I had a birthday recently, and it was filled with magical little moments. I won't go into details here, they involve the manipulation of spacetime and other silliness. And there were also plain Sunday mundane moments.

Here's something I shot on my birthday. Just when you think life is going well, here comes a minivan with the license plate 2011 END. And there it goes. The small print at the top of the back window reads, THE END OF THE WORLD IS HERE.
Rats. Well, at least I was able to buy movies and music with my birthday iTunes gift card. Better watch those movies and listen to that music before the 21st of October.
Why the 21st of October? The message on the window and the Family Radio bumper stickers suggest the minivan is connected to Family Radio Stations Incorporated. They spent a lot of money this year billboarding the Bay Area with warnings about Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011.
But nothing of Biblical proportions happened to the world on the 21st of May. Turns out the physical Judgment Day is coming on the 21st of October. I read it at their website. The 21st of May was a non-physical Judgment Day, which is why we didn't see it, but the 21st of October will be a physical Judgment Day.
What a surprise it will be if October 21st turns out to be a physical non-judgment day. Wiggle out of that one, Family Radio.
And this got my attention before the sun rose on my birthday.
It's a common bumper sticker in the Bay Area, Dog is my co-pilot. What got my attention this time was the DOG decal above it. Cute.
And accurate. Dogs are famous for their navigational skills. You're always hearing about dogs that get left behind on a fishing trip and travel thousands of miles to reunite with their owners.
And there are the movies about dogs that navigate the world. There was the successful movie from 1943, Lassie Come Home. The studio almost made a sequel, Lassie Goes Home Using A Compass She Stole From A Boy Scout, but it suffered financing problems.
There was also the lesser-known movie, Lassie Flies Solo With GPS In A Cessna Skyhawk, followed by the Lassie biopic Nobody Is My Co-Pilot.
Finally, there's a NASA/IMAX movie to be released in 2013, Lassie Surveys Dwarf Planet Pluto. That's a space adventure in 3-D, I gather. Might go see that one, Lassie in a spacesuit.
Oops, end of the world coming. Lassie won't be going to Pluto for NASA and IMAX.

The show CREATE closed recently at the University Of California art museum, it ran until September 25th. I got there too late to see it, but I did create a blackbird photograph from the Bancroft side. The other entrance is on Durant.
Here's another banner, BOX OFFICE. The Mill Valley Film Festival opens on the 6th of October.
Pictured here is musician/painter Sam Andrew. He's a real person, by the way, not a mannequin. Sam's just kidding for the camera. Sam's been photographed more times than anybody I've known.
If you ever heard of Janis Joplin, Sam was a founding member of the legendary rock band, Big Brother & The Holding Company. Sam and the other members of BBHC are still playing, each year they tour the world for their shows. The old joke is that you never lived through the 1960s if you remember them. People who lived through the 1960s and don't remember them nevertheless remember Sam Andrew's music.
He's also a painter, and while it's maybe unfair to show a painting early in its gestation, Sam just started this one. It's inchoate right now, maybe incoherent or imprecise, but it will be inspired and beautiful soon. He's had lots of solo shows, very talented.
Another nice moment from my birthday, a yellow car in a parking lot after an unusual shower. We're not even in our rainy season yet. Someday I'll show my favorite yellow car photos, but this was a Porsche I'd seen and never photographed.
Final photo of the birthday, a sunflower close to home. I skipped a lot of photos I shot but can't display yet.