Anyone But Me

Day 178- Marley's hot on the box

2009-06-23T20:55:00.001-07:00

See? I haven't stopped taking pictures of anyone but me according to my self-imposed rules.

Somewhere along the way I just got my priorities straightened out. It is more important, in descending order, to; Post everyday; ask a new person if I can take their picture; talk to a new person in a friendly way; listen to the people on the outskirts.

This is Marley, celebrating his fourteenth birthday on the literal outskirts of the Venice Drum Circle, where I was relegated after a rude and inebriated apparently homeless man motioned a bikini-clad member of the local nubility in front of his drum and simultaneously elbowed me and my camera out of the way.

"You're fat! You're ruining it!" he said.

Marley here laughed out loud at that with an endearing, and seemingly habitual, combination of acceptance and oblivousness.

"He was talking to me", he said, sadly and philosophically. Marley's dad, a hot dhol player, and I, didn't think so, but I agreed, so he would keep dancing for me.

"We didn't expect him to live. The doctors, I mean. My mom and them and everyone, they said the doctors said Marley wouldn't live and everything. Down's Syndrome kids die at a young age from freak infections and this and that like they always say on the t.v. and everything. Look at him. I brang him here every Sunday since he could walk real good, you know, just to let him mix in with all the other freaks and everything, and he loves it.

The thing is though, is like, we didn't listen to all the stories about don't get attached and this n' that because he's gonna die on you. We took him for checkups on my Blue Cross every year, shots and diabetes screenings and wellness tests and all that crap and everything. And now they're all, 'oh, that's why these Down's kids all died, because they're parents listened to all that stuff about them dying young and never took them to the doctor or anywhere or anything.

See how he walked right over to you? Kids are smart, man. He knows you're good people. Send me a copy of those pics, I want my mom to see them".

Day Out of Time - Hypohypochondria

2009-05-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Today's Anyone But Me subject was a closeup of the daintily splayed fingers of a diabetic guest helping herself to the spaghetti and garlic bread buffet at a Veteran's Hospital luncheon.

An uninvited guest.

She was perfectly iconic. As I stared at her through the awkward, too-heavy new lens on my new camera, I felt a new sterotype crystallizing in my vision. The middle-aged woman slumping towards senescnence on the arm of whoever is striding by, 'needing' more pillows, having a 'problem' with lights, glare, stairs, or noise, getting 'the shakes' from some quack nebulous disorder that necesscitates her serving herself first to any visible tempting mound of starchy sugars.

"I have low blood sugar" is their 'abracabra'. It makes food appear and makes it magically okay to make a virtue of self-centered cluenessness.

When my baby was underweight early in his life, I never never never left the house without some food in my backpack. Even my own mother, who could conduct seminars in self-absorption, has real chemical hypoglycemia, and she would pass out at the foot of the champagne fountain before blurting out her infirmity in front of honored guests. Plus, being Italian, she and I never eat bread and pasta at the same meal.

Raisins in the purse, trailmix in the diaper bag. It's not difficult.

Is that what these poor dumb cows want, someone to remember to bring food along and treat them like precious children? Because the resulting emotions are the opposite response. In spades.

"If I ever get like that", I said to Husband, "I want you to put a Glock right up against my brainstem and pull. 'Close your eyes, honey, no more having to live your poor pampered suffering life'".

"You wouldn't close your eyes", he said.

The really fascinating part about the Uncontrollably Hungry Faux-Diabetic/Hypoglycemic is that I always spot her in the crowd. And she always ends up sitting at the nicest table, in front of a pile of spaghetti with a hunk of garlic toast daintily held in one pudgy hand.

The moral? I shot myself into a corner with this project.

When I started getting some momentum with the daily portraits, Husband bought me the big confusing camera. It was like setting a plate of spaghetti in front of an invalid who sat up and asked for a second cup of broth.

My beloved little point-and-shoot used to fit in my purse, like a blood-sugar snack.
Now my husband has taken it.

And by the time I get my other camera figured out and set up, I resent the subject no matter who she is. Which is not what I was going for here.

By the end of the luncheon, I introduced myself to the volunteer co-ordinator and finally got myself into the system. I am now officially a Veteran's Hospital Volunteer.

So this blog has done some good. After all.

Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be the type of spoil sport who hijacks attention through blood sugar. Some people have real problems.

(This isn't the picture I was going to use, but I liked this website so much I spent about a hundred dollars here on clothes no one but myself, my mirror and my camera will see. Oh, and you. Hello.)

Day 129- The older I get, the better I was

2009-04-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

Robert Therrien doing his Rat Pack-era Sammy Davis Jr. for my surprise party.

The more I use the new Nikon, the more I realize I need to learn. The more I start to learn, the more time I realize will need to be dedicated to studying the manual and making mistakes. The more I study photography, I realize, the less I feel like doing it.

I saw a dark and toothless Mechica-looking woman today selling cherries in front of St. Anne's Episcopal Church School with a newspaper coverlet over her babygirl's cheap plastic crib. The headline flapping in the wind was all about impending Swine Flu in Mexico. The sonofabitching camera jammed and refused to focus on the perfect shot appearing in my frame. My fault, my fault, all of it - not being in the moment, not learning the camera before I took it out, not having the Lumix with me as a fallback, being in a hurry, worrying about my stupid blog again.

I used to just bust with things to write and capture and review and comment on and say, over and over again, night after night.

It was new, there were a few of us doing it bravely together, and it was too fun to think about being 'good' at.

So yeah. We're still here.

Twenty years after I turned left for the Northbound bus and he stayed on Wilshire for the Westbound after our dance class, he shows up in costume and remembers all the things we realize together.

I just realized I say realize too much. If I were a Brit like one of those irresistable illegals I met on the westbound bus, I would say it with an 's' and it would sound ever so posh.

Day 125- Snarking Violation

2009-04-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

I have never seen such a perfect representation of a blogger's odyssey through cyber-popularity summed up so graphically and on such a cellular level as this You Tube short subject called "Validation".

Flip it one way, straight, and it is a crisp, snarky, well-produced little one-note story of schmaltzy, give-the-slobs-what-they-want happy ending love.

Flip it upside down like a Manichean playing card, and it resonates with every day of my own personal trip through webrings, Buzznet Originals,Flicker testimonials, Yelp! votes, Twitter Favrd, back up to and through my own 365Day project, here.

Except for telling people to smile, this is what I've been doing. This is what I want to do.

I think it's working. And yes it does leave me less time to validate my cyber friends.

I think its okay.

Day 160 - Eyebrows are the new lips

2009-04-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

Threading is the new collagen.

I spent a week last month in West L.A. where I noticed a duck-lipped 40-something sun her hundred-dollar pedicure next to a homeless veteran drowsing under a newspaper with economic-meltdown headlines.

Ostentation is so out. Even in L.A. .

The crisp, natural, alert and sexy look of the Indian and Middle Eastern girls streaming out of threading boutiques by UCLA, with their freshly shaped eyebrows, were the perfect opposite of the collagen-bloated personification of excess I had just witnessed.

I decided to try threading.

Imagine my surprise when I walked into Weberstown Mall last week and saw an immaculate little kiosk with a sleekly groomed and smiling lady explaining 'threading' to a group of curious shoppers. I noticed there was a wait so I waited for a weekday morning to drop by again.

Leila, (sp?) the owner/head operator, was working on a young woman with thick full brows when I came over. I got a chance to watch her work before I sat down in the chair thoughtfully provided for drop-ins. For the really interested,there's a dvd showing you how it's done, plus a few signs full of interesting threading details(it's not just for your eyebrows; men use it, too; Brad Pitt, Salma Hayek, among other celebs, are fans).

IT DOESN'T HURT, at least, no more than waxing. In fact, if your eyes are sensitive or if you're as much over 30 as I am, there is considerably less risk of damage to the thin skin around your eyes than with waxing.

It took about ten minutes, but I didn't feel either tortured or rushed. I was handed a mirror and then touched up with some silky brow powder that filled in and fixed my new eyebrow shape. It looked crisp, finished, but natural, and all for under 13 bucks.

Eyebrows are the new lips. The mouth demands, 'I am high-maintenance! Look at me!" The eyes say, "I am interested in YOU."

Nothing sets off your soul-windows like threading.

Day 156- Breathe Me

2009-04-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

This project is paying off in scary, great, terrible, important, intangible ways.

