It also felt like two months. There are definitely events during the early part of the month that seemed like they belonged in July. There are even things that happened after the fifteenth that seemed of another age.
The summer/fall thing had a lot to do with that oddness, I’m guessing. We are, after all, now living in the season of Fall.
Booooooooooo. 😡
August was a busy month for Linzy. She played gigs at The Cottage in Bothell and The Rustic Cork in Mill Creek where we enjoyed a lovely evening with dear friends.
The band she's in, The Little Lies (a Fleetwood Mac tribute band) played to a packed Taste Edmonds crowd on the 11th. The other band she's in, Midnight High, debuted their new album, Swimming Lessons, at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard to a packed house and a lot of love from that audience.
The month was a busy one for me in a number of ways, the most interesting of which was exploring the use of Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe's AI tool that enables serious manipulation of reality. For example, we were at a Public Storage place with friends when I took out a chair, placed it in the middle of the road between two buildings, and had our friend's son sit on that chair with a big smile plastered on his face. With not terribly much effort, I replaced the background trees and sky with a sun-soaked jungle. I also replaced the road with a brighter chunky cement surface and toy dinosaurs running all about.
Seriously.
Toy dinosaurs.
As if they were giant set pieces I'd brought down for the occasion.
Couple weeks later on a particularly bright and hot weekend, I took another photo at that Public Storage, this time with plenty of room for…
A giant public swimming pool.
No kidding. It actually looks like a public swimming pool complete with a net for water sports, barely a couple feet from our van.
I did a bunch of stuff like that across the month, figuring out this tool. Mostly illustration-y things. But those photos at Public Storage continue to capture my attention because of how strikingly real are my additions.
Kimmer, of course, continued her work from home with Ballard Psych. She's also fully gearing up for her Doctoral program at The American College of Healthcare Sciences in Portland. It's an exciting opportunity for her and, from the sidelines, I can see the experience is fixing to be pretty incredible with all the resources they're already making available to her.
For our family movie outing of the month, we all convened at The Crest Theater in Shoreline to watch "Barbie" and compare notes. It's fun to watch, definitely. It's filled with a lot of laugh out loud moments on top of a metric ton of nostalgia. It's creative as hell, great casting (did not see Rhea Perlman coming, for example), wonderful performances all around. Definitely a lot of social commentary that, in a nearly full theater, resonated with a lot of different people at different times according to their experiences... as well as lighting up universals that are obvious (of course) to everyone.
One of my favorite quiet moments of August was a comfy weekend afternoon when Kimmer 'n I drove into Ballard, grabbed some burgers at 'Lil Woody's next to The Majestic Bay Theaters, and drove further west to that spot overlooking Salmon Bay where the water empties out into Shilshole Bay. At that overlook is a patch of grass with a park bench on which we enjoyed a lovely lunch together.
Those sweet moments are not nothing, you know?
Insanely Small World Award of the month goes to Lerin Herzer who opened for Midnight High at their album release show. Lerin, it turns out, is the daughter of Linzy's Jr. High band director.
Dang.
The previous winner, by the way, is Harry Wirth III, Linzy's bandmate in The Little Lies who was also in a band called Molasses, a band in which Linzy's High School band director also played.
Speaking of Linzy's high School band director, he recently referred one of his 2023 graduates to me to talk shop. The student's about to embark on their university experience and wanted to ask questions about being a professional creative. We covered a lot of ground during our conversation and, once again, much to my chagrin, I found myself advocating what once I used to roll my eyes at whenever the Music & Video Business director at the Art Institute of Seattle would bring up his pet advice: networking.
He talked about it a lot.
And we all rolled our eyes.
Only, you know, he was right and even though I frame the advice in terms of community and chasing your career as part of a group with compatible skillsets, yeah.
i just rewatched the first toy story movie and am feeling the after effects. the point of this post was to say Fitz and dex are just like woody and buzz. from the toy story.