Our entire clan has been struck down by a stomach bug our child picked up at the pediatrician's office (this is my theory, Jenn thinks it could have been picked up anywhere). Last night was a non-stop vomit-fest with the three of us abandoning the soiled bed and parking on a futon which was easier to clean up. I haven't felt so bad since had dysentery in India. Jenn was writhing around with cramps and our son would sit up with a scared look on his face and projectile vomit all over us. We didn't sleep much. Despite his suffering at 6:30 as usual the baby was in a remarkably good and ready to play. Jenn and I were less well. These were the respective comments of our parents when we called in for reinforcements.

Call #1:
Me: Dad, Jenn and I can barely make it out of bed we need your help.
My Dad: How are you going to have a second child if you can't take care of one?
etc...

Call #2
Jenn: Omma
Jenn's Mom: Hallelujah!
Jenn: Omma all three of us are sick with a stomach bug. We were all throwing up all night. Can you come up?
Jenn's Mom: But I don't want to get sick. You'll be ok, just pray to Jesus.

It is 4 in the morning. Outside it is bitterly cold. Rain is blowing in sheets and there is thunder. The weatherman predicts sleet by morning. In the street below a young woman without an umbrella has just passed by for the 3rd time in as many hours calling for her dog Samson who has apparently run off. This my friends is love.

My friend Gabe got me all jazzed about seeing the new Edward Burtynsk show at the Brooklyn Museum. I've been a Burtynsky fan ever since I saw his shipbreakers show a few years ago. My plan is to make it out there this week. Do any of my photo geek friends care to join?

I've always claimed Santa is more than a little scary... a big chubby guy in a red felt suit with an unkempt beard and rubber boots. Chills.

Witness my son (who seems to love everyone and is generally all smiles when he meets new people) encountering old St. Nick for the first time:

1. Wind is your enemy.
2. 4 Dozen balloons generate a huge amount of static electricity.
3. Static shocks hurt.
4. Low lying trees pop balloons.
5. Concertina wire pops balloons.
6. People will say "Happy Birthday!" to which you might answer, "It's not my birthday" to which people might say "go to hell."
7. Young kids might ask you "Can I have a balloon mister?" to which you might answer "I'm sorry these aren't my balloons." to which a child might reply, "Then what do you care, give me one."
8. The ribbon on the balloons can get wrapped around your neck.
9. When 4 dozen ribbons are wrapped around your neck and the balloons are blowing around, you might get strangled.
10. If you call out for "a little help" nobody will help you.

Striking images from a local photostudio in Mali by Seydou Keita.

Hard to believe in a few hours it will have been a year since our son's dramatic entry into this world. Noting the date early this morning the dizzying speed which time reels us through life felt overwhelming, but the room was still dark, Jenn and the baby were still asleep, breathing in unison, and I was reminded that this year has also taught me to appreciate the slowness of things .

Even though he was large as far as newborns go, in looking back at 12 months of pictures I ask myself that phrase that comes to all parents at some point, "Was he really ever that small?"

One per month.

Combine mail, pinhole cameras, ebay, and cross continent collaboration & you've got yourself a pretty cool little art project. Check out the Camera Obscure 2005/1-Inf project.

Boing Boing calls Happy Palace, a blog of found images, music, and text hypnotic. I agree. The editor has a keen eye (and ear).

found in the archives:

Poem by Lawrence Raab, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review.

Permanence

I can't remember how old I was,
but I used to stand in front
of the bathroom mirror, trying to imagine
what it would be like to be dead.
I thought I'd have some sense of it
if I looked far enough into my own eyes,
as if my gaze, meeting itself, would make
an absence, and exclude me.

It was an experiment, like the time
Michael Smith and I set a fire in his basement
to prove something about chemistry.
It was an idea: who I would
or wouldn't be at the end of everything,
what kind of permanence I could imagine.

In seventh grade, Michael and I
were just horsing around
when I pushed him up against that window
and we both fell through -
astonished, then afraid. Years later

his father's heart attack
could have hit at any time,
but the day it did they'd quarreled,
and before Michael walked out
to keep his fury alive, or feel sorry for himself,
he turned and yelled, I wish you were dead!

We weren't in touch. They'd moved away.
And I've forgotten who told me
the story, how ironic it was meant
to sound, or how terrible.

We could have burned down the house.
We could have been killed going through
that window. But each of us
desereves, in a reasonable life,
at least a dozen times when death
doesn't take us. At the last minute

the driver of the car coming toward us
fights off sleep and stays in his lane.
He makes it home, we make it home.
Most days are like this. You yell
at your father and later you say
you didn't mean it. And he says, I know.

