Holly Northrop Blog

Last weekend I made my Famous Chocolate Cake for the neighbor Jack because he shoveled out our driveway with his snow blower after we got over two-feet of snow. Well this weekend I made my Peanut Butter Kookies for our chiropractor's 46th birthday. I'm not sure what is up with me and the baking niceties.

Who's to say? I do know that I've been thinking a great deal about people that I no longer talk to anymore for a variety of stupid reasons ranging from nothing to say to logistical to general irritation, none of which are legitimate. And that makes me so very, very lame. So I guess I'm trying to make up for it all with baked goods to people who barely know me. Strange isn't it? Ah yes, the mind is a terrible thing.

I Would Mug Me
Martha bought me a Polaroid back for my Holga and while I love the shots that I'm taking, working with the material on the street is a nightmare. I don't know how folks used to shoot with the peel apart films. I look like a idiot out there trying to juggle my camera; the toxic disposable paper of the backing that I want to keep because they are cool; the wet print I just peeled apart; a small accordion file for the wet print to go into when it dries; a long zip up pouch for the disposable paper backing to go into when it dries and my purse.

Of course I know that years ago they didn't care about the paper backing and seeing how most of the photographers were men, there were no purses on the job.

Tax Time
Martha and I finally broke down and had our taxes done. Now, if we lived on a different planet, one that truly did treat all people equally, there probably would still be taxes but I do think that at the very least, she and I would be able to file a fucking joint return. The tax benefits that the government dollops out to legally married folks should be available to all of us that are in any kind of cohabitation in any kind of "family" scenario. Boy, boy, girl, girl or even boy, girl and yes, those polygamous marriage people too. A family is a family is a family.

Instead, the IRS only sees my status as single or the more depressing category of divorced. Although I do get to claim Jasmine, I cannot claim the house. Martha, filing as single but with none of the benefits of actually being single, gets to take the house. She and I pay higher taxes within a year because of our single/divorced status. This goes with the governments' theory that because we are single, we have more disposable income and with less overhead, we should contribute to the overall community on a higher level then those that are actually draining the system. I pay more in taxes for the local schools then traditional families only my invisible family will never use those services. I understand how it's supposed to work, with Jasmine in a whole other community, draining that towns resources etc. But what is happening instead is that Jasmine is at an out of state college and we are paying almost double for her to go there. So we pay higher taxes in our town and higher tuition in another state.

And once I consider all the money I make in a year, that which isn't in my pocket is funding the beginning of The Third World War, I get super cranky about being told what I am verses what I really am, sexual preferences being left out of the equation.

All this tax shit is nothing new to me; it has been going on for years ever since I stopped being a straight married mom and switched teams. What is new is that I keep getting irritated over it all. It cost Martha and me a total of over $500.00 to have our taxes done. Two single returns, one using the long form and one using the standard, a bunch of bullshit around living in Jersey and working in Jersey then living in New York, student loan interest and a new home purchase. All of that could have been on a joint return and saved us probably $250.00.

The good news about all of it is that we are getting money back, money that will so help with the payment on the new roof. I'm not sure if we would get more money back if we could file a joint return. If it wasn't so complicated I'd run the numbers just to see.

The Carpet Highway of My Two-room Apartment
In the two weeks since Martha's mother, Genevieve, has been alone things had been relatively quiet. The first week passed without us being aware of any incidents. However, the second week proved to unveil the stresses of elderly confusion. Genevieve, not wanting to bother anyone except direct family, ran out of blood pressure meds and in an attempt to get medicine without asking someone to take her to CVS, she signed up for Medicare through the Assisted Living home. Now her medicine is going to cost her $300.00 a month instead of $3.00. It will probably take Martha weeks to fix that.

Genevieve also signed almost $8000.00 in checks over to the desk jockey at the Assisted Living home. Her insurance company reimbursed her for her living expenses and because she would not ask anyone to take her to the bank, she signed the checks and told the receptionist to credit her account. No receipt, no anything, and most importantly the Assisted Living home never called Martha.

