AAOS is in town...

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons - (AAOS) is in town this week, so my brother, followed these migratory birds to San Francisco to teach and learn the latest surgical techniques to the assembled hippocratic masses. Since he recently acquired his pilot's license he rented a plane in San Carlos, twenty minutes down the peninsula, and we went flying around the bay. I have, of course, landed at SFO and flown around the bay in a commercial airliner many times, but to do so in a Cessna 172, a four seater, is a real pleasure. Flying over downtown, half moon bay and the Golden Gate reunited us with the joy of flying and how we used to feel as kids(one I have never really lost, but still, the economy lifestyle jet set has a way of beating you over the head, after a while) when we boarded the old "Caravelle", to fly to Corsica for summer break.

So next time you come to San Francisco, pull out your wallet and go for a flight around the bay, it's not as expensive as you may think and it's a great way to rediscover where you live. If, like me, you get to do it with your brother, trust him with your life, and only call your mother after the fact, it certainly is an added pleasure.

On the other hand, if you find yourself with less than twelve cents, you might want to close your eyes and try riding any free, windowless, imaginary speed boat to come to suddenly and freakishly realize that you are plunging to your death and to the cold, hard, and soon to be bloodied concrete sidewalk, below.

Fade to brack....

I usually do not talk about business, and other such bourgeois capitalist matters, but just this time I will have to make an exception and mention that as of March 1st, two thousand and eight, my professional representation with Redeye will officially terminate. I shall represent myself until further notice. Thank you and Good day...!

" The Blond Giovannis....continued "

A true story, as told to us kids, over thirty five years ago, by my great uncle:

In early March of forty five, a freak snow storm cut off the coastal rail lines, between Livorno and Grosseto. A troop transport reeking of sweat, canned beef and soupy rice and carrying a load of French and British prisoners of war was forced to halt and wait out the storm; just outside of Piombino, in the countryside. The train and its men soon fell silent, and in anticipation of the long wait to come, stared at the sea; slowly looking farther North and at the storm; watching the coast recede, farther and up the Tuscan shore. Patience, a dubious virtue before the war, was now a most acceptable substitute to replace the numbness and silent resignation they had come to casually expect; a reflection of the times these mostly gaunt and fretful men had had to endure over their last five years of interment. Most of these troops, save for a few, had been common infantry men and were of Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan descent. Captured together near Cambrai during the Blitzkrieg five Mays ago they had been shipped East to Austria, to work the land, but eventually, to new and shabbily constructed Stalags, between Mollbrucke and Seeboden, Wolfsberg and Graz.

Alcide, my great uncle, had been the regimental cook and had finally been collared alongside his North African brethrens, one afternoon, in May. After successfully hiding for two days and nights, alongside the carcass of his dead and bloated mule he had been found out and shipped East, not South. At the time, the large cooking pot the beast had been ferrying between the crumbling and retreating battle lines, was slumped over, and on its side. As the beast, felled by an enemy shell, lay dying, but still shouldering its oversized pots and pans, my uncle quickly found, that they made for a dark, safe and improvised place to hide from incoming mortar rounds. If not for the heat, the faint scent of garlic paste, rotting flesh, and the smoldering wheels of a couple troop trucks, this sooty tin capsule was to shield him from, and help him survive, the next two days and nights.

Two days later, a German cook, needing a larger pot than he had to feed his victorious and hungry troops, finally kicked it over, uncovering my great uncle, squinting sheepishly, up and at him, on the morning of his third day. Slowly raising his hands in resigned submission, he surrendered his freedom to a large man, holding a wooden spoon, an apron, a butcher's cleaver and an axe. Soon after, a german corporal stepped forward, flicked his cigarette butt onto the mule's rotting corpse and with a nod, pointed to the shuffling line of prisoners marching to the East and South. Alcide, started up the embankment and towards the back of the column, rejoining the remnants of the captured French and British soldiers' front lines troops. His left boot was filled with dust and caked in blood and missing a sock, the result of the precipitous haste with which they had all been roused the preceding night when a SS scout had called in an artillery strike on their field kitchen, hastily packed mule trains, and potato sacks.

When he came to, his ears were still ringing and the sun had risen just above the grass, where he had spent the night. His left sock was missing, while the greater part of his left shoe had been trapped under the lifeless corpse of the butchered animal's pack. He bent over and yanked on it until, blood soaked, it came slipping out. No sooner had he retrieved it that he saw a line of advancing paratroopers firing above his head but seemingly without much purpose or murderous fight. Upon realizing that none of his companions were to be found and armed with nothing more than a ladle and a handful of rice, he lifted one of the cauldron's sides and promptly disappeared within its confines, while they, inexplicably retreated, towards ripening fields of Alfalfa.

Once inside, and within the unwashed steel walls of his protective pot, Alcide, slowly slipped on his bloody shoe, his heart beating wildly, his chest sounding off the rolling panicked beats of his newfound tin and nickle pan. As the passing and advancing soldiers wheeled to the NorthWest, they let loose a parting volley and a couple bullets pierced his hiding pot but continued on through without causing anything more than a loud and thunderous fright. After this early dawn, he settled as best he could within his cramped and dark confines to wait out this sooty hell, fearing more, but better placed, missiles and bullets.

Being that it was a warm and sunny May, he soon fainted, simmering slowly throughout this first and blood soaked day, until a mid-afternoon thunderstorm woke him; the thunderclaps echoing within his shell while the heavy rain, seemingly filled the silent pot with an unending and boiling rain. But, as soon as the storm passed, a raven landed on his upended crock and started to crow; its song, amplified by the cauldron, its claws and feet, hoping slowly across its sooty tin bottom. A few more minutes passed and the crow fell silent as it began to peck at the mule's freshly butchered flesh, until, presumably, satisfied by this unexpected breakfast, it seemed to sense that it was not alone, and that in its hunger and haste, it had failed to sense my great uncle's cowering palace. As the crow had become fuller and satiated, it seemed to slowly become aware of the scent of his stale and frightened breath, trapped within the confines of his cramped and sonorous hiding place. But instead of taking flight, sensing his fear, and perhaps realizing that he was trapped and unable to threaten it with anything more than a moan or a scratch, it found one of the bullet holes and looked at the man crouched within his hallow metal hull, and for a few seconds, stared in and sideways into his blood shot eyes. But soon, finding itself bored and unconcerned, it hopped aside, and onto the mule's wet and stiffening carcass, towards the head and the flies, where already, green, purple and fat, they seemed content and satisfied to deeply gaze, into the mule's dead eyes.