I can't keep up with posting, ironically, just when the changes I began in October are rumbling up my April days.

I got a new camera.

I got the offer of unlimited help and a whole bunch of lenses from a real professional photographer.

Best of all, I've got the chance to risk my (safety? health? livelihood? complacency?) to see justice done, and I'm going to take it. It's taking all my time.

There will be pictures.
Just can't say when.

Day 147 - Pinkie Posers

2009-03-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Product-Advocate Spokesmodel mugging with a little girl's doggie, Santa Monica Promenade.

This guy was giving away photo-ops with himself in front of this Fling's Pavilion backdrop. I noticed a very cute, very shy little girl on the edge of the crowd cradling her white doggie, and both of them framed by the sinewy old-school-tattooed arms of her daddy.

"Can I get a picture of you with the dog?" I asked of the girl and father.

"Here! Did you get it all? Look! Here. Did you get it?"

Plaid Pink Fling guy here had the puppy out of its owner's hands and in front of a bank of tourist cameras before I figured out how to take the lens cap off the Nikon.

There's something so very L.A. about this. The fact that he just assumed anybody would rather have a picture of him than anything or anybody else; the fakey MySpace-faced mugging and contrived costumery of his hi-concept 'look'; the dark and diffident little mistress, her father, and myself, resigned to being on the edges, seeing what we can see.

Day 145- L'ange Aux Aubergines

2009-03-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

Belgian guest worker loading produce truck with organic eggplants, Grand Central Market, high noon.

"Can I take your picture?", some dude asked in English, and she vigorously shook her head 'no', simultaneously flexing her muscles to show off the tatts (one leek, one artichoke) along her legs.

She was almost done loading up by the time I had approached her after she rolled down her sleeves and pulled on her wellies.

"You have such beautiful...."

"Tattoos, I know", she finished.

"No. I was going to say you have nice posture".

She looked surprised and then burst out with a facetious laugh. Then she looked at the camera and said "Cheeeeeeese!" with a smile, so that I missed the really great shot I had before, but I like this one too.

Day 143 Not Fade Away

2009-03-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

Couple dancing to Grateful Dead cover band at Ashkenaz Berkeley.

I have the softest of soft spots for people who dance, after and in spite of and sometimes in addition to, everything.

This dude had a beard like Bambi's daddy's antlers. The grizzled king of the urban underbrush, emerging with his mate down to the creek for a frolic.

Day 139- Rites of Spring - Young Girl's Dance

2009-03-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of spring.

I found ducks frolicking in the swimming pool. First day of spring.
Ducks just know.

This is a picture of one of my favorite models, who is constantly reinvigorating everyone and everything around her. Pay no attention to the rain coming down behind her - it's always springtime inside
H-Bomb's shop.

(The best part of Sonnyboy's recital was the Stravinsky, even though some cow leaned her Patou-stank'd pashmina across me to hiss to her herd-mate, "I can't stand Stravinsky" while the poor little pianist was still playing. I get him. Fuck off and shut up if you don't, mmmkaY?)

I have a new camera, and some new rules about this project and others, and it's all about cross-wind landings and dancing like a kite in spring winds.

Enjoy the breather. Let's take this little fugue space to enjoy our collective breath.

Le Sacre du Printemps- Young Girl's Dance

Day 135 - St Baldrick's Ghost

2009-03-17T21:03:00.001-07:00

My stepbrother D. via photofunia.

He is bummed that he missed St. Baldrick's Day in his neighborhood, because he wanted to be a shavee again this year. D. is about six months older than me, but was rather wild in his youth, and is a total idol and role model for me in growing older after being much desired. In his fourth decade, he maintains an absolutely Peter O'Toole-ian what-the-fuck? sang-froid in regards to the evanescing of his boyish looks into something both older and new.

I am bummed because I wanted to go take pictures of the high school St. Baldrick's Day event and I had to stay home and clean up cat crap. D. went and got a regular boy's haircut from the cheap neighborhood barber today, instead of the $45 'image enhancing style' he used to get back in the '90's, and he is perfectly happy and content that way.

We both are going through a photofunia phase.

I made him Jack Sparrow, my other role model of a good man bravely and gamely beau-geste'ing through life after losing the best thing you've had.

A good example of what this site could be, if I had better equipment, if my models were willing, if I knew what I was doing

Character Project

Day 133- Organic Reality Television

2009-03-15T10:22:00.001-07:00

Suddenly-unemployed older fellow busking on Valencia outside premiere of "Throw Down Your Heart".

How apropro.

He had the best attitude I've seen outside of that Prince-cover band playing in the London underground three days after the bombings. Only this current crisis will last even longer.

He got our attention by advertising himself as the world's first carbon-free, certified organic reality talk show, then dazzled us with a snappy vaudevillian political burlesque patter accompanied by a Felix-the-cat-bagful of visual puns.

It was raw and windy out there.

We gave him 5 bucks. We were the only ones who stopped.

Next time, I'm going to film him. But then it wouldn't be organic anymore.

Day 131 - Mother Love

2009-03-13T01:11:00.000-07:00

Mother Love wants you to know that her trailer is for sale and she is ready to 'take it to a whole nother level' with her seafood place down by the port.

When her restaurant on the water in New Orleans went out of business after Katrina, she followed a handsome Californian down to the Stockton deep water channel.

"We have a delta too, you know."

"Nah, they want tacos here. I need to get back to catfish and gumbo land".

Day 123 "Are you taking a picture of the hummus?"

2009-03-05T21:43:00.000-08:00

Pretty townie getting mehndi at my friend's one-woman show.

Two beautiful girls who wouldn't let me get any closer than a table's-length away and a persistent Romeo refusing to stay out of my camera range.

I really liked the light falling around the spa owner in the darkroom, too. She didn't like the close-up I took of her, but she liked this one okay.

Day 122 - Happy Girls' Day

2009-03-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

Keiki and her cake.

Keiki's mother is a homesick Okinawan-Hawaiian whom I work with. She mentioned to me that she wished she could bake because her little daughter had a powerful obsession with heart-shaped cake. Keiki was born with a few health problems and doesn't always remember to eat...sometimes for days. She also has a complex and artistic personality of the type you just can't affect.

Being somewhat obsessive myself, and grateful to feel the slight stirring of inspiration, I came up with a cake for little Keiki. It involves over a pound of butter, fresh pureed strawberries,bourbon vanilla, and enough powdered sugar to make your floor dusty and sticky for days afterwards. Recipe available on request.

I got the heartshaped pan on sale for $2 marked down from $10, a week after Valentine's Day. I gave Keiki's mother the cake yesterday, by coincindence Japanese Girl's Day. They both cried, and her mother, being the sage spiritual guardian that she is, bade everyone wait to eat it until they had taken this picture to thank me.

Girl's Day

Day 121- Morris and Mischa

2009-03-03T10:07:00.001-08:00

At the Junior Recital afterparty.

Somewhere in a deep recess of the most shallow subcultures of West L.A. there exists at least two young men who, on a rainy Friday night, put on dress shirts and hard shoes and party manners to support a younger friend's first performance for his peers.

"Why are they being so nice to me?", I asked Sonnyboy.

"You probably remind them of their mothers. None of my white or Asian band mates say that, but all the foreign-born dudes do. Plus, they're classical musicians. We're all nice".

Day 115- Kanji and Fatso

2009-02-26T09:42:00.000-08:00

"Coatless, and buckled into his best belt, he had, at nearly thirty, the free and easy charm and slightly plebian elegance of many an errand boy you see darting through the crowd on his bicycle, nimble as a bird in a bush. "But, in a jacket, I just look common", Maxime decided as he picked up his cat. " - Armande, Colette

Yesterday was one of the days this project was made for.

I'm very very tired. Worried, out of inspiration, distracted, beset by trivia, and still with the cold.

I took my camera(s) on a walk downtown through a side lane I've never used before.

The soft light spearing weakly through the moist fog combined with the delicious Eat-at-Joe's-place lunch time smells made everything all Penny Lane.

I ordered a ratatouille crepe from the Bretagne place that always lets me walk around and take pictures of their art. I saw a young man who looked like a character from a bohemian novel dashing, literally, up and down the sunny side of the path and darting into a narrow doorway.

The doorway was the storefront of a nearly-century-old family business.

