Happy Tardy New Year

So, many of you have wondered* where my annual Christmas bitch-fest was this year and truth be told it's because I didn't have enough venom stored up inside me to harsh your holiday buzzes (be they created with delicious eggnog or heathen manischewitz). Consider it a sea change in attitude for me coupled with the simple fact that I was pleased with my 2009 and didn't care to see it end, unlike the last three or four years where I have wanted to strangle everyone and everything.

A spot of good news and an auspicious event for the beginning for the new year:

New Year's Eve Day I had lost my Con Ed and National Grid bills somewhere in Park Slope. A few hours had passed between leaving the neighborhood and realizing they were missing and in my head I knew they were gone and lost forever, but I went back anyway to see if the could be found at any of the three stores I had gone into that morning.

My head was correct and they were lost and gone; probably on the bus, probably trashed, probably being used to break into my checking account (the argument in favor of paperless bill-pay begins here).

But a few days later, on January 2nd, a strange letter appeared in my mailbox with no return address, my name listed only as "Gin" in blue ball point pen. Inside was a lines piece of spiral bound paper with a grease stain on the margin.

"Hi Gin,

I found your con edison and National Grid bills on the bus(63) and I dropped it in the mail for you.

12/31/09
Happy New Year."

So there you go. Some good person not only put my bills in the mail for me, but wasted another 32-cents+ to tell me they had done so. If that isn't a sign of good things to come and the promise of a better future, then I don't know what is. Happy New Year indeed.

So in honor of you, stranger, who lives somewhere between Columbia St. and Ft. Hamilton in Brooklyn, NY, I have made a donation to the good people at This American Life. Why This American Life? It's free for everyone with a radio or mp3-ready device, generally non-partisan (but with a healthily progressive bent) and as far as I'm concerned, it's as capable of showing the power of the generosity of human spirit as your good deed did. Thank you for teaching us about life and love, again.

Happy New Year.

*None of you have wondered, and fuck all y'all.
+I don't know how much a stamp costs these days.

Oh Hello, I Didn't See You There

Who up in this bitch likes clothes and getting paid? If you raised your hand, you might like to know that Mercedes Benz Fashion Week is here again. Of course, we are all now starving and dying because while there is no depression in Heaven, there is one here on Earth. Bummer. It is well documented that many designers are trying to reconcile the luxe loucheness of pretty birds in sparkly dresses with imminent doom, and one of the ways they cope is with PRESENTATIONS, where said birds line up or lounge about and wear said dresses.

Witnesseth, Exhibit A:

We are so bored,



Exhibit B:

The designers get their moment with the chorus girls,



Exhibit C:

The shoes are kind of cruel when the girls have to stand in one spot for a half hour,



Exhibit D:

You achieve a new level of intimacy with the process when the models and stylists start talking to each other in plain view,



A presentation, though classical in structure and effect, is nowhere NEAR as much fun as a runway show as the pace is slower and static, and the crowd hewn and refined to close friends, staff, and Important Tastemakers (Editors). You could say that a presentation "intimate." You could also say there are "fewer freaks." Tomayto, tomahto.

I've also noticed that the people working the shows, the support staff, the hair and makeup boys and girls, security and the media are all just happy to be here and employed. Count me among them.

While some designers opt for smaller presentations, others still use the fanciest trade-show venue in the World, The Tents. ON WITH THE SHOW.

Behold, a tiny space for all your hair and makeup needs,



A double-wide prepping area sub-divided to fit two designers' crews in at the same time (economies of time, space),





There are fewer cameras on the runway during pre-game this season, but they all end up in the same place (this has not and will not change ever),



The usual suspects are still in the front row,



I'm pretty sure the staff photographer for Nicole Miller pre-rigged the venue with strobes. I can't recall having seen that before, even though I'm sure it has happened at least once. In any instance he lit that space up like a motherfucking roman candle.



People still applaud the effort and time.



That wasn't so hard, was it?

Yes, I'm Ready For Some Football

This is the Patricia Field HSN Line launch show. I think all those words, when used in that combination, are vivid enough to clue the reader in to the content of the show. This particular show has all the hassles of Marc Jacobs on a micro level; the delays, the overstuffed venue, makeshift backstage, belligerent weather and none of the payoff -- certainly not in blown-mind count or in sheer what-the-fuck-ness. Of course, the modern New York fashion show is a grand act of artistic shibai anyway, so any value found in the show itself is the result of missing the point entirely.



The Edison Hotel Ballroom is a dismal place near Times Square. I imagine the good people in charge spent a great deal of time trying to get the old people smell out.



