LENSJOCKEY™ MAGAZINE, the blog

THE CLEAVAGE PETS™ — A NYC REALITY NOIR — episode 5

2010-10-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

The first thing I did when I made it to where Don was, TwoThousandThen, was to go and get lots of magazines… and I started looking for things that resonated with the times. I was trying to be open, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I thought that the best way to learn about a culture was from it’s pictures, and in TwoThousandThen there were way more pictures than I ever saw in 1933. I saw immediately that pictures were their own language now, spoken by everyone.

Don had given me something called a “laptop” and he showed me how to play small videos on it.

One night — late as I was cutting out pictures of spraycan nozzles, I saw how I was in my own heaven finally, a heaven I had created with my own choices… my own attempts at premonition… and weird timely luck. There were two songs that I saw group of people sing on the laptop… people who called themselves “Talking Heads” — one was called “This Must Be the Place.” I was numb, and it was exciting to be in another place — and time, — but I felt so much pressure to get going and do what I felt I had to do. The other song was called “Heaven.” Those two songs and the pictures I was looking at and cutting and arranging — they did something to my head. I saw visions and drew things… I saw pictures of the familiar and the alien, but now they were all of the same world to me.

Because of what Don had done for me for years, now I knew the people Don now knew. That would make it alittle easier, maybe make something go faster… I had The Cleavage Pets™ idea and thought about going further with that, I made collages to help me process everything around me. I wrote things I didn’t understand yet.

I desperately and ruthlessly tried to feel the NOW times when I’d just left my own behind. No matter what I’d learned from Don, no matter what I’d imagined… when I finally was in the actual future I’d been seeing in his pictures… well, I mean you’ve seen pictures of 1933, you get the idea.

A couple of times, I thought painting my dad would make me feel better. Painting hadn’t changed much in TwoThousandThen… but I could see why Don was a photographer and not a painter…

After I’d painted my dad, and thought alittle… I painted over what I had and painted my dad like he would have been now, where I was. I thought that was the right thing to do. Even though I felt that a lot of suits looked horrible now… well, that was my dad. If my dad was in NOW. He would have laughed at now and what was happening, with me, with everyone.

I just kept thinking of how to get where I wanted to be, where I was now. Where I was now was obviously not in my “comfort zone” as Don said people were into saying now. The world was an explosion of imagery. It was jarring, collages were exactly what I felt like.

I could tell Don hadn’t told me everything… like this jockey he kept shooting at the tracks, yes he was a great jockey… John Velazquez, but those looks he gave Don… they weren’t sports looks… I couldn’t put my finger on it. I made a mental note to ask Don at some point what was in Johnny V’s looks…

Don kept on shooting while I was trying to distill what I should be doing from my own writing and collages. I didn’t have enough money to keep buying notebooks all the time, they were now really expensive… so I started just working over some of the writing ones with pictures. Noone was gonna want to read the writing so much anyway I thought… I felt like I was caught between words and pictures, that’s what I was doing looked like anyway.

None of my plans had changed that much really. Even though I wasn’t in 1933 anymore, I was still looking for the same things I wanted from Don in the first place. I was glad he’d been so aggressive about getting me into the future. Sometimes a close friend can do that for you — and the realization that you can’t change the past. That’s what happened in my case anyway.

I finally got to meet Pandora, and she was just as beautiful in real life as she was in Don’s pictures. I sat in the same chair at the Players Club in New York City that I had the week before I left for TwoThousandThen! And it smelled the same! How did that happen? Shit! It was surreal, I am not sure that people were made to feel what I was feeling…

I looked at this picture Don had taken of Lydia… the electronic file, on a laptop. It was like looking at a young Theda Bara, after Theda was long gone. Electronic imagery on a monitor was like nothing I could imagine. It was like fire. I had to drink sometimes… the conflicting lifestyles between the eras was sortof hard to jump emotionally. I felt like crying a lot, because I didn’t think I was going back, to my dad… 1933, that old Depression I’d left — hey at least this was a new and exciting different Depression! They even had Prohibition, but it wasn’t alcohol this time, this time it was more about marijuana. I read it was the biggest cash crop in America at the time… hahah Louis Armstrong would have thought that was funny. He loved that shit.

I dreamed of a “rock band” one night I was doing the collages. They were called Graft Zeppelina. I think seeing all the videos made that happen in my head. They were all characters that were familiar but also unreal, neoclassic I guess you would say. I tried to draw them and define them… one of them was a minotaur character called Buffalo Jennifre (I know that it’s spelled wrong, but that’s the way it was in my dream. She was known for doing a burlesque performance with a see-through flag. I think the neoburlesque scene was doing things to my head. I felt so alone, I guess I needed to make up some friends who were just MINE. Like gods maybe, gods of my own.

It was definitely all the videos. Seeing the actual world that was full of such things… crazy images and crazy music… somehow made me want to run away… and with more than two feet.

I dreamt of Christene Jone’s — she was singing a song called “So Long Marianne,” by a man called Leonard Cohen. I wanted blinders, I wanted a guitar, I wanted boots on my hooves. I’d wake up exhausted and draw… I’d date them all 2000, because to me that was the date that mattered at this point. The truth and fiction took on a different meaning to me, in a really profound way. The truth and fiction didn’t seem that different to too many people, why not just start believing they were the same and just see what happens?

If you could look like that, wouldn’t you too?
I dreamt a drummer that had snakes, like a Medusa. I suppose that was just about percussion and stuff, the rattles. I was drinking coffee too, and it would make me shake more than I already did now. I felt rattled myself! I knew this stuff was now called “intellectual property” now, and that I had to protect it… I was learning all the time, there was no time when I wasn’t anymore! Dreams were the true intellectual property.

Go figure. I wanted to be the Donald Trump of intellectual property, before I even knew of him himself.
I wanted to get people to see things too.

I had skyscraper dreams of intellectual property, like it was a crazy landscape, and Graft Zeppelina sang the soundtrack. For me, the future was where I belonged now… it was funny how I’d wanted to stay where I as so badly, but then when I actually left 1933 and stepped out into TwoThousandThen… well, why wouldn’t someone have tons of weird visions doing that shit!

Doing something doesn’t mean that you understand what it will do to you. At all!

The collages were sentimental to me. I was thinking about things — like what would the opposite of nostalgia be? Because now I knew for sure that nostalgia was no place to go, but what about a strange nostalgia for things that could happen? Or would happen? I could see the beautiful edges of things… but filling them in was not what I could do yet, I couldn’t see the inside of my future yet. There was no way to recognize THAT, no matter what the edges were like.

I started going to things with Don. It was like the past, when we’d go places… speakeasies… events… I dreamt of silver bomb blasts made out of antique silver, like my mother had had so much of.
A STERLING BLAST… a sterling blast… a sterling blast — I guess I felt like that was what I was in for. I saw myself in a see-through dressy thing, with a straw hat, walking away… or maybe leading… there was graffiti everywhere. Things were getting hairy in the world. My pictures were how I divined things for myself — a lot! The outer world of the new world of New York City in TwoThousandThen was definitely something I was going to have to come to terms with before I could safely do anything.

Every night in my dreams I saw microphones, makeup… like smoke. I heard jazz… I saw explosions and fashionable clothing and our flag…

the color pink, the clothing of TwoThousandThen was gorgeous and I wanted to buy it so badly… magazines were full of dreams. This era was a lot to take in after where I’d been, I cannot say that enough, I had to keep repeating this to myself even to calm me down… I walked for miles in the new world I was in., and my scissors cut miles around the images of the day. I was making my own Bible, like no other Bible ever.

There it is, the cover of my own private Bible. Punk Jazz Duke was my god, I could thank my dreams for him, not the other way around.

I walked around Coney Island a lot. I had always gone there, back in 1933. Of course, like everything else, it had changed… but to me it was still home. There was a thing called “SHOOT THE FREAK” — and I thought of how me and my friends would have died laughing if that had been around in 1933. I climbed down a crappy ladder and walked around where the Freak himself probably walked — or jumped around trying not to get shot. Junk, weeds, paint like a bloody massacre, the silence of a rainy slow day.

Then I turned around, and in a time millions of miles from the time I’d been born in, I saw who I was, for the first time ever.

TO BE CONTINUED
______________________________________________

NOTE! THIS IS A COMPLETELY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT USING THE REAL PEOPLE I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY FOR YEARS. IT IN NO WAY REFLECTS REALITY!

here are the other episodes sofar:

episode 1) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/08/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 2) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 3) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

episode 4) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/10/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

The Cleavage Pets™ — A NYC REALITY NOIR — episode 4

2010-10-07T04:56:00.000-07:00

It was scary to see the difference between then and now. Looking up at the buildings sometimes, I wondered how people could find such beauty so easy to discard in favor of the flat glassy structures that had taken over the city like a virus over the past decades. I don’t think HVV would have liked it on a day to day diet.

“Burlesque is the new skyline,” wrote HVV one day, and I think she was right! Burlesque had the wings and the beautiful details that the buildings no longer had. It was like the women were building a new skyline using themselves. There were men involved too... that was called boylesque, but it was definitely a feminine architecture of humor and sex and beauty! It was something to look up to and admire, like the buildings used to be.

The neoburlesque stars were exploding everywhere I looked.

Funny how an artform that you’d think would be finally eclipsed and dead could just blow upwards like some form of human fireworks to become an exciting rush of entertainment loved by so many! I’d been here in the future for years now, and it was just starting to break into the mass consciousness of the city.

The night now belonged to them, like it used to belong to our skyscrapers. They’d sparkle and awe me with their growing — each performer growing at their own stature, in their own place! Ever since I pushed Lydia into it, more or less as a joke, I saw more and more evidence that the men and women who made up the burlesque neighborhoods were constructing a new city of art and fun and culture, to replace the flat glassy personalities glorified and promoted by the masses of the now. And they were all built on a foundation of passion and humor! These people were not acting!

I saw it as revolutionary, in such a backwards way!

Once again the suits were crying! In contrast to the explosiveness of the so-called feminine arts like burlesque, the male worlds of politics and finance were crumbling and self-destructing before our eyes! When I’d send these pictures to HVV, she’d now write back how amazed she was at the uncanny way the future had become the past — effortlessly, or so it seemed.

“I saw a man crying just like this today!” she’d write me from 1933. It was no joke, but the sheerly uncanny nature of the world’s chaotic and unbelievable fall into the depths of depression and recession (just like what I'd left behind!) led me to look at everything in a new way.

Had this ever happened before I wondered… had decades ever before separated two such different eras that were so frighteningly similar?

For the first time, I felt like running away… 1933 was bad, but we owned that time, and we had hope that things would change for the better, not go back to our problems decades later! That in itself would shock the past! I was alone with Lydia in a future the past would be as shocked by as we were. This was freakish.

“Don, that picture made me cry,” wrote HVV… “to me that picture is about driving towards the future… the future of really bad looking automobiles and uncertainty — to you, where you are now, it must say something completely different.”

Only the women of the future kept me where I was. In them and their growing neoburlesque worlds of sex and tease and color and fun I found hope.

The differences between the burlesque of then and TwoThousandThen was the difference between “the first life” and a triumphant comeback. These women and men, of burlesque and boylesque, were saying that truly, progress is an illusion. How else could it be that they were so entertaining?

“I wish I could print these pictures in color Don, wow can you imagine?”

I could imagine. But I thought that even in black and white, that the past would feel very strange knowing what I was finding out. Things had come and gone in the future. Things it seemed that would just continue to lead to a future that would always move forward… but we were finding that that just was not the case.

“HOW DID BURLESQUE OF ALL THINGS, ARISE AGAIN? I MEAN REALLY?”

