Farewell Lou Rawls.
I know we'll never find another love [voice] like yours.
When I was growing up, we had a console stereo, and a handful of records – albums like Peter and the Wolf, William Tell, and Louis Armstrong's Hello, Dolly. One year, we got a new Webcor stereo, and a few albums to go with it. Lou Rawls' Tobacco Road was one of those records. We played it until the grooves turned white.
- EDITORS' NOTE -
Today's Headlines for Wednesday, Jan. 4 included an article, "12 Miners
Found Alive 41 Hours After Explosion," about the mining accident in West
Virginia. That article relied on attributed sources, including a named official
from the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, and
victims' family members. Later information determined that 11 miners were dead
and one survived.
- NY Times e-mail January 5, 2006 3:22:55 AM EST
The big buzz in the news industry today is attribution. CNN was talking
about it last night, and the Times is talking about it today. Everybody got
the story wrong. Another black eye for the news media. They've been running
full-on damage control since last night. A few more news cycles, though, and
all will be forgotten.
:::
See the full
cartoon by Jim Morin at MiamiHerald.com.
The cartoon ran 12/14. On 1/4, the story
breaks that NBC is investigating whether Bush
spied on CNN's Christiane Amanpour... Wonder what Fox will have to say about
this story, if it gets legs.
:::
Something to chew on
Postmodernism involves ‘an eruption of language into the aesthetic field,’ dethroning
the idea of the artist as the creator of an original image... it has offered
pastiche, appropriation, and ironic allusion... [postmodern art is] an art
addressed to spectators who are more likely to be puzzled than dazzled and
whose thirst for visual pleasure often seems deliberately thwarted. – From Picture
Theory by WJT Mitchell
:::
“I've got great shots of people like Paris Hilton, but I didn't include
those because any day, people can pick up magazines and see people like her,
Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson.” – Richard Corkery
Daily News photographer Richard Corkery has a show at the Brooklyn campus
of Long Island University through Jan.27. His photos can be seen at the Humanities
Building Gallery, Flatbush
Ave. and Fulton St. [more...]
2K6 / Twenty-Ought-Six
Happy National Hangover Day. My apologies once more for going so long between
posts. I've been a bit distracted.
The new year came at me like a bullet. I can't believe how fast we leapt from
Halloween-to-Thanksgiving-to-Christmas-to-New Year's.
I got to spend time with my family in places like Dallas and Westchester.
I'm happy to report that my three aunts in the Dallas area, that I was a bit
worried about, are living well. There were so many of my New Orleans relatives
in Dallas this Christmas, that Dallas felt a bit like New Orleans in exile.
Santa was good to me — of course, I was a good boy last year...
Maybe I'm a bit macabre, but I regret that I've been to Dallas twice, and
I still haven't seen Daly Square and the Book Depository. We almost went this
year, but no luck.
We watched ‘New Year's Rockin' Eve’ last night, like so many people around
the country. Cosmetics, surgery, soft lighting, and maybe a little gauze over
the lens helped Dick Clark look better than expected a year after his stroke,
but there was no getting around his physical impairment. Folks at the party
were debating whether this was Dick's last hurrah on screen. The camera didn't
linger on him, often cutting away to other visuals while Dick's voice-over
continued. But at one point, it seemed that Dick started to ramble, and they
actually cut away to a commercial in mid-sentence.
When Mariah [The Most Misunderstood Black Woman in America] Carey came on
screen, the room buzzed. There were comments about her weight, her thighs,
her dress. There seemed to be a collective wish for a wardrobe malfunction:
did her outfit have a halter or not??? Could you do a delay on a live New Year's
Eve broadcast? There was a moment where I realized that the same kind of comments
and observations (maybe the exact same words) were being made in thousands,
maybe millions of living rooms, bedrooms, dens, and spare rooms all around
the country.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in Times Square were caught on camera
wearing Chevrolet-logo-emblazoned hats. Thousands more around the city wore
2006 glasses. Four years from now, there will be no more double-ought numbers,
which make such convenient lens sockets, and one fashion trend will become
extinct.
On the train ride home, we saw a number of inebriated people. One woman looked
dreadfully close to alcohol poisoning. Another guy sat on a bench, barfing.
His glasses had fallen onto the floor and into the middle of his effluent.
Yecch.
On the train, someone puked, the evidence appearing after the car cleared
a bit at one of the stops. Someone sprayed some cologne into the air, just
about the time the stench started to waft into our section of the car.
I
wondered aloud how many hundreds of retching revelers would ride the subways
last night.
I imagine that subway cleaning crews have a lot more to mop up on New Year's
Day, than any other time of the year. Riding the subway and walking the
streets today, there seemed to be a lot of evidence to support my theory.
Another thing made obvious today: National Hangover Day is observed
by more businesses than Martin Luther King's Birthday; but if you're a brunch-oriented
restaurant, it's a big day for business. Bar Tabac in Cobble Hill was packed.
I suspect it's one of their best days of the year. Who wants to cook on New
Year's morning?!
Today, I've been reviewing and expanding my plans for the new year. I believe
there's a fair amount of studio work in my future, so I'm thinking of ways
to set up
the living
room
so that it can convert to a studio when I need it.
I've shot nearly 33,000 frames with my D100, and it's having issues these
days. Visiting one of the better photo clinics in Manhattan, I was told that
the repair would be ‘pretty expensive.’ While that's not very precise, I figure
I could have bought a few good accessories, at least, with that kind of money.
I had started to drool over the oh-so-expensive D2X after trying one at a recent
photo show, when a friend told me that the D200 had finally been announced.
The write-up
on dpreview.com convinced me that not only was this a great camera, but
that it offers about 90% of what the D2X offers for about 1/3 the price. The
reviews that have come out since confirm that, and also indicate that the D200
is even a great value compared to Canon's 5D and 20D models.
The new camera is on order. Yesterday, I actually got to handle a D200 in
the flesh for a brief while. The experience confirmed what my instincts had
told me. Now, my instincts tell me that the D2X will be replaced in a lot less
than the 4 years between the D1X and the D2X.
This will be a big year for my photography, as well as my other creative endeavors.
I hope it's a great year for you, too.
