All I Want For Xmas

Dear Santa:
All I want for X-mas: World Peace or World Domination.
Doesn't matter which, as long as I get one.




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Shoe Box Heart

I'm at a turning point in my life, and it's made me think about my "shoe box heart". I've never addressed it before, so here goes...

... a shoe box is something that's made to look good. It has to, in a way, sell shoes. Or at least give a certain impression of the company that's selling the shoes. But it's not the shoes, it's just the container that they're shipped in. It's a package. It's a way of keeping things organized.

But a shoe box has to have a certain strength to it. It has to be built well enough that it can handle being moved about. It needs a certain amount of strength. And, as mentioned, a certain amount of looks. It needs to be strong enough for a temporary usage.

But it's just a box. It gets filled with one thing, and then taken home and emptied, and then filled with another thing (or just thrown in the trash - my heart has been wrecked more than once!). It's a kind of temporary vessel that can get passed around. Or, it gets filled and put away, pushed into the back of a dark closet, or under a dusty bed. It's a temporary thing, but it can also be a very long-standing thing.

I guess the idea is that it's nothing special. It can be one thing, or it can be another. It can be trash, or it can be useful. But it's never anything really of value. It's just a shoe box - yet the box sometimes outlasts the shoes.

So I don't know exactly what I'm even saying here except that my heart is a transient vehicle. It plays host to certain parties, and it's filled with junk, or emptied of junk (depending on the day), and passed around or put away. It's not anchored like some dense urn full of ashes on a mantle, or some thick steeled safe in the basement. But at times I want it to be solid. I want it to be rigid and focused and something of importance. But I also know it cannot be. And that is why I have a 'shoe box heart'.

What a pathetic
species we are

that we bow down to

a higher power
we don't know

exists

What I like about this photo beyond the facial expressions and conveyed emotions of the characters are the lines of the building and the design, texture, and color of the drapes in the background. They almost become a backdrop for the drama that's going on in the street before them. The way that the sunlight is also hitting the upper part of the building, and not the lower part, is also a little bit dramatic (tempers flaring!) - and I think, interesting as part of the design, and balancing.

Bizzare Self Portrait

STEPHEN HERO SPOKE TO ME
HE SAID, "WE'RE A LOT ALIKE, YOU AND I
BURNT AND TATTERED... NEVER HAVING
COME TO FRUITION
ALL WE HAD, NOT GOOD ENOUGH
TO BE THE NEXT GUY

AND I REPLIED

WHY WILL WE NEVER LEAVE?
WHY WILL WE NEVER WALK AWAY
TO BECOME A NEW PERSON; THE ONE
WE DREAM OF BECOMING?

IS IT THE PRICE OF THE TICKET?
IS IT THE UNCERTAINTY
THAT WE WILL NEVER BE
THAT PERSON?

IS IT THAT THERE ARE SO MANY OF US
LINED ALONG THE SHORE
POISED TO TAKE A STEP?

OR ARE WE, INDEED, ALONE

HE TOOK HIS FINGERS OUT OF HIS MOUTH
AND SAID, "I THINK YOU THINK
TOO MUCH ABOUT IT."

I had a dream last night, and I was thinking about doing portraits. I was photographing Groucho Marx, and I thought, how do I convey something about this guy that's not already there? (Being a dream, of course, we're all familiar with images of Groucho). So I said 'shoes'. 'Shoes make the man, or at least they say something about him'. And I had Groucho put his shoe on top of his head. It was a brown wingtip with a bit of a red cast to it, and it was polished, but it wasn't recently done. It was clearly a shoe that had given a few good years of service. And then I kind of woke up, and I thought, to myself, 'hey, that's not a bad idea'.

This is just a store front window in NYC. I liked the balance of it though, particularly the $5's on each side of the shot, and the way that the glasses on the one styrofoam head give it a point of focus. In fact, the glasses and the earrings and the hat almost give it a bit of personality.

This is from my incomplete 'museum' series. It's blurry in the low light, but that doesn't matter at all. In fact, it probably helps as it gives it a sense of motion, and the lighting makes the whole scene appear as a kind of theatrical piece. The connection between the stance of the sculpture and the stance of the man taking a photo is what gives it life; and the woman to the right acts as an audience.

VERTIGO

What it comes down to is this:

TO HIM,
PASSION IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

_ _ _ _


TO HER,
LOVE IS UNOBTAINABLE LUCK


And she dreams of one day
driving them both off the side of the road
and
dying
in a fiery blaze
of love confessions...