To be continued........

Private.

Crap, this privacy plugin does not seem to work properly. I guess I'll post this entry while I figure out how to make it work like it should. While I work on this, please read the following paragraph . This will, I presume, serve the same function as a public service announcement, even if, in this case, and ironically, the public will serve to symbolically represent the uneasiness I sense, privately.

So, back from Belize and willing to try a little experiment to take my blog private. While away, it has dawned on me that I was self-censoring this blog because it has become somewhat popular and read by a few thousand people every month. It would seem that some form of editorial success might be the desired and a natural end result of blog keeping, but in this case, it is not.

I started writing because I felt that without an audience I may not have had the discipline to keep it up without broadcasting to someone, or anyone in particular. I might have felt that I could have lost interest in my own inner monologues. As it turns out, this is a moot point, and an audience has never been something I have actively and willingly longed for, at least not in the last dozen years(it also seems to coincide with the birth of my first son, Raphaël, twelve years and change ago). Everything I do now, outside of a few people, my children, friends and family has always been done in the hope of furthering, developing and experimenting with those innate skills I sense I have been lucky enough to have been graced with(or so I think!).

I do not seek an audience of thousands or feel the need to be recognized, use this blog to promote my work, myself or profit from its successes. I simply enjoy writing and putting my daily thoughts to paper, or rather, this keyboard. Strangely enough, the very fact that I have become somewhat successful at this, irks and unsettles me; however so slightly, as I sense a creeping self and public censorship, a need to please others, and not myself.

Nevertheless, I did not want to completely remove myself from those who have enjoyed reading these daily missives and might make the effort to continue. As such, and in order to write more freely and broadly, I will ultimately password protect the site and request users to register; at least when I figure it out. Managing a blog and the plugins which come with it can be confusing at times but always time consuming as well as a bit of a crap shoot.

Anyway, who knows, may be I won't like it and go back to public blogging, we shall see, but it's worth a shot. So may be, if it's worth publishing, it's worth protecting; privately !!!

Cherokee Peep Holes...!

Recently, I have begun to take walks in the city. It's the rainy season and I can't stand the rain, which, if you have ever lived in Paris for any length of time, you've grown to hate. At the slightest sign of a break in the clouds I put on my overcoat and step out into the California winter haze. I leave the umbrella behind, a willful thought and hope for the best; and damn the consequences. Today I walked straight down Market, from my house on Castro, without even stopping for gay porn, on the way. So as I said, down Market and onward to the feces district (the Tenderlaid, that would be between 6th and 7th street). Onward.....and by Bloomingdales, by the make up counter ladies taking languorous cigarette breaks, trying not to plant face from all those samplers they've meticulously applied to their faces; passed Old Navy, thru the Metreon and into the light, where there it is, the: Museum of Modern Art, all brick and mortar and eighties fugliest. Into the lobby where monitors rudely remind me that I should not be loitering here any more than those poorly covered feces I recently passed on 7th and Market. My way of saying, 'I've seen this shit before and even wrote about it. So what to do? I did not plan ahead nor did I consult the internet before I left!

So, I bowed to the inevitable and quickly retraced my steps to reluctantly open the door to da YBCA, or Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, as it is also known to the verbosely minded. (BTW, for yall hippies out there, Yerba Buena (Clinopodium douglasii) is a sprawling aromatic herb of western and northwestern North America, ranging from maritime Alaska southwards to Baja California Sur, and NOT what you imagined it to be).

Apparently the YBCA, in a thinly disguised attempt at placating the flower child community into driving East, from Berkeley, North from Willits and South from Venice, is now featuring some half baked exhibit curated to venerate his holiness, the 'Dalai Lama". Don't get me wrong, I love the Dalai Lama and he is certainly worth a walk down market street but besides what I think about him, the show is an unmitigated piece of shit. Enough said, but despite what I think, at least you get to live vicariously through me, and experience, for a brief moment, what it's like to live here, in this soiled City by the Bay.

So, I perfunctorily went thru this display, cursing my fate, invisibly mumbling words so rich in sexual degradation as it would shame me to repeat them here, with impunity..... when at the corner of my eyes, what do I see; a side chapel, a votive assembly, right there in front of me, a notebook, left by one of the artists, to share your thoughts and feelings with the him and the community; " Bingo! bitches!", I exclaimed, "tis not in vain that I ambulate....!"

Here you go, excerpts, with my comments (apparently nasty, I hear, DL:). From the book of life, at the YBCA. Actual comments from visitors, regular folks, like you and me, carefully noted:

"We are the cusp of great AWAKENING". DL: Personally, I was thinking pandemic...

"Let peace and love prevail all over the world. Let all people love each other beyond borders. Fight for humanity and not for land and religion." DL: Do I detect a thinly disguised "Peace in the Middle East" message, massaged within an inch of saying it, but too "site specific", too narrowly minded; I'll replace it with a more non-denominational cliché?

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams". DL: Fair enough, roll it, package it, and I'll smoke it....

"The world is a complicated place to live in! Yeah I know it blows, its pretty weird but it is". DL: I don't know what to say but try a Garmin, it usually works for me, until it tells me to take the 10 to Venice at 9 in the mornin' (LA drivers, you'll know what I says, the rest of yous can ask them what I am just trying to say).

"Reveal, expose, do not deny eternity." DL: Expose eternity....! Is that a call to arms, a political statement or did you just parfumate with one of those samplers on sixth and Market.

"Dear god, Just as every stream and ocean are connected, some how I must believe.....its hard to believe in you. Bless the falling with compasion. The architecture of the sea creates its own laws; why can't humanity create as a matter of architecture? Let us begin buildings peaceful society, NOW-" DL: Who does not want to chant a prayer that starts nice and easy and ends by screaming... "NOW".

"You fucking killed it brutha, you inspire the revolution. Burning free and bad..., love". DL: I am sensing some innate contradictions, but never-mind me, I am far too cerebral for this....

"Words are not enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,.........." DL: That's the great thing about mantras, if you repeat them long enough, they start to mean something else.

"Keep that spirit flowing breathe your art until your last breath. Oliver." DL: This one startled me for a micro-second. I thought to myself, did I sleep walk to this bitch and signed my name. No, that's signed Oliver, not Olivier.

"You are perfectly complete and whole". DL: (Accompanied With a drawing of what looks like a butt with flowing gas coming out of it). And I am a complete ass whole for thinking it.

"I really like your exhieibit very much!" (Lightning bolt and a house drawn, a kid's handwriting and drawing). DL: He/she is innocent until Early Onset Adulthood.