I wrote HVV that I was not sure it ever really went away… but it certainly was roaring with its befeathered head — In the world of HVV’s “Deck” where did neoburlesque fit in?

All of a sudden, I really didn’t care what HVV did about trying to shock the past with the future. My head was spinning. I had to say that if the past was not smart enough to figure stuff out when it had the power… I found it hard to believe it would recognize it’s follies as reflected in the future that hadn’t changed that much.

I’d believed that HVV was on to something for years! I had come into the unknown present believing that she had a point and a vision. Now, just when we were starting to try it all out, I just felt like chucking the whole idea. This whole thing was changing me in ways I couldn’t imagine beforehand. I saw the buildings I saw the people…

“Fuck the past Holly, you belong in the future, that past had it’s chance!” I blurted out one day in my writing.

That’s what I felt, this is the account. I wanted her to bail, she was missing too much in her mission to change things the way she’d thought she could. All the past had was a drive for progress that now had been shown to be just a big fucking illusion.

I wanted Holly to see the future I was seeing now. I saw people, like Meschiya Lake, from New Orleans, I saw Kayvon Zand.

I saw things the past would never understand.

”I’m not saying it was a bad idea, Holly, really, I’m not saying anything like that… but maybe it would be much simpler to just come here and be here now and use yourself now! Too much has happened, even if some of it looks the same! The world now could use someone like you.”

I really felt that now. We could just start the fuck over, maybe it was a mistake to try to change the future with the past. All of a sudden I just wanted us to cut our losses and just play the damn “Deck” here and now. The way I saw it now, we could spend our time trying to convince or scare the past, or we could just take what was happening now, which was a world that was like an egg about to break. After about 8 years, I was doing an about-face.

I kept thinking about this picture I’d taken… a couple of years ago… at a fancy club in New York City, of a friend I’d made named Pandora. She’d been a burlesque dancer herself. She was in a library surrounded by books, (books themselves were in danger now! real danger!) history… and she had a cute hat with an egg on it. For the first time, I started looking at the book titles behind Irene. And the first one I read was titled SALVATION. One of the books — to Irene’s left, was called THE RELUCTANT KING. The picture itself had been taken on Easter. I thought about all of these things.

I thought about a “link” I’d been directed to by Jo Weldon.

http://jezebel.com/5655424/the-day-i-beat-down-mick-foley

Jo Weldon, a neoburlesque dancer… had shown me something I had never dreamed of. I don’t expect any women would have thought a guy would say the things I heard this man Mick Foley say with my own ears, and as a guy I know I never have — nor have I ever said such things myself. What was happening?

I thought about how it seemed like religion had lost it’s grip on everyone within the past 8 years while I’d been here. RELIGION itself I saw now was not seen by everyone as the WAY! In fact, what was happening was that many many people saw religion itself as something the GOT IN THE WAY! Very quickly, like in the time it took to write this, I was seeing that the stuff HVV wanted to be a part of was happening. Maybe we didn’t need the past to change the future anymore — it looked like things were changing right now!

It’s funny how you can wake up with one belief and go to bed with a different belief. I really didn’t feel like doing the same thing anymore. Not after what I’d seen today. But it was such a change it really jarred me.

That night, I had a dream… a green absinthe flavored dream… it seemed to last forever. As if echoing the actually remixing of the present that HVV wanted to do with the pictures I took, the dream was a remix of HVV’s music video for “A Killer’s Killer.”
Pandora — who’d starred in that video, was telling me — after puffing on her cigarette like any femme fatale, that, “the past is only an illusion.” Even in the dream, I kept thinking to myself, “…no, no — progress is the illusion.”

You know how dreams are.

I kept hearing a musical piece called “Gassenhauer” — by a man named Carl Orff. I saw two friends, Roddy Caravella and Gretchen Fenston, and they were telling me that “Gassenhauer” means “popular melody.” I didn’t know that myself… and I wondered if they were right.

popular melody… popular melody… popular melody…

They were all like green ghosts...

till Dirty Martini showed up. A golden Dirty Martini. Dirty Martini was one of the great neoburlesque performers now… in a green dream I don’t know why she was gold. But she shimmered and sang Gassenhauer as if it was a song in a performance in the dream. She and the dream were spellbindingly beautiful.

“Green and Gold? What could they possibly mean?” Dirty Martini sang in her song, like a silken stripping songbird…

Next was Lucas Lanthier, an ex-boyfriend of Shien Lee… since I knew that recently he’d joked about becoming a meteorologist
I wasn’t surprised that he kept talking about stars in my dream. But he had HVV’s voice when he was saying what he was saying, and he kept saying something that I’ve only heard HVV talk about, which was “stars with or without you.” HVV and I used to talk a lot about how certain people were stars even if they didn’t have fans, that fans were not what made “stars.”

When I then thought about stars in my dream, I ended up seeing Shien. It was totally quiet, and all I saw were her eyes flickering for a couple of minutes. It’s like she had eyes like those mirrored balls you see in nightclubs… her irises and pupils seemed to rotate, like little planets… it was very pleasant but also spooky, a lot spookier than “A Killer’s Killer” had been, somehow… I wasn’t feeling that great, very stressed because of what I’d seen over the course of the day, but watching her eyes made me feel so good. Like fire, or the ocean.

Then her eyes turned into car headlights and I was in Michael Arenella’s garage, where we’d shot some of the video…

In the background I heard car horns playing Gassenhauer! And then sirens playing Gassenhauer! The sounds were spinning around together like the lights in Shiens eyes had done.

And then I saw PJ Linden laughing.

She was laughing Gassenhauer.

And she was singing in a green laughing voice, which I know doesn’t make sense… we were in El Quijote, which was my second favorite place next to my own place — Spiro’s — and then I was standing out side El Quijote on the sidewalk next to the Hotel Chelsea, where El Quijote was. It was raining green rain, rain that I couldn’t see that made the Gassenahuer melody as it rained down, the drops being notes of the music.

And that was when I woke up, all groggy and tired, and unsure, but somehow… the Gassenahuer melody itself was still in my mind as it rained outside, just like it had in my dream.

TO BE CONTINUED.

______________________________________________

NOTE! THIS IS A COMPLETELY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT USING THE REAL PEOPLE I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY FOR YEARS. IT IN NO WAY REFLECTS REALITY!

here are the other episodes sofar:

episode 1) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/08/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 2) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 3) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

The Cleavage Pets™ — A NYC REALITY NOIR — episode 3

2010-09-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

HVV sent me this... the text only, I put the right pictures in for you — of course, the pictures the past would see would be in black and white, but I think you'll get the picture. It was the second of her pieces in LENSJOCKEY™'s published view of the future. Imagine this in 1933!

Straight from the future!

The country that blew the world’s mind — that’s us. And that’s a long story. But in TwoThousandThen — or T3 — there are still some people riding around in 1929 De Sotos — check this out! The same fucking cars! Oh, I’m not saying that some things haven’t changed. Nope. There have definitely been some new developments!
I suppose the sharper of my readers might have already figured out what has happened to our dear world in the exciting decades beyond now. If you can’t see what is happening when horseraces are held in graveyards, the news might not help you, but for those of you who can run in dirt that is alittle deeper — well —

My friends, we the past of the future are being sold! We are the substitute for real creativity in the future! People watch pictures of us on TV and look at dummies of us in the stores dressed like us. The have nothing better to invent than us then! Decades later! With all their fucking self-impressing inventions… they can’t make up a damn thing to entertain themselves but us. Isn’t that fucking crazy? They want to come back to us! We must be pretty damn hot commodites. We were before their time! Hahah. Let LENSJOCKEY™ be the first to congratulate the future for it’s complete lack of imagination and real style, but super marketing savvy!
If the big important new future had something better to offer itself, they would have made it. You’d see it here! In the windows of Bloomingdales! And keeping up with the oh-so-timelyness of time and trend, they have introduced bedbugs to their attraction, in the hopes of seeming more authentic to the times! Classic I say! Bedbugs and the 30s go together like Busby Berkely, everyone knows that. It was a genius take-home advertising campaign!
But that’s The Re-publicans. And, there is hope!

Hang onto your tomatoes — A store mannequin has given birth to our saviors! I know, I know, it’s hard to believe dear readers, and it happened a little before the time I am showing you, but it is the very reason that there is no more separation of church and state. You need church to do that, and in T3, they realized that church is so last millennium, because of a miracle.
The mannequin was the miracle. Her name is Gretchen Bergdorf, she is one of the Fifth Avenue Bergdorfs — not to be mistaken for the 58th Street Bergdorfs or (especially) the 57th Street Bergdorfs. Born into a life of “being in the window,” exotic settings, outrageous costumes, makeup., a cool inhuman demeanor… not really what one would imagine for the mother of the future of true spirituality. Or is it? Most other “gods” and their relatives, they always looked pretty Hollywood-ready to me.
I am not kidding people, readers, you. Have faith! Please please continue on with me!

Well, there he is. I know I know I know I know he is not what you want one of your saviors to be, this Tigger Ferguson, the way you have been brought up, but I promise you… in the City Of New York, of the mother Gretchen Bergdorf, of the Fifth Avenue Bergdorfs, there was born unto us some saviors. Some fucking saviors!

The reality then is that... that the center of fashion is the center of spirituality, I know, it must take great faith to believe, really I do… but that is where people look to. Acceptance is the new faith! Accept that and you are saved!

Another miracle — the mother Gretchen had a daughter, and her name was Bunny Love. I am so serious. No boyfriend, nothing! Look, if you can believe the costumery and superficial denials of reality that engage the religious mind of today, in 1933, a miracle only decades in the future with details of only slightly more believeable characters should not be that hard to grasp. You all already worship, I mean shop at the House of Bergdorf anyway. There is a god in Bergdorf if you really look hard enough, that is the reality. Where is the god in church? Only faith tells you it is there. Acceptance will tell you that there is a god in Bergdorf Goodman. Not once but twice! AND in Bloomingdales, although a bit harder to see! This is why everyone follows NYC fashion, and they don’t even know it. EVERYBODY follows, the true religion, without even knowing.
I know it’s hard to swallow this information now, with the depression, but you should feel more comfortable knowing that the future understands you and your depression! They are only just starting to see this stuff even in TwoThousandThen… and they have their own depression to deal with! I am trying to do us all a favor by just trying to gain acceptance for what is to come. Those crazy kids! You think Jesus was accepting? Your fucking god didn’t want a daughter! Who’s did? I mean, we’ve all bought this for centuries… that is, you did. I just couldn’t believe it. That’s why I saw this. This is the latebreaking NEWSFLASH before it’s time!
Fashion can tell that religion looks old. Fashion changes. Fashion and shopping give comfort. To the future, religions are just old fashions. That is the reality that is the new heaven. Reality is where everyone wants to go! And reality is actually here, like bagels, swimming pools, electronic media (I can explain that later friends —)

This is a portrait of God. The true god. This is the god that cannot be fooled, this is the god who has heard it all. This was the god found on a sidestreet near Times Square. This was not the second coming, this was the first coming, of the fucking truth. Straight from the future! People could feel the power. God was found. Now if it surprises you that she looks like a grandmother… well, if you look closely, there is god in grandmother. I don’t see it in Father anywhere do you? Grandfather, sorry, no god there! This is just the truth I am telling you! Isn’t grandmother the one who ALWAYS cares? “God” as we all know him, has been taking the credit for Grandmother all this time. All this time. On faith, not evidence. Grandmother is the new God.
As you can see, in the future we don’t have stained glass for the grandmother god, we have photography, a truly magical and mysterious artform. Because photography is so closely linked with reality. And the truth is in black and white.
To make this clearer, dear readers, I include here one of the worshipful songs of the time, TwoThousandThen — sung by The Criminal Religion themselves.

