Rodney Curtis

    One of the great things about having excess time on your hands is checking out entertainment possibilities you’ve heard about but haven’t pursued due to time, money or inclination. (Switching now to first-person), I stumbled upon these guys while waiting in line during a Target Black Friday sale. After I took pictures for the ill-fated Detroit Daily Press, I did some 5:00 a.m. shopping. The DVD section was decimated just after they opened and all the Flight of the Conchords disks were pillaged.

    I made a mental note to visit my local Lackluster video store and check them out.

    Anyone who gets my sense of humor knows these guys are a perfect fit. The video above is just the two of them in concert, sitting on stools. They’re almost as good there as they are in their now-canceled TV series. The TV show takes their songlist and weaves them into a deadpan plot. I get the impression that they just ran out of energy trying to connect all their incredibly disparate, yet hilarious songs.

    They gave it a good run, even including Troy High’s own Sutton Foster in a few episodes. Skye tells me that one of her World College buddies, (more on World College later), has a cousin who lives near one of the Conchords and that they’re a national treasure in New Zealand. Apparently anyone who’s noticed outside of New Zealand is a national treasure.

    Since I didn’t have anything new, earth-shattering or original to share with the class and my end-of-year links below seemed — well — so 2009, I thought you’d enjoy watching stuff that makes me : )  LOL, ROTFLMAO and other textual things.

    Mostly, they make me happy. And, like Gretchen Rubin asks on her Happiness Project, “What do I want from life, anyway?” And then answers with the simple yet soul-shattering response, “I want to be happy.”

    Eventually I’ll post some more meaningful stuff here. Yes, I’ll tell you my favorite 2009 movies like many of you have been asking for. And there are certain to be some rip-snorting blog entries that defy convention, expose reality for what it really is, root out corruption and offer tips on gardening.

    While soaking in the tub, (sorry about the imagery burning your brain), I thought, “Hey I’m a photographer. How come I don’t post more pictures on my blog?” Since I didn’t have any meaningful words to share with the class, I figured you may enjoy some pictures I took in 2009. You can click on the shots to make them a little bigger if you’d like.

In Jamaica for a wedding of our good friends Darrel and Leslie, Skye watched the setting sun from a cabana.

Every time I’ve mowed my lawn in the past, I’ve looked at the big blank screen on the side of my house and thought “why not?” This past summer I finally made my musings meaningful.

My daughter and brother have been sledding all their lives. But Jo-Jo, my niece, and May, my sister-in-law, were experiencing it for the first time. Oh by the way, I should have warned them that you can’t really steer those things, kids.

Yeah, you’ve seen this one before, but here it sits in my “Best Of” section. Adam and Alison were an amazing and fun couple!

Vancouver has some incongruous sites right outside of town including this suspension bridge over a gorge just minutes from downtown. Taylor wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was!

I think my neighbor’s bush was stalking me.

Yeah, you saw this one before too. But the Motor City Casino was a panoply of color. Panoply Rodney, really? 

Remember Darrel and Leslie in Jamaica whom I mentioned earlier? Aren’t they a gorgeous couple?

Future shock? Marci actually brought a thrift store wedding dress down to Jamaica to have fun with and trash if she could convince Leslie to jump into the ocean. Instead, our daughter Skye wore it and struck an eerily grown up pose.

Maura, one of my brides, gets some hoist help before her wedding this summer. I think this is the last of my wedding shots.

I did a freelance gig for TechTown in Detroit and happened upon this woman whose profile just begged to be — what we photographers call — photographed.

Sorry Tim, I just had to use this shot of you just waking up after spending the night in our basement before your cousin’s wedding. Wait, Grand dad got around… she’s not your cousin, she’s your niece even though she’s older than you, right? No, no, I got it all mixed up. Your mom is my aunt even though she’s almost the same age as my brothers.

Skye loves to flip convention on its ear. And here’s the weird thing, she didn’t even take this boy to prom.

My cousin and buddy Chris contemplates his inner and outer fire during our family reunion in Tobermory, Canada. My new-used camera with the CMOS sensor bought from the cop on Craigslist  is wonderful for low light. Thanks Nikon! (Please send me my free D3X now. I think my plug is worth seven grand).

Oh Grandma, Grandma, even into your 90s you’ve still got it!

Skye designed this puking pumpkin for Halloween. I looked at it and thought, “Oh my gourd!”

I call this photo “Cake Walk.” I shot it back at the Free Press when our reporter brought me a cake to photograph for her shopping column. I stepped back from my table-top background and couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this scene.

I doubt it was Swine Flu, but it was definitely the Skye Flu which kept her from even eating her soup as she dozed off into her Kleenex box at the dinner table.

It’s tough being a Lions fan these past couple of years.

Oh wait, here’s another of my favorite wedding shots. Adam carried Alison down onto the beach for the photo way up there on my blog. Dig her shoes? Great couple; I think I mentioned that.

And there you have it, my favorite shots from 2009. Thanks for your patience. Very soon they’re getting me a blog that displays pictures a lot better so stay tuned. Now bring me some figgy pudding.

Writers are notorious for their writing habits and havens.
    Mickey Spillane reportedly liked to don a fedora before batting out the hard-hitting adventures of Mike Hammer. Jack Kerouac wrote on a long roll of paper so he wouldn’t be distracted by page breaks in his looooong-floooowing flights of prose. Mark Twain crowned himself the king of American writers by building a glorious monstrosity of mansion that still stands today as a tribute to his larger-than-life eccentricities.
    And, of course, Thoreau had that pond.
    Rodney Curtis’ reflections often are tapped out where reflections come to most of us — in bed or in the tub.

    (Hey, do you know a good literary yarn of a famous writer’s eccentricities? Please, send it along. We’d love to hear about it and add it to this page. Add a Comment or Send an Email.)

    AND, in the interest of documenting the habits and havens of yet another American man of letters, we give you …

A Portrait of an Artist in Reflective Work