Andy Calls 911, Saves the Day (kinda)

Helped catch a dangerous criminal today.

I'm hanging out with Ruben this evening when we decide to stop by the L&V to see how the renovations are coming along, and ask when they're going to re-open. Walking around the corner from where we parked, I look up to see this blue Toyota Echo screaming down a side street and with tires squealing cornering onto Main St. hardly slowing down, blowing through the red light, and narrowly missing two cars. I reach down into my pocket to grab my cell phone when I hear the unmistakable BANG! of car-on-car collision and look up to see a red car pull over and the blue Echo scream another block or two down the street. Then it tore in front of oncoming traffic making a left turn into my old neighborhood where I grew up.

Not in MY TOWN shit head. I was fucking FURIOUS. I phone 911 and I'm so absolutely livid I'm shaking and can barely think of street names I normally know by heart, but I manage to get across that he turned southbound into the old historic district neighborhood, where I grew up.

The 911 dispatcher thanks me. Ruben and I go into the L&V and are talking to an acquaintance who is doing some of the remodeling. I'm steaming fucking mad stiffly pacing back and forth with my fists clenched until he and I decide to walk down the street to see if that bang we heard was a collision. Around the corner at the end of the block, a car's rear end is visibly smashed and their blinkers are on. We walk up to the passenger side and ask if everybody is ok. The driver and passenger are visibly shaken up, and the passenger says her head and neck are a little sore, but otherwise they're not hurt. A cop had already seen to them, but told them to wait there as he had to make an emergency run. I guess every cop in town was after this fucker.

The officer comes back, and Ruben and I introduce ourselves as eye witnesses. He is a perfect gentleman with the two lady victims, Ruben, and me. We all give written statements, and the officer reassures us they got the guy, and that he had valid insurance. The bastard was drunk off his ass and had hit two other cars along the way. The dumb fuck even had the balls to try to run from the cops in a goddamn Toyota Echo, and led them on a short chase before stopping.

The struck driver's husband arrives, and with enthusiastic handshakes he thanks us profusely for checking up on his wife, and for calling in the criminal to the police. Ruben and I walk back to my car, and I spend the next half hour chattering like a chipmunk still pissed the fuck off and worked up on adrenaline.

How cops keep their cool in situations even far more dire than this is beyond me. I wanted to beat the to a bloody pulp with my hockey stick for putting my people in harm's way.

I hope the cock sucker enjoyed the booze and the drive, because it's the last of either he's going to see for a long, long fucking time.

---

In other news, I spent saturday night at The B shooting the bands that were playing. To make a short story long, my flyers went over like gangbusters! Turns out I tapped a complete vacuum in the local photographic market. Nobody around here does performance photos, and one of the bands kept kissing my butt and giving me free merch. I'd feared that the already-broke garage bands would be annoyed by a guy with a camera hanging out trying to sell them his service, but the exact opposite was true. I got to hang out back stage with them, and even went to an after party.

I was just so freaking thrilled because for once I wasn't just some awkward choad acting like a dork trying to hang out where I didn't belong. I was accepted and embraced by the denizens of the local music scene, and I had a unique and valuable product to bring to the table. I belonged.

So now I have a new goal: to be published in Rolling Stone magazine. Doubt it'll happen, but hey, that's what's good about keeping your goals and dreams fluid. They flow with the go, if that makes sense.

I'll post some of the photos in an addendum after I work on them tomorrow.

Went and played hockey wednesday night for the first time since about this time last year. I must say, I was pretty pleased with my performance. My skates loosened up a little during, so I did a fair bit of stumbling around when I had to take off quickly, but otherwise, I pulled off several productive moves. One guy was making a break for our goalie, and I got alongside him and kept lifting his stick up with mine so he couldn't shoot it. I rock.

Now, I wasn't "checking out" other guys or anything, but you can't help but notice these things when you're in a small locker room with a dozen other naked guys. Maybe it's a testosterone level thing with these guys who've been playing hockey since they could walk, but they all had huge shlongs, man. Let me tell you, I was feeling *quite* inadequate.

At least mine's a smaller target for flying hockey pucks. :-P

---

In other news, I had a job interview today at a department store portrait studio. During the interview, the manager said she really wanted to hire me because of my open availability, education and experience, and that I was such a great guy.

Of course she could only offer me part time hours at minimum wage. Fairfield Commons mall is just under an hour's drive away. That paycheck wouldn't cover the gas bill.

Dammit. I've had exactly two interviews since graduating last December. One with the Highway Patrol, the position at which was nixed by the governor, and today's. She was offering me the job on the spot, and I had to say no.

Mom & Chuck dropped their cable and went with DirecTV. After they installed it yesterday I was flipping through the channels when I landed on Univision, one of the major Spanish-language networks. More specifically, I landed on a Mexican soap opera.

