Long Exposure

Photographer, Michael Wesley, specializes in long exposures... like 3 year long exposures. These above are photos are the building of the Moma museum in New York. The photos are all really haunting and kind of look like the composite digital-analog images they're always emphasizing in class. Super cool!

link

The Kiss aka Daddy and Me

I don't know about you but a title like this had be running away at first. Even while reading it during lunch and on the train I purposefully hid the book's title while embarrassingly showing its pages with HUGE font. It just sounds like a less than Nora Roberts saad sad attempt at a romance novel. Only after reading the book do I recognize the importance of the title, but truthfully I still wouldn't have chosen that one- it just doesn't peak my curiousity. But the story oh what a story.

Delightfully indecent! Young Katie lives with the most dysfunctional of families. An overbearing disapproving mother and a manipulative grandmother guide her into a nervous bulimic lifestyle, while her minister father, who has been living with another family all her life comes in and our of her life until finally deciding to stay in and becoming dangerously close. And so begins their extended obsessive love affair with one another. A single kiss of the book's namesake sparks their truly tortured relationship. OK but the truth? I'm SO sick of these books of tortured past that lead to empowerment. I'm a cynic I get it but this book in particular was blah.

So many things I didn't like about this book. To be absolutely frank... she just sounds like another whiner. That is absolutely inappropriate to talk about her story in such a way I know, but I didn't find any range of emotions in this book. Truthfully I don't know if that makes it any less of a book but just personally it didn't do it for me. Too much whining... too much 'please feel bad for me'. Something about her detailing every moment of her sad 25 years of life bores me. But maybe that's just me I'm more easy to pity resilient characters that can look back on their experiences with at least a smirk. She's a great writer though and I enjoyed following her poetry as well as her story. It just didn't leave me exclaiming 'hallelujah everyone needs to read this', like I usually leave a good book.

But god twisted twisted story... not as twisted as the next book on my list In Youth is Pleasure recommended by John Waters himself. Now that's what I call twisted.

John Waters- Role Models

John Waters was first introduced to me by Drew. It was actually probably the first day I met him that he invited me over to his room after work for a lil get together with the other counselors (we were in training to be counselors at a pre-college program)... naughty naughty. A few introductions, a few drinks, and there we were all huddled around a small computer watching Pink Flamingoes. I was paralyzed in shock that such a movie existed! Chickens getting fucked, trannies eating dog poop, hitchhikers getting abducted and raped to produce children sold to lesbian couples- it was absolutely brilliant! And from the disgusted looks of a solid 90% of the room, I knew who I would have to censor myself in front of, and who wouldn't budge if I cranked myself up to 100.

Since I've been trying to see as many of John Waters's (http://www.english-zone.com/spelling/possessives.html RULE 4.... I don't want to fight with anyone ever again about this) films and read as many of his books. I want to imbibe all things John Waters.

So of course when I saw this I ran for it. Sadly I can neither find it at any library nor can I afford to buy it meaning the only way for me to read those delicious words is to show my pathetic face at Strand after work day after day reading a chapter or so til I finish. But I'd like to believe John would be proud of me and would delight in my behavior.

So the book. It follows its namesake, Role Models is about the different people in Waters's life who influenced him. And just seeing the different things he has produced and the ideas storming in his head, I could imagine his role models were going to be more colorful people but it's even better than I expected! From Johnny Mathis, to a lesbian stripper in a Baltimore bar, to one of the members of the Manson family, his relationships with his role models are so genuine and show a really human side of him that is so so endearing. I've fallen even deeper in love with John Waters...uh oh.