TGIF Friday Jams: The Cult – “Fire Woman”
Doesn’t get much more rock and roll than Ian Astbury in The Cult’s heyday. Not hair metal, not the AC/DC-style stuff of Electric. Just polished rock.
“Fire Woman” was a staple of our local rock station, and I could never get enough.
Both sides of Blair’s family has worked on the railroad. He has five family members riding the rails.
“I love seeing my brother drive by on the train,” he says.
Blair’s been collecting train memorabilia since he was young. He has an O-gauge train set at home, and the GTs are his favorites.
He’s grateful for the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club.
“I can’t personally work on the railroad because I’m deaf, so this is the next best thing.”
Even more so than with my Instagram feed, I’m venturing into abandoned places and trying out some photography with my new-ish Fuji XE-1.
My phone is easy to shoot with because it’s always with me, and I can pull over somewhere and grab a few shots, and then jump back into the car and drive away.
But lately, I’m scoping out some locations, and carrying my Fuji in the car everywhere I go – just in case. And the 27mm Fujinon lens is flexible enough to get the kinds of shots I want.
Above is from an abandoned home near Spring Arbor, Mich. I’ll have a lot more coming soon from this location.
Art has been collecting model trains all his life.
His mom and dad got him started as a kid, and he still has the original toy train. “It still runs,” he says.
After his children left the house, he converted their bedrooms into train rooms.
“It keeps me occupied,” Art says.
After 20 years in the club, with everyone placing trains on each other’s sets, how does he know which train is his?
“We just know.”
Study the masters to improve your craft.
My latest Medium post on rolling your own masters class using photo books.
It’s like ‘Toy Story’ — some toys enjoy a life of playtime with children, while others are collectors items, doomed to live out their fading lives in glass cases.
So it was at the Gibraltar Trade Center. Here, the characters of my youth — Ninja Turtles and WWF wrestlers and Spider-Man — existed in purgatory. Premium prices on shitty quality toys placed in precarious positions.
Consider the Marvel super heroes chained by their Pac-Man overlord to duel with their counterpart villains. Every day. Forever.
Or the poor headless Star Wars figurine ensnared in the jaws of an unforgiving and sadistic toy shark. The horror.
Spider-Man tried to make his escape, and we rooted for him.
Both sides of Blair’s family have worked on the railroad. He has five family members riding the rails.
“I love seeing my brother drive by on the train,” he says.
Blair’s been collecting train memorabilia since he was young. He has an O-gauge train set at home, and the GTs are his favorites.
He’s grateful for the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club.
“I can’t personally work on the railroad because I’m deaf, so this is the next best thing.”
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bandwagon started at just the right time for me, just as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was waning in popularity. As a kid, I needed another franchise: cartoons, movies, toys, video games, the whole thing.
At about nine years old, the Turtles were it. They offered another world to invest in, and boy, did they give it to me.
So when I went to my fraternity brother’s DLux Entertainment Expo earlier this spring, it was slightly weird to realize the Turtles here were not strict about their secret identities.
They weren’t shy about taking off their turtle heads. It was a little bit like the mall Santa taking off his beard in full view of the kids.
But at least they had pizza for lunch, right?