"Derek, I have always been in awe of your creativeness. The passion for what you do always shine thru. Don't ever stop believing in your capabilities. You are a true artist. I knew this from the day you were born. Love and forever Yours forever yours sincerelly, Mom." DL: This one is a little tricky, as the artist's name is actually spelled Derik, not Derek, so I am to presume that his own mother does not know how to spell her son's name, or she did not get the memo as to why Derek is now called Derik; or some clever little trickster wrote this, but failed to properly read the wall's" "My name is..and I did this..."

"Derek, You are now an art fag Welcome to the club. Vital power takes you right there wherever there is, Leighton, Dad" DL: So dad is in on this too, but I find his message a little more masculine, a little more type A, in a gentle sort of way. Go get the "WHEREVER" Derek....!! I mean, Derik...!

"I am done, I am complete" DL: and someone else wrote next to it, making my work easier, but more indirectly " You are a fucking hippie"

"Thank you brother, I am so proud of you and your vision to wake each and everyone of us from the dream into the living dream of our own potential. Many blessings- reverence." DL: Shoot the messenger, and the message.

"Whoahhhh, whoahh, wwe,.....whoahh, wwwaa,...." DL: Next time I am in a museum I'll shoot for the orgasm, the wine and cheese buffet sucks anyway.

"I honor the place in you where the entire universe dwells. I honour the place in you that is of light, love thruth & of peace. When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me. We are one. Namaste, Infinite gratitude & love" DL: Hey brother, I want to come with you but before we begin, please to point me towards the nearest consulate.

"Wubba wubba ....Wubba wubba ....Wubba wubba ....Wubba wubba ...." DL: The afterglow, I presume....

DL: and to conclude, MY PERSONAL FAVORITE:

"I want to face fuck that girl in the video, she's hot", DL:Comment circled and note added next to it ; " Wow, how sad and insulting that that is all you got out of all this love and work. Micah(the girl in the video) the artist's wife.-" DL: No comment.....

Epilogue:

As I stepped out of the side show and into the lobby, it was now filled with old ladies, when before it had been empty. The place now smelled like chlorine, that public pool smell old people tend to retain after bobbing in it, to sooth the years away. I presume the YBCA was part of the day, a retirement tour date.

Being of less than sound mind, and urgently needing to pee, I made my way to the latrines but overshot and ended up in the women's bathroom. After vainly looking for urinals, it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place. I retraced my steps, only to run into an old lady just about to step into the man's toilets. She had seen me go in the ladies' room and wrongly assumed the other door was where she also needed to do, her business.

How ironic, to get all turned around at the YBCA, where every other exhibit is about some gender specific group show, exploring some sort of gender based "ism-é", or, "Feminism and the subversion of identity, bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex". .....humm, remind me not to have sex with that one, too damn intimidating.

PS: MDM, I wrote this one with you in mind, hope it helps lift your spirits, and Alyson too, they had a bit of a rough week.

Ista quidem est!

"............... those affected foragers, manipulating other, less disingenuous characters, elephantine rogues and agitators who rise to pomp and circumstance by playing to that imminent and gullible mind, of a market of believers.

Perpetrators, thinly disguised speculators, obstructionist and talented frocks, biding the acrimonious bile of some authority or power: The backslapper, apple polisher, flatterer and glad hander; within whose easy compliance lies the carbonized core of a hateful, bullying and fearful deceiver; a coddling messenger who seeks compliant listeners, like so many fools before them in respectful demeanor.... you shall forgive me, should you derive any pleasure from thy efforts, but ..... ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture as crawling." Jonathan Swift.

Les grandes et inestimables croniques : du grant et enorme geant......

It seems that everyone is compiling lists fit to educate the coming year. Classically trained, and not one to be culturally outdone, I have also compiled a short list of French Classics, save one: "The Golden Ass". I plan on re-reading them all in 2008. They are all available in French and in English and are truly great books. Do your own googling, I ain't linking.... you might stumble upon something great, instead of following my leads. These are all books I read as a kid and remember vividly. Twelve in all, one per month.

1- Candide, Voltaire. 2- L'Ingénu, Voltaire. 3- La Chevelure, Guy de Maupassant. 4- Le Horla, Guy de Maupassant. 5- Gargantua, François Rabelais. 6- Pantagruel, François Rabelais. 7- The Golden Ass, Lucius Apuleius. 8- Michel Strogoff, Jules Verne 9- Les Mystères de Paris, Eugene Sue. 10- La Gloire de mon père, Marcel Pagnol. 11- Le Château de ma mère, Marcel Pagnol 12- Vol de nuit, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

PS: So much for those top tens, top twelve is where it's out.

Marsasart....or, Buford Herring's Q5.

Frédéric....

I have been looking for Tahoe vacation rentals for my older brother Frédéric, and consequently, he is foremost in my mind. He lives in Paris, France and has become one of the world's best orthopedic surgeons. That alone should make me extremely proud of him and make it a simple and easy matter to post a mention of his accomplishments here; but what compels me to do so is far more universal. Even though, my brother and I are very different, we share some very fundamental characteristics, a unique fruit cocktail of my mother and father's traits, which and with time, has made us both who we are, but first and foremost, we are brothers. I was reminded of this, in a nice way, by reading Stefan Rohner's latest blog entry.

My big brother has taught me much but I have always known that he has always loved me more then any other play mate. When we were just little kids he would cry inconsolably for me, if I got hurt and was in pain, and this I knew showed, that despite our relative differences, he loved his little brother, "L' olivier".

Brotherhood is an extraordinary bond, and if you are going to have kids, at the very least, give them someone to play with. Today, I was certainly happy and grateful to be once again reminded.

Frédéric, if you ever need it, you can have either one of my kidneys......and whatever else you ever need from me.

From Left to right, excluding newly married couple: My mother in her early thirties, my brother Frédéric, unknown relative, and yours truly, approximately 4 years of age (my son Raphael and I at this age looked so much like each other, as it to be genetically freaky).

What I fucking do all day when I am not earning my man.....

Let’s see, I usually wake up between 6 and 6:30. Feed Raphael breakfast and drive him to the bus stop in the Haight, I salute him and off he goes to get some educated. That little bitch better get me some return on my money. With my personality, someone’s gonna have to pay for my old age. I park the XC70, you see, I really need it to haul the gripage (and BTW, I ain’t no bobo, if that’s what you’re thinking!). That ’s right I paid my dues way back in 86', in that Far East village, gentleman gentrifying C and D for the the rest of yous bohemian bitches. Remember Bernard ? that's right, I built that kitchen organic shit, but that’s another, more interesting story, we'll save it for later, in between morning lattes. I even got threatened by a man vet with TNT. Who the fuck tries to stop someone from hammering away; drunkenly pulls the pin and holds the safety, with a fucking hand grenade?; greatest generation, aye?).

