Holly Northrop Blog

Big fun news: I was accepted into two (2) shows last week. One is up here in Hudson at the Limner Gallery for a show titled 'Art Biologic'. The opening is May 3rd, 4-6pm and the show runs to May 24th. I have one piece in the show that is a little different then I usually hang. Come on up to Hudson if you want to see some art. It's First Saturdays' and all the galleries will be open late.

The other one is in Johnson City, Texas for a show titled 'Urban Ambience: Scenes from the City' at the Watson Studio Gallery. The opening is April 19 and runs until May 24. I have two pieces in this show (#42 & 43). So if you are in Texas...

And then finally I am in a current show in Jersey titled: 'Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?' (Great Idea) Link is here but know that it is a rather large .PDF and takes a few minutes to fully load. All the photos are awesome and my piece is on page 19.

Busy, as a beaver, yes I am. I am submitting to three more shows, and well, we will see how that all goes. A while back Martha joked, but half-seriously, that I should get an intern. As truly funny as that is, she's kind of right.

Some friends of ours just had their first baby. Well, probably their only but anyway, they are brand new parents and congratulations to them. Welcome to the rest of your life.

Speaking of forks in the road, (or is it in the head?), Jasmine comes home for a quick weekend visit. She's going to play Photo Bitch for me on Saturday while I shoot a dear friend of mine and his fiancée in various locations in Manhattan. Should be fun and exhausting at the same time, hence the need for Photo Bitch. Jasmine is bringing a friend, (Weber) so the Photo Bitch has an assistant.

I get to use Martha's new camera. It is a digital world after all but I'll still shoot a few moody black and white holgas because that's just the way I am: moody black and white. Oh and the new printer came and man it is beautiful. Just simply stunning. Thanks babe.

When you buy a house, it never stops. The siding people have to come back to finish up the shit they should have done in the first place. There are holes and some of the siding trim is popping off. Needless to say we are not happy and I think if one more thing goes wrong, Martha is going to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

The floor in the sunroom is buckling. Not sure why or what the fuck is going on but I can't wait to find out. If we don't fix it, pretty soon we won't be able to open the door.

Our taxes went up again. This makes the umpteenth time they have raised them and so far, our tax bill has tripled since we moved here two years ago. We are going to have to file a grievance, (that should be fun) but how in hells bells can it be normal to pay $8,000 a year in taxes?

And you know it you love it, the wasps are back. The bug guy will be notified. Those bugs are straight from hell and for whatever reason they love our house. I did however find some sick comfort in watching them build a massive hive in our neighbor's attic. They work with military precision. Martha said we should send them over to Iraq. While I shouldn't have watched it, (the hive is about thirty feet from our kitchen window) I couldn't look away. It was like the live National Geo channel.

And while I'm thinking of nasty wasps; worrying about speaking badly of a former employer is not such a problem when that employer is doing just a fine job all by himself. I'm just so very, very glad that I no longer work for them. It would be too embarrassing to say, 'Oh yes I work for this racist, good-old-white-boy Arizonian jackass, who while excepting and award, had no problem using the "N-word" in front of a room full of Professional Journalists.' Reporters who report, and did report and in some cases even video taped the whole nasty event. This is the same ignorant jerk who just one week prior to shooting his fat mouth off received an Civil Libertarians award from the ACLU.

Wow, and wow. Old news, seeing how it happened last Thursday. It has already circled the blog world about a zillion times, but the whole thing just makes me sad. I have a real problem when a former employer drops the "N-word" on camera and gives a snarky apology as an afterthought.

Like all bad relationships that do not end in gunplay, eventually someone either leaves on their own, or walks away after being told to get the fuck out. I have been in a nasty staring contest for about six-months with the mothership and finally, they blinked. Of no real surprise to anyone, I was officially laid-off on Monday, I was asked to leave.

I have numerous mixed feelings about all of this but the foremost reaction I have is the desire to take a sauna everyday for about month so I can sweat the past two years of ugliness out of my pores.

Having worked there for over six years; the last two being one of the worst professional spans of my career, forced to watch well over 100 people leave either voluntary or involuntary; I am a little weirded out by the length of it all. It was the longest job I have ever had, so it will probably take me some time to get my bearings.

I guess the best way to gauge my state of mind is to review what I did upon leaving the building for the last time. I walked down Bowery, deep into Chinatown and shot two rolls of film. As I slowly wiggled my way back up to C-Lab to pick up a roll of color film, I stopped and had coffee at Starfucks, where I openly and aggressively applied Tiger Balm to my back while sucking down a tall coffee. Walking further up Broadway, I slid into Best Buy and bought the new Cat Power with a Christmas gift card that I had been carrying around with me. All extremely normal things.

I was hired at the Voice on my 39th birthday, one week after my unemployment had run out and three months after the Towers fell. The pit would continue to burn for another two months and every day on my way into work, out to lunch and on the way home, the air smelt like a combination of chemicals and wet earth that would get up in the sinuses and linger on the tongue.

How I got the job was a simple matter of having a friend who used to work there. He made a call for me and before I knew it, I was hired. The funny thing about my interview was, deep down in my gut I just knew I was going to work there. Before my interview, I sat over in Cooper Square Park smoking a cigarette, looking around I could just see myself there. The other funny thing is that for the past two years I haven't seen myself there at all. Long gone are the folks whom I respected and enjoyed working with, replaced with people who never wanted to have anything to do with me; an interesting environment to say the least.

Yes, my last day at the Voice ended quietly. After shooting for several hours, I made my way to Hoboken where I jumped on a train to meet Martha. I dived right into the post-apocalyptic nightmare that is known as The Road, which I am right in the middle of. Then something completely unheard of happened. I managed to have a whole three-seater to myself all the way to Suffern, New York.