“The New Religion — is fucking reality!
Oh when I was young,
I’d wished for something like this — when I saw praying as the begging it is!
something to see me through
something that would REALLY fucking HELP me —

Why oh why didn’t you?

Religions were made up by men (evidence has seen — and we of the future are having our say!)...
to explain (sortof) some mysteries the best that he can (it seems)
but guess what?
a lot of men’s stories and a lot of men’s schemes well, A-men
we can’t see that they work so well, so obviously, okay?

You can’t build an asshole in your mouth and blame it for shitting

You can’t put priests into power without some icky pedofeelings

And I have always wondered at the statements, like these — that God created man in his own image, when the UNDENIABLE truth is, the evidence PROVES — WE are the ones who made God in OUR (man’s) image…
And we all, got it wrong, for CENTURIES!

Is that really so fucking hard to see?

Well, OUR religion says, get this, A-men, our religion says A-men —
That men are not O-kay!”

Some song huh? That’s the song of TwoThousandThen! I swear. That’s as close to a heavenly choir as you are going to get on this earth. I hope you my readers will agree.

“Don, I am gonna call all these people you’ve shot “The Deck” — because they have to be played. I just wanted you to see alittle of what I am doing… I can’t send you everything.”

“I am so thankful that you have been shooting the 24/7 people of the time you are in now, without people like this I could not do what I do… any guy with a camera can go and get a couple of magazines and see who to shoot to make money. But what you did for years is consistently incredible to me. I need the 24/7 people, people who live their lives 24/7, write their own worlds, people who create their own lives, these are the people to trust! And these are the only people I could use! I don’t even have to ask how you found such people, I am glad that I put my faith in you. I cannot wait to drop these people on the past!”

Shien Lee, it seemed to me, would be Queen of “The Deck.” I knew what HVV meant when she was talking about decks… it’s not the way I’d thought when I was shooting Shien, and saw her effect on men, and what she was doing with her life… but I saw her genuine qualities… immediately, and powerfully. As they say now — “Duh!”

She was young and sexy and exotic and smart, and she had the NYC scene in her hands at night. I was tired myself of all the bogus overrated “personalities” chosen by ignorant lifeless boredsters — “personalities” chosen from fantasy “sets” — TV and movies… that had such control over people that people actually applied writer’s qualities to actors who simply acted. I saw most personalities of the time like the popular breast implants… celluloid was just silicone to these people where I was.

“The Deck,” The Deck indeed was a good way to put it. We were playing another deck entirely. A deck based on the 24/7 people who ALWAYS know themselves. Me and HVV, our fantasy for the past was based on the present realities… using reality as a fantasy… seemed so revolutionary and subversive in the climate of the days, of both times!

Matthew, not your Saint Matthew — I called him DJ 78!

Cornelius Loy, Jr. — plays an instrument called the Theremin — I could only imagine what HVV would say he was doing — to our friends in the past, he’d look like a man from space! What would she make of that glowing singing rod… I had shot him in dingy club rooms… far away from the past.

Michael T ... was a “promoter” like Shien Lee. As I saw it, promoters were the preachers of the day. I knew that HVV would make something up about him that could not help but blow the past’s collective religion-warped minds. The Deck The Deck The Deck… what a beautiful way to put it. To me, The Deck became my unorganized religion of the truth and reality. In the Holy land of New York City, the city EVERYONE worshipped… and I loved Los Angeles. The Sixteen Chapel is the new Sistine, if you know what I mean.

This is Muffinhead. Hahaha, unleashed on the past, I could see the confusion and chaos he could cause. Can’t you? They were all the wildest of wildcards to me, and the game HVV was gonna play with them made me want to be there with her, but I had to be here.

A Deck full of wildcards. A city full of stories to me made.

The face of New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg — perhaps the people of the past would understand a less flashy character… but I doubt the way HVV would present him would make the past comfortable… as I think she planned to marry him off to Heather Holliday…

A firebreather from Coney Island! Haha. The mayor’s own girlfriend would just not cut it as far as we could see. Diana Taylor seemed like a surprisingly intelligent partner for a mayor… truthfully shocking in it’s own way — but HVV probably was not gonna see her as useful for our plans.

“You know the drill,” she’d probably have Donny Vomit say. Donny was a deck definite. He even looked like someone you’d see in a deck… if Jacks had big nails and drills in their hands instead of swords. Hahaha. Couldn’t wait to see how HVV played the Donny card. Couldn’t fucking wait.

Me and HVV were like two halves of a brain. I didn’t know which halves we’d both be, but that’s what it was like.

Jennifer Miller? Hahaha, who would she become for the past? She’d drop machetes as fast as she’d juggle them. A bearded wildcard of a woman. Funny, silly, and realistic…all of these people exist and are real! Is Heather telling our Jennifer a state secret? What’s the story?

“Selene Luna is fantastic!,” HVV would write me later.

“She is like a Velazquez painting in your shot Don! She could be anyone! Thank you thank you thank you! You may make my dreams come true!”

We’ll see. The Deck would deliver I bet.

— to be continued —

______________________________________________

NOTE! THIS IS A COMPLETELY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT USING THE REAL PEOPLE I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY FOR YEARS. IT IN NO WAY REFLECTS REALITY!

here are the other episodes sofar:

episode 1) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/08/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 2) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 4) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/10/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

The CLEAVAGE PETS™ — A NYC REALITY NOIR — episode 2

2010-09-09T06:23:00.000-07:00

“Damn,” she said, “Don, I can’t figure out just, just how to start doing this.”

Holly’s last words reverberated in my head. It was interesting seeing what she could and couldn’t do, what she did and what she didn’t, and when she did things. It WAS sortof a weird new thing, even for where I was now, “decades” after she’d actually said such things, I saw no evidence that anyone else had ever tried to do what she was doing… here where I was.

“I know I gotta do stuff like this,” she said “it just makes sense to make it seem more like I am actually there in the future, and by the way thanks for sending the letters in Don, mwa,” she mock kissed me. “Puff,” she puffed. I love it when you can hear that someone is smoking, over a phone… or the thing I had to listen to her on.

I was shooting Lydia, and I was hoping HVV could use this one. She wanted pictures that had a resonant quality.

“If you want to blow people’s minds, you have to have… there has to be a certain amount of familiarity or it won’t work… I think. What I am doing is about the past and the future… it just, I just want something THERE. Like — so I can totally make up things to go with these pictures and there will be a resonance to pick up on… the cool has to be believable, you know what I mean Don.”

“With an element of the actual past so obviously there in the pictures, it will be easier for the past to digest the imagery, and perhaps even believe what I write, as long as there is real energy in the shots… this should work.”

Since I probably wouldn’t see what she was going to do with these pictures till a while later, it really was hard for me to shoot for the years and years as I did… relatively blindly to the actual narrative that would emerge. We had to trust me. It was a zen photography experience. But, the basic reporting was all we cared about in the beginning anyway. Holly and I concentrated on that.

“Fuck I love you,” I said without thinking. She started laughing. Right after this.

Right now I was trying to concentrate on shooting Lydia, but as you can tell, it’s hard for me to focus. But really, this is a big big picture. Just knowing how to think about it is a difficult challenge. I don’t want to miss things, and there is no map. I listened to my friends that I made, and didn’t pay attention to any papers or other “media” as I have found the call electronic information/entertainment outlets.

Goddamn, look at those eyes. I want to kiss you now baby. I want to wipe that look off your face with my dick. That’s right, you are the first bi-era, double timing, living the vida LOCA superlife baby. You. You are a part of the real Marvel Universe. Sexy.
To quote my mind.
“Fuck I love you,” I said again, and she laughed again.

Even now, sometimes, Lydia made me think of Diane. I wish she could have seen this. She almost got to, she could have. We all could have had a big fucking laugh over this shit.

I loved Diane, she would have helped me with this writing...

Noone is writing this down but me, there is no way anyone would ever know this ever if I didn’t write this, and it is a strange thing to know. At any rate, this is the only account that the future will have of this. “The past will never know,” HVV said over and over. But the future would, I would think to myself at the same time. HVV never knew I was doing this.
She only knew I gave her exactly what she wanted like I was her herself.

“And this internet thing you told me about is very interesting. Data is totally doable then?”

It was!

Somehow, we could rig the machine we used to (among other things) transport me here to carry the data back to where HVV was. That’s the machine in the background of this picture. That’s Tigger James Ferguson, and Dirty Martini,

“Don, we are gonna tell the past that The Capitol is Coney Island, and that Tigger is Mayor of Coney Island.”

“Oh — and that Dirty Martini is a General.”

“Maybe others of these times,” (and HVV definitely meant both times — 1933 and TwoThousandThen) “think black politicians are radical… but till I see a man like this man Tigger you found, in office… I am not impressed.”

Me, when I saw this, I had to shoot it for HVV, it was just what she would think is funny. “We’ll tell the people that he’s at an art show, that will cover up the machine being there, hahah. Mayor Tigger James Ferguson and General Martini attend the exhibit by Donato Giancola at Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery, hahaha. You would totally think that is an art gallery hahah.”

That was when I started to really catch on. What was the truth what was the past what was the future, what lies… could mean to history. It was really screwy, because it wasn’t a linear development with us. At all. Sometimes it felt like it was threatening to melt my brain like she said how porn from where I was now would melt people’s minds back then. But at least that could be understood far easier than the initial creation of such a machine as we were trying to make, just from pictures and text.

“They are going through the same things where you are now — as they were where I am! Where we were! They even talk about it [the past] — as a way to figure out what to do! Can you believe how lucky we are? That we have that to work with as a reality to show… to show that progress is an illusion.”

That was uncanny, that’s for sure.

“Progress is an illusion like a new suit of clothes is an illusion, I just bet your ass, Don.” HVV knew that, knew that before history would prove her right decades later during times no one could have imagined.
Look, people still had horseracing!

And guys like John Velazquez.

HVV loved my horseracing/jockey coverage… which in itself was actually super ahead of it’s time…

“It hasn’t changed at all,” HVV said, looking stunned at the first of the racing pictures I showed her. "Shit, look at that!"

“Look I know and trust you Don, but seriously, that horseracing still exists and that it still looks so the same, and that — look, you have to start covering these guys, now, I mean I never saw that as happening, and we can totally use these pictures because they are so close to both eras. So close. Perfect. What’s this guy’s name?”

“John Velazquez,” I said.

She’d have no idea why I did not sound as excited as she did… HVV knew all about Lydia, but she had no idea I had been shooting the tracks for a couple of years already… and the track stuff as I’d shot I just knew after awhile that that is just what she wanted me to do. I actually did take this relatively seriously, almost as a battle, and this is the kindof thing that the leader would want to know.

“He doesn’t know anything about this right?”

“Uh, no.”

“Fucking, oh Don, people would totally relate to this shit right now!”

“Yeah, I uh, I really thought you would like these… since we didn’t talk about it ever… you know, but then one day I saw an ad in the paper and it stopped me in my tracks. You know what it was like when I just got over into T3…” Nothing looked familiar.

“Haha 1933 was the racing year for news too we got a bump from the fight — hahah, Don.”

When I asked her how she thought that 1933 was the best year for doing what she wanted to do, she told me that a superficial change, like the one she imagined would happen — “if in fact change happened at all” — would not stop what she thought would happen, judging by the way people were.

She wasn’t answering my question hahah.

