Holly Northrop Blog

I did mange to do a few things over the holiday besides lay around and watch movies. I cleaned up, or more likely messed up, some of my code; added a new logo thing and did some general site maintenance. Real boring stuff. I pulled work for the Krappy Kamera Contest and Toycamera.com has me as the featured artist. I'm not sure for how long I'll be on the homepage so the gallery link is here.

Miss Simon came through here Tuesday-Wednesday and then again on Saturday night. She has her very own version of travel hell that only underscores our decision to stay here and have the rest of the country clog the nations highways. Why travel when New York City finally clears out and one can move about without too much annoyance? Shave a few million off the total and things become quite nice. So nice that a trip from Jersey to Queens really wasn't that fucked up even with the 7 train running on a screwy schedule.

Jasmine went to Grandma Northrop's house in Tennessee. According to Jazz, grandma has been sick and therefore the two of them didn't do much. Jasmine spent the majority of her trip to the deep dark south hanging out with the twenty-three year old neighbor boy and his friend, smoking dope and getting drunk at an all-night bowling alley. The crabapple certainly didn't fall very far from that tree. She stayed up partying all night Saturday and then boarded a 8:30am flight to Charlotte where she had a small layover until her flight to Pittsburgh dropped her off at her fathers. By the time he saw her I can only imagine what she smelt like. I am so glad I was totally out of the loop on all of it. It's way funnier over the phone then in person.

Thanksgiving was different this year. Well, wait, Thanksgiving has always been a little different seeing as how I haven't played the roll of 'daughter coming home' in twenty-five years.

As your average disgruntled fucked up kid of the 1970s, Turkey Day was always my favorite day to do a shit-load of drugs. That is if we did not go to Grandma Schneider's House. Grandma lived on a hilltop full of black snakes, about 15 miles outside of Midway, PA. She had a chicken coup and every year slaughtered her own turkey. Grandma Schneider's house was crazy scary and anything stronger than a joint was NOT recommended. The coolest thing at Grandma's house was her black and white dog named Zippy. I hung out with him as much as I possibly could.

If we stayed in Ohio, I would hang out with dad all day while he watched hours of football. It was the one safe place to be, even if he fell asleep. Mom would never mess with a day of sports and I would lie on the floor between the TV and my father, reading horror novels. (I became the dog.) Salem's Lot and football saved me from my mother and myself.

The last time I "went home" for Thanksgiving was in 1980. I had been away at college for the five months prior and after eight hours on a Greyhound bus from Pittsburgh, I arrived in Cincinnati with a duffel bag full of neurosis and a head full of acid. I was having a good day and it was precisely because of the drugs that I was able to be pleasant.

It is almost as though my dilated pupils had taken a photo of that particular day. I remember the image of dinner so very, very well. Probably because it was the last time I ever went home for a holiday. I remember it better than I remember any actual conversation that most likely happened between the three of us. The image of the turkey candlestick holders that caught the wax drippings from the candles, their light flickering off of my mother's china and for a brief moment, everything seemed comfortable, still lingers in the shadows of my psyche. I recall how my eyes followed the light around the thin gold rim of my plate and then looking up to my left at my mom just as she smiled at me. I then shifted my eyes over to the right at my father and caught a glimpse of him watching her with his crooked, Dick Cheney grin.

He had good reason to keep an eye on her. My mom could go from semi-happy and laughing to yanking her lit cigarette out of the beanbag ashtray and pointing its red ember at my nose, murmuring strange things about Meadville, marijuana, abortion or my 'rotten friends'.

Yes, well enough of that silliness, she is dead now and her china sits in a moldy basement in Butler, PA. C'est la fucking vie.

Thanksgiving was different this year. I made Filet Mignon and Martha ate almost a whole homemade pumpkin pie. We watched the fine cinema of Fritz Lang with his masterwork M and we took naps. A little bit of German horror, a nap, extended family floating in and out, and turkey lunch with friends in Queens. It all sounds pretty perfect to me.

The other day I forced myself to leave the building I work in and go out to lunch. I usually just run up the street grab a salad and scurry right on back to my desk where I work and eat at the same time. But not on this particular day. I wanted to experience this stress-free lunch I've heard so much about and just wander around the village, visiting my favorite little places.

