ickibod styzinetti

I'm on hold with the downtown Berkeley post office, trying to figure out why I haven't gotten any of my mail forwarded. Just to make sure it wasn't just a matter of me not getting *any* mail, I sent myself a postcard a while back, to see how long it'd take to get. More pressing, I'm expecting a big check from the ad agency, which I am afraid is in postal limbo. Lost behind a desk, sitting in a pile somewhere, trashed. I need it to pay bills, bad. The guy on the phone kept pulling the "we don't do the mail forwarding here," but I've learned to not let them off that easy. When I pressed to talk to someone who could look into where my mail was, when I'd expect to get it, he said he'd go check.

Also waiting to hear from my old landlord about our bogus cleaning charge. I really don't like being a nagging dick about stuff like this, but fuck.

...ten minutes on hold and counting...

...twenty minutes on hold...

...thirty minutes...

My ear hurts. One time I was on hold with AT&T for an hour and a half. Mitch came to pick up Sarah & I. We drove to Castro Valley, went to Val's for burgers. I was on hold almost the whole time. Today I have a meeting in an hour, so I won't be able to last that long. I'm just going to wait until then though.

I just got asked to fill in teaching for a multimedia class at UC Berkeley! Woot!

...forty minutes...

Man, I'd love a cup of coffee. At this point, I'm pretty sure they forgot about me.

...a FULL HOUR!

Okay, so I guess I'll hang up and try again.

And of course, there's no answer.

Fuckers.

I'm not super into sports photography, but I am a big nerd when it comes to getting a glimpse behind-the-scenes (of anything, but especially photography). Thus, I am really into Vincent Laforet's Blog, documenting his work at the Olympics for Newsweek.

I have photos in two shows coming up next week. First, I'm in a show with Canderson and Tiger Lily at Down at Lulu's. Opening is on the 14th:



The other show, I'm a last minute add-on and will probably only have one or two pictures in, but there's going to be lots of other cool stuff there too:

On Six Gallery Presents

510 Skateboarding 10 Yr Anniversary Party

Art: Jason Adams, Derrick Snodgrass, Sham Saenz, Jef Whitehead, Alicia Goode, Ken Nagahara, Max Schaaf, Uri Korn, Jason Mcafee, Joe Brook, Freddy Corbin, Blake Vonknopka Chris Lindig, Stash, Karl Fisher, David Boisineay.
Music: Hot Tub, Official Tourist, Nightling, Stagger and fall, Hama nd th Chokers.

Art Show 8pm - 9pm
Music 10pm - 2am

Club Six
60 Sixth Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Montgomery Street BART
11 July 2008

Sarah jokes, "Hey look, I took a Mark Murrmann picture. See, none of the people in the picture have heads." Ha ha. Funny because it's true. I don't do it on purpose, but maybe I'll pull together a group of images like that.

I've been working on getting a new website together. That, of course, means wading through photos (old and new), trying to figure out how to group & edit them. Again. That's step one, and the worst part of it all.

Then there's designing the site. I'm done with trying to design my own shit. I don't know web stuff well enough and I'm tired of dicking around with the backend shit. I was all set to commit to using Other People's Pixels for my new site, but then Rob Haggert at A Photo Editor (one of my favorite blogs, period) comes out with this new Photo Website service. Just announced today. It looks good. Really, really good. It's more expensive than OPP, but less than LiveBooks or the other big photo website services. I'll probably bite and get one. And hell, I might even get his consultation service. I need someone to look at my photos and help me get my head on straight in terms of what I'm doing.

It's Friday. I have a bunch of photo books* I need to review for work and lots of packing to this weekend. So even though my boss is out today, I have a full plate. That's okay...being busy helps the day go by faster.

Mark your calendars! On August 14th, me, Chris Anderson and Tiger Lilly are having a group photo show at Down at Lulu's in Oakland. The opening will be 7 - 10pm.



*Tompkins Square Park, by Q. Sakamaki (PowerHouse); Curse of the Black Gold, by Ed Kashi (PowerHouse); Daring to Look, by Annie Spirn (Chicago University); Forest Defenders, Chris Lamarca (PowerHouse); The Americans (reissue), by Robert Frank (Steidl); Time Wearing Out Memory, by Steve Gross & Susan Daly (Norton); Strangely Familiar, by Michal Chelbin (Aperture); Foto8 (magazine); Crude Reflections, by Lou Dematteis & Kayana Szymczak (City Lights)...and a few others. Phew.

I looked up my new place on Google Maps, checked out the Street View, and got this:



Hilarious. That's my new neighbor.

