Happy Fuckin Birthday

Birthday Highlights:

-Holly gift of a Gunne Sax dress that is just effing perfect (POCKETS!)
-Spastic last minute early flight- I mean drive - to NYC, arriving at Boyfriends with my recently attached-at-the-hip aforementioned friend Holly at 5am.
-Wake up with said boyfriend
-Went on a hunt for a tiara (birthday=princess) (success!)
-Show up to the bar where a friend had reserved the back room with the pool table at 8pm, where (slightly buzzed, naturally) I announce obnoxiously that it's my birthday to the door man and make him check my id again, where he responds by buying me a drink!
-Had an amazing mix of photographer friends (and some people I didn't know but who are none the less fantastic, and friends with James) show up
-Sanders and Melanie gave me a box of 120 film!!! MAH
-I molested a hot girl


- JAMES GOT ME A KONICA HALF FRAME CAMERA!!!!!!


And I had a wonderful time and flitted from friend to friend and have decided that Stacey and her Husband need to have a party. And after, err, going for a walk with Stacey I decided that fun had peeked and it was TTG at 11.

I figure as long as I make it to midnight on my birthday, I am good to go.

I love my birthday. Specially this one.

HELL-OO twenty-two!! hi-ya!

And then the next day I got to shoot Melanie. Fuck yeah. Can't wait to develop the film!

Death and Stuff

Just got home from work... and came back to an email from my mother telling me that my Uncle Morris passed away this morning.

This said Uncle Morris is - was - my grandmother's husband's brother. So he's actually of no relation seeing as said husband wasn't actually my grandfather, but he loved me just the same. When Pop-pop died, he left Uncle Morris money to spend on my sister and I. It went to school clothes when we were in High School and then paid for most of the college that we chose to go to.

So what I'm saying is that my Uncle paid for some-odd amount of the last four years of my college career (a hundred-something attempted credits and no degree to show for it), sent me money so that I could buy photo supplies and bought my first cameras (which, besides the Rolleiflex, are my two cameras that I use all the time and are oh-so-reliable). He never forgot a birthday or small holiday. He sent nice boxes of chocolate for no reason and jewelry for Valentines Day.

One time I sent him this long letter, being completely open and pretending he wasn't an 80-something year old man who was kindof-not-really related and described to him all about getting a piercing and what it meant to me and why I liked piercings and tattoos. I thought that maybe it was too much for a conservative man, but I decided not to care and to treat him like a person who loved me just because. He responded with a really lovely letter about a girl he met once "at a dance". I feel it was the only time that him and I really actually communicated.

I've been "trying" to write him a letter for about a week now.. and I feel guilty that I didn't make it.

I never sent him any of the photos I took.

I've never met him.

Rest in Peace, Uncle Morris... I hope you know that I've always thought about you, whether I wrote to you or not...

Nothing New

I have a bunch of black and white film to develop. I'm putting it off. Tuesday, though, I think, I'll do it. I have a roll of T-max in my camera that I'll have to use first, though I dunno on what.

My Aunt apparently googled my name. Huh. She came up with Sanders' photo of Coni right below here and stopped investigating. haha

My birthday's coming up. I'll be 22, which I love the sound of it. Twenty two. Much better than twenty one. 21 sounds so "omigawd, I can DRIIINK". Whatever.

For my birthday I want to have fun. I want friends and laughter and silliness.

I want Melody to be there, too.

Sigh.

Healthy Pride

I shot this girl, and then this awesome photographer dude shot her. And that makes me happy. She's awesome, too.






Photo by Sanders McNew

The sun is coming up

I got home from work (bar) at quarter-to-five. I don't know about you, but I can't sleep after I'm done with work. Esspecially fast-passed ass-busting work like tonight. Or bartending at a decent place, period.

I love it. I love pre-dawn. I love the light at sunrise.

I have so much more to say, but I'll leave it at that.

And a photo of this girl I used to be friends with. Her name is Molly.

Sam

I shot this girl Sam today. She was awesome and she looked amazing in the dresses I have in my possesion that, of course, are Holly's . I can't decide if I like the colour or black and white better. I went a bit photoshop happy. Anyone have an opinion?



