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Saturday, December 01, 2007

Balloons for SCG-

Yesterday Simply Curious Girl put our 'Bill Belichick for President' image up on her sidebar, and I said I'd give her a balloon for doing it. So this morning I decided to put my brain to work on the problem-

OK, enough brain work. Let's get on our hogs and take a balloon tour!

Wait, wait- anyone have to take one last visit to 'the necessary' before we leave?

All right then, everybody get your party dresses on!

I think that I shall never see,
a balloon shaped just like a tree...

ooops, I was wrong.


For Ted V., I found the new Bill Belichick Victory Tour Balloon-

AArrrgh! Wait! Blow, everybody, BLOW HARDER!!!

well shit.

I guess that's it for today. Anyone got a bicycle pump?

31 comments:

Hungry Mother said...

That "tree" looks like a Chihuly. I first noticed his glass work when I visited Venice and Murano. It's interesting how artwork can change by the environment it's in. In the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, I thought that the decorative chandeliers were cheap plastic and completely out of place in an otherwise sumptuous room. Then, I realized that the casino and hotel are filled with original Chihulys. The pieces look so much better outdoors or featured properly in a gallery-like setting.

Forrest Proper said...

HungryMo: Chihuly rocks! I've had a few books of his work. Trivia- they once featured an actual piece of Chihuly on the set of 'Frasier'.

Triva-x-2: in the 16th century the Venetians were so jealous of the commercial secrets of their glassblowers that they threatend death to anyone who shared the secrets. A man named Antonio Neri finally blew the gig and wrote a book...

Malach the Merciless said...

I can make ballons look like penises

Mike said...

We have a hot-air balloon factory a few miles from my house. In the summertime they occasionally make test runs out this way. It's always fun to watch.

Forrest Proper said...

Malach: You have a balloon that looks like Dick Cheney?

Mike: Here in the Valley we're on the "balloon run" during the summer, but these have all been tested. Does anything ever go wrong during test flights?

AngryMan said...

I don't understand your obsession w/that child molestor.

Forrest Proper said...

Who, Dik Cheney? My obsession relates to wanting to see him incarcerated in a Turkish prison for the rest of his life for Crimes Against Humanity, or maybe being sent to Gitmo and finding out whether waterboarding really is torture or not.

That's about it...

FOUR DINNERS said...

I spent an inordinate amount of 1993 talking like Donald Duck due to balloons.

Anonymous said...

Well dag you went all out didn't you?!

Forrest Proper said...

Dinners: Sounds like a bad date I once had...

PrePo: I know. The problem was, once I started finding pictures, I couldn't stop, they were all so good.

Bruce, a work in progress said...

When I lived in Florida I would see hot air balloons every now and then early in the morning on the way to work. Someone told me the weather conditions were just right in that area at that time of day. Would've been pretty cool to see the Vader one floating around.

anaglyph said...

You might like to visit Jason Hackenwerth's site...

fu said...

them's some nice balloons man

SagaciousHillbilly said...

That's what I thought. . . . it looks like a Chihuly.
There are actually a bunch of people doing similar work these days. I walked into a gallery in SF a year or so ago and thought I was looking at Chihulys but they were some hack pieces. They were actually very nice and very expensive. The gallery manager was quite up front about the fact that they were hacks and that there were quite a few such hacks doing really nice Chihuly imitations. I couldn't even afford the hacks.

Simply Curious said...

That is SO fucking sweet! Thank you!!! Choose one and I'll put it on my sidebar.

Forrest Proper said...

Bruce: I think that one's in England. We had a balloon almost come down on top of the house last summer. It finally came down in a farmer's field out back. Around here they carry a bottle of champagne and give it to the owner of the property they land on.

Reverend: I wanna be a balloon artist!!!!!

The Velvet: Thanks! Not as nice as J-Lo's, but pretty nice.

Sagacious: Only four figures after the dollar sign instead of 5, yes? There's a glass-blowing studio I visit sometimes to watch them make glass, and hacks or not, they're all pretty impressive. It's hard, somewhat-hazardous, hot work, and it's amazing what comes out at the end.

SCG: I'm glad you liked them! I've put a sidebar image at the bottom of the post.

Anonymous said...

Just for your information:

Google/Blogger has now changed the way that bloggers on other platforms (eg me) are linked when leaving comments. Up until this week I had the option of leaving my name as a link that was active directly on my blog at TCA. Now, I am forced to have a Google/Blogger account or post with an unlinked nickname.

Personally, I think this is entirely despicable, and antithetical to the spirit of blogging. It makes Blogger 'a club' that I must join. This is one further step in a progression that made me leave Blogger originally.

