Tavi (who came!) also took a BRILLIANT. LIKE, BRILLIANT. picture of my mom but because she [mom] described it as the, quote, “WORST THING EVER!!!!! I look like an ancient witch pulled unwillingly out from behind a rock, shamed and naked except for my rings,” something tells me she wouldn’t want it posted. (It’s okay, mom, that’s what you look like anyway OH ZING SNAP.)

I wanted to steal these lights from the dressing room but that would probably be rude/illegal.

p.s. There’s another show tonight! I think there are still tickets left (like I said, everyone hates my dad). Here.

Sammy and I did pretty much the same stuff today. Just hung around the house and watched Freaks & Geeks and ate food. Exhibit Z (for “cute zombie”):

I assure you Sammy is not this serious and zombie-like in real-life. Somebody actually sent me a formspring asking if he was a sad kid or something – ’tis not the case! p.s. the taking of this picture was traded for transportation to his friend’s house.

As you can see, I’ve been cropping all of my pictures the past two days to be square and maybe look like, oh, a medium format photo. Ever since I re-started perusing señor Ouellette’s archives… Let me put it this way: I spent probably close to an hour on eBay looking at vintage Hasselblads today (I know he uses one from an interview I read – 500C/M). I do love 35mm (and 4/3rds, as I am forced to) but the magic~ of a 120mm film hadn’t really occurred to me until yesterday. Now all I can think about is square pictures.

Anyway, NOT TA BE GEEKIN’ AROUND ON ALL Y’ALL. I went to Michigan last weekend and took pictures of a fireplace.

Here’s to a more productive tomorrow! Or not. Chilling is okay, too. I think I’ll just chill.

A water main or something broke in our school’s building, so no escuela por mi (is that right? Beatriz? español correcto? I got an A- last trimester)! Sammy and I stayed home playing video games and being frustrated over blog themes and eating Lou Malnati’s pizza and bartering photos for transportation. Exhibit L (for “most latterly mentioned action”).

Also today I made a petite post regarding how much Justin Ouellette inspires me. If y’ain’t familiar, he is the founder of Muxtape, makes amazing design things, and arguably even more amazing photographs. Every interview with him / article written by him has at least one nugget of incredible profoundness, usually regarding music or analog photography.

So in a bout of inspiredness, from Ouellette’s work and the beautiful sunniness that was today, I took these pictures. Unfortunately, they aren’t film. I wish they were. Honestly, if a lab opened up in Chicago that wasn’t all the way downtown (besides Walgreen’s, that actually develops all kinds of film), I would make so much more film-y-ilm-y-ilm-ies. Here are these, for now:

(above from chromogenic.net. I wish they were mine.)

Jew-friend Eli. We’re so cool, hangin’ out on stairwells (REALLY EDG•E™).

POLE.

Eli again.

In case you haven’t noticed (which is nothing but probable) I love pictures with hands/fingers in them.

My window sill. Also: leftovers of science fair experiment?

Makes me feel like Yellow House by Grizzly Bear.

Where I am now! Desk!

Thanks for looking, guys. I would say less pictures + more writing later, but that’s probably not going to be true (starting a new project involving photography soon) and that’s not even necessary. I don’t know why exactly I always feel like posting one or two paragraphs and a whole bunch of pictures is some sort of cop-out. It ain’t! Or maybe it ain’t ain’t! You people seem to enjoy it, regardless of my Jew-like over-sensitive paranoid behavior.

*smiley smiley* danke.

On Friday I went to the old Chicago stockyards* with my class and brought along an expired disposable camera (found in my closet). The ‘expiredness’, let’s say, isn’t really apparent in the photos, but it was still fun to cohort through gross muddy snow and greasy railcars without having to worry about a nice machine (film or digital SLR). Unfortunately, in addition to the expiredness not being apparent, there weren’t any light-leaks/etc. like those from my canoe trip in October, either. I’m still happy with how they turned out (and that I didn’t have to wait a squillion years to develop them).

As far as an industrial district goes, some of it was pretty beautiful.

abandoned firehouse.

nick.

* half of the class read The Jungle awhile ago, so it was supposed to be a chance for them to see that actual setting of the book and stuff (even though most of it’s gone). My group read Our America and was supposed to visit the old Ida B. Wells neighborhood, but there kind of isn’t anything there anymore, and it would be rude to just come into somebody’s neighborhood and act like it’s a crazy part of history, y’know? So we all went to Back of the Yards.

Heya Spencer! What is your preferred method of listening to music is you cannot see a live show? iPod, records, cd’s, something really cool I don’t even know about?

Well, these are all “the same” in that you’re not experiencing live music. Records are really nice to listen to, but I listen to most of my music on iTunes (imported from CDs).

more on Cutty — is he the kitty on the cover of Mermaid Ave 2? is he more of your dad’s cat? or your mom’s?

My mom found Cutty in an alley almost twenty years ago, along with our other two (unfortunately deceased) cats Flukey and Jackson. Cutty is not the Mermaid Avenue kitty.

Are you coming to New Zealand again when Wilco tour in February?

I wish! New Zealand is awesome and beautiful and home to generally the nicest people on Earth. I was thinking about maybe posting a revival of my pictures from ‘08 while Wilco’s visiting, though.

do you have any camera secrets because your lighting always looks perfect!

