Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Photos that Look Good, Photos that Make Me Look Bad, and the Kids Who Always Look Great
Let’s start with the plug. You know about the plugs, right? There are two kinds. First you have the shameful ones, like nickle, hair, and toilet. But then there are the shameless plugs, with their auroral glow and harpsichord accompaniment. Everybody likes the shameless plug - so here’s mine:
Longtime readers - or the odd actual person from my life - will remember the inestimable Cosmo The Dog. I wrote about him every so often while he was part of my family; he ran out his time in 2004 and I miss him to this day. Well, turns out there’s a contest for the best essay about how a dog has changed a person’s life, and I have an essay in it about Cosmo and another dog named Roselle, who together taught me in a burst of awareness what true nobility is. Here’s the really fun part though: WINNER GETS MONEYS. So if all, oh, seventy million of you reading this blog (give or take) were to vote for my essay, I would be a big winner and surely appreciative and would gladly reward you all with glorious ribbons of internet cybercoupons (actual value of coupon is below computation). Vote for Cosmo! Vote for Chuckles! Vote for dignity! And do it like it’s burning a hole in your shorts while you’re wearing them! (contest ends at the end of the month. gratitude lasts forever.)
Maybe cybercoupons are not a sufficient draw, for those of you seeking a more tangible benefit than, um, nothing. Well, how about some entertaining visuals to entice your goad? Here, suck on these and tell me what they taste like:
Let’s start with the wetlands - wide acres of shining sand ringing the bay and rife with life. I’ve always loved the way it looks and smells at dusk, when the crepuscular shift seems to bring out the richness of life and beauty. I snapped this photo from the passenger seat while on my way to a feast of Polish food in Berkeley a few weeks ago. It’s not quite the same as being there but it gives you a place to start imagining what it would be like:
Wetlands… waterfowl… DINNERTIME. There’s our segue. Not long ago we went to Clement Street and picked up, at Zach’s wise suggestion, a roast duck - one of these guys:
I stripped out a bunch of meat for some delicious fried rice, and then we mixed some more into a salad and some other dishes over the next few days. Then I took everything that was left and boiled it into a rich consomme out of which just this past sunday I made some amazing polenta. And there’s more where that came from. Thanks, duck. We wasted nothing. Plus, you make a very striking composition, visually and gustatorialy.
Let’s go from the gastromorbid to the sublime. After we got our duck we decided to take the long way home. Clement Street is two blocks from my house but we were in the car anyway so why not drive to the top of Twin Peaks and just, um, peek? And thus was it so, except the photos I took of the trip and view were sort of extremely not good. Except for one, of Sutro Tower, whereof I lately even here have written. I tried to instill with my words a sense of its austere grandeur but maybe I should just have started with this:
Yes, it’s a little fuzzy, but still lofty and imposing. JUST LIKE ME. And now let’s stick with the Sutro beautyshot at dusk theme: here’s a cameraphone photo I took this past weekend at Sutro Park, on the cliffs over the northwest corner of the city, overlooking the Pacific. The site was once home to a mansion but all that remains of it is a retaining wall, in which recent rains left this puddle to catch the gleam of reflected sunlight as it poured across the underside of clouds that blanketed the sky like veins of granite:
And now finally, or at least finally for the natures mortes, is this study in color, geometry, urban decay and cosmic renewal: at a vacant lot near City Hall, next to an old brick building painted red, grows rich verdure. In that raunchy crotch of the mid-market backwash, I was deeply moved by the implacable power of life, by the texture of human handiwork, and by the balance of forces of stopping and going, the green and the red:
Oh that was nice, was it not? Images like those, they feed the soul. And I know what you’re wondering: how does a man like me, a man of such depth of literary understanding and nuanced humor, also have the sensitivity to capture poems visually, not just in flowing words? Oh yes, it’s a good story, and one I’ll tell you if you buy me a fancy meal with expensive wine. But I can begin by letting you in on some secrets - secrets I thought I’d hidden even from myself. But when I finally uncovered them a few weeks ago, wedged in the back pages of a photo album I mostly filled up in 1977, the fact I’d hidden them so well filled me with a burning desire to share these unspeakable secrets with the whole world, so you’d better look quick before I get wind of what I’m about to do and pull the plug on the whole ugly affair (that would be one of the shameful plugs, as referenced above):
ITEM: I began life freelancing as a nerd, before I decided to make it both vocation and avocation. Here is a document that proves it if nothing else does - my A.D. certificate, signed personally by none other than Peter “the Eube” Uberroth, and if you don’t know who I am talking about, well, me and Carl Lewis are very disappointed in your ignorant millenial ass. Don’t tell me you don’t know who Carl Lewis is. This is just sad. Okay, check this out, then. It will tell you everything you need to know. About everything. Meanwhile, the rest of us aged brainies can feast our eyes on this bad boy:
(note: yeah, I photographed the documents instead of scanning them. That’s because I don’t have a scanner. And that’s because I’m not cool. It’s not exactly the same as being a nerd, since many nerds have scanners, but it really doesn’t help, either.)