Crazy Isn't Stupid, Stupid is Just Stupid
Moving on, spring is coming, I can tell even though we still have white snow and brown deer poop in the yard. We start this week out as week five of the siding people and with the exception of some kind a weather issue; they just might finish the job. No. Fucking. Way. I know, right?

Martha and I did what we always do when one of us is let go and our financial future is sent into a tailspin, we bought something pricey. We consider it the layoff gift, because we're that damn weird and being laid off isn't a big enough gift in and of it's self, we bought art. Excuse me we bought Photography, apparently, a dying art form, which complete strangers delight in telling me once they see a Holga around my neck. People are so damn strange.

I remember years ago when Martha bought me a digital camera for my 40th birthday. I fooled around with it for days, shooting in all different modes and all the different settings. Eventually I settled on a programmed setting of no flash, white balanced, ASA 400, no beep, no sound and one shot only. Basically over time I navigated as close to my 35mm as possible. I goofed around with the Black & White setting but the whole thing felt stupid. I shot hundreds and hundreds of digital images over the course of two and a half years. The very first version of my website was almost all digital. Roughly all the Voice work I shot was digital, except for a few features where I was able to use the Holga for that 'Holga Look'. On a side note, I find if very funny that the last thing I shot for the Voice was this, although, it is not the one I would have picked. I would have chosen this one, but I'm just a picky bitch.

Countless times when I am out shooting or just walking from one place to another in New York the soundtrack in my ears perfectly matches the visuals of my path. Some are obvious like walking down McDougal Street while listening to Dylan or walking in step to Marquee Moon, over by Bowery and Bleecker, even though all that exists down there are hi-rise apartments full of Upper East Side Blonde girls who suddenly want to live the 'Downtown Lifestyle'. Thank god for places like Avalon Bowery Place, (Studios starting at $2,895) that can make those dreams safely come true. For Martha and I to live there, it would cost us around $6,500 a month and I wouldn't be able to have a darkroom.

Anyway, despite New York's continual slide into wealth management, I am talking about the delightful musical surprises that happen. Things like listening to Elvis in the middle of Union Square, or the Pixies in SoHo. Weird little bits of musical chance that can make the most miserable event tolerable.

One such moment happened last week when I was on the 6 Train going uptown to what I thought was to be a routine dental visit, but more on that in a minute. I had to stand on the train, which normally I don't mind but when the train is crammed full of shithead foreign tourists coming fresh off a Ground Zero stop, I turn into one big cranky face.

Just when I decided that I hated everyone, through my ear buds the sounds of the Butthole Surfers, Leave Me Alone flowed faintly in the background. In the process of yanking my hand up to adjust the volume control, I smacked the ass of the girl in front of me.

She jumped up and around allowing me the full on force of her lunch choice involving buckets of garlic. I smiled, she didn't, I rolled my eyes and shifted my direction by precisely one inch to the left and turned up the music. Standing three inches from my face and mouth breathing garlic at me, she glared at me for exactly one whole subway stop, and then looked away once we passed 14th street, having taught me a harsh, harsh lesson. (Like that had any effect on me, honestly now, all you did was stare at me and make my eyes water.)

This particular 6 train was being driven by Mr. Fuck-You-I'm-in-the-Union-Driver. You know the guy. He doesn't give a fuck about any of it and pushes the train to go as fast as he can, stopping on a dime in every station, laughing to himself in his little booth at the sounds of bodies banging about each subway car. He's the guy that we've all seen get off his shift and slide out of the subway car like Superfly, saying "Hey Baby" while pointing to all the female Transit employees.

Riding with Youngblood, you know the drill, find a nook and ride the wave. While traveling between subway stations and well beyond 60 miles per hour on some of the long stretches, for a split second your feet can actually leave the ground. It's the slamming on of the brakes that you have to be ready for. Every stop, all the tourists went flying, yet oddly, they never stopped talking to each other. Hands on pole, legs in the air, yak, yak, yak. I know they are talking because I can see their mouths moving around, but thankfully, all I hear is Butthole.

Once we get to my stop, I birth myself out of the subway car and immediately moved into the salmon upstream sensation of 59th street at lunch hour. It doesn't matter what direction you are headed, it is always the opposite of the flow. It's like a blizzard, always in your face and way too bright.

I am late when I get to the dentist so within seconds I am in the chair with the little napkin thing around my neck. Things move along like normal when the hygienist notices something about my upper left molar. Great. Okay, well, let's see what it is.

Now my relationship with this particular dentist is long and strong. For years, she was the only professional of any kind that I was seeing. That means that she was my therapist, my doctor consult and a life coach. She went through Jasmine's cancer with me where I would go there for check ups, just lay in the chair, and cry. Sad but true.

All this drives Martha crazy because:
a: Dr B (as she is known) is out of network;
b: she's fucking crazy Park Avenue expensive; and
c: I simply will not consider anyone else.

I can guarantee that as Martha is reading this, her hands are sweating and she's getting a headache, combined with a little stomach upset.

Dr. B pokes around in my mouth and does not like what she sees. Three shots of Novocain and a laser procedure later, I am numb and slightly shaken. But it wasn't as bad (meaning I wasn't as bad) as it can be. In fact, Dr. B touched my shoulder and said, "I just want you to know that was the most normal I've ever seen you. You're almost like a normal patient."

Drugs and therapy baby, drugs and therapy.

So, good feeling gone when I go to check out. The total for the day came to $4,500. Upon hearing that, I just started to ball. Dr. B walked over to me and hugged me then told the billing clerk to cut the bill in half.

