I suck at team sports pt 1

I'm sure there will eventually be a part two to this, but my stomach started disagreeing with me, and is only now, a day and a half later, finally settling down. So I only played one game, and only shot two of them, and then I ran off to drink (see previous post). Anyway, here's the goods:

ok, some pictures already

It was a nice uneventful weekend... well, things happened, but it was fun and nobody got hurt this time, which is to say no fights, trips to the hospital, supergluing of wounds, etc. So all of the things that have defined my weekends of partying didn't happen. Just drinking, followed by sobering up in some chill spot (thanks to the bike cave and the schofield house, respectively, for their hospitality). Anyway, photos:

Matty at HiLo- yes, that's a plastic tiara on his head.
Tanner, at the bike cave, concentrating on some Texas hold 'em. I passed out like a narcoleptic on valium.
Andria, while she was getting me shitfaced on sunday afternoon. Jager is still a good time though.
Bartender, chatting. This was moments after she was showing off her tongue's lack of connective tissue. I like this picture better though.
Trinity and her beau, forgotten his name. She was saying something about me taking pictures at monster's ball.
Rainstorms, tonight. Hope tomorrow is nice, I've got work to do.

I'll only add to these that three times in the past five days women have offered to pose scantily/provocatively clad for me. I'm not a skeezy dude, they asked me, but it's kinda funny. What change in my complete lack of game caused all this? More as it develops. (oh yeah, and bike polo post soon).

Always remember the super glue

So, tonight, during the course of bike polo, and well before I'd arrived, Timmy wacked the back of his head against a concrete pillar. Whe I first saw it, I thought it wasn't that bad, but after a second look, I realized the wound, while small, was all the way through the skin and really needed some kind of closure. I jokingly said I could stitch it up if we could find a needle and thread.

Now, I do have some pretty good first aid training and experience under my belt, so when Timmy actually wanted me to stitch it up, I thought, ok, no problem, told him it would hurt, but we could do it. So we all went back to grant's house, and we got out a needle and thread, I sterilized it in bleach, and we waited for grant to get back from the store with some peroxide to clean out the wound. Before you even think it, yes, I know that peroxide robs the tissue of oxygen, but iodine is harder to get in the middle of the night.

We all go into the dining room and I lay down a towel and pour in the disinfectant. It's a little cut, but it really needed like two stitches to close it and keep out infection. It wasn't going to close on its own. So, I stick the needle in. It goes through with a little pushing, and then refuses to come out the other side. So I pull it out, bend the needle some more, and try again. Still no joy; the point is just too dull.

We talk about taking him to a doc-in-a-box clinic, and Grant is looking up phone numbers when somebody brings up the possibility of super glue. I don't remember who, but I'm still kicking myself for not thinking of it before I tried to stitch him up. It's perfect for little out of the way wounds that need to be closed but can't be sutured for whatever reason (lack of insurance and sharp needles this time). So, Grant goes to the store again, gets some super glue, and the cut is fixed up better than the ER would have done in about five seconds.

Moral of the story: Don't forget the super glue.

Bike polo

Bike polo is fun. Evidence:

Start with ladies' night

"I have something in my nose? What?"

So, It's very early on friday morning, and I have about three posts in the queue. They're all vaguely about drinking, and/or bikes, and or insightful important need-to-know information. Those are the only types of posts I do, so we'll see if I can do them all in one feel swoop.

Sigrid was there, writing on people's knuckles.

Wednesday was the famous and ever popular ladies night at The Blue Note, and really it was a nice time. I walked in and there was Cyrus, chillin' at the bar with a new 'dew. I actually like the new hair better, even though it is a little funny to see Cyrus in a crew cut. I laughed, I admit it.

For example: Reaghan.

We were the two drunks at the end of the bar solving the world's problems. We came to the conclusion that people are better taken individually than in groups- there's some context missing, but that's what I remembered hung over this morning. That and a lot of pretty girls. Which brings me to the next part of the story. (You people reading this should realize that this narrative has a pretty good basis in fact, but I'm glossing over the boring parts of the evening).