Okay, maybe that’s actually kind of cool, with the Eube’s real-deal John Hancock and those snazzy stars and such. How could I been a nerd when I was awarded this kind of style? Especially in a time when Carl Lewis was considered cool? Oh, I had extra nerd stores saved up. Let’s cue up Exhibit 2:
It is my Certificate of Participation Recognition for the Logotherapy Essay Contest. My theme, apparently, was “The Pursuit of Meaning for Youth in the 1980s.” I was awarded this handsome piece of calligraphed construction paper (with foil badge!) in 1982, so this was in the nature of predictive essayism. I think I said that the search for truth would be conducted by the light of whale-oil lanterns, with long pointed sticks for beating the brushy moors till truth got scared and ran for it, and then we could hunt it down for sport and sustinence. This is because MTV had only been on the air for two years and there were still only like five teevee channels total. Yeah, I didn’t win the contest. That would actually have cut into my nerd cred. Winning anything is cool. Losing the logotherapy contest? You gotta know that’s nerdy.
And yet somehow, I managed to eke out a bit of coolness that emerged despite my years of nerdy prep. Here, let me show you it. But first, cast yourself back into the murky lukewarm seas of my coming-of-age. I was at Northwestern University for five weeks of intensive theater training before my senior year of high school. I learned mime and modern dance, sang in harmony while touching other boys, and wore high-cut shorts with contrast piping. One would think I’d given up any chance of being cool - and I’d have agreed with you, up until that fateful night in late July when I found myself enjoying a conversation with three friends late at night. That’s truly all it was - conversation, friendship, a laugh and a sigh. But here’s the crazy thing:
TWO OF MY CONVERSATIONAL PARTNERS WERE FEE-MALES. I was even in their actual room, with the beds in it where they slept! Yes, me and some other dude were so cool we just spent a whole night in there talking. With girls. One of whom happened to be, as I recall, Jamie Gertz, but that’s just the way that turned out. She was actually really nice. And I got busted for it. I saved the disciplinary slip all this time as proof of some imagined coolness that the paperwork erroneously implies. Jamie and me, we were just friends. And I paid the price for it. And I’d do it again. But not right now.
Because now it’s time to wrap this up with Insulin Shock Theater: can you withstand the eye-melting cuteness of my brood? Look upon these punims, and despair! Or just pinch their pudgybunny cheeks! It’s all good when you’ve got…
okay what have you got there, son? Zach off his pushbike at the Sutro Park carriagehouse, securing his marbles. I particularly like how the duck on the helmet is sharing the joke with you.
Let’s give Jesse a turn. Here he is taking the car for a little spin. You think he doesn’t know how to drive it? Okay, you are probably right. But that will not stop him. NOTHING WILL STOP HIM. Look at those eyes - fear runs from him. I’m just glad he’s usually on my side.
Okay, Z got shorted on that exchange, since he didn’t get to smile for the camera in any way you could see. Let’s make up for that with a two-shot: Z and the steam-table chickenfeet, which actually looked really good:
That is enough for now. If I have not persuaded you to vote for my Cosmo story, I have no more persuasion left with which to, um, suase you. I give and I give and this is the thanks I get. You break my heart. Me and Jamie and Carl don’t need that kind of treatment. We’ve still got the 80’s, dammit. What do you have? No don’t tell me. I’m feeling a little fragile this morning. Time to search for more meaning, I guess…