HSN's presence meant that there were pockets of pre-lit action where I could just post up and wait for the river of human oddities float on by. I found their setup to be a little clumsy -- from a civilian standpoint, anyway. I support and respect their scorched earth/brute force style of lighting.



The process of prodding and primping fantastically beautiful people and the organization of individual stations is similar to working in a high-level restaurant. This particular backstage was oppressively hot and the misting air conditioner wasn't helping matters in the slightest.



Any show with a name designer is SRO. This is a given. The expanded coverage for HSN and the manpower needed to cover the show the way they did (multiple hand-helds, multiple talent crews, at least two end-of-runway positions, a jib and two Steadicams) meant that most optimal viewing positions have been a) thought of and b) taken. Sometimes it's best to just give up.

You Soon Realize You're Not Sufficiently Advanced For Your Situation

Uptown parties have girls in costumes and red carpets.



Downtown parties have girls without costumes and performance pieces.



Uptown parties have well dressed people and well-lit situations (so you can see how well dressed they are).



Downtown parties are in the dark so that you can act too cool to care that a TV crew is right next to you while in fact you're REALLY trying to evesdrop on Stephanie Seymour from the shadows.



Uptown parties feature people who will snicker behind your back or make cutting remarks to you face in the spirit of glib oneupmanship.



Downtown parties feature people who will threaten you with their sexuality.

Basically the whole week is an excuse to bust out antiquated (70's-era) notions of uptown/downtown new york scenes; as an old acquaintance of mine once said (foolishly on many, MANY levels), there's 'nothing good above 14th street.' The truth of the matter is that any given person will go to any given event so long as there is enough liquor/tiny burgers to last through the evening and/or enough photographers to take their picture. Everyone loves to dress up! Everyone loves to see naked people dancing (or doing anything, for that matter)! Fashion Week is a biannual bacchanal celebrating the cavalcade of human oddities that you marginalize every day -- like the notion of your own mortality -- in order to make yourself function. No one can live like this all the time. It would be too fantastic.

The Truth About Chinese New Year

In China it is custom to celebrate the Lunar New Year to unleash a bevy of demons and hoojibs upon mankind in an effort to clear the human species of the old and infirm thus ensuring peace and prosperity in the coming months. In a curious coincidence, the recent motion picture "Cloverleaf" violently and clearly dramatized this annual feeding, whose drama and chaos has bloodied the fields of the Old Country for thousands of years.

The annal blood orgy begins much in the way the Spaniards begin the running of the bulls -- the elderly (below) are herded into narrow passageways and alleyways.



The savage beasts involved in this cruel display include Lions (below) and Dragons. This young lion is held in place by his cruel master. It is custom to starve these specters for months before hand. In tradition, this cruel treatment is meant to build resentment and a taste for human flesh. Recall that the origin of the ritual was to thin the proverbial herd -- a necessary task when crops are small and the mouths many.





When the signal is given the creatures, crazy with hunger, are released into the crowd. The dragon, above, has burst from his chains and has set down into a crowd of elders. Soon the streets will run as red as their traditional crimson toques.



Lions hunt alone or in pairs. There is little evidence that the creatures have a predilection towards teamwork, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Scientists have observed that they have a keen sense of smell but poor eyesight, even in the blinding mid-February sun. The two lions (above) have taken a classic "Two In A Room" formation.

Oh no! An elder Fung Wah Lion (below) has caught my scent! Only by standing perfectly still will I be able to survive. Like a shark, a Fung Wah Lion will beat at a prospective target with his wild maw -- the slightest reaction by the target means the target becomes a meal.





Some brave men hide beneath the mantle of a dragon in order to escape its wrath. It is well know that Dragons require tiny parasites to clean themselves as they are unable to bend backwards.



Each year, a Snack King (above) is chosen to be the final morsel offered to the hungry beasts. It is said that if the creatures are too full, spent on the fat and sinew of their prey, to eat the Snack King, a great disaster will befall the community. This years' Snack King awaits his fate.



The two dragons shown above are enough to sweep a street full of one hundred people clean in minutes -- dragons are notoriously neat eaters, and their excrement smells of fresh plum tomatoes.

It is tradition for men of marrying age to take to the streets to kill and behead a lion in order to impress a mate. Custom calls for a boy -- now a man -- to parade with the bloody carcass of the creature held over his head until his arms burn with acid. Only then will he be suitable for a bride.