Then Cyrus upstaged all this knuckle writing by doing his whole forearm.

New girl comes over, Jordan, we meet, get to talking, and it turns out she wants to be a Suicide Girl, but needs a photographer. I was, of course, doing my normal thing, taking drunkpictures at the bar, and so she asked me if I would do it, and me being an idiot, a sucker for a pretty lady, I said sure. So it's me and Cyrus and her hanging out and drinking, and one thing leads to another, and they're kind of talking, and then I look over and they're making out. Making out pictures don't do anything for me, but I snap a few anyway, because the impulse to document is still there.

Like I said, making out pictures don't do anything for me, but I love her surprised smile in this picture.

So I turn to Rachel, who was sitting at out table, and say something, chit chat like, and then Jordan says "Matt!" and pulls up her shirt. Reflexes and impulses being what they are, I snapped a couple frames. Demand all you want, but I'm not going to post that on the internet unless she tells me to, which is unlikely.

Does this look like a girl who would flash the camera for fun and profit? I like it, either way.

From there, the night is a blur of the HiLo and then to Reaghan's new abode, where there was this somewhat interesting other girl, but then everybody passed out pretty quick, and nothing happened. Her name was Kat, I'm pretty sure, and I remember her asking about my camera earlier in the night. Maybe I'll run into her again. If not, it's the bus theory of meeting women. I'll let you work that one out while I'm working on the next post.

Walking back to my car, there was a random tractor. But that's oklahoma.

twitter thoughts too long for twitter

A conversation today on twitter got me to thinking about photography, and culture and style and art and society. There was a photographer, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, who's work really demonstrates all that's wrong with the world right now.

The photographer that brought up all these questions is a very successful commercial photographer. Very polished, styled images. There are a lot of things that I don't like about them. A lot of his images are super low contrast, with no blacks (tonality, not people) at all, while also cropping off body parts willy-nilly. His lighting also bothers me- the photos strike me as the kind you need an army of assistants (well, at least two or three) to maintain-complex and unnatural. Not every shot should be into the light, all of them can't be at golden hour, and sweat is never that perfectly placed. It's a distinctive look, but it's a plastic look, it's one I've seen a thousand times before.

We live in a dissafected, disenfranchised society. There are the indebted, and there are the people we owe money to. The rich are few and far between, something like 5% of the population at any given time, depending on your definition of rich. Money as we think of it now has no basis in the real world, but is merely some numbers in digital domains.

Given that, where is art? It's all gold and glam and crazy hair and tight pants. It's abstract and disconnected and complex. It's thin, insubstantial. It's going to fall apart.

It's the lack of substance that I keep coming back to in my thinking; those photographs, even of somewhat interesting subjects, were plastic and boring, stamped out of a mill of complicated lights and staged action-peaks that only look like decisive moments. They are the shiny object, to be consumed and tossed away without thought.

Where are the real photographs, the photographers of the world as it is? I'm not talking about people wandering to far flung regions to uncover the the worst of the worst, I'm talking about the local people, the ones doing projects and reporting on local things? Where are these photographers? They're out there, I'm sure it's not just me laboring under a delusion. I know because I'm one of 'em.

This one goes out to Mom

Yeah, sure, sappy, I know. Go fuck yourself. My mom is in the hospital for the 13th time since September. Or was it August? I can't remember when she started dialysis, but it was around then. 3 A.V. fistulas, a peritoneal port, 6 cardiac caths, a couple infections, surgeries to install and remove the above, time for monitoring, recovering, etc, etc. She's been through a lot. And she's still not done, although it now seems that they've got a handle on why the fistulas keep failing so consistently, it's a 2% of the population kind of problem. Now she's going to rest for a couple months and they're going to do something different for a dialysis access.

She might murder me for posting this, but oh well, at least then I won't have to worry about my student loans. This was right before they took her back for surgery today.

Home, where the laptop is

Phil the wonderdog, and his owner Todd.


So, it was a fairly disastrous weekend, with a few redeeming moments that made the trip to Austin just shy of a total waste. So I blogged about Thursday evening, and then took my laptop into the kitchen for some browsing and conversation. I plugged in the laptop so it could charge, and then when I got up I tripped over the cord and knocked it onto the floor, breaking the screen. So, sans laptop, I didn't blog or process pictures the rest of the weekend.

