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Day One Travel To Iberia
Day Two Marbella
Day Three Mijas
Day Four Granada
Day Five Gibraltar
Day Six Ronda
Day Seven Marbella
Day Eight Paris
Day Nine Pere Lachaise
Day Ten Louvre mall; in Notre Dame
Day Eleven Ste Chappelle; Le Tour Eiffle
Day Twelve Versailles; Musee D'Orsay
Day Thirteen Louvre Musee
Day Fourteen Musee's D'Orsay, Rodin, Paris Modern Art
Return to The HackFester Homepage
JP's St. Pat's Pie
JP conjured up this garish treat some years back as a special contribution to a St. Pat's party on
Warrington Drive: Green Jello.
We were all greatly relieved when, after making us squirm for a few minutes thinking in horror
that this was our only
dessert that day, he also pulled out one of Alayna's classic chocolate cakes.
Bon Bye-Bye.
3/8/07 - Let it be known that the young Monsieur Logan Stagg, shown here in a particularly
industrious state, has temporarily fled the toilings and tribulations of teendom in
Ann Arbor for a more sedate and sophisticated existence found, of course, only in Paris.
We bid him a fond adieu and wish him Bon Chance.
Unfortunately, when he returns on 3/15, spring will be less than a week away;
therefore, the grass will begin growing anew, and he will be consigned once again to
the aforementioned toilings and tribulations, a portion thereof being displayed above.
Ahhh...the symmetry of it all.
European Vacation
3/1/07 - Alayna and JP (P for Pierre), prior to being chauffeured by WOM through a dark
and stormy night over to Northwest Flight #50, bound for Paris, then on to Malaga.
A forlorn Logan sits stunned on the right. He was just coming to the realization that
he will somehow have to get through the next week without anybody to remind him
to take out the trash, shovel the driveway, eat all his vegetables, or go to bed.
His feelings of abandonment won't last long:
He will join his parents and sister in Paris next Thursday.
Departure Date: JP and Alayna, at long last, flap their wings for Paris; Malaga, Spain,
and the Costa del Sol ; and then back to Paris, this very evening on Northwest Flight 50.
Superb timing, as March comes in like the proverbial lion here in dreary, damp,
and dismal SE Michigan...
Ann Arbor Weather, 3/1/07
8am to 5pm
|
Likely Freezing Rain , Likely Ice Pellets (sleet) , Chance of Snow |
Likely Freezing Rain , Likely Ice Pellets (sleet) , Chance of Snow |
Likely Freezing Rain , Likely Ice Pellets (sleet) , Chance of Snow |
Likely Rain Showers |
Definite Rain Showers , Chance of Thunderstorms |
Definite Rain Showers , Chance of Thunderstorms |
Definite Rain Showers , Chance of Thunderstorms |
Definite Rain Showers , Chance of Thunderstorms |
|
| 80% |
80% |
80% |
90% |
90% |
90% |
90% |
90% |
|
| 95% |
97% |
99% |
96% |
98% |
99% |
100% |
100% |
Malaga, Spain, Weather
Thursday
|
Friday
|
Saturday
|
Sunday
|
Monday
|
|
69� F | 55� F
21� C | 13� C
|
69� F | 59� F
21� C | 15� C
|
73� F | 57� F
23� C | 14� C
|
71� F | 55� F
22� C | 13� C
|
66� F | 53� F
19� C | 12� C
|
| Scattered Clouds |
Clear |
Scattered Clouds |
Clear |
Scattered Clouds |
Buen Viaje!
Bad News - Good News
Logan warily eyes a drooping, ice encased bough.
The bad news is that Nicole is enroute to France and we won't be seeing her for a while.
Her voyage wasn't so 'bon' either.
American Airlines got her to Dallas/Fort Worth about twenty minutes after her connection
departed for Paris. AA got her a bunk at the local Comfort Inn, and she'll try again today.
The half inch of ice and foot of snow predicted for southeast Michigan never
materialized, but enough of the frozen H2O fell to delay thousands of travelers.
The good news? No school today, 1/15/07!