¡Aye Dios Freakin Mio!

I'd never seen such exotic, flesh-meltingly hot women in my life! Instantly my brain spazmed under such shocking sensory overload... it felt like I was going into a seizure. Holy frijole....

*WHEW!*

Last night at The B, I dropped off the CD of images I took for the band "The Tennessee Hollow" last month. Another band had set up, and on their merchandise table was a photo album full of the usual snapshots. I told the guy at the table that they need professional photos. Unfortunately, I didn't have a card on me.

I had an earth-shaking idea: Why not fucking advertise??

So today I design a flyer:



Printed a bunch out and posted them all over The B, as well as another hotspot for bands. Gonna take some to Sound City monday, too. Soon everybody in the entirety of the local music scene will have heard of me. Pretty soon, everybody in Dayton, too, once I get my hand on mom's color copier monday afternoon, and I zip off about 100 fliers to distribute about Dayton's Oregon District.

I'm going to bust out of Tim Hortons, dammit, if it's the last thing I do.

Elliott Erwitt is my homie. If I could be anybody other than Andy Hutchinson, and damn if I'm not finally settling into a consistent and recognizable visual style, I'd opt to be Elliott Erwitt.



This has to be one of my favorite photos of all time. He will never know who I am, and I'll never know him, yet he has been such a major influence in the simple way in which I perceive things, whether sizing them up in a viewfinder, or just simply wandering about and observing the absurdities of everyday reality.

---

I'm not big on fast food burgers. I'll go a couple of years without having one. Now, back when I lived in Warrensburg, Missouri we had a Sonic there, and I was absolutely nuts about the SuperSonic Cheesburger. Here in Ohio, I've been pretty well insulated from fast food temptation, the nearest Sonic being well over an hour's drive away.

... until they built a Sonic here in town late last summer. I've been able to hold out for this long, but my will has crumbled like a stale hamburger bun. I've now thoroughly plunged back into my SuperSonic Cheesburger addiction like a meth fiend.

God, they're good.

"I am intellectually stifled."

A Google search of that phrase turns up nada. Not a single other person on the entirety of the google-indexed internet has written that simple cry for help. Sure, leave out the quotes and then two or three bloggers pull up, but for crying out loud, there has to be more than just a handful of other people on this planet who feel like the grass that's been under the refrigerator in a redneck front lawn for too long. I'm over here screaming to the world, "My brain is for sale! Use me like the hunk of gray matter meat that I am!!" but no takers.

Please! Anything! Well, ok... NO sudoku puzzles. I swear, it must take communion with the evil forces of darkness to be able figure out sudoku puzzles. It's flat-out sorcery I tell you, the power to crack those damnable ciphers!

Just kidding, Dark Haired Girl! (she's a sudoku whiz)

Really, the reason I don't do sudoku is that I'd probably get hopelessly lured in like everybody else, and that just has a certain Borg-like ring to it, don't you think? It's like a fighter jet engine, or American Idol. All you have to do is simply wander too near, and *FOOMP!* you get sucked in like a wet spaghetti noodle.

---

On another note (hehe... note), I did a paid gig for a local music store. He needed a nice photo of his new gift cards for advertising and the web that wasn't just a flatbed scan.



Seriously... if you need any music/audio equipment, the guy that runs this store is the most 100% honest salesman you'll ever meet, and just one helluva nice guy. I trust him completely, he won't steer you wrong. Anyhoo...

He raved about the shot, and thanked me for my quick turnaround, as did his ad agency when they called me later needing an alteration to the image, which I emailed out to them in about ten minutes. His ad agency said they may have more photography/photoshop work for me in the future...

When being alone isn't so bad.

I was bored tonight, so I called up Ruben. It's my "friday night" (having the next two days off), and also payday. We went to the Awful Waffle for some coffee, and I was hungry. Several cups of coffee and a chicken sandwich later, we ended up at M's. It's raining, and is supposed to through tonight, so I stopped off at the dollar store along the way and bought a $5 golf umbrella. I'd also worn my rubber boots that Dark Haired Girl had gotten me for Christmas. I planned on drinking at M's, and didn't want to risk getting pulled over afterward.

It was karaoke night at M's, and we hung out with Ruben's friends. He had to leave early due to having jury duty early in the morning, so I drove him home and came back. Two pints of Guiness later, I sang Marcy Playground's "Sex and Candy". I spent the rest of the night sitting back, sipping lots of beer, and enjoying the quite stellar vocal performances. It wasn't a wild night... just slow, low key, and nice and comfortable. Upon the bartender's request we finish our drinks at 1:30-ish, I paid up and walked over to the Speedway gas station to get some Powerade to prevent searing leg cramps later tonight, a hot dog to put in the ol' stomach, and ended up chatting with the clerk to whom I'm a regular.

