A List of Things That'll Surely Make Me Wildly Unpopular.

Things I just don't get, alphabetically. Not right or wrong--- I just don't get 'em.

AK-47s – Does anybody really need one of these? I mean really need one? Nope.

Abercrombie and Fitch – Somewhere along the line, looking like you just rolled out of bed became fashionable, hair included. Granted, I’m at the age where my demographic definitely isn’t their target. But even at 16-24, I still don’t think I could bring myself to spend my minimum wage on clothes that new already look like they’re ready for the ragbag.

Adam Sandler – Okay, I’ll grant you that The Wedding Singer was a damned funny movie. Other than that, though, hasn’t he been pretty much making the same movie over and over for the past decade? The lovable loser who ultimately prevails and gets the girl? You know, that one (or eight)?

Andrea Bocelli – Yeeeees, I know he’s blind. But I gotta tell ya, it just sounds cheesy to me. I have to wonder if it’s his doing, though, because the guy really does have a great voice. But the music is über-schmaltzy.

Blue Man Group – Never seen it, and I can’t really say I’m interested. But it would seem I’m the only one on the planet who feels that way.

Disney – From the Latin "mouse separating you from your cash".

Dunkin Donuts/Krispy Kreme – My beef with Dunkin Donuts is their coffee. Or what they actually refer to as coffee. It isn’t. It’s a lame, super-weak imitation of coffee. Krispy Kreme, well, they do have yummy donuts. But are they the Greatest Thing Since Napkins as the world would have you believe? Nope. “Ooo, but if you get them as they just come out of the oven…!” They’re just donuts, people. Settle down.

Eric Clapton – God to many. To me? Definitely one of the greats, but that’s about it.

Geico/Progressive Insurance – Funny commercials, great concept all the way around. However, we can’t use them here in Massachusetts because we’re still in the Puritanical Regulated Insurance Stone Age. So please guys, STOP advertising here already.

Howard Stern – I listened to him back in the early 90s because there was nothing else on when I was doing security at night. It had its funny moments but got old real fast. Gotta hand it to the guy for being able to keep his fan base going despite the show's stagnation.

Inflatable Lawn Ornaments – Insanity, inflated (inflanity?). Around my town, I've seen upwards of six of these per lawn.

Jesus Christ – I kid. I suspect that the things he’s done and said have been embellished at least somewhat, but the overall message is good. He's just all right with me. Now if people would just stop committing lunacy in his name...

Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter/Star Trek – To be fair, I’m the problem here. I just can’t wrap my mind around fantasy of that magnitude. I've seen them all and nodded off in them all as well.

Marlon Brando – That’s right.

Me –

Olsen Twins – What started out as a couple cute kids on a forgettable sitcom has become fantasy fodder for guys waiting for them to turn eighteen. Impossible scenarios between said twins and the fantasizers could fill Penthouse Forum for the next 3,562 years. Why? Because they’re twins? Yeah, probably.

Plasma Screen TV – Dropping five grand on a TV that’ll last maybe ten years? Yeah yeah, I know all about the amortization times entertainment value equation, but that much bread on something that gets too much attention in the first place is just inconceivable to me. But that may also be jealousy talking because I haven’t a living space that could accommodate such a thing.

Shakespeare – Mandatory reading in high school. I try to see what the big deal is but just get lost in it, and not in a good way. My little brother has explained in great detail what the allure is. To hear him talk about it makes me feel stupid. Score yet another one for the younger sibling.

The Apprentice – Or anything purportedly reality-based, really. How is it no one has pasted this guy yet? Wait! Put him on Fear Factor! "The Donald" buried in an acrylic box with Rosanne Barr screaming the National Anthem piped in, and he has to eat live Peruvian millipedes to get out. Now that, I would watch.

Van Morrison – Again, I’ve tried, but this dude does nothing for me despite his being some kind of genius or something.

Wilco – To me, Alt Country is just Alt Boring.