Steves was there, somewhat improbably.


That afternoon, there was an alley cat and a movie premiere. I got DFL in the alley cat, and saw half the movie, which looked pretty good, and then decided to strike out towards the action. There were free drinks somewhere, I could smell them. Come to think of it, that might have been the empty beer in my hand. Oh well.

The bikes piled up before the alleycat. Yay dfl!


That night, my luck was a little better. We got in to a party with free tequila, but then, standing in a long line waiting for drinks, Sarah decdided to go see Devo, who I don't care about, and so we all left the party with the free booze and I went and walked sixth street for a couple hours while they were at the show. That's where I saw the coolest thing of the whole trip.




There was a guy standing between two van de graaff (lightning) generators, all covered in chainmail. The lightning striking him was modulated so that the lightning was a speaker. The lightning noise was the music.

F'ing amazing.


From there, I wandered until my feet hurt, then sat a little, then wandered a little, in a "diminishing returns" situation until I was walking a block and sitting on a curb for five minutes, and then getting up and moving along. Somewhere in there was pizza and a coke. Then Devo was over, and everyone went back to the party with the free drinks, where, after I'd had one beer and one shot of tequila, they ran out of booze.




Back at the house to sleep, only to wake up in the morning to no computer and no internets. Saturday was half-decent DJ's during the day followed by a rather nice evening hanging with Todd (my host, remember) and his girlfriend Kelli. Fairly interesting people, the both of them. Todd really really needs to show his paintings in a gallery. I know people, professional art people (gallery people), who would kill for paintings like his.

Oh yeah, cmay was there too.


Sunday morning, we woke up and drove back. Contained in that sentence was another highlight of the trip- driving north on I-35, big puffy clouds overhead, radiohead on the stereo, and finally, for a little while, everything was right with the world. Now I'm home.

People at the "Mess with Texas" show right next to the capitol. This was a nice moment when I was sitting on a rock.

SXSW update....

So we're still here, still haven't seen any shows, and if it weren't for our gracious and intelligent host, we wouldn't even have had and free beer. Austin is really going to have to kick it up a notch to save itself from this one.

Beginning of the night, all dressed up, still hopeful.


We went to the party 45 minutes early and there was already a line a couple hundred people long. For some reason, when you tell people free beer and hot DJ's, they line up like it's the cure for stupidity. And then stand there. For two hours. While people cut, and get to go in vip.

On the way, the night looked promising.


Seems to me it's an intelligence test. It sounds like a good idea to go stand in line for a little while and get a bunch of free shit- booze, music, hot, scantily clad women etc. There's a limit to how much you can stand there though, and here's where the intelligence test comes in: the smarter you are, the sooner you leave. When we left, there were still 200 people standing in line, not about to get in.

The line, when we got there. Seemed like we'd get in.


Now, they were at capacity when they stopped letting people in, I'm sure. But after a bunch of people leave, why not let the people at the front of the line in? Instead, they were only allowing VIP's, which unfortunately, we're not.

The same line, 45 minutes later.


So, we gave up after about an hour of just standing there. In our defense, there were maybe 20 people in front of us; it seemed possible, when they said they were at capacity, that we might get in after some people left. Then we came back to the house, (Todd's house) and drank beer and talked late into the night with todd, todd's friend who works for SNL, and his girlfriend, who's name I've forgotten. Longtime blogreaders and friends will know this is because I'm horrible with names.

This was as far as we got. Then we gave up and commenced drinking.

day 1 sxsw

Today has kinda been a blur... there was morning coffee, burritos, american appearal factory seconds sale, walking around, biking around, whole foods, lots of music, lost of fun. And I haven't even had any free beer yet.

In austin. on a couch.

So, throwing yourself at the mercy of the universe occasionally does work out. I'm on a couch here in Austin, TX, mere miles from downtown and the famous and ever popular SXSW music fest.