In the end, she found the machine in 1933. That just happened, and we got lucky. The genius year she chose to send me to, was TwoTousandThen. Where another depression was happening! And that wasn’t all. I haven’t asked her how she came to that year, I am not sure I could understand, and I am not sure HVV does either.

“Timing is so everything.” That was her version of religion, time. She followed it, she worshipped it — “You don’t call yourself lensjockey if you don’t feel time and timing, pace, making time-based decisions on the fly.”

Anyway, it was too bad for me that Johnny looked just like then.

Horseracing indeed was one thing that I found that just had not really changed. In fact, the only real action in that scene (after decades) was happening now… of course. It wasn’t doing too good, I’m not saying it was doing good, but it was still around.

The few times HVV asked me for some special image, say, a composite, she gave me such great direction the results were stunning. The first one she wanted was of a horserace running out of a cemetery.

“Hahahah, I doubt that many people in 1933 could comfortably deal with horseracing in cemeteries. See if you can give me something — people will think the world just went to SHIT.”
And she was right. I even sent images of composites I’d made with tape… and people reacted to them in even stranger manner.

Tape itself had only recently been invented in 1933, I found that funny…

That "The Woodlawn Invitational Cup" was the first feature story she published under the “operation.” That story broke from the gate like a winner, and caused a commotion for months. She just had a really good way of putting things together… I bet she had fun writing that.

"...disgusting, sick, crazy."

That was what people really said about these pictures in T3 — imagine what they would say in 1933, I couldn’t really finish imagining… somewhere along the line the concepts would all bottleneck and my thoughts would jam entirely.

We never had time to talk about what she was doing after I came here to T3. But somehow, we had such a rapport, a creative understanding that I could think for her here sometimes. This picture I sent along with “The Woodlawn Invitational Cup” images. I thought she’d weave that into some spell.

“Thanks Don! That will look great in black and white, Lydia’s ass, totally pops. You are a genius matching that stonework, hahah from such different locations, and the lighting is perfect! Shit!”

Looking at her ass, made me think of John Velazquez.

Because I had just found out recently that they had been having an affair. And I still had to shoot him at the tracks. Now especially. I didn’t bother telling HVV what had happened, I showed her the racing stuff and that was my responsibility, but I couldn’t figure out how to deal with it yet myself. This shit me and HVV and Lydia were doing was too important to fuck up with emotional shit… but it was gonna drive me crazy.

He knew I knew, but he didn’t know why I wasn’t doing anything and mistook that for me being an idiot — the smiles I'd started getting in the shots could just be mistaken for sportsmen courtesy, but they weren’t. I’d started getting these looks from the jocks that were different…

I believe it flew around like gossip does, and then I think, well, now I think, I think quite a few people know. I think Calvin knows, and Edgar…

shit. Things started to make more sense…
Shit, I don’t know what to do. This is not what I need… and it didn’t seem like Lydia really knew what kind of guys these jocks were, but it doesn’t matter why it happened, only that I know it has and all of this together would make anyone’s head fucking spin.

But I’m a patient guy.

TO BE CONTINUED.

______________________________________________

NOTE! THIS IS A COMPLETELY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT USING THE REAL PEOPLE I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY FOR YEARS. IT IN NO WAY REFLECTS REALITY!

here are the other episodes sofar:

episode 1) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/08/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 3) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

episode 4) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/10/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

2010-08-31T12:57:00.000-07:00

Everybody loved them. Everyone loved them NOW I mean. But they were around for a long time before anyone saw them. My boss made them, the three original Cleavage Pets, in 1933. 1933 was a year that was ready for a lot of things — I was there — we were ready for the end of prohibition, we were ready for a NEW DEAL, we were even ready for the first sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

“Timing is everything,” Holly Van Voast said, "and we aren’t going to see the right time for these little bastards till TwoThousandThen, we just aren't.”

TwoThousandThen, TwoThousandThen, TwoThousandThen… I heard a lot of that. And I probably would have dismissed her as just another loopy tomato… but she said things and did things

that sometimes gave me the manshivers. I really got the manshivers one day in 1933 when she showed me a drawing she’d done one night to entertain her girlfriends with.

“I know it says BILL, but it really is more about my appreciation for Charles Bukowski.”

What can you possibly say to that? I was working late in my office in the LENSJOCKEY Building in New York City (at the time her quiet newspaper HQ) and she just dropped this notebook down in front of me. Of course, at a glance I could tell instantly generally what I was looking at, but further inspection revealed a rather revolutionary document. How many tomatoes could diagram the sensitivity zones of manland? How many guys ever diagrammed it? I was just reading the most recent COSMOPOLITAN magazine, and there was a Dr. a real doctor woman… a “certified sex educator and relationship expert,” who just this month wrote, “In fact, it is true that nothing you do with your hand is going to be “better” than what your guy can do with his (in general, a steady, rhythmic pressure feels amazing, with your hand rotating down his shaft in a corkscrew motion.)”

“Well, you’re never gonna give a guy a better handjob than he gives himself if you don’t know THIS," HVV said, lazily drawing her finger up and down the length of the shaft in the drawing. For me.

She had actually gotten to about 9 times better than what a guy could do for himself with her knowledge. I won’t say any more about that.

“Damn, you know I was gonna wait a few more years to drop this on people, like everything else… but the world is in such shit Then… really, I hadn’t anticipated so much bullshit in the culture — if no one cares, no one cares. Christ noone’s done this? I couldn’t even find something like this on Gooble.”

“That’s Google,” I told her. Holly was a genius, but the internet was sortof a lot for someone in 1933, even someone like her. Somehow it worked out good that I was the one who went forward to TwoThousandThen. I more instinctively acquired a grasp of the wild new technologies, anyway, she trusted me, and my pictures.

The internet blew my mind. The porn alone “online” would have melted guys minds in 1933. Melted their minds! The world I was in now — decades after the world I as born into and should have rightfully stayed in, seemed to have turned a corner when you started to be able to buy things with these little plastic cards.

I don’t know what the Cleavage Pets would have done to peoples’ minds in 1933, but the people and the clothes were not ready. HVV knew that… in fact this kindof “before your time” situation with her ideas happened so often. The Cleavage Pets were inspired by something her dad made for HVV’s mother one day.

"He was so ahead of his time sometimes… I could tell, but most others were too close to see that… he was totally into the idea of “drive-in” theaters in 1918… but that wasn’t gonna fly till 33."

She INHERITED that particular quality from her father. I am convinced that is something you can inherit.
She made three of the Cleavage Pets. I remember the first time I saw them. As cute as they were, I’ll never forget the first sight I had of Lydia’s creamy real estate like a valley in a picture, in the background of a picture Holly pulled out of her files one day.

“The Three Graces, Stooges, Musketeers… the Holy Trinity… The Police — all you need to start something is three.” She said. Two of them had gold teeth, one of them looked quite sour, but when tucked in a nice pair, suddenly the expressions took on a certain... life. I thought it was interesting that anyone who saw them immediately recognized how funny and great they were, but even Then, even THEN — decades in the future, we still had to wonder if it wasn't too early to make the idea actually sell. And, we were not alone in our high hopes for The Cleavage Pets. We were happy we still had them.

There were the “Dylan before Dylan” albums. HVV saw Dylan coming, but she didn’t have the technology to record either “John Singer Sargent” or “FRONT COVER” till, well, after Dylan. Nobody was gonna go for that — especially from a woman, before Dylan. It’s too bad — I bet quite a few people would have liked the song “Painting” (on the B-side of the album) — it was a super instrumental that captured the chess game that is painting. Stroke by stroke, the guitar would lay the song out, totally painting the picture you’d see finally at the end of the song. Way ahead of it’s time. The wild thing is that most people would see the same picture, from listening to the instrumental. That was a pretty good trick.

“Even Dylan himself had to tell you what you were supposed to see,” she told me.
And “Drawing Conclusions” — has to be heard to believe.

“FRONT COVER” — also known as the “Blue Cup Album” — signaled the beginning of the ideas Holly was having about news and fiction and an artform that was gonna be big, it was big, and it was called “videos.” “A Killer’s Killer” was the first full music video to be shot with absolutely no acting — in fact the subjects of the video had no idea they were being shot. The actual people and places that told the song’s story were completely shot candidly in the hidden infrared format over 8 years. By me.

“The actual reverse engineering of the story out of the years of candid photography was the hardest. I never really knew when I was finished, except to have an instinctual relationship with my subjects to begin with. My gut was the storyteller.

(cough)

...like a card game, with characters just like a real deck. Like… there were Queens and Jokers and Aces, but the Queens were neoburlesque dancers, the Jokers were jockeys, the Aces were architecture, the King was The Freak. Oh sorry, that's a different story — but the point is — I try to play the footage (I shot) like a poker hand. Making a story out of the evidence of events... Right in front of people. The music, that was easy. In the video, I tried to turn photography on it’s side, use it like noone else before.”

“We had Phil Spector too. He did an awesome job bringing out the tobacco stained brilliance of the guitarwork. In the language of TwoThousandThen, it really did “kill.” It killed photography like Dylan would kill with his own switch to electric instruments. This was an album where the photography was the point — unlike most albums where the music really did dominate the dynamic of the expression.

I'm trying to make this as simple as possible, but it IS a new idea for you as an audience, readers. This is the colorful reality.

“Phil really did me a favor to with this album. Not only was he between two murder trials, he was also producing a whole record for his wife at the same time... well, supposedly... I mean, that's what she said.”

Luckily HVV didn’t need as much help as Rachelle.

“When Phil eventually got convicted and went to jail, well, that didn’t make either of us too happy.”

I really wish I had been around to shoot the recording of THAT album. The riffing she did with those early early infrared pictures was spectacular. You can really see what she was doing now with me even then, but in a smaller more easily digested way. So simple… the idea of shooting first (for as long as it takes to build up such a deck of characters)… and then shuffling them and creating a whole new world out of them —

it really was a whole other card game with the cards everyone else just called pictures. When Dylan DID eventually see and hear these albums, even he had to say he’d never thought of the reverse engineering of a story from the actual pictures taken to "document" events and people in real life.

“Fuck,” said Dylan, “I never thought of anything like that…,” then he went on to talk about some other stuff, shaking his head. It’s a long story.

Holly was so glad she’d gotten to meet the man (Phil) who inspired her so much before he was even around to see what she did. Who wouldn’t like that? Phil felt the same way. Phil totally dug the photorevisionist ideas Holly would spend hours telling him about. It was orchestration, arrangement, and within a supertight frame, of mass data. HVV thought that Phil had done something musically speaking, akin to developing the atomic bomb.

"His songs reached a critical mass like stage..." she'd start up, hahah.

“Fuck!” said Phil one day, “you know, she’s kindof crazy, that reverse engineering… those ideas… John Lennon — when John told Yoko to pack her bags… at first I wasn’t quite sure why he’d dropped the Y-O-K-O… but now… Christ… — what’s it like to work with her everyday Don?”

My name’s Don Spiro. I hope I don’t LOOK like a guy who’d swallow a lot of insane chick talk.

This is just an account. It wasn’t my idea to reshuffle reality for a neojournalistic edge, but I thought it was an interesting way to approach my boss’s biggest problem, when she told me about it.

She’d begun by simply reporting the future as I shot it to the past, hoping to entertain 1933 with a look into TwoThousandThen. She didn’t really want to melt people’s minds with the porn of the future, noone would want to do that, but what was really happening was not really impressing the past that much. People still looked the same, dressed the same, they had freaks back then too — trust me, 1933 was FULL OF FREAKS.

The collective “whatever,” from the past drove my boss to “think outside the box” as they liked to say so much now.