Martha spent a great deal of Thursday on the phone to just about everyone at the Assisted Living home drilling into all of them that they are to contact her if Genevieve gives away anything, (jewelry, cash, furniture) or if she tries to leave the property without some kind of supervision.

For Genevieve, the mail is a foundation of incredible anxiety. Everyday something arrives that is so confusing to her that for all she knows it could very well be written in Taiwanese. Her job before Frank died was to open the mail and lay it out for him to read. She never actually read anything. So now, everything is confusing. A credit card offering 0% interest for 9 months is cause for serious concern. "What is it, what should I do?"

There is still a great deal of tinkering that needs to be addressed before Genevieve is in a place where she can't screw up things. Martha and I are going down in about a month to tie up some loose ends, to say the least.

I think I need to start having the same expectations for The L Word that I used to have when I was in high school and watched General Hospital everyday after school with my best friend Sherry. The only thing that was expected from that soap opera was for it to be on. Plot was not an issue and believability was never a consideration. If we skipped school, then the whole run from All My Children, One Life to Live and on into General Hospital was room ambiance to our pathetic southern Ohio lives. That and Lynard Skynard [Leh'-nerd Skin'-nerd].

But the point is, nothing groundbreaking was expected from these shows and we were never mentally challenged, except for when Luke raped Laura on the floor of a disco and then they ran away together to Ice Princess Island. While on the run, Luke and Laura fell in love but she was already married to a guy named Scotty, who went nuts when she ran away. Somehow, Scotty and Laura divorced and she then turned around and married Luke, (the guy who had just months before raped her on the floor of a disco) but not before he managed to save the town of Port Charles from being frozen from Cassadine's weather machine.

As far as I can tell it's every woman's fantasy, to not only fall in love with your rapist but to run away to exotic locations with him. While "on location" together, you can help save the planet. Then, with nobody in the way of a complete 180, nothing else says submissive-punching-bag better than "I do". I mean, if he rapes you before you marry him, just what is to be expected when you lay down the "till death do us part" line?

Anyway, The L Word isn't even as believable as anything that was ever on General Hospital. I now realize that I extremely dislike just about every character on the program because every single cliché within the lesbian community is in use. I can almost see the conference room white board with the all the characters names across the top and little boxes below, each one filled in with a predictable behavior or affliction. Some characters have several clichés running in rotation so all that they do is hop from one superficial event to the next. The writers of The L Word are really bad soap opera writers. This shit would never fly in the straight daytime land of soaps and that stuff is total crap. I expect at least the same level of hogwash as General Hospital. Come on girls the bar is already low enough.

WOMAN'S WORK
More health scares with Jasmine this week. For the moment, things seem to be in a small holding pattern. I can't tell if it is just Jasmine's natural hypochondriac abilities at work or if there is something more sinister below the surface. Telling me to relax is really something that just doesn't work much anymore.

She is coming home for spring break to meet with her main doctor here about a new thing. Heredity might be at play, so we aren't as concerned but then some days we are. It flips every other day and I am slowly losing what is left of fucking senses. This Friday Martha and I will be in Pennsylvania. I hope we can get there in time for her appointment with the eye guy. This is all for the second opinion about the spinal tap. Her doctor here wants to make sure she needs a tap and not drugs first.

I, true to form, buried my head in my photography. Green-wood Cemetery is up. It took me five days to scan all the negatives. Not five solid days, I did have to work and talk endlessly on the phone with Jasmine about health issues. Anyway, the gallery here is up and I will be putting a smaller one on Toycamera later on in the week. I'm also going to see if the Voice will run it. They were interested a few weeks ago but now, things might be different. Everything else about work is.

Regardless, it is good work and I am very proud of it. I think I managed to catch the feeling that was with me on the one rainy day. It is a strange sensation to walk alone among the dead with nothing but a camera. I've always enjoyed it, but I'm funny like that. Martha went with me but we would separate the minute we left the car. She traveled over one hill and I over the other. She managed to shoot a pretty funny little video clip of the two of us but outside of warming up and drying off in the car the shoot was a solitary event. She shot some very good photos as well.