I strongly urge you to protest to Google about this, or leave and set up on a platform that is more egalitarian and more aligned with the spirit of the web.

To show you what I mean - imagine that I configured TCA comments so that when you visited, you could leave your name, but no link back to your blog. It's a closed door. No visitors to my blog would have the option of reading yours. Unless, of course, you joined up to a special club that I invented to raise the apparent numbers of people who were in said club...

This really pisses me off (if you couldn't tell).

FreeOscar said...

So that is why my toliet is stopped up. It's made out of ballons. No wonder when I called the plumber he said I need to call a clown.

Anonymous said...

The last time I called a plumber he took a look at my toilet and said 'What clown did you have here last time?"

Commander Zaius said...

Had a balloonist go up a few summers ago and ran head first into a thunderstorm. I came out to my porch for some reason and saw it off in the distance. At first I didn't have any idea what I was looking at and actually started considering little green men for a moment. But as lightening flashed I made out the rest of it watched as it disappeared. The crew did make the news that night after they were finally able to put down in some field. They reported a hell of a ride.

Sirdar said...

A balloon tree? That must have taken some work. Very cool looking art.

And I agree with the Reverend Anaglyph...I'm not happy with blogger's work. So what I have done is gone to my profile, deleted pretty much every thing...and under About This Blog, I put My blog is here: and of course added my url. I think Google is becoming the next Microsoft....sounds like fodder for a near future post....

Anonymous said...

Sirdar sees Blogger's 'Where Do You Want to Go Today?"* and raises it one 'Think Different'.

Props to you my friend!

(*Answer: Wherever we want you to go.)

Anonymous said...

Pah. And you can't even put code in the nickname box - a shameful prevention of hot-linking inside that field!

That's got to convince you they're being truculent.

anaglyph said...

Colonel: I'm sorry to hijack your comments so. It got my dander up. I've put my thoughts into a clearer fashion on The Cow, for anyone who cares to read more.

Just follow the hot-link on my name - something you will no longer be able to do for off-Blogger commenters from now on (unless they use the trick I have. Pay close attention as you follow the links to Tetherd Cow. Nifty huh? Anyone who wants to know how to do this, email me).

Forrest Proper said...

Reverend: It does seems pretty petty. I'd noticed the comments form had changed but the implications had not dawned on me.

C.Rag: It's when clown start coming out of your toilet that you should worry.

Reverend: see above.

Beach Bum: Thunderstorms and power lines- bad stuff for balloonists. I can't even imagine what riding a balloon through a thunderstorm must be like.

Sirdar: That balloon tree is pretty cool, eh?

Reverend: Blogger sucks.

Anonymous: Hot-linking Freedom for All! (this is also the Reverend, for those who didn't realize it. I know this for two reasons. First, it's part of a thread where he was obviously experimenting, and second, only Our Reverend would be completely pissed off and still use the word "truculent").

Reverend: Think nothing of it, glad to be of service.

Pope Benedict XVI said...

You should see De Pope's blimp, yes,yes

Forrest Proper said...

But when are we going to get a Popess with big balloons?

pissed off patricia said...

Almost every weekend morning we will see at least two hot air balloons sail over our house. There are a couple of comapanies who sell balloon rides here.

One morning our neighbor's dog saw the balloons and was looking up, running after them and barking. The dog ran right into the side of the neighbor's house. Thankfully, the little pooch wasn't hurt.

Forrest Proper said...

PO'd Patty: Ouch, poor doggy. Our most memorable balloon here, aside from the one that almost landed on the house, was last summer. The balloon went over, and then started coming down like it was going to land in back of the school across the street.

The school has a long drive which ends in a circle, and as the balloon came down a caravan of chase vehicles and about a dozen cars came careening down the street and turned on after the other into the school driveway.

Almost as soon as they turned into the drive the balloon popped straight back up into the air and took off towards the south, and the entire caravan of trucks and cars, without even stopping, drove around the circle and came steaming back out at top speed and went right back off down the road.

This was far more cars than usually follow a balloon (usually it's just the chase truck) and there were about a dozen neighbors standing on the sidewalk at this point watching all this and waving at the cars. A young woman stuck her head out of one of the car windows, waved her cellphone in the air, and shouted at us-

"She said "Yes"!!!"

And off the engagement caravan went down the street, after the balloon...

Tequila Mockingbird said...

where are my balloons? aweee i want a balloon... perhaps one shaped like a bottle of booze?

anaglyph said...

I laffed at the 'truculent' comment.