I went to my much loved, St. Mark's Bookshop where I found myself standing next to Parker Posey, eavesdropping on her while she was on her cell phone chatting with someone about how great the new Kate Bush record is. Yuck, I hate Kate Bush and overhearing those words come out of her mouth made me cringe. This is like the fourth or fifth time I have run into Ms. Posey. I know she lives somewhere near the Voice but it is starting to look like she just might be stalking me.

The only reason I even noticed her at all was because her cell phone rang in the middle of the store, and she had the gall to answer it without so much as a whisper of hesitation. As soon as I heard a long long-drawn-out "H-e-y, I'm so glad you c-a-l-l-e-d!" I looked up from the book I was thumbing through and thought, h-e-y, I know that v-o-i-c-e. It was Mary, from Party Girl. Not a real stretch of a character for her, I see.

Aside from the star factor, the whole thing was annoying because, well, um, we were in a bookstore and she was standing next to me talking on a cell phone. Loitering on the other side of her was her goofy boyfriend, Ryan Adams. It was a real moment, the kind I usually miss because I eat lunch at my desk.

THE POLITICS OF BOOTS
I need to buy winter boots before it snows and I am screwed. I have nothing to wear because my winter boots of the last few years finally gave out sometime this past February. So Martha and I have been loosely shopping around for warm, waterproof and reasonably priced snow boots. I've kind of upped the bar of this shopping task by refusing to buy ANYTHING that has been Made in China. For fucks sake, just stop it, right?

(Yes, I am fully aware that my favorite camera, the Holga, has a Made in China sticker on the bottom of it but it's a Chinese toy camera originally made in China. Bitching about it would be kind of like going to Chinatown and complaining that everything in Chinatown is made in China)

From the Holga manual: Designed and engineered in a factory in China, the Holga was initially introduced to China in 1982 as an inexpensive camera using the most popular film format in the country at that time, 120 size film. China was just beginning to open its doors to the world and photography was skyrocketing in popularity. Unfortunately for the Holga, no one could have predicted the quick and over-whelming dominance that 35mm film would have on the Chinese market and after only a few short years the Holga was overrun by its 35mm competitors. But by then, word of a special, all-plastic camera called the Holga had spread to the West and its popularity was growing. Since then, over a quarter of a million cameras have been sold in 20 different countries with almost no change in it's original design.

Fascinating. Anyway...

Macy's was a bust on the boots. Everything under $50.00 had been made in China; everything else was well over $100.00. Importing high volumes of crap product from a country with such dismal human rights record is one thing but snatching it up because it is the ONLY economically priced alternative is another. Is the value of American or Canadian made goods really twice as much as Chinese made ones? Should it really cost double to buy American made products? I don't think so. I think it's because the US Dollar is almost seven times the value of one Chinese Yuan and they are in no hurry to revalue their currency regardless of what Hu Jintao says in organized photo opportunities with our feeble excuse for a president.

It may cost twice as much to buy American but it isn't worth twice as much.

During his worldwide tour of all things Asian, President Bush asked Hu Jintao to consider importing more US product in an attempt to level out that whole messy trade agreement thing. Yeah, I'm sure Hu Jintao is gonna get right on that. Just like he's going to get on the stick about fixing all the other shitty things his post-totalitarism régime has done. While not as crazy as the North Korea leader, Kim Jong il whom earlier this year called our very own president Bush the "world's dictator", Hu Jintao has a vested economic interest in not doing anything our way. Yeah sure, the democracy word gets thrown about quite a bit and it all looks good on paper but to actually increase wages, costs and to even consider importing American product into his country is ridiculous.

This is the kind of shit that spins around in my head while I walk the shoe isles of Macy's and DSW. I think about the vicious cycle of consumer products and I ask the burning question of "Where did this product come from?". I guess I'm funny like that.

Remember when you were a kid and the new Christmas Toy catalog from Sears would come to the house and you would spend the day pouring over each page with a pen and paper in hand, writing down your list for Santa? Those were great days weren't they? Well before you realized that Santa was a cranky senior vice-president and trust officer who held a grudge like a two-thousand-year-old Japanese curse.

