I'm Big in Pittsburgh...

In anticipation of the premiere screening of "Happy Walter" this coming Tuesday (March 13, 8pm), there is a friendly article in The Pittsburgh City Paper. Read Article. Is this the beginning of fame and fortune? Shall I quit my day job? Nahhhh, but it's a real hoot to be part of the buzz and it should help with turning more folks out that night. One minor correction to the story, Bill O'Driscoll refers to Zoje's character as "Happy Walter IV", actually she portrays "Happy Walter Jr.".

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February Hiking Report

30 miles last month, so the year-to-date total is now 79 miles. Some of those miles where gathered in while I was back in Ireland for a visit. Here's a photo of my friend Alan and I on the rocky hill above the Cahir Valley. It was a blustery Sunday afternoon and we were hunting for an ancient Celtic tomb that we had found before and wanted to show to our friends. Heavy grey rain clouds moved in from the west and we thought for sure that we'd get rained on, but time-after-time the sheets of rain moved off down the valley and headed out into Galway Bay leaving happy and dry-ish. It's hard work moving over that broken ground. Gaps between the Burren limestone hunger for your booted foot and I could not help but imagine the drama of snapping my ankle if I miscalculated a step. Thankfully, none of us fell to such a fate and we located the tomb and made our way back off the hilltop and headed back to Ballyvaughan to warm up and have a hot whiskey.

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January Hiking Report

Yes, you read that correctly, this is my report of my JANUARY 2007 hiking activities. Figured I better get it in before February is gone. My mileage goal for the year is 600 miles, the same as last year. I've added the additional goal to get out in the woods more, however as I find that too many of my miles come from the old, easy routes, primarily the beach outside my front door. Last month I managed to pound out 49 miles, just one mile shy of the fifty mile average I need to stay on track, so not a bad start. February is shaping up to be a slack month, though I did get a few soggy miles down in Ireland, more soon on that.

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"Happy Walter" Coming Soon to a Theater Probably No Where Near You

"Happy Walter" is headed for a big screen premiere in Pittsburgh, Pa. of all places. Zoje Stage, the writer/director/actor/producer/editor/etc of "Happy Walter" has a strong connection to the town and has shown work before through the Film Kitchen organization. I lifted this from the Master Builder newsletter:

"The main news I have to report is that my
feature-length mockumentary HAPPY WALTER will be
screening at Film Kitchen (Pittsburgh, PA) on March
13. Reception with free food & beer at 7pm, followed
by the movie at 8pm -- all at the Melwood Screening
Room in Oakland. "

My wife, who also has a small acting role in the film, and myself will be making the drive up that day to attend the world premiere. I'm really excited to see the final cut, I've only seen a few bits and pieces and I'm also looking forward to visiting Pittsburgh for the first time. We'll only be staying the one night unfortunately, but I have my sight-seeing priorities and plan on paying a visit to the Monroeville Mall. Now I'm not a mall guy, in fact go out of my way to avoid those places, but Monroeville Mall has history as it was the shooting location for the original "Dawn of the Dead". As a teenager, my friends and I would catch DotD whenever it played at the midnight movies on the weekend. You see this was back in the pre-video days where if you wanted to see a particular film, you had to either catch in the theaters or on TV were it was heavily edited and if Dawn of the Dead ever was shown on TV back then, it would have been about 12 minutes long. I'm sure there's lots of great stuff to see in Pittsburgh, but I'll be checking it out after I go to the mall.

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Drawn Into It

This drawing was inspired by a small, wooden carving I saw recently at a show of Mexican art at the Peninsula Fine Art Center in Newport News. The piece looked like it had been assembled from found pieces of wood; a bust of Jesus, a fragment from some smashed alter piece (who knows, maybe damaged in an earthquake?), framed by golden wooden boards decorated with rough-hew stone inlay. The piece is small, just a foot high, an intimate scale that lures the viewer close so they can smell the dust and see the brush hairs frozen in the thick oil paint. I wish I had made that piece. If a particular work of art strikes that chord in me, energizes the urge to create, then it succeeds for me on a soul level, it is nourishment. I drew this little sketch from memory, so the details aren't exact, in fact I gave myself permission to interpret, to allow the thick lens of my mind warp the image and accept this new thing, a melange of the real and the imagined. I have been trying to get back into the habit of drawing again, of making art of any kind, and the sketch fits the time and space I have now. My wife draws constantly, and I admire her fearlessness to experiment and step out of her comfort zone. She recently started a blog called "Daily Drawing" where she actually is posting a drawing a day. Since the first time I saw her art, I have always felt a connection to the images that she makes. There is a deepness and a mystery there like looking at cave paintings by candlelight while listening to a distant, storm cloud opera crashing and booming on the edge of the night. It too is nourishment...

OK HW

2006 Hiking Report

Alright, so I couldn't wait to share the news that I hit my goal, so this entry is a tad anti-climatic. But nonetheless here are some year end stats for 2006:

Goal: 600 miles

Final total miles: 605 miles

Month with fewest miles: August (19 miles)

Month with the most miles: Tie between November and December (77 miles each) The Big Push!

Longest individual hike: February 24, in Rochester, NY hiked down the Genesee River past R.I.T. and back to our apartment downtown, 15 miles.

So there you are.

My 2007 goal will remain at 600 miles with the only twist being that I'm going to get into the woods and mountains more often and take some weekend trips out of the city. Virginia has lots of great hiking, unfortunately it's all three hours or more away from where I live on the coast.

It's a beautiful, unusually warm and sunny day today, so if you'll excuse me, time to lace up the boots.

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