My love of the website PostSecret… ironically, is not a secret.
I last wrote about it almost a year ago… about the first postcard I sent in. Since writing that, I’ve made more postcards (like I said I would) and sent them in. Probably about 5 or 6 more. It *did* get easier to send those in. Some, I just wrote simply on the postcard, others I tried drawing.
None of them were ever posted… but like I said before, if you send it in with the expectation of them appearing on the site, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. The guy gets over 1,000 a week, and posts 25 of them. Odds aren’t in your favor.
But it’s the telling of the secret is the key. It’s entrusting it to a complete stranger… even potentially the world. Maybe even getting away from it. Giving the secret to someone else… because you don’t want it anymore.
Since last year, the site now has a presence on MySpace and Facebook, of which I also check every now and then (though not as often as the main site). These sites are mainly used as “what’s going on” with the site, and upcoming seminars/exhibits and whatnot… while the main site is solely for the weekly postcards, and nothing else.
Last Saturday, I was looking at the latest MySpace blog… and people have started posting their cell phone numbers in the comments section… for the purpose of letting strangers text-message secrets to them. The “instructions” just said to go to the latest one posted, and send it to that person. I thought that it could be dangerous… but honestly… I think the only people that READ the PostSecret MySpace blog… or the main site itself… are the kind of people that wouldn’t abuse it. Plus… you can always go back and remove your comment if you get too nervous.
I sent off a few of my own to some numbers that were posted. And a few minutes later:
I posted my own cell number.
Within 2 minutes… I got my first text-secret.
It… was a bit heavy. More so then I was expecting. It definitely showed me that this is an experience that isn’t F**king around.
But the trust it shows… to send that to *me*, and who the hell am I? It absolutely humbled me. Sorry, I won’t say what it is… because it *is* a secret. Entrusted to me, and I don’t tell secrets that aren’t mine to begin with. I took the secret so this person wouldn’t have to keep it. Hopefully, it helps them… they said it did.
Within the hour, I got several more. For the next 3 hours, until I went to sleep, I just lay on my bed, texting secrets back and forth to strangers from across the country… some told me their names, some asked for feedback. But I always exchanged a secret for a secret. I believe that’s part of the trust.
It felt… very intimate. Sharing some things that even people I’m close to don’t even know about me. I actually felt connected to so many people at once… it kinda feels like falling in Love. The trust I felt… the trust I gave… the vulnerability, seeing and feeling it… and especially NOT suffering embarrassment for it, or having it shoved back in your face.
I think I can honestly say… it was one of the most Beautiful experiences I’ve ever had. And you know I don’t take the word “Beautiful” lightly.
I was still texting a few people the next morning… continuing conversations. Now, I don’t have unlimited texts… but frankly, I don’t care. I’ll pay the extra fees… this experience was too wonderful to not continue as long as I could. I even got some new people texting me… even though there were more recent numbers posted after mine.
I wanted this to continue… I wanted to do something more.
So, I wrote out several secrets of mine… and when I went to the gym for my daily masochism/work-out… I placed them all around. (I don’t think anyone saw me) Didn’t put them in obvious places… but hopefully places where they would be found. I did notice a few people actually saw them… fewer actually picked them up to read them. But I don’t think anyone threw them away… at least when I was there. But the next day they were gone. So… I put out a few more. I’d like to think that someone was picking them up and keeping them… and not tossing them in the trash, but who knows? Maybe the gym isn’t the most empathetic place to hide secrets at… but the place does advertise itself as a “judgment free-zone”… so that makes it sound kind of appropriate. It’d be hypocritical if they frowned on my behavior… don’t you think?
Hiding those secrets… was fun. And a bit cathartic. Because like the texting and sending in the postcards… it’s a way to get away from the secret. To get rid of it, in a sense (though not really).
This whole past week has been filled with PostSecret for me. I discovered that there’s going to be a “PostSecret Event”… basically a seminar and exhibit, given by the founder, and it’s coming fairly close. By “fairly close”, I mean about 3 hours away. But it’s the closest the tour has come to me yet… about 7 months ago, another was scheduled that was closer… but it got cancelled a few days before it happened, much to my chagrin… so I’m not skipping *this* opportunity. I’m taking a half-day at work, and driving up for that evening. Sure, coming back so late will suck… but I think it will be worth it.
And I’m sure I’ll do another update when that comes up in a few weeks. Count on it.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
9.26.2008
9.12.2008
Looking Through Another Eye
I first started getting into photography when I was in Graduate School. I had gone home for Christmas break, during which I had bought myself my first digital camera. It was 1.3 Mega-pixels, (which at the time was a half-decent resolution) and I barely knew anything about it.
My only experience with taking photos was earlier failed attempts with a “regular” camera, using actual film. Rarely did those pictures even come out... at all. It was pretty frustrating to take a few rolls worth of pictures, send them in for developing, spending 5 bucks or more per roll, waiting a few days for developing, making a trip to the store to pick them up… only to find that just about all of them were too dark, too fuzzy… and totally incomprehensible. When I figured I’d be in events or situations that I wanted to take pictures, I bought a few disposable cameras, and hoped for the best.
So, I was pretty happy to get a digital. You can see right away how the pictures come out, and if they suck… you can instantly delete. Plus, they hold a LOT more than regular cameras, and no film to change. If I wanted a hard copy… you can even get prints of them at the store. (And eventually, even print them out myself) In the long run… they would be a lot cheaper… so, on a practical level alone, it seemed worth it.
Wanting to get my money’s worth, I carried it around a lot. Just threw it in my bag, and if a sudden Kodak moment showed up, I’d be ready… (even though it wasn’t a Kodak). People noticed I had it… and for some reason, everyone assumed I knew how to USE it. Not many people had digital cameras (it was still in its relative infancy in the market), and since I was in the Theatre Department… I got requests. Some of the directors doing the small tiny one-act plays were asking me if I could take pictures of their shows, so they could have them for their own portfolios. Or if the Film Majors needed a photographic prop for their film, they came to me. These were all people I liked, so naturally, I’m going to accommodate and help them however I can. So I found myself, several times, being the “show photographer”… sometimes even listed in the program as such. (I considered it an unnecessary credit… but they wanted to put me in there.) When I actually found myself taking archive photos of the large-scale, highly-funded official Department Musical… I looked at my tiny, low-end 1.3 Mega-pixel camera and thought, “How the hell did THIS happen?”
But everyone seemed to like the photos I took. Granted, I knew nothing about lighting, or shutter speed or anything that “real” photographers use to get the “perfect picture”… but hey, if the customer is happy, right? And it’s not like I didn’t learn anything. I did figure some things out… like the darker the room, the brighter the picture would end up being. (The shutter has to stay open longer to absorb the little available light… and usually absorbs too much, hence… brighter picture.) Plus, my camera did have a neat feature… panoramic pictures. Not *real* panoramic pictures… but rather it would take up to 5 photos and stitch them together, so you had to make sure you lined them up right from shot to shot. It was neat to take a picture of someone, have them move a few feet to the side, take another picture… and stitch them together so there’s two of the same person in the same picture.
Plus, once I got the pictures onto my computer, I could play with them even more. I guess the word would be “photoshopping”… but I never actually had Adobe Photoshop. Rather I had the really cheap program that came with the camera… but I got by nicely. My favorite thing was (and still is) to add captions or “word bubbles” above people… mainly to give myself a laugh (and I think occasionally other people find it so). That’s why I love the “candid shots” more then the “oh-there’s-a-camera-let’s-pose shots”. There are more possibilities with the split-second looks on people’s faces which can be drastically misinterpreted from the original context. (That cracks me up)
Once Grad School ended, I figured that was the end of my Photo career. I had no training, very little knowledge… and the camera is not the kind of Pro equipment one would need. Honestly… my heart was not broken. It was such a small part of my life… a minor hobby, really… that I barely thought of it.
Then, when I was living down in Los Angeles, I got involved in a weekly ongoing monologue show. The subject of all the monologues were sex and relationships… so it was considered an “adult-content-show” even though there was no nudity or anything like that. Now, all the actors were supposed to have their own poster… in a town full of actors, everyone wants to promote themselves… it made sense to have it like that. So after my first night of performing, the director mentioned that we needed our own posters, and she would call the photographer that did the last batch… and I noticed she didn’t seem too happy to pay the guy again for more pics. Well… I saw the last batch of posters… I didn’t think they were that great, frankly. Not to be elitist or judgmental… but for a show talking about sex, the posters weren’t very sexy.
I raised my hand. “You know… I have a digital camera. I know it’s not much, but if you’d like… I’ll take the pictures. No need to pay some guy for it.” I mean, this was a no-budget off-off-off-off-off-off-off-broadway theatre show… let’s pinch pennies where we can. I had no problem helping to promote a show I was a part of. (Call it a vested interest) She emphatically took me up on it. This way, I could make appointments with each person individually, take as much time as we want (so you’re not shuffling people one after another just to get the job done and over with in one sitting), I’ll put the text on at home on my computer… e-mail the finished product to the individual… they can print it out and make as many copies as they want… voila. Cheap show posters.
