Decorating Easter eggs

Not much longer until it's Easter. My favorite part of Easter has always been the egg hunt. My mom and grandmother would hide chocolate eggs all around the house and garden for me and my brothers to find, divide and then eat!

Last year, I hid some eggs and a chocolate Easter bunny around the apartment for my Japanese husband, so he could go on his first egg hunt ever. He enjoyed it but I'm not going to do it again this year, there's only so many places one can hide an egg in a small studio apartment and I used them all up last year.

Instead, I decided to decorate some eggs. As a child I decorated real eggs with special markers or with paint by using a little apparatus like this:

But this year, I've decorate felt egg creatures with colorful ribbons and listed them in my shop so that other people can play Easter Bunny and hide these eggs around their house for their loved ones to find on Easter Sunday.

bleronk

Darmayasa Bleronk, from Padma, Bali. This was after a session up the coast that was pretty big. Bleronk and his brother Tonyo were charging, it was awesome to watch. It was also the first time I'd seen them in pretty sizable surf.

Bleronk looks at the camera, goofing off, and referring to the surf he goes, "too small!!!!" Cracked me up.

bolex in bangkok

I was in Bangkok during the celebration of the King's 60th year on the throne. The city was lit up even more than usual, and everyone was wearing yellow. This was early on while traveling and filming on this project. This was actually the first batch of film I shot with my Bolex, which I bought off Ebay. So I wasn't sure if it even worked properly at this point.

I watched some of the ceremonies of the celebration on television, and I absolutely tripped out when I saw the King had a team of guys shooting the occasion with wind-up 16mm Bolex cameras! Royal Bolex shooters decked out in ceremonial dress. Could not believe it. Almost the exact same model as my camera.

I found one film lab in Bangkok that processed 16mm film, it's at Kantana, which is like the Warner Brothers of Thailand. I showed up there with my girlfriend, and she goes, "Whoa! That's P'_____(don't remember the name, a Thai moviestar)!!!" There was a huge netted golf driving range next to the Kantana building, all part of the complex. I took my 4 little 16mm film cans to the lab, and the lab workers looked a bit puzzled by this. They usually only deal with feature films and commercials I think. We had to then go to the accounting office, a room full of young ladies clad in yellow, where they also seemed really puzzled about my small 4 can 16mm order.

They were all cool to us though. Got my footage back, and at their post house they even let me take a look at it on one of their transfer machines for free to make sure my camera was working properly.

One more thing, I've got a new trailer ready for release. It's 5 minutes long with original music. I think it'll be out next week.

the book of te nao

This is the cover to a sketchbook that I call the Book of Te Nao. Te Nao translates to the wave, or god of the waves amongst some islands of the equatorial Pacific. I made this sketchbook a few years ago cutting down paper to size, and binding it with string. I traveled with this some while first starting out on this film project, and sketched some of my surfing experiences in it, as well as waves from my imagination.

Sleeping Dogs

This just in...Sleeping Dogs from Mike Foldes

80 years ago, on March 1, 1932 ...

On the night of March 1, 1932, the infant son of famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow, the daughter of a diplomat, was kidnapped from the family's hilltop estate in Hopewell, NJ. The ensuing investigation involved not only crime fighters at the highest levels, but also members of organized crime, small-time crooks and swindlers, politicians and hangers-on who surfaced from every quarter seeking their own measures of fame and fortune in the mournful glow of the flyer and his wife. A $50,000 ransom in "marked" gold notes was paid, but the boy was not returned. Then, on May 12, 1932, the decomposed corpse of a child was found and identified as Charles Lindbergh, Jr. The search for the kidnapper or kidnappers continued until September19, 1934, when Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German ex-convict living in the Bronx with his wife and son, was arrested after passing a gold note traced to the ransom. What was known as the Crime of the Century was followed by the Trial of the Century. Hauptmann was convicted and after several appeals, died in New Jersey's electric chair as the sole perpetrator of the crime.

Nearly 50 years later, the deathbed confession of an old woman living in the Hudson Valley, and the subsequent discovery of a gun buried in the concrete floor of the chicken coop behind her house, led to a plausible explanation not of who committed the crime -- but of who didn't.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/135175

Now available online at Smashwords.Com:

In epub formats for Kindle, Nook, Sony, Apple and more.

Download and read the free preview ...

Print edition available in March from Split Oak Press, Ithaca, NY,

The Spices of Life

This just in...from Kim Wilson

 My first novel, The Spices In Life, has now been published through Kindle Publishing.

I appreciate your support in paying it forward; tell everybody please. Much literary love.

Check out my website for more information. www.kimkologne.synthasite.com

Jumping Blue Gods

This just in...from Zach Fishel

Jumping Blue Gods is Open for Business, http://jumpingbluegods.com/  The editors say: We just like you and your fascinating literary treasures and we are jumping blue to receive and publish them.

Asbestos Boots on Beatnik Feet

This just in...from A.J. Kaufmann

Asbestos Boots on Beatnik Feet is a new online initiative I started. The blog is located at http://asbestosboots.blogspot.com/. It is my aim to build an online "home" for a new generation of writers. Your work doesn't have to be strictly cut-up - true, cut-up philosophy is currently the focus of this site, but I'm not stopping there or looking exclusively for poetry in that technique (a very old technique, by the way, and well exploited). I'm looking for all that's FRESH, nonlinear or, plainly put, "exciting": poetry/prose/art/photography and music - reviews are fine too, especially of small and micro-press publications or indie records.

blind surfer at pipe

Best surf video ever. Derek Rabelo surfing Pipeline.