Not surprisingly, most of these items are all the result of hype. Hype drives me barking mad. The aural and visual equivalent of having a dry wooden spoon jammed down your throat, you’re somehow a lesser or out-of-touch human being if you don’t buy into it. And have I mentioned Andrew Lloyd Weber and Coke C2? Oh right…

You'll notice the option to comment is up. There's no sense in delaying the inevitable, so let the flames begin.

So spake a Mr. Costello, "What's so funny about peace, love, and Family Circus?"

Hear That?

Okay, I’ll be the better man and admit it: fall isn’t so bad after all. Could it be that since I’ve chosen to explore the world of black and white photography, I have been given a better appreciation of landscape that’s essentially, well, black and white? I’d be a fool to deny the connection.

But another trait of fall occurred to me yesterday that I find kind of intriguing: more quietude to it than the other three seasons. It’s hard to explain, but in the summer (which is STILL my favorite), you have any one of a number of noise sources going on, whether it’s dirt bikes, personal watercraft/boats, straight-piped Harleys/wound-up sportbikes, slammed Civics blasting something bowel-liquefying, etc. Whatever the noise, you can bet it’s man-made.

Also, by now, hurricane-force winds indigenous to the early fall have caused the drop of the majority of trees’ leaves, so the necessity of screaming banshee leaf blowers waking one up at 7AM (bastards) has lessened appreciably. With the colder temperatures, the air seemingly has an altogether different density; things even sound different. It’s a...crisper sound, I guess. But then again, what isn’t in the fall, really. So instead of me walking up to a brook and thinking my usual “Wow, it’d reeeeeeally suck to fall in that right now”, I’m instead thinking about what a tranquil and captivating sound the rushing water is.

My lady fair has long encouraged me to embrace fall and winter rather than to fruitlessly curse it, and every year I say I’ll try. This exercise usually lasts until, oh, December 1st. Perhaps with the assistance of a viewfinder, I’ll be able to actually see it through. Oof, forgive me--I ordinarily shutter at such flagrant use of puns. There I go again. My apologies for losing my focus. Great. Now I can’t F stop. How aperture.

All right all right all riiiiiight


It Was 99 Years Ago Today
Tommy Burns and Jack O'Brien fight to a draw in 20 rounds for the heavyweight boxing title.

Curb This Instead

The picture you see here is one I took in Provincetown a couple weeks ago. These signs are everywhere.

This sign reminds me of something else, though: this utterly craptacular newspaper. Remember that piece of garbage show A Current Affair? Well, the Herald is pretty much that, but in print. It seems more hell-bent on exposés than actual news worthy of note. And then they spend the rest of the week patting themselves on the back for the "you read it here first!" bit. The only reason anyone read it there first is because it's petty, alarmist, shallow journalism that no one gave a rat's rump about in the first place. When driving into the city, one's lucky eyes inevitably fall on their billboard that reads:

"If you want sugar-coated, buy a donut".

Ha! Pissa! It's the paypa with local cullah! Wotta hawt shidt!

I rest my case. At the end of the day, guys at the train station hand them out, free to whomever wants one and thereby making a sucker of anyone who ponied up dough for it that morning. Even when I have zero reading material for the ride home, I can't bring myself to take one. Not even for the funnies.

Interestingly, the paper that scoops poop is also best suited for training a puppy, so you have kind of a space-time continuum thing happening.

Aw jeez...here comes the soapbox.

I just sat down to a nice, manly cup of hot chocolate. Mmmmmmmm, chocola...wait, why does this taste like saccharin?

You know, I don’t really consider myself a My Body Is My Temple kind of guy. I keep my weight in check, I quit smoking, and I do get a modicum of exercise. I’ve also stopped eating meat, but that was for health reasons rather than moral ones. I realize the whole Obesity in America bit has been done to death, but there’s a reason: it’s real.

However, while I wholeheartedly believe that it is dependent upon the individual not to fall prey to the oh-so-American trait of gluttony, I will say that the food industry should shoulder a at least some of the blame. And I’m not talking extreme instances like suing a tobacco company because you’re dying of cancer--the facts regarding the hazards are out there and have been for a LONG time.

