Sunday, December 23, 2007

Excuse the Mess While I Write Like A Madman...

Please pardon the site's temp banner and other rushed aspects while I soldier on with The Willows and X-Ray Rider, both time-sensitive. Am tinkering with the original banner (which I am particularly fond of) to improve overall page layout; and to emphasize its colors and amp up its resolution. It'll be the banner--re-mastered! Also want to get the site re-focused on what it was intended to be: a photo-blog about a boyhood and a celebration of a certain time and place and state of mind. Should be a neat little site once it fully manifests into what it's supposed to be; which everything eventually does, of course--people and Art included--if only sunned and watered faithfully.
--Wayne

Friday, December 14, 2007

Friday, December 7, 2007

Finally, Charles R. Knight's Originals and an Allosaurus in the Marrow

As a boy I had something of an obsession with the allosaurus, probably because it was smaller and more compact than T. Rex, just as I was "smaller and more compact" than my bullies. You can imagine my delight, then, at seeing the classic restoration on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (ABOVE). The dinosaur's pose (yes, the one in the background) appears to be based on Rudolph Zallinger's famous The Age of Reptiles mural at the Yale Peabody Museum, or visa-versa. Regardless, old allosaurus was a real childhood pal, showing up outside school windows, running alongside my parents' car, and, of course, eating bullies.

His appearance in Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C. amped my interest, as did Aurora's fantastic model kit, which my mother (Mary Lee Spitzer) and father (Giff Spitzer) surprised me with one magical night in the 1970s. How they found it I'll never know (we had searched unsuccessfully throughout Spokane), but it was an unforgettable moment, to be sure. For a Boy That Time Forgot.