(Above) A young dragon escapes. He is lured with a Snitch tethered to a golden staff. If left to his own devices, the dragon would lay waste to the pack of Boy Scouts fleeing from his howls. Fun fact -- J.K. Rowling borrowed the idea of the Snitch for her popular "Harry Potter" stories!



This boy longs for the day that he too will be able to take a chance and snatch himself a lion's head for his prospective bride.



It seems our friend has tired! Will his display of daring and strength mean he will be able to find a suitable mate? Only time will tell.



At the end of the day, dragons and surviving lions are led through the streets to their enchanted chambers. The creatures become docile as the warm goo of human entrails slosh about in their gullets. A dragon has three stomachs -- one for soft tissues, one for fluids and one for bones and other hard matter. The lions have one stomach but their metabolism processes nutrients faster, thereby allowing them to feed constantly. They will be kept in darkness until the next new year when a cruel but necessary rite of passage -- the culling of the old and the triumph of the young -- is conducted in cities and towns throughout the world.

They Covered Can't Hardly Wait. The Suicide Lyrics Version.

So yeah, The Mighty Handful. Great name. They are actually a sextet, and I like to think it's all part of the joke. I know them through Dan and more specifically Dan's kid, who's the drummer. My deep thoughts about this event are still gestating. in the meantime, I will offer you the rich, reduced broth of the experience.

"We're gonna play a song... ...the last time we played it someone's -- and I won't say whose -- someone's parents got upset."

(From the back of the house) "Were they yours?"

"No, they weren't mine. This song is called 'Uptown Drunks'."

(cheers)

The song is on their Facebook and Myspace pages. It has a medium tempo and a singable chorus. It's about teenagers "experimenting with each other," if you know what I mean. Just sing about sex. Of course. Cut to the chase. If you're going to make parents upset go right for the jugular. If you're trying to woo Sally from homeroom go straight for her skirt.

I Call Bullshit

I call bullshit here,

And here,

(Above, dated August 2, 2007)

And I claim by 5 dollars.

(Above, dated May 1, 2007)

Anita

If Matt and I go all the way back to the first day of school, the Anita and I go back to the first day of school + 5 minutes. She lived around the corner on the girls' side of The Can with Serena back when there were gender-specific sides of The Can. In truth, I haven't seen her in about a year (give or take. It's been so long neither of us can remember) and I sort of felt bad calling her out just to shove my camera in her face in exchange for coffee beverages.

She does graphic design by training, but has become a little transient in terms of employment and vaguely dissatisfied like the rest of us. She just always seems a little more Zen about it. As for whether that's a fair assessment or not... ...you'd have to ask her.

I'd have to hunt for the negative (or a print) but I have a picture of her that might be the first "good" picture I ever took. We yacked back and forth about what number this was in terms of sitting for a photo; we decided this was the third (after I convinced her) -- the one freshman year, the one senior year and the one today.

Original Artyfacts

Remnants from Coney Island

The Cyclone, Coney Island 5/27/07

 
Snakes, Coney Island 5/27/07

 
Grandma's Prophecies (Arcade Favor), Coney Island 5/27/07


(Let the record show that grandma only communicates in cyphers and Plain English.)
 
Richard and Ally (Photo Booth), Coney Island 5/27/07


(Ally lives on Flickr here.)

[Deleted at subjects' request, 9/18/08]

[Deleted at subjects' request, 9/18/08]

16 Tons

Dear Blog,

Now that Mr. Hollister has moved out (God bless him), I have the whole apartment to myself, which is a very pleasant and exciting development. The problem lies with the schedule of home repairs, which I hold myself to strictly in an attempt to advance my personal hygiene and keep myself from getting lazy. After twelve-hour days at work, painting and cleaning are not high on my list of things to do,

List of things to do, in order:

1) Eat
2) See What The Social Scene Is For The Evening
3) Drink
4) Sleep
5) Paint
6) Clean

In a minor coup, I have sucessfully painted his old room and installed a six-foot stainless steel kitchen prep-counter similar to this one as a desk (I hacked the legs down about eight-inches to make it proper desk height) and have nearly finished painting my old room.

The sense of accomplishment is palpable even though I've learned the hard way (is there any other way) that like fucking, painting is best done with another individual, and if possible three or four. Now, the problem with home repairs of this scale is the desire to live like a real boy duking it out with the desire to not improve the equity of the landlords, especially when you consider my ongoing series, The Crazy Lady Upstairs and The Case Of The Flooding Bathroom. Please recall The Crazy Lady Upstairs believes I put a curse on her and feels this gives her cause to fight back by running the water at all hours and occcasionally causing my bathroom and entryway to flood.

