I'm back.

I've taken a break (a very long break) from blogging. I could blame it on xtube, which has become my latest addiction. but really it was work, travel, relationship, and life in general consuming my time completely. So this post is really only my way of saying I'm still here, and i'll post when i can. so check back on occasion.

New Year '06

The holidays are behind us (thank god!!)

What I've been up to:
Went to the Saint at large party at Pacha on New Years Day. Great party had a blast and ran into so many friends that I see so rarely. The evening went by in a flash, as most really good parties do. I'm glad the sound factory space is back, I love all the different levels and spaces in that club. I've never been one of those people who finds a spot and camps out for the entire evening. I love to roam and see whats going on in every part of the club. I hope there will be some good parties held there in the future.

Work, I've been busting my ass this past fall on a number of projects. Normally 90% of it dies for whatever reason, but not this time. Almost everything I worked on either got approved to move forward, or we won the businesses we were pitching. All of this means I'll be in production on a number of projects simultaneously. When it rains, it pours, right? It will all be good for me if I survive the hectic schedule. Hopefullly I'll have some fun pictures from the various shoots. One of them requires a location shoot in an exotic place. I often try to get away with setting my work in an exotic place in hopes that if it goes to production I'll get a fun trip to someplace cool out of it. Rarely does it ever work out that way, but this time it looks like its going to. last year I presented a layout on a beach with palm trees and another poolside and ended up going to miami and the keys for 10 days for the shoot. Lets keep our fingers crossed that they don't get all cheap on me and decide to shoot it all on green-screen in Hoboken.

Doodle fun

Have you ever been forced to sit through a boring, pointless meeting and spent the whole time doodling? This is my gem from yesterday's afternoon meeting.

I've often done some cool doodles (at least I think so) in meetings and considered posting them in the past. I think if it works out, I'll do more in the future. Judging by the amount on notes I took, (they are the blurred text along the right side) you can clearly see how productive/useful the meeting was.

And again last night

at a Thai restaurant on 8th ave. Holiday music at full blast the entire time. By the end of my meal I was almost at the verge of stabbing a chopstick into my temple to make it stop. But then, I looked around and everybody in the place seemed to be into it. a couple of the patrons were even humming along. Maybe it's just me.

Have a Very Merry F**k You!!

Now that the Christmas season has been forced upon us once again, I have to say the single thing I hate most (there are a great number of things I hate about this season, this is just the one I hate most) is Christmas music playing everywhere we go. If it’s meant to lull us into the joyous holiday spirit, then it has exactly the opposite effect on me. First of all. there has NEVER been a Christmas song ever written worth listening to. And second, even if there was, I wouldn’t want to listen to it on a constant fucking loop for an ENTIRE MONTH. I’m already at the point of taking an axe to every public sound system I can find in this city, and its not even December yet. I just got back from picking up my lunch at a sushi restaurant, and what do you think they had playing while I waited? Really people, what would be so wrong with silence in public spaces? Do we really need a single genre of music to dominate our sound systems for the entire season? If not for me, what about all of the people who don’t even celebrate Christmas if its annoying for us, it’s got to be the cruelest form of torture to them. I’d rather go back to the suspicious brainwashing announcements from the previous post than hear Holly-Jolly Christmas for the 3000th time.

Does this freak anyone else out?

I keep hearing these announcements on the subway saying: “If you see something, say something.” Or, “If you see suspicious persons or activity to report it”. And then again over the weekend I heard similar announcements on the train on my way out to New Jersey. It sounds logical in the current landscape of terrorism that we should all be aware right?

But then I thought, why does this feel so much like I’m being played? On the surface these announcements sound so reassuring to make us all feel calmer, safer like we’re all looking out for one another as a community. But it didn’t. They only seemed designed to make us feel paranoid of others around us. Maybe it was because they weren't asking me to simply be aware. I could accept that. But no, these announcements were directly telling me that I should be suspicious of people around me! Think about it. What good is making me suspicious of others? And if I'm suspicious of others the way I'm being asked, what is there to stop people of being suspicious of me? And what qualification do any of us have to judge anyone else? This in no way resembles a safety measure to me. It seems more like a way to make people nervous. What purpose can large groups of suspicious, paranoid people serve? It all seems to me like a ploy to keep us all on edge, and keep us looking over our shoulders, much in the same way I imagine the 1950's were during the McCarthy era when people were told to be on the lookout for communist activity. What is the goal here?

Then I remembered a quote (I don’t know offhand who said it) that goes something like this: As long as the public is kept fearful, they'd be willing to give up their rights to feel protected. Is that what they’re doing? Keeping us afraid so they can control us? Strip us of our rights? I thought maybe I am just being paranoid.

Then, I heard this week that the city has plans to install detectors in the subways (at $50,000 each) which can detect bombs. Not only bombs, but other substances as well, such as any number of illegal drugs, cocaine, marijuana, etc. Something here smells fishy doesn’t it? I thought bag searches were bad enough, now they will be using expensive equipment (which we will be paying for through our taxes) to search us at random. Have any of you had a bag searched yet? I have, and there seems to be no rules of procedure, no sense of professionalism about it in any way. The entire system seems totally uncontrolled. Remember the good old days when they needed a probable cause to search you? Now they can do it on a whim.

The thing I really think is ironic about these searches is that they feel racial profiling is bad and that right must be upheld at all costs. Yet our right to privacy is worthless and will be completely ignored. Really, how effective can the most sensitive bomb detector be if it is used in a random search? If even one person can get through unchecked, it would still be a giant game of Russian roulette. Don’t get me wrong, I think racial profiling is wrong, but spending 50 grand a pop on machines that will be rendered useless because they’ll be used in random searches, is just as wrong. And the only other way is to search everyone going into the subway? I don’t even want to think about that. I feel like our freedoms have been violated enough already.

I know I’m not the first person to feel like out current administration is lying to us and manipulating us. But I definitely see an agenda showing here. It’s sounds to me like the only people terrorizing us, is our own government under the guise of be protection.

Pinhole in the park

First the apology for staying away for so long, no real excuse other than laziness and other things going on in my life -- not that there is nothing to blog about. Believe me, there is plenty. But too much of it is not bloggable for privacy reasons.

Now on to the actual post

last week at work I was doing my usual scan of blogs and found a cool article on apartment therapy about pinhole photography. Specifically a photographer who works entirely using pinhole cameras Michel Bayard. Here's an example of his work.



I often surf the web killing time at work looking a random design sites, and last Thursday I came across apartment therapy's article on Michel. I was immediately taken with his work and clicked through to his gallery, and spent some time looking at his stuff. he has some really great scenes of the city. Simple. Moody. Classic.

Cut to Sunday afternoon. Bf and I are walking aimlessly around the city enjoying the warm weather. We walked through the village and ended up at 14th and Broadway and walked up along the park, where by chance, we passed a display of Michel's photos, and immediately like a dog tugging against his leash, I pulled my bf over to his booth. I thought how odd it is that on Thursday I could be looking at something that interests me online, then randomly be face to face with the artist a few days later. How oddly surreal. You can imagine my excitement to meet him and to have the chance to buy a couple of his pieces. I bought the cityscape above and a small shot of a water tower. We talked for a bit about how he takes his shots, and I told him how I saw his work for the first time online and how much I liked his photography. These are the times I love living in NYC, it seems like we all have a strange connection to each other that I can't imagine happens in other cities.

I can't wait to frame and hang the panorama of the city, and Bf is going to send the shot of the water tower to his mother in Canada. His%2