“A box?” she’d say to me… (HVV felt that that phrase sounded like “the McDonald’s advertisement of philosophy.”)

“How primitive, and you can’t move, with a sphere you can roll — I want to think outside the SPHERE.”

...and since people had super short attention spans and even shorter memories, it was quite easy to just start over…

and people at least thought it was original.
Oh sure, there were things people didn’t want to hear. Or couldn’t understand right away. But she’d nicked them all like a vampire in the beginning with The Cleavage Pets™. I mean, after that, wouldn't you follow that person anywhere?

In TwoThousandThen, people were mistaking Inception for the Immaculate Perception…

“the people of the future start to appear like the architecture of the future… transparent slick superficially shiny in personality. Fragile, with skins and personalities of glass. Personalities that take less time to create, personalities with the same face… hella just like the architecture. Blowing the mind of the past showing them a vision of the future was on HVV's end an attempt to

"scare the bejeezus out of the past so they might shape up a small bit or two.”

Holly wanted to get a message like that across… as with others.

“So many people really cannot tell the difference between Bloomberg and Dahmer — even in the far far future!” “They have no nose for the truth anyway, just like now.” “Lie about the future to change the past — NOW!“ that was what she wanted to do.

“I think MTV did that,” she said “in a way.” I thought that is was cool that she could talk so well about that kindof thing in 1933… I’m not sure if many women — or men, could have. But she had the machine, and they didn’t, so we’ll never know.

“Now and the past know the future from nothing.”

Lydia I met like I said when I saw her breasts in the picture of the Cleavage Pet that HVV had shown me.

She became my assistant when I’d just been shooting at the racetracks in NYC early in the “operation.” After we had spent some time together, I realized she’d meet less guys if she became a neoburlesque dancer, so I encouraged her to start dancing. That was also after my wife Diane died. I swear I was good till then.
But Lydia wasn’t. I am just trying to let you know about Lydia.

Oh Jesus… it wasn’t enough that the songs on her second album (songs she sang while she did her performances — songs which WERE her performances) were songs like, “Oh You Silly Indians” and “The Buffalo are Damn Gone Y’all (Let’s Get Over It, Let’s Get Over It”). The songs meant a lot to her, bless her badass little bad ass, and there was an awful “Wholelotta Wholelotta” truth in them… but people were JUST maybe ALMOST ready to take that when HVV went and produced the Lydia’s routines. And I mean she wrote the songs, played them, and designed and made the costumes, under the name NEOFRONTIER, and she also designed the posters/album covers under the name Cool Anonymous.

I know this is alot.

Blackface Indian Bling, we had to hold that show in The Swooning Dewd,” the speakeasy under my place, Spiro’s. The character she used for the BIB performances was La Roja Noche — the name she used as her regular burlesque persona was Medianoche. Let’s put it this way, she was not a bad photographer, and she was a great assistant, but her shake was wasted on it. And those jokers, I mean jockeys, I just didn’t want her around them, no, no, no, no, no.

In her performances, she was assistant to no one. You’d be surprised by how the past got her. Or at least, she got them, She got them good.

“Smart shit is the broccoli of entertainment,” Holly said, and in the future, it just gets worse anyway. Let’s just replace the Kardasians with these chin dogs? I think the people here (in 1933) will think that’s funny, and we don’t have shots of the Kardasians anyway.” “Lets have the chins stand for the Kardasians in the new stories.”

Hahah, perfect.

I told Holly to stop. Haha. Since we knew who the Kardasian sisters were, we thought this was so much funnier than anyone in the past could possibly know, but they’d still like this in 1933. Dogs.

Sometimes we got carried away — “Kim Kardasian DWI!”

“Wait —,” said Holly, “that’s too close to the truth for this project.” While Holly and I were trying to tighten up the details for the operation, we had to amuse ourselves every once in awhile. “… hahaha… … Kardasian… sisters.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

______________________________________________

NOTE! THIS IS A COMPLETELY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT USING THE REAL PEOPLE I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY FOR YEARS. IT IN NO WAY REFLECTS REALITY!

here are the other episodes sofar:

episode 2) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 3) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

episode 4) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/10/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html

BOOBS, JOCKEYS, BOOBS, JAZZ, BOOBS.

2010-06-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

This is Angie Pontani.

When I saw her perform, it was like she was a huge shaking and snapping eraser, erasing all the ignorance and residual ideas I had about burlesque. She was performing a tribute to Blaze Starr. (Whose real name is: Fannie Belle Fleming!) I had forgotten about the Governor Long story, of which Blaze was a huge part. A woman who moved like that in the 50s would just be able to take over. It was fun to watch now. Back then, I can only imagine.

All this is about how I learned to live. I’ve learned how to live by jockeys, by jazz, and recently I have thought about life in terms of burlesque.

I am afraid that asking people to read between the boobs sounds too clever, which it is. Yet, when I think about it, I really have the feeling that that is just too close to the very truth of what I am doing now. Next to slapping advertising pasties on a pair of a neoburlesque star's climactic assets, the idea of slipping a couple of worthy souls between some slammingboobyflesh in the hopes of getting some deserved attention for some other interesting interests seems like an idea anyone could at least imagine some entertaining consequences... of.

This is Calvin Borel.

Calvin Borel has won 3 of the last 4 Kentucky Derbies. This is unheard of and unheard of. Just for that I think he deserves alot more attention, just because it really makes no sense that profoundly worthless "personalities" (that is a word I don't even trust anymore) really can effortlessly segue into comfort and applause and gain far far more attention than someone who really should be thought of as more like hmmm... like — christ if this was baseball, this guy would have been on magazine covers forever. He won something three times (in four years) that any jockey would really just do anything to get... once… in a lifetime of riding. He can't read, he can't write... but the horses he rides and he himself, have become something... freakishly wild. And yet he’s almost unknown.

What I am really into saying is that perhaps even more attention to be paid to really looking at how people spend their DVI (disposable visual income). Because it can’t be good for people to consume so many really pretty defective, completely subpar people (stars) the way we do. And we miss certain real badasses, like John Velazquez, Edgar Prado, and Calvin Borel. Just the basic knowledge that someone won 3 Kentucky Derbies (with even the smallest touch of semi-understanding), is inspiring.

John Velazquez is badass.

This is Jo “Boobs” Weldon

Yes, shooting just the boobs could be seen as a transparent gimmick... at the very least, if I was a guy I might be perceived a pervert. But there really is something that I am trying to say with my own version of burlesque portraiture. I am saying that there are things and subjects right under the radar that perhaps should be focused on... like the boobs of burlesque have been under the radar in a way. They have always been there, they are still the focus of the performance, but yet there has no photographic focus (to my knowledge of course) on the simple exclamatory glands themselves. As a comment, as pretty, as witty, as anything. Burlesques breasts seem to be the breasts of exclamation and attraction itself. So I am just adding alittle bit of punctuation I think to my work... it is actually quite a challenge shooting good boob shots. In a burlesque show, they are always moving around so much... sometimes the high speed boob shots don't look good at all. Maybe the last word in any writing on burlesque should end with the tits, I mean that is the so called “reveal,” in a burlesque performance — the end of the story. I really do wonder why noone just focused on the boobs… there has always seemed to be a lot of boob fans… aren't the tits enough?

Really, I have checked so many pages of flickr burlesque shots and googled and checked out burlesque photography... sofar, I haven't seen a single shot that just focused on the succulence and artistry. Where's the S&A? Please direct me towards the truth if I am in error!

About Jo “Books” Weldon:

The stories of burlesque (as every burlesque performance is a story) — they end in so many ways. They pretty much end up all at the same places though, so it’s really all about how to get there. And how to get there and what to wear on the trip is all in Jo “Books” Weldon’s first book, The Burlesque HANDBOOK. This book is just released from Harper/Collins, and Jo writes with such candid flirty eloquence about burlesque choreography and acting — she tells us that it sometimes has more to do with Bugs Bunny animation than well… what you might expect. The artist R. Crumb in the 1994 Zwigoff documentary mentions a real “crush” he had on Bugs Bunny. That two different artists involved in very sexual expressions both gained such powerful influence from Bugs Bunny is super touching to me. If you were gonna be anyone in any of those old Warner Bros. cartoons, there really is no doubt that that is who to be. But as an example of how to work a burlesque routine — and the specific animation in particular that she uses for THE example, will be instantly recognizable to a substantial demographic — we’ve all seen it — I find an animation to be a GENIUS model for how to move in a burlesque performance. I will never look at Bugs Bunny (or perhaps movement itself) the same way again. She is dead spot on. The parts where she talks about her animation influences/references was a surprising revelation. I mean you know, if Bugs Bunny entered a burlesque competition, you know the wabbit would win. No DOUBT. If you’ve recently gotten into burlesque, you won’t have a good understanding of burlesque if you don’t read this — it seems that there are not many good books on burlesque. I actually find that easy to believe. I have just started getting really interested in the neoburlesque scene... so it was so great to have all this information all there... really. Great book Jo! Nice world ya got there.

Jo Weldon is a revolutionary, in the art of telling a good boob story. It is hard work, that is one thing I see with her, she gives everything to the book, to what she does… She totally works her boobs off. I admire that. A lot. That is what I love thinking ad writing about... people who work really hard and just rock on what they do.

This is Meschiya Lake, I probably don’t need to intrioduce her to some people.

I really doubt that there is a better world to watch in New Orleans than Meschiya Lake’s. I’m a New Yorker, and I felt like I’d fallen down a rabbithole when I visited last October to take pictures for her newly released CD “Lucky Devil.” New Orleans is so exquisitely different. It’s grotesque what is happening now… we thought we had enough to deal with with Katrina which doesn’t look… so… bad…………… now. It’s like when there was a big herpes scare, in the 70s or something… and that really seemed to freak people alittle judging by the coverage, but then AIDS happened and herpes seemed almost okay. To me, this is, thanks BP, pretty much, like watching something taking a huge shit in the ocean right in front of us. That is how I see it. It’s like a Bosch nightmare to me. Real grotesque human nature. We are all getting a nice close look up the stinky smelly ass of human nature.

You know Meschiya Lake would take your mind offa that. She is the party in New Orleans that we all should have wherever we are.

The CD? — I immediately want a glass of red wine and some NOLA chow. I’m not a dancer! I just really like the daydreamy fantasies I have about living in a little depression era looking Walker Evans lookin little apartment with a little victrola or radio playing this... and then I just keep seeing and wondering how noone had that voice yet! Meschiya’s voice is so different. And I love hearing those instruments like I like walking around and looking at flowers and trees. If flowers and trees had tattoos, or a whole city, or the world, tattooed with the Chrysler Buildinglike spires and dots and the family wings and the mermaid tails of the tattoos she gots. I feel like there is something different about the tattoos of Meschiya Lake. Like if cities had tattoos, New Orleans would have them, somewhere… but it can’t, she has them.

Neo-burlesque, the Neo-Depression,

I’m suspicious that progress is just an illusion now, I have been for years, but now I am really into the world that has trombone players named The Butcher.

Meschiya Lake looks cool. She looks tough, she looks sweet, she looks. She just dresses herself.

The salty sweatiness of the song Lucky Devil is molassesy and almost stumbly, very lovey. It actually sounds kindof hellish… in a really comfortable and soothing way, like the poppies in The Wizard of Oz.

If you don’t check out the credits before you listen, around the third song you might sortof have a feeling like “wow, I didn’t know anyone sang things like this then…” and those for me were her own compositions. They are a chick being real, in so many ways.