The whole journey started this morning, when Sarah twittered about going to SXSW today, to catch some band. So I called her and asked if she could delay an extra half hour, to give me time to get my shit together ( I thought we were leaving tomorrow). She told me she didn't really have shit together either, and so I had time, meet at her house, and everything would be cool.



It took for-ev-er to get out of OKC though- one thing after another kept going wrong, or errands that should have taken just a few minutes took an hour, and on and on. It was like the karmic forces of the city didn't want to let us go. Finally, after something like 2 hours of running around, we were ready to go.




The drive down was good- there was a nice sunset, some McD's, a little nap, and not a few pictures. I drove the last 40 minutes, and after a couple tries, parallel parked the car on an off street east of downtown. We got on our bikes, and not two minutes later were yelled at by some cops. Nice job austin PD, making people new in town feel welcome.



So, jetting away from that situation (nice thing about bikes in a city- there's little chance for someone in a car to catch you), we found ourselves right in the middle of the maddness, on the mainline, we hit the central nerve, etc, etc. Only to be greeted by a sign outside all the official venues: no photography without a press pass. Bullshit I say. The good news is that for the most part we're going to be frequenting unofficial parties and venues; apparently that's where the best parts are.





Went from there to the long branch, which was a cool little joint. Nice atmos, good music, interesting clientele (if you could call them that). I had a couple beers, and that (and a short ride back to the car, and a short car ride) brings me to the present tense. Oh yeah, and there's a crazy jumpy dog in the house we're staying at.

Japanther rocks your face off

Show was good. bunch of good pics. invented the unintentional photo essay. Don't worry, I'll explain later. Gotta go get my shit together for SXSW. See you all on the flip side.

a few from last night

FYI, she's staring at tanner trying to track stand and chug beers. Tanner was able to get three without a foot down, but that photo just looks like a dude chugging beer on a bike.


Jim, all dressed up at the party. Martini: extra dirty. Suit: extra sharp.


Adam Lock, back in town for the week.

Three guys play some music

Ended up at sauced friday, and didn't have time to post these yesterday. some people might say that makes me a bad blogger, but they need to get a life. The band is called, I think, The Double Clutchers. I could tell they were having fun, not a bad sound, but a lot of covers. I enjoyed it.









This girl is not a member of the band. Rule of thumb: stripes = trouble. She's not wearing paisley, that's all I'm sayin'.

test

trying to post to get the feed to update. real post coming in a bit with photos of a band. fun.

Openbeta2

Last night was openbeta, and it was actually a really cool interesting event. I'm not just saying that, you know; a lot of talks and conferences bore the shit out of me, and I just leave in the middle of them. OK, so I stepped out for a smoke in the middle of one of the boring lightning talks, but other than that, it was good.



This is Grant, giving his demo of Twircl, which still hasn't launched, but is by far the coolest thing I've seen one of my friends come up with since art school. Twircl is a direct group messaging app that runs on top of twitter, something that the system needs.



These are the wimgo girls, and, well, do I really need to say anything. Thanks for the pen, ladies.


Grant kills 'em with his presentation:


Voltron Presents: Why they're awesome. I need to find out if they have any staff photographer openings. Maybe they need a screwball wandering correspondent for their web side? Y/Y?


The view from OKCCoCo:


Afterparty:


There was a good reason for these faces, but I can't remember for the life of me why.

Pictures until I was too drunk to focus

By which I actually mean there are more photos, and some of them are in focus, but after the last one here (which we'll pretend was intentional), I was walking the fine line between blackout and just stupid, and so none of those photos are any good.



I'm actually not sure any of these are any good, but they're kind of fun, at least. That's the threshold these days for blog-worthy photos, if I think someone I know will get a laugh or like it or link or somesuch, then I'll put it up. Actually, there's a quality threshold as well, see paragraph 1 for example.



Wednesday was a pretty epic night, and actually it's a good thing, because my money's just about run out again. Time to find another jobby job. I did a pretty good job of embarrassing myself in front of girls I barely know, and some old friends in the mix too. It's strange, the way things run in circles sometimes.



