We Can Reach Our Destination, But We're Still a Ways Away...

"Way to shield the hated heat."

I fucking hate Halloween.

Cover Star: Scar
Headlining Band: The Dream Syndicate

Laws Of Man Are Just Pretend

Halloween tomorrow
Used to be my favorite holiday
Fuck it

Election Tuesday
Panic attack
Berlin or Brooklyn?

History shows that "seven points ahead"
Don't mean shit
When shit can be bought
Or stolen

Halloween.
Is. Shit. Now.

Goblins are way more palatable than John McCain
And THAT chick

I'll take a Goblin any day
In fact I do
Surround myself with them

Cover Star: Jenise
Headlining Band: QOTSA

And She Said She'd Stick Around Until The Bandages Came Off

Last cigarette.

Last drink.

Rough Wednesday night...

Only Tom Waits makes sense right now.

Cover Star: Kendall
Headlining Band: Tom Waits

For Sarah

I was talking to a friend about you last night.

I miss you.

Cover Stars: Sarah and Tracy, Halloween 1994, at Kevin's loft on 2nd Street. Sarah went as Patti Smith.
Headlining Band: Giant Sand

When It Comes Apart, We're Gonna Have Some Fun, Son...

"Would you leave me alone
My sweet Simone
If I lay on my back
Down below on the track
Remember the night
How I’d wade in the water
Be counting the stars
And starting me over
They shine
Your eyes
Gonna make me rain,
Gonna make you rise
When I’m gone, Baby, don’t you forget it
I did all I did
Just to get through to heaven

Got no mother she can’t find me
Got no father he gonna blind me
Little girls might twitch at the way I itch
But when I burn it’s a son of a bitch

Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone

Make me, shake me, bleed all over
Going down to the ground
In deep black water
Let’s ride suicide
Say what you want, but you make it don’t lie
Don’t let me down, Baby, on a bed of hard thistle
Gonna die when I drown just to have it away
Those lies in my eyes
Push you down in the river till you testify

My mother, she don’t know me
And my father, he can’t own me
Little girls might twitch at the way I itch
But the way I burn is a son of a bitch

Make me, shake me, deep black water
Gonna run through my pain, gonna make it rain
Baby I’m gone, so don’t you forget it
I did all I did just to get through to heaven

Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone

If you could hear me love
I'd tell to you my story
To you and only you
So love that you might save me
I woke up from a dream
I woke up I was crying
I saw an animal
With eyes like mine on fire
I saw my own true love
She was a sullen flowers
Was she forget-me-nots
White lilies or red roses
And then from far away
Who's that I see come riding
Upon a pale white horse
Come riding fast as lightning

Oh, If you can hear me love
I'd tell you my story
So that you might save me."

Cover Star: Jessalyn
Headlining Band: The Gutter Twins

My Tornado At Rest

"I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you."

- "To The Harbormaster", Frank O'Hara

Cover Star: Kellie
Headlining Band: Concrete Blonde

Old Fashioneds

Had a little MAD MEN "party" last night with two friends to watch Episode 12 , since I don't have cable and we couldn't watch the season finale.

We made Old Fashioneds, after we wikipediaed (yes, that's a verb now) exactly how to make them (cherry and orange slice, thank you very much).

And when Mr. Draper ordered one, we toasted and took a drink too.

A little sweet for my taste, but fitting.

Season finale tomorrow night, just one cable-less day late...



Cover Star: Kellie
Headlining Band: Team Sleep

C-Spot

A couple of months ago, the editor for Columbia University's new "sex" magazine contacted me to shoot five dancers for the inaugural issue. No, not those kinds of dancers, an entire dance troupe from Columbia. Three girls and two guys.

She sent me two copies of the magazine this week. It's also on-line.

Apparently the press junket started this morning as I received an email from the NY Post and a phone call from Fox News.

I'm sure Fox will spin it as a bunch of privileged students - not studying to help the world, but fucking instead (and probably bring the fact that it's Obama's alma mater into it as well) - but it was kind of cool. I just told the Fox person to credit me...