He invited me in and let me take photos of the army-men vs. Totoro tableau set up in the showroom window. Fatso here got jealous and jumped up in my lap.

I stayed and took a whole roll of lomo shots, plus this snap and couple of others. When I offered to email Kanji here a copy, he laughed and said they didn't have email. "Everybody says, get with this century!'" He shrugged. "Why?"

I feel as new-blessed as Colette finding a new back slope of Montmartre or Lennon tripping on Penny Lane.

Day 119- Laissez-Les Bontempts Roulez

2009-02-24T21:11:00.001-08:00

"You don't have any beads. Man, that ain't right. Take some of mine. No? Have some beer".

Main street is still alive.

How are you?

Day 116 - Visual Freeganism

2009-02-21T10:09:00.000-08:00

B on the Bus via Dirty Dan Sin

"I took this for you on the 51 Broadway and don't remember if I ever sent it. I have another on the home computer that I will send this evening.

We got engaged on valentine's day - no date yet but sometime in the next 365 :-)"

This was in response to a public plea on my other site for people to feel free to step in and fill the gaps in this project until me, my camera and my computer are up and running.

Dan validated all possible requirements for the definiton of 'posse'.

Feel like helping out? You can do it, too. Leave your email in the comments. Take a photo of a stranger and tell me how it went here on this blog.

Thanks, congrats, and mitakuye oyasin, DirtyDan.

Day 111 - Thousand words worth less than (no) picture

2009-02-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

See that last photo? Wasn't it fun? Well, I was using my lomo camera because the digital was being unreliable.

Yesterday I dropped and broke my lomo, so that's done for too.

But you know what I've found out? Saying hello to someone different, every day, is the lesson. Asking may I make art from your face is the shaolin daily exercise part of this project.

Everybody knows if you take a hundred pictures, if you're really lucky, you might get two good ones, and a canny photographer scrubs the bunk ones. You poor people here been only been getting my scrubs.

Seeing people as themselves, as integral as it is to this goal I've set for myself, has made little changes in how I think and live....like tiny grains of sand day by day diverting that sludgy tired old river up north there back to the sea where it belongs.

We all belong to the same sea.

When I'm asking someone if I can take their photo, a peculiar thing keeps on happening to me, over and over again. I feel less intimidated, or annoyed, by people, and start to feel like we're all speeding souls on this cosmic freeway. We're all part of a big organism that may be heading somewhere worthy or not, but our survival, or at least the pleasantness of the ride, is dependent on each other.

In the past 110 days, I've gone from self-hate and compulsively trying to compete with the most beautiful and talented self-portraitists on Narcissusland, to feeling like the person who is in charge of rate assignments after Armageddon hits. I see the value in everyone. Every face. It just doesn't come across in this pictures. Yet.

Letting go of my need to look good in pictures, be all ego-stroking things to all anonymous buzznetters, to make money or get strokes for my blogging, all burned away in the mad new obsession to look at the folks speeding by and say hello.

Now, surprisingly and paradoxically, I want to dance. I'm dancing better than ever.

"Dance everyday, if only on the inside", the great Arabia once said. Word.

The same thing goes for my Anyone But Me project. I look at your face, frame you in
an imaginary portrait, every single day, if only behind and between my eyes.

Opa Cupa

Day 110- Sforzo and the flying machine

2009-02-14T15:13:00.000-08:00

Young Slovenian international-exchange-student getting a cockpit ride at Lodi airport. Scan of a lomo photo. I cropped the instructor, but left in the stepladder just for laughs.

Day 109 - Gerald

2009-02-13T18:21:00.000-08:00

Just because I'm going to be shut away from the world in a dark room for 14 hours doesn't mean anybody's stopping me from waking up early and walking around the faubourg
before I have to drive to work.

Gerald here is the first person who ever actually accosted me about taking his picture. He'd never seen his own image in an 'instant camera' as he called it. He also offered his name, which no one has done so far.
I found him methodically and skillfully going through the 'recycling' bins put out on trash night the evening before.

"A society that throws away enough good stuff that other people can use will throw away people who still have some good in them too". Turns out he dropped out of Navy Basic Training with a brain-injury-induced coma and a Section 8 just like someone in my family. It happens.

We didn't have time for a righteous sea story, so I just let him see what he looked like in digital, per his request, and told him some of my easier Freegan recipes.

"Someday, I'm going to come over for supper. Get rid of them cats first".

Day 107 Take me to the river

2009-02-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

President Obama's inauguration felt like the family reunion a lot of folks didn't even know they'd been needing.

The enforced-buy-nothinghood of Christmas '08 went halfway to bringing people together;
the open-door, block-party inauguartion night celebrations really did, like the Best Man's toast after a wedding benediction.

Here you see two generations of an African-Pacific-Islander-Euro-American family in a rare moment of February sunshine. They were the only two to get into the hot tub fully clothed. It was fine. They obviously are getting something from this moment together.

Grandma was smiling after giving up trying to remember the scripture verse she was looking for. "Something something water and rivers going on and on." She shrugged and took grand-daughter into the warm water with her. I took the photo.

Someday when Rani asks what happened the before day her grandmother died, I can tell her, she was passing you the secrets of time and the river. She was able to let go now that a new tide was rising over your country.

Tuesday, February 10 - Auntie Zen

2009-02-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

I had given up on getting anyone to let me take their picture for the day when this lady came out of a nail salon practically into my camera range.

I politely asked if I could take her picture. If I could have got the look on her face at that moment,this would have been a great portrait. I expected;modesty, offended humility, maybe a little surprise, a headshake of denial.

What I got from her instead was a masterful display of tolerance.

"I never let anyone take my picture, but I like your reasons".

*She asked to remain anonymous, so I will refrain from any further commentary except to add that when I thanked her I told her she reminded me of a great-aunt who I've lost touch with, and she gave me a look of furious reproach. Baby boomers.

Day 104 - Harry Potter and the Patel Twins

2009-02-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

Sometime during the summer that The Goblet of Fire came out, he
quit talking to me.

We just quit hanging out.

The magnetism of our relative True Norths just kept us drifting apart.

But once in awhile I catch him doing something he never would admit he got from me (silly rave props, dancing, that Noel Redding shirt) and, being me, I got this shot without anyone even knowing I was there.

And then, being myself, I'm posting it on the internet. That's how I roll.

Day 103 Play N Trade

2009-02-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

"Come'ere, Joshua, a lady out here wants to get our picture".

"Why do I have to be in it?"

"Ah come on, do I always get to be the only one who has fun up in here? Because it's fun".

"Let me turn the lights on in the marquee. Here, the light's better by the door. I used to sketch in this kind of light. I took a semester in Video Game Building at Art Center before I quit. Did I ever show you..."

"He's smiling! Take it now, Miss. Hah! Boss is smiling.That's okay, you still look like the boss".

I never get over how grateful people are to see how beautiful they are just being themselves, for a moment, witnessed by a stranger.

Day 102- I finally take that walk

2009-02-07T11:00:00.000-08:00

Purple Girl in the Wilderness Reserve.

Day 100- A Man of his word

2009-02-04T22:39:00.000-08:00

He said he would someday buy his dream ride, and he did.

He was just standing there nodding when I told him we'd love to see him if he ever wanted to come by on one of his rides. I mentioned wanting to get a shot of him in the mid day sun, before work.

"I'll be there" he said. Here he is.

He promised that he wouldn't stay poor, or keep working the job that's giving me an ulcer.

"I'll hop on my bike and ride away".

And he did.

Day 99-San Joaquin soldiers on

2009-02-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

The Ironworkers are our union brothers. I caught this sight on my way back to the gym for the first time since November, and thought, Dude has his shit in one sock fo' reals.

Everyone at the bus stop just a few meters beneath this girder, and all the retirees in my Zumba class, were all buzzing about the millions of jobs lost this morning. Everyone seemed to notice each other's winter weight and the baggage of unwitnessed insecurities brought out into light at the same time.

I left the class still sweating like a stuck pig and with hair that looked like a tumbleweed, grabbed my camera and legged it over to the construction site.

Sihouettes. I should have known that Ironworkers would dig it about silhouettes.