You look into your own eyes in a mirror
and that's all you can see.
Until you notice the window
behind you, sunlight on the leaves
of the oak, and then the sky,
and then the clouds passing through it.

You know the Rankin/Bass stop-motion holiday classic Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer that plays on TV every year around this time? It was on CBS this evening. I love the show as much as the next guy, but a couple of things have always rankled me.

1. Skinny Santa is mean, really mean.

2. The Burl Ives snowman plays his banjo during some of the songs, but there is no banjo on the soundtrack.

3. Charlie in the Box is terrifying.

4. Owls at the North Pole?

5. The Abominable Snow Monster should be bloody after having all his teeth ripped out.

6. Hermey is a terrible name.

7. There's nothing wrong with the doll on the Island of Misfit Toys so why is she on the Island of Misfit Toys? (according to this site the problem is psychological)

8. King Moonracer is an Aslan ripoff.

9. Yukon Cornelius is a Yosemite Sam ripoff.

10. Did I mention Santa is kind of an ass? Also, he only has 4 fingers. Terrifying.

As an aside what in the world was up with the "Ronald McDonald and I'm loving it" ad that appeared during the middle of the show? Ronald McDonald is frightening enough on his own, but hard rocking Ronald stage diving into the crowd is terrifying? Is the McDonald Corporation trying to hurt my mind?

So you're a Jewish Orthodox kid and you love salsa. Dilemma. Not cool with the folks. But you want people to know about this passion so you have a shirt made that says says "Salsa King" on the front and has an airbrushed picture of yourself (complete with your sequined yamica) in a dancing embrace on the back. At home you hide the shirt under your long dark coat and listen to salsa real low on the Puerto Rican radio station at night, but when you go out, you remove the coat and let the world see what you're all about. When a guy on the street give you a thumbs up, you grab your girl, a hot Latina, and do a few steps with her. You are the Salsa King.

About a year after I graduated from college I was on a train out to Amagansett when I realized I was sitting next to Andre Gregory. Fellow cinephiles will know that Andre Gregory is the Andre from My Dinner with Andre, the Louis Malle film beloved amongst a certain circle of film geeks. I'm not one to be starstruck or the type to chat up a famous person for no reason, but in this case I had to say something. He was listening to music with headphones, it was playing loudly and I knew the recording, so when he was changing tapes, I asked him if it was the Bulgarian Women's Choir. He nodded. Then I asked asked if he was Andre Gregory. "Why yes, yes I am, " he replied seeming pleased. For the next 40 minutes or so we had one of those intense convoluted conversations that I can best describe as being something like the one in the movie covering topics ranging from Japanese cinema to the polar bear in Central Park to the suicides of friends. For every question I asked, he asked two more. It was thrilling... my own private conversation with Andre. He exited the train before me, but before he left, he invited me to his production of Uncle Vanya at the Victory Theater. He gave me a date a fortnight in the future and told me not to be late.

Now this was the early 90's and Times Square was in it's last throws as the old dirty Times Square of lore. The transformation into a sanitized tourist mall had not begun. The Victory Theater (as well as most of the other theaters on 42nd street) was a decrepit ruin. In the twenties the theater then known as the Belasco featured the A-list of vaudeville: Mary Pickford, Tyrone Power and Lillian Gish.

Houdini built a swimming pool under the stage to catch his elephant Jennie after he made her "disappear". Houdini's act later moved to the Hippodrome, a much bigger house, but he was said to have always had a soft spot for the place. Later the theater housed the first burlesque house on Broadway. During World War II it became a B movie palace, and then for many years the Victory was a XXX skin flick palace. By the 80's it was shuttered.

When I arrived for the play that fall day in 1991 I had to step over a sleeping junkie to get to the theater door. The lobby was dark and smelled of urine, but upon entering the theater there were a small group of actors on stage around a dinner table. Mr. Gregory welcomed me like an old friend. A few more guests arrived, but the actors outnumbered us. We sat up on the stage and so began a production of Uncle Vanya so intense that it was as if I had unwittingly stepped into the living room of a very dysfunctional family. In my memory I held my breath most of the two hours. I don't think I've experienced a film or a play since that begins to compare. Wallace Shawn played Vanya.

I mention this now because we saw a play this weekend at a theater a few doors down from the Victory, now the New Victory ("The Ultimate theater for Families!" proclaims a sign outside) this weekend. 42nd Street is unrecognizable with crushes of tourists so dense navigation is difficult. We saw a play that was competent and polite, the out of town audience applauding nicely. Afterwords we had dinner with one of the actors, a friend of Jenn's. As they spoke I kept thinking about the Victory and how lucky I was to have been on the train that November day and to have witnessed one of those small scenes that make New York New York.