everyone's lost but me...

The unfortunate little beast upstairs howls almost constantly now. Blind, deaf and thanks to its incontinence, now has to be housed in an infant’s playpen. It’s stubborn owner selfishly refuses to have put it out of it’s misery, choosing instead to live with it’s cries, like some sick canine version of Johnny Got His Gun . This situation brings to mind something a much too honest friend of mine told me after the dissolution of a recent relationship, “You’ve never been able to finish anything and you can’t ever accept when something’s not working. That’s a bad combination.” (much like being impatient and slow moving....). She was right. The whole relationship had turned into a really bad scene. He was my friend. She was my lover. I overestimated his friendship, and underestimated hers. They ended up together. His betrayal hurt more. My much too honest friend saw it coming. All of my friends did, actually. The prickly emotional minefield that Memory Lane has become seems like some masoch...

If you think about the most iconic portrait, which one comes to mind? Is it Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl? , or maybe one of the many amazing images by Annie Leibovitz , Walker Evans, , Robert Mapplethorp , William Allard , Helmut Newton , or Richard Avedon? Portraits are the most difficult of the photographic pursuits. The skill of the portraitist is to capture a revealing moment that peers into the soul of it’s subject… it reveals the unseen, it moves us. "Photographers are like hunters who possess the killing instinct, but not the desire to kill." --Peter Coyote, "Exposure" Stuffed animal heads on the wall, or portraits, same thing, both trophies of the hunt. Some tribes believe that photographs contain the soul of their subject. That puts a heavy burden on the photographer. Do we have a responsibility for the images we take? Do hunters have the same kind of burden of conscience over their "body count”? Some of my portraits have begun to haunt ...

I arrived at the airport early to relax a little before my noon fight to West Palm Beach (connecting through Charlotte), for the Candidate’s speech that evening. (I would also be traveling to Miami early the next day for another shoot with the campaign photographer). I treated myself to a breakfast of a Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger (truly the best burgers anywhere). It was really divine and I thought it a great way to start my day… At 10:40am my flight was cancelled. No reason was given. I called my travel guru, who takes care of such things at the office, and she began desperately working on the problem of getting me on another flight to West Palm. The barely audible announcement said to go to the “U S Airways Special Services” desk for “Re-accommodation”. What I had no way of knowing was that the term “Special” wasn’t so much a designation as it was a description. (Special, as in short-bus/crash-helmet special.) I waited in line with 75 other people to be “re-accommodated” at the sp...

President’s Day. This is the day where we honor the Commanders in Chief of our nation, both past and present. We honor their leadership and their sacrifice. We honor them as only capitalists can: With mattress sales. Some crazy fat guy in a powdered wig and a frock coat, green-screened into a shot of a crowded store, beckons us with the promise of massive liquidation savings. “I cannot tell a lie, these are the best prices of the year on Sealy Posturepedic and Sterns and Foster.” It’s nice to have a day off, but what do we do to celebrate? Some would say should we do exactly what our president would want us to do. The same thing he told us to do after the crisis in September of 2001. Spend Money. Contribute to our debts - I mean contribute to the growth of the economy. I went to Whole Foods and bought some criminally priced steaks, what did YOU do?

gratuity |grəˈt(y)oōitē| noun ( pl. -ties) money given in return for some service or favor, in particular, a formal a tip given to a waiter, taxicab driver, etc. ORIGIN late 15th cent.(denoting graciousness or favor): from Old French gratuité or medieval Latin gratuitas ‘gift,’ from Latin gratus ‘pleasing, thankful.’ I’ve previously railed against poor tipping at the coffee chain, now I want to look at it from the other side. I want to tip. I like tipping. It takes so little to impress me toward gratuity. A basic understanding of a job, the smallest effort, it doesn’t take much. But, I don’t tip if it’s not deserved. This isn’t a Mister Pink “I’ve been here a long fuckin’ time and she only filled my coffee once…” thing. Bottom Line: Give me SOMETHING. Smile. Introduce yourself. Call me by my name. Fake it. But give me some small reason to want to tip you. It’s not a right, and in most cases, it’s not mandatory. At the airport curbside check in, the Thrower dutifully helps me to chec...