I feel confident that the little men coming to re-route the pipes tomorrow (Monday) will finally solve this caper and foil her dastardly plot to remove the curse. She should try live chicken sacrifices.

Thanks for listening to my whining, Blog. I really need someone to vent to now that all my friends are sick of listening to my trials and long, boring stories of work, work problems and relationship issues.

Sincerely,

Richard Gin (dot org)

Happy May

I was working for the last three days for a British company putting together a show about 7 World Trade Center for a series on remarkable buildings. 7 WTC was chosen for its new safety features designed to survive the salad days of terror, and the people in charge of the building couldn't have been nicer or more accommodating -- we could literally run around where we pleased and spent a good deal of time on the roof and scampering about the maintenance decks and tunnels shooting whatever the hell we wanted. Usually the crew is invited into a building to shoot only to spend 60% of our time negotiating access to the freights or reminding the new security shift who we are.

Nick and I (along with Anthony) were the American support crew -- he was AC and I was audio (Anthony was our driver) -- and if you've ever wondered what it feels like to work in television, look at Nick.

Lesser Koodoo and Mountain Nyala

Lesser Koodoo


Mountain Nyala


This is an experiment in webtraffic (made up of bad science). Thank you for visiting. The Nyala is hosted on the Daddy Site and the Koodoo is hosted on Flickr
.

Zzzzzzzz...

I'm dozing and clock-watching as I hold fast to my promise of only adding another polaroid after the previous polaroid posting reaches 50 views (the sad bird is currently at 40 [as of 4/3/07]). I have one all lined up that will hopefully be a handy illustration of My Day With The IRS (working title), which might not have been as bad as I had forseen (knock wood).

That's a lot of parentheticals.

Where We're From, The Birds Sing A Pretty Song

Subtitled: Emo Bird Is Emo



Today, sharing images with you brings me no joy, and I think my dead-bird friend here kind of says it all.

I'm getting audited and as much as I'd like to play it off as another life experience, it's a very lonely feeling right now, especially since they're asking for info from 2005 which I don't really have in any sort of complete form, and there's a big chunk of change that they're curious about that I have no documentation on AT ALL. I certainly won't have it by Monday (which is Opening Day, the first day of Spring). The numbers that we're talking about in terms of money are sort of nebulous to me and I have no cotton-pickin' idea why they'd want to audit me to begin with, short of 2005 being the first year I actually rose above the poverty line.

I've been asked by my friends, who are fearful of the same thing happening to them, to take good notes ... So in short terms, let this be a lesson to you, kiddies: keep EVERYTHING. One of my head-slapping moments was realizing that I had shredded 2005's phone bills literally 12 hours before the audit summons arrived in the mail. That said, they say to keep this sort of shit for 7 years. There isn't that much space in my universe.

Unhappiness Is An Invented Thing

Dominique



Dear Dom,

So sorry. You've become one of my favorite people to photograph. I should have warned you that this might happen.

--RG

Marc Jacobs and Stasis

Got backstage at the Marc Jacobs show yet again and I'm in a bit of a rut. The picture above... well, I've taken it before, and it seems like the whole event was compressed anyway (and not in a good way; i.e. 'starting on time'), so I fell back on safety shots that I knew would work.

I guess these things happen, and it looks like this season will be a wash for me; officially I'm only on for two more days and I haven't even made it into the Tents yet, and if I DO go, I'll have to go on my own.

On the plus side, the crew and I snuck up into the balcony of the Armory, which might have been the best place to see this particular show, what with the living tableau,



Irrespective of nothing: CINDY SHERMAN WAS AT THE SHOW AND SHE LOOKED AT ME.

Fashion Week Arrives; RG Barely Cares

Fashion Week (Fall, '07) is here and this might be the first time in a long while that I don't particularly care whether I participate or not. My once week-long shifts have been dropped down to 4 or 5 days (depending) and the access I used to get has been reduced to 'whenever the talent decided to go to the tents... then you too will go. No, you don't need a press pass.' So as someone who has a history of exploiting access for his own gain, this is a sad development indeed (cf. the 'People' section of the main webpage with the Betsy Johnson stuff).

I was at the Lisa Perry launch party last night (see above). There were tiny hamburgers and tiny french-fried potatoes and tiny lobster rolls. We didn't get into the Gotham Mag party because the 5-0 shut it down for some reason. Apparently Oksana Baiul got in eventually. So... not much to speak of yet, especially in terms of pre-game parties, as it were.

This is not starting well.