Found Objects

An unexposed roll of film sat on my souvenir shelf. I'd forgotten where it had come from when I'd unpacked it.

Maybe it wasn't even mine. Maybe it was Yancey's. Maybe it had been at the bottom of a drawer. Or maybe there was nothing on it at all.

All unknown rolls of film must be developed, so today I trotted down the four flights of stairs out of the apartment, and two blocks down the street to the photo counter at the drugstore in the mall. The Newport Mall sits between me and the Hudson River, between me and the PATH train. A passageway through the mall stays open at night so that residents of Hamilton Park don't have to walk around the long way.

The result? The photos didn't look like any I remembered shooting, but they could be mine. They were from between 1996 and 2000. And they were far more likely to be Yancey's than mine. But they were mine now. No way would I give these photos up. Pond Scum, Yancey, Dave Sharpe, and Babc0ck. And I was even in one of them. They were from the old Marvel offices and from Babcock's condo when he was renovating.

On the walk home, I remembered where the roll of film came from. It had been in my ancient Canon AE-1, a camera I still have and don't know what to do with. A camera that Babc0ck had borrowed sometime in the last decade or so, and kept for many years.

He'd told me it didn't work. He was wrong.

The Lonesome Sadness of Fat Boy

Every once in a while, Daniel Johnston* used to send me art.

Sometimes it was topical and related to me, and other times it was his usual cast: Captain America, the Red Skull, the Frog, the torso, Satan, and/or Cap's Duck Army.

I came across a stack of pages yesterday. They all make me laugh, but this one cracked me up. Mr. Romance here, Fat Boy, might be Daniel himself, or he might just be a character that Daniel was thinking of. This might be an ironic take on romance and the human condition, or maybe it's just what was on Daniel's mind that last time he was in the bathroom.



*Daniel is a semi-known indie musician and outsider artist. We used to be friends, though I haven't kept up with him in a few years. You can hear me talking to him a little in the documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," which used some of my footage. I still have the best stuff, which was shot on VHS and couldn't make the transition to the big screen without being unwatchable.

Murphy

Poor Murphy! This is Yancey's dog. She tore a ligament and had to go in for a repair. She is in a lot of pain, having just cried for 24 hours and Yancey isn't getting any sleep right now. She even has a morphine patch.

I used to wish that Yancey had left me the dog along with the apartment. But not now. I'd never be able to carry her up and down the four flights of stairs.

Yancey's place in San Francisco has an elevator.

Here's Murphy in happier days, during one of our sleepovers when I got to dogsit.

Election '08

You guys can have Hillary, Obama, and McCain. I'm voting for this Basura guy. I like his unassuming signs.

My Travel Map

I tried one of those online travel map sites.

36%? It sure felt like more.

Urban Curse

"No fork, please."

The woman behind the counter looks puzzled. She hesitates as her hands struggle to alter their rhythm.

"WHAT?" She looks stunned.

You'd think I'd told her that her shirt was on fire.

"NO FORK. I have forks at home."

She smiles and nods. Her hands mechanically install a fork and a napkin into a small paper bag along with my dinner. She can't help herself.

What the hell am I supposed to do with all these plastic utensils?

Kitty Chow

I've been unpacking right here, "live" for months. But I'm kind of done.

Except that I still have a few ongoing projects. I'm going through old papers and clothes. When spring comes, I have to tackle the garage. Soon I'll start converting vinyl to CD (some of it really can't be had on CD). And I'm still organizing old photos and negatives into binders.

I stumbled over these charmers today, in the "Serengeti" photo box. Tasty!

Anti-arctica?

If you've been here a while with me, you already know my opinion on Antarctic tourism. While I don't want to eat sled dogs and live under an overturned lifeboat, I was disappointed by the relatively adventure-free Antarctic Peninsula cruise I went on.

But now lots more people know, because I've written an entire article about it for Tim Leffel's "Perceptive Travel" online magazine.

I have been trying to write this article for a long time, but it never quite worked the way I wanted it to. And when I pitched it to Tim, it still didn't sit right. It wasn't until he sternly told me to HURRY UP and finish that the article came together. Sometimes, a little tough love is exactly what a writer needs.

(Other times, it makes them shut down. Case by case, I suppose.)

I hope I don't get hate mail. Some people are bound to be upset by my opinion, and I actually expect several letters about how wonderful Person X's trip was, and how Person Y had the most meaningful experience of their life, and so on. I'll try not to worry about it.

You can read the article here.

Prehistoric Seventies

A few more shots of Dinosaurland. I wonder what year this was. The early seventies, I think.

Dinosaurland Redux

Mom found this old postcard of Dinosaurland and scanned it in for me.

And then she found these photos. Unfortunately, they were stuck in an old photo album, so she had to scan them in the album. I tried to clean them up a little, but some things are beyond the help of Photoshop.

I'm the one in the giraffe shirt (of course) by the giant praying mantis. The other little girl is my older sister, who for reasons unknown (though her hobby is tearing apart and rebuilding PCs) does not have her own blog.

I'll upload the color photos tomorrow.