I've never seen a look on Cyrus's face like the one below, but it's probably always there under the surface- a sort of laughing incredulity. Either that or it's drunkface and I'm reading too much into a picture.



Reagan always makes the best photo-faces. It's like she's screaming "I"M REAGAN" with her whole face.





And here's the old friends I was talking about- Chase and Brian- I've known Brian since high school. He'll probably get pissed and send me more death threats, but that's a risk I'm willing to take to bring everyone quality photos.



I really like this pic, for some ineffable reason. I know, I know. Shoot me.

Shooting in a bit of a different mode yesterday. With the digital camera. Decided film was too expensive. So sue me. I don't think the look suffers that much.






I like how even the McD's sign is screwed up.








Every time I talk about this project, people bring up the tower theatre; looking at the fron of it, I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just build a new one in the vacant lot across the street.




The shooting yesterday wasn't as good, as fulfilling as is was the first couple outings; I thought, walking back, that I might just give up the project and move on. But it seems like I'm onto something; the dilapidation there is a symptom of the wider economic problems. I can't tell if it's getting worse or better. Also, I look at the pictures, see I'm doing good work, and can hardly stop myself.

Momentum Artshow

Momentum 09 was last night, and I was really surprised by the quality and scope and size and attendance of the show. It was packed, the work was 75% good, all stuff I'm not used to seeing in this town, and it filled a freaking warehouse.



There were a lot of big open installations, a lof of big cool paintings, some shit photos (sorry everyone, but the photo showing this year just wasn't that great, with a few notable exceptions). Hving these clouds right by the entrance set the mood for the place: it was as if someone took a piece of a real art scene out of the air of New York or Santa Fe and stuck it here in oak city, improbably and strangely. So it seemed natural to see a crib full of beer bongs and a whole room of homoerotic black fraternity induction paintings.





Then there was my friend Bobby's band, playing a pretty rad live set. If they'd had a cd available, I'd have bought one, and that's not something I do a lot. These kids know how to rock.













Then there was this womblike installation in what used to be a woman's restroom. It was completely transformed and amazing; all it needed was some giant pillows on the floor and some mild hallucinogenic gas in the air and it would have been perfect.


I didn't know what to think of the deer. But I like the photo, so sue me.



Some MC, not all that great. Nobody's perfect, maybe he was havin' an off night.



Then there was the after after after party, which was really about four people in Jim's apartment eating cheese and drinking french wine. I'd like to say it was a nice end to the night, but there were a couple fights on the lawn that complicated things. So instead it was kind of a haggard exhausted end to the evening, but at least it was in good company.

Some random photos:

There's a post about momentum coming, but to tide everyone over until I can get that together, here's some photos from earlier in the week. Francois, on wednesday:

Ray-guns, at McNellie's:

Cody at blue note:

It was one of those nights where I was the drunk one. Not as drunk as some people, though, and that turned out to be a good thing. I told Sarah early on in the night that I'd make sure she got home alright. She did, and I crashed on her couch. My good deed for the week done, I give you the morning after:


More in a few minutes, when I get the real momentum post together.

Candid Portraits for Hire

So, this is a New Idea. At least, I think it's new, and if it isn't, well, I don't know anybody that does it. The idea is, a lot of people like to have good pictures of their family; in fact, this is the only thing a lot of people care to have pictures of. But studio pictures from places like walmart or sears or even glamour shots suck.

So instead of a studio, what about the home? And instead of a quick grin-and-grab, what about spending some time with the family, say two hours- over dinner, maybe, or an afternoon in the park? Candid pictures the whole time, and give the family digital copies that they can do whatever they want with? If they want to order prints through me, that's fine, but I'd rather make money shooting than printing, so that's where the charges come from.

The pictures here in this post were shot in the space of about an hour and a half; These aren't all of the keepers, just enough for a teaser. I ended up sending the family 25 images in all, all of which I was happy with.

So, if anyone is interested in this being done with their family, just drop me a line at my email, rates are negotiable, and depend on how much and what you want me to do.

Just photos. need flickr next.

She swears she hit her eye on a cabinet door, and actually I believe her.

Kanaly busts a move.



Ole?