Every man there (no women, sadly) was proud to be working and proud to have their picture taken. I was a little embarrassed about looking like someone's mother, and/or a slob, but it was all good. The foreman looked like he could have been my dad's dad. He was sihouetted with a coffee mug and a clipboard, standing straight in that frontal Egyptian way Steelworkers have. One of the forklift operators was a dead ringer for Gael Garcia Bernal. He smiled at me through his yellow safety glasses and let his eyes wash over my body while offering me half his lunch. The Chinese general contractor walked out of the trailer and frowned at everybody and then one of the older workers said 'She's a Teamster" and he frowned harder and walked back in and slammed the door.

Nobody said anything bad about the economy.

"Where do you work out?" Gael asked. "Hey, is that a Chronicle?", talking to his newspaper-reading buddy, "save me the Morford column, eh?"

"I went to a Zumba class but I walked out because it was stupid. It was fun, though. Mark Morford hates Stockton".

"I know. Talk about stupid and fun."

"I wonder what Mark Morford would say about Zumba. A white guy who types for a living and acts like he invented yoga wouldn't have too much in common with a couple of skins in the Central Valley, nah mean?"

Gael shot me a look. "Is your dad an Ironworker?"

"No, but I know a lot of Apache and Mohawk cousins who are. Those guys never join nothing. You must be alright".

General contractor came out again with an Il Duce posture and we all scattered.

So the lessons of my long break are, I guess, as follows-

When you dance again, you don't remember not feeling like dancing. You remember what you liked about being yourself and what is stupid.

It's okay to look your age.

Work is ennobling, workplaces are humiliating.

And, sociobiology gives better answers about sex than show business, marketing, or religion; a good man doing skilled work is visible from half a mile away with the sun against you; and, long and healthy hair, a small waist and a darting gait are ancient powerful signifiers of a woman approaching on the horizon when we are all repped by our silhouettes against a morning sun.

This blog is back.

Please join me.

Day 1- Every Dog Has His Day

2009-01-19T11:31:00.001-08:00

In less than twenty-four hours, we will have a new President.

Where will we go the day after that.

I finally went for my walk. Here I am just on the heels of a gang of youngfellas disgorged from an locovato Chevy, innocently swinging their poles on a walk to the old fishin' hole.

People aren't who you think they are. That was the reason behind this blog. Anybody remember?

I heard screeching and yelling sounds triangulated by the deep water port, and started to turn around and begin my hike in the opposite direction. Too late.

About five dudes from a Cambodian gang I recognized were squatting around watching a pitbull maul a fighting cock half to death. My sudden movement attracted the dog towards me.

The group of truant cholo fishermen up ahead made a circle around me. Without even pausing in their conversation. Without more than a quick glance towards me. Without me asking or thanking them.

"Here, Blackie" one of them laughed, and tossed a chunk of Velveeta to the slavering hound, who ran off like a yellow cur.

"Can I take your picture?" I asked.

"Yeah, take a picture of his ass, it looks better than his face", said the taller one.

So I did.

Another mysterious example of the power of instinctual brotherhood to counteract the bad apple effect. I can't link it here. Google 'This American Life/Bad Apples", you'll see what I mean.

Sometimes.....I love folks. I love the battle. Tides turn. Times change. Every dog has its day.

This blog is suspended for legal reasons until further advised.

Happy Inauguration Day

Who can count the days? Or ways

2009-01-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

What this blog could have been, and still might be, was an imperative to get me away from myself, out of Social-Tech time, into the alternate parallel Real Worlds and microgalaxies behind every new face.

So what happened, at least in the first days, were that I would gladly give up my comment-returning-time to go outside, and the magnetic-pull of my inspiration led me to ask strangers to let me take their pictures. It was always good. It worked. It gave back to me and them, if not always to this blog.

What I didn't forsee is that my chronic mono would bushwhack me so badly that I would be sidelined before I could even get up off the couch. Before, I had the time and energy, but no ambition. Now I have the ideas (thank you, muse!) but no energy.

None.

I hate feeling like this. Three weeks and counting of dizzy spells, fever blisters and no energy to spare. This is exactly the trap I wanted to avoid when I came up with this idea.

So here's my promise - the very next time I feel like getting up, I am going to take my camera. I am going to go somewhere I haven't been ; one thing this blog has taught me is that it is inherently more productive to, say, go visit someone in the hospital than to furiously blog the state of health care, or to attempt talk to a stranger in their native language instead of leaving smarty-pants Babelfish comments on some Eurotrash blog ; and I am going to start taking pictures of people who don't yet know they want to know me.

Promise.

Day 57 - Take Off

2009-01-06T15:58:00.000-08:00

Head Counterman at sportplane rental place hidden between work artifacts.

A word about the 365 Days of Anyone But Me Project -

Yes, I have been taking, or at least asking to take, a different photo of a different new person every day.

And yes, it has been an interesting experiment.

I don't have the juice to write about it. I can't spare the energy to edit and post.

I'm taking off a week off to let this annual recurrence of my chronic virus to finish kicking my butt. Then I expect to feel inspiration and motivation seep back through my brainpan groundwater with my returning health.

The social capital generated by this simple project has made the beginning of this year the best in my memory. I feel flawed, but strong.

"Learn to be peaceful, and thousands around you will find salvation." St. Seraphim of Sarov

Day 54 - Holes

2009-01-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

Head Shop customer with a sense of humor and a knowledge of Picnik requests to be 'smudged' when we go live with this.

"You know, this place is the only local business that hasn't gone under in the past few months. People come here to feel good and also to buy sweet bong screens."

Day 53 - Mendocino in the Morning

2008-12-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

"I wanted to go to that karaoke party at that bar in Livermore tonight. But the boss just texted me that they really need this up there in Mendocino by the first. It's already a new year, can you believe that? Crazy. So I'm just over there at that Starbucks getting me a big coffee to get me through this night. Hey, Happy New's Years."

Day 53 Shake it up, Sugaree- See You at the Jubilee

2008-12-29T14:00:00.000-08:00

One, or perhaps both, of these people fit the rules.

The rendezvous was a meeting of mountain men, fur traders, and skinners. It was held once a year. The place and time were passed along by word of mouth and intuition.

This photo was taken about five minutes after we decided to do it. The chest in the foreground is my Christmas gift.

Me? Not me? Who cares? See you around the mountains.

Day 52

2008-12-28T00:17:00.000-08:00

"Yeah, I know I look like shoe-thrower. No, I do not want to let you take my picture. If you catch, you can keep."

Day 51- Hours Before the Winter Sun's Ignited

2008-12-25T22:43:00.000-08:00

"The dove-blue holiness of Sunday....." - Dancer from the Dance

I woke up early to take a walk around the neighborhood as they woke up to private personal Christmas joys.

This guy came running out from his open garage to meet me.

"Let me turn on my lights, and you can take a picture!"

It was the first of many sweet and surprising gifts I got today.

This blog is both much more boring for the reader, and meaningful for me, than I could have predicted. I can't wait to see what 2009 brings.

Merry Christmas.

My Favorite Customer

2008-12-24T15:53:00.000-08:00

"Hey Carl, I'm going to take your picture, okay?"

A fraction of a second later he stuck out his tongue, but I was quick.

Carl works in the rain and the ice and the heat and the dust, and nothing ever gets him down. They used to call him half-car, but I still don't know why.

He likes everyone, always has something nice to say, and never meets a stranger.

He is my psychic opposite.

He helps balance Blue Lake.

Seven Days of "No"

2008-12-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

"All winter holidays are based on rituals to call back the sun in the winter dark. You fucking well better not show my face".

"Here. This is the pretty part".

"Full sunlight. Use a flash. That better be 35mm film in there. (note- it was). Lift tip of tongue to just behind teeth, slightly open mouth. If you do all that plus remove digital noise, you can post it."

"Wait'll I move this lawn, be right back"

"What do you mean, I'm cute, Miss Beauty? YES to taking it, YES to posting it, NO, I don't want to see it".

"What're you, a fuckin' cop? Yeah, I know it's Christmas Eve, get off my land".

"just my profile. I didn't wash my hair and I don't want to put on lipstick"

Day 46 - Stan Lee Lost a Bet

2008-12-20T00:44:00.000-08:00

Day 46 - The Macro Universe of Forced Overtime

2008-12-18T01:10:00.000-08:00

Camphone pic of ____ ____, my radioman homie

He was a generous resource for his stories about tattoo art in the Balkan ruins , and our hours of overtime conversations about biblical mythology and the nature of 'goodness' and why he didn't use torture when he was in Iraq. (one reason - it's a lousy interrogation tecnique.)
- Thanks. I didn't want to make you wait for the novel to get a publisher to be acknowledged.