Got Mardi Gras?
To find out, click on the pic...
Lost in Space
September 17, 2006 - This amazing photograph -- taken by an eye-in-the-sky camera during Logan's and his buddy Steve's terrifying
Magnum Rollercoaster ride at Cedar Point -- captures the exact moment that Logan's brand-new cell phone (seen here
plummeting past his left wrist) began its fateful fall from his pocket into oblivion,
never to be seen -- or heard -- again. No wonder he didn't answer my calls that day. JPM
Note to self: Don't carry cell in flimsy t-shirt pocket while engaged in bronco busting,
trampline jumping, or amusment park riding.
Something to toot about...
Young Logan -- shown here playing Hail to the Victors after a TD two seasons ago when the Wolverines were merely tolerably good --
can now pull this same horn out of deep storage and really give it a blast.
Not only is UM showing signs of returning to glory, but on 9/20, Master Logan officially notched another year:
16 (AKA, the Year of Living Dangerously). Let's all hope he practices his driving more than he did his trumpet.
Just kidding, Logan! All the Best on your Big Day.
Three plus sixteen!!
Happy Birthday Nicole!!!
Bon Voyage
These are some of our final images of Nicole, as she headed off to France last week...
As I thoughtfully recorded the scene, Logan got in a couple free throws, patiently
waiting for fifty pounds of underwear
and socks to get tossed into the trunk.
Hey! Careful! There are golf clubs in there.
We stood in line with her for nearly an hour as she checked her baggage,
then gave her a hug and kissed her goodbye.
Au revoir, Nicole. See you in December.
Cool Jazz
I mean really cool jazz. Drizzmal, gusty, chilly jazz.
That was the story at the 27th Detroit Jazz Festival on Saturday, 9/2/06.
But by Monday, uninvited Ernesto drifted east leaving the event just plain cool.
The streets and seats were full of music lovers, including Julie & Mark (dead center, below)...
...sampling seven stages featuring the likes of, among many others,
Mose Allison, Lyman Woodard, Dr. John, the Detroit Allstars with
Marcus Belgrave, Barry Harris, Louis Hayes, Rodney Whitaker,
and Charles McPherson...
...and for all three days, it's all free. Now that's cool. jpm
HB, JP!
Fulda, Germany July, 1974
A contemplative and studly young JP, shown here on a vintage A & F catalog cover, one of the originals
in the long-running (and highly controversial) campaign. Amira unearthed this shocking relic while rummaging through the dusty, musty magazine
collection at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, right here in A2.
How Pruitt was able to conceal his early modeling career from us remains a mystery, but at least now we know how he could afford to purchase both a motorcycle
and a "classic" car (an Austin American) shortly after leaving high school, with no real income. Astounding!
Have a phenomenal fifty-fourth, JP. 20 years ago...
It was on this date in 1986 that JP (decked out in Saturday Night Fever white) was manhandled up to
the altar by his three brothers (standing just behind the him, lest he attempt to flee again).
Thus, it happened that he made an honest woman out of Alayna, seen here with the ceremony's
be-robed orchestrator, Rev. Zach Clayton of the Aldersgate Methodist Church
in Midland, MI (Alayna's home town), both also attired significantly in white, though of a more
virginal shade than the groom's. We wish the veteran couple happy memories for yet another two decades.
Birthday Techie
This young lady is celebrating her birthday by fixing the computer!
"I've always wanted to do something crazy on my birthday like go for a glider or hot air balloon ride
or fix the computer," stated Alayna, while chewing thoughtfully on a piece of discarded bonding wire.
Besides revamping the Parallel Port Headers and Super I/O Controller, she's cleaning out the
SiMM Sockets, lubing the Voltage Regulators and Capacitors, degausing the
On-Board Secondary Cache Chips, and replacing the Flash Bios ROM!
"There. That ought to improve buffering and eliminate file corruptions."
Now that's one wild and crazy chick!
Happy Birthday, Alayna!
Play Ball!
In this series of pics, Huron High River Rat Logan waits on the pitch
in a recent doubleheader against crosstown rival Pioneer.
