of the above have glow in the dark brains – you can’t top that)

Marvel Comics produced a decent comic that had two successful runs – the stories captured my imagination (although I had my own story running in the basement).

I would spend hours on top of the cabinet at the end of the Universe planning ginormous battles between the Time Travelers and Baron Karza, who had often taken the Navarone by force.  My  usual soundtrack was  a cassette of Orson Wells’  War of the Worlds radio broadcast (played over and over and over).  I could write several posts on the Micronauts by themselves, so I’ll move on to the supporting cast of the cabinet wars.

There was a die-cast metal Raydeen from the Shogun Warriors. I still don’t know much about the Shoguns – but Raydeen was metal and could change into a bird (this is all pre-Transformers, by the way), so he was useful in a fight.

And there was giant Godzilla. He had flame on his tongue and could shoot his fist. He was the best. As tall as the mountains, he could upset any battle, provide the perfect chaos and destruction to BOTH sides at the most unlikely moment.

19 1/2 inches tall!

The second drawer in the cabinet held all my Lego, which came in handy for building stuff for the Mirconauts to destroy. I had pieces from an erector set, too, which made my hands smell like metal and made me wonder if I could get metal poisoning.

Less related to the Cabinet at the End of the Universe were other cool things I ran across in my childhood – some of which factored into my Cabinet adventures, and some that did not.

The Vertibird – a simple yet really fun helicopter that could be made to go up, down, forward and backward in a loop.

Which Witch – a game was fun no matter HOW you played with it. Kinda like mouse trap – fun to look at, set up, and useful for holding the Micronauts as prisoners.

I had forgotten all about this Girder and Bean set (below) until recently  – perfect for constructing potential targets for asteroid collision damage or Godzilla attacks.

There were usually a handful of action figures around, too – they were useful meat puppets, if not actual super heroes.

This guy was on my 3rd or 4th birthday cake – he’s also still with me.

Marx castle – they made the best stuff.

I didn’t have these, but thought they were cool.

My youngest daughter reminds me of my Cabinet at the End of the Universe. She will sit on our steps in the house and play with whatever she happens to have in her hands – lost in an imaginary world. She doesn’t need TV – she could be holding a spoon,  a pony, a shoe box and a couple of  figures and she’s happy for hours.

Hat tip to Mr. Old-Toy-Blogger himself, Jim Groom, who wrote a series of posts just before Christmas  that brought me some nostalgia. I’d been wanting to write a post like this for a while, and I’m contemplating rebuilding that cabinet in my barn. Jim helped get my blogging gears going.

In the meantime, UPS finally made it to the house with the spoils  of a barter I struck with one of my creative comrades. Two of my very favorite things:  a bag and shoes.

I’ve been traveling a lot lately. I prefer to travel light, and my daily backpack is a just a little too small to do a weekend conference out of town.  I thought I’d give the Timbuk2 Swig a try. It’s big and very lightweight. I’ve had great luck with TimBuk2 stuff in the past, and my current TB2 backpack ranks highly on my favorite bags list (I’ve tried a lot of bags).

So – when is the next WordCamp (hopefully somewhere warm)? I’m ready!

The last two are sketches for other ones. Acrylics are making my sketchbooks a lot more interesting. And I learn something every time I touch a brush.

I’m feeling a little more confident with the pen nibs, although I need a better way to clean them.

All this lounging is making me sleepy, soooo – goodnight!