I’m simply talking about food additives.

Let it not be misconstrued that I’m an organic superzealot or anything of the sort. Frankly, I think an organic orange when compared to a non-organic California navel orange, well, sucks. But, the arguments for organically-grown stuff are quite compelling. However, giving up meat was hard enough for me. Going with just an organic diet would be difficult to maintain, mostly because of availability, and I’m just not ready to give up jumbo navel oranges at the moment. A lot of produce is genetically altered, and I know this. Unfortunately, at the moment I don’t know enough about it to have an intelligent conversation. So I’ll instead move onto the next point.

High fructose corn syrup. HFCS. It's in damned near everything. And I do mean EVERYthing. Bread, catsup, soda, etc. Food manufacturers use it because it’s cheaper than sugar. But it’s evil. The reason?

“Corn syrup’s sugar is primarily glucose, which our body burns as a source of immediate energy, is stored in muscles and our liver for later use, and releases insulin.

Fructose, on the other hand, does not release or stimulate insulin. Insulin is a naturally occurring hormone that helps to metabolize our foods by pushing carbohydrates into our muscle cells to be used as energy, and allows carbohydrates to be stores in our liver for later use. It also stimulates production of another hormone, leptin, which helps to regulate our storage of body fat and increases our metabolism when needed. These two hormones keep our body fat regulated and tells us, for all intent purposes, when we are satisfied and sends the message to our brain to stop eating. “

So there you go.

I will go on record as saying that no one, NO ONE has a bigger sweet tooth than me. No, really. But you know what? Plain ol’ sugar still manages to do the job for me. I don’t need HFCS, which is 75% sweeter than sucrose, added to anything I eat. To combat weight gain, people turn to artificial sweeteners. As anyone who knows me has heard me say a billion times, I don’t care WHAT you call it, it all still tastes like saccharin. And I know saccharin. I used to eat that stuff like candy at my grandmother’s house. It has a super-sweet bicarbonate fizz that quickly dissolved into shag-nasty aftertaste.

A new trend amongst manufacturers is to tout something “new and/or improved” as having less sugar and fewer calories. I got duped by this bullshit when Coke C2 came out. I’ve always found regular Coke a little on the cloying side, so I was eager to try a less sweet version. Well, I bought one, took one sip, and wondered “wait, why does this taste like saccharin?” Coke didn't cut back on the sugar or HCFS, thereby making it less sweet. No, they just cut back on the sugar and replaced it with aspartame and sucralose.

One of my all-time favorite chewing gums is Wrigley’s spearmint. I love the big ol’ white Plenti-Pack. Well, unbeknownst to me, they opted to make it even sweeter and throw in acesulfame. Never heard of it, but it sure didn’t sound like something that occurred in nature, so I figured that it must be to blame for the artificial sweetener taste. I was right. Why? What is with the industry’s insistence on making everything sweeter? It’s like buttering pork rinds. It seems nothing’s safe. Except this, which I now chew a ton of and happily endorse.

For as long as they’ve been around, there have been warnings about artificial sweeteners' cancerous potential. Aspartame, saccharin, stevia, acesulfame…the list goes on and on. For years there has been a running joke/stereotype that the British have bad teeth due to their penchant for sweets. Well now the joke’s on us. But full-body.

I’m not a lobbyist or causehead. I just want these people to stop putting this unnecessary crap in our food.

Observations, Part Deux

Moustaches. You know, I gotta tell ya, I really don’t think these will ever be in vogue again. I mean, you see a guy with a moustache nowadays and what’s the first thing that comes to mind? That’s right—1970s porno. It’s an accessory (the ‘stache, not the porn) that’s been around for as long as time itself, and its use as a style statement just doesn’t endure well. Still, they’re everywhere, from that weird-looking pencil-thin thing that’s essentially an eyebrow on your lip that never meets the nose; the full-on cookie duster, and everything in between. Younger folk as of late have adopted it to look retro (NOT ironic, as the public are wont to egregiously use), but they still just wind up being the butt of a joke. Or just looking like a butt. The only guys who can pull off The Look? Bikers. That's it.

