DIANA SHAMOUNKI (JORDAN ARTIST SERIES)

I thought I would continue in the spirit of my last post and exhibit a pair of older paintings by artist Diana Shamounki. Again, she has a house full of art, but these two were my favorites. Diana now paints mostly landscapes of Amman and Jeruselum, and the occasional fish.

FAROUK LAMBAZ (JORDAN ARTIST SERIES)

Farouk Lambaz is a Jordanian painter born in 1942. When he was young and oozing with passion, he painted the two pieces shown above (in the late 60's). I absolutly love them both. They are part of the private collection of Nuha Batchone. She has a house full of thousands of paintings and sketches, but these two were my favorites out of all of them. Lambaz now teaches art and still paints, but his style has moved toward Arab calligraphy.

THE ENGAGEMENT RING

As I noted in a previous post, I gave Julie my Great Grandmother's engagement ring when I proposed to her recently. After closer inspection by two local jewelers, it seems it might be my Grandmother's ring, as the diamond was estimated to be around 40 years old (they can tell by the cut). Getting the ring resized here in Jordan has almost given me multiple heart attacks. The first jeweler I took it to, Kayali, started sawing the band before they had even established Julie's size. When they cut too much out, they filled the gap with a gold spacer instead of platnium (which the band is made of). They pretended like this was normal until I insisted the ring should be all platinum. They finally confessed that they don't work with platinum, but said if I brought it back in a few days they would get some and do it right. I stupidly did this and they used the platnium they cut out of the ring originally to replace the gold, though they did it wrong and it no longer fit Julie's finger. Do not get work done at Kayali. They mean well, but don't have a clue what they're doing. Then I started asking around and everyone I trusted recommended a jeweler called Imseeh. The manager there assured me his people could fix the mess. It took three tries, but finally the head repair man cut out all previous fuck-ups, inserted a solid piece of platinum after he confirmed with Julie that it fit properly, and welded it in place using platinum solder. After sanding and polishing it looked better than new. Thank God for over-the-counter valium here in Jordan!

WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP DEAD SEA

This past Friday I headed down to the Dead Sea to cover the World Rally Championship for Total, a French gas company. It was a whole new world for me, and one I knew very little about. The second picture is of Sebastien Loeb, who is kind of like the Lance Armstrong of the sport. He might be an amazing racer, but he's not a very friendly guy. He mean-mugged me every time I tried to take his picture, and refused to be photographed with the CEO of Total (his major sponsor who pays his bills). All this set-up and money spent, and as a spectator you literally see 10 cars speed by you for about 5 seconds.

MY PARENT'S VISIT TO JORDAN AND PALESTINE

My parents just ended a two and a half week worldwind tour of Jordan and Palestine (I'm amazed at how many sites on the internet consider the word Palestine as anti-semitic propaganda, but I digress). My parents enjoyed Jordan much more than the land to the west of the Jordan River. They thought my term, the unholy land, fit well. As with most foreign tourists, they found their preconceived notions of the Middle East to be vastly wrong. I have great admiration for them coming here, even when not a single friend in their rural Georgia community thought it was a sane choice. They came despite their initial fears, and more people should. The closest thing they saw to a terroist incident was being overcharged for a carved camel in Petra. It's great that my folk still have that sense for adventure. I'll miss them.

EVOLUTION OF THE HAPPY MEDIUM LOGO

I was looking through some old files the other day and came across this series of logos for my company. I first established a video production company in Portland in 2003 called Happy Medium Productions, and sketched out my idea for the logo of the devil and an angel laying in bed in post-coital bliss. The devil is drinking herbal tea, while the angel smokes a cigarette. I then found a very talented graphic designer named Jeffrey Boyce to draw it in Illustrator. I was very proud of the logo until I started getting corporate clients and got a bit embarrased every time I handed them my card. I was also starting to do more photography, so the "productions" bit didn't make much sense. So I made a list of all the polarities I knew of and tried to find a pair I could unite without controversy (lets just say that my idea of a Palestinian giving a Jew a piggy-back ride or Nietzsche playing cards with God didn't seem any better than the devil logo). As my favorite book is Moby Dick, this seemed to be the obvious choice. So I drew the whale and Ahab as pals. Jeffrey again drew the final logo, but in this case changed it quite a bit, simplified the idea, and made it much better. I love the logo and have even thought of getting a tattoo of it, though it's hard to find a good parlor in Amman.

I'M ENGAGED!

Last night at the Dead Sea I finally proposed to Julie. We have known each other for over seven years and have grown a lot together. My Mom and Dad are in town and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to pop the question. The first thing to note is that the top two pictures of the actual proposal are not staged. They were taken at the moment I was proposing, though instead of the traditional "Will you marry me" I nervously proclaimed "We should get married". Julie said yes when I corrected myself and actually asked a question. In the pictures you can see the little remote in my hand that I used to trigger my camera. I told Julie that the hotel we were staying at asked me to take a sunset picture of a dinner set-up in exchange for a free dinner. Julie actually helped me set-up the table! She had no idea what was happening. My mother very generously gave me my Great Grandmother's ring for the occasion. It was an incredible evening and I feel fortunate that my deceptions allowed me to take real-time pictures of this momentous occasion. The last picture is actually me rehearsing the proposal shot as Julie sat watching totally unaware on the bed. My Dad is looking away in the photos because he said he couldn't see anything over the flower arrangement. My bad!