it’s 8:23pm and i’d be pretty stoked if anyone other than me was ready to go home.

i’m convinced the people in this office sleep here (or don’t sleep at all). that’s probably why there’s a pool table right outside the elevator door.

[true story: the first time i ever came here, i walked off the elevator and thought i’d taken a wrong turn into a bar. or someone’s bachelor pad.]

this place is like the black hole of labor. they must pay their staff a completely offensive amount of money to come here 7 days a week and pretend that they never want an hour off. ever.

there’s a photo of me on the wall that some random chick took 3 days before i ventured off for the cross country job.

[these crazy awesome non-sleeper-over-workers are the ones who sent me into the great unknown a few months back. and for that i owe them all the time in the world they want right now. and maybe even a kidney. and they owe me a beer. which is funny because just as i said that, the producer -- who i adore -- walked in with 3 shopping bags full of beer. ask and you shall receive.]

i look ridiculously perky in that photo. the one on the wall.

and really rested.

there is hardly any point to the photo above except that this window is on 1 of 4 walls of a warehouse that i’m shooting in on monday and unlike the billion photos i take for other people, this one i took for only for myself.

it’s a funny little place where this short guy named andrew takes people like me up and down the elevator giving tours of the space in hopes that our higher-ups will drop a stupid amount of money to film here.

i don’t think his real name is andrew and i’m not going to elaborate on this because you will call me a racist racial profiler and i’m just not going there. and maybe i’m wrong and his real name is andrew. but i doubt it.

one time, he made me scale the outside walls of the building in category-5 winds just so i could see the roof.

i felt like spiderman, but i almost peed in my pants.

in between the colored eggs and chocolate.

one year, easter looked like this:

i probably made those ears with my very own 5-year old hands.

[and my mom probably has them stashed away in some closet or rubbermaid bin, holding on to them for the day when she decides to scrapbook my life. which she won’t likely ever actually do, despite the fact that she insists she will.]

most years it looked like this:

excerpted from an earlier post:

my grandfather used to own this farm in rural north carolina where he had horses and the likes and wore blue jeans and cowboy boots and taught my dad and his brothers how to shoot guns and drink wild turkey.

i don’t know exactly how long he owned the farm, but it was a long time. and it fueled some of the greatest childhood memories a kiddo could hope for. every easter, my dad and uncles would go to the piggly wiggly and buy a whole flock of baby chickens and bring them back to us in a big brown box. i can recount hours spent standing on my tip toes hovered over the box watching the baby chickens. waiting for them to do something.

for the life of me, i have no idea what we ever did with the baby chickens after easter was over.

we sure as hell didn’t take them home and raise them. i can promise you that.

 

this year, easter looks exactly like this:

courtesy of my non-scrapbooking mom and stepdad who probably have a hunch that i’d very much like to be with the family today, sitting by my grandmother’s backyard koi pond while she wows the masses with yet another perfect feast made up of ingredients that she ripped from her garden and turned into something which would have martha stewart stammering in green envy.

so whether you are wearing construction paper ears on your head, staring at a box full of chickens, or taking time to smell the flowers, may your easter be full of family (even if they are far away), friends, koi ponds, and prayer.

don’t forget the prayer part.

it’s the most important of all the easter things . . .

why are you not famous and why do i have 6 versions of this on my phone.

somewhere between the drag show in the east village and the nine hours of karaoke that ended sometime around sunrise, me-plus-three traveled 80-some blocks uptown for this:

you might think to yourself, “now that is one hefty cab fare for 34 seconds of a scottish accent and a modern-day spin on a Braveheart moment.”

and you would be right.

[although you may also notice that kristen, as seen in the bottom of the frame, is completely amused. cab fare wins.]

in that case, let me make this worth it to you by explaining just how fantastic this little place called Sing Sing really is.

[the karaoke joint, that is. not the maximum security prison. i don’t anything about that, other than the fact that they were electric-chair-happy right up until the moment everyone realized it was constitutionally barbaric. insert 8th amendment rights here.]

for free+8 bucks per hour per person, you get your own private recording studio “party room” complete with pleather couches and binders chock full of every single song you ever sang alone in the car or shower.

oh, and a butler. you also get a butler.

one mash of the button on the wall and taa-daaaaa! THERE HE IS . . . ready to bring you whatever assortment of booze drops your inhibitions low enough to make you sing loud and sing proud.

for me, it doesn’t take much.

my rendition of “Summer of ‘69” is enough to have you fully convinced that i’m canadian and that bryan adams is my father.

the resemblance is startling.

there might be an ounce of wisdom in there, but i doubt it.

greatest nonsensical facebook post of all time.

i have no idea what it even means.

[p.s. neither does she. trust me, i asked.]

should i have the band play ‘lady in red’ for when you inevitably do your solo dance?

why, yes. yes you should.

weddings are fun, but this one took it to a new level of greatness.

lady gaga and all.

[and we know i love a good opportunity to break it down to some gaga. who doesn’t.]

someone (meaning me) left home without her camera. but thanks to the invention of camera phones, i have a few captured moments to share. there would be more, but i was too busy dancing. or complimenting the bartender on his ability to create the most perfect champagne cocktail in the history of champagne cocktails. the aftermath of which i carried with me through 3 different airports the following day. awesome.

happy honeymooning, kristen and brett (!!)

the rest of us will be here dealing with reality and moderate week-long hangovers while you two frolic around on white sandy beaches.

no really. we aren’t jealous at all.

the day i went to the barber shop.

parents tell their kids not to talk to strangers.

[sorry, mom. it’s what i do for a living.]

but some of my best days have been spent by doing just that. i know i’ve talked about this a time or two before.

i wrote about it here

and i wrote about it here

something pretty awesome happens when you open yourself up to someone else’s world and see it through their eyes.

if only for a minute.

life is about minutes.

i love this photo. a lot.

taken a few days ago on what was just another ordinary work day (with the exception of the car accident that snuck into my day, in the worst and most dangerous neighborhood in all of brooklyn. not my fault and yes i’m fine), it sums things up pretty well:

i’m totally out of place (clearly) standing in an establishment where i don’t belong (understated) taking photographs of people i don’t know (well, now i do)

. . . . yet i’m exactly where i’m supposed to be . . . .

 

have a conversation with a stranger. ask them about their life. tell them about yours.

you are bound to learn something.

dashboard confession part two: rappers make everything more complicated.

this is something i know a lot about. fortunately or unfortunately.

who would have thought this snapshot would have my week spinning on its axis. i won't explain why. it's a complicated element of this whole filmmaking shenanigan and i doubt my explanation would make much sense to y'all anyway.

music videos are the worst. trust this. and rappers have a way of really throwing absurdity into 6th gear.

they often come fully furnished with semi-crazy agents, entourages for miles, and riders so incredibly arrogant that peon production assistants have been known to spend entire days scouring a 3-state radius looking for flavors of candles that only exist in weird places like iceland.

i rearranged the truth and told the city of new york we were shooting a "commercial."

it's better for everyone and, well, what that really means is it's better for me.

and better for me is how i'm rolling this week.*



[*i'm not that selfish. it's better for absolutely everyone involved. and even those who are not involved.]

Location:it changes every 7 seconds.

insanity has a new name and it's called rush hour(s)

i don't know which is more wack.

the fact that it's 8:00pm and rush hour has no end in sight or the fact that i just stopped inside a latino no-hablas-inglais hair salon to pee.

according to this super fun photo op, the car in front of me is on fire.

this must be what it's like to see through the eyes of a rodeo bull with a rubber band around his balls.

[you're welcome for that visual.]

Location:inside my car. where else would i be during rush hour.