Week 5: Get a Picture With Someone Famous

Week 5 began on time, with substitute special guest drawer Fangming:

Ignore the man behind, he is there for quality control only

And were off to the races immediately, as this one, may be more luck than skill or hard work.

 

The suspense is killing me

Dramatic Music!!

So lets look at our options, as have been suggested to me by my advisors:

• Sports team members
• Book Signings
• Concerts
• Paparazzi wait outside fancy hotels and restaurants, and Aspen
• Visit famous criminals in jail
• The local news
• Get someone I know famous in a week then take a picture

Tricky options all of them.

 Attempts at persuading a celebrity through twitter have been fruitless:

Some Friday Inspiration

“I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!”
― Emily Dickinson 

Times are hard, so far nothing has panned out, so some new ideas have been provided:

• Get a picture with a nobel prize winner.
• Get on the news myself and get them to come to me for a picture.
• Get someone to pose with a picture of me.  

The Big List Of Celebrities

Since we're probably playing a numbers game here trying to find the one celebrity with time to kill.  I'll just continue to update this list with all the people I have contacted.

• Jerry Seinfeld
• Kevin Costner
• Jack Nicholson
• Antonio Banderas
• Kathy Sabine
• Channel 7 News
• The Dalai Lama
• Patton Oswalt
• Kyle Kinane
• T. J. Miller
• Oprah
• The Pope
• Alan Thicke
•  David Wineland 
• Emo Phillips
• A baseball player

SUCCESS!!

It may be a little later than the goal, but if it pans out definitely worth it!

And here we go, hopefully the first of many:

Rob Paulson
The voice of Yakko Warner on the animaniacs, Rafael in the Ninja turtles and many more.

His name is Robert Paulson

David Wineland
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics

He's a big fan of my work

Emo Philips
Legenday comedian

Thanks you's

This was one of the tougher ones, and a big thank you to everyone who helped, or tried to help.

Jason, Summer, Eric, Eric, Biz your help and advice proved invaluable for this challenge

Week 4: Jump Off of Something High

For this weeks drawing we have another celebrity guest performing the drawing.  Mrs. Xiao, was kind enough to give it a whirl.

And the result:

Shit.

They won't see us waving from such great heights
"come down now" they'll say
But everything looks better from far away
"come down now" but we'll stay
-The Postal Service, Such Great Heights

Friday Update

So after some questioning of facebook here are the options thus far:


* A Barn in South Dakota
* A House in Texas
* A Building Using a Window Washer Harness
* Casa Bonita's Cliff
* A High Dive at a Pool
* Heritage Square Bungee
* An Airplane
* A ski lift
* Some sort of trampolene
* A rock climbing wall

Time is clearly going to be an issue this go-round so feelers have been sent on everything.

Monday Update

So, was able to successfully though somewhat unsatisfactorily satisfy this weeks.  Ended up using a rock climbing wall, still a little spooky to jump off but I believe there is a better way to fulfill this.  So for now lets say call this a C-, and we will hopefully revisit with something more spectacular when the season is better.

The wall from the bottom

Didn't measure, but my estimate is it was 500 feet tall

 

The Climb

Yes it was the wall for babies

The Jump

The stranger I recruited to take pictures failed to capture the jump, so we'll have to go on the honor system for now.  I may re-try to get the jump before the week is out but for now this will have to do.

Week 3: Run To Work

For this week, we have two special celebrity guests.  The lovely and talented twins of Pearson east, Janis and Diane.  They did the honor of picking the weeks goal.

Not Pictured:  My grimace at the chosen task

Some of you more astute readers may have noticed that it is not Wednesday.  As such, I will delay any plans for acheiving this until tomorrow.  Until then some early inspiration

To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.
Charles Bukowski

Thursday Update

So, because just running isn't as fun without some music, I have set about soliciting for someone or someones to come along and follow me in some fashion whilst playing some uplifting music.  Surprisingly very few takers of people who want to wake up at 7 in January and help a fool make an ass of himself.

Nevertheless I do believe I have one who will follow me in a car.  How far we make it before the cops step in remains to be seen.

Monday Update

Well its Martin Luther King Day, and no work today, that leaves tomorrow as D-Day.  Today has been spent making preparations.  A route has been chosen

Because straight lines are for suckers

The forecast has been consulted, thankfully its about as good as one can expect for January.

Now, because math is awesome, lets do some number crunching.

The Numbers

• Estimated Route Distance:  10.5 Miles
• Estimated Time: 1 Hour 45 Minutes
• Estimated Calories Burned: 1452
• Estimated Number of Tears: 25

So dear friends tomorrow we will embark on this foolhardy mission.

Tuesday D-Day

Success, 10.5 miles, 1 hour 50 minutes, incredibly sore calves, frozen fingertips and probably pneumonia.   Pictures to follow.

Here is my witness/travelling motivational music player Brenda.

Early morning about a quarter mile in.

Trust me I'm somewhere in the blackness

Here we are enjoying one of the many brief respites waiting to cross a busy street.