Day 46 - Unfair Trade

2008-12-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

My niece Jamila poses for the label of her family's Christmas vintage.

Day 44 Here is My Heart

2008-12-13T21:48:00.000-08:00

Detail of a Designer Perfumes kiosk salesgirl with the colorful shirt.

A Maillot figure and a Renoir complexion, plus a Mona Lisa smile. Due to being about 20 pounds bigger than the mannequins in the GAP window behind her, she made me delete her face.

It was a pretty one.

I'm almost done with my holiday shopping. Will upload the last two days when I finally get to my own laptop.

I bought two stocking-stuffer-sized bottles of Ed Hardy Men's that I didn't need from this girl. The power of subliminal visuals.

Day 44 - Louie's Top Shoppe and Xmas Tree Lot

2008-12-13T19:56:00.000-08:00

Louie's endless supply of brothers-in-law provide the labor and work for tips plus an occasional shot at a warm place to sleep off the morning Scotch-and-tamale heartburn.

I realize I am a day behind. I actually had a day when everyone I asked said no.

(I dreamed last night that a pale and matted little red fox jumped up on my bike handlebars to nuzzle my cheek. It was bliss. I wonder if it means anything.)

Day 43 Sucking Up to the Local Management

2008-12-12T15:52:00.000-08:00

During the 20 minutes that this informal little chat took place, six of her flights came over to my (busier) circuit and Oldgirl here miraculously disappeared from the schedule until after the new year.

I am being held over on mandatory overtime from now until the 31th so that fuckin heffa
can go back east for her dad's third annual recurring seasonallly-induced visit to death's door.

Fuckface didn't even think of wearing a skirt herself until she saw me doing it. She really shouldn't try and get away with a full skirt with such a cowlike waistine and wide flat ass.

This is another time I am breaking one of my own rules. No permission asked or given. At least, it's only my own dumb rules and not a major multinational corporation's ethic policy I'm violating.

Fuck you to death, Noo Yawk Fauxhemian.

Day 43 -Madonna and Child

2008-12-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

Mother in the parking lot of the homeless shelter with her son. Today was his 10-month birthday.

I ended up standing next to them in the hallway of the recieving room. I don't know whether they were dropping off donations like me or waiting for room at the inn.

This shelter treats everyone the same.

The smell inside that room was like breathing underwater in a swamp. It made the worst foot-and-ass-and-greasy-stove institutions of my backstory seem in retrospect like the Sephora counter at Neiman's.

Nothing left but the smell, like Erika Lopez says.

I got to hold the baby for a minute. He smelled like malt-o meal and talcum powder.

Day 43- Dear Santa. I have been a good girl this year.

2008-12-10T21:47:00.000-08:00

How does it feel to be the child of the poor relations that no one wants to invite? Do you know your parents are losers and tweekers? What do you think about when you pass the house of that big Christian family with all the cool reindeer light sculptures on their lawn next to the big "Yes on Prop 8" signs still standing? Do you think they really mean it when they ask you over for a night of Bible stories and caroling?

Apparently you do. Apparently, they did.

I was standing there in the hallway when they invited you in, talking to the Older Brother about his new band. You smelled like sick wet dog and mildew, and I heard your stomach growl as we both smelled the gingerbread baking. I wish your dad didn't hate us so bad that you can't come over our house. I wish it wasn't so hard to be good to people right under our noses, literally.

The girls called you upstairs where they were writing birthday cards to Jesus and I overheard you composing your letter out loud to Santa (because, if you've got nothing, it must be because you're not good, right? Santa is Jesus when you're a poor kid) and I remembered the hymn "Jacob's Ladder" a second before I thought to take this picture.

Day 42 - Xmas Shopping in the Rain

2008-12-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

Sign Guys are the canaries in the coal mine. Like the adolescent males who are placed as the first line of defense around the food stores of simian collectives.

Disposable and yet the first to accept what nobody else wants to see.

Day 41- Oh Little Town of East L.A.

2008-12-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

Self-Help Graphix in East L.A. was putting on another one of their more-than-usually-awesome special events this weekend.

Ofelia ("Mary") and her brothers (2 of the three wise guys) let me take this.

This is so like what I want to be doing with my picture-taking - a big box of myths you can pick up and put on while slipping into another soul. It helps to make a huge ass of yourself and not take the end result too seriously, either.

Day 40- Jim and Chip

2008-12-07T18:25:00.000-08:00

"Hey".

"Hey!"

"I saw you up on the trail earlier. Can I take your picture?"

"Sure! Oh, wait, Chip wants me to dry him off first. We had to have our run through the water, didn't we, boy? I'm Jim".

"Nice to meet you, Jim. That picture didn't turn out very well. I didn't bring my camera, just this cell phone".

"No, that's great! Looks just look us, don't it boy?"

"But you're not in it. There's only part of you in the frame".

"That's okay", getting into the car dry and happy together, "You got me on a run with Chip. You got the best part of me".

Day 39- Ms. M.

2008-12-06T15:33:00.000-08:00

Ms. M keeps an office on the ground floor of the big professional arcade that I pass on the way to the freeway.

When I'm having a lull, like this one I'm in currently, I do something I'm scared of or something I hate before I begin my day. The elevator in Ms M.'s building is creaky, poky, and scary, and I hate it.

After weeks of sneaking for panicky elevator joy-rides, I peeked into the closest office. It smelled like soy candles and good tea. The colors were soothing and perky. Ms. M. herself was tolerantly amused. She let me come in and take her picture while waiting for her morning tutoring student.

I still don't like elevators, but I like this place.

Day 37- Some people really know how to relax

2008-12-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

The Honey Spa Salon is a natural nail salon that uses no acrylics or chemical fragrances.

No cellphones, pagers or loud talk is allowed. This isn't enforced, just understood. Loud people generally don't like natural nails and 90-minute pedicures.

This happy man just got a 15 minute honey foot massage.

"It's the only vacation I'll get this year".

I'm coming back for the 20 minute chair-massage.

Day 37- Everybody Will Die

2008-12-03T00:47:00.000-08:00

Day 39 - The only non-white person in DiversityLand

2008-12-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

Why would a guy, wearing a big ol' custom-printed "Obama is my man" tshirt, buying drinks for all the other philosophers solving the world's problems (at 10 a.m.?), conspicuously petting all the dogs of all the prettythinwhitefemale customers, fling a filthy name at an innocent woman asking permission to take your picture?

"Oh come on", the nervous bartender said, "don't be a dick. Here, hon, take one of Gary under my flag".

The fellow who refused to be photographed went on with his World Peace as Long as It's Inside a NorCal Bar act out on the heated patio, while I got this nicer guy in blurry profile.

This blog is getting to be a lot like my life - the places where I think I'm going to see a new and interesting face is just another sauce with the same old leftovers.
And the places where I go everyday with no inspiration always surprise me, like a cat that suddenly answers when you call.

This town was the whole damn list

Day 38- Come Fly with Me

2008-12-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Captain Hotel Lima is the best person in the world.

No exceptions.

End of story.

She has a story, and it would earn her a place in that new December sky right next to Orion, but she doesn't want me to repeat it.

I'm lucky she let me take her picture.

When I'm alone and sad, I cheer myself up by making collages of what I want to get her for her birthday.

Day 37- Thanksgiving Girl

2008-11-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

This came into my email this morning, forwarded from one of my pals at a veteran's forum. The picture was not taken by me, so I realize I am breaking my own rules.

It WAS, however, taken by my camera, by one of the friends who was allowed in, and edited by me in Picnik in my browser.

From the proud papa's email -

"I never made a big deal about it or asked for prayer requests or what not, but for years back in late 90's-2004 we tried to have a baby. First we had fertility issues, then we could conceive, but where plagued with a serious of miscarriages/ 2nd and 3rd trimester still birth's. Eventualy they declared us DNA incompatable, so we moved on and tried not to think of all the funerals we've had for our unborn children. Heavy shit.

