Pourous*

Tonight at aLife, KR is signing his new book. These photos were taken from the gallery at Krink.

*I spelled it wrong on purpose...its a pun, dun.

The Music, Man

Flickr is pretty cool...its time I upload my photos on there. Obviously the SpiderRoll has not been getting my attention of late, but maybe that will?

Anyhow, I came across these cool photos of the band hipsters love to hate, WILCO. Problem is, there damn good, whether you like to beleive it or not. In addition to being damn good, they are also on tour...and will be in town (or close to it) later in April. Rock on Sayreville!

The above images are courtesy of chango. Kansas City never looked so good. I take that back, Robert Altman did OK with it too.

ALL THINGS GO

On the Lo

damn it feels good to see people up on it.

Engagement Gift

Everyone I know is either getting pregnant or getting engaged. Not that this has much relevance, but I donated $1.50 to this bum in order to take his photo. Im guessing hell put it towards the new issue of US Weekly.

Peoples Instinctive Travels...

On a recent walk near the NY Public Library at Bryant Park, I came across some cool plaques embedded in the sidewalk. These are just a few.

For Emily and Jay

February flew. It began with a view of the Carribean sea from my bed, in the middle was a monster snowstorm in NYC, and it more or less ended with the opening of my first art exhibit.

The highlight was a long weekend in Mexico, and a wedding on the beach.

PRE SOUTH BY POST

Off to Austin on Wednesday for the South By South West Festival (SXSW). Many schedule conflicts, but heres my wishlist (as of today):

The Alkoholiks, Allen Tousaint, Animal Collective, Andy Dick, Belle & Sebastian, Jay Bennett, Billy Bragg, Blackalicious, The Boy Least Likely To, Brazilian Girls, Bound Stems, Built To Spill, Jason Collett, Daedelus, Decoder Ring, Detachment Kit, Devin the Dude, Dungen, Eagles of Death Metal, Earlimart, Elefant, Elf Power, ESG, Field Music, Friends of Dean Martinez, David Garza, Ghostface, The Go Team, Gogol Bordello, Jean Grae, David Grisman, Anthony Hamilton, Hank Williams III, Helmet, Head Automatica, Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet, Holy Fuck, Hot Chip, Islands, The Jai Alai Savant, The Juan Maclean, Curt Kirkwood, k-os, Ladytron, Ted Leo/Pharmacists, The Long Winters, Magnolia Electric Co, Metric, Miguel Mendez, Mogwai, Morrissey, The M's, Of Montreal, Mum, The New Pornographers, Oranger, Robert Pollard, John Popper Project, The Pretenders, Rainer Maria, RJD2, The Rub, Rogue Wave, Soul Position, SpankRock, Spoon, Starlight Mints, Superchunk, Susan Tedeschi, Thunderbirds Are Now!, Twilight Singers, John Vanderslice, and Xiu Xiu.

Its going to be impossible to see it all, but this site will help.

Gordon Parks, 1912-2006

A busy couple of weeks at work means no blog posts. It also means some major news slips through the cracks, like the passing of Gordon Parks. Excerpts from the Associated Press article:

Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood's first major black director with "The Learning Tree" and the hit "Shaft," died Tuesday...He was 93.

"Nothing came easy," Parks wrote in his autobiography. "I was just born with a need to explore every tool shop of my mind, and with long searching and hard work. I became devoted to my restlessness."

He covered everything from fashion to politics to sports during his 20 years at Life, from 1948 to 1968. But as a photographer, he was perhaps best known for his gritty photo essays on the grinding effects of poverty in the United States and abroad and on the spirit of the civil rights movement. "Those special problems spawned by poverty and crime touched me more, and I dug into them with more enthusiasm," he said. "Working at them again revealed the superiority of the camera to explore the dilemmas they posed."

Parks went through a series of jobs as a teen and young man, including piano player and railroad dining car waiter. The breakthrough came when he was about 25, when he bought a used camera in a pawn shop for $7.50. He became a freelance fashion photographer, went on to Vogue magazine and then to Life in 1948. "Reflecting now, I realize that, even within the limits of my childhood vision, I was on a search for pride, meanwhile taking measurable glimpses of how certain blacks, who were fed up with racism, rebelled against it," he wrote.

"I dream terrible dreams, terribly violent dreams," he said. "The doctors say it's because I suppressed so much anger and hatred from my youth. I bottled it up and used it constructively." In his autobiography, he recalled that being Life's only black photographer put him in a peculiar position when he set out to cover the civil rights movement."Life magazine was eager to penetrate their ranks for stories, but the black movement thought of Life as just another white establishment out of tune with their cause," he wrote. He said his aim was to become "an objective reporter, but one with a subjective heart."

Life's managing editor, Bill Shapiro, said in a statement Tuesday that it had "lost one of its dearest members.""Gordon was one of the magazine's most accomplished shooters and one of the very greatest American photographers of the 20th century," the statement said. "He moved as easily among the glamorous figures of Hollywood and Paris as he did among the poor in Brazil and the powerful in Washington."