Brisk weather dominated both games with temps in the low 40's and a 30-mph wind.
Here, Logan laces a sharp line drive to the opposite field...
...only to have the ball speared in a dandy catch by the third baseman...
Huron prevailed in both games and now holds a 3-1 record, after splitting two with Plymouth today.
Photo Sells for Record $2.9 Million at Auction
By ELIZABETH LeSURE, AP, with W.O. Marion, The HackFester.online
NEW YORK (Feb. 15, 2006) - A photograph of a darkened room taken by J. Pruitt Marion sold for more than
$2.9 million on Wednesday, easily setting a world record for the highest-priced photograph ever auctioned.
Sotheby's said. "Blackout!," snapped in Pittsfield Township, Michigan, in 2003, sold for $2,928,000,
including the buyer's premium. It was bought by Peter MacGill, of Pace/MacGill Gallery,
on behalf of a private collector, who is blind as a bat and has been so since birth.
The photograph shows the ambient light, or rather the lack thereof, in Mr. Marion's bedroom
at exactly midnight on the first night of the famous power outage of '03, which struck a large part
of the Midwest and beyond on August 14. Astoundingly, he took the photo without even leaving his mattress.
The infamous blackout originated in Ohio, you may recall, when a clumsy employee of
Ohio Electric -- on his way out the back door to sneak a smoke at the company's Central Transmission
Station in Columbus accidentally tripped on the Main Power Cord (MPC), unwittingly dislodging it.
Not a single technician thought to plug it back in, and millions were without electricity for nearly
three days until the facility janitor pointed out the problem while dusting.
The hapless employee was later fired but sued for wrongful termination, and after six months of
litigation, was restored to his job with back pay and full benefits.
Last October, he was promoted to Supervisor of all four of South-Central Ohio's Transmission stations.
He has since quit smoking.
Pre-sale estimates priced the photo, which is slightly bigger than 16 inches by 19 inches,
at up to $1 million. But the blind collector, who became sightless when his obstetrician
pulled him from the womb by his mouth and eye sockets like a bowling ball, has money to burn
in the wake of the settlement with the hospital following that tragic incident.
He actually bid himself up more than $800,000, just for laughs, he stated anonymously.
The previous record for a photograph sold at auction, $1,248,000, was set in November
by Richard Prince's "Untitled (Cowboy)," which, in reality, makes it titled (Cowboy).
Also surpassing that record on Tuesday were two photographs of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe
taken by Alfred Stieglitz, her husband. A photograph of her hands sold for $1,472,000, and a portrait
of her nude sold for $1,360,000, Sotheby's spokesman Percy Weigman said. Both went to West Coast
dealers. It is not clear why the photograph of just her hands fetched more than the shot of her entire naked body,
which has not only her hands but also lots of other limbs and organs, including some not generally seen in public.
The three photographs were among a group of about 140 scheduled to be auctioned by Sotheby's on Tuesday
night and Wednesday morning, but it's unlikely that enough filthy rich suckers can be found to purchase them all,
but you never know in these matters.
The photographs were put up for sale by the Metropolitan Museum of Art from its acquisition last
year of the more than 8,500 photographs in the renowned Gilman Paper Co.collection, which few "normal"
people have ever heard of. Stephen Perloff, the editor of The Photograph Collector, a newsletter about the
photography art market, said before the Marion auction that it would be a "moment of history," not stopping to
think that every moment is, in actuality, precisely that.
The entire sale is estimated to bring in between $4 million and $6 million, said Denise Bethel,
director of the Sotheby's photography department. The proceeds will go toward defraying the costs of
acquiring the collection and then selling it using Sotheby's, which charges absurdly high commissions for
basically just standing at a podium and taking people's money.
Marion, who was among a group of early digital photographers who have all along aimed to gain
acceptance of digital photography as a fine art, was not available for comment, as he was skiing
and taking photos at Boyne Mountain, Michigan. He hopes to auction off several of these photos a
s well, stating that "there is an bottomless pool of wealthy blind patrons out there."