But I'll be damned, we had ourselves a genuine miracle. Today....Thanksgiving Day....Danielle Ann was born at 7:57 this morning. I can't express how I feel, other than to tell all of you never give up hope. I can't say she was planned, I can't say having children at 48 years old is easy, but I can tell you all, never give up hope, and great things will happen when you least expect them. There is so much more I would like to say, but I have been up since Monday at this point sitting here in the hospital. I am still grasping the idea of leaving here and not attending a makeshift funeral in the hospital chapel. My eyes are raw from crying with happiness for the first time ever. I can't describe all of the emotions going thru me today, not only for Danielle, but for all of those we have lost and never named. Thanks for letting me share guys."

On my way into work today, I was listening to an interview with photographer Martin Schoeller.
"Why does a portrait photographer feel that they owe it to their subject to present a flattering work? Do journalists? Is nakedness only real if you can leave your eyeliner on?"

I wonder what the evolution of photography will be like by the time little Danielle is old enough to take her own picture. I wish for her, among other things, a world that welcomes beauty this real, raw, and, yes, naked, without the Victorian-prude squeamishness toward unphotoshopped female naturalness that abounds today.

Welcome to the world, Danielle. Welcome to the web.

Day 36- Old dogs, New Tricks

2008-11-29T11:20:00.000-08:00

Muzzie and "Juvie" , ie, Junior, his prize Smooth Fox Terrier

Neither of these guys have let me take their picture before.

Love those smiles.

Day 35- Nikki and her friend

2008-11-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

For Buy Nothing Day, Nikki's mistress and her sisters got together and swapped white elephants from last Christmas and ate leftover mince pie with hard sauce for lunch.

No one was stampeded.

A very civilized custom.

Day 34- Turkeys

2008-11-27T09:48:00.000-08:00

Mean and bitter old hippie trying so hard to catch up on all the High-Profile Protests scheduled for Worthy Causes happening around the Strip this weekend that he pretends not to notice the little immigrant child asking him in broken English what that animal is.

I took his picture just because he pretended not to hear me ask permission. I know he was pretending because when a cute little messenger boy rode past a minute later and yelled "Obama!", pointing at my t-shirt, OldBoi looked up and thinly smiled, ready to play. Too late, pal.

No wonder he's sitting there alone.

I was invited to five different Thanksgiving dinners this year. The meal I had at the Hollywood IHOP was one of the best.

There is a place for you at our table, if you desire it. - the Talmud

Day 34- Where's Waldo?

2008-11-26T09:34:00.000-08:00

One of those holidays where you have to go 'home' to places where you haven't felt heard, seen, understood, or appreciated since you stumbled off into the real world after that first searing glimpse of it through your tattered pscyhic caul, twenty years before.

This is home? This is where I made all those lizard-brain associations that I write from, center on, panic about? And then I see that Mom, for all her histrionic arm-waving and repetition of her holiday mantra "Nobody's helping me!" had not managed even to clear a table, let alone make sure there is a turkey defrosted or any butter in the house. How anyone can have the nerve to invite people over for a meal without butter is another one of those irrational reactions I feel down to my bones.

I don't want to be a bitch, and I'm certainly not surprised. It's what I expected. But it's not what I know. In a minute or two, I'm going to have to tell Mom that we're leaving, that I got several invitations to Thanksgiving this year and one of them is with part of my happy extended family-in-law, people who really like and enjoy me, and don't just want to herd me in by guilt and hold me captive. There is absolutely no anger like the baffled angry-child surprised resentment of a parent or spouse who realizes that other people like your captive more than you seem to appreciate her.

So I get myself together by disappearing into one of the bedrooms for a minute. Mom has invited an old friend of _________'s from our Hollywood days. They still keep in touch. I can't believe that face still looks as easy and familiar to my eyes as it did when he used to be desired by Willie Heron and El Vez and we used to sleep all day on the Crosstown Bus together after a night watching the Dyslexic Speedreaders.
Memories like old teddybears that I didn't buy and ain't even mine, but they comfort, and I won't throw them away. Every cell has its places to hide.

There is always something to be grateful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Day 33 - Walk it like you talk it

2008-11-25T20:06:00.000-08:00

Man and muttface strolling down by Lighthouse Drive.

"Hey, thanks for the picture! Now can you look up a little?" Or, maybe, come out a little more into the sun?"

"Did you get Charley? Charley loves the camera, don't you boy? What do you need me to look up for?"

"It's too dark. I can't see your face".

Ohhhhhh. I stood there and thought about it for a beat, and then
he shook his head and walked off, whistling while I stood there feeling lucky and stupid at the same time.

Day 32- Nina. No, srsly.

2008-11-24T21:59:00.000-08:00

I know that Day 31 was a little boy who told me his name was Nino and now I give you Day 32 and a little woman named Nina. It's a common nickname in my neighborhood.

I spent way too much time yesterday on Science Daily's Social Psychology section, and thus was reminded that before I had a blog I never let anyone take my picture, and was resigned to being irredeemably hideous in film.

Those studies- and the fact that I had only my old lomo with me today - made me remember a time when nobody asked to see themselves on digital after you took their picture (as all of the children to have appeared on this page have done).
There was a time when we didn't expect to have to be seen in a context of free photoediting software and flattering profiles and self-promotion for its own sake.

"The truly sincere and secure are more commonly represented by a snapshot rather than a posed and edited glamor avatar" - Science Daily.

Nina. She works hard. She laughs easily. She does a mean samba when she's had a couple of shots of Cuervo. She took in two abused foster children and dozens of stray cats.

She doesn't know why on earth I want to take her picture, but the thought makes her laugh. When I bring the prints back from 1-Hour Photo for her approval, she says she doesn't care, they all look nice to her, and she means it, and she is right.

Day 31- Nino

2008-11-23T20:46:00.001-08:00

Nino's brother and mother were at the rally in Sacramento today, but he missed it.

I missed yesterday's post, too.

I was walking past the mall tonight when I saw these kids out with their signs, a make-up consolation protest.

We're all a day behind and alone in the dark, only now, not so much, and publicly private.

Work has sucked donkey dicks lately. Hoping to be caught up again tomorrow.

Day 30- Heat Map Hawaiian

2008-11-21T21:20:00.000-08:00

Hauna Hou always looks like the only human element in a room full of cold hard equipment.

I used heat map effect to highlight this.

I'm in a rut. I wish I remembered what it was like to want to write.

Day 29- Holographic Lace

2008-11-20T21:58:00.000-08:00

Avi is justifiably proud of the custom paint job on his ride.

When I asked him if I could take his picture, he said, 'okay, but only if you get my truck. No, how about, YOU in the truck, in the front seat, and I take the picture?"

That's when I discovered that my Italian is good enough to fool panhandlers and camera-shy young tourists.

This paint job was pretty sweet.

Eve in Red

2008-11-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

Seriously, did you just bring a snake into my store?

Day 28 - We're Still Here

2008-11-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

"I'm your subject for Day 28? hey that's major. It's female. Think what it is, to be a female. A lot can happen in 28 days. Remember 28 days ago? Yeah,I thought everything would change when Obama won, too, but then all that Prop8 stuff happened so here we are again.

It's all good. It's all good, being female. Think what it means to have days to use like this. To have a life."

Day 27- The Drums of the Fore and Aft

2008-11-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

Anonymous female Rudyard Kipling fan who wanted her picture taken, but not her face.

She noticed my camera only after I pointed out that she was keeping perfect march-time.

"Everything is in perfect time these days".

Let's hope so.

Day 26- Fair is Fair

2008-11-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

At the Anti-Proposition 8 rally downtown on Monday night, a lively young protester demonstrates the fundamental inclusiveness and lack of territoriality in the Equal Marriage Rights Movement...an attitude in sharp contrast to the so-called peace movement.

Day 25 - Sunshine in the Breakfast Room

2008-11-18T22:14:00.000-08:00

A visit from a friend from times past.

The name of his old band was very close to the title of this post.

He still sounds as sweet as creekwater campfire coffee with a slug of whiskey.

Days 25-27 Ghosts in the Machine

2008-11-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

I actually have been doing pretty good about collecting new photos every day.

I have no way to upload pics for a few days.

Be back soon as possible.

Day 24- Toil

2008-11-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

More males.

Is it just that females are more often concerned with who they are rather than what they do?

I interrupted these two highly trained and hardworking IT guys to take their picture, and they loved it. They didn't even pose (much). This was after two breathtakingly gorgeous women refused on the grounds they were 'ugly', ie, not perfect.