Half is still crazy but not $4,500 crazy as I pointed out to Martha later on that evening, when she about had a heart attack.

I may be unemployed but as Martha pointed out to me while lying in bed one morning, "Thank god you're on medication."

The very first time I was ever laid-off from a company was in Denver, Colorado, (Aurora, to be precise), in September of 1987. It was a small design shop consisting of an owner; a female Art Director (an odd sight for the decade and someone I considered to be a mentor); and a female bookkeeper. All were full-time employees. I was hired as freelance contract work. Specifically, I was hired to paste-up the Yellow Pages.

There was a typesetter who came in twice a week to print out galleys and galleys of type that I had speced. Specing type is an art form unlike anything that goes on today. It's a mathematical formula involving a pica pole, words and the ability to problem solve without approval and/or praise.

While this wasn't my first job in my chosen field, I had previously worked at a print shop, it was the first job that I liked the folks I worked with and enjoyed, for the most part, coming to work.

I was young and had so very much to learn about business.

I worked there for roughly a year and a half. Once the Yellow Page contract was finished, I moved on to bigger and better projects. Things like hi-comp work, where I was able to play with Letraset films, papers, Pantone Books and press-type. Mostly I did hi-comp work for Coors Beer and AT&T. It was a good gig and I was happy.

Then somewhere around the beginning of spring 1987, the company hired a bearded hippy guy, who I considered to be a slimy fuck. He was a fast talker and knew everything about everything. He also had a knee-slapping laugh that sounded more like a bark, bark, bark, and a snort, then anything normal. The hippy guy was hired to help out on an enormous production job; pasting up direct mail pieces. You know, that junk mail shit everyone gets, discounts on dry-cleaning, and half-off on pizzas? Well, I've actually made those.

After a few months the direct mail contract was finished, and much to my annoyance, this hippy guy stayed.

Not only did he stay, he started going out to lunch with the Art Director, something that I had never done. The Art Director would slam me with work and then have closed door meetings with the hippy guy. Considering that the office space we all existed in was about the size of a one-bedroom apartment, having a closed door meeting of any kind was weird. Sometimes I was the only one who wasn't in a meeting.

As spring turned into summer, the work started to dry up. 1987 was a weird year for business. Reagan was president and in the middle of the Iran-Contra Affair, the stock market was going nuts, (and eventually crashed i.e. Black Monday) and the economy was starting to suck. I spent a great deal of time at my desk painting personal projects and turning up my radio to avoid hearing the Art Director and this hippy guy laughing at each others jokes.

Then on the first Friday of September at 4:45, I was called into the Art Director's office and asked to close the door. I sat there, all of twenty-five years old and wide-eyed like a puppy, notepad in hand, thinking we were going to talk about a new project when she folded her hands together on the table, put on a sad face and in a soft voice said, "We're going to have to let you go."

Go where? I thought and then it occurred to me that something very bad was happening. I immediately asked about the hippy guy (like this was important) and the Art director informed me that it was just me that was being let go.

I couldn't believe it. I was devastated but more importantly I was blindsided and I hate that. No one likes to be taken by surprise but I vowed to never, ever let something like this happen again. Oh sure, I can be laid-off, it is after all, the nature of this business, but not without seeing it coming first.

But back to September of 1987.

After leaving her office, I grabbed a cardboard box that was full of reams of copy paper, dumped the paper on the floor and started packing up all my shit. All my tapes, art supplies that I brought from home; rulers; orange triangles; a set of Rapidograph pens; a pica pole etc.; all jammed into a box along with my radio and Violent Femmes, Patti Smith and Husker du tapes. Intermittently I was spewing profanity at the hippy guy by telling him to 'fuck off'.

As I was just about to leave the office for the last time, the Art Director asked to see what was in my box. I was horrified. I completely understand this thinking now, but at that time, I was personally offended. I could not believe that she would think I would steal something. Standing in the small lobby, while the bookkeeper, hippy guy and the owner stood guard, the Art Director dug through my box of crap at a slow, meticulous pace. I just stood there with my mouth open, trying not to cry.

Then on top of that she pulls out a metal 12" printer's gauge claiming it to belong to the company. Hippy guy made a gasp and the owner took a step closer to me. I explained to her that it was mine, that I had brought it from home and I used it instead of theirs because the numbers on mine were easier to read. Theirs was faded. She then made me walk back over to my desk and show her the other one.

Once I got out of there, I threw all my shit into the back of the Dodge Omni coffin car that I drove, (yes I even drove then) and cried.

Being laid-off that time unleashed a shitstorm of events that were impressive only in their combined determination to punish.

Because I was always contract freelance and never considered a full-time employee, I was unable to collect unemployment. So right out of the gate, Jim and I were screwed, living from shitty paycheck to shitty paycheck, we had maybe twenty dollars in our checking account. Oddly enough on the day I was laid-off, in the mail arrived a brand new MasterCard with a $3,000 limit in Jim's name. Our grocery store just started taking credit cards, and so there you go.

Three days after I was let go, I was pulled over for going 45 in a school zone. I started crying as the female cop gave me a ticket. She was unmoved. After I got home from that horseshit, Jasmine's pre-school called me to inform me that they had had a Chicken Pox outbreak at the school and were sending all the children home for two-weeks, could I please come get my kid. I called the doctor and he said that there isn't too much that can be done at this point but to watch Jazz and if nothing happens by 'Day 10' then all should be clear.