I’m sure whatever she is doing as I write this is totally doc worthy. That’s just what she is like in real life. It’s been hard for me to know of her, and also see so much real SHIT on TV and go damn, this is what is interesting? I mean the evidence is that it must be right? But it just has to be some crappy programming we humans have that we should look at, because I really it distracts from reality. Kim Kardasian — everytime we see her, what she is really really doing is distracting us from a very scary reality. She and her sisters are fembots, scarier than the ones in The Million Dollar Man.

But Unce Jack? Tuba Skinny? Chief Sitting Voelker? They are there for you. They have Meschiya’s back, they have yours too.

If I didn’t have the people I follow like I do, I would be so bored. I would not get the coverage I want out of the coverage there is. That is why I am doing what I do. I want more coverage of the subjects I like… I think that they are good enough to share too. I want to share the jazz world with the jockey world and the burlesque world with both. Today I got a message on facebook from a horseracing fan asking what burlesque dancing is. I liked that.

This is Legs Malone. The girl with the 341/2 inch inseam.

I hadn’t seen Malone in awhile. I had some investigating to do.

Hmm, last time she was on myspace was 12/28/2009. My birthday is actually the 28^th of December so I thought that was cool.

Let’s see, I missed a lot.

Whole lot of Sugar Shack, The Legs Malone Show… oooh I missed so much. And after investigating a bit more I found she has a very intelligent background. Not surprised. In the picture I took of her in 2008, she gave off such an earthy cool charisma. Now, she looks like the Manson chicks would look like if any of them had actually been charming, too bad she hadn't been one of them, maybe she could have told them the WAY TO GO.

She has a very distinctive catlike face. She’s like if Catwoman from the Batman TV series, Julie Newmar, had had a lanky Steve McQueen lovechild.

I think she is worth following.

It’s not a book, it’s not a blog, this is both, and I am calling it a blook™.

2010-05-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

I am dedicating this blook™ to Kurt Vonnegut — this is a portrait I took of him a couple of years ago — actually six months before he passed away. He has always inspired me.

Boobs, jockeys, boobs, jazz, boobs. That works right? That’s a nice title, right? Right Kurt?

Like, if that was a poker hand, like it pretty much is — a poker hand I dealt myself — a poker hand I bet on, bluffed and shot for the over 8 years I have been shooting in the city, what would you call that hand? Is that hand a winner or a loser — or a lifestyle?

I’ve always believed that you have to write your own life. And when I look at the life I have now, well, it really looks like a life I have to get creative with. As in, if you were in a creative writing class and your teacher gives you a story that you have to finish as an exercise. A story like this:

What have you done? You’ve become a photojournalist in New York City. You call yourself lensjockey™. You shot jockeys (and jazz, and more) for 8 years already, you thought you could make jockeys stars, like the stars you saw them as. Then you thought you could make some underground jazz performers stars too, hahah you are pretty funny. It’s amazing how forceful irrational dreams can be. We’ll see what happens with the irrational dreams… and…

your whole thing in fact, for years, as lensjockey™, was that what you did was ride the unknown longshots/subjects you thought would be great winners someday. You rode the jockeys, you rode the jazz, but somehow the jockeys and the jazz just were not getting you where you wanted to be, and where you wanted to be was the winners circle, the winners circle of pop culture pop-photojournalists. And very recently you looked at this one shot you took, (a very nice set of tittage) racking up the hits all day one day (like very few portraits [of anybody] do) while you were at your sittindown-for-10-odd-hours job… and you saw the big picture. And that picture was the story you wanted to write your life to be.

I THINK like a jockey. LENSJOCKEY™ wants to be the source for the view to invisible worlds unknown to most. I think like a jockey with an eye for pictures who likes jazz and shooting boobs. That’s what you are gonna get from me. Boobs, jockeys, boobs, jazz, boobs. Well, and alot of other stuff too of course. But I wanted to make a point. LOOK! hahaha.

BTW:

Boobs are the period at the end of the sentence that every burlesque performance is.

SAM WAGSTAFF, the Anti-Warhol

2010-01-14T05:23:00.000-08:00

I’m thinking about Sam Wagstaff today.

I have a phantom art book. I can see this book clearly, and can browse it in my mind. It has a plain silver toned, glossy dustjacket with the name WAGSTAFF in big black fantastic letters on its 2” spine. On it’s front, the tiny word “silver” appears in a simple black non-serif typeface, like a little obvious mystery. It has a monumental presence in my own collection of books, and I like pretending that the more I learn about Sam Wagstaff, the more real the book becomes. WAGSTAFF — The book that should be.

Btw, I love the idea that Sam Wagstaff was so much better looking and perfect for playing the part of his own life than ANY ACTOR EVER COULD BE. That seems so cosmically right.

January 14, 1987 was the day that Sam Wagstaff died. It was over two decades ago, and more than enough time for someone to have produced a biography of one of the greatest New Yorkers ever. That has not happened… and the book in my mind is all I have — and since noone else has one either, in a funny way the book in my mind is all anyone has. Lately I wonder if there is someone out there working on a biography of Sam Wagstaff, paralleling my own thoughts. Anyone out there?

You won’t find too much googling him, bookwise. There are books on the city he lived in, books on those he knew, books on the arts he promoted by his collectings, books on so many lesser beings. Countless books on lesser men and have been written. Every day, books on lesser souls are written and read. Books on absolute hoaxes are written and read. Fictions with less story are written and read.

Sam is known partly for his photography collecting, which defined photography collecting for all time. Long story. He was also (arguably perhaps) the person most responsible for an art driven advertising campaign (via the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, his lover and friend) that in a completely New York way — a way unequaled since — an advertising campaign that advertised and defined the underground glossy elegant stylish nature of the gay sex scene (and not just any gay sexual scene, the New York City 1970s 1980s gay sexual scene) at it’s most graphic and unforgettable. It is hard to imagine a better advertisement for the sexual underground than the lifestyle and photographs Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff unleashed upon the city and the world. It was classy and nasty in the best ways. Supposedly, Sam Wagstaff hated advertising — an industry he was involved with earliest in his professional career — but it sure seems like that’s what he ended up doing all along. Sneaky?

He was a man-witch and a WASP. I wonder if the reason that there is no biography of Sam Wagstaff could have anything to do with the idea that — like it was a rare occurrence for him to even have happened — it is equally rare to find someone who can/could see him as a whole without falling prey to your own issues and biases. Waspy people aren’t into graphic depictions of gay sexual events and portraits and the undergrounders cannot get what someone could possibly see in some old silver. You know really, like oh, stupid old silver… yawn, like, someone who fully appreciates American silver from the 19^th century just might not get the sometimes icky reality of the sexual portraiture. And it seems like most people who saw the art in Mapplethorpe’s work, and even see the art in full on modern minimalist art, just cannot see the inarguable beauty and craftsmanship of imaginative silverwork — silverwork that Sam actually slept with like a lover in one instance. There is no more of that silver that will ever be made, ever, and it is beautiful, but if you listened to some people, you’d never know it. Each side has it’s own issues whech seem to make it harder for a whole and true picture of Sam to have emerged. More than most I can think of, he personified the story about the blind men and the elephant. People can see something in Sam, but few can see all comfortably. He is known for being so many things for people who interacted with him, so many real and genuine and genuinely outrageous things. You know, genuine. Fist-up-your-ass, cuddle-the-silver genuine. Defiantly genuine.

In Sam Wagstaff’s New York City in the mid seventies, it truly was the best of times and the worst of times. President Ford told the city to DROP DEAD — fiscally the city was in horrible shape — close to bankruptcy — yet the coolest scene was alive in ways later scenes not so much been since. It was the sparkly golden age of the Bee Gees, David Bowie (Fame — what a time for that song), Vicki Sue Robinson and Andrea True Connection. I only wish I could have experienced New York City then.

He was like the First President of Porn all holed up in his classical white spaceship apartment — even his name SAM WAGSTAFF sounds like both a political name and a porn name, and the two Sams (president and porn) flicker like a tricky lenticular picture, the two polar extremes cohabitating effortlessly in his life, constantly replacing each other — overlapping, nudging each other — extreme opposites transcending by alchemy, to the music of Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony. Do the Hustle!

The elegantly witty deco apartment building One Fifth Avenue — ONE FIFTH AVENUE, let that sink in alittle (One Fifth Avenue of the worldknown Fifth Avenue, known throughout the world Fifth Avenue, known perhaps more than any other street in the world Fifth Avenue, the ONE, 1, 1 Fifth Avenue of the one New York City of the ONE world)— was Sam Wagstaff’s Mount Olympus. His faceted-like-a-jewel penthouse apartment was his White House. From it he ventured and collected the best (for that was his art) like the best New Yorker you could ever make up. You hear him talk in an old video and hear art/photography politician. You could never make up anyone better than Sam Wagstaff. He was a character called THE COLLECTOR.

He had a face that once sculpted, could have (and still can) comfortably exist next to any historical figure’s bust. He had Lincoln in him, he had Redford in him, he had such a frighteningly timeless visage. There is a double portrait by Scavullo — of Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe that seems like a photographic version of Mount Rushmore, if Mount Rushmore was in New York City.

I want to contribute some of my own thoughts about Sam and what he did to what is out there to be known. Sam Wagstaff is the kind of person where you find that the more you know, the more you want to know. Yeah, he was a super private man, and there are few of his contemporaries left (many died of AIDS), but is there no more digging to be done? Has Sam Wagstaff been fully dug? Is what we have now all that there is to dig? I mean dig in both ways — can you dig it?

I can’t help but feel akin to a man who was known for seeing greatness in a subject before others like some art world handicapper. I after all, call myself a lensjockey. He wanted to be first to collect in a scene, to be the defining voice of the subject — his impression/vision being the first, (and cheapest and easiest) to produce. Collecting was partly an investment and test of his own mind for him. In my own photography, I’ve tried to find subjects with my own compasses and hoped that my pictures would lead others on and grow in worth, exactly as Sam wanted his collections to grow in worth and scope of influence. I have wanted to be like him ever since a lover/photographer named Bernard Warkentin brought him to my attention almost twenty years ago. He had his own Wagstaff story to tell me, he’d been in the spaceship apartment. Bernard himself has a beautiful singular collection of eighties portraits.

This is a portrait Bernard shot of me around 1989. He was a photographer who really saw something in me, and we'd talk alot about art and we had all these projects we were gonna do. And we talked about Sam. So New York City. He was another collector.

This is all what I have been thinking about for weeks and I am posting it today in honor of the man who inspired me so much, (at least that much) on the anniversary of his death, January 14, 1987. You can’t say Sam Wagstaff doesn’t deserve it.

2009-11-11T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Big Voice of New Orleans

2009-10-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

This is the Bible of punkjazz. The gent on the cover is no other than Punk Jazz Duke himself, the god of punkjazz. I made up my own religion (punkjazz) because frankly, religions just don't say anything to me or for me. They are all from too long ago, and strike me as outdated operating systems which have only become corrupted and ineffective. I mean, really, to me, New York City is heaven... for real. I cant imagine a heaven someone made up so long ago saying anything that can help us now.

So, who are the saints of punkjazz? Cuz there's gotta be saints for a religion right? Hmmm, now who could possibly fill the shoes of the first saint of punkjazz... that someone would have to rock... be UNMISTAKEABLY punkjazz... or noone would EVER believe in this new religion.

Miss Meschiya Lake is who Punk Jazz Duke led me to.

She's got the voice of my kind of angel. And I just can't relate to all the poofy babies and clouds and robes. Give me some tattooes and fire and style please... something to call my own heaven on earth voice. The first saint of punkjazz busks on the streets of our world now, all fiery and sexy and with her own style of jazz and punk and reality.

and you know, where else would the first saint of punkjazz come from... I mean seriously!

