More Talking Heads

It continues. Doctors with ties. Sitting in chairs. Speaking in monotone. Meters moving. Microphone dangling. I fight the nap ghost.

Billings MT

I love Montana. I am a proud graduate of it's fine university system. I would like to live there again some day.

However the food in Billings sucked on this trip.

We shot another hospital administrator who wore a tie. He was an adviser to Max Bacus on Health Care Reform, presumably helping Senator BlueDog dilute, neuter and generally destroy the last best chance for real health care reform into a tasteless pudding of mandates and gibberish that the other guys will gut and mock for generations . Now I feel bad about that too. And Bacus used to be the good senator from MT.

Retail Shoe Cult

Many Days Spent on the worshipful altar of Retail Sales. I spent a couple years working as an editor for a small production company that worked on a variety of videos for a large well known corporate retail clothes and shoe store. The job was great but the store was like a customer service cult. It was very successful, but creepy. This job has been one of my first trips back into that environment and strangely today (day 2) it was a strong reminder that the corrupt system of the hamster wheel of fashion and consumer want / need to be trendy was a major reason that I left that otherwise stable job. The level of devotion of these people to the life of selling clothes and shoes is damn frightening. It is a bedrock basic almost spiritual drive with them.
I understand that people will want to wear clothes. And if they wear clothes they should be pretty or make people attractive but the diabolical devil in the details here is the small crack this opens up to exploit people's desire to be attractive to others and people's insecurities about their appearance. The constant need to update and buy more to make you that much more appealing to others or to just feel good about yourself rather than those attributes coming from the inside makes "fashion" an unending hamster wheel. The quality of the clothes is great and if you buy something from a store it's wonderful to have helpful and nice customer service, but the cult-like fawning over people in order to get them to buy more and to create a lasting contact (convert? proselyte?) to the store's "way of life" seems almost frightening.

Fashion is an empty suit.

Oh Yeah, I shot Festival Mexicanos in Wennachee With Tante Ricky

I forgot. I also worked with one of my top seven people on the earth, Tante Ricky Barnez at the Wennatchee Festival Mexicanos for huge mega corporate bank. It was pretty fun, though Rick didn't want to stop to eat. We shot a lot of mouth watering Mexican food but ate none of it. We did eat a fine meal late at Fran and Phil's, Norwegian American Refugees from Ballard.

Rick drove. I complained.

Big Dam Boat

I worked for Holland America Line today aboard the MS Amsterdam. We shot in the bridge and engine rooms. It was cool. We had sushi and listened to a sad cover band on the Lido deck. They played "too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you." I mentioned "Deer Hunter". Nobody knew what the hell I was talking about. Forgot my phone. Took no pictures. This is a picture of the ship that brought my family to America in 1859, the SS Atalanta.

Why Evaporation?

Because much of the time I feel like I am dissipating into a gas. I am becoming increasingly diffuse and abstract and make less sense even to myself. More frequently I am at a loss for words or can not find the word or name for something and I feel lost for an instant. I take little joy in anything anymore but I am not what would be called depressed: I feel more like I am leaving slowly, evaporating.

This picture of Tom makes me really sad. A gulag hair cut on a cute little person who suddenly doesn't want to be on the beach.

Salt Lake City

Flew to Salt Lake. Shot one interview with a hospital administrator. Left immediately.

Salt Lake is actually more diverse and interesting than I expected. I'm sorry I didn't get to see anything other than a conference room and a man with a tie.

Indian Casino. Watching in Fast Forward.

Once or twice a year I do three day shoots at an area Tribal Casino. A big, luxurious tribal casino, doing basic audio (they only want the yells of excitement and clapping- nothing else) and gripping. Gripping is a young man's sport. My best gripping days are long past but I know the job.

The casino is now a well known adversary. It is a morally corrupt, surreal carnival of harlotry populated by really nice people, who look and act like my parents (if they were chain smokers and heavy drinkers.) My old testament attitude about casinos kept me off these jobs for several years, but 2009 was a rough year so I stopped avoiding the siren's call. I used to say that I would not do casinos, republicans or porn. I now have done two of the three. High morals are great. Paychecks are great too.

The spots are really simple. Beautiful young people dress up and play slots and table games, having loud and boisterous fun. Nobody in the casino has fun like these beautiful people, in fact the old, chain smoking people do their level best not to crack so much as a smile while they play their solitary slots. The beautiful, large breasted, high heeled models have so damn much fun it hurts to watch. They are constantly adjusting their strapless evening gowns in the most lascivious ways imaginable. Their chiseled, handsome menfolk also high five with a certain intensity saved for professional sports playoffs. Very few of the actual casino patrons watch us shoot which always surprises me, production always being a draw for passing crowds- they are too busy and wrapped up in losing this month's rent or social security check. I watched a woman with Parkinsons lose $200 on the $5 machine in ten minutes- it didn't seem to faze her. Frequently it starts to feel like a neon retirement home with cocktail waitresses.

It is also painfully obvious that the last rung of celebrity in this world is having your name or likeness used on a video slot machine: Elvira: Mistress of the Night, The Village People, Dean Martin and strangely "Star Wars" all had their own electronic theft devices sucking up disposable income from senior citizens.

Pictured, is me doing what a college graduate can do best: creating a "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" water effect on the fake rocks of the pool while hiding behind deck chairs where the beautiful people cavort. I have a weird job.

Kitty Glitter: Says it all folks....