Previously, previously.

(some of you might not be versed in the definition of webcock, which is a bit crucial to the punchline.)

Jim Henson.

Douglas Adams.

Arthur Schlesinger.

Kurt Vonnegut.

Today, George Carlin.  Sad.  Very sad.

It’s a strange time in a man’s life when his contemporary heroes and objects of inspiration and admiration begin to die out en masse.  Reflection is not my strong suit.

I have half a mind to call Bill Moyers and James Burke just to say, “Hey, are you guys feeling alright today? Take care of yourselves, please. I can’t afford to lose another one of you just yet.”

But for the longest time, I’ve been trying to take decent photographs with my Hasselblad 500C/M.  Over countless rolls of 120, I can just never seem to get the results I want, no matter how much experimentation I do with aperture and shutter combinations, lighting conditions, and film stock.  I bracket and meter and re-meter.  I try to get accurate depth of field.  When I want soft shots, I get sharp ones.  When I want contrasty shots, I get washed out ones.  And the same applies in reverse.  Honestly, I get more predictable (and more satisfying) results from my $20 plastic Holga! Very frustrating.

I know it’s all a learning process, and medium format isn’t as forgiving as 35mm, but it still annoys the crap out of me that a lot of other photographers in my skill set range can get great results with the same camera, yet I Just Can’t Seem To Do It Right.  Especially in light of my discovery of the Apollo 11 film library yesterday.  I mean, when a guy — in a spacesuit, on the surface of the moon, in 1/6th gravity, pumped full of adrenaline from being the first person to set foot there, wearing a huge helmet and operating the camera with enormous gloved hands — can take an amazingly well exposed and focused photo like this, with minimal photography training, and essentially the same camera that I use, then what the hell is my problem?

Nice photo, Neil Armstrong, you spacesuited bastard.  Astronauts are such showoffs.

[ Update: a reader pointed out to me that the Apollo crew did indeed have quite a bit more photographic training (in both equipment and technique) than I gave them credit for.  Doesn't make me feel any better though. h/t Derek ]

In memory of
1st Lt. George M. Delgrosso
US Army Air Corp. / 5th Air Force
1914-1991

Miss you, grandpa.

Having said that, I do have a bit of a custom when it comes to “retiring” a filled notebook and beginning another.  I did this with one of my Moleskines the other day.  The first one in a while, actually; it’s pretty rare when I fill one from cover to cover.  I always have a bunch of them going at a time, some for specific projects and others lying around for general note-taking and core-dumping.  So more often than not, I’ll abandon them at some point, and they’ll just get stuck on a shelf or tossed in a drawer.

But when I hit the back page of a well-worn Moleskine, it’s fun for me to use that as a reason to grab a fresh one, get it ready, and start filling it with ink.

I reached the end of this notebook the other day.  It’s been in use for a couple of years, staying near me on my desk or in my bag.  It’s gone with me pretty much wherever I’ve travelled.  It’s been places.  It knows things.

This wasn’t really a jot-it-down book so much as as a place for more fleshed-out ideas and concepts.  It’s full of scraps of paper, a writing “cheat sheet” that I keep in most of my notebooks, and other ephemera.  There was a lot of creative energy in that book, and now I’m tempted to scan it into a pdf so I can reference some of it later on without having to pull it down off a shelf.

There’s nothing like grabbing a fresh notebook off the shelf and taking the plastic off of it.  It’s not nearly as fun as unboxing a new Mac or other Apple gadget, but it’s such a great tactile buffet.  Peeling off the wrapper.  Cracking open the (so far) unbent cover.  Pulling the elastic band off.  Feeling the crisp paper.

It’s almost like the book asks something of you.  No, it demands something of you.  ”Put great things in here.  Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone if it sucks.  Just give me words. Lots of words.”

Alright, back to business.  I label the spines of all my Moleskines with a silver Sharpie.  Once you get a few dozen identical black books floating around your world, you have to be able to tell them apart.  I’ve gotten into the habit of scribbling a quote on the top of some of them too.  Whatever comes to mind, usually.  This one got a Balzac (and before you roll your eyes at me, I’ll tell you that the last one got a Ralph Wiggum).

For my more “important” notebooks, I’ll usually grab a new (or new-ish) pen to keep with that particular book.  I had a Lamy fountain pen that I wanted to use this time, but after trashing my office looking for it, decided to use this Acme rollerball instead.  I don’t use rollerballs much, but this one has a great balance to it, and the ink flows really well on the Moleskine paper.

The first ink to go into a fresh notebook is always the “if found” part.  I’ve put the exact same text into that space on every Moleskine I’ve ever used.  Only one has ever been lost, and I got an email the next day from someone who had found it in the coffeeshop where I left it.

Once the new book is prepped and “in circulation”, the retired one gets shelved somewhere in my office.

So then.  That’s my only admitted “custom”.  Silly?  Sure.  These little books, they’re cheap and ordinary.  But they’re the kinds of objects we creatives bring into our lives, and we invest into them so much more than black ink or colored chalk or elegant code.  They have power over us, and have power because of us.  They’re never just tools.  And because of that, I think, sometimes even a $10 hunk of paper can be worthy of a simple ritual.