'Day Ten' Jasmine woke up with a pox on her back. Three days later, I woke up with a pox on my shoulder. I'd never had chicken pox as a child and had no idea what I was in for. The first few days I felt weird but was able to take care of Jasmine. She was covered with Chicken Pox and I covered her in Calamine Lotion. She looked like a three-year old chalk child. Jasmine kept scratching at herself so I duct taped mismatched oven mitts to her arms. She was covered from her fingers to just under her armpits. She looked like a floral and plaid penguin. Yeah, I know, ok but you weren't there. In the end, this is why she doesn't have scars all over her face.

Just about the time that Jasmine was due to go back to school, I started to get really, really sick. I had pox all over every part of my body and could not stop throwing up. I was so sick that I was puking up bile. I spent all day for several days in the bathtub filled to the top with Aveeno oatmeal bath. The last day Jasmine was home with me, I had set up two child gates at each end of the hall so she could only be either in her room or in the bathroom with me. Those were some good times.

The toilet was next to the tub and every few hours I'd wake up in cold water, the parts of my body that had been in the air completely dry, sit straight up and throw up in the toilet. Jasmine would hear this, knowing I was awake and come running in asking "Do you feel better, mommy?" and "Can I have some juice?" Then she would then run back into her room where I'd hear her playing with her toys singing "Mommy is sick. Mommy is sick. Sick, sick, sick." over and over again.

At this point, I had been unemployed for about three-weeks with no hope of even getting close to any interview of any kind soon. I had over eighty-seven crusty chicken pox on my face. I know this because one day, when I was able to sit on the couch for hours on end, I counted them. It was around this time that two other things happened.

I'd been sleeping on the foldout couch for days, coughing up phlegm and running a mean fever. One night, as Jim sat in the chair beside me doing bong hits and watching The Outlaw Josey Wales together, I seemed to have stopped breathing and had he not been there to bring me back, I'm not so sure I'd be around today.

It was about this time that my mother called to let me know that they were coming to visit. Now, I can count on one hand, (and still have three fingers left) the number of times they had visited us over our then, five-year marriage. In fact, if I count the total number of times that my parents have ever come to visit me anywhere, I still don't think I would use up all the fingers. Even more disturbing is when I really think about it, that visit, was the third to the last time that I would ever see both of them alive together in the same room.

So let's review. I'm unemployed and feel totally betrayed. Jim and I are charging food on a credit card that we will never be able to pay back. While I had stopped throwing up, I look like I've had acid thrown in my face and simply cannot be seen in public. My parents are coming and I have a $100 speeding ticket that we need to pay, in cash or they are going to put a warrant out for my arrest.

Yet, somehow, we moved through it all. Jasmine went back to school. I got another job, be it a sucky one but at least I was working. We paid the speeding ticket and soon after, I caused a multi-car accident during rush hour on University Blvd while on my way to an interview. Boy did that end my desire to drive. My parents came and went (literally) and Jim's parents ended up begrudgingly paying our MasterCard bill.

All this memory stuff has come up because of two things. My time at the Voice is coming to an end, (something I've been out in front of for sometime now), and that makes me sad, scared and unusually hopeful. The other thing is when I was putting on makeup the other day, I noticed a chicken pox scar on my face and surprisingly, it made me smile. "Mommy is sick. Mommy is sick. Sick, sick, sick." Indeed.

There is no way to describe the absolute joy and jubilation that comes from knowing that Jasmine's PET scans are all clear. I didn't even realize just how fucked in the head with worry I truly was until the word came that she was fine. I started to cry at my desk at work. Tears of relief. Then, within two minutes I suddenly was exhausted and in dire need of a nap. But, in the middle of a newspaper deadline, I stayed chained to my desk.

Jasmine is learning the fine art of first apartment furniture gathering. She has already snagged an end table from the clutches of the trash room and then, last Tuesday, she found herself with a day off, wandering around Macy's furniture liquidation sale. She bought an entertainment stand for eleven dollars. That's as good as any yard sale or Goodwill. I have trained the young grasshopper well.

The only catch was that she had to get it home all by herself. So, she carried it through Newport Pavonia mall, drug it on the Light Rail at rush hour and then walked it three blocks to the apartment. There really isn't any place to put this 4ft by 2ft thing so it is currently shoved up against the window in the living room. There really isn't any place to put anything in this apartment and we don't have a storage space. We have eight weeks until move out and the stacking of crap has already started. The office is a disaster zone.

Plans are in the works for Miss Jasmine's 21st birthday. They now include a fancy water front dinner at The Chart House and she is busing in college backup in the form of a boy from PA to help her celebrate. Oh sure, Martha, Sheri and I are just great and all but we tend to wrap it up kind of early. We'll get tired and cranky and the talk will turn into a three-way mom fest with no end in sight. At least with one of her own kind around we'll instinctively back off, not so much to save Jasmine but more of a not letting the others see how ridiculous we can get.

But yes, back to the idea of company in our cramped little domicile. He is gay and will be Jasmine's roommate next year. Horror of horrors we are having a boy in the house. Hmm, does it count if he's gay? Well, the cats will let us know.

CUT ME OPEN
Well, hey what's this I see? A surgery date has been confirmed...and why, yes, it looks like...July 27th at 10am in the morning they will be taking my left adrenal gland out. We shall see. I have to jump through all those hoops that I jumped through in February so let the games begin. I'll believe it when I wake up in the hospital doped up and hallucinating. At least all this time has made Martha and I deal with some adult stuff like Living Wills, Power of Attorney and the all-important Last Will and Testament. Hey, they are going to put me under so we had to go there. Thank you to Olivia for the use of her super cool Notary stamp.