Update: No photo, no credit. Just a bunch of rhetoric. Fox!



Despite that:

I woke up today feeling this way about everybody. And I mean EVERYBODY:

"Got a lot of questions for me
You got a lot of questions for me
Got your finger pointing at me
Distrusted
I look for wires when I'm talking to you
You'd make a great cop"

And my kitchen is still half yellow...

...and is it bad form to leave a half painted kitchen with a butt print on the wall when you wake up and realize that you have to move out of this place within the next 30 days?

FUCK!

I gotta go watch "Mad Men"...

Cover Star: Kellie
Headlining Band: Fugazi

Pleasant Evening

Spent with seven friends, old and new.

Most of the times, it doesn't get any better than that.

A comfort, of sorts.

Cover Star: Kitchen
Headlining Band: Jack Kerouac accompanied by Steve Allen

The Scene of the Crime

Walking by
Unmistakable saunter and silhouette
Headphones in

Me withdrawing
And stopping dead in my tracks
Twenty feet away

I imagine I know your
Eventual destination
Although I have no idea

I have more important
Work to do
Supporting a friend

Something you don't
Understand at all
According to them

I wonder
If you could take it all back
Would you

Join me
At the scene
Of the crime

Cover Stars: Jessica and Angela
Headlining Band: The (ever present) Afghan Whigs

Dread

Such an interesting word:

[dred]

Verb (used with object)

1. to fear greatly; be in extreme apprehension of: to dread death.
2. to be reluctant to do, meet, or experience: I dread going to big parties.

I dread both death and going to big parties. For the record.

I woke up this morning with dread in my body.

Dread of Monday, dread of the rent increase, dread of people being all up in my shit, dread of calling a really good friend who I need to reconnect with in a serious way, dread of feeling dread.

Dread of my signature softlight frying itself last night at the beginning of a shoot and dread of me having to get it fixed or buy a new one.

Dread.

Life is cyclical. But dread is a constant. There are ups and downs in life, but dread keeps poking it's ugly little head into all my business.

I need to quit smoking. but I dread the monkey on my back third day fallout.

I need to get published again, but I dread talking to human beings who hold those positions.

I need to work out, but I dread, uhmmm, actually doing it.

I am not a lot of fun right now.

Sorry. Whatever...

Cover Star: Naama
Headlining Band: The Afghan Whigs

Another Volume Of Unreconstructed Rubbish

I thought it would rain tonight.

The skies above Brooklyn were really dark when I left the house.

To watch "Liquid Sky" with some good friends.

So, I closed the windows.

But it never rained.

It never rained.

It always rains when you don't close the windows.

Always.

Always.

Always.

Hey Doug, how you been?



Cover Star: Kendall
Headlining Band: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

When You Look At Me

The last Presidential debate is about to air. I gotta go and yell at my man to be more forceful.

Why do I have to do that? Why? Why? Why?

Steve...



Cover Stars: Carolyn and Rebecca
Headlining Band: Swearing At Motorists

Factory Girls

My two favorite quotes from the film, "Factory Girl," which were ostensibly attributed to Andy Warhol, but actually muttered by the brilliant Guy Pearce:

"I would sure love to work with her. I've never seen a girl with so many...problems."

And:

"I don't really like to tell them what to do. I just think people are so...interesting."

It's amazing to me that no one, and I mean, NO ONE, liked this film. I always thought I would.

And tonight, I liked it a lot.

Cover Stars: Carolyn and Rebecca
Headlining Band: The Velvet Underground (from the infamous Norman Dolph acetate)

There's A Hole In My Neighborhood

Ideas for next shoot:

Trevor Brown
Chester Brown
Charlie Brown
Buster Brown

Still working through this...


"Sweet Jesus I'm on fire
She has the sweetest, darkest eyes
And when it comes into her eyes
I know iron and steel couldn't hold me
But God I'm easy bruised
But so often a moth to her flame
And the things that she's asked me to do
Would see a Senior Saint
Forgetting his name

I have an audience with the Pope
And I'm saving the world at 8
But if she says she needs me, she says she needs me
Everybody's gonna have to wait

Where could she be?
Was that a minute or an hour?
Where could she be?
She turns the hours into days.

