I know that my blog has never revved up that high—20,000 rpm. Instead, it’s been idling, or should I say, it’s been stalled.
Anyway, 20,000 rpm is, I think, definitely a goal for many engineers to develop high performance engines which rev faster than “20,000 rpm” for motorcycles, cars…etc.
Once, back in 1960s, when Mr. Honda and his hardest working boys made up their mind that high rpm & max horse power would be superior to fat & thick torque when it comes to racing. In real life driving, we just stop at traffic lights and start again, then stop again, start again……… This is just like on a race track, well, not on an oval track tho, the engine runs wide open throttle, in most cases, less than 30% of the entire length of the race track.
So why am I wiring this? In my opinion, our life is, I say about 70 years, long and winding plus up and down. And I stupidly assume that our body is just like an engine, we can hit gas to the floor less than 30% of our life, which is about 20 years in 70 years of life expectancy… and when we exceed the 30% time limit, again, just like an engine, we get sick, in worst case, we die.
Few weeks ago, an exterminator came to my apartment. He didn’t look like one at all, he wasn’t even wearing an uniform, he got loose pants and some bad taste print shirt. He sprayed pesticide around the kitchen, and he had very bad aim doing that. He asked me if I have seen any mice. I said yes, and I hear something running around in the ceiling once in a while. So he set mice trap. Now few weeks later, the traps has only caught ME, once when I was drunk, stepping on a glue sheet, made me almost tip over and hit my head to the kitchen counter, then, once I am sober, I stepped on it again. So what I am the mouse in my apartment? I didn’t like his shirt at the first place…
Beauty Bar, 4 x 5 Tri-X, zone system, 30 minutes long exposure in a rain!!!
I shot this photo in 1998? I can’t remember. Back then, the bar still had its’ original sign as a beauty salon, and lots of hair products here there and everywhere all around the bar. The owner lady used to drop by on her vintage bicycle. Patrons were “21 and over” in a true meaning, yes, some young kids, some hard core East Village people, some very seasoned drinkers, in all races. I used to live few doors away from the bar, so that it was very convenient to get wasted and stumbled to home. Yes, I did that so many times.
It is still nice place to hang out, however, the crowd is no longer as diverse as it used to be. I would drop by once in a while, to be the strange old guy at the bar, once I was pretty excited to talked to.
I woke up around noon. ( JFYI, yay, Monday is my day off.) I had this regret from last weekend that I could not make it to the movie I’ve wanted to watch on a big screen for a long time, to be exact, more than ten years!!! “Pierrot le fou” by Jean-Luc Godard, 1965.Well, well, well, I did miss the film last year when it was in a theater somewhere in Brooklyn. I have a DVD and have watched it over and over and over. But, I want to see it on a big screen!!! Anyway, I made coffee, sipping, reading horoscopes through information super highway, is this word dead now?
And I thought about my ex-girlfriend. To be honest, we broke up last October, but, I’ve been having hard time letting her go. She is the first woman who made me feel that I want to get married. Tears for tears, broken heart…blah blah blah…yes, I spent my teen in 1980s… I wanted to take her to the theater last year, but I think we were having arguments and decided to stay home, hmmm, another regret. So, I thought, no more regret, I love her so much, I must let her go for her good and for my good.
I checked the web page of the theater where the movie was being played. This month, they are showing Godard’s films from 1960s. A Woman Is A Woman, 6:15, 8:00, 9:45. While I was crying over the spilt milk, it was already around 7:00pm. Then suddenly, I felt like doing laundry. It was 7:30pm when I put my dirties into a washing machine, the machine was telling me 35min left. “Oh, I can finish by 9:00 pm then rush to the theater!!!” It all went smooth, of course, I was just doing laundry. Then I made it to the theater just on time.