AMERICA: THE MOVIE
Why has 60 Minutes been nothing but reruns for the past several weeks? What the fuck? Isn't there ANYTHING to report on? I mean the whole cancer sniffing dog thing was cool but honestly, they should be ashamed of themselves for phoning it in like every other news and entertainment program. What about Sandra Day O'Connor? (This country is so fucked) What about Live 8? What about the Increase in the Number of Documents Classified by the Government. Or National Organization for Women pissing and arm waving at Bush over abortion rights. It's not just 60 Minutes either. Dateline and 20/20 are just as useless. I don't get it. How can so many of us not care? My own newspaper has turned into something I no longer recognize. The Village Voice is not what it used to be that is for sure and the word "evolve" isn't what I'm thinking of. The right is the new left and the true left are a bunch of sky is falling fruit loops.

What? Everything is fine, the economy is great; don't worry about healthcare, or jobs. Where's my fucking iPod? Katie Holmes said YES! "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." -George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

And you know, Freedom ain't free, biatch.

EVERYTHING ABOUT ME SAYS GO AWAY
Sunday night, a little after 5:00pm and I had the apartment all to myself for about the two hours. Jasmine was at work and Martha was out doing the most social of activities. She was golfing with two other lesbians. As predictable as that is, it is just as unpredictable that I won't play along and be the fourth wheel on the lesbian golf cart. I'm just not that kind of girl, although I happen to like a girl who is a golfer. I love to nap to golf and I really do dig Annika. But it's more than just golf that I won't partake in. Martha explains it away with excuses that I'm not very social and "that's okay", which, I suppose, it has to be.

She and I had a conversation about how if anyone ever needed a mentor in life it was I, because almost everyone I've ever known has turned up full of shit and exclusively self motivated. I did have a teacher once, senior year of high school that I trusted and gave me basic life stuff. She was part of that new Hippie way of Team Teaching and insisted that her students call her by her first name, which was Cindy. She treated all of us like adults, even if we fucked up and skipped class to go smoke dope in the parking lot. At the time, I thought she was cool because she was the first adult to vocalize to me that my mom was probably insane and not to pay too much attention to her. But, by that point, it was a little late in the game and I was out of the state of Ohio within three months, regardless of whatever horseshit my mom pulled. I would have thumbed to college if I had needed to. My mom hated Cindy and constantly told me so, but it was the only time I ever got straight A's in high school.

This was also around the same time that I met a girl that was a little older than me named Jenny. We both worked the nightshift at Frisch's Big Boy and became fast friends. She lost her right eye when she was a small child via her little brother and a tree branch and she now had a glass eye. One slow night when I was bored out of my skull I asked her if I could see it. She responded by popping it right out of the socket and holding it up in front of my face. Both of my eyes shifted focus between the marble eye in the foreground and the dark hole of her eye socket in the background. From that moment on, I thought she was the coolest girl I'd ever met. That single act of unconscious behavior blew my mind.

Ah yes, but that was a hundred years and countless buckets of whiskey ago and unfortunately, the basis of my bullshit detector rests somewhere within the seeds of my youth. Over the years, I have met some of the finest folks under the strangest conditions and I have watched some of those same folks turn the strangest. It really is tragic when you fail to live up to someone else's expectations.

Whether its lovers, family or friends, you think you are all on the same page but then the page changes and you realize that some of those that you love can't keep up. You recognize that they are in remedial reading and stuck on junk that was never who you were in the first place. Or maybe who you were for one day, on acid and walking around with a camera but not who you are all the damn time. But in their head, that's how you have been filed so now you are stuck living out somebody else's absurdity. Oh sure, some fake it real well and a have glazed over understanding of the words that are coming out of your mouth. They fake it until they can't follow along anymore and either walk away or blame all their heartache on you. Others act out in aggressive deeds of hostility in the hopes of showing you just what an asshole YOU are. That is when you start to realize that blood is thinner than water and everyone is apathetic unless it directly relates to themselves.

Ah, I have a point in there somewhere but who cares.

Yeah, so that is what I did when left alone. Write and listen to my new Say Hi to Your Mom CD. (Everybody send love to Eric in Brooklyn.)

Fuck it, and chalk it up to being so fucking overworked that I'm nuttier than normal. Siren is so up my ass that all I dream is green. Let's just say that this year is particularly painful and I spent the majority of my 4th of July weekend working on it. I like the site though but I am also fried. I keep telling myself that it is for the greater good of the collection of hours and another portfolio piece. I'm collecting my overtime to cash out for my surgery. It would be nice to use that instead of ALL of my vacation time. We do have that beach house thing in October that I daydream about daily. Last week was just downright ugly with the Union threatening to strike and then pulling me into there little circle of strange. That's right, I'm now a Union employee. God help us all.

Wow, what a weekend. The Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, The Dyke March at Bryant Park, Billy Graham in Queens, The Gay Pride Parade and a massive street fair, one block from my apartment building. I had none of it. Well, I did watch some of the street fair out the window through the binoculars, but even with all that photo worthy stuff, I just could not get my shit together to go outside. Martha and Jazz managed to go shopping for red Pumas and Rose scented perfume in SoHo but not me. It was so absurdly hot again and after what happen in Brooklyn Heights a few weeks ago; I thought it best to simply not. Besides, I recently bought a shit load of music and I had a big, long overdue date with my stereo. I am working on a strange little project that requires me to listen to massive amounts of weird and wonderful stuff while maintaining a rather large list of songs. All things best done, alone...and, uh well...alone. Just me being really, really weird. It's what I do best.

CHILDREN ARE A PRODUCT
My brain has been a little distracted as of late. Surgery is back on the table and Martha and I meet with the surgeon this week to pick a damn date. If all goes right, unlike before, I should have my operation within the next two weeks. This would work just fine because I am sick to death of this tumor and so desperately want to move on with my life. Jasmine had her PET scan Thursday and we are waiting on the results of that test. This time of year always makes me a little crazier then normal and she does not help matters by blurting out crap like, "If is get cancer again, I am NOT going to have chemo. I'm just not Mom." This late breaking news came to me while we were trying to have a nice little sushi dinner.