SUNBEAMS ON GOLD CARPET
Lately, I have had to think about my mother more than I normally would and more then I am comfortable with. All this aging stuff has me trying to guess about her health issues so as to gauge my own demise. Heredity is a funny thing. I can't remember how old my mom was when she went through the change but if I had to guess, it probably started before the age of fifty but really hit peek levels by the time she was fifty-three, and those where some good ole days I'll tell you. I was thirteen and she was fucking crazy as a loon. It was somewhere around the age of fifty-eight that she developed uterine cancer and had a hysterectomy. She then went on to live another twenty-two years with varying degrees of health problems. I have yet to find out what she actually did die from although I know she had just undergone her first round of chemotherapy when she died two years ago. But what kind of cancer is a mystery to me. All of my doctors are interested in my family's, (particularly the females) medical history but that is so hard to give when everyone is dead. Yes, I could find out if I really wanted to and I will probably have to but not just yet.

So for now they'll get this list. Breast and Uterine cancers; extremely high blood pressure; hypertension; mental illness, specifically manic depression with panic attacks and high anxiety; alcoholism combined with prescription drug abuse; cigarette smoker for fifty years, osteoporosis and cataracts. Yep, that was my mom as defined by illness. The sum of all that's wrong, well at least what I knew about.

I think that I just might be stronger then my mother ever was. Now that is a bold sentence and I'm still working on processing that thought but if I line up both of our lives, well... I'm thinking that an idea of that caliber just might have some weight to it. I mean honestly, once she married my dad she had thirteen years of VP bank wife, country club loving, republican voting living before I came along and created half of what was wrong with her. By the 70's all she had in her life was a fucked up teenager who did normal fucked up 1970s type stuff. There was only ONE of me so other than that, she pretty much had the run of her life if she wanted it. Instead, she cleaned the house, grew zucchini in the backyard, sat at the kitchen table, and stared out the window for hours on end while drinking Black Label beer and chain-smoking Salem cigarettes. Maybe, that's the way she wanted it. The only probe into my mother's brain during those dark years was kept on a pad of paper by the phone. In that pad of Provident Bank notepaper, my mom would write these wacky sentences; nothing that I can recall now and not anything I could have begun to understand then. I left home a seventeen and while she did seem to calm down a tad bit, that woman was as high-strung as they come. And why yes, the apple didn't fall very far from that tree.

I don't think my mom could have handled working full-time in the fantastic mans' world of publishing, or faired well with any kind of artistic talent, moonlighting the self-indulgent process of creation. Or nurtured a shaky child through college, with the constant health scares and the ever looming fear of the cancer coming back. She could have never walked away from a marriage, even though I know that for many years she was painfully unhappy with my father. She could have never ever handled moving to Denver, DC or NYC and none of this could she have done before the age of forty.

I have no real point here other then I've been thinking about my mother and as I mentioned before, I'm thinking about her a little bit more then I am comfortable with.

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.

It took me all last week to scan the remaining Holga beach photos and because of that, and the sexy new pink chair Miss Simon gave me, my office is the place to be. Martha has a nice little set up and Zoë even naps in the chair when not in use by Mom.

Aside from feeling all itchy and weird, the days seem to be flying by. I have so many things I want to work on. I did manage to finish a 2006 Holga Wall Calendar. It's pretty awesome and if all four of you could buy one, I could make a few bucks and besides, everyone needs a calendar somewhere in their life. I make a dollar (seriously) per calendar, so collectively you will have paid my morning commute to work. Think of it as helping me out on a Monday. Or not.