No date for the event has yet been set.
Marion's Blackout: Winner of the prestigous Daguerre Society's Best Contrast award,
it was also featured on the cover of Black Humor magazine in October, 2004.
Now it is the most expensive photograph in history.
Little Traverse Bay February, 2006
Are you up for a quick ski trip to Boyne Highlands?
Click here to view a run, trailing Alex and Logan over a couple little jumps.
It will probably take a couple minutes to download and open this Quicktime file.
As you wait, read the following run-on-sentence-laden paragraph.
It's all planned out. Check this out - the first day of this little jaunt will consist of a full day of
racing pell-mell down double black diamond runs, and if you're lucky, your overstressed plastic
boot won't crack and detach the toe of your right boot in the middle of a jump, jettisoning in
one direction and cartwheeling your ski in another direction - creating a 'yard sale' if your landing
lives up to the disastrous potential that races through your mind, mid-air. Odds are that will never
happen. But if it does, just ski down the mountain the rest of the way on one foot and
go rent another set of boots. Apply up and down motion liberally to the hill - repeat until
closing, and later restore life to your lactic acid laden legs with a rejuvenating plunge in the
jaccuzzi at the lodge as snow falls around you and your hair freezes into an Ed Grimley style
bouffant, all the while rehydrating with a nice cold cup of Black Cherry Vanila Coke until the
realization of just how famished you are sets in after you add up the number of calories
you burned dodging trees trying to avoid emulating Sonny Bono's last run.
After a quick shower and short drive down a twisty, ice covered road, pull into the local
Mexican eatery and devour all the chips and salsa you can get the waiter to bring until
your entree is wheeled out. What's next? Dancing? No way! Still no legs.
It's back to the lodge to fall asleep in front of the idiot box watching Olympic skiers
risk their lives for free doing what you paid to do. When the alarm goes off the next morning,
its down to the buffet to carb up for another seven and a half hours of trying to set a personal
best record of getting back down the hill, if you can see the hill through the snow pelting your
face as you whip through a stiff 30 MPH wind humming in off Little Traverse Bay in the 22 degree
temperature. What would that make the heat index? Or is it wind chill? Your body heat will f
luctuate between chilled and quite warm from sitting on a tediously slow chair lift to burning thigh
muscles powering through clumps of snow after scraping across expanses of bald faced ice.
They say if you can ski in Michigan, you can ski anywhere. At 12:30, head to the lodge for a
turkey or roast beef sandwich with some chips, an apple or banana, or some cookies, or
hot chocolate, then rewrap layers of fabric on exposed areas and try to get in another 35 or 40
runs before they tell you they've 'already sent the last chair up for the day. Thanks for coming.'
Now you get to drive home 275 miles, if you can stay awake. Sound like fun?
How about next weekend?
It took four long years, but Nicole -- shown here with a few fellow escapees --
finally broke out of Community High once and for all.
After a summer of freedom, she'll next be incarcerated in this
fine institution: http://www.goucher.edu/
- Lucky Logan: High-schooler-to-be keeps the family streak alive by
First, it was Mavourneen, then Amira, then Nicole,
and now young Mr. Stagg beats the odds and
grabs a spot at CHS.
Nearly 300 applications were thrown in the hat; only 120 were pulled out:
Number 33 was Logan's.
Got Gifts?
Just what you want to see Christmas eve...
Dude Displays Dental Work
After years of filtering food through steel and rubber bands,
Logan's teeth were finally set free Friday.
Follow-up care includes wearing a retainer to keep
his choppers from going back to their old habit of pointing
to all directions on the compass,
but that still beats the tartar out of a grin of tin.
Nice going, Logan! Now, chew some gum!
Where's JP?
JP is stuck somewhere in this amazing photo taken at Chicago's Millenium Park.
He actually appears four times.
Can you find him ? (hint - yellow tee shirt, green shorts, white hat.)
Green Leaf
Fall '04...another outstanding photographic contribution from JP who,
apparently, will do anything to get out of dealing with the onslaught of leaves,
including throwing his rake down and running for his camera...a very good move, as it turns out.
