12/31/01 Little Tokyo

Lost & Found: Odd One Out

I adore this picture. It should be in the dictionary next to the definition of "contrast". It's a fairly large photo, so it comes to no surprise that it practically leaped out at me from the pile. All that sea of severe solemnity and in the middle of it the cherub-faced child. And that's not all; everyone of those ladies - and few gentlemen - have character, and hat to match! I just wish I knew what was the occasion.

Lost & Found: A Bird In A Hand

This image is a minor vernacular masterpiece. When I fished it out of the pile of old photos at the flea market I went "now, that's interesting". It would've been easy to miss, since the actual print is quite small.

Lost & Found: Tall Man

Whatever happened to Fred Green?

Square America: Christmas

It's almost over! Just another week of stressing, wrapping, spending too much, crowned with a glorious weekend of stuffing yourself till you pass out, and then we can finally get back to normal.


Lamp!


Back in the days when second-hand smoking was good for you. It built character.


Lovely Do, lovely tree.


I have nothing.

Just the Pretty: Winter

I'm not a big fan of winter in general. I gladly left the the cold, the slush, the scraping of windshields, and the frozen toes behind when I moved to California.


However, even a curmudgeon like me can appreciate certain aspects of winter; the thick blanket of freshly fallen snow, the way it seems to muffle the world, reality itself, slows down time. The way it hangs from the branches of trees, and crunches under your feet.


Certain things can never be perfectly described. To think about it, language is always frustratingly limited. You have to keep spinning it, piling on the modifiers to conjure the right atmosphere.


The right photo has the power to take a shortcut to those memories in the dusty recesses of your brain. Of course, you have to have the memories to begin with. Otherwise the best it can be is a bundle of pretty, maybe something intriguing.


The picture above is worth clicking on to enlarge. There are some beautiful details there. Apparently it is of the Moseley & Motley Milling Co. from Rochester, NY.


Unfortunately, the above photo was printed on textured paper. I hate that; it obscures too much.

The Future Abhors Sensible Shoes

Obviously. I saw Tron Legacy a couple of days ago at an advance screening. Nice ambiance, standard plot. The costume, set, everything else designers did a fine job retaining the visual style of the original while making it fresh. I even liked the 3D - for once it wasn't gimmicky. The music went well with the whole thing too. Tell me though: Doesn't Daft Punk in Tron sound just a wee bit like Vangelis?


But this post is not about movies or music, it's about shoes. A plethora of Tron-themed merchandise is about to hit the stores, among them the shoes above. I actually like them. They look cool. Not that I would ever wear them, even if the price wasn't deterrent enough. I don't do heels. There are plenty of other, more creative ways to achieve pain and discomfort - if that's your thing. It doesn't have to be footwear. My shoes come from Sketchers.


That said, it's a little thing, but it bugs me to hell: Why do futuristic badass chicks keep running around in high heels? From Seven of Nine to Quorra. (And isn't that just a very L.A. way to spell Cora?) It makes no frakkin' sense! It's not practical!


That's another of many reasons why I love Serenity/Firefly so much: women kicking ass - in boots. Big ass-kicking boots. I can get behind that.

Flea Market Follies

Last Flea Market of the year. The weather was pretty decent for December.


Not quite warm enough to warrant this. Maybe she's hitchhiking.






And finally, lunch:

Square America: Together

Monday at work I was tasked with arranging a meeting with Italian business partners who'd be in town on the last week of November. I sent out an email, with a gentle reminder that there was a holiday over here this week. Their reply was "Silly goose, (not exact wording) we're coming the week after. So I had to explain, that if we didn't nail down the time of the meeting by Wednesday noon the latest, there would be nobody around to reply emails or meeting invitations till Monday. The Italians were somewhat surprised - I don't know why; they themselves took the entire month of August off for vacation. And by that I mean the whole country of Italy.


If you live in the US you know what's going on. If not, let me explain. Dive the amateur anthropologist at least should appreciate.


Thanksgiving is a practice run for Christmas; people - generally related by blood or marriage - come together, play out weird family dynamics, watch TV (football), eat way, way too much food, and drop off into a food coma.


There are some variations on the theme; consuming copious amounts of alcohol or playing football (the American kind) may be involved. In some cases both. There's nothing like drunk men ramming into each other on a cold afternoon. The pain will manifest itself the day after.


The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday is the day when crazed hordes of people swarm the shopping malls. It's a lot like a zombie movie, but the participants move faster, and there is more carnage.

iShoot Square

I keep playing with my apps. For a long time Hipstamatic was a favorite. Give me John S lens and Ina's 69 film and I was set.


Occasionally I wandered into B&W territory with one of the Blackeys films.


It's funny how all this digital technology that slowly but surely making film, paper and darkrooms obsolete is the sexiest when imitating what it replaces.

Not that I'm bemoaning the lack of chemical fumes and aching feet of ours spent in darkrooms. Along with me across the world a billion bathrooms also sigh in relief.


My chosen Hipstamatic combo has a pronounced greenish tint. Sometimes it works brilliantly. Other times it doesn't.


These days I more often just take a regular photo, then if I like it run it through lo-Mob.


This app applies frames and visual effects after the fact, giving more control to the user.


Lo-Mob has a lot of options, but I'm unfailingly drawn to the "vintage instant - reframed" setting.


I have thing for square images.