What was I saying, oh yeah, I park the lease and slowly walk over to get me some Cafe. Every day I get a latte, I used to get cafe au lait but the coffee at Tullys is so shitty™ I have to get a latte to drown the taste. Since I spend most of my days alone, as freelancers often manage, I stick around for an hour or so, generally abusing those around me, by, as the brits used to say, “take the piss” out of they. If they don’t like it they usually sit somewheres else and ruminate. Of course I fully expect those who stayed to “take the piss” out of me. With any luck it’s funny, otherwise it’s just hate, and what’s the point, aye?

If I don’t feel like socializing or those who don’t mind “a pissing” can’t be shaken from their early morning grumblays, I’ll check ye olde email on the mobil-ay, point one finger, and go to it. Check stock prices to see how rich some people are getting and harangue the poor fools waiting for the google buses; a stone’s throw away. Those are the worker bees who didn’t get stock optionated and are now forced to commute greenly every day. These big black buses come by 2 or 3 times a day and swoop them up and away. They have those quirky cubes designed to highlight their individualities, a couple real live pooches and some snurf guns, for when the inner child needs a break. That's some cute and funny shit I have often been asked to “portray”. Some of them actually build themselves habitats for the work a day; they use a mixture of spit and clay which they store in pouches, in fleshy pouches, along with the volley balls, they receive on: “Explore the day”. They do this, like africanized honey bays; but all in one day...

So, around eight in the morning, Adrienne, drives by coffee and drops off Gabriel, number two, that way I can walk him to school. I shower him with kisses, make fun of him, he curses me and on we go, hand in hand, we walk to school and shoot the breezes. I love those monkeys and I LOVE being a daddy; I love boys especially but I am sure that if I had girls I would quickly turn into a drooling papie. Kids are humanity’s answer to all those douches we have to deal with everyday, unless of course they have early joined those masses, in which case, well, that’s a real fucking shame. Am I to presume that they were born that way? Feel free to lump me in with all other afore mentioned idiots, after all, one man’s fool is another man’s tool. Stands to reason, don’t it?

Also around 8:30, if my leg is aching up, which it usually is; it’s not called chronic pain for nothing, ain’ it? (read previous entry), I pop a couple Vicodins to shave that snake; but fear not, the rest of him keeps on kicking throughout the day, to remind me its not quite done with me. Afterall, who wants to run around like a fucking caged monkey, thinking about nothing else but how much freaking nerve pain a primate can endure in a day. Thank you opiates, and yes I have a prescription, and no, you can’t have it, and no, I am not fiended; I have actually reduced and never increased the dosage. As previously explained, I am very slowly getting better, lots of steroids and Botox injected, twice weekly physical therapies; and oh yes, once again, thank you opiates; without you I would have been freaking desperate . Surviving the last year without these beauties would have been far too manly for my taste.

Anyway, around 8:40, I slowly walk back to the XC seventies and pop in some African CDs, I am a big fan here, let’s say 30 years; turn on the ignition and peel off like the French born that I is. On the way home I curse California drivin’; by far the worst goddamn cretins on Gore’s not so green earth; ain’t it? Worthless bunch of inattentive, self righteous, passive-digressive, incompetent clueless douches. Give me New York City or Paris any day, that’s my kind of tootin’ anyway; where men drive like clown monkeys and women bray like camel riding donkeys . If ever I have guests, I try to tone it down but “es-startlement happens” ! (new word here, means: Spanglish to describe the startling processes).

Not to spare you the tedium, I take Belvedere or Cole to 17th and Market and then down the hill to the Castro, that’s where I live with my girl, and the progenated. Up Douglass and up up and away. You see, I am a divorcé, so off I go to live communally. Clicker in hand I open the brand new garage door and ram the cardboard flotsam to the back of these here garages. Step out of the car, disrecollected, close the roll ups and walk up, up and away. Back down to get recollected and back up again’. Open the door leading into the deck, trip over the Bar-B-Qued remains and drop the keys that opens the kitchen gates. Wheel the dishwasher back in place and to the home offices; it’s more feminine that way. Tap the keyboard and wake up the CPAs, “Good day”! To show cheer and show my good graces by animating objects, is an important part of my day to day.

I check email one more time and snurf the dailies: the Jackanory, aphotoeditor, Heading East, 2point8; these are all people I either know, or we communicate; sometimes every day. I like them, and their energy and efforts are always greatly appreciated. When I feel less pressed, like today, I roam the interneted, and less well known tottering blog-aided…. I comment, but shouldn’t, too much time away from these bitches! Thankfully I can finger type with great rapidity.

If I am feeling friskay, I’ll write my own entry, usually consisting of what this blog generally disseminates with great identity, which it’s supposed to portray, or a least try to communicate, what a slightly older, effeminate esthete, British and patrician academic might think. Well crafted, defined, opinionated, ideated; ideas, tidbits, wisdoms and recollections collected while traveling with the Queen and her majesty’s secret services; all the while, throwing in, a few contemporary rabbits and expletives, to appear younger than I might actually turn out to bees. I have tried to have that come across with greater clarity and voice-hover all my entreaties, but that was way too time consuming, I had to put that one to sleep. Enough for right now, I have actual work to do, but fear not, more’s a coming your way…..

Self Righting is an admirable quality, don't you think?

The Photo Editor continues his daily postings and it seems I can’t just ignore him, dammit: He writes: “I’ve never met anyone as loyal as Martin Schoeller (here). To the subject, his team of people, the client, his agent, his style, his goals, the print… everything. It’s more than just being a nice guy and delivering consistently good work there’s honesty and integrity, and a devotion to the craft, and an incredible work ethic that adds up to, well, loyalty.

There was a point in his career where he was thinking oh shit, this big head style is not going to define me but over the last couple years he’s decided the market forces are too great and produced a book and several gallery exhibits of big heads”.

Commentum, humanum est:

Loyalty: I am going to go out on a limb here and throw the baby out with the bath water but I am of the opinion that Yankee psychology leaves little room for such august affectations. I might even venture to proclaim that in this country, as someone who has lived on three continents, Europe and Asia being the other two outside this one; that personal and economic loyalty are oft ridiculed personal and corporate qualities and attributes.