I could have stabbed her in her baby blue eyeball with my chopstick.

After reading an article about Jasmines' generation being called the Boomerang Generation (we keep kicking her out and she keeps coming back) the fear of her moving forward becomes a fright, especially when I start to think about how fucked up it actually is out there and how ill-prepared she is. In so many ways, she is still a child and a mouthy one at that. I keep telling myself that how she is around the house and around me is different then what she is like in the world but how do I know that? It's like that asshole at work that everyone has to deal with. You know, every office everywhere has the one guy who is just a total dick. (Some offices have more then one.) Well, he has family, friends, and a whole other life support system outside of the office. Do his people know he is the office asshole? Do they care?

Not that Jasmine is an asshole by any means; I know it sounds like I am comparing her to one but this is all more of a general worry about her moving into adulthood. Well, if she is reading this she will be pissed at me but for all the wrong reasons. I am not saying that she is childish - not really, except for that chemo remark. There are so many explanations as to why she is not embracing the whole adult thing. I mean Christ; I have yet to come aboard that ship, although, I at least acknowledge that there is a ship. I really do wish that life were just one big tightly packed bowl of crazy fun.

We are coming up on her 21st birthday here in a few weeks. This one is a strange one because, for this one and only time, she will be exactly half my age. Or I will be twice as old as she is. It's a strange thing and most mothers and daughters are a little older when it happens. You know, 25 & 50 or 30 & 60 or as with my Mom and I, 40 & 80 after which my mom promptly died eleven days before my 41st birthday. But all that math is just math and the strangeness of ageing is never dull.

MEDIA FRENDLY
Martha entered a contest at work, technically, it was a raffle, and she won first prize: a Sharp 13 inch flat panel TV. It is cute as could be and she gave it to me to put in the office. So now, we have a three-room apartment with a TV in every room. There is something so very wrong about that. But it is cute and I'll watch the news on it once we get cable hooked up. However, this has opened a whole new can of worms about if I'm going to get a cable box in the office then I should just go ahead and get a cable modem. See, I am still on dial-up (whatever I have my reasons). One of the many is that dial up keeps that fucking phone line busy for hours and I can only be reached by cell phone and only if I happen to notice it is buzzing. Another is the cost, on demand lifestyles are expensive. Probably the one reason that Martha doesn't understand is that I really do not want to give up an email address that I have had for ten years. It is old and dependant on maintaining a certain account that would become obsolete if we switch to a cable modem. It is like having a 212 area code. Ideally, I would like to get DSL but get this; they do not offer it in my area. I am in a weird 5-block pocket of non-DSL availability. That sounds about right.

HELLO FRIEND
I shot a little pit of product last week for Lynn Yaeger's column, Elements of Style and in doing so; I met possibly the nicest man ever. The place was Charlie's Place (it's closing this week, hence the photo), but Charlie is so sweet and delightful that twenty minutes in his little jewelry shop on Mulberry Street restored my faith in human kindness. Right out of the gate, when I introduced myself he shook my hand with both of his hands and told me I was beautiful. Now, I used to be attractive, but the last four years have taken a big chunk out of me, so I know in my head that this is nothing more then a sweet little old man lie, but it totally worked for me. From that moment on, he was delightful and I was relaxed. Anyone who can calm me down is a gift from God in my book.

So much of New York City is the exact opposite of nice that when someone smiles at you on the subway or holds a door open for you instead of slamming it in your face, it makes you soften for a minute. And when you find a person that is sweet and gentle in a place where everything has slowed down to a more normal pace, you want to just hang out and breath in the calm cool air. Meeting Charlie changed the rest of my day. I carried him with me all throughout work. On the way home I walked slower with my head held upright, managing to catch other folk's eyes before they shifted nervously away from mine. On the subway, I smiled and actually looked around at my fellow passengers. I am sure they thought either I was out of my mind on drugs or a tourist but I didn't care. I wanted to look around me instead of burying my head in a book. I wanted to see if anyone else was out there. And well, okay not on this particular ride home did anyone smile back at me but Charlie's gift of kindness was the best thing ever because my odd behavior gave me a wide berth of seating to stretch out in. Apparently, being nice is a great way to keep people away. So is possessing a foul odor but that is another story.

On Saturday, I shot Kips Bay for The Voice and after four hours of walking around in gorgeous 65-degree weather, both Martha and I needed serious naps. All that god damn fresh air and sunshine made me dizzy and loonier than normal. We walked from 28th street to 34th back and forth from Park to 1st avenue and while normally, I really would not consider something like that a big thing, right now it is a very big thing. I have all the cadence of a heroin addict.

Martha wants a digital camera for her birthday, while I seem to be going the other way. I have now fully assembled my pinhole camera and I am currently working my intellect on how to make the bathroom light tight. I am so excited about making paper negatives and doing contact work again that my heart races when I think about it, making my murmur flip out and for a second I feel a little pukie. Anyway, between my Holga and the pinhole well, the only high technology that is being used is two double A batteries for the flash on the Holga.

I went to B&H on Sunday and almost the entire store was on the digital camera side, slammed up against the counters like fricken traders on the floor of the Exchange. Consumers are just nuts. At this point it isn't even about the whole tourist thing. Nah ah, it was all about the shinny little Get Smart devices that had the folks pupils dilated. After a dizzy round of digital camera dialogue with a bearded Hasidic Jew named Avel, I found myself in the darkroom supplies section. It was great because no one was over there; hardly anyone uses chemicals these days and I was able to fondle enlargers and linger around the loop display case totally undisturbed.

