Space Needle pictures make me happy

I decided to follow the advice that I dish out at work all the time to folks who are struggling to blog. We encourage them to get a reader, like Google Reader, subscribe to a bunch of blogs in their field or area of interest, then find a post they like and comment on it.  I am now an avid consumer of blogs and read through my reader on a daily basis, so I figure this should be easy. (Is it a gift or a curse that I seem to have no real concept of whether things will actually be easy or hard..?)

Today’s posts in my reader consist of a few posts from Harvard Business Review which are interesting but  not compelling, a post on Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist, a blog I love, but she is waaay out there, not for everyone, and I couldn’t even begin to know what to say about her latest post. There are 597,286 gozillion posts from Social Media Today and all I really have to say about that is enough already. I’m seconds away from unsubscribing strictly from the annoyance of having them take up so much of the real estate in my reader.

So, the post I settled on was from my favorite local news blog, the Queen Anne View, about the Canlis brothers doing a publicity stunt by posing for pictures on top of the Space Needle. Canlis is a fantastic Pacific Northwest restaurant, with equally fantastic prices and an urban legend.pdf that if you don’t eat or drink (or spend) enough, they will give you a card inviting you never to return. I have only been once, but we ate, drank, and spent more than enough to save us from that fate.

The brothers are trying to garner votes for their new chef for The People’s Best New Chef award with a Facebook campaign. They are doing a retro black and white photo shoot of themselves around town, including on top of the Space Needle. Note this is not of them AT the top of the Needle, but rather ON top of the Needle wearing harnesses.

I suppose I should make some comment about using old fashioned pics on a social media platform to revitalize a family business, but that would be boring and work-ish. I live within eye shot of the Space Needle and have come to think of it as MY Space Needle. When I see it from the highway, I know I am getting close to home. I have come to learn that it has a life and gets colored red for National Aids Day, green for St. Patrick’s Day, and they turn the lights out for Earth Hour.  When the fog is just right the legs disappear and it looks like an actual space ship floating in the sky. To see the pics of these two guys up on top of this iconic landmark with the wind whipping them around was exhilarating to me. I could imagine what it might be like to be up there, without having to face my own terror of heights to go there.  And they just looked like they were having so much fun. Maybe that’s what drew me, I have any number of crazy goofy pictures I make friends (or Brian) pose for and they all make me smile, and some of them even make it to our Christmas cards.  So, I don’t know if this post makes me want to go eat at Canlis, but it might make me want to get out my camera…