It’s For School. On the train this morning (yeah yeah, I know), I saw a photo opportunity. A young woman was sitting across from me reading, right under the train window. The lighting was compelling and the landscape rushing by would have made an interesting backdrop. I was tempted to ask if I could take her picture, but then I just assumed that’d sound too creepy, and understandably so. But if I told her that it was for school, the creep factor would be nonexistent. Those two simple words can be the difference between someone just completing an assignment, or someone who’s either a wack job or pervert. For example:

1. A kid carries a diorama of the Civil War onto the city bus. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of ketchup involved. No one bats an eye because it’s for school.

2. A woman gets on a crowded elevator, proceeds to the rear corner and buries her face and body into said corner and says nothing. Not to worry. It’s for Psych Class (thanks, Mary).

3. A guy strips to his skivvies in the middle of a church parking lot, wraps himself in gaffer tape and sequins, hops on one leg, and jams rotten guava into his nose and ears while rapping “You Light Up My Life”. But it’s cool…he’s preparing for a role in 4th period Drama Class. In Seattle, most likely.

You get the idea. For School is another Get Out of Jail Free card.

Stupid. Seemingly, anything we don’t like, understand, or agree with, is stupid.

Burritos. It took many years for it to dawn on me, but I do believe that burritos just might be THE perfect food. I’m pretty sure God/Allah/Yahweh/Elvis eats ‘em.

More of This.

You'll never hear him use one in the Downbeat 5, but you sure as shootin' will when in the Rogues.

Just seizing the opportunity to post a picture I dig. It's kinda like taking a peek into a secret lab. And, um, taking a picture of it...

It Was 99 Years Ago Today

Opera star Enrico Caruso is charged with an indecent act after allegedly pinching a woman's bottom in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo.

1000 words.

It didn’t occur to me just how much I talk about my train time until I anonymously received the cartoon above in the mail yesterday . One item I don’t believe I’ve ever touched upon is the whole cell phone thing.

The reason for the deliberate glazing-over is that it’s been done to death. I have a difficult enough time trying to provide the faithful with reading material that wouldn’t be a mere regurgitation of stuff that’s on about 8,658,429 (I counted) other web logs, so I try not to go for the easy “don’tcha hate it” angle. There really is nothing else I can add to the running commentaries on the daily lack of consideration, overall rudeness, cluelessness, ignorance, classlessness, self-absorption, hubris, and attitude of most cell phonians (new word-you heard it here first). The only addition I can offer is one of the (anonymous) visual sort. Click and enjoy.

What A Piece Of Work Is Man

Musicals. Can’t really say I’m a fan. I’ve been to a couple high school productions, but only because my nieces were in them. I don’t know what it is about musicals, but they just don’t hold my attention. To be honest, a lot of them infuriate me. When I think of musicals, I think of The King of Cheese, a Mr. Andrew Lloyd Weber. Sweet fancy Moses, do I ever find that guy’s stuff irksome. However, what I consider shmaltzy, over-the-top dreck, other people derive a great amount of joy from. So as with pretty much everything in life, to each his own (right, Nana?).

The exceptions?

1. Marty, a musical starring John C. Reilly. My lady fair did some costuming work for it at the Huntington Theater, so I got to check that one out. I liked it just fine, but most likely because I was watching a celebrity that we really dig, and the set design was top drawer.

2. Hair. This is a big one for me, and I’m veeeeeeery slowly finally starting to figure out why. I think I first heard it when I was maybe four or five, which would have been about nine years after its debut. While living in Lodi NJ at my nana’s house (which was attached to the restaurant she and my grandfather owned), my brother and I would pass the time by either watching stupefying amounts of TV, inventing games, or listening to any one of a number of tapes that were just haphazardly piled in a box. My grandparents had a business to run, so we were left to our own devices pretty much. In actuality, though ripe for disaster at any given moment, all that alone time was relatively damage-free. Relatively.

