Tres’ Passing

The Vector Snob does not consider himself a photographer. His career of choice is based around graphic design. Something he mastered long before his peers, and spent perfectly good keg stand frat house collage years, smoking Luckies and listening to Kraftwerk while creating fancy bullshit for major companies. Orange juice you see falling out of a spout on a Tropicana commercial? You can probably thank the Snob and his mega computer for it.

I used to go out on photo hunts with the Snob. He took me through Seattles underbelly and rotting guts. He showed me how to navigate through deserted factories, what to do when security is on to you, the quickest way to hop fences, and the importance of using layers in Photoshop. Just when I though I took some amazing photo, he would show me his and make me want to quit…

He could make any person or broken place look as unique and beautifully mysterious as he is, in a photo. Now more than ever he seems to get distracted by nature more than buildings. He talks to trees more than people. But his feet still smell more like death than pachouli, and the 1960s science book styled photos that come from this modest photographer still make me want to test the limits of what can be done with a sad looking situation along with some creativity.

All images belong to Vector Snob

A Place For Kids And Junkies

On the 4th of July, all of my potential plans went to shit. Not too surprised. If it involves groups of people gathering to grilling meats on an open fire with the potential of explosives going off, I’m always the forgotten one.

What the fuck ever.

Psh! Mosquitoes, eating overcooked meats in the dark, rowdy people with poor shoe choices being drunk off shitty beer. Its prrrrrobably not my thing.

The issue intercepting my fantasy hatred for this summer activity is that I LOVE BBQs! I can’t resist the smell of openly burning meat and coals!!!!

I started off my failed Independence Day by cleaning my house and talking about my BBQ dilemmas with my very hung over friend, who could relate. This couch bound friend spent her time multi tasking. She went between listening to me and checking her phone after drunkly suggesting for an acquaintance to throw a BBQ so that she could invite herself to it, the night before. A noble attempt, in my eyes.

To escape from the fumes of pitty and Windex, we went for a walk. Had a man with a mouth full of meat in his mouth not been walking out of an open crack of a solid gated lot right off of the Jefferson L stop, we would have walked right passed it.

We poked our little blonde heads in only to see that this was more than your average junk filled lot. This lots ‘junk’ meticulously formed a 9 hole mini golf course, developed by a series of local artists. As if we weren’t sold right there and then,  right by the entrance was A FUCKING BBQ!

$1 for a hot dog, $2 for a burger. Yes. We had found ourselves desperate enough for the joys of BBQing on the 4th of July so much so that we were willing to pay someone to let us join in.

It was well worth it!

The Putting Lot ended up being a hidden gem amongst many converted warehouse with a lack of interesting businesses.

The mini golf course was created and is run on a volunteer basis. The Putting Lot hires volunteers to work 4 hour shifts throughout the summer, to manage the Brooklynites that come to fill the holes at 5 bucks a pop.

Ha. I said “come to fill holes”.

The groups involved in this project have taken the most random assortment of items and turned them into 9 interesting things to watch as a reaction of hitting a ball with a stick. If you couldn’t tell, I’ve never had much of an interest in mini golf. But its hard for me to resist my love for junk art and creative uses for pill bottles, type writers, and fire places.

See The Putting Lots website for more info

All photos taken by Chloe Rice

Away Note From the Greasy Haired Bone Breaker

Salt watered hair and red finger nails have been great for easily pulling my hair back and cracking open lobster shells.

My computer won’t hold a signal long enough to create a real entry, so I leave you with the theme song of my week.

ohHobo Sac

The summer edition of whats in the bag, is much lighter.

1. Ex Libris Anonymous made my blank papered journal out of a 1966 first aid handbook for children. The journal is separated into three sections by some original pages of text and illustration. I use it to draw, write recipes, and lists. Lots of lists.

2. Japanese Matcha candies! Anyone who tries them seems to refer to its surprisingly dense texture and bittersweet green tea taste by using the exact same word. “Interesting”. I have a sugar problem, so in the time it takes me to get through one of these slightly sweet candies, the itch usually passes.

3. Woody Allen on Woody Allen. A series  of interviews that Stig Bjorkman conducted with Allen about his movies and life, through them. Interview collection books are usually my favorite thing to read on the train, because ending a chapter is short enough for the average train trip.

4. My my Metrocard. The New Yorkers equivalent of car keys.

5. Reading glasses, because I have old people vision.

6. My sunglasses, because I want to prevent worsening my old people vision.

7. Panasonic retro headphones. Of the 9 sets of headphones I own, these are my favorite. Despite the ‘look at me.’ color that they accidentally sent me. You know the theory that what one person sees as red, may really be blue or whatever? Well I guess Panasonics white is actually lime green.

8. I like to try to keep my mouth as clean as possible, anytime I feel like want to smoke a cigarette. A habit I kicked almost half a year ago. My thought is that if I keep my mouth fresh, then I won’t want to ruin it with tar. Breath strips, floss, tea tree oil toothpics….They will never make me feel the same way Luckies did.

9. Its a bag of makeup. I don’t ever use it once I leave the house, yet I carry it out of habit.

10. Dual card reader for my camera. Because you never know when you’ll be bored near a computer that allows you to upload photos. The dinosaur sticker is on it so that it doesn’t get confused with other peoples card readers. Don’t you hate when electronic accessories get lost in the shuffle?

11. Even though I don’t smoke and I HATE cats, I carry cat lighters only for the reaction value from when I hand it to a smoker who needs to borrow a light.