No I do not run in place when waiting

And another.

Clearly my running fashion sense is as keen as my everyday fashion sense

Finally the sun fully rose around the 5 mile mark

Can't you just feel the speed coming off this picture?!?

Success, as we reach the end of the journey.  

That's more Gatorade than sweat, don't drink and run kids

Finally a celebratory smoke to ... celebrate the arrival.

Suck it haters.

 

Week 2: Ride an Animal

This one should prove more interesting than last weeks.

Vagueness is an Artform

Thursday Update

So  after a not very exhaustive search I have found the following options:

A horse
A very old horse
A unbroken horse
A portly man willing to give me a piggy back ride.

Attempts at procuring a donkey, camel or elephant all proved fruitless.  So it seems horse will be the way to go.  Hopefully, things will fall into place and I can achieve the goal this weekend.

Friday Update

After some more searching I have found a wonderful organization the "Longhopes Donkey Shelter" the work they do is very inspiring.  I've contacted them in hopes that in exchange for a donation they will let me briefly ride one of their magnificent animals.

Regardless of whether or not it pans out, they really are a fantastic organization, and I will still donate to them, and I encourage anybody reading this to do so as well.  Visit them at http://longhopes.org/  because seriously Donkeys are awesome!

Some Mid-Week Inspiration


 “He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm


 

 

Sunday Success

All the pieces came together this Sunday.  A family friend had a donkey they were willing to let me try to ride.  So I hopped into the car with my trusted photographer and set off to ride.

Pictured:  Trusted Photographer

The two donkeys we got to meet.  Rupert and Boone,  Boone is the one in slimming black.

Boone is the one in slimming black

They were game if I was

Both were very sweet, but Rupert has had a rough life so Boone bravely volunteered.

After much getting to know Boone and sharing a few gingersnaps, I successfully climbed aboard and took a massive journey of 3 whole feet.

"Ride" is a relative term

So with 2 days to spare, we are now 2 for 2 on resolutions.

A dream deferred is a dream denied

A very special thanks to everyone who helped make this one possible:

Donna - For offering her horse

Rich - For offering his friends horse

Lori and Hank - For providing the donkeys

Chandan - For driving out on a Sunday to photograph the ridiculousness.
And many others for countless good suggestions on how to achieve the goal.

Until next week!

Week 1: Paint a Picture

The title says it all, a nice easy start for the first week.  Paint a picture.

Don't lose hope though, there is lots of craziness in the remaining 51.

So lets, start with the materials, one canvas, and my box o' art supplies.

One Canvas - Small

Box O' Art

Ah acrylic paints, the terrible artists best friend.

Unfortunately I was not able to recruit anyone to document the art making process, so like a good cooking show we'll just skip to the finished product.

Two roads diverging and a tree, how deep is that shit?

Thank God, I didn't write "Paint a Masterpiece" on the resolution!

Just for you doubters, here's a picture of me with the painting totally proving I did it.  Although honestly if I was going to take credit for someone elses painting I probably could have chosen a much better painting.

That smile is one part pride, and 3 parts shame

And finally,  a little inspiration behind it all.  This beautiful prose.

Once upon a time there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. And they grew next to each other. And every day the straight tree would look at the crooked tree and he would say, "You're crooked. You've always been crooked and you'll continue to be crooked. But look at me! Look at me!" said the straight tree. He said, "I'm tall and I'm straight." And then one day the lumberjacks came into the forest and looked around, and the manager in charge said, "Cut all the straight trees." And that crooked tree is still there to this day, growing strong and growing strange.

Beautiful!

It Begins

And so begins the grand experiment of 2014 wherein I the veritable fool, Nick Rosevear, or Knick if you're not allergic to fun, will attempt to accomplish 52 "resolutions" chosen at random throughout the year.

"Resolutions" is in quotes because very few of them are likely to benefit me in anyway like the typical new years resolutions.  Instead many are ridiculous, some charitable, some painful, ill-advised and just plain confusing.  Because, why not?

Anyway, here are the basic ground rules I've established.

Rule:  The First

All 52 resolutions are written out on tiny pieces of paper and will be placed inside of a hat.

The Resolutions

The Hat

Rule:  2

Every week, on Wednesday a new resolution will be drawn at random from the hat, and the goal will be to achieve the resolution during that week.

Simulation

Why Wednesday?  Because Wednesday's suck, nothing good has ever happened on a Wednesday.  No one's ever sung a song about a Wednesday (seriously name one Wednesday song).  Oh and also, the 1st of the year was on a Wednesday too so that kind of works out.  But mostly its because Wednesday's suck.

Rule: C

Some of the resolutions will require significantly more planning or will not work for the given season, as such, if a resolution cannot be achieved it is simply moved to the postponed section, meaning it can still be attempted to achieved at any time so long as it is before the end of the year.

Rule: C.2

I clearly am not good at taking anything seriously, and as such I reserve the right to change the rules throughout the year as I see fit.