I'm not yet ready to discuss beer and catastrophe. Instead, let's mourn the imminent death of my smartphone's camera by celebrating some of its best narrative photographs. Click to enlarge.
We'll start with the preciousness. I love this picture, from the same "session" as
week five. G. was all about funny faces that day—it looks like she's about to pull off a mask and reveal herself as a
V baby or something. She is the best.
Here's the orange frame I got in December's yankee swap (still don't have a print for it). I was diligently working away one afternoon when I glanced over and liked the way our blinding sun projected the Dunkin Donuts cup's shadow upon it. I promise this is in no way staged. It is
art.
Garden Fresh Salad Co. in Chelsea is located, as you would expect with a name like "Garden Fresh," next door to one scrapyard and across the street from another. It's also a stone's throw from the train tracks, as demonstrated by this shot taken from a passing commuter rail car. You can get no fresher than backhoes, discarded appliances, telephone lines, barbed wire and a foot of snow.
The later stages of August's BBC beer dinner at Cambridge Common. What a great night, made greater by the no-show table neighbor whose beers were split evenly between my two friends and me. I was pretty all set.
We took a long walk in Marblehead in the Spring, and at the time I thought the "dichotomy" of these signs was really something else. It was
hilarious to me in some subtle, clever way. For the life of me, though, I can't remember what the big deal was—I no longer get the joke. Any ideas?
I swear, every time I whip out my camera in an outdoor setting I end up with a picture exactly like this, taken from the same goddamn angle, with the same proportion of sky to structure. And I don't even realize it until I upload the photos afterward and realize
"Hmm, that looks familiar." Here's the Newburyport version, taken during a trip soon after G. was born.
Turning this one ninety degrees changes the message from CAUTION: WET FLOOR to CAUTION: LUNGING ASSASSIN. Dig the cheesy rose-colored marble in my old building. At least it will still be standing in five years, unlike the new one which I think came from Ikea.
I don't know what to make of the logo for a local dry cleaner. Clearly the goal was to present an all-powerful superhero who zaps stains away from racks of undersized clothing. To me, however, he looks like an evil puppet master with wonderful child-bearing hips.
This was my Halloween costume a couple of years ago. I dressed up as someone who shops in the adolescents department at Marshall's.
A. and I traveled to Block Island in the Fall of 2010. We rented a scooter and toured most of the accessible roadways, but we had to stop at one point in order to document what total badasses we were in those helmets. Do not fuck with us.
The uncommon (though less so, recently) spelling of my name was inspired by a character on the old television series
The Big Valley. TV Land or somebody plays a lot of reruns—here's a recent one. Do not fuck with Jarrod.
Here I am sitting in our hotel room in Montreal trying to decide which RetroCamera setting was best. I think people rely too much on these things—any old fool can oversaturate an image—but I'll admit it is fun to mix them in from time to time. So I composed the same shot over and over, applying a different filter for each one in order to compare them side by side. I think this Polaroid knock-off turned out especially creepy, like it's one of those purposely staid images where if you look closely enough you can make out a demon or a bloody screwdriver in the shadows.
A. and I had a little scare early in our pregnancy that thankfully turned out to be nothing. Upon learning the good news (or, rather, having a doctor rule out any bad news) we celebrated by heading straight from the hospital to Woody's Grill & Tap, one of my all-time favorite restaurants (I used to live right around the corner). Our joy and relief were palpable as we enjoyed the best pizza in Boston, snug in front of the brick oven, with A. sneaking sips of my Coffeehouse Porter.
Around the Horn was on the TV above the bar and there must have been a malfunction with the closed captioning because it read WHO HAVE TO BE BORING? the entire half hour. What a brilliant sentence fragment—we laughed and laughed and it was just what we needed.
Lastly, as I said at the top, the shutter on my phone's camera is having trouble handling light and therefore has been slow to function—just try explaining that to a squirming five-month-old as you attempt to snap her picture. Anyway, there's an auto body repair shop right on the East Boston/Revere town line that puts its trade to good use when a local sports team is in a championship game or series—naturally, they stage the remains of an accident out front. Leading up to the (gulp) Super Bowl, they had decked out a giant SUV in Patriots colors and had it colliding with and destroying a compact coupe with a Giants logo painted on it. The coupe was pretend burning and everything. As we drove by one night I tried to snap a quick picture to post on Facebook—I even had a caption written in my head, "The flames are fake but the fire is REAL"—when my camera called bullshit on that. A. had to keep moving because traffic was heavy, so I just started shooting random pictures to see if it would fix itself. It wouldn't: the above is a single photograph and not a collage—one click, no post-click editing. The reddish section is pretty much straight ahead, the way I was facing, but the others represent alternate realities where I aimed the camera anywhere from left to right. Time for a new phone.
Maybe I'll return next week to try to work out what the hell happened in Indianapolis (hint: terrible defense!). Beyond that, I'm in a bit of what might be called a creative trough. Beefheart? Sure, but I haven't read the book yet. Short story? I have a title,
Trial Size, and nothing else. At least there will be six thousand or so words to look forward to in May when I barf up another overlong annual playlist. Two of those words? Iron Maiden.
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