Martin Schoeller, besides being an extremely talented photographer probably owes much of his success to his temperament and character but also to the simple fact that Europeans are taught, at an early age, to stick by those who raise you up, and that to not return the favor is an abominably rude and crassly North American attribute.

Americans tend to take their entrepreneurial zeal a little too seriously and often dismiss budding friendships and partnerships for short term profits. Friends of mine who work in Europe, China and India dislike working with North Americans most of all for lacking these most natural virtues; knowing full well that if they do not give way to our commercial brutishness, that they, the ” Yankees”, will take our business elsewhere to save less than a few cents.

Business is based on personal character and on nurturing relationships, but these values are often ignored in response to brutishly attained profits; victims of our quarterly reported and greedish creed. The unflinching coarseness of the market has created increasingly newfangled, unemotional and unavailable beasts.

Nothing wrong with profits but profits without relationships will eventually diminish returns on those very real and coveted profits. Without lasting relationships the proverbial economic air slowly gets sucked out of the market and replaced with increasingly short termed and noxious speculative fumes (dot coms, sub prime shenanigans, dollar stockananigans, just to name a quick few…..)

Nonetheless, it’s nice to see that sometimes, humanity and simple loyalty can be appreciated, at least on a personal level. As for institutions, they are in the business of stripping those very human qualities to replace them with malignantly optioned algorithms and purposeful speculative economic rape and pillage.

As far as I am concerned business without values such as loyalty only leads to blindingly irrational exuberance, quickly followed by the digestion of increasingly depressing, manic, and loathsomely bitter pills. This seems to have become, not only the modus operandi of the North American economy, but more recently, the engine of its continued, rapid and possibly irreversible enfeebling.

Anyway, Americans are a versatile and flit footed people; let’s hope we can learn from our mistakes and regain some of our legendary humanity, which as of late has been sorely missing from the North American psyche. Nevertheless, I also wonder how quickly Martin might be forgotten should he falter to produce or fall pray to illness, age, cynicism or simple disgust?

Sorry, was that self-righteous enough for you? I swear I stopped reading Paul Krugman way back in two 0 two ! Sorry for the rant, I know it isn’t appreciated as constructive in this here “God’s country”.

Happy Halloween, à la Jurgen/Teller/Richardson.

Couldn't quite get the dong in there, as I had to do this myself. Next time, I'll use a wide angle and get it all in there. Tomorrow, I'll tell a funny story about Halloween, Fins, Helsinki, vomit, urine, windsheer, minus 35 degrees and long haired dirty hippies. So please drink responsibly.

Forty three (.Y.)...!

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Today is my forty third birthday. Since I am taking the day off, I figured I'd just lay around and enjoy what turned out to be a warm and sunny October day. Bright and early, my mother called to wish me well, second only to Adrienne, how sweet it be? *

Anyhow.... later today, between 10 and 10:30, I drove to Berkeley to once again ingest the world's largest frozen bucket of acidophilus and ice cream headaches. As I stood there, nearly unconscious, helplessly wolfing some type 2, I came to thinking that not so long ago; twenty three years, to be more or less exact; that it was I, who felt remarkably like these misshapen college grads....... Not to be outshunned between classes, I sat on the UC's lawn to take in the sun; a vain and failed attempt at warming the temperature within and these reptilian brains therein. Just then, and not a decade to soon, I suddenly and inexplicably recalled that my newfound friend "Mauzner" had Saturday mentioned: "Don't you know, you can mail order whores on Craigslist !". **

Not to be outdone, I picked up my iPhone(a gift) and started surfing Craigslist for pussy.... and then some, Aie papi!!!...... Men seeking woman, woman seeking man, men seeking men, women seeking women, LGBTs seeking men, men seeking LGBTs, humanity seeking relief, morning glory, that sort of thing..... First off, I can't believe I did not know about this until last saturday evening, what's wrong with me? It's not like I have never surfed Craig's crevasses or something. Nevertheless, there it is, under "services", between "event" and "creative". If that's not a happy ending, I wouldn't know it, if it were to hit me!

It's my birthday and I can only imagine what you're thinking, but no, I did not indulge and call one in. I am like Mauzner, afraid of diseases, and given the circumstances and the collegiate supernunnery surrounding me, I wisely opted not to call it in. But now that I think of it, this here fortuitous scene, might make for the perfect symbiosis of iPhone advertising, that thirty second clip on your TV screen. Mauzner, "it's my birthday gift to you, kid".... "Think of it as your big "YouTube" directorial debut, baby"!

Scene one: iphone fades in.... quirky iPhone acoustics chimes in....dirty little finger points and clicks on the mapquest GUI......dirty little finger on the mapquest GUI searches for pussy...." "san fran frisky shemale + seeks + dirty Latin" "...... map zooms in and there you is .... "gorgeous shemale Latin", so beautiful, and functional too, papi !..... dirty finga scrolls and calls..... iPhone tunes in, cute capitalist music fades to..... iPhone ringing..... gorgeous shemale Latin picks up her phone....." Aie papi, jew wanna play, jew wanna play papi"?

For those of you, who like me, have not had that Browse me long time feeling of these erotic services birthday wishes that is Craigslist, I highly recommend it. Just remember that if you are not a member of the student body, or faculty, and are browsing for craigslist's pussy on the premises of the UCB; it is wise to cover your dirty doings with an overcoat or any other, similarly shaped, protective shield. And BTW,not that you don't know this already; in this life, or the next, they don't offer rebates for pussy; on my or anyone else's birthday..... sadly......

Happy birthday to me anyway. "Thank you Mommy, I could never have written this entry without thee....!"

*My 12 year old son, Raphael, looked dazed and confused, when I asked him if he wasn't forgetting a little something. After thinking it over he blurted out, "Happy retirement". I came within an inch of turning coffee into a finely aerosolized mist. Where he got that idea beats me, but it might forever be, the best birthday greeting I have ever received.

**(Now, now, I would not want to start any rumors or anything but knowing a little something of his personality(he lives in my neighborhood in San Francisco) and having photographed him a few times for honey, I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't sometimes tempted to call in a few "ladies", to satisfy his needs for a little "R&D").

My new favorite ASCCI: (.Y.) . It means big tits.

Piriformis Syndrome.

In this entry, I am actually going to try to be both serious and informative. Hard to believe....but here it is:

In the past couple of years I have been in a hell of a lot of pain from what has recently been diagnosed as Piriformis Syndrome. If it sounds radioactive, it is. Not in a U238 kind of way but it radiates like a bitch and if you have never experienced chronic pain, do I not recommend it, even to those amongst us who profess to enjoy it. If by some chance, nature did not endow you with an ounce of empathy, this here: tear jerking, fist clenching, teeth gnashing, and all consuming pain, will make you wish you never existed. And the best part of it is, it's on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and every sorry ass day of the year.

