GumBollz

Whenever Tater and I would purchase gumballs we would get three and pick what color was going to come out. That was actually the fun part, as gumbollz lose their taste in about 45 seconds and you cannot blow bubbles anyway... I've been sitting on this gumball machine snapshot for about a year. I took it on a day I walked west west west to 12th Avenue and stumbled upon a huge docked fighter boat and Murray's Bagels, where this gumball machine resided underneath a lot of nice light.

the double jack

15j

<3

synapses

...at present, the pathways from my brain to heart to marshmallow insides relating to all things social academic artistic monetary logistical emotional pragmatic fantastical grounded inflated or real...look like this. not sure if i should cut the fence, turn into mercury, or go back in time. conversely: maybe i should become the fence, or become less tree / institution / collective and more just a teeny sprig...having defined myself, then, i could get out of any number of those oppressive looking metal diamonds that contribute to the shape and purpose of the fence...no?

We Eat Shoots and Leaves, and for $200 We Will Eat, Shoot, and Leave.

matty mc d keeps me young. one too many late nights like a 22 year old at his apartment...his living room has been the site of numerous social catastrophes, love connections, dance offs and kiss offs, wrestling matches, drunken installation art, pesto nights, photo sittings, reality tv show marathons, etc...dunno what it is about the space, but it's like that friend's house in high school where everyone wanted to be all the time...here is the secret genius himself in his natural habitat on a sunday afternoon, preparing for another successfully seamless shoot...he sits close to his bushwick windows and against a blue wall he painted, in those famous house slippers surrounded by traces of coffee and cigs and wires and cables and gigabytes, under the huge, beautiful photo he took this year at the ICP while exploring and growing into this magnificent lil' 4x5 photographer...matty has more potential marriage partners than anyone i know...he's got staying power, you see...and apparently he gets jealous of other photo THINGS (gadgets, lighting technique, actual photos, books, color pallets) but i've NEVER actually seen him get ruffled, nor does he sweat other photographers...i mean, NEVER for their personality, wit, intelligence, or heart...i think this is because matty mc d aka shaqPanda has all of this in spades...it also has something to do with his knowing that photography takes time and money, it's a process, like handling a shoot with a cumbersome camera and hiding under that little black rag before pulling the trigger...he has his own steeze and is content with it, and since he's found something he loves to do, instinctively, he doesn't worry about the rat race...he's in the game, concerned with 3-pointers only, smokin' marlboros and tilt shifting as he pleases...g'head, Shaq...

Young Boy as Michael Jackson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqXYuhLy6EY

double exposure on jade's birthday / narcissus as himself

this is under the manhattan bridge. that skyline belongs to manhattan, or to you, depending on how hopeful and optimistic you are when you gaze at it from across the way...have you ever seen the original Scarface? the city he gazes at through the window was modest. much more modest than reality, even...odd when someone chooses to present a fictionalized account of something and hasn't already gone off running with an extravagant version of it...anyhoozles, the people present at jade's birthday are of the utmost. they are seriously communal / proud, positive, popular types...and sitting on the grass in hoodie, i'd never heard so many Q trains rain over head and i thought every plane that droned over brooklyn had her on it, bound for...well, bound, and forever... it was july and kind of warm. a one-layer-day. at the time of the potluck and socializing and celebrating, i was thinking of the willyburg bridge and why he had ridden east instead of north, towards me...i was actually caught up with the idea of showing off my newest friend to people i had come to admire; something i never feel to do. my version of all that was, basically, an extravagant version of reality...trying to make the pieces fit so that when i looked at the skyline it glowed and i could swell and i could feel like, see, sometimes life is like the movies, and i am its protagonista! patience is a virtue...but ok, borjita, i see you-let's move baby...turns out photos can be mini movies, too...the skyline can be my backdrop (here / here)...the city still a canvas...the characters are players, unfortunately, but also friends and loved ones and bosses and run-ins...the seasons are chapters...and then, i am left with: the meta gaze...in general, me examining myself in some way just bougie enough to make me despise how much time i have for this luxurious thing we call introspection...and i save this expressionlessness for only myself because i know i can handle it and sometimes i try to make as blank a face as i can in the mirror to try to see who i REALLY am and i stare at myself silently in what i think is a 'deep' way but i end up scaring myself and KNOWING that i can never see myself as the world sees me...as evidenced every time you stand next to a friend in front of the mirror -- something is off, you think--"...that's not what he looked like, when i was looking at him..." and he turns to you like narcissus, cutting through the air with his jaw line, while he postures in the reflection of those rose-colored-glasses of yours...and he treats your face like a mirror until you finally verbalize that he doesn't need a mirror anymore: just eye contact...and then abruptly: FIN!...(se acabó la peli)...you sit there through the credits, cursing its reticence to give you exactly the type of fiction you go to the movies to see.

The Sun Blocker

hi lovely...sorry i've been out of touch. see you soon.

JJ, Kate and Pop, the Room

The Texture Of The Waves At Coney Island

This day was the last of a certain type and I didn't know it until this week. I should learn from my miniest of histories, no? Laura Paull would say yes...among many other, dually noted, pieces of mind...namely: no take backs.

my curtains in el barrio mission, sf ('08)

hombrecito bat (1:1)

Meli y Michele

hermanitas, dia de los muertos. i get the feeling these two might dress this way on sundays, or at least more often than just halloween...eh? also, i can't stop photographing my alter-egos, it's getting out of hand...

Ms. Girner and I Peep

We spied on some voluptuous types bathing on 14th Street. Then we went to look at huuuuuuuuuuuge fantastical wonderful magical photographs by some Swedish dude...they were hypnotic...apparently he is also a sculptor. We stared at one of an almost-life-sized buffalo resting inside a cloud of tully fog... he had another of a huge tree, a weeping willow, also amidst the fog...it was like a gradient exercise of browns, tans, beige, dirt, camel, creme, grey, fog, white...we examined the catalog and walked calmly around the gallery, relaxed, not stressing...maybe thinking to ourselves: there will be time for you, and time for me, and the taking of a tea, TS etc etc...When you're ready you know, you know? We then bopped into Ricky's costume shop with Matty and bought some fake blood and a blow-up doll. I saw Sarah a few days later, on Halloween...she had painted herself over with white face paint, beautiful red lips, and immaculate, dried rivers of blood along her graceful neck...the black coming off her eyes was less scary than complimentary to her blue-green eyes...her cheekbones shone...she is a painter, too, then...should have known from her handwriting...and should have just known, in general, as she has always been able to envision what she wants to see: on a contact sheet, on the wall, through the frame...to perfection. While she walks briskly along 3rd Avenue, I dance myself into distraction, while she travels to Westchester, I amble wherever Brooklyn is that day, while she organizes her two-and-a-quarter negs, I wait in line at Walgreens for my cd of jpgs...but when we see each other we embrace, fully...fully...I want some of what SHE got, but it's so much nicer to feel her love me than feel myself green, with envy.

Mario (of the super variety...)

dia de los muertos, queens.

lani

Ilana turns me into a 5 year old.

we're expecting something?

Ángel

...dia de los muertos, queens.

dia de los muertos - queens

face.