One of my favorite movies is the French film Amalie. One of the running gags in the film is that Amalie has given a garden gnome to a friend of her's who is an airline stewardess, who then takes the gnome all over the world and takes photos of it in front of famous places, such as the Empire State Building, Ankor Wat, and others, and then sends the photos back to Amalie's father who wants to travel but mopes around too much to ever get around to it.. I assume this is where Travelocity got the idea for its gnome icon. So I've been looking for a gnome of my own to take with me on my travels so that I, too, could send/post photos of this icon in front of interesting or famous places. Well, I've not been able to find a small, light-weight gnome that I would be willing to pack around with me. And there's that whole Travelocity has already stolen Amalie's gnome icon thing.

As a result, I've also been looking for something else to use in the place of the gnome and this past weekend, I think I've found it. Or him. There's a series of children's books based on Diary of a Whimpy Kid and while in a Barnes & Noble bookstore I found this Whimpy Kid action figure. I thought "For all the whimpy kids out there never seen as cool enough, how cool would it be to cart him around the globe?" So now when I travel somewhere, I'm going to attempt to make it a point to bring him with me and shoot shots of him in great places as an homage to all those kids out there seen by others as whimpy, not cool. We'll show 'em! Clackamas, Oregon; March, 2011.