When I got together with each person… I gave each person the exact same spiel:
“Okay… just so you know: I’m NOT a professional photographer. I’m just ‘the guy with the camera.’ I have no interest in asking you to do anything you’re not comfortable with… frankly, I’m making this up as I go. So, if you have ANY ideas about what YOU want for YOUR poster… please, let me know. Cause I need the help.”
Everyone seemed to respond favorably to that. Some of the women that didn’t know me from Adam had brought along their large, karate-expert boyfriends because they didn’t want some “creep asking them to take their pants off”. They would later tell me that they thought I was a total sweetheart, and thanked me for being so respectful. Some even said they considered me more professional than most photographers they worked with. And everyone was happy with their posters.
(And yes, there is a poster of me… half-naked with a white sheet draped over my shoulder. One of the actresses took the picture for me. No, you can’t see it.)
No, I never asked them to take their pants off… though some did it anyway. (Only in L.A…) Since we only had to “imply” nudity under the sheet… that did give some leeway. Plus, when I looked at the “last batch” by the guy who got paid for it… they were all from the same level and angle. Almost like he just set up a tripod and lined people up, took one picture and moved onto the next.
I tried to give a little variety. I tried from lower angles, higher angles… tilting the camera a bit. Played around with them sitting or standing… anything but the same angle and level… all the while trying to leave room on the side for the titles and show info to go on. I didn’t want any words or info overlapping the actor… I figured that would be bad. They’re not the background of the picture… they ARE the picture.
After I took all the pictures, I went home, chose maybe 10 of what I thought were the best ones, e-mailed them to the performer, who would make the final decision. (Like I said… it was THEIR poster, so they should have that right.) Then I make the final poster, and when I saw them at the next show… I brought a burned CD with the finished poster and every picture I took of them. I know a lot of professional photographers actually claim legal “ownership” of the pictures they take… but what the hell was I gonna do with them? I think the subject of the photo has every right to know and control where that picture is seen. Sure, I kept copies for my archives… but they never have, nor ever will be released to be used by anyone else.
Like I said, people were happy with the photos and posters… which was a nice compliment for me, I thought. But I was getting bored… with the SAME corner inside of the SAME building, and everyone wearing the SAME white sheet. There’s only so much variety I can get with that situation. So, without telling the director… the next person that joined the show and needed a poster (it was a rotating cast… I was one of the few that was with it for so long)… said, “Yeah, I think I’m supposed to be wearing a sheet or something, right?” I replied… “*Actually*… I’d like to try something different…”
We got the hell away from that corner. I asked the performer to pick out a few of her/his own outfits… ones that they felt Sexy in. Not ones that other people said were sexy… but ones they FELT comfortable in and FELT Sexy in. (Big difference) Some women would come in black cocktail dresses, or a business-type outfit, or an artsy-kind of getup, or PJs, or even just jeans and a t-shirt. (Most of the guys came in jeans and a t-shirt… go figure.) But that’s what they felt sexy and comfortable in… (and I think “comfortable” is always sexier anyway). And some would come to my apartment, or I’d meet them elsewhere… anywhere but that damn blue corner. We tried different places, different outfits… different ideas. Now that we had more options… we came up with a lot more ideas for each shoot.
I quickly became very surprised at what I could get people to do when I had a camera. Having one guy stand in my shower, fully clothed, with water streaming all over him, soaking him and his clothes to the bone, and me snapping pictures… Again, I thought, “How the hell did THIS happen?”
And I really liked how the pictures came out. They looked sexier than the ones before… and they even had more clothing than the sheet. (Funny how that works, huh?) When the final picture was selected and the poster made up… it was shown to the director. Who loved it. Finally! I was away from the white sheet and that blue corner… and allowed to do whatever I want.
Plus, I started getting a little money. I started asking for about $5- $10 to help cover the cost of making the posters (really for the ink and paper from the computer)… everyone gave me at least that with no problem… quite a few actually gave me more. One women handed me $50… and when I told her I didn’t have change, she said, “I didn’t ask for change.” (That helped with groceries that week)
Wow… I was technically getting paid for making sexy pictures of people... with my low-end crappy 1.3 Mega-pixel camera. (As the technology got better and cheaper, the more adjectives I added to describe that thing.) Kick ass.
One night, after a show… a guy not much older than me had seen the show, and asked me, “Hey, who took the pictures of the posters that are outside?” (I signed them all… “Photo by Victor Riley”, adding to the history of not using my real name.) I told them, “Actually… it was me. The name on there is a pen name.” Then, this guy told me about a project he was doing… he had made an adult board game version of “Spin the Bottle”… with drinking rules and everything. He had a prototype, and needed some photos taken for the website and promotional stuff… he asked me if I was interested.
I had to tell him… “Uh… just so you know… I’m NOT a professional in the least. And the camera is NOT a high-quality camera. It’s just this little crappy thing that’s getting us by.” (I believe in letting people know exactly what they’re getting.)
He said, “Well, you bring your crappy little camera… and make some money.”
About 2 weeks later, I was in this guy’s apartment… with 2 attractive young women he hired for models… taking playful/suggestive/sexy pictures of them next to and playing with this adult-themed board game.
When the guy’s business partner was standing next to me, looking into the camera’s viewscreen with me… and whispering to himself, “Oh Baby…yes yes yes…” Admittedly, I was a little creeped out… and once again said to myself, “How the hell did THIS happen?”
Only in freaking L.A.
But apparently, I was good at making people look sexy. Even fully clothed. I think me doing all this with the other actors inspired my girlfriend-at-the-time to suggest that we “take some pictures” of our own. You’re not getting details… that’s a little *too* personal… but suffice to say , these were not going to be seen on any poster to advertise the show. I did make an effort to make them look more artistic rather than pornographic… and I thought we did that nicely. I even experimented with shadows and silhouettes… and suffice to say (again), we had fun. When we broke up… I looked at the CD we had the pictures on, the only copies of them, and gave them to her. I figured they were taken in a state of trust in our relationship. Now that it was over, the only way to honor that trust was if SHE had the only copies of the pictures. I don’t know if she realized I was giving her the sole copies… but that’s what I did.
(I did tell some friends later that I actually kept another copy of them… but I really didn’t. I said that to try and make myself feel better, like I still had some kind of advantage or something. Going further will get into a subject I don’t care to devote time to anymore. Anyway… yeah, I’m a lying liar who lies.)
I did actually get some requests from friends… ones who weren’t connected to that monologue show… “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you… could you take some pictures like that of *me*?” (They were implying the “fully-clothed-sexy” ones of the show posters, not like the private ones that they didn’t know about.) I did mentally kick around ideas of some things I’d have liked to have done, picture-wise… but I never did get around to shooting photos for any of them. But it was a nice compliment that they thought I’d do good at making them look sexy.
When I got back to the East Coast… my brother gave me his old digital camera. It was only a few years old… is about 5 mega-pixels, has a great lens… and is a MUCH higher quality that my little 1.3. Looking at it… if I had THIS camera in L.A… I would have felt more confident about actually pursuing more paying options with it. At the time he got it (he won it from work), it was worth over $1,000. Nowadays, there are more powerful cameras that are cheaper… but it’s still a very nice camera.
Most of my pictures these days are of the “candid” variety… (because I love putting those word balloons in)… or more landscape-type pictures. I’m a sucker for good scenery. My new letterboxing hobby helps me with that. I take pictures of the different places I go and hikes I do, and put them in my logbook. It keeps me snapping pictures, and makes my logbook more interesting to look at.
That’s my photo career as it is today. Back to being a nice hobby rather than a pseudo part-time (not even “part”… more like “fraction-time and low-paying-but-interesting”) career.
But you know… while I’m usually behind the camera, rather than in front of it… that does me just fine. Because picture composition is pretty interesting to me… and whether I’m taking photos of models or scenery, I have fun with it. Who knows… maybe in the future, I’ll once again be put into a photographic situation where I’m saying:
“How the hell did THIS happen?”
Cause at the very least… it’ll be a lot of fun.
My only experience with taking photos was earlier failed attempts with a “regular” camera, using actual film. Rarely did those pictures even come out... at all. It was pretty frustrating to take a few rolls worth of pictures, send them in for developing, spending 5 bucks or more per roll, waiting a few days for developing, making a trip to the store to pick them up… only to find that just about all of them were too dark, too fuzzy… and totally incomprehensible. When I figured I’d be in events or situations that I wanted to take pictures, I bought a few disposable cameras, and hoped for the best.
So, I was pretty happy to get a digital. You can see right away how the pictures come out, and if they suck… you can instantly delete. Plus, they hold a LOT more than regular cameras, and no film to change. If I wanted a hard copy… you can even get prints of them at the store. (And eventually, even print them out myself) In the long run… they would be a lot cheaper… so, on a practical level alone, it seemed worth it.