Back to the tapes. After listening to Cheech and Chong a thousand times--never really understanding it but laughing anyway--I put on the soundtrack to Hair. It just sucked me right in. Again, I had no idea what any of the subject matter meant and didn’t pick up on any of the drug references (and why would I?), but there was something about the music and vocalized angst/frustration/desperation/strife to that stuck to me like so much glue. I’d never heard anything like that before. The humor, drama, and politics wouldn’t come to me until much later, but I knew I was hearing something special.

Hmmmmm...as I wrote that, I just worked out why it is so near and dear to me: my mind was essentially a blank canvas. Enough time hadn’t passed yet for my opinions, beliefs, etc. to be colored by cynicism or negativity. If I had heard the soundtrack to Cats (shudder) back then, there’s a good-to-great chance that I’d be in love with that, too. How did I get so hardened? What made me shut down my willingness to embrace things with fresh ears and/or eyes as easily as when I was young?

Well, that part I’m still working out. Maybe it was because that when I heard Hair for the first time, I subconsciously knew that there was a deep, timeless message in it, even at five. I listen to it now and it’s one of the few things I can revisit just by listening and STILL get chills. I wasn’t a child of the 60s. All I’d ever seen was the sanitized, canned version of it. It was all about sitar, beads, and weed. Or so Time-Life and VH-1 would have you believe, anyway. But on some level I knew there was something else going on that just wouldn’t let me go.

A couple years ago, some friends of mine took me to a local production of Hair. It was the first time I'd ever seen the soundtrack brought to life, and I didn't shake that chill for a week. I started to see life with a few new colors, and all without having to quaff either brown or blotter acid.

It Was 99 Years Ago Today

Roosevelt becomes 1st U.S. President to visit a foreign country (Panama)

Mismanners

Excuse me.

Sound like a polite request to you? Me either.

I walked down into the belly of the train station this morning, and as always, the stairs were jammed full of people both ascending and descending the stairs. A woman probably in her 20s or so just plowed right through people, pretty much knocking them out of the way with her elbows. All she said was “excuse me", and there was nary an angstrom of remorse in her voice.

Once upon a time, the phrase “please excuse me” was spoken as a request for forgiveness for an impropriety or accidental breach of etiquette. Nowadays, it just means "Yeah, I did it. Now forgive me and get over it". It’s no longer a request, it’s a demand-- a Get Out Of Hell Free Card. The sincerity has looooong since been abandoned. As with about a billion other societal ills, what started this revolution of selfishness and entitlement?

Politeness. It’s so easy. It’s something any and all can subscribe to regardless of class, race, religious belief, or time.

Excuse me. It’s right up there with a cashier asking “How are you?” while not even looking at you. Don’t mean it? Don’t say it. To half-heartedly (IF that) mutter the words almost makes it worse than not saying them at all.


It Was 99 Year Ago Today

People actually exhibited decorum and assumed responsibility for their actions. And they didn’t wear a backpack on a crowded train either, jackass.

Tai Chi, Chai Tea.

While walking down through Harvard on this unseasonably warm day, I spied a guy doing Tai Chi. He was right in the park across from Harvard and I kept my eyes on him for a good quarter mile.

The whole time I’m watching him, I’m thinking I wish I had the crackers to do Tai Chi in public. Some good, old-fashioned physical spiritual enlightenment in front of God/Buddha/Allah/Elvis and everybody. How can a spectator not be touched by that?

Alas, I don’t because I’m too self-conscious. I even feel funny just setting up camp and reading a book on the common. However, if I’m to be even a semi- serious photographer, I need to care not one iota what those around me are thinking. I need to get completely absorbed into the moment. Yeah, that's it! I'll even try some Tai Chi myself! Let ‘em wonder, I say!

As I’m having this mini pep rally in my head and get closer to the open field practitioner, it becomes abundantly clear to me that he isn’t some dude doing Tai Chi. He's actually some drunk dude trying to get off the ground.