Is it just that males are more often defined by the beauty of what they do rather than how they look?

Nah.

Couldn't be that simple, or the one on the right wouldn't have bothered to suck in his gut.

Thanks, fellows. I think what you do, and how you look, is important and yeah, beautiful.

2008-11-14T19:34:00.000-08:00

3 old dead white guys walk into a store on Mars and say "What is this, a joke?"

Alright, so I didn't work up the nerve to ask any living people if I could take their picture today. I was afraid that they might ask why I want their picture, then I'd have to talk to them... In a perfect universe, I'd figure out a way to tell them the truth and retain complete anonymity.

Not so much.

Day 23- National Smile Day meets Honor the Fallen

2008-11-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

Pictures don't always tell the story. Not even part of the story. Pictures make me want to write, and also to make me wish I took better pictures.

This was the first photo of the first of the 365 days, before I started posting.

I went to the Farmer's Market on Honor the Fallen Local Heroes Day and at the last minute, grabbed my camera.

This young lady was with her grandmother, honoring the recent death of her uncle, one of five killed in one day by small-arms fire near Anbar Province.

When I asked if I could take her picture, she modestly put her little puppy in front of her face and then asked if this was 'for National Smile Day', which it was.

Death doesn't reach everywhere, even when it does.

Mourning black, little-girl pink, and somber smiles all go together. Death and all his friends.

As one of my autistic students used to say, "Boogers are true, but so are kittens".

Day 22- Sweet Home Chicago

2008-11-13T22:50:00.000-08:00

Unnamed acquaintance who wants it known that he wore HIS Obama shirt when it looked like the old white lady was going to be the best the dems could do, and also that Prop 8 is a total non-starter in his native Chicago.

But he and I agree that Obama is just the figurehead, the impervious mermaid figure at the prow that cuts through freezing and stormy waters, and we are the crew who have to get along without killing each other, and do all the grunt work.

Shipmate. What a beautiful word.

On top of the world.

Day 21 - Bronx in Cannery Row

2008-11-12T22:46:00.001-08:00

When I was waiting at the front desk alone to check out of our hotel while Husband was bringing around the car, I noticed that the concierge was getting all giddy and flustered and looking towards the door.

She was a slender and fresh-looking young blond thing, too unhip and unspoiled to be a local. I noticed that her flustered state coincided with the sudden appearance of a young brown skinned man still hovering in the glass doorway, ridiculously overdressed in head-to-toe custom Warner Brothers hip hop threads, but with a passion and innocence about himself that matched the desk girls.

He saw me looking at him and offered me a closer look at the Bugs Bunny patch on his shell suit jacket. I swear I caught him checking out my ass. When he started speaking to me in a gusty, Newyorican accented Spanish, I knew I was right - he pegged me for a fellow Puertoriqueno.

"The island of Puerto Rico has the most decorated serviceman per capita than any American state, in the last two wars" he blustered to me.

"Can I take your picture?" I asked, already going for my camera.

"Sure. Get my ink".

So I did.

As I was leaving, he held the door open for me and checked me out again.

"You sure look like a hot tamale" he laughed, and then he held the limo door for his girlfriend like an old-fashioned date, and they drove away.

2008-11-12T16:36:00.000-08:00

I'm not very good with rules, except for the self-imposed ones. I tried using my cellphone cam for awhile, but it has better luck with ghosts than living people. This one was done with an old pda type of device. Marginal improvement. It might catch zombies.

This is Jerry, who is well known in my hometown. A sort of Amish biking leprechaun, he drinks coffee all day. All day. All day in my store.

Mostly, he leaves me alone. I like Jerry.

Day 21- Viva La Vida

2008-11-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

Newly married Messrs. Beltran-Lawver sign the guestbook, Dia de los Muertos/Death and All His Friends party, November 8 2008.

Day 20 - Women Don't Want to be Photographed

2008-11-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

Here's a young man who said Yes.

I'm still on vacation.

It's Veteran's Day.

Day 19-Очи чёрные

2008-11-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

These two brothers are regulars at the club where my friends and husband and I had rented for our anniversary/same sex marriage/post-election-elation blowout this weekend. (Yes, all weekend. It's been a long time coming.)

I invited them over to the spare table and ordered them a couple of combo plates. In return, they, figuratively, danced at our wedding.

The elder brother in the foreground held forth on the migration of Germans fleeing the Red Army to the Central Valley back after the Revolution, and the effect they had on the local dance scene. We played the gypsy disco version of "Dark Eyes" (Очи чёрные) at his request and waited for him to ask someone to dance. He never danced.
Guys who can drink like he does and who philosophize about the abstracts of dance generally don't dance.

This picture was taken while he was still looking around the room with that half-sheepish, wedding-crasher's smirk.

It was the wedding of hope and pragmatism, of young and gifted regulars like Pavel here,with sociopath's eyes and boyband hair, and the old veteranos doing the hug-and-wobble to the slow Santana numbers on the floor, dancing with a light heart for the first time in years.

There is a place for everyone at our table, if you so choose. That's what President-elect Obama says, and so did Chekhov.

Let us celebrate together.

Day 18 - Adios Gato

2008-11-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

Celebrant at Post-dia de los Muertes/Reverse Prop 8 protest wearing an original custp-design 'Hispanic answer to the ubiquitous Hello Kitty'.

Since we agreed we were all going to work to overcome predjudice, we both stop ourselves after agreeing that 'certain Caucasion gays totally fetishize anything Asian'.

Subject declined to have his face photograph, but he did pay for all the drinks. :)

(edit- will Luna please send me an email so I can credit you and order one of those shirts???? They are awesome!)

Day 17- Labrador

2008-11-07T11:19:00.000-08:00

Labrador let me take his picture in the sweet, soft, giddy space between ObamaDay and Let's Beat Up Some Fags day.

He sold me the Benefit Lip Balm that he also recommended for my upcoming anniversary party.

He had one of the most naturally commanding presence I've seen in a retail clerk, and I could not imagine a country that wouldn't allow him to marry his long time partner.

The island of his birth, for which he was named, quite decently and sensibly makes no mention of all in its constitution about marriage.

I hope you get your North Country Cruise honeymoon, Labrador.

My friends Mark and Rich detained at Prop 8 Protest

Day 16- "I Voted"

2008-11-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

Father and son, on the walk to polling place, Election Day morning, November 4 2008.

It's true.

We did.

Running for Imaginary Mayor

2008-11-03T22:51:00.000-08:00

My state rep, Paul Robertson. A nice guy, he's on my side.

My friend Maggie refuses to let me take her picture, but she doesn't mind dragging me to town meetings. She speaks out of turn, but it's a small town. The out of town visitors we had at our meeting today showed some interest in our scrapbook we've collected over the past few years. It sucks that you need documentation just to prove that a collection of houses and businesses is a community in it's own right, older and with a history of it's own independant of a larger nearby community.

Day 15 - Passing by the Color Purple

2008-11-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

Lynn-Anne was the one who told me that Obama's grandmother died today.

I was walking by on my way to a rumored early-voting polling place (bad information as it turned out) and was lured in by the sight of the leftover Halloween candy on the counter.

All those young things in that hip salon, and no one would talk to her. Or rather, she didn't talk to them.

"I don't think he went back to Hawaii just because he felt guilty" LynneAnne told me.

"I think it's like all young boys,when they're going through a stage. They run back to you when they know the next step is going to change things forever. Like when Abe Lincoln visited his poor old stepmother right after he was president".

All the other girls shrugged, blank embarrassed smiles.

One day, the young man realizes that everyone dies. The people who remember you when you were the cool young person in the room. The person who saw you when your beauty was just beginning to heat up, not once it was a legend. The little boy who you took care of because you were just that type of person, who put your heart into doing what was necessary, whether putting on hose and makeup to go work at the bank everyday while keeping your little grandson safe and happy and out of trouble, or letting that nice girl put purple streaks in your hair because you're feeling a little down.

I took her picture, thanked her, and left, thinking of the poem "Nancy Hanks" and of that quote about the color purple.

*******************************************

"She was suspicious of overwrought claims or overblown sentiments....content with common sense".

Barack Obama on Mrs. Madelyn Dunham, his grandma.

Tomorrow is Election Day.

Purple dawn coming.

Day 15 James and the Giant Spider

2008-11-02T20:52:00.000-08:00

James was waiting for his mother in the salon where I got mah hair did today.