Why am I telling you this? Fear not, I do not need your pity or sympathy, even-though I'll take your money, but if by some stroke of fantastic luck, you are reading this, and are sitting at home and contemplating the old adage, that dropping like a stone has its advantages, read these here phrases before you decide to leap off the ledge and into the bottomless pit (btw, in you are going to do it anyway, remember that you must jump from at least the 4th floor, to ensure a sufficiently traumatic death? .

As I was saying, in October 2006, I decided that I had had enough of this grief to actually do something about it. I went to see a MDs, and as it turned out, not just one but many. At the time the pain was severe but not yet devilish. I had just finished crossing the country and the Pacific several hundred times, in a three month traveling frenzy, which had aggravated my aches and pains enough to warrant a trip to the clinic. I started to believe that since I was spending all this dough on health insurance, why not give medicine a spin, no more barin' and grinnin'.... let's get some relief, you've earned it....

Long story short, the pain got worse and worse, the MDs got more and more confused as to why my supposed Sciatica had no visible diagnosis, no herniated disc or spinal stenosis. Hell, at this point, since we can't figure this out lets shunt him off to the pain clinic; it's what we do when our protocols are no longer useful and we'd rather not look into it, it's probably all in his head anyway. Being the type A that I am, and a strong believer in answers to everything, I simply refused to believe the way this was ultimately going. I decided to enroll my friend Scott, the MD, who one early summer day came bouncing out of the San Francisco mist to casually mention, that I ought to get Botox injections: " I read a paper recently that Botox injections can be quite effective, if, as you seem to so vociferously believe, that it's a muscular, not a skeletal thing". A quick search (Botox + Siatica) on the internet and there it was, the number three, the trinity(actually six). There are, in turns out, not two but three possible diagnosis for this wretched sciatic misery; and here is my word for it: Piriformis Doloris Vendictis. I won't describe it here, just go to these and the other links, I am so generously providing alongside this entry to remind you that medicine is protocol based; to believe in your instincts and listen to your pain, not the physicians who think they seen it all before; just another patient, like every other miserable wretched case before it. My condition, it turns out, should have been well known to the MDs who treated me, it's not that uncommon, but thanks to the time constrained and generally disinterested MDs who treated me, I was well on my way to rotting, alongside all the other unlucky corpses haunting the halls of the chronic pain.

Epilogue: I received a Botox injection in the Piriformis last August fourth, and am doing better. Not out of the woods yet, as a lot of physical therapy and possibly many more corticosteroids and Botox injections will be needed to deliver me from this nightmarish affliction, but at least now, it has a name and can be treated like the bitch that it is.

Below, are must reads, if you have any kind of sciatic like nerve pain radiating down your lower limbs. Even if your MRI shows signs of herniation or synopsis, as it often will; do not discount the Piriformis, and mention it to your MD, as a very real possibility. Send him/her the links and nip it in the bud, before it breaks your spirit, as it eventually will as the longer a diagnosis takes, the greater your chances of going insane in the membrane.

Take it from me, chronic pain is unmitigatedly the closest thing to absolute misery. If you have it, wether or not your Piriformis is the culprit, you have my deepest sympathies; I feel your pain, I really do mean it, even if I often profess to the contrary.

Future Salamis of America.

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Two things for Friday Sept Sixth:

Thing One: I just took a nap for no other reason that I had to drive to Berkeley to deliver some promos for bulk mailing. After that, I went for a walk through UC, the university. Like an old man on his afternoon walk, my hands behind my back, I reviewed the offerings laid out on small tables where students proposed to let others, not I, join various ethnicities, to presumably once again bond and share a common ancestry, find solace amid a sea of unfamiliar kissters and grins. As if that was a barrel of monkeys, or something.

When I first moved to this country, when I was fourteen, it never failed, I had to be introduced to every French, Dick and Harry who happened to live within a 200 miles radius of me. Wether I like it or not I had to play the little diplomat, shake their sweaty paws and prove to the peanut gallery that indeed we were French, not some knock off, some cheap Chinese copy. That generally was achieved by muttering a few words, twirling our mustaches and cursing "Les Roast-Beef ".

As if sniffing a terrier's crack somehow smelled better to another terrier than a pug's posterior or a shepherd's ass. So, as I was saying; I strolled by so many recruiting stations that I became frightened and had to turn back, retrace my steps, return to my car and begin the short ride home to Saint Francis; but not before noticing the Future Business Leaders' hermit crab convention and the Future Accountants of America 's kissing station. Like a fucking Carny, but scary.... I quickened the pace and then down right ran as fast as my shackles would let me.

Thing two: When you are forty two, going on forty three, you'd better not succumb to the culinary temptations of Telegraph avenue, which as you might have presumed, and rightly so, are chuck full of tricks and treats for teens. I made the mistake of ordering a large frozen yogurt on this empty stomach. Large frozen treat came with a paddle, for scooping, and could barely be dragged, never-mind carried. It came oozing, out of the frozen yogurt machine, all 50 gallons of it and had to be consumed alone, with no other posse or company than my own.

Needless to say, on the bridge back to San Francisky, my lids were droopy and my killer driving instincts severely diminished. I hopped into bed, closed my eyes and threw off the main switch. When I woke up, I did not really wake, just dreamed that I was waking and cutting myself a piece of salami. As I was chewing I came to realize that there normally is, no cutting board or salami in my bedroom; let alone on my bed, at least not in the past several years of domesticity. I decided to double check that what I was tasting was real, not some fucking dream, that it was indeed a piece of dried and smoked meat I was indeed, masticating. That did it, and next thing I know, I am truly awake, with both my hands deep inside my mouth, searching for that salami treat I could have sworn I was chewing.

Thing Three: Look up, not at the night sky, just the top of this page and behold the galaxies. I love this image. Every point, every spec, a galaxy. I even tried to run the dust and scratch filter in Photoshop and momentarily cleaned a few billion errand stars, clusters and galaxies. But not to cause, any real, intergalactic damage, I, promptly, commanded Z, and reverted to saved, right away.

Saturday Night Lite.

