Pepper of the Earth - The Home Office Record & Mostly Daily Gazette

June eases down into the cradle of Last Year’s News, day by day. In a week I have my last shift here at the office until fall or so, and I couldn’t be looking forward to it more. Seven shopping days until I don’t have a job, and no shopping days thereafter, I guess, ever again. With rent and health insurance and the gym and utilities and a modest allowance for food, the rest of my life will have to coast on faith. Faith and staying home on the weekends, those two things. It’s a good thing it’s summer. Good? It’s a grand thing it’s summer.

Really, these days are gloriously busy. Not the hair-still-wet hellacious busy of “whoops forgot the rent check, again, because I was late this morning, again,” but rambunctious Tom-Cruise-in-a-sofa-shop busy, minus the disturbing maniacal Tom Cruise part.

I’ve been out shooting pictures a lot, which has a nice tendency to make things happen: it’s a social activity at heart. A big weekly newspaper may be running one of my shots of the Bubble Battle from last Friday (more of that here on Flickr); I sent over pictures today, and we’ll know next week. I had to appreciate this because in my decade of trying to get their music section — which doesn’t work there any more — to review our records, I never once managed to get in touch with anyone of substance in their office. Now that they want my picture, I call up and ask for the Managing Editor, and get him. “So the mountain,” opines Pierre, “comes to Mohammed in the end.” Now if only the mountain wanted to pay for the shot … but hey, foot in the mountainy door, you know how it goes.

My three-day weekend goes down like this:

• Friday there’s a noontime dance piece I want to shoot at North Cove, involving choreographer Stephan Koplowitz and a habit of pretty dancers performing in and out of the focal plane of a camera obscura he has set up outside the Winter Garden (a very cool installation).
• Saturday is the annual Mermaid Parade at Coney Island (yes, of course I have pictures from last year, thanks for asking). I’ve also been asked to shoot, for myself and for charity, at the Mermaid Ball afterparty — or I think I have; they said to come and then I never heard back from them, which sounds like “Guest List” to me.
• Sunday there’s a tentative shoot involving the Upper West Side, a yacht, a Hummer, and a ladle or two of scallywag actors for a show their cheeky chic company is doing later in the summer. We’re still waiting for details on that to shake into place. I’ve worked with one of the actresses before, and we had a great time, so I hope this comes off as planned.

And last weekend there was a long hot dusty portrait walk with the lovely Jess in Williamsburg: I haven’t had a free second yet to start chowing down on those pictures. Yep, June rounds third and is racing in hard to home. Me, I’ll be wandering somewhere vague in the outfield, where it’s roomy and fun and the grass is longer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 13:21 and is filed under General Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.