Vegas, Baby

Is this sign a sign?

    Well that title may be a little misleading. It’s not really about Las Vegas, it’s more about the iconic “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign. And that’s really only the object of yet another one of my synchronistic-divine intervention moments. You can read about the previous two examples here and here. This time we're going to Vegas, baby.
    I was working on a photo in Photoshop. Basically I was experimenting with a photo I had taken back in November 2020. That particular shoot involved a 1960’s theme and the model was styled like a Vegas showgirl; I was doing a reproduction of a Robert McGinnis illustration that was from that era. So, like a lot of the times when I experiment in Photoshop, I picked a photo with the goal of just making something cool and interesting. Usually I’m just making something up as I go along. Since it was a 60’s shoot, I thought about including graphics of that era: mid-century graphics, atomic age graphics, etc. I worked on it for a few days and really liked how it looked. I had funky starbursts and atom icons, with warm, beautiful colors and nice geometrical shapes. Then I thought maybe I’d include the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign and allude to the fact that model would be performing there. I found the sign quite easily in a google search and it was a png file that already had the photo on a white background; real easy to remove and place in my project. I worked on it for about an hour but ultimately decided it didn’t work and scrapped that idea. Later on the same night I finished watching season 3 of The Sinner that was just released on Netflix (originally aired on USA Network).

Another Coincidence?

It's a twister, It's a twister
(Image obtained from www.weather.com)

    Recently I posted a article about being amazed and seeing the same camera shot in a tv show and movie I had happened to watch back to back. Well just yesterday I came across a similar situation, this time involving StarTalk and the movie Places in the Heart.

    StarTalk is a podcast hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. There are different segments, including live town halls with guests(though not recently due to covid) and others that have a specific theme. I subscribe to the channel on youtube, and if I may put in a plug for it, it’s a channel I think you should subscribe to as well. It’s very educational of course but also very entertaining. Neil gets very excited talking about science. The particular show I was watching is called Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains and is co-hosted by comedian Chuck Nice, who does a good job of throwing down the humor. The segment was called Force vs Pressure. In one part he talks about how when there is a tornado, the air around it has very low pressure and if it descends near a house, the pressure inside the house will be greater than outside. There is no equilibrium between the air inside and outside. The result is there will be enough force to blow out the walls of the house, “turning it into matchsticks” as Chuck had said. I did not know this. I thought tornadoes just rip roofs off, spin cows in the air and send houses to OZ. I guess they do some of those things but I never thought that it could explode a house. This brings us to Places in the Heart.

A Mere Coincidence?

    Possibly. Others might say probably. I guess there isn’t any kind of synchronicity at play here but it still fascinates me because I think to myself, what are the odds that this seemingly meaningless, silly thing occurred?
    Like everyone I’ve been watching a lot of TV. I have a lot of the streaming services and can pretty much watch most anything. One evening I came across the show Monk starring Tony Shaloub, which ran for 8 seasons. I remember when it came out back in 2002 but had never watched it. I like Mr. Shaloub so I figured I should give it a go. I’ve watched a lot of different series the past year. I call them filler, not in a negative way but just something easy to watch to fill in the time here and there or in between movies since they’re usually an hour or under. Some of these shows I had seen before and others were new to me. A few shows I’ve watched are: Twin Peaks, Community, Ozark, How To Get Away with Murder and The Twilight Zone(the original version. I do want to see Jordan Peele’s version but I don’t have CBS all access; you can’t have them all) And again like everyone, I tend to binge on these multiple episodic shows. You can watch just one(most likely not) or as many as you want and because of Covid you don’t have to feel bad that you are avoiding life by binging on several hours of TV because this is life right now. So watch ten episodes in a row guilt free. Unlike Netflix, which will throw up an entire season of their shows in one shot, channels like HBO, Showtime or AMC still follow the old way and release an episode a week. I tend to wait till shows on these channels have finished their seasons before beginning to watch them. I don’t want to wait a week between episodes. I can’t. I won’t. Let’s get back to Monk.