Note: This shot would make an excellent desktop backround for those
who need a change of scene on their computer.
An Exclusive:
and took home a hefty $250 in the 11th-12th grade category.
No, you're not seeing double.
She won again! This year it was Third Place!
Nicole's effort earned her a nifty certificate and a cash prize of $100!
in the 11th-12th grade category in the
2005 Ann Arbor District Library Writing Contest.
Here is the facing page of a large dictionary I was drawn into while straightening some shelves.
This tome contains a wealth of
information, including color plates of flags of the world,
Great Seals of the United States and Territories, Coats of Arms of
various nations, US & Canada yacht club flags, 2,373 pages of definitions,
plates showing developement of the Merchant Marine from
the Phoenicians to present day (1919), and much, much, more.
Typical Autos
This plate shows cars typical of the time that not only possess a lot of class
and character but probably also got
pretty good mileage.
The vehicle three rows down and three to the right reminds me of why chicken coops
have two doors.
(If they had four doors they'd be chicken sedans).
Fascinating to see how an atom was once regarded as the smallest indivisible particle.
How the world has changed since the unleashing of subatomic particles.
It was first postulated in 1913 that matter is made up of molecules
and these, in turn, are made up of atoms.
A typical atom consists of a nucleus composed of positively charged protons and
neutral neutrons surrounded by a cloud of orbiting negatively charged electrons.
Six years later, it hadn't been accepted as
fact (by Websters).
AND, let's not forget about anti-matter.
Proof of its existence occurs at least once every time I play a round
of golf and lose a ball.
By the way, atrabiliousness refers to being inclined to melancholy
or having a peevish disposition; surly. JPM
Bye, Bye?
Another season, nearly depleted. Although R.J. still may be able to sneak out for a round or two during the tropical Baltimore
winter, it's looking more and more bleak for the rest of us. The clubs have been taken from the trunk and placed
in the garage. Their final resting place? The basement, where they'll languish until late March or early April, gone but
not forgotten. Still, that move will not be made until their fate is absolutely sealed: When the snow and frigid temperatures
are unquestionably here to stay. That could well be tomorrow.
(posted 11/22/05)
Popcorn Not Included!
Before many companies fled Detroit for the 'burbs, you had to park where you could
find a spot. Since no one was using the long shuttered Michigan Theater, a few well placed steel girders
supported an increased number of parking spots. It's unknown if it was cheaper to park in the
balcony. I've heard of drive-in theaters, but this is ridiculous.
The Aftermath
JP put this patriotic collage together shortly after 9/11/2001, when stunned Americans let their red, white & blue
ferver accelerate to the highest level. Things have since simmered down, but the horror of the acts and images
of that day will always be with us. WOM
A Man for all Seasons
A2 Fart Fair File Photo, circa 2002
As the Dog Days of Winter press on, JP gives us a flash of what's to come in just
a few miserable months...shorts, sandals, t-shirts -- or, for you ultra-free souls, maybe
no such sartorial encumbrances whatsoever.... Note veteran (but thankfully clothed) nudist reading
Get Naked! Monthly newsletter in background. He's not wearing underwear, the old perv!!!
Quentin, PA -- Although HackFest '04 is now well behind us, it behooves one to pause and
reflect on that event from time to time...Here, JP instructs the young, impressionable
Logan as to the proper way to eat Quentin Haus Family Restaurant home fries: First, primer
the mouth by taking a goodly swig of ketchup, holding bottle in left hand. Then with right hand, grab
sufficient fries and insert them into that selfsame mouth to co-mingle companionably
with the ketchup. Swish, chew, swallow, repeat.
DISCLAIMER : Despite these tantalizing prices from Gibraltar -
only 9 pound 70 for a carton of Embassy smokes - warning of the dangers of
smoking should be enough to disuade anyone from taking up this addicting
habit. BUT, if you do find a low interest loan to finance this stinky health
menace, just remember - you look cool. And to paraphrase SNL's
Fernando Lamas, "It's not how you feel, it's how you look."
