Hard to believe it's been 5 years since this night.

We're releasing another pair of Jane Mount's Ideal Bookshelves today over at 20x200. One is a shelf of Tina Roth's (aka Swissmiss') daughter's books, the other is of chef George Weld's cookbooks. Both are supergreat and I recommend snapping one or both of them up.

Because Jane is part of the 20x200 family, I was lucky enough to have my kid's bookshelf painted (see below). Makes me happy every time I look at it. You can have your own bookshelf painted if you are a bit lucky (details on the 20x200 newsletter).

Note: Every time I post anything about children's books I get parents asking me for lists of book names. I've named most of the books in previous posts. I've also put most of them up together on an Amazon Heading East Bookstore.

Update: Tina just updated her site with a list/links for all the children's books in her daughter's ideal bookshelf. Many are European favs, obscure here. It's a great list/print Go and be happy.

While putting my kids to bed last night my four year old asked me to sing "that song about the moon I love." It's a Mexican lullaby I knew from my childhood. I sang it once and immediately received a terse demand from my two year old, "Again," he commanded. So I sang again. And again. And again. We sang the song over and over until everyone was singing it.

"Why do I love that song so much?" the four year old asked, "It's my favorite one." His question struck me, and in a flash, I was back with my grandparents on their red tiled porch on a hot August night watching lightning roll around in the clouds. My grandfather was on his green metal rocker singing the song. The crepe myrtle was full of fireflies and the air smelled of a storm. When my grandfather finished, I asked the same question, "Abuelito, why do I love that song so much?" He turned to me and said, "One day you won't have to ask why you like it so much, you'll know." Now some 38 odd years later, I did know. Now I was sitting in the dark watching my sons. Both had closed eyes. The two year old's breathing indicated sleep. It had been a long pause when Raul Andres asked "Dad?".

I leaned over and whispered to him, "I think you already know why you love that song. I think you've always known." That was explanation enough. Eyes still closed, he smiled, and drifted off to sleep.

It seems that more and more photographers are working at night these days often for no good reason, but partially, I suppose, because over the last few years it's become much easier to work at night because of faster films, and higher ISO digital cameras. I know I've been guilty of this. And much of the night photography out there looks like the work of the handful of photography stars who have made a name for themselves shooting in the dark.

I like Astrid Kruse Jensen's work because rather than reminding me of any specific photographer, Edward Hopper's paintings comes to mind. And pretty much any photographer whose work evokes Hopper has my number.

Lately I've been finding copies featuring small hands and feet by the printer.

Love this photo of a treehouse in Daniel Augschöll's portfolio. I was just having the thought that treehouses are one of the things sorely lacking in the lives of urban kids. I wonder how far a guerilla urban treehouse initiative would go before it got shut down.

We're headed for a day when static will be a thing of the past. Signals will all be binary, either there or not with nothing in-between. I couldn't be more sad about this.

Radio Static
Truly local radio was once one of the great appeals of a long backroad drives. Dime store preachers in Texas. Blues in Alabama. Punk whenever you hit a college town late at night. Ranchera down along the border. Almost as good as hitting a great station was listening to it fade away. It gave you a sense of that you were going places and it made you feel you were traveling from someplace known into the unknown.

Record Static
When I play a record I often imagine the stylus bouncing up and down along the grooves of the vinyl moving the magnets that send vibrations up to be amplified. Part of me knows that each play will inflict tiny scratches and bits of wear. One day the records will sound like like grandfathers' obscured by a warm blanket of noise. Play a record enough and noise is all that will remain.

Telephone Static
It wasn’t so long ago that most local calls were as clear as a bell, but long distance calls were progressively degraded depending on the distance you were from the caller. It made long distance calls seem special. The static volume determined the importance of the call and as those calls were often from people you loved, the high noise to signal ratio made the love seem that much stronger.

Walkie Talkie Static
We were kids in the woods with walkie talkies exploring alone but together just out each other's of visual range. The static was the tether that kept us safe.

I saw Where the Wild Things Are today: it's a movie for adults about what it felt like to be a kid—a deeply considered interpretation of the book, beautifully rendered, but not a terribly good adaptation. There's a huge distinction in my mind between interpretation, which I see as someone's distinct vision of an original work, and adaptation which is a more neutral transformation of work from one medium to another, one that allows space for you to project your own interpretation. Of course a true adaptation of this book is impossible, so a strong interpretation was the way to go and in virtually every frame of this film you are reminded that this is Jonze/Eggers' Wild Things, rather than Maurice Sendak's Wild Things.

