Posts tagged ‘NYC’
Is there anything more hopeless in the photography world than street photography? Here’s a camera, go wander the fucking streets by yourself for a period of time and for no money, and come back with something good that most people don’t want to look at on their walls.
You ever get your rolls back in the mail and ask yourself why you were allowed to carry a camera that day? You ever review a memory card worth of pictures and immediately want to sell all your digital equipment on Ebay? Street photography can be fucking hopeless. But you do it anyway, because you saw a picture, and you had to take it. Or worse, you do it because you saw a picture and you missed it.
So if you’re going to do it, just know what you’re getting into. Because once you start, you will never stop, like some kind of sick Alfred Hitchcock episode . . .
It seems that most of the stuff on my facebook feed has evolved into inspirational quotes and amazingly uplifting videos. It’s so full of positivity that I rarely have negative thoughts anymore. But when I lose reception on my phone, I’m almost beside myself. I start wondering what videos I’m missing from Sun Gazing, and I start to pace around, constantly pressing the refresh button on my phone, as I whisper how fucking unacceptable it is to have no phone service in a relatively civilized part of the city. But in the back of my mind, I know it’s T-Mobile, and I have a blackberry, and that combination isn’t very reliable. Still, it’s no excuse but then after a few battery pulls everything goes back to normal except now everything is going a little slower on my phone. Then I realize I have to renew my passport by the end of this month so when I go to that site listed first on google that promises you will “avoid the lines” in “three easy steps,” I of course immediately try to sign up. It takes me about twenty minutes to type in all my details but then it asks me for payment and I forgot to read the FAQ beforehand. I’m going to be paying you first but at what point are you going to tell me about the passport picture. Sure, I’m happy that I don’t have to wait at the post-office, but I’d be even happier if I didn’t have to go to some Kinkos or some hole in the wall place for some stranger to take a picture of me.
I’m just trying to get it, each and every day.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But I’ve been smoking endo and sipping gin n’ juice since the early eighties. And I still have healthcare, even before all this Obamacare shit went down.
She told me to get a camera and get back to business.
Dear Peanut Butter:
Often times as parents we get a lot of advice, either from books or from our parents. But noticeably absent in any chapter or advice columns about parenthood is the importance of peanut butter, not necessarily for the child, but for the parent.
You have solved about 99 percent of all problems I have faced with my child. Don’t want to eat your broccoli? Well, here, have some fucking ants on a log. Don’t want to do your homework? That’s fine, but you won’t get a piece of toast with peanut butter. You sound a little grumpy? Here, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup will make everything better.
Parents have a hard job. We are taught that the “in” thing now is to talk to your children all the time. Some of the uncles or single guys or ladies out there writing these advice columns must think that talking to their favorite niece at a birthday party for fifteen minutes proves their point. But stay at home with the child for at least a year and then come and tell me that children make great conversationalists.
I think you understand that more than anyone or anything. Unlike parents that have replaced peanut butter with hummus or some vegan/gluten free concoction, I have free space in my life where my kids know NEVER to enter. And I couldn’t have done any of that without you, peanut butter.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Darlene
One of these days I’m going to get myself my own train. I’ll have it connect to all my secret hideouts so I don’t have to go through all the trouble of squaring the blocks or hacking into the mainframe of certain large law enforcement organizations. With all the new spare time, I’d probably start collecting animals like zebras which as some of you know aren’t horses. When it’s not a horse, you don’t have to worry as much about all those regulations.
You can read just about every book in the world about parenthood, but none of them will really explain to you how much fucking laundry you’re going to be doing. When you start the whole endeavor, you’re going to invariably volunteer to do the laundry rather than having to deal with the children; let the mother figure those buggers out. But soon that one laundry bag you and your wife had when you got married morphs by necessity into two laundry bags, then six months later, morphs into four of those fucking blue IKEA bags that you can carry pumpkins in. It’s going to be up to you not only to bring all those clothes down the elevator to the washer and dryer, but to bring them back in the next hour, so that you can spend the next hour trying to fold the clothes, then another half hour putting them away without fucking with the drawer system that you had no say in creating. The whole thing is completely thankless like you’re some kind of bass player. No one gives a shit if the laundry is done or the clothes aren’t on the floor or left in the washer overnight. But when you fuck with the laundry, somehow the whole house becomes a mess, and then everyone starts feeling that you’ve caused a god damn squalor. Heidi Murkoff will be the last one to tell you this, but don’t volunteer to do the laundry under any circumstances. Learn some nursery songs and how to have tea parties and other diversionary tactics when you still have a chance.
i hate it when i’m doing something real focused, like hanging clothes in the closet, and then turning around to catch my cat by the door staring at me. i hate it mostly because it happens pretty much all the time. i could be surfing the internet and turn around and in the corner of my eye, my cat is staring at me from underneath the table or on top of the ten foot bookcase. not a lot of people stare at me when i’m on the street because i am trying to go through life completely anonymous and i’ve worked hard to go mostly unnoticed by everything and everyone. but then this whole cat thing puts all the work i’ve done into question. i stay up at night worrying about it. i know cats are skilled and everything but if i can’t hide from my own cat then i might have a real problem. but what i really hate is when i think my cat is staring at me and when i give a double take, it’s my unfolded boxers or a hand towel discarded on the floor. and then i’ll see my cat staring at me from some other place in the room. sometimes i pick up the boxers or hand towel and throw it at her.
a few days ago i was being chased again by a pack of squirrels that mistook me for some kind of bread product. i ran past bedford avenue, took a right on 23rd Street, and ended up somewhere on Farragut Avenue underneath a truck.
e v e r y d a y aperture 