Surprisingly.. sorta! One thing eeeveryone should do with their camera (dSLR) is shoot mainly in “P” (Program) mode – or the other advanced modes like Tv and Av or M, but I won’t get into those – and make it so the autofocus point is set to the middle one. Depending on your camera this could be done in a few ways so you should google “af point selection” or something of the like. FURTHERMORE and not geek-out totally, but when I’m “shooting” in semi-low-light environments my 50mm 1.4 lens is perfect (thank you Christoph), because I can get a wide aperture (let more light in), put the shutter speed at 1/60, and crank the ISO up (which can be really nice with black and white because it produces grain). Look into the Tv mode and just learn everything about your camera all-round!

This isn’t fully elaborated just ’cause I don’t want to take up the whole formspring. Email me?

i am guessing you hate questions like these, and I can respect that, but I am also going to ask anyways. Do you have a favorite Beatles album? If so which one and why?

Revolver’s probably my favorite right now. I love it recording-wise and song-wise.

what do you think of the right to bear arms, anti pro, idk?

I’m not totally “informed” about these things but, in general, I tend to lean toward a liberal viewpoint. I think there should be strict laws on small weapons, for sure, though.

how oh how can i solve my massive problem of wanting to read SO many books?!!! ahhh! so read any good books lately?

I just finished reading Our America, a documentary-ish nonfiction about kids in the Chicago ghetto and what life was like for them back in the 90s. An author of the book is actually coming to speak at my school soon.

i cant ever write a paper without music!

I always do work best at my own desk with music playing.

Even Salman Rushdie couldn’t create fictional rock musicians who weren’t card-board stereotypes. Why do you think that is? Have any books or movies gotten the “rock musician” species right?

Cate Blanchett just popped into my head.. with a jew-fro. Mysterious.

If you’ve never read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” have you ever listened to Neutral Milk Hotel? “In the Aeroplane over the sea?”

Yep. I’ve gotten a few formsprings asking about that album. The answer is yes!

If you were in Star Wars, would you side with the Empire or the Rebel Alliance?

Rebelstodamax.

Did you know that Social Anxiety is the least understood anxiety disorder? Never hate on the shy kids-you never know what they could be going through!Share this link to spread the awareness?http://www.socialphobia.org/social.html#top Thanks!

I think I saw that it was a disorder in Time’s special about the brain once. In any case (and not to make fun of a disorder) my friends and I probably all suffer from it. Just with.. awkwardness in place of shyness. Nobody should ever hate because someone’s shy!

Hillshire! (now what do you say?)

What?!

What’s Neil Young like?

Neil Young is an awesome, wise old man. I feel crazily lucky to have met him (more than once) and his wife Sharon. One time we were at the Bridge School benefit and he mistook my mom for her.  Update: Pegi! Not Sharon! Neil Finn’s wife is named Sharon.

Do you play any instruments besides drums? Does Sammy?

I also plays guitar and all those concert band percussion instruments (TRIANGLE ANYBODY?). Sammy play guitar, and some drums.

I’m waiting to get a roll (er, three rolls) of film developed. I have to go downtown because Walgreens is stupid and “adapted to the modern world” and only does one specific NICHE of films. Until then, Fuji “Polaroid” Instax from last weekend. Pretty junk-e (boring), mostly..

Title: reference to something the principal said in his speech; also mentioned several times throughout post.

* I think that actually means an ancient cave-drawing or something, but in this case it is the combination of picture and photograph.

1 from neighbor’s birthday party in January 2 a quarter of my Moleskine collection 3 tube amp lamp 4 our delicious curtains.

Momma Tweedy filmed this on her cellular telephone. It is, undoubtedly, the most genius work of cinematography ever.

After that (☝) faux-fatal clonk to da head we sat for two hours on the floor discussing certain people and certain home-wreckers, and Tavi’s sculpey Characters o’ the Decades (whom we later threw a birthday party for). Then, for olde time’s sake, we went to the record store, where I rediscovered my passion for looking at unfortunate 80s album covers (and the occasional awesomely beautiful one, but mostly just dudes with mullets and disturbing half-fetal skeletons).

Eeegghheehhrererghhg.

“CATS CAN FLY.”

…said the children.

You are acting “very strange”, Mike Rutherford.

Reminds me SO MUCH of Tobias.

An obvious one, but.. an obvious one.

A little while later we went to her friend’s house to steal puppy chow ingredients, and then a grocery store for the other ingredients. Some fifteen minutes later I received a formspring via “tellular email client”:

“Guess what! I saw you and Tavi at Jewel today. I almost had a heart attack. It was embarrassing. I awkwardly followed you guys a little and I was going to say hi, but I’m 17 and I felt really creepy. Anyway, just so you know, you’re definitely a celebrity. (And Tavi looked adorable). Oh, question, right – can we be friends? And what did you buy?”

WHAT THE CRUNK?!  How did this happen? You should have said hi! Or not, that’s fine. (Yes, you’re invited to that sushi party from before.) We bought powdered sugar and semi-sweet choco-chips. Gushers/Fruit Rollups were almost put in there, but after further consideration it was deemed a risk to Parent Reimbursement Act credibility.

…crazy. Besides that we just watched Ghost World. Unlike Tavi, I had not seen it 12 times so it’s still not being completely understood by me (whooo randomly passive sentence structures). This is also when she hijacked my phone/twitter and opened a rift in the Bieber Satan Continuum.

“~FUNKEY~”