Wanting to get my money’s worth, I carried it around a lot. Just threw it in my bag, and if a sudden Kodak moment showed up, I’d be ready… (even though it wasn’t a Kodak). People noticed I had it… and for some reason, everyone assumed I knew how to USE it. Not many people had digital cameras (it was still in its relative infancy in the market), and since I was in the Theatre Department… I got requests. Some of the directors doing the small tiny one-act plays were asking me if I could take pictures of their shows, so they could have them for their own portfolios. Or if the Film Majors needed a photographic prop for their film, they came to me. These were all people I liked, so naturally, I’m going to accommodate and help them however I can. So I found myself, several times, being the “show photographer”… sometimes even listed in the program as such. (I considered it an unnecessary credit… but they wanted to put me in there.) When I actually found myself taking archive photos of the large-scale, highly-funded official Department Musical… I looked at my tiny, low-end 1.3 Mega-pixel camera and thought, “How the hell did THIS happen?”
But everyone seemed to like the photos I took. Granted, I knew nothing about lighting, or shutter speed or anything that “real” photographers use to get the “perfect picture”… but hey, if the customer is happy, right? And it’s not like I didn’t learn anything. I did figure some things out… like the darker the room, the brighter the picture would end up being. (The shutter has to stay open longer to absorb the little available light… and usually absorbs too much, hence… brighter picture.) Plus, my camera did have a neat feature… panoramic pictures. Not *real* panoramic pictures… but rather it would take up to 5 photos and stitch them together, so you had to make sure you lined them up right from shot to shot. It was neat to take a picture of someone, have them move a few feet to the side, take another picture… and stitch them together so there’s two of the same person in the same picture.
Plus, once I got the pictures onto my computer, I could play with them even more. I guess the word would be “photoshopping”… but I never actually had Adobe Photoshop. Rather I had the really cheap program that came with the camera… but I got by nicely. My favorite thing was (and still is) to add captions or “word bubbles” above people… mainly to give myself a laugh (and I think occasionally other people find it so). That’s why I love the “candid shots” more then the “oh-there’s-a-camera-let’s-pose shots”. There are more possibilities with the split-second looks on people’s faces which can be drastically misinterpreted from the original context. (That cracks me up)
Once Grad School ended, I figured that was the end of my Photo career. I had no training, very little knowledge… and the camera is not the kind of Pro equipment one would need. Honestly… my heart was not broken. It was such a small part of my life… a minor hobby, really… that I barely thought of it.
Then, when I was living down in Los Angeles, I got involved in a weekly ongoing monologue show. The subject of all the monologues were sex and relationships… so it was considered an “adult-content-show” even though there was no nudity or anything like that. Now, all the actors were supposed to have their own poster… in a town full of actors, everyone wants to promote themselves… it made sense to have it like that. So after my first night of performing, the director mentioned that we needed our own posters, and she would call the photographer that did the last batch… and I noticed she didn’t seem too happy to pay the guy again for more pics. Well… I saw the last batch of posters… I didn’t think they were that great, frankly. Not to be elitist or judgmental… but for a show talking about sex, the posters weren’t very sexy.
I raised my hand. “You know… I have a digital camera. I know it’s not much, but if you’d like… I’ll take the pictures. No need to pay some guy for it.” I mean, this was a no-budget off-off-off-off-off-off-off-broadway theatre show… let’s pinch pennies where we can. I had no problem helping to promote a show I was a part of. (Call it a vested interest) She emphatically took me up on it. This way, I could make appointments with each person individually, take as much time as we want (so you’re not shuffling people one after another just to get the job done and over with in one sitting), I’ll put the text on at home on my computer… e-mail the finished product to the individual… they can print it out and make as many copies as they want… voila. Cheap show posters.
When I got together with each person… I gave each person the exact same spiel:
“Okay… just so you know: I’m NOT a professional photographer. I’m just ‘the guy with the camera.’ I have no interest in asking you to do anything you’re not comfortable with… frankly, I’m making this up as I go. So, if you have ANY ideas about what YOU want for YOUR poster… please, let me know. Cause I need the help.”
Everyone seemed to respond favorably to that. Some of the women that didn’t know me from Adam had brought along their large, karate-expert boyfriends because they didn’t want some “creep asking them to take their pants off”. They would later tell me that they thought I was a total sweetheart, and thanked me for being so respectful. Some even said they considered me more professional than most photographers they worked with. And everyone was happy with their posters.
(And yes, there is a poster of me… half-naked with a white sheet draped over my shoulder. One of the actresses took the picture for me. No, you can’t see it.)
No, I never asked them to take their pants off… though some did it anyway. (Only in L.A…) Since we only had to “imply” nudity under the sheet… that did give some leeway. Plus, when I looked at the “last batch” by the guy who got paid for it… they were all from the same level and angle. Almost like he just set up a tripod and lined people up, took one picture and moved onto the next.
I tried to give a little variety. I tried from lower angles, higher angles… tilting the camera a bit. Played around with them sitting or standing… anything but the same angle and level… all the while trying to leave room on the side for the titles and show info to go on. I didn’t want any words or info overlapping the actor… I figured that would be bad. They’re not the background of the picture… they ARE the picture.
After I took all the pictures, I went home, chose maybe 10 of what I thought were the best ones, e-mailed them to the performer, who would make the final decision. (Like I said… it was THEIR poster, so they should have that right.) Then I make the final poster, and when I saw them at the next show… I brought a burned CD with the finished poster and every picture I took of them. I know a lot of professional photographers actually claim legal “ownership” of the pictures they take… but what the hell was I gonna do with them? I think the subject of the photo has every right to know and control where that picture is seen. Sure, I kept copies for my archives… but they never have, nor ever will be released to be used by anyone else.
Like I said, people were happy with the photos and posters… which was a nice compliment for me, I thought. But I was getting bored… with the SAME corner inside of the SAME building, and everyone wearing the SAME white sheet. There’s only so much variety I can get with that situation. So, without telling the director… the next person that joined the show and needed a poster (it was a rotating cast… I was one of the few that was with it for so long)… said, “Yeah, I think I’m supposed to be wearing a sheet or something, right?” I replied… “*Actually*… I’d like to try something different…”
We got the hell away from that corner. I asked the performer to pick out a few of her/his own outfits… ones that they felt Sexy in. Not ones that other people said were sexy… but ones they FELT comfortable in and FELT Sexy in. (Big difference) Some women would come in black cocktail dresses, or a business-type outfit, or an artsy-kind of getup, or PJs, or even just jeans and a t-shirt. (Most of the guys came in jeans and a t-shirt… go figure.) But that’s what they felt sexy and comfortable in… (and I think “comfortable” is always sexier anyway). And some would come to my apartment, or I’d meet them elsewhere… anywhere but that damn blue corner. We tried different places, different outfits… different ideas. Now that we had more options… we came up with a lot more ideas for each shoot.
I quickly became very surprised at what I could get people to do when I had a camera. Having one guy stand in my shower, fully clothed, with water streaming all over him, soaking him and his clothes to the bone, and me snapping pictures… Again, I thought, “How the hell did THIS happen?”
And I really liked how the pictures came out. They looked sexier than the ones before… and they even had more clothing than the sheet. (Funny how that works, huh?) When the final picture was selected and the poster made up… it was shown to the director. Who loved it. Finally! I was away from the white sheet and that blue corner… and allowed to do whatever I want.
Plus, I started getting a little money. I started asking for about $5- $10 to help cover the cost of making the posters (really for the ink and paper from the computer)… everyone gave me at least that with no problem… quite a few actually gave me more. One women handed me $50… and when I told her I didn’t have change, she said, “I didn’t ask for change.” (That helped with groceries that week)
Wow… I was technically getting paid for making sexy pictures of people... with my low-end crappy 1.3 Mega-pixel camera. (As the technology got better and cheaper, the more adjectives I added to describe that thing.) Kick ass.
One night, after a show… a guy not much older than me had seen the show, and asked me, “Hey, who took the pictures of the posters that are outside?” (I signed them all… “Photo by Victor Riley”, adding to the history of not using my real name.) I told them, “Actually… it was me. The name on there is a pen name.” Then, this guy told me about a project he was doing… he had made an adult board game version of “Spin the Bottle”… with drinking rules and everything. He had a prototype, and needed some photos taken for the website and promotional stuff… he asked me if I was interested.
I had to tell him… “Uh… just so you know… I’m NOT a professional in the least. And the camera is NOT a high-quality camera. It’s just this little crappy thing that’s getting us by.” (I believe in letting people know exactly what they’re getting.)
He said, “Well, you bring your crappy little camera… and make some money.”
About 2 weeks later, I was in this guy’s apartment… with 2 attractive young women he hired for models… taking playful/suggestive/sexy pictures of them next to and playing with this adult-themed board game.