AND HE DREAMS OF THIS TOO,
but of only her
being
in the car

Picture postcard: View from Centre Point along the gorge, Oregon

Picture postcard: Washington state, along the Hood river.

This is Cannon Beach, Oregon on a weekday morning. The mist is still out and there aren't too many people about. It's kind of cold and desolate, but there are other people out there. If you look towards the center of the photo you might notice some people on horseback.

These are tracks on the beach in Oregon from three wheeled bikes that people ride. It's pretty cold and windy there, so you can't really go in the water (there are some surfers in the upper left hand corner), so what they do is ride these reclining bikes around and around. I guess it's fun, but what I really liked was all of the interesting patterns they left in the sand.

VENUS

The pictures above were all taken at the Mermaid Day Parade in Coney Island, June 20th, 2009. I have a lot more, and I'll try to put them together in some kind of series, but at the same time, I think some of them lose their charm when you show what was really going on. We'll see.

Icing Cupcakes at Billy's Late-night

What I Remember

What I remember of my trip to paradise
was not so pleasant at all
I remember the dead guy
and the brains under the towel

I didn't see the fall


But I remember the girl




The flight was late
and customs was hours
just waiting, not even in queue

and the hotel just wasn't there
Sleeping in a U-Store-It with the rain coming down on a metal roof
Like living inside a drum

But on the first day she was there
She sat on the beach but never went in
She wasn't that type
She was delicate, but bent
and beautiful in her own way

And I asked to see her again
and she said yes
And I arrived and her friends
made it more than uncomfortable
But she smiled when we left
And she laughed at my jokes
And she seemed impressed
when I just gave away my American bags
to the fisherman that wanted to buy them

And then her brother fell

BrooklynWeGoHard

Nonsense

It said
In red
That I was not able
To view
The original
Message...

That I
Myself
Had sent

Geez, I guess I could make "hotel art". I put this up and then thought "ugggh, how pathetic is that"? I really need to get a grip. I seem to be slowly losing my edge.

Homeland Security

I find this image interesting because the latino-looking man with the "homeland security" t-shirt is giving me the same look that the apparent son of the American 'pork' family is (gimmee a break! - they're all wearing pink ponchos)... forgive me.

This is an interesting image. It's more paper grafitti, this time from New York.

The Leonard Nimoy/Spock character is a very large image. The others are about life-size, or even a little bigger in the case of the dog. These images are repeated throughout the neighborhood. I question what they're saying though, when they're grouped like this. It seems like they're just put up to be there. That there's no connection between any of the images. Perhaps I'm missing something.

LEGS

I'm not sure who this is, I'll look it up (or please enlighten me), but this is an artist's installation along the newly opened High Line in NYC. There are other installations along the way, but this one really grabbed be. Entering, it completely changes your sense of place, kind of like in the old days when you went to the movies and stepped through a black curtain to find a darkened room lit by a bright screen up front and shadows flickering along the walls. (That's a sensation that's lost to a lot of us). The blue makes it feel cool and dark, even though it might be warm outside of the tunnel - yet it glows with energy - an interesting juxtaposition. And it has a pattern to it that's the same all the way across, but gets broken up due to the beams that it has to cross.

BEAST

I am a beast
I am a monster
I am not fit for domicile

I should live in the woods
Or a field
Or atop a mountain

Eating birds, and rodents, and whatever comes my way

But I ask you this,
If I am such a beast

So... "unliveable"

Then why do other women find me so attractive?

I love this "art for art's sake" graffiti. I only find it in New York and Philly, although I'd imagine it's world-wide. It's just not as prominent near me, in south Jersey, or Baltimore, and certainly NOT in D.C. (where they try to keep everything spotless for the tourists)! I could easily imagine finding this is Paris, or Berlin, or even Denmark.

Philadelphia, there's just something wrong with this!

Sometimes your first image is your best image. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's what caught your eye in the first place. There's an immediacy to it that you lose in the following shots by trying to line things up and design the shot better. Sometimes a little bit of something 'off' gives just a bit of tension that makes it all fall together.

In this case, the main subject is juxtaposed against the flowers in front of it, but also connected to them by the colors. Beneath the flowers is earth. Beneath the gas pump is earth (and gasoline tanks). The sky is grey, and the pump is backlit, but it still pops out at you because of the bright colors. It's eye-catching advertising - who can argue.

But in the background the grey of the truck and the rust-colored red of the barn reflecft a more natural world. In the middle, electrical wires break up the grey of the sky.

It doesn't really make a comment on anything, it's just a reflection of the way things are, but I think that if you look at it closely and find those things on your own it should get you thinking.