He was a good sport.

I gave him some good pics of himself in exchange for this one. :)

I was wondering why he bothered with me at all;I'm not young, not attractive, and don't flirt. Then he opened his mouth and Northern Ireland came out.

For some reason known only to God, Indian women and Brits find each other like bread and jam.

This was a fun shoot.

Day 14 - Courage comes from the word for heart

2008-11-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

"May I send this to the local paper?"

"Grandpa might see it. I don't know."
(deep breath. Some tears.)

Nodding.

"Yes. He'll have to be proud of me for standing out here in the rain instead of just being a good girl".

"You are both good girls".

"We're all good girls here!"

The willingness of everyday people to allow me to photograph them in all situations and any light, for publication on the internet !, in this post-MySpace age, is more of an inspiration than I ever dreamed when I started this little project.

"Of all the various forms of everyday courage, none is greater than the courage of girls, or there would be no marriages". - Collette

How she tried to get a bonafide Hattori Hanzō

2008-11-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

"C'mon, dad! Why can't I have a real ninja sword? I'd be real careful with it. You can trust me. I'll just wear it sheathed on my back. And if I run into any creeps I'd just scare them with it. I have the costume left over from halloween. We don't want to waste it. And I could do a report on ninja swords for school. I already mastered karate, this is the next logical thing. It could come in handy when I'm a crimefighting veterinarian ASPCA officer."

Marty and Sally

2008-11-01T03:12:00.000-07:00

They were the first to be married in the town square in my lifetime. Halloween in Blue Lake. All the ghouls and goblins were in attendance. (A ghost friend of mine sat on the Bride's side. She didn't know anyone, just there for the party.)

Appropriate for a dead little town.

Best of luck, kids.

It just occured to me that after a year, I just may end up with a picture of nearly everyone who lives in my town.

Day 13? Halloween. More treat than trick, really.

2008-10-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

The mute Belle who lives on the next block came trick or treating with us, as did the gifted and talented Red Ranger from down the street. Belle grunted and pointed and tried to take my camera when I showed her herself on the display. She had no bag, wanted no candy. Just to be Belle. Red Ranger and I had some sword fights, and some jokes about pajamas. My own Little Sid collected, inventoried and reported the candy tally after every score.

It was all good.

Day 13- Halloween! How apropros!

2008-10-31T16:10:00.001-07:00

I took probably fifty pictures today, and there will probably be more tonight, but this was the most fun to take.

Beatriz and Marta are sisters who love to work together and love Halloween.

"Smile! You wrecked it! C'mon, take another one. C'mere, Marta"

"I ain't apposta smile, I'm an axe murderer. I'm trying to look serious".

I thought they were both adorable.

Mr Blurrycam's Father

2008-10-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

These pics look okay when I preview them, then they turn out like this.

Dad and I have spent the past 5 days moving every freezer, cooler, counter, display case, rack, or box, repainting, replacing, or refurbishing everything which we can, all while keeping the store operating. Small business owners work twice as hard for half as much as a sane person.

Tonight we removed old tile and replaced it with an epoxy based paint which we hope will hold up. Dad's thumb fell off again, so I had to superglue it back on. I'm not nearly as skilled as he is at hammers and nails and miter saws and electrical work and plumbing and painting and all of that sort of thing, but I'm okay with superglue.

Two nights ago, it was his elbow that fell off. He had to work like that for a while. After three hours, I noticed that he couldn't drink his coffee anymore, he just straight arm pitched it right over his left shoulder. I found the elbow under a milk crate and stapled it back on.

I want to get better at fixing things. Someday superglue isn't going to be enough.

Day 12- Krista

2008-10-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

My commute takes me about 50 minutes if I take the freeway. On gorgeous fall afternoons like today was, I cut through the delta, where there are at least three fruit stands that I know of. Today was my Friday, so I left a little extra time to stop at the pumpkin patch-fruit stand.

Krista actually approached me and asked 'Are you anybody?' with a great gravelly laugh.

"Yeah. I don't know. No". I laughed, too.

"They told me to come out here to welcome the staff photographer for _____, and I thought you might be her, but you look too cool".

"Me? You're tripping". We both laughed then, and I took this picture.

"You're good-looking. You know it, don't you?"

"Sometimes. I don't care though, you know? I like to feel good!" , face to the sky, rain just beginning to spatter around both of us, wind blowing the hell out of the corn behind her.

I know.

Day 12 - Two males. Two females.

2008-10-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

The male human in the foreground is Tony.

He is the only member of his family who is voting for Obama.

I tried to talk to his sister, but she either didn't understand or didn't want to, I never did find out which.

Tony absolutely loved having his picture taken. This one was my favorite.

Day 11 - SixEdged

2008-10-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

SixEdged is the username of a guy whose real name is even cooler but he doesn't like his identity known even more than he doesn't like having his picture taken. He wants to live a perfect life, like Jesus, or to be NASA's first resident philosopher.

His mother wrote to me on 'gmail swaps' (anybody remember that? ancient history) and was very grateful to have my dozen or so gmail invites. She invited me to dinner at their home in St. Petersburg.

Less than a year later, Ms. SixEdged was performing with our local symphony. I found out when I offered her son cooking lessons in exchange for Russian lessons and we all compared notes. Small, small world.

Their home is kitty-corner from the regional Republican headquarters where I went today hoping to catch a McCain supporter to photograph. No luck.

SixEdged isn't interested in politics, but he notes as a philosopher that no free people ever willingly elect an angry leader. "The Russians loved Gorbachev but they still all pretty much wished he would shut up", Six said as he ushered me in.

Today he is taking a break from world news by playing all of the folk songs he has heard in his travels or can imagine, from as far back as Kiev, St. Petersburg, Dade County, Oakland, Tokyo, Andromeda.......

.

Day 10 - The Hun and Brightblack Morning Light

2008-10-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

This is a surprisingly lush and rich camphone shot of the radiant Hun, with a nimbus of East Bay early summer light making a halo around her freshly done original ink.

Taken shortly after our last meet-up in June.

I talked to her as she was leaving town last weekend.

"Use me! You have lots of me, and you always had to ask me first! I know! Use a recent one of me for when you guys finally get someone new to join".

PanasonicYouth requested an invitation yesterday.

So; behold the Hun.

Day 9 -``I reckon I'd like me some of them french fries, uh, huh.''

2008-10-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

Bravo Alpha is a co-worker of mine who is also one of only two other people who commutes from the same town.

We shared rides a few times, only under extreme duress, because while we each delight in the other's company, we both have the same self-imposed isolation, in her case, tempered by a long stint in the Navy.

I know certain things about her, all sad. The one thing that I remembered from our first conversation four years ago was that she had never been on either a picnic, to a circus, or on a fishing trip.

We've made and broken several dates over the years to make up the gaps in our childhood.

Last week I took her to the Corn Maze for the first time. Here she is whipping my butt at the Pumpkin Blaster.

We worked up an appetite and stopped off at a Denny's for grilled cheese and french fries. Bravo Alpha asked for extry mustard with her french fried taters.

"Yes, ah know, just like Karl in Sling Blade. Ain't that a beautiful movie? It's really North Carolina, though, same as where I'm from. And we really put mustard on ever'thang! including taters and biscuits."

Her pleasure in shooting pumpkins out of a cannon, and wandering around a corn field for fun, for the first time, felt as momentous to me as Karl's discovery of french fries.

She had also never had her photo taken by a digital camera before.

Here ya go, B.A. We had ourselves a time, didn't we?

Karl: I don't think anything bad ought to happen to children. I think the bad stuff should be saved up for the people whose grown up. That's the way I see it.

Mr. Blurrycam's Mother

2008-10-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

Autofocus? What's that?

2008-10-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

Finally, documentation!

I found this Bigfoot, or as some call them Yeti, perusing the juice selection. Apparently this particular specimen preferred apple juice. Maybe it reminded him of his native home.

Interestingly, this one seems to have discovered a way of blending in with the local fauna. I searched the area for droppings, but none were to be had. Clever bastard must have realized what I was up to and took them with him.

Good hunting, friends!

Day 8 - Here's Donovan

2008-10-24T12:47:00.001-07:00

Baby nephew of one of my co-workers.

Photo edited at his request.

Welcome to the world, Donovan!