PEPPERMENT ROCK, SPINS ME OUT
Jasmine comes home in three weeks for the summer and all of us are a little nervous about it. Before she comes home, we need to buy the Ikea storage bed for the office. Then, the first week in May Martha and I will be driving the rest of her shit across the fine, fine state of Pennsyltucky. Martha and I have rented storage space in the middle of nowhere for all her crap. Every time I think about a storage facility I remember that scene from Monster, where Charlize Theron is talking with Bruce Dern while sitting in her storage unit. Trash and ratty clothes are strewn about… that whole visual made me realize that when all else fails you can always go sleep in your storage unit.

Yuck, anyway, Jazz needs a job and simply must make money. Grandma has pulled the purse strings and there will be no more college money. Martha and I are now paying up to almost $300 a month on her student loans with the total of around $22k and two more years to go. She'll need to save those pennies cause next semester she has an apartment. I'm trying not to worry about it because there really isn't all that much I can do. We only make so much money for fucks sake.

I am also convinced that I will be laid off this year. I don't know why but I just have a feeling that my name is on a list somewhere. If not at work, well then somewhere. Let's just hope it's not that BIG LIST in the sky, eh? The union contract is up for negation, hard to believe it has been three years, even though it has nothing to do with me, I feel that I might be affected by whatever path the negations lead the paper down. Management always finds a way to pay for concessions and I am merely a cog in the big environmentally toxic paper pulp windmill. Call me crazy, and many have, but I have a feeling that my name has been mentioned in dark paneled windowless conference rooms with sexy recessed lighting and they aren't talking promotion, if you know what I mean.

Clearly, I have either lost my mind here and soon you will see me walking down the street swatting at imaginary flies or my tumor has now given me an even greater sense of intuition -something I really don't need in my life. If I get any more razor sharp about day to day bullshit I am going to give myself a lobotomy and not just for my own benefit. I am already so damn close to being impossible to live with that I would view an icepick to the tear ducts as an act of self-preservation for the entire family. Some days the best thing that could be done for me would be to put me down just like Zoë. She is so tortured and such a nervous Nelly. Too fat to play and too crazy to live.

But with so many other things to flip out about why add work to the mix. Whatever happens, happens, right?

Um, so yeah, I guess I'm getting used to my meds because I haven't slept right for the past two nights. So now, I am just your basic head-case with a tumor.

Did you know that Dick Cheney is the same age as Bob Dylan? Isn't that crazy? It is hard to imagine them on the same planet let alone the same age. I have been reading the new Dylan book and it is so funny and fun. What a gas it is to be in New York reading about when he first came to New York.

I am so glad the debates are over. I don't think Martha could take one more round of smurky Bush. (Kind of like Papa Surf but different.) I am ready to vote now. Can I? Fuck November 2, lets do it now. Here is the thing about Bush, if he wins this election, he does not have to do one damn thing that he is promising now. Not one thing. He will do WHATEVER he wants because a reelection will validate everything he as already done so anything that he might have "hesitated on" because of reelection implications will now see the light of day. I am scared out of my mind at this thought. All of us should be. Doesn't anyone think it is weird that he has not vetoed ANYTHING in four years? With all those Republicans running the government and not one veto? Jesus, just what has gone on down there in the swamp lands of our nation's Capitol? What have we passed?

Instead of going to work on Wednesday, I spent the day up at the Fashion Institute of Technology in an un-air-conditioned, windowless room, slogging through InDesign training.

Now there is a whole bunch of things wrong with what I just wrote. One thing is that I cannot go to any campus without thinking about my daughter. Yes, even here in New York where the majority of FIT's female student body looks like a bunch of overweight Paris Hiltons crammed into low-rider jeans and pointy witch shoes, I think of my child. Maybe it was the CONSTANT cell phone usage and the inability to pay attention to anyone other then themselves. One stupid bitch actually walked right into me and I was the only one standing within twenty feet of her when she started out. If I had been a tree, it would have been hysterical.

Did you know that they have knitting class there? Like real knitting. A whole class of knitting freaks. I wanted to take a photo so bad that it paralyzed me. My camera was in the training room and my brain just shut down. I stood with my mouth open, in front of the open door to "Knitting Class" until the instructor asked me if I needed help. Having all the little knitters stop and look at me, thankfully, unsnapped my legs. From there I went down the hall to one of the fine, fine school restrooms. If I come away from that place without getting the worst cold/flu/funky skurge of my life I will be amazed. The computer room, also known as Enterprise Center, was packed with at least fifty students all of whom were in various states of sickness; coughing and snotting at the monitors of brand new G5's and Dell Dimensions. And this, the season without a flu vaccine. Awesome.

Allow me to puff up a minute by saying that I have been on a computer since 1988. Mac or PC, it does not matter. Seriously. One of my email addresses I have had since 1993 and I have had some kind of home computer in the house for eleven years. Currently we have three. I have used so much software for print, multi-media and web design that at this point in my life it is more about my personal preferences than anything else. InDesign is a combination of Quark: fucking hate it. Develop and supported by the devil; PageMaker: much better but a little buggy and not supported much of anywhere and Corel Draw: not good for big documents and no one uses it but I happen to LOVE the paint program.

Training should be tailored to the organization in need and a classroom of matched skill sets and job functions is the best way to go. This was not that. I can be the bitch here and say it because I used to work for a company that developed training programs. Not only do I know the difference but also I have seen repeatedly the value of the fucking difference. This was a guy, who knows InDesign quite well but uses it for making books. Making books is completely different than slamming together an Alt-Weekly newspaper fifty-two Monday nights a year. Some folks were able to take chunks of what he demonstrated and apply it and others in the group were simply lost. This coming Monday is going to suck.