The movie started with a trailer of the movie which we were going to watch, I love trailers of Godard’s movie. The movie is about the relationships between a woman who wants to have a baby and a man who doesn’t want a baby, then another man. This film doesn’t have crazy editing as in his later film, Breathless,(original entry was wrong, Breathless was shot in 1959, A Woman is A Woman, 1961) but sound-wise, it was fresh to me. The lines between a man & a woman reminded me of my relationship. When someone was laughing at dialogs, I was about to cry. In the middle of the film, I almost thought it was a bad idea to watch this by myself, recalling my relationship, good times and bad times. But, it also made me sure that my relationship with the ex was as good as the film. A simple apartment, a small bed, arguments, their jobs…the film made me feel blue, but it did encourage me to letting go of my relationship. I just wished my ending was as happy as the film.
My good friend and Co-worker, Arty’s main project. And he is the legend of HC, if you ask someone from long island who is into hard core scene, he is da man. Well, to be honest, I don’t enjoy listening this kind of music sitting around on a couch, HOWEVER, when you see them on stage, it is totally a different story!!! They will blow up your brain, and destroy your ear drum. Most of all, the energy from the band scramble together with sweaty audience, it is a radioactive reaction. There will be no plants grow for next 70 years so they said…
I love taking pictures of people those who have their own clear idea of how they want to look in photographs. I take this shooting experience as dancing with folks I am taking picture of. I am not a photographer, to be honest, I would rather consider myself as a collaborator using my method, photography, making their dreams come true in a photograph. Without their will, my photo doesn’t look good at all, I won’t be happy and they will never be happy, never. I think this photo is a pretty good example of the dancing process. FYI, I did not dance with them, but I did feel like dancing with them when I looked at them in my view finder, and I am the only one on earth who saw them through the view finder of my old school Nikon.
Thanks for the school. They taught me and taught me how to talk about (bull shit about) my art work. Now you just saw how big my mouth became, didn’t ya? Yes, I’m a little man with a big mouth, that’s all.
I met her when this world was still peaceful. I mean before Sep.11th, 2001, in NYC. After she flew back I sent her this photo and a poem by Richard Brautigan. When a friend of mine saw the photo with the poem, she told me, “Oh, it’s so sad.” And I was, “What? I thought it’s a beautiful poem!” Well, I guess I don’t understand English poem 100%. OK, here’s the poem.
It was my “homework assignment” for project mayhem, oops, First rule of fight club, you do not talk about it! Second rule of fight club, YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT!!!
Well, it was one of homework assignment to get in to an art school in NYC. I showed this art work to the interviewer, only response I thought I got from him was that he seemed very amazed how those pieces were cut-out and glued together nicely…he even did try to feel/peel the edges of the cut-out pieces with his pinky finger nails. I said, please don’t even try. It took me crazy amount of time of meditation to finish this art work.
Well, well, well, Ooooh, well(John Lennon song), what I wanted to express but I couldn’t is my idea behind this work. I still clearly remember when I first saw Manhattan skyline in a cab. I just got off from an airplane at La Gardia in early morning, summer of 1996. It was my first visit to NYC!!! The skyline was not clear, it was smoggy. It was not beautiful at all, but something unexplainable made me so excited, it was a giant space ship landed on earth. AndWTC was her main bridge, control towers. So, I wanted to embed the excitement into my work. Back then, people over middle east were fighting around Gaza strip and the fight was heating up quite well. I bought at least 10 newspapers in all different languages. It was so easy, I just went around few blocks from my apartment, dropped by every single deli, found all those papers. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, French, Polish, Hebrew, some languages I don’t even know… It was all around my old neighborhood, 14th St. and 3rd Ave, in east village!!! The papers is the people who live on the space ship. World Trade Center is Money. The Village Voice had a front page, “Emigrants go home!” with a face of Ms. Liberty with black eye. Who punched her? Anyway, I picked Hebrew for one tower and Arabic for another to express my concern over the fight in middle east. Then all other languages for all over the place. I printed image of bills on the voice cover. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, glued glued glued…
When I showed this work, I didn’t have no idea if WTC would be demolished in such a crazy way. Even after I watched “Fight Club” still I didn’t have no slight idea of what had been brewing in some people’s mind. Then, the morning, I didn’t even think the main bridge was going down. I even thought the damage was not serious, they could fix in few months. I was very upset whoever did that horrible thing to the space ship I love so much. I love her so much that I chose to live on the ship. I still won’t give up believing in Love & Peace!!!