I've been asked if I'll take my kids to the movie. I don't think I will. Raul Andres who is almost 5 has a particularly deep love of the book. I'm pretty sure for him the book is about the joy of rebellion, the power of imagination, and the love of home whereas large sections of the movie are about dread, loneliness, and the inevitable messy consequences of things. These emotions are large parts of every childhood, but for me (and I think for my son), these were not the emotions stirred by this particular book. If I were to take Raul Andres to the movie, I'm almost sure he would be scared by the film but love it anyway. Still, I would hate to have the Jonze interpretation of the story overwhelm the one he has in his head. That's the danger of movies for children. They can obliterate narratives which are still being formed. So I'll wait a few years for Wild Things to become his own. I hope by waiting his ultimate enjoyment of someone else's love for this book made real will only deepen.

I've been a fan of Andres Gonzalez' work for some time. He just posted a new work in progress project titled Golden State featuring work taken around his home town of Chino. I'm eager to see how this one develops.

Related: Tarlabashi

Always be careful to lift with your arms.

Don't know why I it took me a year to discover a link to this Gerda Tara show, but I was totally wowed by the work of this photographer I knew very little about. She was Robert Capa's collaborator/girlfriend and they worked together for only two years before she was killed in the Spanish Civil War just shy of her 27th birthday.

Gerda Taro Exhibition Catalog

Times article on Ms. Taro.

More of Taro's story on Wikipedia

Related: The Mexican Suitcase

The longer you live in a big city, the more the city becomes your own, specific to the people in your circle and the paths you frequent. One of the pleasures of living in a large city is discovering the work of artists who experienced different versions of your city. Good work— whether it contradicts what you know or fits neatly into your schema— always forces you to look at the city with new eyes. I've found this phenomenon to be especially true in Los Angeles which in it's vastness seems to only be comprehensible in small bites. I was there for 10 years and never got a handle on the place. I think you'll enjoy visiting Patrick Romero's LA and I love the evocative title of his project Earthquake Weather..or Stranded in Los Angeles.

Langdon Lane in 1969
Same house via Google maps
We lived there for 3 years. It was a little house—we always called it the little house, even back then—but it was the first house I remember, so in my memory it is vast. The front yard is an endless stretch of the greenest grass. The sky is always blue. My room is chock full of books and toys, and monsters live under all the beds.

Traveling back via Google Maps is probably just as ill advised as driving back when passing through Houston and standing in the yard, but I visit from time to time.

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Here in Brooklyn we live only 4 blocks away from the place we lived for the first two and half years of my 4 year old's life. We walk by on the way to his preschool, and sometimes he asks to sit on the steps. He knows he can't go inside anymore, but sitting gives him comfort. Normally we don't talk, and after a bit he'll simply get up and continue on. Do I tell him he'll always want to sit on those steps, and that over time they will grower smaller even as they grow larger?

1980 Adventures in stop motion) on Vimeo.

I think this was my 2nd or 3rd super 8 flick and the last one I'll force upon my readers here (more flix will be posted on

vimeo

. The stories I think are self explanatory. I'm the super dorky kid in the purple who shows up near the end of the film at about 2:36.

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1979 My First Movie on Vimeo.

So it was 1979. I had been taking pictures with my dad's Pentax for a few years and had a serious camera bug. I had always asked to shoot with the super 8 (a Canon 814 Autozoom), but wasn't allowed. The movie camera was off strictly limits and of course the forbidden status gave it a special pull (I even loved the smell of the case). One summer my parents went on vacation leaving us with our grandparents. I had recently learned about stop motion and was desperate to experiment. This was my chance. I secretly brought the camera to my room and shot a stop motion test. The next day my brothers were recruited for a guerilla shoot. I didn't have a story, I just wanted to experiment and see what happened. The movie above is the result. I was actually so scared of getting in trouble that I left the exposed film in the camera bag. The film wasn't developed for months, and when it was it became part of our family lore...That little crude shoot gave me a passion for movies that has lasted a lifetime.

Sidenote: I've always thought it would be fun to add sound to this. I'll probably take a stab at it. I'd love for someone else to give it a try. The source is downloadable for a week on vimeo.

Scene list:

Stop Motion
Ed makes magic
Ed jumps
Use dove soap 21 secs
Sideways guy
Ed wake up
Ed jumps off of Mr. Dixon's Winnebago 1min 26secs
Can't shut the camera off
Mr. Dixon
My trophies
Christopher turns into an old lady
Ed Falls backwards
Razor ad w/ Christopher
Ed lays down a long skid on his bike 2min 35secs
I catch Ed and Christopher fighting (my Grandfather intervenes)
Very bad baseball special effect
Ed jumps off the roof. 3 min 05secs
More stop motion
Crest Commercial
Stop motion shoes
Upsidedown jumping
A brief appearance by me (Tigers shirt) 3min 52secs
Football special effects
Bozo the neighborhood dog
Stop motion tree climbing
Ed as Chaplin 4min 19secs
Christopher as a mariachi
My grandmother 4min 37secs
More stop motion
A watermelon we were growing
Bad pine cone special effect
More zapping
Falling down
More roof jumping
Practical joke on Mr. Sullivan 5min 18sec
Replay of the practical joke, but "funnier"
Delayed football reaction special effect
Credit

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