I started using the Firefox Browser on my MAC at work and I liked it so much that I suffered through a 56k modem download of it for my PC at home. Man, do I really like it. The tab browsing rocks and the incorporation of the Web Developer Extensions have started to change my life. Well, my life on the internet anyway. Despite what might be assumed here, I do not spend a great deal of time on the internet. After all day working on the Voice's site and then the small stuff I do on this one the last thing my eyes can handle is more "leisure" internet. I have a few things that I read and then I am out of here. But Firefox has made it considerably interesting again. The only thing I want is an extension for the code so it recognizes the color of scrollbars. Right now, it defaults to Explorer colors. Yuck.

One of the many little ways I keep causing Martha stress is that I am constantly yapping about a building down the street and how great it is and it would make a wonderful gallery. Blah, blah, blah. It is for sale and in a great location. This makes her nuts because we have no money and there is no room in our lives for the dream of puppies and galleries. She thinks I am losing my mind and it scares her. I view it as alternatives to the existence that I am living in. You know, the one with surgery, student loans and sky-high rent in our sky-high apartment as the baseline. Another word would be dreams. Not delusions. Delusions are a whole OTHER thing that has nothing to do with the gallery space over on Sussex Street, right next to the snooty bread and coffee shop.

I was supposed to shoot Jamaica Queens for the Neighborhoods column but just the thought of making the trek all the way out there was too exhausting. My new medicine works in the sense that my symptoms are gone when I take it but I cannot seem to do much else other than sleep. I took a three hour "nap" on Saturday, woke up at 7 pm watched The Weather Underground (excellent movie by the way) and then fell back a sleep before 11. AND I slept through the night - all they way to the sunrise. This shit is way better then any sleeping pills or anything else I have ever taken in all my desperate attempts to sleep throughout the years. Of course, I have slowed my heart rate down to about one beat per minute but what the fuck, it works. The trouble is that I cannot shut it off and I have to keep taking more of it or my symptoms will come back with a vengeance. What I get is about an hour in the morning where I feel total normal, well at least what I remember to be normal, before I have to take a pill.

Martha said that the pills make me nicer. That I am not the, "cold cynical bitch" that I usually am. Nice. She said it with love and I understand what she meant. I'm just too tired to be as cranky as I usually am.

I can see myself doing something stupid like not taking it just so I can get some work done. Working or rather working a full day is damn near impossible. But I don't want to catch up on a lifetime of sleep loss in the next few weeks. Jesus, I can't even stay awake long enough to paint my nails.

So here is something new and I am not quite sure how I feel about it. It is the smell thing now that I have quit smoking. The smell thing and New York City to be exact. Okay, I have not been oblivious in the past to the way this city smells in the summer. Oh no, no, no. But I don't remember a constant smell of dog shit in the spring. Yeah sure, it is everywhere and it would make sense that all that shit would stink the place up but honestly, I do not remember it being so strong. Everything smells stronger. The flowers are amazing. When I walk anywhere near Bleecker Street toward LaGuardia that whole row of trees is just crazy smelling. Intoxicating and it most certainly overpowers the shit smell.

Jasmine had to give a presentation in her business class and she chose me as her topic. I am so proud. But seeing as how I think I am kind of a failure, if the gauge is a successful business I think she missed the mark. I am kind of curious as to why she chose me in the first place. I am not really a business, yeah sure, I have product but that's just 'cause it's fun. Not because I am thinking ahead of the curve on tombstone coffee mugs.

I am going to start shooting for the online Neighborhoods column at The Voice. That is until they get bored with the column. I swear, sometimes the editors there remind me of a bunch of Alzheimer's patients rummaging around in a junk shop. It does make complete sense for me to shoot this seeing as how I am already wandering all over the city anyway. They might as well give me a list of neighborhoods and tell me to have at it. The first one is up here.

I can't seem to stop listening to Mazzy Star. This is never, ever good and I got here the same way I always do. Jesus & Mary Chain = Mazzy Star. It is a short jump but I have done it hundreds of times. These two bands go hand-in-hand, in my head. My Bloody Valentine floats here too and now Death in Vegas will round out this little psychedelic fuzz guitar trip that I seem to be on. I am walking around with a buzz saw in my head.

This whole thing with me is as predictable as the day is long and all started from a single song, Just Like Honey, which isn't even my favorite Jesus & Mary chain song. It seems as though You Trip Me Up has THAT decade long honor. I blame the movie Lost in Translation, which has me looking sideways at my Roxy Music vinyl, but I am holding back for now.

I woke up Sunday morning thinking about Roxy Music but hearing the sound of a huge squawking seagull standing on a light pole right outside our bedroom window. I always forget that we are so close to the ocean. Seagulls are scary. They are big and look rather mean like they would snap your nose off and fly away with it if they could get close enough to you. Yes indeed, they have the crazy eyes. Not like pigeons. Pigeons just want your food but they don't stand on light poles devising ways to distract and attack. The seagulls out on Coney Island are craziest.

Speaking of Coney Island, Siren is back. Diane has returned to The Voice after her CMJ crap and a long holiday. The beginning rumblings have started and we have already had two meetings. We are planning to have video this year and I think actual fricken Voice press coverage (we never do that)... so yeah, here we go. I wonder who she will book this year.

The best for last: Jasmine has made the Dean's List for the Fall Semester! They sent home a certificate and everything. I am so proud. She will be home for a week in March. Spring break and all. Getting wacky with her mom and Martha. Ah, yeah.