It's a humid 52 degrees outside, and I just came in from the most enjoyable midnight stroll through the dark empty streets of my town, splashing through puddles in my boots and listening to the sound of the rain hitting my new umbrella.

I've been thinking about money lately... more specifically, my lack thereof.

I was at M's the other day having a beer, and CNBC was up on the big TV. Amid the randomly jagged charts and stock tickers, there was a promo for the station. It was the lady who founded Baby Einstein, and she was talking about how she had a simple idea, and used CNBC to research whether it was already being done or not, and made a fortune. Then, tonight, I'm watching a show on the history of Google, and all it took was one simple idea to launch Google into billions in profitability, which was to tailor sidebar ads by search keywords rather than displaying random and irrelevant ads.

One thing occurred to me: There's an exotic and incomprehensible volume of money out there, and all it takes is the simplest forehead-thumping idea to tap into it. So I'm thinking... what type of stuff can I do with my camera that nobody else has thought to do? What service(s) can I provide that nobody else does, and convince people that it's something essential that they need?

Hmmmmmmm.....

---

Since we're on the topic of money, you know how they're phasing out analog broadcast TV next year to free airwave bandwidth for wireless devices? Well, I remember reading computer magazines back in 2001 that talked about Taiwan, and how they had wireless devices so inexpensive as to be nearly disposable, yet they had fantastic capabilities like realtime videoconferencing, and on-demand tv and movies. They made our latest cutting-edge devices here in the US look like prehistoric bricks. It's all because their government opened up a wide range of the radio spectrum for their devices to operate within, while to this day our FCC only allots a thin sliver.

Well.. I'm thinking that's about to change with this digitizing of broadcast TV. The US is finally joining the 21st century and catching up to the rest of the modern world. Given the nature of devices existing abroad even at the onset of this decade, you can see the void that will need to be filled over here.

My point: there's going to be a spectacular boom in wireless devices starting in the next few years. Now's the time to invest in the companies that manufacture/mine the raw materials that go into the manufacture of wireless devices, like nickel and lithium for the batteries, gold for the contacts, and other minerals for the transmitter components.

Not like I really know what I'm talking about. I'm not a money person. I'm just drawing parallels, you know?

---

Speaking of how behind the US is, my mom worked for Time-Warner cable when I was a kid. She had a British co-worker who said that they had HDTV in England back in the late 80's.

A model I'm going to work with was asking me what ideas I had for doing a couple's shoot. I went into photoshop to sketch out an idea with my Wacom pen tablet of her resting her head on the male model (hopefully the aforementioned Eric) while he embraces her with his muscular arm.



Thought it looked kinda cool. :-)

Mother Nature gives Ohio the cold shoulder.

So we had that ice storm just the other day. It was kind of cool. Great photo op, and the temperature to sustain freezing rain had to oscillate between above and below the freezing point. Well...



My patio. We just had a blizzard warning over yesterday and today. Howling wind, snowfall as thick as fog, freezing-ass temps, and a level 3 emergency for our county and most adjoining counties. Level 3 means the cops will bust you simply for driving. Emergency vehicles only permitted on the roads. Turned the heat on in my bedroom for the first time since winter '06. Normally I can deal, but the wind forced draughts through my window pane that made my room feel more akin to a meat locker than a living space. The aroma of two years' worth of accumulated dust burning off the baseboard heater was quite charming, let me tell you.

Worst of all, we saw this coming. Dark Haired Girl and I had planned to spend my Saturday off being snowed in at her place noshing on a gigantic summer sausage and watching rented DVDs in each others' arms. Instead... I spend the day over here with my car buried in a snow drift (that's dramatic. I can see it just fine) calling her on the phone to see if she's ok, and surfing the net looking for jobs, used camera gear, and otherwise.

---

Speaking of otherwise, I stumbled across a link to alien porn. Yes, you heard me correctly. I tentatively clicked the link with an already-amused smile curling my lips, only to explode to maniacal laughter upon the sight of an adult movie actress covered in green gelatin screwing somebody wearing a dollar store Halloween alien costume in an inflatable little pool.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... truth is FAR FAR FAR stranger than any conceivable fiction, whatsoever. Think about it: there actually is a subculture of people who are really into looking at that stuff.

I feel so much better about myself.

My attitude toward Hillary Clinton came under criticism. The suggestion was put forth that I was subscribing to the double standard that an assertive man is to be admired, but an assertive woman is just a bitch. Not so!

I was not calling her assertiveness bitchy. I was calling her childish and bullyish behavior bitchy. If Hillary's and Barack's behaviors had been swapped vice-versa, I'd have been calling Obama a dick and praising Mr. Clinton.