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I had forgotten how much fun it is to shoot what's on broadcast TV. In the seventies and the early eighties, a lot of photographers built their entire careers on taking pictures of what was on the telly. The resulting images are somewhat gimmicky and never that interesting, but undeniably fun and entertaining. At the end of the day, the appropriative ease and speed with which you can take pictures of television screens is just too much of a no brainer; which is not to say that ease and speed are not photographically good things. I make enough sweeping generalizations as it is already. Come to think of it, TV stills are to photography, what comic books were to Pop Art in the sixties, it's seen better days. Nevertheless, I am sure that somewhere, somehow, a lone genius is reviving the genre, and is being ignored because of flippantly opinionated people like me.

Still, I would not mind seeing a new wave emerge from that Phoenix' ashes. Problem is, flat screens don't flicker, which is unfortunate since half the fun is working with and around the cathode's flickering rays. On top of it all, to add insults to injury, digital cameras are making the process ever cheaper, quicker and easier.

Case in point, last saturday night, after returning from Slideluck Potshow, which included my work in the mix, I sat in from of my TV, with my girlfriend's new point and shoot and captured "digitally", close to six hundred pics while she slept next to me. Out of those six hundreds, I'd venture to say that almost half turned out nicely, even if they are, in my mind, devoid of value. The other three hundreds fell victim to flicker and delay.

So, out of guilt and shame, I further combined some of them into diptychs to feel like I was actually being creative, as opposed to some late nite fingering perv, pleasuring the trigger for leisure. As for screen stills, the ones I like the most are those where the photographer steps back to include the TV dinner, a fork and a spoon. Something I did not do. In order to make this photographic sub-specie more interesting one would need to create a story board and hunt down images* that best fit the script to create "cathodovelas" using found images available on TV, Youtube or DVDs. If I feel like it some day, I might experiment with it, as for now, I'll stick with large format. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be a bad way to spend an idle saturday night.

*which I am sure has already been attempted.

Ex Libris.

Here are some of the books I have read or re-read in the past year and would highly recommend. Since I have reviewed some of them as of late, I figured I'd throw in a few more. All these books are great but I'll add a star next to those which I felt were better than good, two stars to those I considered excellent and three stars to those few tomes I think are simply exceptional. I am afraid that my reading list does not include fiction. At some point I'll go through my bookshelves and the basement to put together a list of the past five years(may be). I also tend to give away books to friends and acquaintances when I am done with them, less clutter and it saves trees even if I am never quite sure if anyone reads them or just simply humors me. In no particular order:

How the Scots invented the modern world, Arthur Herman ..+.. The Gate, Francois Bizot ** ..+.. The Battle for Spain, Anthony Beevor ..+.. Churchill, a biography, Roy Jenkins ..+.. Imperial life in the Emerald city, Inside Iraq's Green zone, Rajiv Chandrasekaran** ..+.. Samurai William, Giles Milton* ..+.. Collapse, Jared Diamond ..+.. Mao, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday** ..+.. Chinese Lessons, John Pomfret* ..+.. Civilizations, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto ..+.. Under the loving care of the fatherly leader, North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, Bradley K.Martin ..+.. Ivan's War, Catherine Merridale*..+.. Sex with Kings, Eleanor Herman ..+.. Mapping mars, Olivier Morton* ..+.. The Places in Between, Rory Stewart* ..+.. Stumbling on Happiness, daniel Gilbert ..+.. Red China Blues, Jan Wong ..+.. The Bounty; The true story of the mutiny on the Bounty, Caroline Alexander*re-read ..+.. Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz re-read ..+.. Ghengis Khan and the making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford ***re-read ..+.. The History of Money, Jack Weatherford*..+.. Paris 1919: Six months that changed the World, Margaret MacMillan ..+.. The Best American Science and Nature writing 2005, Jonathan Weiner(editor)..+.. Krakatoa; The day the World exploded, Simon Winchester..+.. To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman ..+.. King Leopold's Ghosts: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa*re-read ..+.. Diamond: The History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair, Matthew Hart. All these books taste great.

" The Blond Giovanni ".....

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In the early spring of 1938, my grandfather was approached by a representative of Chang Kai-shek's government and was invited to lecture at Chongqing's Polytechnical Teachers' Institute. Chinese forces had recently moved their capital from Nanjing to Chongqing to continue fighting Imperial Japan's brutal occupation of China's coast and cities. China's strong man had been impressed by my grandfather's easy wit and strong command of the Chinese language and following a chance encounter, while attending a conference on Sichuan's largest city, the two men had struck up a friendship which was to last for forty years and enrich both their lives and families.

It had been during an extended trip to China's western provinces, where my grandfather had hoped to further refine his already prodigious knowledge of Chinese dialects and languages, that he had unwittingly walked into a temple in the hopes of visiting with the local abbot, but had instead stumbled, quite innocently, into Chiang and members of his extended family. The two men had exchanged pleasantries but had soon been engrossed in conversation the likes of which his aide de camp had never seen him indulge in. At the time, the great man was secretly planning on leading a million nationalist conscripts in a bloody campaign to flush out Mao's red bandits from Gansu and Shaanxi; instead of fighting the Japanese with the help of the communists, to which he had earlier agreed.

In 1934, Mao's troops had managed to regroup and lick their wounds after enduring a forced march and a fighting retreat to escape Chiang's military advances into their original soviet base in Jiangxi province. His army, thinned by hunger, disease and fiercely contested military clashes had seen it ranks severely diminished, as well as those of the first Chinese Soviet Republic. Only a few thousand bloodied and exhausted veterans remained. Strategic plans to finish them off had been drawn in 1936 but Chiang had been kidnapped by Chang Hsueh-liang and forced to agree to a truce and a much hated treaty between him and Mao's communist party to fight the Japanese menace together in the East.

A few weeks earlier, after a long and treacherous sea voyage on the HMS Bering Straits and a fourteen day trip up the Yangzte, my grandfather had found himself gazing upon a great alluvial plain, absentmindedly marveling at the expertly planted rice paddies over which so many tanned and bare chested natives toiled night and day. To get this far into China's countryside, he had managed to hitch a ride in Chiang's private car which had now just stopped to let its half dozen military officers and their mistresses stretch their legs and smoke the french cigarettes, he had bought in Hong Kong upon disembarking in Tsim Cha Sui; knowing that someday he might call upon this camaraderie to achieve his many aims, dreams and wishes. Making life long friends out of casual acquaintances had always been a gift he by now, almost took for granted; but this time, it was to forever change his life in ways he could never have anticipated. While China tried to march onward and away from its troubled and tortured past, my grandfather found himself swept up and transformed by events far beyond his grasp, and which were to irrevocably change his life; in ways his children and grandchildren would to this day marvel at. China was about to be further put to the sword and the torch but his fate was about to become more unexpected than his already storied escape from the impoverished and vengeful hills of his Corsican birthplace.