When the guy’s business partner was standing next to me, looking into the camera’s viewscreen with me… and whispering to himself, “Oh Baby…yes yes yes…” Admittedly, I was a little creeped out… and once again said to myself, “How the hell did THIS happen?”
Only in freaking L.A.
But apparently, I was good at making people look sexy. Even fully clothed. I think me doing all this with the other actors inspired my girlfriend-at-the-time to suggest that we “take some pictures” of our own. You’re not getting details… that’s a little *too* personal… but suffice to say , these were not going to be seen on any poster to advertise the show. I did make an effort to make them look more artistic rather than pornographic… and I thought we did that nicely. I even experimented with shadows and silhouettes… and suffice to say (again), we had fun. When we broke up… I looked at the CD we had the pictures on, the only copies of them, and gave them to her. I figured they were taken in a state of trust in our relationship. Now that it was over, the only way to honor that trust was if SHE had the only copies of the pictures. I don’t know if she realized I was giving her the sole copies… but that’s what I did.
(I did tell some friends later that I actually kept another copy of them… but I really didn’t. I said that to try and make myself feel better, like I still had some kind of advantage or something. Going further will get into a subject I don’t care to devote time to anymore. Anyway… yeah, I’m a lying liar who lies.)
I did actually get some requests from friends… ones who weren’t connected to that monologue show… “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you… could you take some pictures like that of *me*?” (They were implying the “fully-clothed-sexy” ones of the show posters, not like the private ones that they didn’t know about.) I did mentally kick around ideas of some things I’d have liked to have done, picture-wise… but I never did get around to shooting photos for any of them. But it was a nice compliment that they thought I’d do good at making them look sexy.
When I got back to the East Coast… my brother gave me his old digital camera. It was only a few years old… is about 5 mega-pixels, has a great lens… and is a MUCH higher quality that my little 1.3. Looking at it… if I had THIS camera in L.A… I would have felt more confident about actually pursuing more paying options with it. At the time he got it (he won it from work), it was worth over $1,000. Nowadays, there are more powerful cameras that are cheaper… but it’s still a very nice camera.
Most of my pictures these days are of the “candid” variety… (because I love putting those word balloons in)… or more landscape-type pictures. I’m a sucker for good scenery. My new letterboxing hobby helps me with that. I take pictures of the different places I go and hikes I do, and put them in my logbook. It keeps me snapping pictures, and makes my logbook more interesting to look at.
That’s my photo career as it is today. Back to being a nice hobby rather than a pseudo part-time (not even “part”… more like “fraction-time and low-paying-but-interesting”) career.
But you know… while I’m usually behind the camera, rather than in front of it… that does me just fine. Because picture composition is pretty interesting to me… and whether I’m taking photos of models or scenery, I have fun with it. Who knows… maybe in the future, I’ll once again be put into a photographic situation where I’m saying:
“How the hell did THIS happen?”
Cause at the very least… it’ll be a lot of fun.
8.08.2008
Mother-$@#%&!!
Alright…you may have seen the “NC-17” rating at the bottom of this page. That’s not an official government-slapped certification… just a silly little “find what your website is rated” kind of thing. Someone made a program that does it for you, and it’s solely meant for entertainment value. And even though I don’t think I get too nasty or controversial on this blog… the program gave me “NC-17” because of the occurrence of certain words… most of them stemming from my very first post… which was about a movie-premiere party for a Light-Bondage and Discipline Porn Film. So, I wasn’t getting violent or writing anything blatantly and purposefully offensive… I was just peripherally talking about Sex. (Go figure)
Well… today, let’s EARN that NC-17 rating! And talk about some Mother-Fuckin swear words! Huzzah!
Now, I can’t say I particularly *like* cussing… nor can I say I hate it.
Actually, my views on it are probably a little contradictory.
On one hand, I see the point of view of them being “bad words”… and in the interest of manners, civilization and appropriateness… I can see why some wouldn’t want them to be said. In fact, sometimes I have to watch myself to make sure I don’t say any “bad words” around kids.
Which of course, then begs the question… what makes them bad? For instance…. Shit, Poo, Doo-Doo and Crap are all talking about the exact same thing. All synonyms of the same noun… and when using it as a metaphor, they can be interchanged there as well. So what makes one phonetic formation worse or more offensive than the other? What exactly is so offensive about “Doo-Doo”? (Wait… is that the one? Or is it Poo?)
Which leads me to the other hand… my “Fan of Lenny Bruce” hand. He used a lot of naughty words in his stand-up act… because he felt they were only words. If certain words were offensive or had any kind of “power” to them, it was because we gave it to them. As Saint Lenny himself said:
“It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.”
So… to battle this idea… he used them. A lot! He was actually thrown in jail numerous times for violations of “indecency laws”. Later on, his entire act would be just reading the transcripts of his Indecency Trials… trying to point out how hilarious the whole situation is… because they’re only words.
One of the first bits of his that I ever read about involved using pretty much every racial slur imaginable inside of 45 seconds. He would go on to say:
"Now why have I done this? Is it only for shock value? Well, if all the niggers started calling each other nigger, not only among themselves, which they do anyway, but among others. If President Kennedy got on television and said: 'I'm considering appointing two or three of the top niggers in the country to my cabinet' -- if it was nothing but nigger, nigger, nigger -- in six months nigger wouldn't mean any more than good night, god bless you... -- when that beautiful day comes, you'll never see another nigger kid come home from school crying because some motherfucker called him a nigger."
Holy crap… shock comedy with an actual POINT! I think that *would* be a beautiful day… but we’re not there yet… and he was talking about this in the early 60s. (It’s probably worth noting that I’m *only* comfortable writing or saying the N-word when I’m quoting Lenny Bruce.)
It’s there… they’re just words, and we have “Freedom of Speech” in this country… so go nuts. What’s the big deal?
That’s when I think that personal tastes come into it… because I actually try to watch my OWN language, (even as a Lenny Bruce fan). I wholeheartedly agree that a lot of words need to be stripped of their power… but to let a *few* of them retain some power and strength to them… isn’t entirely a bad thing.
Take “Fuck” for instance.
There was a guy in High School… looked like he was straight out the 70’s. He had a poofy kind of mullet, always wore jeans, a heavy-metal t-shirt, a brown leather jacket… I think he fancied himself some kind of “rebel without a care”. And he used the F-bomb, literally, as every other word in a sentence.
“What the fuck is this fuckin shit? I fuckin, don’t fuckin care about the fuckin homework. Fuckin, why the fuck do I fuckin gotta do this fuckin stupid fuckin thing?”
It literally took him twice the time to say anything, because he was adding so many “fucks”. Wow… I’ve never heard a swear word mean LESS coming from anyone else. Now, I highly doubt he had the wherewithal to be pulling a “Lenny Bruce” here… no, he didn’t have a social message he was trying to impart… he just thought he was “playing by his own rules”. (I think he actually sounded more like an idiot.)
I’m sure we’ve all seen the chain e-mails and gags that illustrate the variety of uses for that word… it can be a noun, adjective, a title, a qualifier… pretty much anything you need it for. Because it CAN be used in so many ways… it’s important that you’re careful not to overuse it. Think of “Fuck” like Spider-Man… “with great power, comes great responsibility.”
So I say be careful where you use it… because it’s such a great word.
Especially when an attractive member of your preferred sex is using it as a verb, in a request involving you and saying it with a particular look in their eye. But I digress…
I remember when I was a Senior in High School… walking down the hall with a few acquaintances of mine. And in our conversation, I swore. I don’t remember if I was angry about something (I don’t think so) or what… or even what I said, but I used a swear word. One of the ones I was walking with was a young lady and was suddenly a bit shocked, saying, “I don’t think I ever heard you swear before!”
Well… I *had* sworn before… but I think I realized that I didn’t really do it that often (at least in public). Hence the shock when I did.
A few years later, I went through a period when I swore a lot more often… don’t know why, I just did. After one particular instance of interspersing several curse words, a friend of mine actually paused and studied me for a second… then saying, “Nah, swearing doesn’t work for you.”
I think it doesn’t necessarily “work” for me… because I’ve always looked younger than I was. It was like hearing a young kid, or a toddler, say “Motherfucker”. Shocking yes… but also freaking funny as hell, so you can’t take it seriously. So, me looking more “innocent” and young… the extreme swearing just didn’t “feel” right when hearing it from me. Nowadays, even if I look younger than I am… that younger-looking age is old enough that hearing swears and cusses from me sounds a little more normal.
Still… I do like to be careful of my language. Being a writer, I like to consider myself as having a decent-sized vocabulary… (and find it a point of pride that I’ve been able to use the word “Machiavellian” in a normal conversation) and I think its more interesting to not have to rely on the same old words time after time. Which makes it give the words a little more punch when a well-placed “bitch” or “fuck” is thrown in.
Course, there are some swears that don’t have a lot of meaning to me, so they’ll be thrown in willy-nilly to a conversation, and it just feels like saying a preposition or any other word. Like “hell”, “ass”, “damn”… whatever. Those are no big deal.