The new, well actually it is 25-years-old but to me it is new, Russian Lubitel 166B camera came! After about thirty-minutes of fucking around with it I figured out how to use it —in theory. Now we'll see if I can actually create anything with it. I downloaded the English version of the manual because there was a button that, for the life of me, I could not figure out what it is for. I'm still not really sure because the translation is a little too exact. It says stuff like:

"It is enough to raise a little reflex viewfinder cover to see deep between the light protective hoods large and for any illumination distinct clear image according to which it is easy to fit frame limits when the object is already found or to find a new scene."

Right. And that my friends is a down and dirty Russian to English translation. Not for the basic stoner head reader. Put down the bong and focus.

I can figure out how to use the basic parts of the camera because, thank god, photography is a global thing. F8 is f8 in any language and be there is where you are. This little button in question is called a Reminder Dial. What the fuck? I have no idea. We'll see if it's important later on I suppose. If only it could REMIND me of what it is supposed to do.

I'M NEVER GONNA STOP THE RAIN BY COMPLAININ'
Martha and I drove 6 hours on Saturday to spend 5 hours with Jasmine and her roommate Patrick. Seems odd and silly to the average viewer but well worth it and generally normal in this here family. I would crawl the earth to see that kid and she knows it. Jasmine has the loveliest first apartment I have ever seen. She has learned the fine art of fabric draping, curbside furniture finds and the ever so complicated Salon Style exhibit living.

I love her apartment! The building is ghetto but her and Patrick have made a beautiful home. It was like time traveling back to 1978. Jasmine is a hippie—period. One would never have known it was 2:00 on a sunny afternoon while sitting in her living room. My baby vampire has learned mood lighting well beyond my highest expectations. Martha and I hung out in her incense-filled lair for about an hour, taking an abundance of photos and talking non-stop about everything. Patrick hit the big score when we invited him to tag along with us to lunch at Eat'n Park, the thrift store, Spencer Gifts, (two days before Halloween) a costume shop, (again, two days before Halloween) and so help me god - Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is the only game in that one-horse town and Jasmine needed stuff, that why yes, we could have driven further on down the road, in our gas-guzzling SUV, to a locally owned store an hour away that doesn't spend an enormous amount of its profits not only supporting "The Bush Agenda", but also obsessively importing products from China. Things are now so out of whack that I can't even live politically left if I wanted to. Keep killing the planet, support the president of the 'Kill the Planet' Club, or not buy Jasmine food. Those were my choices.

Sometimes I feel as if the only thing left for me to do is to move us out to the middle of the woods with no running ANYTHING. Just take it way back to the shitting in the woods, growing your own food, collecting rainwater and learning how to weave, stage of life.

Good Lord, Holly, land the plane, land the fucking plane.

Jasmine had a huge Halloween party to go to and all she really wanted was a Bat Girl costume, hair care products and a bunch of spaghetti sauce. But by God it was good to see her. She looks good. She looks happy and I tried not to tear up when it came time to go.

Martha and I spent the night in Punxsutawney. You know, the place with the groundhog. We had reservations at the 107-year-old hotel in the center of town with a lovely view of the park where, every spring, they yank the little guy out of his nest and see if he freaks out or not. While we did see PLENTY of groundhog road-kill on the way to Punxsutawney, we however didn't see any live ones while we were there. We did meet a fluffy West Highland White Terrier named Samantha from New Jersey on Sunday morning in the park but that was about it.

A truly bizarre thing happened at 8:00pm on Saturday night as the town clock chimed the familiar ...ding, ding, ding, ding, pause ...ding, ding, ding, ding and then gonged eight times. As soon as it finished with the last gong, it did something I have never heard before. It proceeded to ding out Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head in its entirety. I shit you not. It went on the full-length of the song, for like three minutes. At first, we could not stop laughing but then it became like crazy land. Martha turned on the TV to drown it out and a 30-year-old Laurence Welk Show came blasting on at full volume just as Myron Floren, the show's star accordion player, was working his way through his rendition of a Mauler symphony, a Welk original for sure. All of this was most certainly a glitch in the Matrix.