My grandfather started life as the youngest son of a family of merchants whose fortunes were being rapidly diminished by an influx of cheap imported salt and a new road recently built and completed by German prisoners of war; as part of reparations designed to punish, but also to compensate French economic losses suffered during the first World war. The road brought my ambitious grandfather new found opportunities to escape the family's trade but along with the outside world in came the Spanish flu, and the cheap salt which had previously brought them the great wealth and prestige this family of Corsican aristocrats had grown accustomed to, in their distant and storied past. The back of the family's mules and it's fortune, were soon broken by this newfound commercial route and the dreaded flu sent most of his siblings and relatives, to early and unexpectedly rocky graves.

Shortly after burying a sister and an older brother, in November 1920, he rode the last mule train to the sea and boarded the rusted hulk of an Italian ship ferrying a load of wine and tangerines to Sorrento, on Italy's Amalfi coast. From Sorrento, he made his way to Padua and called on a family friend his father had befriended in World War I. Over a glass of wine, tomato slices and Bruccio cheese he recounted the family's fall from grace and called on him to make good on the promises he had made while battling the guns the Kaiser and his Huns had so fiendishly and abundantly mass produced in the Ruhr valley.

Luciano Battesti had met my grandfather's father in the trenches and had been billeted in small rain beaten, beet farming villages, between Lille and Cambrai. Even-though my great grandfather was Corsican, and Luciano Italian, they had managed to disregard the ancestral enmities between the two countries, and in and amongst the muddied guts and rotting corpses of their compatriots, the two young men had become friends in Pozières and Bazentin.

Four years had past since that summer and Luciano could do nothing but mourn the death of his old friend and offer my grandfather a job as a clerical Orientalist in Padua University's Institute of Far Eastern languages; where he remained until 1922, when he was releaved of his duties after refusing to help Padua's militias torch old books and anarchist manuscripts, deemed unpatriotic by Benito Mussolini and his fascist brutes.....

To be continued......

In other news:

A man walks in his house with a duck tucked under his arm. Upon seeing his wife he pronounces out loud: "This is the pig I've been fucking all this time....!" Upon hearing this, his wife, perplexed and amused, responded in surprise: " Honey, that's not a pig, that's a duck under your arm...! " I wasn't talking to you...." the man quacked back to his wife.

What's that sound in your eye?

# Since all we get these days are data files and images, is it too much to ask to get to know what Mars sounds like....?

Like any self respecting fan of all things celestial, I take great pleasure in reveling in the facts that no matter how self-obsessed or delusional I may get, there is always a place, far from where I dwell, where I can go and marvel at the unmentionable vastness of the known universe.

A few weeks back, in early July, I went camping in the Sierra Nevadas where, as luck would have it, this god fearing, prostate packing, 42 year old's tool, made him get up and take a mid-summer's night piss on the closest evergreen he could see. Not too close to my tent as one might suffer the consequences..... le lendemain.....but not too far either, as to not fall, and off that precipitous cliff he might have imagined. Being that it was the middle of a dark and moonless night, it seemed reasonable to assume that a precipice might be harder to anticipate if your neck is cranked way back, looking up and away.

I like to wonder as much as the next guey**, but plunging to my death while relieving myself, is a stunt I'd rather wait to taste just before I finally take my last steps and kiss The Little Prince's cape...... But when I do, we'll kiss and greet on both cheeks, and I'll finally get to piss on that snake, the one that looks like those hats men used to wear, before JFK caught a bullet with the back of his head (if he had worn a hat, that fateful day in Dallas, instead of baring his head to an assassin's rifled gaze, he might have lived out a more lead free and prosperous presidency).

There's nothing like looking up at the sky and pissing on the ground beneath it. There's still nothing like reminding the forest and the beasts that a man will pay twenty bucks to stay the night, eat a steak and drive home the next day. It's not every day that he gets to piss on a stump beneath the Milky way......Just another way to further remind this here Universe, that free will and a tank of gasoline brought me here, while 'they', will spend the rest of their natural living days trying to open garbage pales or chase down four legged protein shakes....... At the very least, not bothering to treck on over to the latrines, at three o'clock in the morning, feels better than splitting open my chin on the bathroom sink.......and it's good way to keep my feminine side humming.........since whatever estrogen I have coursing through my veins needs as much tending, as the peaches in Voltaire's silk breeches; those same treatises where Buddha meets Plato meets Rousseau meets snow globes or the cold wet steel of a French Guillotine (I have a hard time believing that Voltaire did much gardening and will presume that he meant it metaphorically).

As I stood there, I thought about the fact that there are millions of great images of Mars, Saturn and the Moon***, but that galactic sound files are not that easily found or downloaded on the information super highway. I understand, but regret that because there are no molecules for sound waves to travel within the vacuum of space, that there is no sweet celestial music for us to hear. Nevertheless, Mars has an atmosphere and that ought to be worth at least an MP3.

The only space recording I have ever heard came from what the Cassini/Huygens probe sent back and recorded while descending into Titan's atmosphere. That was sweet... but in the future, can I please listen to other atmospheres.

In other news, landslide and meteor strikes; how on earth are we supposed to get out of the way if there is not a sound to be heard on either side of the Moon.

* Multi-year mission to Saturn and it's moons. ** Guey. That would loosely translate as "dude", in Spanish. *** Hell, as we speak, they are sending a giant camera to Pluto which will reach the icy body in a little more than a decade. # Also commonly known as the Red Eye nebula.

Backpackers' Paradise.

I was doing a little house cleaning when I came across some of my old diaries. I am not sure I want to re-read them again for fear of personalizing embarrassment, but still, I found some pics, when I was twenty three. I am very much against self incrimination as a general rule of thumb. These pictures were taken in the spring of 1987 while in Hong Kong and Thailand. I think the mustachioed ones were shot in a booth in Kowloon, within shouting distance of the Chungking mansions; Hong Kong's Nathan road's backpacker's overnight attraction. I can't recall exactly where I bought the mustache but I vaguely remember purchasing it a couple streets over, near that movie theater where I used to watch kick flicks before returning to China on a new visa. The middle image was shot in Bangkok that same year in July; the details of which are lost to time and within the putrefying folds and cavernous recesses of my forty two year old mind.

Anyway, and since I am going down that lane, here is what I looked like in 1978, when I first traveled to the United States. All of five feet one inches. My hair has since migrated towards the gray but my eye color still has not changed.