Now “Jesus”… is a special case. You may notice in this blog, that I don’t use it. Rather, I use “Jeebus”. Now, I don’t consider it “taking the Lord’s name in vain”… because I don’t think I’m using it in vanity, nor am I even a religious person. So… it honestly doesn’t really mean anything to me… not in a positive or negative way. I don’t use it that way… NOT because I’m afraid of offending people… but rather, I say “Jeebus” (of which that pronunciation comes from The Simpsons) solely because I find it funny. That’s it.
There ARE some words that I don’t use at all. The aforementioned “N-word”… because it is still MAJORLY taboo. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if that word simply went away… and NOONE used it at all. (It’s hypocritical to say that one group can use it, and another can’t. Even if that one group is using it to “take away its power”… the fact that you won’t let other groups use it is only FEEDING it that power.) The word is associated with so much hate… that it would be better to just erase it from everyone’s brain. And in 100 years, if the word is rediscovered, the context will be completely lost to history and won’t make any sense to those finding it. They’ll say, “Who cares?”… and then it will truly be finished.
I also don’t use the “C-word”… and I’m not sure why I think it’s on that level of “that bad”. Maybe it’s the hard consonant sounds at the beginning and end of the word… makes it sound harsh and uber-insulting. But it’s a female body part… that’s it. We have no problem using the synonyms… especially in the heat of the moment when that type of language is appropriate, and even encouraged from your loved one. Even amongst many people that advocate swearing and freedom of speech… the C-Word is still seen as ultra-taboo and very few seem to want to even touch it.
But the first time I ever saw The Vagina Monologues… a friend of mine was performing the piece entitled, “Reclaiming C*nt”. And… Holy Crap… she made that word sound SOOOO freaking Sexy. Wow! And the point of the piece was really to take away that negative power to it… and in the context of that monologue, it totally works. (Not to mention that my friend totally nailed it... it was awesome!) Unfortunately, outside of that… it’s still a harsh, unforgiving word. That is one I’d like to see have its power taken away. Not so that *I* can say it… I have no desire for that… but rather because no part of the human body (especially a woman’s) should be presented as a negative.
Which reminds me of another Lenny Bruce quote:
“If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer.”
Yeah, it really does all come back to Saint Lenny. (His autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People is great… one of the extremely few biographies I ever had an interest in reading.)
I’m actually going to make a recommendation here… if you’re interested in learning more about cussing and some different viewpoints on the social implications… the show Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!... has an episode all about the subject of profanity. Very much worth watching… entertaining and even a bit educational.
There. Don’t ever say I don’t promote education.
I’ll end off with another quote… this time from the late, great George Carlin. A very poignant moment from one of his most famous routines:
7.25.2008
Talk Nerdy to Me
As you may know… I’m a proud Geek.
(I’ve also been told, in a loving fashion, I’m a Nerd. And I’ve also heard that I’m “a Dork… but in a good way!”)
That wasn’t always used as a badge of honor, though. When you’re young, awkward, and just wanting to be liked… and people are saying it with a sneer in their voice and a condescending look in their eye… you’d prefer to be anything BUT a Geek. Because then it sounds synonymous with Outcast, Aberration, Unliked, Unwanted, “Oh-My-God-Just-Go-Away-You-Pathetic-Piece-of-Nothing”, and so much else.
It’s hard to comprehend exactly WHY that is. Being a Geek is a trait connected to the attribute of Intelligence… and we are really the only species on this planet that actually *uses* our Intelligence to the degree we can. Our brains are larger, more defined than other animals… we have short-term and long-term memories, we can use reason and logic, we have a sense of morality… and it’s because of our brains and those functions, that enable us to live and adapt to almost ANY environment that we can encounter. As such, we are not slaves to Mother Nature, and can actually exist despite some of her harsher efforts.
It is an incredible achievement of Evolution, God, Fate, Luck, Buddha, or whatever you believe in… that we *can actually BE a Geek*. (Whoever is responsible… they done good!)
So, it’s odd that amazing achievement singles out some people over others… and not in a good way.
Don’t forget or ignore the fact that every human being on this planet can (and does) find pleasure solely in the acquisition of new knowledge.
That’s right… *everyone* has fun with facts. It’s obvious that when you meet someone that really likes Science Fiction or Film History… they’re going to know a lot about it. They’ll probably have a few hundred facts that you won’t give a damn about.
But exactly how different is it from the tough, jersey-wearing sports fan that knows all the names of all the players on his favorite football team? (Even the 4th stringers!) Or who’s leading the league in touchdown passes… or knows about all the college players that are up for the annual draft… AND has opinions on how they’ll adjust to the big leagues? Guess what? They got themselves a bunch of facts, numbers and statistics that the majority of the world doesn’t give a flying freeball about.
Or what about the person that spouts off memorized book and passage numbers from the Bible?
Or the Golf enthusiast who knows par for every hole and every course that Tiger Woods is playing on?
Or the guy that knows the name of every Playboy Playmate of every month from 1983 to today? (Actually… that one’s kinda creepy)
Or the tough-talking, tattooed grease-monkey mechanic that “knows everything about engines and cars”?
Or the gal that knows all the plotlines and episodes of Friends?
Are we allowed to get in a group and point at them, yelling:
“NNNNNEEEEEERRRRRRDDDDDD!!!!!!!!”?
What makes some subjects more “socially acceptable” than others? In America, someone who’s a fan of Doctor Who is considered a Nerd and a Geek, and maybe a bit shunned for being “weird”. Yet in several other countries around the world… the show (old version and new) is wildly popular. I hear Steven Spielberg himself, arguably the greatest filmmaker of the last 35 years, is a fan of Doctor Who. Would you call him a Nerd to his face? Or does the fact that he can buy and sell you 900 times over give him some leeway? Hell, I’ve seen intelligent, incredibly Hot women tell me how hooked they are on World of Warcraft.
We’re all Geeks. It just depends on exactly what you’re a Geek about. There is a subject that you know a lot about, that other people don’t (and don’t even care about)… but you derive a lot of pleasure from it. Doesn’t matter what it is… but that’s what you’re a Geek about. Even if your knowledge in it is limited… the pursuit of that activity/show/subject is enough to get your Geek on. I say… Embrace it. It’s healthy… it gives us an escape… a pleasurable option in life to relax within.
Me… I’ve got plenty of Geek to go around.
The aforementioned Doctor Who… I’m a fan. I watched the old series a little as a kid, but I was given a more thorough introduction in college… and I find it immensely fun. My favorite of “The Doctors” is Tom Baker… he had the big curly hair and the 13-foot long scarf. Sure, the acting wasn’t the best… but they were earnest, and had fun. Yeah, the sets wobbled… but the whole show has a “charm” to it… that just makes it endlessly watchable to me.
As for the new series… some of the best writing and effects I have ever seen on television. It’s absolutely genius!
Star Wars… I’ve talked about before. Admittedly, my enthusiasm for it has dropped off a bit… because sadly, the story *didn’t* end with the 6th movie… No, George Lucas is continually beating a dead horse… insisting there’s still milk in that teat. Cripes on Toast, man… just let it die! But the originals are just so great…
Harry Potter… I didn’t get into it until after the fourth book came out… and just before the first movie. It was my Graduate advisor, of all people, insisting that I read them… and once I did… I was hooked. Those books are like crack! I read the first four straight in a row. I ordered the fifth book, got it when it came out… but didn’t read it for about a month or two. Sixth and seventh books… read them the days they came out. I revel in most any opportunity to talk about and dissect that story… and my favorite character is actually Neville Longbottom… I was so glad he got to shine in the last book! (It’s not that much… but enough. He kicked ass! Hells yeah!)
Horror… well, I’ve also talked about this before. It still applies… I love it, but most of it sucks.
Science Fiction… a lot like Horror… there’s a lot of crap out there. But when it’s good… it’s brilliant! (And there’s quite of bit of underrated stuff out there) What makes most of it crap… is that the stuff they call science fiction, *isn’t really* Science Fiction. I may have to do a whole post on this sometime.
Theatre… probably my first official Geek label. It was really the first thing I found that got me on my way to actually finding an identity for myself… and even so, I think I’m a bit of an anomalous freak amongst Theatre Folk. For one: A lot are touchy-feely, and say, “I’m in Theatre, I don’t have a personal bubble”… but I do. I’ve been told several times over the years that I’m “not a typical theatre person”… whether they meant it as a compliment or insult, I’m not always sure. And while I usually know what I’m talking about… as I’ve been studying it about half my life, and even taught it for awhile… there’s STILL a lot I don’t know. (Musicals for one… I’m not *that* learned in.)