I hold no double standard regarding women. It's Dark Haired Girl's strength, independence, and assertiveness that leaves me in such awe.

---

We had an ice storm yesterday and last night. How could I resist...

The trees in the photo above usually stand straight up, I call them "the Dr. Seuss trees." The following photos of wires are from a sound sculpture here in town that I drove by on an errand this morning.

pieces of my mind

Hi there. I thought I'd take a few moments to spend some quality time here on blogger. Got some decent photos to show you, and a few other minor rants to get off my chest.

I proudly voted for Obama the other day at my local Board of Elections office. I was (trying to tolerate) watching his and Hillary Clinton's debate on tv last week which concretely solidified my disgust with her. She spent that entire debate wearing this shit-eating little smirk whenever Obama was speaking. Whether it was her turn or not, she'd speak right over Obama and the moderators, popping off these snarky little passive-aggressive potshots at Obama. I wanted to reach through the tv, smack that smirk off her face, and shout "Grow Up!"

Plus, the only thing universal about her health care is that it's another huge financial burden that universally everybody will be legally required to take on. From her campaign website: "The tax credits will ensure that working families never have to pay more than a limited percentage of their income for health care." Money people like her have lost the ability to comprehend that, tax credit or no, we the middle people can't afford to lose even a small percentage of our income. The money people have been able to afford extras and been out of touch with the reality of middle America for so long, they can't fathom how someone couldn't tack on just one more bill each month, with a credit at tax time to reimburse if they can't afford.

Unfortunately, Obama's plan is similar in that respect. It's that whole "It's affordable because you pay for it now and we give you a credit to offset the cost next year at tax time" tap dance routine. It doesn't fucking work when you don't have the money upfront in the first goddamn place, future reimbursement or no. The money people can't get that through their thick skulls.

They did that to us in the Air Force. If you needed medicine that the clinic didn't carry to dispense, you'd have to go and buy it yourself and submit the receipt to be reimbursed later. When I didn't have my ritalin, and that negatively impacted my work performance, they were all "Why don't you have it? It's free."
"I can't afford it"
"But you get reimbursed, so you're not out any money."
"I don't have the money to go buy it in the first place"
"But Airman Hutchinson, it's free..."

---

*Whew!* I feel better.

Last weekend (as in two weekends ago) was the men's weekend. A good time was had by all, and this one guy cooked an appetizer of venison tenderloin that melten in your mouth like buttah. God was it good. Here's a few photos:






---

Has anybody seen the latest commercial for the Toyota Tundra? You know, the one where they fling it around by the front tow hooks in a pointlessly huge centrifuge... Did you ever catch the fine print at the bottom? "Closed centrifuge. Do not attempt."

Dammit! I'd just had my own personal automobile centrifuge installed in the back yard for that very reason, and now they're telling me I can't use it. Bunch of killjoys.

---

Borrowed an acquaintance's Tamron 90mm macro lens to give it a test drive of sorts. He's selling it for $200 and I'm in the market for a decent portrait lens, so I called up another acquaintance of mine, Eric, to strike a few poses. I was disappointed with the lens' sharpness (or lack thereof), and it's autofocus is a nightmare. Also did a spontaneous "Hey, those sunglasses are cool, let me grab my camera" photo shoot with Ruben's friend Anne the other afternoon as we were lollygagging about:








She'd been talking about doing crunches and showing off her belly to Ruben earlier, so I asked her if she'd mind showing it off again for the camera. Thought I'd try for a sexy magazine ad style photo.



---

My computer's hard drives had filled up entirely with photos, so I had to bite the bullet and dip into the nest egg to get a 500 gig external hard drive at Best Buy. $129... not bad at all. Took a peek at the memory since I'm only running a gig and my computer is far more sluggish in performance than it should be. They had 1 gig sticks of PC5300 DDR2 for $34. Snapped one up in a heartbeat for that price. The computer immediately kicked into the pavement-melting speeds I'd expected when I put it together. Astounding the difference a bit of RAM makes.

---

Dark Haired Girl said something funny... I was discussing with her my interest not just in the "whats" and "hows" of sex, but also the "whys". I've been doing research into the anatomical structure of the g-spot and clitoral nerves, how women that squirt do so with an organ similar to the prostate, and the makeup of female ejaculate fluid. For men I've read up on the various vitamins and botanicals and their chemical components that enhance male performance, such as zinc's universal role in testosterone and prostate fluid production, and Horny Goat Weed's active ingredient icariin and its role in the inhibition of PDE-5, a chemical which blocks the relaxation of smooth muscle tissue thus inhibiting blood flow and erection. She laughed and said I was a "sex nerd". I kind of like the title:

Andy the Sex Nerd.