Well, last week all 416 pages of the new B&H Home & Portable Entertainment catalog found its way to our mailbox and after quickly drooling over all the goodies inside, I've made a dream list. Knowing full well that Santa, is poor I kept it pretty simple.

On page 13 is the Kenwood Sirius Digital Satellite Tuner. While I'm a at work I've been listen to WFMU on internet radio and I would love to check out Satellite Radio at home. WFMU reminds me of what college radio used to be all about. Satellite radio is like the Wild West, all new and full of possibilities. This would be the 'fun, learn something new toy'.

I need new speakers. Now, this has been an issue for years. The woofers on my Harman Kardons have started to biodegrade right there in the living room. This is bad and I know it. Speakers are expensive, well at least the kind that are going to last for 20 years, like my harmans.

So, without the aid of a sound room and strictly by the written page I have eyeballed two. For purely ascetic reasons I would like to 'hear' the Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting floor standing speakers that are on page 182. I am a sucker for design and these look fun. The JBL Northridge E90 3-Way Dual 8" Floor standing speakers on page 203 are what I am leaning towards, sight unheard.

Headphones with me are a big deal. My hair is a snake nest and anything put up there needs to be able to withstand constant tugging. I hate when shit pulls my hair. I have been using earbuds but would be open to a pair of the Sony Studio Monitor Headphones that are on page 81. I see them as a necessity for work in order to push all those around me into the great mid-day 3:00 void of get the fuck away from me.

Ah but yes, right there on page 127 is what I think would be so much fun to have. A Sony Hi-Fi Component CD/Player/recorder. Hook that puppy right on up to the main stereo and I could burn vinyl and god only knows what else. Why they are so expensive and cumbersome I'm never know. This technology should be standard on ANY CD player.

It's good to dream.

PUSHING PRODUCT
I made a 2006 Holga Wall Calendar through Lulu and I must say I am very proud of it. Lulu does nice work (and so do I), in fact much nicer than Café Press. I compared the two and it was easily no contest. It's printed on a 80lb linen paper and it just looks gorgeous. Buy one, they make great gifts!

MORE MUSIC & WHITE NOISE
Martha's new iBook came and I must say it is really cute even if it is white. She's organizing the bazillion photos of the cats and figuring out how she wants to work with the new system.

I would like to try to strip her old Dell down and network it to my Dell, put it on the floor next to me in the office and turn it into an MP3 server for my own personal amusement. It's only 40 GB but that would at least hold all my Dylan and maybe a few other albums worth of stuff. Could be fun or a nightmare depending on my talent for understanding XP Networking abilities. Yeah, I know, I am a little scared, so this week is back-up and burn baby, back up and burn.

SUPER STUPID
Last Thursday night at 2:00 in the morning, Jasmine saw a kid get hit by a car. She was with her normal group of party friends and they had been out being bad kitties when she saw a wasted kid whom she did not know walking down the street. A car came up beside him and turned into him, rolling him either up over the car, or up over the hood. I could not really get that straight; Jazz was all excited and talking way too fast for me to follow along. The kid is alive and probably what saved him was the fact that he was so wasted.

I am surprised that Jasmine is the first one of us to witness a person being hit by a car. I can't believe that after living here for over 5 years now I haven't seen complete carnage. All the elements are here, speeding cabdrivers, oblivious and obnoxious pedestrians, confusing street signs, drunken tourists, multitasking NY drivers and of course, Jersey drivers. I am surprised that I don't see a hit and run or at least a hit every damn day.

CAN I SHOW YOU MY SLIDESHOW?
With my nose to the monitor and a month after we got back, I have finally finished the Topsail Island vacation photos. Now this section was built basically for three people, Martha, Sheri and myself. Well, Jazz too if she wants to look but she's a little bitter about not going so maybe, not so much. Some of the photos are beautiful, if I may say so. The black and white beach stuff is particularly stunning but they are still vacation photos. The only thing modern about the presentation is that the viewer can chose not to go there instead of being stuck in the neighbors' family room. Two of them made it on to the 2006 Holga Wall Calendar, so there. Enjoy.