Movies… while I attain that I’m not a “film buff”… I do know what I like, and like to see it often... and I have opinions on it. When I worked on the fringes of the industry, and trying to get into it… I did learn a lot, and was exposed to a lot of older movies and shows that I wasn’t previously aware of. And whenever I watch a movie or a new show… usually right after, I hop on IMDB or Wikipedia and look up any trivia or notes they have about it… just to find out more about it. Hmmm… maybe that *would* make me a film buff… I just think that’s a silly title.
Graphic Novels… This is kind of intersecting with movies, these days. Normally referred to as “comics”… but I think this is more accurate. I haven’t collected actual comic books in several years… I wait until they collect several issues together and throw them in a trade paperback, otherwise known as “graphic novels”. Sure, maybe it’s a little more expensive… but I get a complete story… with a beginning, middle and end. And there’s no chance of missing a middle part of the story, by having that chapter sell out before I can get to it. Plus, there are a lot of stories made FOR the graphic novel format… and there’s nothing “comic” about them. There are a lot of darker, more adult-style stories out there. Hell, anything written by Alan Moore I’m willing to read… he’s just that good of a writer. Same with Neil Gaiman, Kurt Busiek, and the Granddaddy master: Will Eisner (who is probably responsible for elevating the world of comics to Art).
But at the same time… every now and then, I like to kick back with an old Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge comic (written by Carl Barks… without him, there would never have been Ducktales). They’re just so much fun!
RPGs… Yep… Role-Playing Games. No, I don’t mean Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft. This is not computer or video games… this is the actual and original meaning of Role-Playing Games… where you actually play a role. You have dice and character sheets, and actually sit around with friends and interact and engage your imagination in ways that video games can’t. It’s more social than computer pixels… and more interesting to me. If you have a problem or an obstacle in a computer game, it can only be solved by doing one of the solutions that has been pre-programmed in by the developers… which is limited, no matter how many options they give you. In a real pen-and-paper RPG… the options are whatever you can imagine. The inventor of the obstacle may actually have no idea HOW you’d get past it… just wants to see you try. It’s basically Co-operative Improvisation Storytelling… and I’m surprised more people in the Theatre/Filmmaking world are not involved in it. (Though it is gaining some credibility these days… as filmmakers and actors like Jon Favreau, Wil Wheaton and Vin Diesel have all talked favorably about their past involvements with the hobby) I actually credit this hobby for having a significant impact on my personal writing and storytelling skills. Don’t knock it till you try it.
And no… I’m not a Satanist, I don’t know how to do Black Magic, nor do I think I’m a Vampire. Sheesh… And for the record, I’ve never gotten lost in Steam Tunnels. (Okay, I have… but NOT for purposes of gaming)
Board Games… Because you wouldn’t put Monopoly in the RPG category, that’s for sure. I have myself a nice collection of board games. Hell, I’ve got almost 10 different versions/variations of the game Clue (my all-time favorite classic board game). Plus several horror-themed ones (perfect to pull out around Halloween)… some collectible games… and still have several games that I’ve owned for awhile, but haven’t had the chance to play yet. Yeah… this probably is the hobby that takes up the most room in my house. Ooch!
And my newest hobby:
Letterboxing… it’s very simple and very cheap to do. Since discovering it a short ways back… I think it’s just the Bee’s Knees… and can’t believe it took me this long to discover it. It’s like Geocaching… only you don’t need a GPS. All you need is a rubber stamp (either buy one, or make your own for cheap), and a logbook. Then you go to this website (www.letterboxing.org), and look for “clues” in your area. You follow the instructions on the clues (they can be very direct or very cryptic… mostly they lead you through public parks and hiking trails), where you eventually find a small box… and inside is ANOTHER rubber stamp and another log book. You use *your* stamp on that logbook… use that stamp on *your* logbook, sign and date it with a little message… and put it all back for the next person to find.
It’s basically a treasure hunt! How cool is that? When I was first told about it… I was intrigued, because I never heard of it before. So, I got a little book… made up a crude rubber stamp… and grabbed a clue off the website… and went to see for myself.
It was right there… just where it said it would be. And this particular one had been there for months. It was so neat… and I couldn’t believe that something like that could be there, and not be vandalized or taken away. I got such a kick out of it… I felt like I was Five! I loved it!
I’ve even made my book a little more elaborate. All you’re really supposed to do is stamp your book, write where you found it, and move on. Me… I’ve been adding photos of the locations and hikes to mine. Making it into a little art project/collage-type-thing… and gets me back doing a little photography. Gives it kind of a “storybook” feel to it… is an easy reminder of the experiences of getting each one… and also makes it easier to illustrate to others what exactly the hell it is I’m doing on my weekends.
More than anything… it’s a great little excuse to go for a hike, and get a little exercise. I think that’s a wonderful byproduct of a “Geek Hobby”. Plus, I’m having fun… so bite me.
So… that’s my Geekness (or at least a good portion of it).
How about you?
What are YOU a Geek about?
(I’ve also been told, in a loving fashion, I’m a Nerd. And I’ve also heard that I’m “a Dork… but in a good way!”)
That wasn’t always used as a badge of honor, though. When you’re young, awkward, and just wanting to be liked… and people are saying it with a sneer in their voice and a condescending look in their eye… you’d prefer to be anything BUT a Geek. Because then it sounds synonymous with Outcast, Aberration, Unliked, Unwanted, “Oh-My-God-Just-Go-Away-You-Pathetic-Piece-of-Nothing”, and so much else.
It’s hard to comprehend exactly WHY that is. Being a Geek is a trait connected to the attribute of Intelligence… and we are really the only species on this planet that actually *uses* our Intelligence to the degree we can. Our brains are larger, more defined than other animals… we have short-term and long-term memories, we can use reason and logic, we have a sense of morality… and it’s because of our brains and those functions, that enable us to live and adapt to almost ANY environment that we can encounter. As such, we are not slaves to Mother Nature, and can actually exist despite some of her harsher efforts.
It is an incredible achievement of Evolution, God, Fate, Luck, Buddha, or whatever you believe in… that we *can actually BE a Geek*. (Whoever is responsible… they done good!)
So, it’s odd that amazing achievement singles out some people over others… and not in a good way.
Don’t forget or ignore the fact that every human being on this planet can (and does) find pleasure solely in the acquisition of new knowledge.
That’s right… *everyone* has fun with facts. It’s obvious that when you meet someone that really likes Science Fiction or Film History… they’re going to know a lot about it. They’ll probably have a few hundred facts that you won’t give a damn about.
But exactly how different is it from the tough, jersey-wearing sports fan that knows all the names of all the players on his favorite football team? (Even the 4th stringers!) Or who’s leading the league in touchdown passes… or knows about all the college players that are up for the annual draft… AND has opinions on how they’ll adjust to the big leagues? Guess what? They got themselves a bunch of facts, numbers and statistics that the majority of the world doesn’t give a flying freeball about.
Or what about the person that spouts off memorized book and passage numbers from the Bible?
Or the Golf enthusiast who knows par for every hole and every course that Tiger Woods is playing on?
Or the guy that knows the name of every Playboy Playmate of every month from 1983 to today? (Actually… that one’s kinda creepy)
Or the tough-talking, tattooed grease-monkey mechanic that “knows everything about engines and cars”?
Or the gal that knows all the plotlines and episodes of Friends?
Are we allowed to get in a group and point at them, yelling:
“NNNNNEEEEEERRRRRRDDDDDD!!!!!!!!”?
What makes some subjects more “socially acceptable” than others? In America, someone who’s a fan of Doctor Who is considered a Nerd and a Geek, and maybe a bit shunned for being “weird”. Yet in several other countries around the world… the show (old version and new) is wildly popular. I hear Steven Spielberg himself, arguably the greatest filmmaker of the last 35 years, is a fan of Doctor Who. Would you call him a Nerd to his face? Or does the fact that he can buy and sell you 900 times over give him some leeway? Hell, I’ve seen intelligent, incredibly Hot women tell me how hooked they are on World of Warcraft.
We’re all Geeks. It just depends on exactly what you’re a Geek about. There is a subject that you know a lot about, that other people don’t (and don’t even care about)… but you derive a lot of pleasure from it. Doesn’t matter what it is… but that’s what you’re a Geek about. Even if your knowledge in it is limited… the pursuit of that activity/show/subject is enough to get your Geek on. I say… Embrace it. It’s healthy… it gives us an escape… a pleasurable option in life to relax within.
Me… I’ve got plenty of Geek to go around.
The aforementioned Doctor Who… I’m a fan. I watched the old series a little as a kid, but I was given a more thorough introduction in college… and I find it immensely fun. My favorite of “The Doctors” is Tom Baker… he had the big curly hair and the 13-foot long scarf. Sure, the acting wasn’t the best… but they were earnest, and had fun. Yeah, the sets wobbled… but the whole show has a “charm” to it… that just makes it endlessly watchable to me.
As for the new series… some of the best writing and effects I have ever seen on television. It’s absolutely genius!