I got my film back from shooting Coni who was another gem. I'm really pleased with the girls I've been able to shoot lately. Girls like Coni and Sam who are talented and new, who actually like my work and want to work with me. And I think they each gave me a cavity. Which is nice.

I've got so many shots of Coni.. I'll be editing for days haha. But I don't mind. And I'm sure I got some great stuff with Sam today. Makes me happy.

Sad Happy: Part Two

I decided to go now, or, as it were, twenty minutes ago. And while I wasn't shorted $30, I was $2 but decided not to push it, though my desperate frustration at making $53 at the busiest bar in Utica, on the busiest night of the summer, having been the first bartender there to set up and continuing my over-achiever for almost 12 hours was at least happy to find my half pack of damp Camel Lights. This whole situation is tiring, not so much physically, but mentally. It's the idea that you have to clean bathrooms before you get to rightfully assist Richard Avedon. But I don't want to be someone's bitch my entire life, I want to float and be fair and Make A Difference. Unlike whats-his-name in "A Happy Death" where Camus argues his characters for perfect bliss as being free to do nothing. Yet for some strange reason I (and arguably Camus) cannot find peace in being idol. But I stray, perhaps in my want to sound well read. Well fuck that, I am well read, I just read Tristessa. Christ. Art fag. And my fight for Cool Points continues.

James, you are like E. The come-down is really rough. Cept I'm not fucking up my brain, or at least not putting holes in it.

All of this semi-complaining. I don't feel I'm actually complaining, though. I feel it is easier to "publicly" share my thoughts on my frustrating climb through my career-life than it is my love-life.

Which, by the way, is fucking awesome.

But I wouldn't want to jinx it, so I'll leave it at that.

Okay, now I'm tired. Photographing possibly three people tomorrow. Picking up a couple rolls of colour from the other day with the amazing Constanza. Pretty stoked. Sunday I go to the community darkroom that I got a membership for the summer for the huge unreasonable sum of forty dollars. In this respect, I feel on the right step again.

Sigh. He inspires me so.

Constanza:

And while I learned how much I love cross processing with that little point-and-shoot camera, I also learned that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to do it with my half point-and-shoot half slr digital. Not only can I go into photoshop and fuck with it till my heart's content, I can also control the image better.

But film is still so much more gratifying.

Can't. Wait. For. The. Film.

I have so much to do on Sunday! I can't wait to be back in the lab.

Sad Happy

I just got home from work.. a particularly frustrating night consisting of down-pouring rain and standing out in the cold and soaked down to my panties, shivering and standing idol. And while this may sound like a fun adventure (say, if I werren't working and my palm was full of my baby's palm, perhaps with Manhattan glowing over there and six stories up on a roof with my head tilted back; stupid happy and rightly so), it may sound like an adventure but instead it was my boss pulling me aside by the arm and speaking low, if you put a negative energy to these new girls I will cut you so fast and I feel the tears pulling out, my throat tighten like a child. I child who is wet and cold and lonely and truely only wishes to make people happy. I just wanted to close the bar, to at least clean and lift boxes of liquor and work toward something real; make myself useful. Moments later, though, and he's having us do just that, and I find myself wondering how come he couldn't have just said it's okay, we'll get you guys out of the rain, get your bar packed. It makes me feel inhuman, I feel the strength of stoicism and apathy fighting with my passion for life and love and approval. Silly girl. Silly girl who got lost in the world of a man she loves, forgetting that the outside world exists and you have to go back to it. Everything's about ballance. Fuck balance, I just want to do the things that make me happy. Happy is not in Utica, but four hours North-East of here.

I just realized that I'm $30 short of what I should have gotten in tips according to the little slip of paper attached to the wad of ones (yes, they don't even have the decency to change it in for bigger bills). I'm torn between going back to the bar and seeing if they're still there and ask them why, or waiting and doing it tomorrow. My fear is that they'll not trust that it was actually short. Seeing as I'm clearly a liar and a thief.






James took this.. And while it's supposed to say "fuck you" I feel it says a lot of things, "fuck you" being lower on the list.