Kill me phone, cover the cage
And wait for the doorbell to ring

Where could she be?
No, she won't come running
Where could she be?
The world is turning at her pace.

Kill me phone, cover the cage
And wait for the doorbell to ring

I have an audience with the Pope
And I'm saving the world at 8
But if she says she needs me, she says she needs me
Everybody's gonna have to wait."

RIP, William Claxton.
His shot of Chet Baker at the piano is one of the best images ever created.

Cover Star: Katy
Headlining Band: Elbow

Paint It Yellow

"My love don't comfort me
She toys with my sincerity
On that I can depend
I've found that nothing's straight
My twisted mind is bent all out of shape
But you will come back
And you will live on
Indeed, I know
But you wouldn't lie when I told you to
Had to waste your time and tell the truth
This one is three, this one is three
Indeed, I know
You got me figured out now
Now we're both disappointed
What's done is now undone
Let's cut the line and have the action
In time I will be able to give."

Cover Star: Rebecca
Headlining Band: The Afghan Whigs

Forensic Scene

"In your memory not so gentle
Perversify slash sentimental
Caught between and caught without
I'm a failure not your failure now

In and out just like a knife would
Tax the flesh and leave a cheap wound
Fucked and fucking love and lay
Congenitally fractured anyway

Unclipped unclean this forensic scene's
All played out
The defense rests and sorry's just a
No shit Sherlock mouth talk con job

From your memory to this instant
Worked so hard for working distance
Like a mouth too late to shut
I'm a failure not your failure now"

Cover Star: Rebecca
Headlining Band: Fugazi

I miss them.

The Temple

I just went to a funeral at a rural North Carolina Presbyterian Church.

The service was exactly as my Grandmother would have wanted it and since she mapped it all out before she died, so be it.

I am basically an Agnostic or "Non-Theologian," a term I've recently become fond of. Which means that in these days of Sarah Palin, I am more irritated than normal regarding this country. I don't think I can live here if McCain and "his one" win, and I really have no idea what will happen on November 4th, which scares the shit out of me. I threatened to leave after the theft of 2000 and then again after the voter's idiocy of 2004, but I loved living in New York City, being able, such that it is as of right now, to be able to express myself through my photography and this here blog.

So anyway, back to the funeral. Pastor Russell (his first name), a man my Grandmother loved, presided and did a fine job. He told stories about her that my family (including me) had previously shared with him, which is always great - makes it more of a celebration than a wake. But then - then - he invited anyone who hadn't "accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior" to come forward.

Luckily he didn't have any takers as the only ones in the church that haven't were my sister and I, who just elbowed each other the whole time. Instead of screaming...

It just seems a little egregious in light of the fact that it was my Grandmother's service - her day. Her last day. And much like everything else right now, that moment was co-opted for someone else's stupid fucking agenda.

This was also the same guy that, in November of 2001 when I took my Grandmother to church there, told me, upon finding out that I had stood in the street 20 blocks from The World Trade Center "that" morning and watched all sorts of things that most people never saw on TV, that "The Lord works in mysterious ways."

My response was immediate and direct: "Russell," I said, "The LORD had nothing to do with that." The conversation pretty much ended there. I realize that perhaps this was the only way that he could cope with what had happened down in The Financial District that day, but still, dude, be a little more sensitive...your kind words and introspect didn't strike a chord within me.

Not at all.

Religiously, you don't have to agree with me. I could care less if you agree with me or not, these beliefs are mine and they are personal, just like the rest of my life. I don't fucking care what you believe, but I respect it, and the fact that YOU CAN believe in anything you want. But THAT right is on the line too. You believing what you want to believe, unless you are in line with the personal beliefs of a potential President Palin.

And then you'll never be able to see another picture like this.



Really. Ever.

A potential President Palin retains her right to choose. And her right to choose is to choose your rights...

Cover Star: Angela
Headlining Band: The Afghan Whigs, covering Andrew Lloyd Webber from "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Curse Softly To Me, Baby

My Curse.