Star Wars… I’ve talked about before. Admittedly, my enthusiasm for it has dropped off a bit… because sadly, the story *didn’t* end with the 6th movie… No, George Lucas is continually beating a dead horse… insisting there’s still milk in that teat. Cripes on Toast, man… just let it die! But the originals are just so great…
Harry Potter… I didn’t get into it until after the fourth book came out… and just before the first movie. It was my Graduate advisor, of all people, insisting that I read them… and once I did… I was hooked. Those books are like crack! I read the first four straight in a row. I ordered the fifth book, got it when it came out… but didn’t read it for about a month or two. Sixth and seventh books… read them the days they came out. I revel in most any opportunity to talk about and dissect that story… and my favorite character is actually Neville Longbottom… I was so glad he got to shine in the last book! (It’s not that much… but enough. He kicked ass! Hells yeah!)
Horror… well, I’ve also talked about this before. It still applies… I love it, but most of it sucks.
Science Fiction… a lot like Horror… there’s a lot of crap out there. But when it’s good… it’s brilliant! (And there’s quite of bit of underrated stuff out there) What makes most of it crap… is that the stuff they call science fiction, *isn’t really* Science Fiction. I may have to do a whole post on this sometime.
Theatre… probably my first official Geek label. It was really the first thing I found that got me on my way to actually finding an identity for myself… and even so, I think I’m a bit of an anomalous freak amongst Theatre Folk. For one: A lot are touchy-feely, and say, “I’m in Theatre, I don’t have a personal bubble”… but I do. I’ve been told several times over the years that I’m “not a typical theatre person”… whether they meant it as a compliment or insult, I’m not always sure. And while I usually know what I’m talking about… as I’ve been studying it about half my life, and even taught it for awhile… there’s STILL a lot I don’t know. (Musicals for one… I’m not *that* learned in.)
Movies… while I attain that I’m not a “film buff”… I do know what I like, and like to see it often... and I have opinions on it. When I worked on the fringes of the industry, and trying to get into it… I did learn a lot, and was exposed to a lot of older movies and shows that I wasn’t previously aware of. And whenever I watch a movie or a new show… usually right after, I hop on IMDB or Wikipedia and look up any trivia or notes they have about it… just to find out more about it. Hmmm… maybe that *would* make me a film buff… I just think that’s a silly title.
Graphic Novels… This is kind of intersecting with movies, these days. Normally referred to as “comics”… but I think this is more accurate. I haven’t collected actual comic books in several years… I wait until they collect several issues together and throw them in a trade paperback, otherwise known as “graphic novels”. Sure, maybe it’s a little more expensive… but I get a complete story… with a beginning, middle and end. And there’s no chance of missing a middle part of the story, by having that chapter sell out before I can get to it. Plus, there are a lot of stories made FOR the graphic novel format… and there’s nothing “comic” about them. There are a lot of darker, more adult-style stories out there. Hell, anything written by Alan Moore I’m willing to read… he’s just that good of a writer. Same with Neil Gaiman, Kurt Busiek, and the Granddaddy master: Will Eisner (who is probably responsible for elevating the world of comics to Art).
But at the same time… every now and then, I like to kick back with an old Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge comic (written by Carl Barks… without him, there would never have been Ducktales). They’re just so much fun!
RPGs… Yep… Role-Playing Games. No, I don’t mean Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft. This is not computer or video games… this is the actual and original meaning of Role-Playing Games… where you actually play a role. You have dice and character sheets, and actually sit around with friends and interact and engage your imagination in ways that video games can’t. It’s more social than computer pixels… and more interesting to me. If you have a problem or an obstacle in a computer game, it can only be solved by doing one of the solutions that has been pre-programmed in by the developers… which is limited, no matter how many options they give you. In a real pen-and-paper RPG… the options are whatever you can imagine. The inventor of the obstacle may actually have no idea HOW you’d get past it… just wants to see you try. It’s basically Co-operative Improvisation Storytelling… and I’m surprised more people in the Theatre/Filmmaking world are not involved in it. (Though it is gaining some credibility these days… as filmmakers and actors like Jon Favreau, Wil Wheaton and Vin Diesel have all talked favorably about their past involvements with the hobby) I actually credit this hobby for having a significant impact on my personal writing and storytelling skills. Don’t knock it till you try it.
And no… I’m not a Satanist, I don’t know how to do Black Magic, nor do I think I’m a Vampire. Sheesh… And for the record, I’ve never gotten lost in Steam Tunnels. (Okay, I have… but NOT for purposes of gaming)
Board Games… Because you wouldn’t put Monopoly in the RPG category, that’s for sure. I have myself a nice collection of board games. Hell, I’ve got almost 10 different versions/variations of the game Clue (my all-time favorite classic board game). Plus several horror-themed ones (perfect to pull out around Halloween)… some collectible games… and still have several games that I’ve owned for awhile, but haven’t had the chance to play yet. Yeah… this probably is the hobby that takes up the most room in my house. Ooch!
And my newest hobby:
Letterboxing… it’s very simple and very cheap to do. Since discovering it a short ways back… I think it’s just the Bee’s Knees… and can’t believe it took me this long to discover it. It’s like Geocaching… only you don’t need a GPS. All you need is a rubber stamp (either buy one, or make your own for cheap), and a logbook. Then you go to this website (www.letterboxing.org), and look for “clues” in your area. You follow the instructions on the clues (they can be very direct or very cryptic… mostly they lead you through public parks and hiking trails), where you eventually find a small box… and inside is ANOTHER rubber stamp and another log book. You use *your* stamp on that logbook… use that stamp on *your* logbook, sign and date it with a little message… and put it all back for the next person to find.
It’s basically a treasure hunt! How cool is that? When I was first told about it… I was intrigued, because I never heard of it before. So, I got a little book… made up a crude rubber stamp… and grabbed a clue off the website… and went to see for myself.
It was right there… just where it said it would be. And this particular one had been there for months. It was so neat… and I couldn’t believe that something like that could be there, and not be vandalized or taken away. I got such a kick out of it… I felt like I was Five! I loved it!
I’ve even made my book a little more elaborate. All you’re really supposed to do is stamp your book, write where you found it, and move on. Me… I’ve been adding photos of the locations and hikes to mine. Making it into a little art project/collage-type-thing… and gets me back doing a little photography. Gives it kind of a “storybook” feel to it… is an easy reminder of the experiences of getting each one… and also makes it easier to illustrate to others what exactly the hell it is I’m doing on my weekends.
More than anything… it’s a great little excuse to go for a hike, and get a little exercise. I think that’s a wonderful byproduct of a “Geek Hobby”. Plus, I’m having fun… so bite me.
So… that’s my Geekness (or at least a good portion of it).
How about you?
What are YOU a Geek about?
10.16.2007
Harder than I thought...
Last Friday, I picked up the book “A Lifetime of Secrets”, a collection from the website PostSecret (http://www.postsecret.com/). This website has been a favorite of mine for a long time… you just anonymously send in a postcard with a secret or confession on it, made up to be a little “art project”. You can simply just write on it… or be as creative and complex as you want. A small bunch are selected (out of the thousands received) and are posted on the website… a new batch every week.
I quickly got addicted. It is simultaneously funny, touching, sad, thoughtful, depressing, inspiring, hopeful and haunting. I know many might think, “Why would you tell a complete stranger a secret of yours that you wouldn’t tell anyone else?”… but personally, I have no trouble comprehending that. For one, it’s completely anonymous… you don’t put a return address… there’s no way to track down who made what card, so you don’t know whose secret is whose. Two, sometimes we don’t like to keep secrets, but have to (or feel we have to) anyway. This is a safe way to finally get it out of you, and maybe step away from it. Plus, there’s an extra bonus. There have been several times where I personally identified with the “secret” that I saw… on one particular week, there were at least 3 secrets that I felt I could have written myself… like someone ELSE was telling my secret for me… and it was kinda liberating, because it felt like I wasn’t alone on that subject.
Face it, not many people like to truly feel like a freak… we just want to know that we’re *normal* healthy people. Capable and worthy of loving and being loved. But there are so many people that inwardly feel like they’re NOT. Maybe we compensate with attitude, or a tough demeanor, or a belligerent tone… or any of 1,000 other ways. And EVERYONE has something they just don’t bother talking about… a past event, a future hope, a thought process… something. And maybe a big source of problems (personal, relationship or whatever) come from the fact that we DON’T talk about them. I know how it can hurt more to NOT express yourself over something… and with so many people pretending to lead “perfect lives”… I find it hard to believe that most people aren’t feeling more screwed up than we think.
Now, for as long as I read the site… I never sent in a postcard myself. Several times I wanted to… and had many ideas of ones that I would send in, but never actually sat down and made one up. Some people that know me may think, “But you’re a straight-forward guy, I can’t imagine you having secrets.” Yeah, well, I do. (Hell, the 2 previous blog posts are all facts and secrets/quirks that most may not know about me…) Granted, I don’t cultivate an air of “mystery” around myself… if I did, I’d probably get more dates… but I do. Like I said, we ALL do. Well, given the date at the time (one of semi-significance for me), I was feeling particularly reflective. So that, combined with picking up this just-released book… I decided to finally sit down and do it. So, I dug out a box that sits in the back of my closet… one that sits there sealed and taped… opened it, took out the pictures, scanned in some notes, and on my computer made up a postcard. (No, I didn’t do it by hand, I’m kind of anal that way) The next day, I bought some postcard stock and then printed it out… addressed it and put on the stamp.
