A: Jimmy Carl Black, The Indian of the Group

So I am by no means a big fan of Steely Dan -- pleasant music, inoffensive, doesn't do much for me, but doesn't bother me either -- but I've enjoyed their extra-musical sardonic smartassery for a few years now. As when they were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and used their "acceptance speech" time to throw out some "important questions" to the audience to be answered.

(#1: "Who was the first drummer with The Mothers of Invention?")

Somehow though, their deadpan humor just seems to confuse people, as with a current document up on their website:



Open Letter to the Great Comic Actor Luke Wilson

Which is being taken as a serious (even legal) demand in some internet quarters, or at least as an example of the "unhinged-ness" of Becker and Fagen.

Is it that subtle, for god's sake?

The Image as Virus

A lot of the webjournals I've been enjoying are primarily image based. Some of them are compilations of interesting images the journal keeper finds online or elsewhere, some of them are showcases for the blogger's own art photography.

I've begun to become interested in photography myself again as a result. For a couple of years, ages 16-19 or so, I took my photographic work very seriously, but as I lived in NYC longer and longer, I found my artistic urges moving entirely towards film and theatre, leaving behind photography, poetry, and prose. Whenever I spend time anywhere outside the city (especially New England, for some reason), the old urges return, but I don't have the equipment for good photography, and my craft skills in that area are a bit rusty from disuse (prose and poetry tend to return to me quicker). And I'm not quite comfortable with digital cameras yet; my mind is still stuck in a world of 35mm Kodachrome and 125 ASA Ilford black-and-white (I think in terms of light captured in chemicals, not pixels). So I've tended to deliberately avoid still photography except for publicity shots for my plays, and "snapshots" with absolutely no "art" aspirations attached to them.

But these photo-journals have inspired me to start playing with still image again. Just have to get used to my digital, spend some time getting more comfortable with it. I pulled out some of my old prints tonight to digitize and share. Unfortunately, I gave away all of my best prints years ago to friends and family, so my collection of "good" prints is very small. Then I discovered that my little scanner/printer is rather crappy for good quality transfer of photo prints to computer.

I transferred a few over anyway, tried to fix the bad scans as much as I could in Photoshop, and here are three of my favorite old shots for you (albeit, again, not printed from the best materials):


A L'Heure #1 (Uma)

October, 1985

A L'Heure #2 (Jennifer)

April, 1986

A L'Heure #3 (Karen)

October, 1986

Yes, I like photos with people in them, and the illusion of being a frozen moment out of something much larger. And, yes, women.

I think I'll ask my female friends/actresses about posing for a series. Actresses Against City or something . . .