I looked out the window this morning not long after sunrise and saw this. There are actually two deer in this picture. The other one is on the other side of the bush that they were both sowing down on.
I took this through a window (obviously) using my iPhone. There was no noise at all but as soon as I snapped the pic both deer turned toward me and just stared at me. For a long time. It was like they were gazing into my soul, trying to decide if they were going to jump through the window and eat me.
I’ve had a super stressful week at work this week. Lots of shit going down. Nothing truly bad, just lots of stress. Knowing that I lost a staring contest to two super annoyed does at the very start of my day was just the kind of weirdness I needed to put it all into perspective.
Unrelated note: I think its 25 days until we see Rush again.
My first attempt at the Frugal Film Project made it through four months before it crashed and burned and died a painful death. May through August 2025, all success. September 2025… epic fail.
My second attempt at the Frugal Film Project has now officially survived through the first five months. We’re alive and kicking, kids! May through September 2026, all wins. Kick ass.
Take a cheap film camera like my Lomo Lubitel 166 Universal and a cheapish film like say Kentmere 100 or Kodak Gold 200 and shoot one roll each month for a year. Or you can be a friggin’ idiot like me and shoot two rolls a month in an attempt to punish yourself for screwing up your first attempt at this silly thing last year.
We start with a roll of black and white Kentmere 100 shot on Weir Hill in North Andover, MA at Lake Cochichewick on September 24, 2026 after a dentist appointment.
I had such high hopes for this one… but…
And there we have it. One roll of film down and one to go. The second roll started at Salisbury Beach at sunrise and then moved over to the Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island. They were taken on September 7, 2026.
And that’s a wrap on the Kodak Gold 200 roll. Success. 12 shots on both rolls and everything came out. Amazing. 120 film. Medium format. Just dig that crazy resolution.
Now that its October I have to figure out what I want to do for month six. I want to do some fall foliage but the lens on this camera is slow and the two films I picked are also slow and I don’t think I will have much luck in the woods. Unless I bring a tripod. I could do that. Maybe. If I don’t I’ll just go back to Boston or something. We’ll see.
I got the scans of my three rolls of film that I shot in California today! Happy new film day! Here are a few highlights to celebrate!
First, Pacific Beach…
Next, Mission Beach… at this rate you’re all going to think we’re beach people when we are not… but when in San Diego, you go visit the Pacific Ocean.
Up next is the Mission at San Juan Capistrano…
And finally a few random spots on the road. There’s a scenic view spot on route 5 and a rest stop in the mountains overlooking Palm Desert, which we thought was Palm Springs but apparently we were wrong, and outside the visitors center in Joshua Tree.
I still have a ton of digital photos to post and I’ll get to them eventually. For now though, the only question remaining is… when do we go back?
I took a shit load of photos in San Diego but I haven’t posted hardly any of them. What am I waiting for? Am I waiting for the film? Could be. I shipped four rolls of film to the lab in Los Angeles the other day and three of them were from the trip. I got the notification that the package had arrived yesterday. Now I just have to patiently wait for them to do their thing and develop my stuff.
For now though, while we wait for still more bad photos, here are some pics of kites on Mission Beach.
This post is like… eight days late? We went to Cleveland for no reason other than a Rush show. We were traveling anyway so we detoured to the city that embraced Rush enough in 1974 that it lead to them signing a major label record contract in the US and sent the career on the path to greatness that would eventually include a 50 Something’th anniversary tour that stopped in Cleveland while we were traveling anyway.
It was my 27th Rush concert. If I can find the list I’ll tack it on to the end of this post. The show was fantastic. Our seats were… distant. The sound… well… it was a first for me… a Rush show with shitty sound. At least I think it was. A discussion on Threads gave the impression that the sound where we were was awful but down on the floor it was perfect. That, to me, implies that it was the room that sounded like shit, not the mix. It was 40% bass drum, 50% the rest of the drums, 6% vocals, 3% guitar, 1% keyboards, and 0% bass guitar. It did improve as the night went on but not a lot. I know a lot about bad sounding arenas. I have been to shows at the old Boston Garden. I believe it was Billy Joel who famously said that even hockey games sounded like shit at the old Boston Garden.
The set was fucking amazing. We got all of Moving Pictures at the start fo the second set. In the first set we got… and I still can’t believe it… we got A Farewell to Kings. They stopped playing that song in 1978 or ’79 and I had never heard them do it with my own ears. It was awesome. Awesome.