I was terrified at the thought of 9:00, and oh my god what if they do that every hour? We will never sleep! Not to mention ever get that fucking song out of our heads. But that was all for the big clock and it didn't even gong out the time the rest of the evening. Man, I didn't even know that you could make a clock to that. Or even think that you would want to. Just what kind of crack are they smoking out there in the middle of PA?

Ah yes Middle American strangeness is always welcome and the fall leaves were amazing to boot. I shot a few Holga and by a few, I limited myself to only bringing two rolls of 120 with me. I brought the little Russian camera too but intentionally loaded it with 3200 black and white film so I could focus on composition and tiny little knobs, F-Stops and shutter speeds. It took me minutes to set up a shot. Yeah, f8 and be there for the next few weeks, I'm afraid.

I had the weirdest dream about Jasmine the other night. The whole thing was screwy but all I remember now is that I bitch slapped her because I caught her huffing cleaning supplies in the living room. I'm not sure what THAT all means but the whole damn day was stained with that fucked up image. The big 'ta da' for her last week was that she changed her major. Miss Jasmine Rai Northrop is now majoring in Journalism. I am so very proud and thrilled that she has found something she likes to do. So two photographers made a writer - the cycle of poverty continues.

After a little bit of typical Middle American confusion Jasmine's lease is all secure for her apartment next year. Being that she is living in a small college town all of the apartments have over-drafted leases to protect themselves for non-payment of rent. Yeah, no shit. So it was no surprise at all when they wanted Jasmine's parents to guarantee payment. Okay, sure, we know all about crazy leases but when this paper work came it was ridiculous. They wanted to guarantee the guarantor by having Jasmine's father, to not only sign it, but to have the dumb thing notarized. Yeah, right like that is going to happen or make a difference for that matter. Martha called them and explained that although he is not dead, he is, oh what is that word... 'estranged' Yes, that is the polite way to explain the situation. Martha also proposed that she could sign it too as my lesbian partner of 13 years but they declined the offer. The really funny part, well at least I think it's amusing, it that the whole nine months rent on this place is just a little more than what we pay for one month here. Is that sick or what?

MY DISTAL IS FINE
I was so fucking happy last week after leaving my root guy's office that I almost did pirouettes down Park Avenue all the way to Grand Central. I was totally having a klutzy ballerina moment that is for sure. But I couldn't help it and in any other city, someone would have carted me away. I had been dreading that visit for days because my teeth are nose-diving like crazy since I have been on this blood pressure medicine. I already had two cavities that we knew about. I personally can't believe that I have any of my original teeth left to decay. I think they are held together via a series of fillings. A few on x-ray look like filled Swiss cheese. Anyway, I had been very pensive about this visit because I don't have any extra patience what's so ever or an extra $1800 for more bling bling.

Oh he tried all his little tricks to make me jump in the chair but that tooth is fine. Now I do have another dental visit on Thursday but that is for my six-week root scraping. Nice eh? Living large, living larger.

I'M IN-LOVE WITH PLASTIC
I am in love with my new scanner and the Holga camera. The combination is unbeatable. It is so bad that I didn't even take my digital out of the house for three days last week. I only had my Holga with me. I have film in the freezer, in-camera and at Spectra Photo. It feels great and I love it. Everywhere I go I have the Holga around my neck and I look like a total jackass with a black plastic toy camera on top of my coat. Whatever. It can take any weather that is pummeled at it 'cause it's plastic. The only metal on the thing is the spring inside and the two clips on the outside that hold it together. But I have black photo tape around both of those so the back won't accidentally spring open. On the subway, folks always look at my camera and then look at me. It's a tourist thing to have a camera around your neck but I look nothing like the basic New York City tourist. Anyway, I love the shots I'm getting even if Martha is starting to do the simple math of film, processing and contact. If I can keep it to no more than two rolls a week then she shouldn't freak out too bad. The Polaroid is similar with its dollar-a-shot principal and I've managed to keep it reasonable - sort of.

