An artist friend of mine on Facebook posted lyrics from a Jon Bon Jovi (as opposed to Bon Jovi, and yes, there is a difference) song as his status yesterday. I posted another line from the song, which is really one of those that you probably have to be a fairly dedicated JBJ fan to recognize (it’s “Santa Fe” from the Young Guns II album Blaze of Glory), and Val admired my fanboyishness. *laughs* As it happens, the Blazy of Glory album is one of my favorites in general, and has what is possibly my favorite Bon Jovi song ever, “Bang A Drum”. Some twenty years ago when I bought the album, my sister was reading the lyrics–she hadn’t heard the songs yet–and she said, “This is your favorite song on this album, isn’t it?” It seems I’m quite predictable. :)
My artist friend Ellen Million has a write-up in the Fairbanks newspaper about her first art show. Go Ellen! (And one of the featured pieces of art there is from a book I wrote, which is fairly cool. :))
The National Geographic Photo of the Day had a particularly spectacular photo last week, and I noticed when another of the same photographer’s images came up that there was a whole gallery of Scottish Hibrides photos by this fellow, Jim Richardson. His stuff is of “makes me want to weep with despair” quality, because I can see in his work things that I love, and that I try to do in my own photography–elements like extremely sharp exposures, sometimes with delicate time lapses, for example, and deeply saturated colors–except of course this is work by someone who has dedicated his career to the art of photography, and I’m a dilettante, so what I really see when I look at his imagery is what I could perhaps do if I spent the next thirty years focusing on photography instead of writing. Which isn’t very likely to happen. But he keeps a blog, and he talks in detail about capturing some of the images in the above-linked gallery, and I will certainly read it, and maybe learn a little, and continue to weep with despair.
Oh, speaking of which, Guy Gavriel Kay is auctioning off the signed first book off the press of his new book, UNDER HEAVEN as a fundraiser for high-needs elementary school literacy programs across Canada. It’s already out of my price range (even though it’s in Canadian dollars! hardly anything! ok, more than they used to be, but still! hardly anything!), but I thought I’d point it out in case there are any GGK fans reading my page. Also, GGK himself will match the winning bid up to $1K CDN and his publisher, Penguin, will match it up to $500 CDN. So it’s a good fundraiser thing!