And now, pictures. Shitty pictures taken at a killer, great show.
Holy Shit! The Teardrop Bass!
Here is my list of past Rush shows:
1987–12–03 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA 1990–05–10 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA 1991–12–10 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA 1994–03–11 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA 1996–11–09 — Fleet Center — Boston, MA 1997–06–23 — Great Woods — Mansfield, MA 2002–07–12 — Tweeter Center — Mansfield, MA 2002–10–28 — Fleet Center — Boston, MA 2004–08–12 — Tweeter Center — Mansfield, MA 2007–06–27 — Tweeter Center — Mansfield, MA 2007–07–09 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT 2007–09–06 — Marcus Amphitheater — Milwaukee, WI 2007–09–17 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY 2008–06–15 — Comcast Center — Mansfield, MA 2008–07–05 — Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center — Saratoga Springs, NY 2008–07–07 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT 2008–07–11 — Verizon Arena — Manchester, NH 2010–09–14 — TD Garden — Boston, MA 2011–04–08 — Giant Center — Hershey, PA 2011–04–10 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY 2012–09–07 — Verizon Wireless Arena — Manchester, NH 2013–05–09 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT 2013–05–11 — Etess Arena — Atlantic City, NJ 2015–06–23 — TD Garden — Boston, MA 2015–06–29 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY 2026–09–19 — Rocket Arena — Cleveland, OH
You folks out there in internet land have just been dying for this post, I know it. The August edition of the Frugal Film Project take two. Take a cheap film camera (a Lomo Lubitell 166 Universal) and shoot a cheapish roll of film each month for a year. I failed in this last year so to torture myself as punishment I’m actually doing two rolls of film this year. Kodak Gold 200 and Kentmere 100. I started in May this year and for three months I’ve managed to stay on goal. Today we add month number four, August.
The color pics go first this time, Kodak Gold. 12 shots taken in Boston while wandering around the Back Bay on August 15th.
Here we go!
A roll of 120 film through a 6×6 camera gives you 12 shots. Amazingly, all 12 came out… sort of. They all generated an image. I’ll take that as a win. Now let’s take a look at the black and white shots. Kentmere 100. These were also taken in Boston’s Back Bay on August 15th. I had a pretty busy photowalk that day.
There you go. Two rolls of film for two instances of the Frugal Film Project. 24 pics doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you add them all to a post here… 24 is a lot!
So I have matched last year’s failed project. I made it four months before crashing and burning. This time around? I’ve already shot the Gold 200 roll for September. I have them on my Flickr account but I’m not going to post them just yet. I still have to shoot the Kentmere 100 roll. If I can’t get that in this weekend then… well… then I guess that part will be a failure.
After a few days of not making any progress at all, I finally got something done yesterday. Day 80 was spent getting back to work and dealing with a stomach bug (or something) that has been seriously kicking my fat ass. No clue, but it was not successful in stopping me from being silly, musically, though it was a close call.
I didn’t start thinking about 50 songs in 90 days stuff until after 10:00pm last night. At that point I sat up in bed with my laptop and my goofy little USB piano keyboard and I started another song… and then another song. Two new songs, numbers 58 and 59 if you’re keeping track.
One of them is in straight 4/4 time and isn’t very interesting. The other is a math problem. I’ve been messing with weird time signatures all throughout this challenge. I’ve done more work in 5/8 time than I had done in the previous 55 years combined. I also did one song in 9/8, which I treated like 4/4 with an extra eighth note. Last night I thought to myself what if I did 4/4 but only added an extra eighth note on every other bar? Next thing I know I’m trying to write riffs in 17/8 time. Yup. Song number 58 is in 17/8 time.
It’s not good. Not even close. It’s overly simple because I was afraid if I did anything even minutely complicated on top of the weird time signature then I would never, ever be able to play the guitar part. Nope. I kept it simple as well as rhythmically silly.
A few random photos from our day at Mission Beach in San Diego, CA. We did go for a swim in the Pacific Ocean. While, as a New Englander, the idea of having an ocean to the West instead of the East might seem wrong and also kinda silly, it is the biggest swimming pool on the planet Earth so its pretty impressive.
We tried to see the sunset on the water but the clouds did not cooperate. When I say we tried, it wasn’t just this day. It was every day we were there. The clouds never let us see the horizon.