Ah whatever, the camera is too much fun and the scanner is a gas.

OCD ON MY BODY, BABY
I honest to god think that some days my doctors are just making weird shit up that they can do to me. Like in some kind of bizarre frat hazing. Now, they want to stick a catheter in my groin (their word not mine) and run it up the artery to my left adrenal. I'll be awake but sedated. You got that right and they might want to take me to the point of coma 'cause the 'ick' factor is pretty high with this latest torture test. Apparently, while that shit is going on I'll be on a table under a florescent plate of glass and the doctors will "Oooo and ahh" as they observe the little plastic tube crawling up my artery. When it gets to the adrenal, it will then measure the blood that is zooming out of the gland to determine if this is the source of the tumor or if it is a secondary site. These fuckers are convinced that the tumor is somewhere else too. Despite constantly injecting me with radiation and scanning me for days on end, it is only showing up in the FUCKING LEFT ADRENIAL. The obsessive-compulsive desire to test me repeatedly is leading me to think that all of my doctors have OCD.

SURREALISTIC THRONGS
The Salvador Dalí exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was amazing on so many levels but one word really sums it all up for me. And that one word is, volume.

The volume of pieces on display were impressive as was the volume of Pennsylvanian yahoos who stood around with headphones on and refused to move about the exhibit. It was damn near impossible to see anything. There were eight or nine rooms packed with art and retards. The crowd that Martha and I were shoved through with had to have been bussed in from the 'burbs of PA. I'd recognize that marble mouthed pronunciation anywhere on the globe. We were all packed in there so tight and up each other's asses just like stacks of waxed rimed drink cups. Drink cups with headphones on.

At least the whole stroller thing was outlawed (thank God) but still there were stupid mothers with infants strapped to their fronts in that external womb concoction. These things make a kid look like it's skydiving off of mom's body. All of the child's screaming and kicking are forced outward and onto the rest of us. One mother was so close to me that her baby grabbed my hair with her sticky little fingers and would not let go of it. The mom thought is was funny until I turned around and flames of white hot fire shot out of my eyes. I found not one nanosecond of humor in any of it and while yes, that is my problem in general when placed in large, unruly crowds I tend to loose all sense of fun, I also exist in a city of 8 million people who understand how to 'move about the room'. We all do it every day in a million ways and in five years, no one has grabbed my hair and screeched like a seagull.

But, but, but - what I did manage to punch my way though to and stand before was stunning. Dalí was an amazing painter and that whole 'attention to detail' and 'use of color' thing was jaw dropping. No reproduction can even come close to holding the color on that CMYK + what, probably 7? His compositions have always been the crazy thing but one needs to get up close to see his real obsession with detail.

Martha and I have two Dalí prints at home, one she bought me the first year we were together and one I bought her five or six years ago. The Philadelphia museum had a study of 'The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table' and they also had 'Untitled (Female Figure with Head of Flowers)' and it was pretty cool to see the originals.

While the whole thing was breathtaking however, I hold the Philadelphia Museum of Art totally responsible for orchestrating a near unsafe crowd control policy and Martha was so pissed that she wrote a letter to the museum director. I, of course, am awaiting the bird flu that will hopefully shave a few million off the top of this here latté and give some of us a little more space.

Ah yes, Christmas that most hedonistic day of all the days of the year. Did everyone get what they want? Does anyone? Hmm, well we do give it a good shot every year don't we?

Martha and I bought Miss Jasmine a digital camera. That's right she now has the technology and the ability to provide us all with an endless supply of party pictures, photos of cute, crunchy college boys and all of her stoned friends. Not to mention endless, and it really is endless, photos of Lily. Once the novelty of the medium wears off hopefully, she will find her approach. She most certainly has an eye, but for about the next six-month period sophomoric hi-jinks will prevail.