Here she is, spreading the good word.

Can't tell me she ain't no saint.

Wanna hear the word?

That's where it's at.

2009-10-21T20:30:00.001-07:00

THE DAY SARAH K. ANDREW MADE ME A STAR

2009-06-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

We should all be so lucky to have the feeling I got.

Like most days that change your life — in ways big and small — June 27, 2009 started out quietly. I wasn't even planning on going to the track, I was gonna go on Sunday. But your own plans, and the plans of what we call fate — well, I saw what happened when I let the soft embrace of my fate take me to a place I could not imagine.

The world of the New York City racetracks is not large, it is quite small actually, but make no mistake, it is a world that has it's own rules and structure — just like a city. Going to Belmont racetrack for the first time was just like going to New York City itself for the first time.

I was nobody.

It was a whole world of people I didn't know and things I hadn't seen, and I came with the same exact ambitions and love and fear and an overwhelming desire to be seen and heard above the

big noisy microcosm. And I FELT like it was going to happen, I just felt it, but feeling something like that when you have no idea why and no idea how — that is humbling. Because it's weird and strong and a mystery and it is up to you to make the moves.

Just like in a horse race. Exactly like in a horse race. You have the horse you've got and you are the jockey, and there are alot of jocks next to you, all seemingly wanting the same thing. I didn't even realize what kind of jockey I was till a year or two later when I started calling myself lensjockey.

Sarah K. Andrew is a lensjockey too.

That's the beautiful talented Sarah K. at Aqueduct racetrack in Jamaica, Queens.

She has a fascinating blog, and very cool ideas — here is a sample — it's about me, and my top ten music faves — but who ever thought of asking track photographers what their top ten faves would be? Only someone who goes by the name Rock and Racehorses. Only.

http://tinyurl.com/kk567k

if you have not seen Sarah's view of the racetracks, you haven't seen the racetracks. You just haven't. Like all great lensjockeys, her view is irreplaceable. I think myself that to have a rock approach to shooting horses, jockeys and races is the best approach there is. It is the only way to inject style and modern action into such a traditional and relatively untouched environment.

When I came to the tracks with my desires and ambitions and my style and my view, one of the few who got me, and I think she got me really fast, lengths and lengths before others, lengths, lets say the lengths are years... the one who really sees me, is Sarah K. Andrew. And the picture she took of me last weekend, mere days ago, was a picture that I have been waiting for in the back of my mind, never knowing what it would look like or when it would happen, or by whos hand it would come.

yeah, I know it's a picture of me, but I see it as more than that. it is a picture of a photographer at a NYC track and it is a rock photo. It rocks. It's Pete Townsend, it's Jon Bon Jovi,

it's rock and roll, and it's at the racetracks and it's a photographer holding a remote for a camera to shoot a race. The picture she took of me is the first of it's kind at the tracks. it's the best illustration I have seen yet of a photographer as rockstar, there might be others out there of course, but this was a pure and direct result of two different people. I can't post bigger images of hers to this blog right now as I write because she doesn't allow the access to her pictures on flickr that I would need, but she's got shots!

That little black and white shot of me at the top of this post, she took during a moment that just happened, it was kindof a joke really. But it turned into something more. In a small quiet way, she turned me into a star.

Check out her blog, check out her pictures. Remember her name.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockandracehorses/

ROCK AND RACEHORSES.

thanks Sarah, that was a little personal fantasy of mine you made come true. hahah

dogseat, the photographer

2009-06-17T05:23:00.000-07:00

ERIC HARVEY BROWN - also know as dogseat on flickr.

ERIC HARVEY BROWN - also someone who is indescribable in words. So here is a picture, this is from a set of his called "365 dogseats" —

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogseat/sets/72157612080947336/

I can't remember which pictures I saw of his first. I think it was one of his pictures about an event called the Phagwah.

this is probably it.

this is another picture of the event that got in the NY Times.

Somehow, even then I could tell that he was someone that would be really really fun to follow. I couldn't decide though if I wanted to follow him for his pictures or the way he seemed to be someone so like a rockstar. He just — he just seemed to be too much to overlook. His collection called "365 dogseats" should be mandatory flickr viewing. More than almost anyone I have come across on flickr,

(and I realize that the flickr world in NYC is a vast and unknowable galaxy of photographers)

Eric Harvey Brown seems to me to be the photographer to follow if you want a real and human and unretouched view of some part of humanity that is brave and unkempt in this age of plastic surgery and unrealistic beauty/handsome standards.

like this:

I never saw anything on flickr like that. A guy who posts a picture like that to flickr — well this is a guy you can trust. You can trust any picture this photographer takes, because there is no attempt at self illusion. That is what I adore about dogseat. Even his name dogseat conjures up visions of, well, dogs seats, perhaps rubbing against your nice clean carpet of human illusions about our bodies and our functions and our silliness.

this is another picture you can trust:

it's of a cat called "Smut." I highly recommend the Smut collection. It's endearing in it's backwoods charm. You will giggle and wish there had ever been a Saturday morning cartoon about such a cat. Precious.

this is another picture you can trust:

haha oh Eric, Eric, B. How lovely to trust. Photo "DSC_4690.jpg" is a pooptacular statement of nature's (and a dogseat's) vernacular.

Not all photography should be a grand statement. I feel that the language of photography is ill-served by the idea that the photographer should be invisible and that the world of photographic coverage should look like a stock photography catalog, all smooth and smell-less and unhairy and overgroomed. Eric Brown is the best ever reminder of that concept to me.

so if you want to see the unkempt underbelly of NYC photography, you should seriously follow dogseat. he's everything alot of people aren't.

this is my favorite picture of Eric, it's a self portrait, and it is beautiful.

had to put that in here. he doesn't always take pictures of the smeary unbeautiful. This is a shot of his from his latest trip. He want to Alaska to compete in a Beard and Moustache competition. (He came in Fourth, here is the set of pictures from that wonderful and witty competition — http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogseat/sets/72157618730271109/)

I think that this is my favorite shot from that trip.

That's all Folks!

GRAND CENTRAL JASON

2009-06-16T05:38:00.001-07:00

It made me so jealous. When I saw it in the "contact" sheet of pictures that you get in flickr, I just wished I'd taken it soooo badly. I have been trying to get something like that of Grand Central Station's gods and goddesses for so long! And there they were!

The colors are exquisite and the composition and framing are perfection. The Gods have spoken.

Jason is a lensjockey who covers the city and shoots the real city. His eye is simple, direct, subtle, clean, energetic, and it is no wonder that his pictures are often used by those who wish to show a simple yet eloquent idea about the city.

Readers of gothamist, CURBED, THE NEW YORK OBSERVER — web sites about this awesome city — are familiar with his images.

Images like:

...images like these, with their smart poetry and clean lines — these are images that describe the simple truths of the city — the beautiful truths of the city we all walk around in each day. I often imagine Jason Kuffer walking around the city with his eyes forever opened to the delicious tidbits any real New Yorker cannot help but nibble.

It took me awhile to appreciate his images, they are so unlike my own. Jason Kuffer's images whisper where my own images are more aggressive. It took me some time to understand his own language, but now that I know it I love it. His pics are like sushi to me, little raw tasty elegant portions of the city.

*smacks lips* hahaha

have a taste! It's on Jason!

(that's him!)

Sometimes he sees something like this that is just so freakin unbelievable though, he definitely has range...

I mean look at that! He can go from a whisper to a proclamation about this city. Effortlessly.

As lensjockeys go, "Digiart2001 | jason.kuffer" deserves attention. He's active and has a great sense of style and humor, and he gets around. I suggest that you follow how work. You will see the small and the monumental... in ways that embrace you. And this beautiful city.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digiart2001/

Thanks Jason for your pictures of this city I love so so much.
lensjockey

FIRST REVIEW OF LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE

2009-05-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Here it is:

I picked up a copy of your magazine at the DUMBO photo fest this afternoon. I read it on the train going home. I was very impressed. On the front cover there's a price of ten dollars. Is that how much you charge people for the magazine? Or is that how much you pay people to read it? Cause I read the whole thing and want to know where I can go to collect my ten dollars. I never read such drivel. And the photographs in the magazine, well, what can I say.......... drek.

— Hasifleur Wagibigit

fair enough I'd say - yet it has been very strange seeing the really angry responses that I got personally... for what really is a valid effort at presenting a fun, original and different look at a part of the NYC photography scene... perhaps it is right in the end that negative attention is still attention. In the spirit of punk — it seems right! I mean, this wildly named person will probably not forget the LENSJOCKEY name! And if you want to see for yourself how awful my magazine is, you can see it at St. Mark's Bookshop in NYC and at McNally Jackson Booksellers!

I told my friend Steve in Texas about this letter and he immediately said that the name was made up hahah. I love that someone hid their name while writing me this. That's a pretty good one, I never thought of that. I guess it would also have to be someone who sortof knows French, some sort of European something... a worldly wit of some sort. The truth is though, that if someone wants to make up a name to tell me they think my magazine is bogus, or too expensive, with such silly (and rather unseeing) venom, well, I still have to think that no matter what, they know I'm doing something, they will always be able to change their minds later. Because it is not just about that 2nd Issue of LENSJOCKEY. People really did think punk was awful when they were confronted with it. That's a real effect. Just looking at my magazine as an experiment, I feel like it is a success.

LENSJOCKEY CONTENT

2009-05-26T08:03:00.001-07:00

You can't start a magazine without really trying to define your content. Looking towards the third issue of LENSJOCKEY, I am struck by how different my view of the photography scene is. I mean really, where IS the punk rock photography magazine? I mean punk rock in the profound way, maybe not so much underground as just such a different viewpoint, and not even mad... just fucking punk rock.

I didn't see it at the NY Photo Festival. I was concerned alot with getting my own ideas out, but even while I was doing that I had to see what was out there around there... and nothing caught my eye... and my eyes are sortof trained to look for that now because of what I am doing myself.

To me, punk was raw, imperfect, noisy, human, shiny, dirty, cheap, colorful, and said fuck alot. I of course have not seen attempts at this sort of a magazine, one reason being that I have been spending so much time working on my own, which is isolating. But I did go to the NY Photo Festival this year and I didn't see anyone else's ideas about photography were like mine. I just didn't. At all. Great design is really important in the photography world, I guess to a certain point it has to be - like expensive clothes, but I don't see a jamming sensibility. Is it out there? I will look again, while content becomes an issue for my own magazine.

I want to find the stars. I have always loved finding a star to focus on before they become bigger. I'm sure alot of people are like that, gallery owners for one instance, but really, why is there not a magazine that focuses on photographers more like stars? Them in front, illustrated by their pictures, you know, like you don't hear songs in Rolling Stone. Something in relation to that idea. that you've seen the pictures, you know, maybe, but not seen who the person is, it's a fine balance maybe, hey for me this is an experiment about an idea.

When I would be handing out my magazine, and talking to others I noticed that there was always — with everyone — a genuine surprise at what I would say to them. And what I would say to them was "Rolling Stone for photographers" — that's how I would start talking with most people I met. Just as a response, the way that I would get genuine surprise mixed with an involuntary sort of a "noone has ever put those two things together but it sounds like something" means something to me. It was like I was testing a switch at the festival. That was a particular interest of mine there, to test that psychological recognition switch with alot of people. I needed some feedback that was exclusive of what others thought of me. Something independent of personal issues and biases, or as close to that as I could get. Knowing my own limits too, and being honest about my own biases, like who I felt comfortable addressing, all sorts of things. I even got some really super negative reactions - that is all I can call them. For instance, one person came up to a friend of mine, another photographer who was handing out some copies - and made a huge point of saying he thought he'd just throw it out, like, right in front of her, in her face. As an insult, really too aggressively. He wanted her to know exactly how stupid and worthless it was. It's a fucking magazine. Why so angry about a magazine called LENSJOCKEY that has been given out free? I guess you can't ask for your money back since it was free. So being insulting about throwing it away is the only alternative left for an enraged recipient of a free publication.