Cover Star: Angela
Headlining Band: The Afghan Whigs

Are You The One I've Been Waiting For?

A lot of things break my heart, lately. This Nick Cave song is one of them.

You know when you get full-body goosebumps...

The firstborn must be the strongest, despite the damage and the toll.

It's simple. Just like this portrait of Angela.

93, Going On 94

I sat on the bench in my parent's adjacent lot for a long time tonight. By myself, smoking and drinking Tecate out of a can. Late night in the universe, Cary, North Carolina.

The cicadas and crickets were so loud, it was partially deafening. Coupled with the fact that I saw Nick Cave last night in NYC.

No cars drove by the whole time. Nothing. Not one disturbance down this streetlight-lit suburban street.

I thought about a lot. Memories flood and take over, then subside and leave. Leave you with another one as if you are unwrapping a mummy made of foot-long strands of cloth, each one holding a unique significance. Then another one.

My last Grandparent died Friday night. My Mother's Mother, 93 and 7 weeks shy of turning 94.

I stood at "the viewing" tonight with my back to her "lying in state," meeting relatives I'd never met or at least don't remember meeting. Me in my black Hugo Boss suit and my sister in her black ensemble, both of us too freaked out to actually turn and look at the open casket.

I'd like to remember my Grandmother alive. The last time I saw her, earlier this year, she was not doing well, generally failing in health, but nothing in particular taking her down. But she was down. The last two things she said to me were, "Don't ever get this old." and "I'm afraid I won't ever see you again."

She was right on both accounts.

I feel no sadness, only melancholy. We are not supposed to live that long as a species.

But I am fortunate, maybe even "lucky" to have known her for my short 44 years on the planet. Most people half my age have no Grandparents.

She went in her sleep, and it doesn't get any better than that.

She was one of my favorite people in the world, and I know that she knew that. I know that I was one of hers.

Arlie Mansfield.

I Swear I Don't Have A Gun

Nirvana Update:

Kurt still dead. Krist and Dave currently alive.

And as my friend Theda pointed out, what about Chad Channing, their Pete Best?

As far as I know, he's still around too.

"I need an easy friend
I do, with an ear to lend
I do, think you fit this shoe
I do, but you have a clue

I'll take advantage while
You hang me out to dry
But I can't see you every night free
...I do

I'm standing in your line
I do, hope you have the time
I do, pick a number too
I do, keep a date with you

I'll take advantage while
You hang me out to dry
But I can't see you every night free

I need an easy friend
I do, with an ear to lend
I do, think you fit this shoe
I do, but you have a clue

I'll take advantage while
You hang me out to dry
But I can't see you every night,
No I can't see you every night
...free

I do...

I do...

I do...

I do... "

Polly wants a cracker...

Yo-Yo Ma

When this city works, it really fucking works.

Long story short (and leaving out many sordid details):

I had a shoot last night with Anna, my amazing MUA and her friend The Rock 'n' Roll Florist, and trucked ALL of my camera and lighting gear over to Astoria. After the shoot the Rock 'n' Roll Florist and I went over to the bar where Anna was bartending and, well, we stayed a while.

At 2am, I chucked ALL my gear in the trunk of the cab, which I never do, and headed home to Park Slope.

As I walked up the stairs I "realized" that I wasn't carrying ALL my gear.

At that very moment I was a former photographer, at least until the insurance money kicked in...

You know as much as I threaten to "quit," at 2am last night I realized how important all of this is to me.

So this morning at 9am, I called 311. Being a good freelancer, I had the cab receipt which has the Medallion # of the car on it, and within thirty minutes "they" had located my camera case in the cab. I am currently waiting for the driver to drop it off at my place.

Big tip, my friend.

Edit: He just drove ALL my shit to my house, with his entire family in the back. Great success!

Stressful, stressful day...

...perhaps I wasn't Mussolini in a former life. I was almost convinced that I was...

Here's a water-damaged/expired film/underexposed Polaroid of the Rock 'n' Roll Florist to make everything all better.

It rained pretty hard last night...