12. Nivea hand cream. ’cause I is chappy

13. My robot friend for obvious reasons.

The Cooling

The Cooling

Orlando, FL

2009

Model: Little Buddy

Photo By: Chloe Rice

My Mom Was Right.

Photo of the Los Angeles Times Building after being bombed in 1910.

A lot of things happened durring the year 1910:

• The Daylight comet and Halley’s Comet both appeared.
• Boy Scouts of America was formed by William D. Boyce
• A bomb killed 21 people during a strike at the LA Times building, over M&Ms.
• Sweden held its last execution ever.
• Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born.
• Florence Nightingale kicked the bucket.

and this photograph was taken.

Sergey Prokudin Gorsky, a Russian genius, began experimenting with RGB images and created photographs that are some of the most visualy crisp and real photographs that I have seen to date.

“His process used a camera that took a series of three monochrome pictures in sequence, each through a different coloured filter. By projecting all three monochrome pictures using correctly-coloured light, it was possible to reconstruct the original colour scene. Any stray movement within the camera’s field of view showed up in the prints as multiple “ghosted” images, since the red, green and blue images were taken of the subject at slightly different times.”

Here is a self portrait of Gorsky taken in 1915

And so ends this weeks series of “My mom was right. I probably won’t achieve anything with my life.”

To Tired To Title Tits.

Seeing Scarlett Johanssons boob is kind of as exciting as that time where she made out with Penelope Cruz. Because you know its fake, but it pulls you in anyways.

The Milking

the making

the styling

the faking 

the smiling

the meeting

the sifting

the rogering

the gifting

the hoping

the praying

the leaving

the staying

the waiting

the lying

the sighing 

the crying

the wishing

the dreaming

the fishing

the creaming

the milking

the milking 

the milking

 

-Alan Martin

(written for Tank Girls ‘The Gifting’ in 2007)

The Girlfriend

The Girlfriend

Brooklyn, NY

2009

Model: Gala Darling

Photo By: Chloe Rice

3 Dudes I Love.

I woke up thinking about a few people I’ve seen on a screen and thought “Hey, man. I love you. In a bizarre and platonic kind of way.”

Torben Ulrich. Unfortunately he gave birth to the man whose ego make my fists clench, and who’s bullshit attitude gives me idiot shivers. But without that, he wouldn’t be the man who has made “delete that” into a household term, for me.

Bill O’Riley. An overall happy man with stubborn, cynical, blunt views on everything AND a ridiculously short temper?!? I love you! Although I don’t think he is right all of the time, I also don’t completely disrespect the mans views. Most important, the man is always ready for a good debate. If he were a woman, he’d be a goddamn nightmare to live with. Not in the I’m-drunk-and-bored-so-i-feel-like-fighting kind of way, but more in the Shut-up-I’m-wise-and-power-hungry-like-Angelina-Jolie kind of way. I’m OK with that babbling skin sack of hypocrisy.

Ellen Degeneres. When I used to think about having a conversation with Ellen Degeneres, I imagined it would go something like this:

“Hi I’m Gay! Do you like ice cream? I like gays! Are you afraid of the dark? I’m not afraid of anything cause I’m gay!” ect….

So when she came back from her career plummeting vagaytion to start a talk show, I watched it because I had nothing better to hate. Two episodes and practical joke with Dennis Quaid later, I had unknowingly developed a friendship crush. Once I was able to let go of the pride overdose she gave to everyone, I found her attitude to be slightly addictive. Always positive, embraces her ‘drunk white man at a wedding’ dancing daily, can seem to mesh with every type of person , and has great style in interior design.

Detroit Rubble City

The other night, a friend from Michigan was telling me about her attempts to buy a house around Detroit since they’re selling them for around $300 to $500. The catch is that you would have to pay for the property taxes on it, which many people can’t really afford right now. Detroit seems to be a lost cause of a once booming city.  Its like the Britney Spears of properties.

Kevin Bauman started taking black and white photos of abandoned homes around the Detroit area with his Hasselblad camera in the 90’s, to document the places before they got knocked down and made into condos and updated urban structures. Unfortunately, most of the homes that Bauman documented over 10 years ago, are still rotting on their plots.

This time around he decided to re-document them in color, build a site for his photo project, and sell inkjet prints of each for $35 (giving 30% to the organization Habitat for Humanity). Not a single person in Detroit bought one because it is so common see them in their everyday life, that there was no beauty nor shock value to it.

I started clicking along these photos expecting to be bored 4 photos into it. I was cynical and wrong. Kevin Bauman did such an amazing job with compostion and targeting where to saturate/desaturate each image, that I was hooked looking at 103 dilapidated structures.

all photos from 100abandonedhouses.com

Stash Blow, Dash Snow.

Self Portrait by Dash Snow

Dash Snow is dead. Another untalented, pretentious, Warhol inspired, drug addict who considered the personal documentaries of his sad and useless life, died of a drug overdose Monday night.

Shocking. I know.

If this bums you out on a personal level and you aren’t that mans grandmother or Mary Kate Olsen, than we probably shouldn’t be friends.

At least his art will live forever in your nit witted shriviling brains until…the weekend, when you can dance out your sadness at ‘duh club.

Shall we?

Leno Tits.

This was on my desktop when I walked into work this morning.

The photos after the cut were not….

The Best Memo

Doug Savage has made great use out of his post it notes.

That or I have become too easily amused by robots, chickens, dry humor, and narcissists.