I had my Secret… ready to go into the mail. Now, it wasn’t no Picasso… nor was it any kind of earth-shattering message… hell, some people can probably guess what the subject of it is… so maybe it’s not much of a “Secret” after all. But its what I wanted to make, so bite me.
I brought it with me to the car, with the intention of making a slight detour, going to the town post office and dropping it off, then continuing back onto work. Well, I got on the road and figured, “Hmmm… I’m running a little late… maybe I’ll just go straight to work, and drop it off on the way home.” No problem, right? Well, I made it to the highway, and am driving on… and as I’m coming to the state border, I realize that I could get off at the last exit, and drop it off at this OTHER post office… one that isn’t as big a detour as the other one would have been. It’d be even EASIER to drop it off… and I hesitated. I kept glancing over at this homemade postcard with my statement on it… and debating when to let it go. It kind of hit me… that maybe I was making excuses for keeping it longer. “Oh, I’ll be late if I do”… then it’ll be, “Oh, crap… I forgot. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day.” Etcetera, etcetera. So, I just turned off… and went to the post office. The side streets were not difficult to get though in the least (wow, I should do all my downtown shopping in the mornings… it’s a piece of cake to drive through!)… and I got to the post office, parked, opened the door (didn’t even turn off the engine) and brought the postcard to the drop-box.
I hesitated. Again.
I don’t know why… I mean, its just a postcard… I’m not getting RID of the feeling it conveys (as much as I’d like to do that)… or saying goodbye to the pictures... they’re still at home, on disk, sealed back up in the box in the back of my closet. But I just stood there for a moment… looking at this postcard that contains pictures and notes that I hadn’t looked at in 2 years (albeit with faces blurred and cut off, and names obscured). Was it the postcard as a whole? Or did I just want to look at the pictures more? Why do I want to look at pictures I don’t want to look at?
I turned it over twice to make sure it had the right postage on… even though I knew it had the right postage since I put it on the evening before.
I knew I was just making up weird excuses… so I dropped it in. Got back in my car, and got to work (at the same time I usually get there).
That… was harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought the hardest part was going to be MAKING it… because when it comes to drawing or making pictures, I don’t think I’m that creative… I’m a writer, after all. I can THINK visually, but not that great at actually showing it, so I describe it. And once I got through the procrastinating, and figured out roughly what I wanted the card to look like… the hard part would be over. I figured dropping it in the mail would be the easiest part. But it wasn’t… and I’m not sure why.
Anyway… there’s no guarantee that it will be posted on the site… in fact, I’d bank on it NOT being posted. The guy gets thousands of them a week… its just not possible to post all of them, even if he posted new ones every day. I think if you send one in with the expectation that it will be posted… you’re doing it for the wrong reason. I’m hoping that the action of sending in this small piece of art will do something for me. I don’t know what… but maybe something. Maybe give a little relief in some way… who knows. Maybe that’s why I hesitated… because I secretly knew that it would do something… or because I secretly knew that it would do nothing.
But NOW I’m sure the hard part is over. Maybe the other postcards I make will be easier to send now.
Oh yes… I’m making more.
I quickly got addicted. It is simultaneously funny, touching, sad, thoughtful, depressing, inspiring, hopeful and haunting. I know many might think, “Why would you tell a complete stranger a secret of yours that you wouldn’t tell anyone else?”… but personally, I have no trouble comprehending that. For one, it’s completely anonymous… you don’t put a return address… there’s no way to track down who made what card, so you don’t know whose secret is whose. Two, sometimes we don’t like to keep secrets, but have to (or feel we have to) anyway. This is a safe way to finally get it out of you, and maybe step away from it. Plus, there’s an extra bonus. There have been several times where I personally identified with the “secret” that I saw… on one particular week, there were at least 3 secrets that I felt I could have written myself… like someone ELSE was telling my secret for me… and it was kinda liberating, because it felt like I wasn’t alone on that subject.
Face it, not many people like to truly feel like a freak… we just want to know that we’re *normal* healthy people. Capable and worthy of loving and being loved. But there are so many people that inwardly feel like they’re NOT. Maybe we compensate with attitude, or a tough demeanor, or a belligerent tone… or any of 1,000 other ways. And EVERYONE has something they just don’t bother talking about… a past event, a future hope, a thought process… something. And maybe a big source of problems (personal, relationship or whatever) come from the fact that we DON’T talk about them. I know how it can hurt more to NOT express yourself over something… and with so many people pretending to lead “perfect lives”… I find it hard to believe that most people aren’t feeling more screwed up than we think.
Now, for as long as I read the site… I never sent in a postcard myself. Several times I wanted to… and had many ideas of ones that I would send in, but never actually sat down and made one up. Some people that know me may think, “But you’re a straight-forward guy, I can’t imagine you having secrets.” Yeah, well, I do. (Hell, the 2 previous blog posts are all facts and secrets/quirks that most may not know about me…) Granted, I don’t cultivate an air of “mystery” around myself… if I did, I’d probably get more dates… but I do. Like I said, we ALL do. Well, given the date at the time (one of semi-significance for me), I was feeling particularly reflective. So that, combined with picking up this just-released book… I decided to finally sit down and do it. So, I dug out a box that sits in the back of my closet… one that sits there sealed and taped… opened it, took out the pictures, scanned in some notes, and on my computer made up a postcard. (No, I didn’t do it by hand, I’m kind of anal that way) The next day, I bought some postcard stock and then printed it out… addressed it and put on the stamp.
I had my Secret… ready to go into the mail. Now, it wasn’t no Picasso… nor was it any kind of earth-shattering message… hell, some people can probably guess what the subject of it is… so maybe it’s not much of a “Secret” after all. But its what I wanted to make, so bite me.
I brought it with me to the car, with the intention of making a slight detour, going to the town post office and dropping it off, then continuing back onto work. Well, I got on the road and figured, “Hmmm… I’m running a little late… maybe I’ll just go straight to work, and drop it off on the way home.” No problem, right? Well, I made it to the highway, and am driving on… and as I’m coming to the state border, I realize that I could get off at the last exit, and drop it off at this OTHER post office… one that isn’t as big a detour as the other one would have been. It’d be even EASIER to drop it off… and I hesitated. I kept glancing over at this homemade postcard with my statement on it… and debating when to let it go. It kind of hit me… that maybe I was making excuses for keeping it longer. “Oh, I’ll be late if I do”… then it’ll be, “Oh, crap… I forgot. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day.” Etcetera, etcetera. So, I just turned off… and went to the post office. The side streets were not difficult to get though in the least (wow, I should do all my downtown shopping in the mornings… it’s a piece of cake to drive through!)… and I got to the post office, parked, opened the door (didn’t even turn off the engine) and brought the postcard to the drop-box.
I hesitated. Again.
I don’t know why… I mean, its just a postcard… I’m not getting RID of the feeling it conveys (as much as I’d like to do that)… or saying goodbye to the pictures... they’re still at home, on disk, sealed back up in the box in the back of my closet. But I just stood there for a moment… looking at this postcard that contains pictures and notes that I hadn’t looked at in 2 years (albeit with faces blurred and cut off, and names obscured). Was it the postcard as a whole? Or did I just want to look at the pictures more? Why do I want to look at pictures I don’t want to look at?
I turned it over twice to make sure it had the right postage on… even though I knew it had the right postage since I put it on the evening before.
I knew I was just making up weird excuses… so I dropped it in. Got back in my car, and got to work (at the same time I usually get there).
That… was harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought the hardest part was going to be MAKING it… because when it comes to drawing or making pictures, I don’t think I’m that creative… I’m a writer, after all. I can THINK visually, but not that great at actually showing it, so I describe it. And once I got through the procrastinating, and figured out roughly what I wanted the card to look like… the hard part would be over. I figured dropping it in the mail would be the easiest part. But it wasn’t… and I’m not sure why.
Anyway… there’s no guarantee that it will be posted on the site… in fact, I’d bank on it NOT being posted. The guy gets thousands of them a week… its just not possible to post all of them, even if he posted new ones every day. I think if you send one in with the expectation that it will be posted… you’re doing it for the wrong reason. I’m hoping that the action of sending in this small piece of art will do something for me. I don’t know what… but maybe something. Maybe give a little relief in some way… who knows. Maybe that’s why I hesitated… because I secretly knew that it would do something… or because I secretly knew that it would do nothing.
But NOW I’m sure the hard part is over. Maybe the other postcards I make will be easier to send now.
Oh yes… I’m making more.
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