To: Tony Delgrosso
From: SA8300HD
Subject: Us 

Tony,

Hey - what’s up? Haven’t seen much of you lately! I know you’ve been traveling and busy with work and all that, but I thought maybe you’d have been around a little more. Everything ok?

Let me get right to the point. I’m sad. Well, not *sad* so much as disappointed. Don’t worry - I’m not mad at you. I just feel unappreciated. I’ve worked so hard for you lately, and, well, you just don’t seem to notice. Are you ignoring me on purpose? Have I done something to upset you? Just be straight with me. I can take it.

I just don’t know what it is I could have done, and I’ve been losing sleep over it. Everything you’ve asked of me, I’ve done for you. Yet I do and do and do, and for what? So I can just sit here by myself with the fruits of my labor?

Okay, so maybe now I *am* getting a little mad. I can understand that you didn’t watch Lost from last week yet. But I’m holding onto the entire John Adams miniseries for you. In HD. Do you know what kind of space it takes to hold that? And the last three Dexter episodes from last season. And a Nova. There’s a Simpsons, too. Lots more that I can’t remember. The more I think about how much baggage I’m carrying for you, the more upset I get. This is such a one-way relationship and I’m getting sick of it. And don’t fuck with me, because I know your secrets. All of them. Do you want all of your friends to know that even though I’m keeping all the new episodes, you still haven’t watched the end of BSG from last season? LAST SEASON! And I’ll tell them. I swear to god I will.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get pissy like that. It’s just that I’m at 93% capacity right now, and if I don’t hear from you soon, I’m going to have to start throwing away some of your stuff. And I don’t think either of us want that.

I just really, really want to see you before I take the summer off. So come and visit, okay? Please?

Love always,
DVR

I think I need to spend a little time in front of the TV.  Soon.

My office closet is fairly deep, more like a small storage room than a typical “closet”, and the back of it acts as a repository¹ for all sorts of random things.

Yesterday I had to mount an expedition to its farthest reaches, in search of something.  I now forget what, exactly², because I never actually found it.  I got distracted when, at the back of the room, I dug up one of my old messenger bags.  One that I hadn’t seen or touched in almost four years.  I took it out and opened it up, and it still had a good amount junk in it.

I found it odd that it would still have so much flotsam in it, especially writing materials, as that’s the stuff of my work and I usually treat all my bits of paper quite well.  I vaguely remember having bought a new Powerbook around then, so probably in my excitement I stuck the new computer in a fresh new bag, grabbed what I thought I needed from the old one, and then tossed it into the closet.

Nothing I found in the bag was particularly important³, but it’s an interesting snapshot of the moment.  I probably spent a good hour just looking at the stuff and trying to mentally reconstruct what I was working on at the time.  It’s funny how you can find “treasure” like that from just a handful of years ago in your own life.  It was fun.

[ click on the photo for the marked-up version at Flickr, where there's notes on some of the stuff that was in the bag ]

My Muse was late for work today.  Again.  One week on the job, and already she’s pissing me off.

I had to get working first thing today.  Last night I tossed around for hours, struggling with some dialogue, yet stubbornly refusing to get out of bed and work it.  So this morning I wanted to deal with it as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard.

At 7:30, she hadn’t come in.  By 8:30, she still hadn’t shown up.  Shit.

I called her cell.  The one I provided for her when she started working for me.  The one I told her to keep on all of the time.

“Hey, you know, sure would be great if you could show up some time today.  I can’t sit here all morning staring at the screen.”

“Stuck in traffic on the I-90, sorry,” she said.

“You couldn’t have left, oh, thirty minutes earlier to beat traffic?”

“Car wouldn’t start.”

“Pretty sure I specified ‘must have reliable car’ in the want ad,” I said, and hung up.

She came highly recommended, and she’s wicked expensive, so I didn’t feel too bad being irritated at the tardiness.

Twenty minutes later she trapsed into my office and plopped on the couch.  She opened a whimsical turtle-shaped messenger bag, pulled out some tablets, and tossed them on the coffee table.  She propped up her feet and took out a pack of Camels.

“Well, what’ve you got so far?” she asked.

“Nothing yet.  Been waiting for you.  And I’ve told you before, Calli, you can’t smoke in here,” I said.  She pouted and put the cigarettes down.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to snap like that.  I’m just struggling here, you know, and I needed you a bit earlier.”

We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds.  ”That’s a cute bag,” I said, to clear the tension.  ”Where’d you get it?”

“My little sister gave it to me.  She’s a good kid.  Now, are we gonna sit here and chat all day, or are we gonna write?”

I smiled.  Calli pushed her sleeves up over her fully inked arms, and grabbed one of her tablets.  “Now, I’ve got some dialogue I want you to try out.  I think this will work.”

Yeah, it might work.  I’ll still need another week to feel this arrangement out, but I think it might work.

(via Kevin Cornell)

Not your usual passive variety, mind you, but the skull-crushingly frustrating kind. The kind where you feel like an amnesia victim, with the entirety of your forgotten lifetime just out of sight behind that enormous mental dam. And the dam is cracking, but not fast enough. Or something. (See? Even my analogies suck right now.)

So while I go off to bang my head for a while (possibly literally), please to be enjoying this Don Music skit. It always makes me feel better in these situations.