December 17th, 2009 | link
December 15th, 2009 | link
Here’s the thing about living alone: you get to eat all the cheese you want.
Those cheese trays, the ones with small sections within the plate to separate the different kinds of cheese, should be called trays of shame. You’re at some sort of public function, maybe prom or a wedding reception, any place where everyone’s self-esteem is already slightly lower than normal, and you see the ShameTray™ across the room with the various cheese cubes, all neatly sorted. On one hand, hooray! Free cheese! You’re the winner here! But on the other hand, you already know what’s coming, and even though you can anticipate the course of action that is in the very near future, there’s little that you can do to prevent it. It’s already in place. And walking across the room you can immediately feel yourself sitting on the toilet hours later with more regret than Tiger Woods HEYO sorry Tiger. Too soon.
Back to the cheese.
You make your way over to the table with the drinks and chips and cheese, and all your old friends are there. Chedder. Swiss. Colby. Brie. Oh hey Pepperjack! Your senses alert you to the presence of Cheese Whiz somewhere in the vicinity, but that would be going too far at an event like this, even for you. You have standards. You stand there, acting as if you’re debating as to which cheese cubes you will select, but in reality you’re waiting for a clearing. You know that if you linger long enough, all the while putting off the vibe that you really don’t care about the cheese much at all, then eventually those around you will take what they need and vacate the area. “Here, let me pour you another drink Oh I spilled it on your nice white blouse better go clean that up LEAVE!” And eventually, everyone leaves, and that’s when you make your move.
First, you grab a small handful of chedder, but not too much because you need to be able to shovel all of it in your mouth at once. So you do that. You inhale the chedder, and under the assumption that no one saw you do so, you stand there in front of the tray as if you just walked up. Oh what do we have here? A cheese tray!
With chedder already consumed and everyone else none the wiser, you take from the other compartments, because you’re considerate of the other cheeses as well. Yes, yes, you chose chedder first, but that was a strategic move. If you would have chosen the pepperjack then there would have been the possibility of the existence of a rogue cube, a cube that got way too much pepper and not enough jack, and if that would have happened then you would have had to abandon the tray altogether and rush to get water, and the jig would be up. Everyone would know. Hey hey you guys, look who ate too much pepperjack! Aww is it too spicey for you? Poooor baby. (And then you’d punch him in the face and so on and so forth and all of a sudden you’re in the county jail. What are you in for? Pepperjack. Oh nevermind.)
So, assuming you haven’t been arrested yet, you partake of the other cheeses. At this point we can assume that other people have gathered to get drinks and food and such. You are, after all, standing in the grazing area where everyone goes to escape the awkward. Your predicament at that point is to figure out how much cheese is an acceptable amount to take for one person. You can, of course, play the I’m getting some for a friend card, but don’t. Everyone knows. You decide against the friend card, but you’re still stuck with the fact that, yes, you’d like to take the entire cheese plate out to your car, but that’s obviously not an option because you didn’t drive. You take a few cubes, then a few more, then just a couple more, but then you see it, and it stares right back at you. The bottom of the plate. That stupid, cheap plastic. You weren’t there before! There used to be a pile of cheese and now there’s plate and oh no everyone is watching.
“Is that cheese stuffed in your pocket?”
Again, this is the best thing I’ve found regarding living alone: you get to eat all the cheese you want.
In your living room, you sit down on your couch, which is mockingly short so you can’t lay on it, and you take your wheel of gouda which you’ve recently purchased, working away at it without any tray or wedding guests or prom dates in sight. And, of course, you use a knife to cut the cheese into pieces, because even though there is no ShameTray™ in the room, there’s still the shame that exists, even when you’re alone, of biting into a wheel of cheese, leaving only a trail of teeth grooves behind.
December 13th, 2009 | link
“Judgment will have far less to do with who we are than who God is.”
-Father Jordan Bradshaw, this morning at Blessed Sacrament
Joshua & Matea
December 11th, 2009 | link
Shooting for Joshua & Matea was an honor. Congrats to you both.
As an aside, I’m booking up my weekends this spring & summer to shoot a few weddings. If you’re interested, do email me (thelongbrake[at]gmail) or call me [2063990645] and we can discuss details. I have the availability to travel both nationally and internationally except for the last weekend in June. I’m totally graduating!
Here are a few of my favorite photographs from Joshua & Matea’s wedding in San Francisco.
Rifle Paper Co.
December 6th, 2009 | link
Everyone who knew Anna Bond (then Anna Melcon) in college knew that, no matter what she did, she was going to make beautiful work. She had this studio loft in Lynchburg that we were all jealous of, the kind you see in movies. Exposed brick. Wooden beams supporting the high ceiling. Photographs hanging from a string in her bathroom, drying from being printed the night before. I remember walking in one day and seeing a small painting lying on the floor.
J: Where’d you get this?
A: Oh, I did that in high school.
J: Naturally.
A: You can have it if you want it.
J: Naturally.
Since college Anna moved to Orlando, worked for a magazine as a designer, got married, quit to open her own shop, and recently launched Rifle Paper Co., which has been featured on Design*Sponge and Martha Stewart. Her shop took off, and for good reason.
You should purchase a few cards or a print for Christmas. Make sure you buy extra so you can keep one for yourself. It’d be a shame to have to have to give them all away.
December 5th, 2009 | link
Jake and I have begun our conversations like this almost every day for the last 3 years. He always asks for flowers. With subtlety.
In December of 2006 I was living in Zulu, Indiana, working and saving to go to graduate school. During that time I was writing for an online magazine, and every once in awhile I’d get an email with comments or a response to something I had written. Most of the emails were very kind and encouraging, but for some reason Jake’s email stood out. I don’t know if it was his sense of humor, his insight, or his immediate demand that I send him flowers, but in an instant I had a new friend.
Jake lives in Rhode Island (not an island) with his wife Maggie and their two boys Dylan and Eli. He’s a real adult. Insurance. A mortgage. Family. In 2006 I was anything but a real adult (and 3 years hasn’t changed much in that realm), but somehow Jake and I connected. It was kind of like You’ve Got Mail. I was totally Meg Ryan. Sorry Maggie.
Since that day we’ve exchanged thousands of emails, gifts, books, photos, and daily IM conversations that seem to never end or begin. We always pick up wherever we left off, which is usually nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Any web presence that I’ve had online, from this site you are on now to the multiple sites I’ve sold photos through, Jake has built, managed, and maintained, all with an incredible amount of grace and patience. This is the sort of thing that happens regularly:
Me: Jake, I think I broke something in the code.
Jake: Ah. