beatnik sidearm

Story of a Shot: "Jayne and Sophia," October 2009

There's really not much of a story here -- only an opportunity for me to recreate this iconic photo:

I took the above shot in a shop at Disneyland. The placement of the figures was serendipitous. The bottom photo was taken in 1957, and yes, Jayne Mansfield's nipple slipped out, much to Sophia Loren's apparent ... bemusement? Disgust? Delight? Photos are liars; appearances to the contrary, they really don't tell you everything.

Nothing much else to report today. We are drinking wine and listening to Nick Drake and David Bowie, which is precisely how we got our jollies back in the 1970s. Before Disney made Tinker Bell into a shameless FILF.

Story of a Shot: "You Don't Know That," June 2008

As is often the case with my street photos, the story in my head is better than the genuine article. I don't know what this bus was actually doing in downtown Seattle in June 2008, but I'm prepared to take it at its word. Whatever its purpose, wherever its destination ... this bus is just plain wrong. And its driver knows it.

Eightballs of Fire

Seattle had a window of sunshine this afternoon that lasted about two hours. Before that was hard rain, unusual for this region, and a goddamn lightning storm, which happen here so rarely that I think I can count all the lightning strikes I've seen in seven years of Seattle residency on my fingers and toes. Last night, I filled an entire hand: five flashes, five house-shaking booms. It was wonderful.

I haven't much to report beyond that. I went to Arcane Comics and bought nearly forty bucks worth of titles, something that is all too easy to do. My old girlfriend Katharine used to spend something like fifty bucks a month on comics back in 1992, a sum I thought to border on the profligate; truthfully, it ain't shit. Granted, I've mostly been buying compilations instead of individual titles (though I'm hooked on "King City" and "Chew"), but goddamn, those funny books add up.

And that's that. It's raining again -- and I just saw a flash of lightning outside. That's the left little toe.

I was born to love.

I love Shiner Bock. It's my new go-to beer. I've had exactly two other go-to beers in my lifetime: Sam Adams and Schlitz. I ascribe this meager selection of fall-backs to my religious upbringing, and also because I never really had the college experience. I had a favorite gin before I had a favorite beer. Still, there's nothing like a beer to chase a burger, and the People's Pub -- my go-to bar -- has Shiner Bock on tap.

I love Seattle and the people who live in it, despite the fact that in the last bar I visited before this one, these assholes were cheering the Yankees.

On a related note, I love a bar that's perverse enough to blast ABBA records during the World fucking Series.

I love writing, though I've been kind of sucking at it lately.

I love Las Vegas, the city that gave me the roots I'd always wished for.

And I love quitting while I'm ahead.

Story of a Shot: A Dancer in the 2009 Fremont Solstice Parade

Here, if anything, is concrete proof of the law of averages. I took more than 500 photos at this year's Summer Solstice parade, and of those I like maybe a dozen. (The full set is here.) They're popular shots -- it's the only one of my Flickr sets to have garnered more than 10,000 hits -- which I'd chalk up to the fact that many of the images contain boobies and peepees, rather than to the artistry of the shots. The shots have no artistry, you see; I just pointed and shot and shot and shot.

But that doesn't explain what happened in this photo. This one is a moment. I don't know who this dancer is and she doesn't know who I am, but she recognizes that she's in a frame and is actively helping to compose it. In actuality, all the dancers were fanning the crowd with that fabric, but in the context of this photo she's working with me directly -- creating a kind of intimacy in the middle of one of Seattle biggest, loudest parades, and painting the lens with a resplendent wash of color. It's the best shot out of hundreds, and it proves something I've long suspected: You may stop trying to make art, but the world around you never does.