There is some talk about Jazz changing her major from Business to English. I think it's a great idea. Whatever makes her happy. Of course there is no money in having an English degree as a few of my writer friends could specifically address but I also know of one or two who are actually editing AND writing for a living. However, it IS a shit wage, as are most things creative. I don't know, what one does in college is hardly ever what they end up doing in life. But I think that Jasmine is finally starting to see that not everything is so fucking front burner and to stop flipping out about it all. Yes, she is a product of her environment but she is also a Cancer for god sake.

We also bought her Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas. This family has been a fan of GTA since the first one so of course we HAD to get this. It was only a matter of time. A few things surprised me in this version. The first is the language. Now I am no priss and I tend to have a mouth that is reflective of my white trash roots but this game is a little heavy on the usage of the word FUCK. I'm not offended in the least but it is interesting how Rockstar Games has pretty much given the proverbial middle finger to middle-America and you know, I support that. The second thing is how black it is. Considering the typical gamer, and I do not consider Martha, Jasmine and myself the typical GTA fan, it is interesting to see how layered in black culture this version is. Again, I see it as slap upside the corn-fed, bible-thumping heads of all that crazy Christian crap in the middle of this country.

I like the game because it is the one and only time I get to drive and I actually enjoy it. I walk up to any car I want, beat the driver senseless and then hit the X button and slam the car straight into a pole. It's fun and makes me happy. Martha likes to watch Jazz play because Jasmine is actually very good at it. She is all serious and not just with the missions. She makes her guy every morning go to the gym and workout. He eats salads all day and spends his extra money on clothes, tattoos and custom-made hydraulic cars. Sometimes she'll have him play pool or just spend the day "tagging". When Jazz does do a mission it's usually only for the money, although she can blow shit up with the best of them I think because she is a girl there is more "character development" going on.

In what I view as to total act of unselfish love, I bought Martha the Star Wars box set. Jasmine's father is a Star Wars junkie and both she and I were, in essence, tortured by his obsession. For me, it was that and Steely Dan which Martha also enjoys. But just because he likes it and I've seen all of them a few hundred times doesn't mean that I should hold her responsible for my brain damage. Christmas day, after present opening was over; she scurried off to the bedroom to unleash the magic. I even went in there to hang out with her and watch Return of the Jedi but found myself quoting dialogue, an annoying habit I have but usually reserved for old John Waters movies. She became slightly, and rightly annoyed so I tried to nap. But Luke, Darth and that whole father thing kept rattling around in my brain. I got up and pried Jasmine from the living room TV where she had set up the total GTA workstation complete with the map, freshly downloaded cheat codes with the strategy book and a snappy highlighter. I made her go for a walk with me, just so she could take a break and live in the third dimension for at least thirty minutes.

Besides the sun was setting and I wanted to try out my new toy camera that Martha bought me. It's a Holga and no big deal at all. Totally made of plastic and held together with black photo tape. It has a built in flash that is about the size of a box of tic-tacs and I think I might have temporally blinded Lily's left eye. She's better now but for a few minutes I don't think she could see very well. My eyes were buggy and I was on the other side of the camera. It was like a prison search light for a second there. I can't wait to see what I get. It shoots medium format film, a format I enjoy but the cameras are, so damn expensive. The Polaroid is about the same ratio but this is real film with a negative and everything. I figure the first roll will suck until I figure out just how much light is getting in and if I want to stop it or not. But it's cheap and for now, fun. I really like it, and I am considering the possibility of at least developing the film at home to cut down on some of the cost. This makes complete sense in an already overcrowded apartment, eh? Let me just splash a little bit of smelly, toxic liquid around the place. Don't mind me.

Speaking of space and stuff, Wednesday Sheri and Keri arrive and then Thursday Jasmine's friend will join us. I'm not sure how all of this is going to work out for five days but I remain hopeful. I think we are going to give Jasmine and Courtney the living room to dance around in and pretend that they are living the hi-rise life without any of the rest of us around. We'll keep all the lesbians in the back bedrooms. On paper, it looks good but in real-time, we shall see. It's a lot of female energy in an 1100 square foot apartment to successfully juggle.