Also, be sure to check out the new installment of the Inhuman Eating Machine!!!

Great. I wore my Batman shirt today. The day the new movie comes out.

I didn't even realize it. Now I look (more) like a total dork.

Holy Shit!

A new full-frame camera from Nikon, the D700!

Downtown San Francisco, CA
April 2008

I should be in bed. My flight leaves tomorrow at 9:30 a.m., taking me back to the Bay Area. I had a good time here in New York -- I always do -- but it was busy, hectic, a little stressful. I'm ready to be home.

Jamaica, New York that is.

I'm sitting at the little hotel room desk, eating chicken wings & fries, drinking a tallboy of Budweiser, watching a Rodney Dangerfield movie at the Days Inn by JFK airport. Got in a few hours ago for a long weekend in New York.

It's going to be hectic, busy, but fun.

The Jim Beam website is up!

Brushy Peak Regional Park
6 April 2008

It was a really nice day today. I barely left my little desk, catching up on all kinds of work, yet I still don't feel like I got shit done.

That's what I could use right now, a tall, cold can of High Life.

I'm loving that Indiana is in the spotlight with the Democratic race, only because it's fun to recognize places and try and see if I know any people in the photos and footage. I wish I was there to shoot the campaigns.

Mother Jones won the National Magazine Award for general excellence! Woot!

Gary Winogrand, 1964

This is one of my favorite photos, the cover shot of Gary Winogrand's now-rare book, 1964. Like Robert Frank, Winogrand got a Guggenheim grant to travel across the country, document what he saw. The book includes a number of just killer, killer photos, many of which were shot on KodaChrome. Winogrand rarely shot color, so it's even more remarkable of a body of work.

I stumbled across this photo today online. It reminded me of that book and how I wish I had all my photobooks out here with me.

Also: A rare interview with Gary Winogrand!

Mick Jagger, SF Art Exchange
February 2008

Last night was more scanning. Sarah had work to do, which was kinda good because I did too. I'm trying to catch up scanning all my negs. It's a slow, tedious task.

NEW YORK: I am coming out for the New York Photo Fest, May 14 - 18.

Melrose, Louisiana
June, 1940
by Marion Post Wolcott

Today, in looking for photos on the Great Depression, I came across the Library of Congress' collection of photos from the Great Depression through World War II. They have a whole section just of color photos from the period. I know there was a book that came out a few years ago of the color FSA photos, but I never picked it up. There are some really fucking cool photos in here, both color and black & white. Someday I'm gonna get my shit together and order prints. Since these are in the public domain, you can order prints, cheap!

So I got a little lost in this site, digging around. Back to work.

A possibility for a new business card? I think so. The font is wrong and the color at the bottom should be looser, like how the hot dog is colored. But I love it.

Reading Shoot the Blog I ran across a link to The Constant Siege, who is still sore from lots and lots of darkroom time:

Fuck the darkroom right in the ass. I don’t miss those days. I have books filled with instructions and recipes for my own prints. They’re like spell books for a dead magic.

And this gem:

Seriously, all the time i spent in the darkroom? Wasted years. It's like training to be a carriage maker right at the dawn of the automobile.

I like the darkroom, but this still rings true to my ears.

Quick:

-Saturday I helped Sarah with the Bug Zoo she was running at Cal Day. I spent most of the day with a Giant African Millipede crawling around on my hand/arm, plucking runaway hissing cockroaches off Sarah's shirt and dealing with pushy parents and nerdy kids. It was pretty fun.

At the end of the day I ran down to Moe's and finally bought a copy of Last Photographic Heroes, a book about photographers of the '60s and '70s, most of whom were heavily influenced by Walker Evans and/or Robert Frank. The first half of the book was awesome...then it got into the "art" photographers, which I just have very little patience for.

I also dropped into Amoeba and found a used copy of the Sonic's Rendezvous Band's "Too Much Crank" LP. It's limited to 666 copies, and normally sells for $26. I couldn't bring myself to pay that much. Glad I held out. And I found a copy of the first Go-Nuts 7". A friend has been looking for it for years. He'll be stoked.

-Sunday, we went to Santa Cruz for an antique fair/flea market. Last time we went it was a little better. Still a good time. Found some cool records at Streetlight, as usual. Then we spent the rest of the day at the arcade on the Boardwalk. Played pinball for hours and hours. The new Spider-Man pinball is pretty fun, but the Boardwalk has started charging $.75 for all the newest games. LAME. I got my name on Tempest (5th place) and the old, original Star Wars video game (10th place).


And today I'm back at work, dealing with old landlord crap, busy looking for photos, editing Jim Beam pictures, generally slammed.