{"id":206,"date":"2008-12-31T14:45:38","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T14:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/?p=206"},"modified":"2012-05-08T13:46:28","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T17:46:28","slug":"john-lights-the-knight-rider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/john-lights-the-knight-rider\/","title":{"rendered":"John lights the Knight Rider."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">John is a fairly seminal character in my life.\u00a0 I worked on my first paid job in the motion picture industry with him in 1993 or &#8217;94.\u00a0 Three summers ago, during one of those breakup inspired lost weekends that lasted eight months, I caught up with him in LA and we wound up camping in Joshua Tree for the weekend.\u00a0 It was early August.\u00a0 By the time we got back to LA I was sold on Burning Man, it was time.\u00a0 I had heard about the festival for years but I had other things going on in the desert and it just didnt have the appeal until then.\u00a0 Two weeks later I was headed up to black rock with a car full of excitement and the first sign of being alive that I had been trying to discover for months and months and months and months.\u00a0 Hope and Fear provided no sign of John.\u00a0 Keep in mind I knew exactly where his camp was and went there every day for a week, but thats the way it goes at Black Rock City.\u00a0 Went back the next year with fully organized plans to meet up.\u00a0 Again, a week went by and The Green Man didnt not produce the meeting we were hoping for.\u00a0 So it goes.\u00a0 Last year I was sitting in the camp across the street from me and noticed some sky divers.\u00a0 What the fuck, I&#8217;ll roll over to Mystical Misfits and see if he turns up.\u00a0 Sho&#8217; nuff, as I got off my bike there&#8217;s John packing up his parachute.\u00a0 I suppose this is what you look like right after you jump out of a plane&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-205\" title=\"33420010\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420010.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-207\" title=\"33420021\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420021.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-208\" title=\"33420008\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420008.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-209\" title=\"33420026\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420026.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Over his shoulder while he packed his &#8216;chute, one of the dancers from the camp next door climbed up on the three stories of scaffold to twirl through the air.\u00a0 John had the good fortune to build his township of a camp right next door to a commune of dancers mostly from the North West.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-210\" title=\"33420011\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420011.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-211\" title=\"33420029\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420029.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Ive photographed a few sky divers right after they&#8217;ve landed but this was the first time I ever watched, with full attention, someone pack a parachute.\u00a0 I&#8217;m still really amazed at how simple the mechanics of the pack are.\u00a0 As John put it that afternoon, &#8220;you dont worry about the chute not opening, you worry about it staying closed&#8221;.\u00a0 Good times were had that afternoon which was three years in the making.\u00a0 This roll of film got blasted off in the first five or six minutes of that communion and while it must seem somewhat pedestrian overall, it was a bit of a milestone moment for me that might make a burner or two crack a smile.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-212\" title=\"33420013\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420013.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"298\" height=\"449\" class=\"size-full wp-image-213 aligncenter\" title=\"33420024\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420024.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-214\" title=\"142\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/142.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"679\" height=\"450\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-215\" title=\"33420031\" src=\"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/33420031.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John is a fairly seminal character in my life.\u00a0 I worked on my first paid job in the motion picture industry with him in 1993 or &#8217;94.\u00a0 Three summers ago, during one of those breakup inspired lost weekends that lasted eight months, I caught up with him in LA and we wound up camping in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-burning-man","category-john-pedone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3635,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/3635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}