“Let’s make him look like Drexl Spivey”

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You’ve heard to saying, “There’s no small parts, only small actors?” Certainly true of Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Drexl Spivey, the drug dealer in True Romance (1993).

The following year Oldman played a corrupt narcotics officer in The Professional. Another superb performance. In one of the opening scenes Oldman lead a team of narcs into an apartment searching for some missing heroin. Photo below is one of the half dozen cops on the raid.

Don’t know who the actor is but that’s not important. The similarity to Drexl Spivey seems too strong to be coincidental. Was this an inside joke on Oldman?

Hiking trail progress

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I’ve fallen into something of a routine. One day of cutting and dragging trees/brush; one day of chipping; and one day of lining the path-to-be with rocks and spreading cedar chips.

The rock work would be quite the chore but for the fact I’m never more than an arm’s reach from a rock. Lots of rocks. Tomorrow is chipping day.

Hiking trail project revived

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I started playing with the idea of cutting some walking path through our woods back in May of this year. The project stalled out when I realized how much brush and how many cedar trees would have to be hauled off, one pickup load at a time. The alternative was a whole bunch of brush piles somewhere on our property. Either option was proving exhausting.

The recent addition of a wood chipper has breathed new life into the project. I quickly had enough chips to cover the first path and today I started a second leg, mainly to have some place to put the chips. Now I can cut and chip with abandon.

UPDATE: The photo below was taken a day later, from the other end of the path-in-progress. Difficult to see here but making progress. It’s not unrealistic that I might be able to create a mile of paths, given enough time.

Perfect October Day

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Surounded by trees, we don’t get spectacular sunrises and sunsets. We just don’t get much of a horizon. But we do have a tiny vista, looking down our road to the hills just on the other side of the Missouri River. It’s so quiet we can hear approaching vehicles — few and far between if you don’t count neighbors — from far down the hill.

When the sun does shine through the trees in the late afternoon, we get some flattering light. My friend John says this was taken using the Old Man filter. I am much happier than I look. Ditto for Riley.

The Philosophy of Solipsism

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“Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.” (Wikipedia)

Typical Russian Apartment Tour

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“This Russian apartment was built during Soviet times, in about 1981. Within 40 years it has of course been partially refurbished and now represents the collaboration between the interior design of the past years and some new features that were gradually added through the years.”

Not sure I can explain my fascination with this (and similar videos). I need to find some video of “typical” Russian apartments in 2022.

Chipper goes to the woods

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Having determined how big a branch the new chipper can (and cannot) chew up, we’re ready to roll the chipper down the hill to start chipping. It took about 45 minutes to cut and stack these cedar trees but it would have taken much longer to drag them up or down the hill. This will be the first real-world test for the chipper.