The responses just made me think that truly, having a magazine that attempts to follow a model like Rolling Stone, having a personality focus for a photography magazine, is really a new idea. That's what I saw on the faces and the responses I got. The third issue?

What is the content that I feel worth backing up in print? What WOULD a Rolling Stone for photographers look like? I am trying to accomplish this idea. I know that I made a first impression on many, good or bad. the name recognition has to be there — for more than a few people who attended the NY Photo Festival this year the name LENSJOCKEY is out there in it's own imperfect way — what will I do with Issue #3?

FROM JOCKEYS TO LENSJOCKEYS

2009-05-22T06:08:00.000-07:00

By Holly Van Voast

Boy am I burned out. What a week!

Issue 2 of LENSJOCKEY magazine was about struggle and love and pictures and people — photographers. At The NY Photo Festival 2009 — just last week! I got reactions ranging from disgust and meanness to genuine feeling and encouragement. All those things came from the same group. (And some of the genuine feeling and encouragement came from the top — William A. Ewing — just sayin.). I met people who listened and people who didn’t. I saw my nightmare and my triumphs. I triumphed over the fear of putting myself and my own ideas out there in front of the hip tough crowd of New York City photographers.

I’ve done it before.

When I went to the racetracks in 2002, and started my seven year involvement shooting candid portraits of the jockeys riding in New York City, I had no idea what it would really lead to. And that crowd is a tough crowd too, that was good training. I went to the tracks cold, just like I did to the NY Photo Festival in 2009, seven years later. Cold and unknown, and not looking like much to so many. I really went from jockeys to lensjockeys — really.

If I don’t tell this story, it won’t get told.

These are the pictures I took of those jockeys —

I saw them in a way that was exclusive of the horses they rode.

Over seven years I collected a group of portraits that were never-before taken of the men who I loved who rode the horses at 35 mph, and exploded from big metal banging gates on those horses in search of a win.

There’s a TV show now, and the races get alittle more press these days, but when I started going, it was a ghosttown of a world, totally forgotten and insulated from the city around it. Totally.

God, I loved jockeys.

I’d go to Aqueduct racetrack – sometimes on both weekend days — a 2 hour ride on the subway at least — just for one or two shots for a high.

I never bet on the horses…

I bet on jockeys — I thought they deserved way more attention than they got.

I still do. I can't shoot as much there as I used to — the magazine work takes up so much time and I got involved with a completely different scene for a time, but there are more and more people shooting jockeys now. Raymond Haddad — who shot the author photo for the second issue of LENSJOCKEY #2, was a friend of mine when we worked together at BMG/Columbia House - years ago, and he started to see what I did with the jockeys then. He saw a book I wrote, he read what I wrote online and off about the jockeys that I loved, the ones that I portrayed — and he saw my pictures. He loved my pictures. He can shoot there now more than I can, and that hurts, but he has become known in his own way for doing what I started in 2002. I see people shooting from the spots that I shot from, places where no professional would want to shoot from... now it is common, when I did it, I had it all to myself. I really felt like I had it all to myself. I have a priceless collection of men who rode from a time that doesn't exist anymore at all. I have the best collection of Norberto Arroyo Jr. portraits, a great collection of Edgar Prado portraits — John Velazquez, Pablo Fragoso, Alan Garcia, Mike Luzzi, Channing Hill — it seemed like such a golden time to me.

This is a picture I took of Alan Garcia in 2005 where he rode in a stakes race — The Gotham — at Aqueduct. He rode most of the race with his right foot completely out of the stirrup. That's what a jockey means to me. Just bombing down the track even if your foot is out of the stirrup. He almost won that race. It was pretty spectacular. he wasn't winning the race here though, I just wanted to shoot him because he was in the Paraneck Stables silks and he was a favorite jockey of mine. If that is the only racing shot I ever get, that would make me happy.

And that's how I feel about LENSJOCKEY magazine. I'm riding with one foot out of the stirrup and I might not win, but that is how I'm riding my life.

you can see my collection of jockey portraits on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lensjockey/sets/72057594063826614/

and even earlier pictures:

http://finalturngallery.com/g2/main.php —scroll down to the bottom! To the album titled

"The Woodless Wood Day" I posted my portraits there for years before going on flickr. It's disorganized, but those pictures are to me the soul of the start of interest in jockeys exclusively, there was nothing like that, noone had ever followed these men with a camera like me. I feel so lucky to have shot what I got at all the tracks I shot at. It is in the spirit of jockeys that I conceived of LENSJOCKEY magazine. Truly.

I started something at the tracks just focusing on jockeys, and I want to start something now with the photographers I see in New York City now. It's the same thing for me. Eric Brown is just like a jockey to me. He just uses a camera. btw - he's about to enter a contest in Alaska with his spectacular mutton chop sideburns. Good luck Eric!

NY PHOTO FESTIVAL - the experience!

2009-05-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

I went with my newly printed magazines every day of the festival.

Imagine yourself dragging a handcart with the second issue of your magazine. You look like a cross between Johnny Thunders, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan — you know, just imagine you don't look pretty. Anyway, you have all these copies of your magazine that you know you have to make some sort of an impression with. You just have to.

I doubt that you and a handcart with a cardboard box bungeed to it are what you'd be advised to use if you want to make an impression with your magazines. You have to give up the cool.

So I gave up the cool and got real and just walked the streets and stood outside the talks and walked the fuck up to strangers and gave the magazines away.

I met Martha Cooper — so unassuming and gracious, I met Eugene Richards, again, unassuming and gracious. Lauren Greenfield, Andrew Hetherington, Daniel Power, Frank Evers... everyone so devoted to one thing, photography.

William A. Ewing mentioned me - or at least what I was doing - in a talk he gave. (I didn't hear that, two separate people who were there at the talk told me when they happened upon me. But it was about the American spirit or something) He mentioned to me how smart I was, once when I was standing outside of a talk at the festival — he told me to hand out my magazines to people as they came out of the talk. If I had memoirs, this experience would be in there, no doubt.

btw - It was really profound watching Daniel Power's brave humility in the face of the publishing world's awful turn away from photography books and the powerHouse move to go into custom publishing. It's kindof sickening that photography book can be on a bookstore shelf for only 90 days, that is nothing. I love powerHouse books, I love their vision of photography, and New York City. That was the overwhelming feeling in the Festival for me, how crappy this anti-book thing is. I was proud to be trying to make a printed magazine work. Fuck that shit. A world without books and magazines? That's just wrong. We are moving in the wrong direction with that.

I wanted my magazine everywhere I was able to put it. Every day I spent taking my magazines around was an adventure in being completely out of my comfort zone! Just the raw experience of interacting with others in such a mind-blowing manner — look, it's like being both a beggar and a salesman — and it was wild.

I gave away approximately 400 magazines to so many different people - it is the most incredible event I have ever been to, full of such vibrant visionaries.

FREE LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE!

2009-05-08T06:39:00.001-07:00

Get FREE copies of LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE at the NY PHOTO FESTIVAL -

see below!

LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE at NY PHOTO FESTIVAL — May 14-17 in DUMBO

2009-05-08T06:20:00.000-07:00

During the Festival's day and night activities, I will have copies of the magazine - for attendees of the festival the magazine will be FREE!

LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE is full color representation of the exploding NYC photography scene. this is about you by me.

you can also get it at St. Mark's Bookshop after the 16th of May.

Obama Inauguration - Harlem NYC

2009-05-06T05:36:00.001-07:00

Obama Inauguration - Harlem NYC
Originally uploaded by jamie nyc

Jim Kiernan covered the Harlem NYC reaction to the Barack Obama Inauguration. I kindof wish that Obama would wear Cazals.

Tub Cat - by Sarah K. Andrew

2009-05-06T05:31:00.001-07:00

Tub Cat
Originally uploaded by Rock and Racehorses

"Bryan likes to hide behind the shower curtain in the bathroom and peek out as I brush my teeth.

He also likes to meow in the bathroom- perhaps he's checking the acoustics."

Indeed. Sarah shoots way more than cats, but her portrait of her cat Bryan is one of my faves because of the hypnotizing quality of his expression paired with the minimalist bathroom elements.
Bravo!

¡ Happy Cinco De Mayo ! says Raymond Haddad

2009-05-06T05:26:00.001-07:00

¡ Happy Cinco De Mayo !
Originally uploaded by [ raymond ]

Raymond has a special way of looking at the city through his portraits. Looking at his pictures I often think of them as advertising for the city.

Leanne Staples's fire escape to heaven

2009-05-06T05:22:00.001-07:00

fire escape to heaven
Originally uploaded by ifotog, Queen of Manhattan Street Photography

This is one of my favorite buildings in the city. Leanne shoots buildings and clouds like noone I have ever seen.

Self Portrait of Eric Brown

2009-05-06T05:18:00.001-07:00

_DSC9539
Originally uploaded by dogseat

Eric never ceases to surprise and amaze me. he took this picture recently, and I think it is beautiful. Dewd, the chops never looked so romantically grand.
I think you had better follow him!

He's a TRUE PHOTOGRAPHER ROCKSTAR.

see him in LENSJOCKEY!

LENSJOCKEYS IN ISSUE 2

2009-05-06T04:57:00.000-07:00

I had to write a new post because the text editing window would not let me edit my text sizes and colors right. Don't know why.

LENSJOCKEY 2 is all about the photographers that I admire here in NYC.
There's Bob Gruen, Jim Kiernan, Leanne Staples, Dana Dunham, Eric Brown, Sarah K. Andrew, and Raymond Haddad.
It's a collection of photographers that I love.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifJIM KIERNAN!

2009-05-05T06:40:00.000-07:00

The first ever cover lensjockey. Read about him in the second issue of LENSJOCKEY.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimkiernan/

He's competitive, fast, he reminds me of the actual NYC jockeys I shot portraits of for 7 years. He talks like a jockey, he shoots like a jockey — position!, he moves like a jockey. He is the most jockeylike of any lensjockeys I have seen yet. He HAD to be on the cover. I even had a contest to find a cover feature photographer for the magazine. I still want to do that, but the first contest was held just about when I met Jim. And he stole the fucking cover scene.

Other lensjockeys included in ISSUE 2 of LENSJOCKEY are:

Leanne Staples - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifotog - she takes such exquisite architectural shots, really personifies them, and clouds also - awesome cloud shots.

LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE IS 16 PAGES OF LOVE FOR AND ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS OF NEW YORK CITY.

2009-05-05T06:22:00.000-07:00

the best photographers in the world, in the best city in the world. no contest. no-brainer.

get LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE at St. Mark's Bookshop in NYC after the 16th of May -

2009-05-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

I'm planning on getting them some copies about then, the magazine will be shipped next week. I'm a publisher-er-er.

LENSJOCKEY is all color, great pictures, my writing and interviews.

DAY 1

2009-05-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday, it's the morning, I'm alittle chilly because I have the window open and it's right next to my bed.

I am awaiting the delivery of a box containing the second issue of LENSJOCKEY. Now, it's on to promotion. EW! Truly though, it is an honor for me to start promoting online what I publish in LENSJOCKEY, the first ever magazine devoted to the stars (as I see them) of the awesomely awesome photographer scene in NYC right now.