Start with ladies' night

"I have something in my nose? What?"

So, It's very early on friday morning, and I have about three posts in the queue. They're all vaguely about drinking, and/or bikes, and or insightful important need-to-know information. Those are the only types of posts I do, so we'll see if I can do them all in one feel swoop.

Sigrid was there, writing on people's knuckles.

Wednesday was the famous and ever popular ladies night at The Blue Note, and really it was a nice time. I walked in and there was Cyrus, chillin' at the bar with a new 'dew. I actually like the new hair better, even though it is a little funny to see Cyrus in a crew cut. I laughed, I admit it.

For example: Reaghan.

We were the two drunks at the end of the bar solving the world's problems. We came to the conclusion that people are better taken individually than in groups- there's some context missing, but that's what I remembered hung over this morning. That and a lot of pretty girls. Which brings me to the next part of the story. (You people reading this should realize that this narrative has a pretty good basis in fact, but I'm glossing over the boring parts of the evening).

Then Cyrus upstaged all this knuckle writing by doing his whole forearm.

New girl comes over, Jordan, we meet, get to talking, and it turns out she wants to be a Suicide Girl, but needs a photographer. I was, of course, doing my normal thing, taking drunkpictures at the bar, and so she asked me if I would do it, and me being an idiot, a sucker for a pretty lady, I said sure. So it's me and Cyrus and her hanging out and drinking, and one thing leads to another, and they're kind of talking, and then I look over and they're making out. Making out pictures don't do anything for me, but I snap a few anyway, because the impulse to document is still there.

Like I said, making out pictures don't do anything for me, but I love her surprised smile in this picture.

So I turn to Rachel, who was sitting at out table, and say something, chit chat like, and then Jordan says "Matt!" and pulls up her shirt. Reflexes and impulses being what they are, I snapped a couple frames. Demand all you want, but I'm not going to post that on the internet unless she tells me to, which is unlikely.

Does this look like a girl who would flash the camera for fun and profit? I like it, either way.

From there, the night is a blur of the HiLo and then to Reaghan's new abode, where there was this somewhat interesting other girl, but then everybody passed out pretty quick, and nothing happened. Her name was Kat, I'm pretty sure, and I remember her asking about my camera earlier in the night. Maybe I'll run into her again. If not, it's the bus theory of meeting women. I'll let you work that one out while I'm working on the next post.

Walking back to my car, there was a random tractor. But that's oklahoma.

Bike polo

Bike polo is fun. Evidence:

Always remember the super glue

So, tonight, during the course of bike polo, and well before I'd arrived, Timmy wacked the back of his head against a concrete pillar. Whe I first saw it, I thought it wasn't that bad, but after a second look, I realized the wound, while small, was all the way through the skin and really needed some kind of closure. I jokingly said I could stitch it up if we could find a needle and thread.

Now, I do have some pretty good first aid training and experience under my belt, so when Timmy actually wanted me to stitch it up, I thought, ok, no problem, told him it would hurt, but we could do it. So we all went back to grant's house, and we got out a needle and thread, I sterilized it in bleach, and we waited for grant to get back from the store with some peroxide to clean out the wound. Before you even think it, yes, I know that peroxide robs the tissue of oxygen, but iodine is harder to get in the middle of the night.

We all go into the dining room and I lay down a towel and pour in the disinfectant. It's a little cut, but it really needed like two stitches to close it and keep out infection. It wasn't going to close on its own. So, I stick the needle in. It goes through with a little pushing, and then refuses to come out the other side. So I pull it out, bend the needle some more, and try again. Still no joy; the point is just too dull.

We talk about taking him to a doc-in-a-box clinic, and Grant is looking up phone numbers when somebody brings up the possibility of super glue. I don't remember who, but I'm still kicking myself for not thinking of it before I tried to stitch him up. It's perfect for little out of the way wounds that need to be closed but can't be sutured for whatever reason (lack of insurance and sharp needles this time). So, Grant goes to the store again, gets some super glue, and the cut is fixed up better than the ER would have done in about five seconds.

Moral of the story: Don't forget the super glue.

twitter thoughts too long for twitter

A conversation today on twitter got me to thinking about photography, and culture and style and art and society. There was a photographer, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, who's work really demonstrates all that's wrong with the world right now.

The photographer that brought up all these questions is a very successful commercial photographer. Very polished, styled images. There are a lot of things that I don't like about them. A lot of his images are super low contrast, with no blacks (tonality, not people) at all, while also cropping off body parts willy-nilly. His lighting also bothers me- the photos strike me as the kind you need an army of assistants (well, at least two or three) to maintain-complex and unnatural. Not every shot should be into the light, all of them can't be at golden hour, and sweat is never that perfectly placed. It's a distinctive look, but it's a plastic look, it's one I've seen a thousand times before.

We live in a dissafected, disenfranchised society. There are the indebted, and there are the people we owe money to. The rich are few and far between, something like 5% of the population at any given time, depending on your definition of rich. Money as we think of it now has no basis in the real world, but is merely some numbers in digital domains.

Given that, where is art? It's all gold and glam and crazy hair and tight pants. It's abstract and disconnected and complex. It's thin, insubstantial. It's going to fall apart.

It's the lack of substance that I keep coming back to in my thinking; those photographs, even of somewhat interesting subjects, were plastic and boring, stamped out of a mill of complicated lights and staged action-peaks that only look like decisive moments. They are the shiny object, to be consumed and tossed away without thought.

Where are the real photographs, the photographers of the world as it is? I'm not talking about people wandering to far flung regions to uncover the the worst of the worst, I'm talking about the local people, the ones doing projects and reporting on local things? Where are these photographers? They're out there, I'm sure it's not just me laboring under a delusion. I know because I'm one of 'em.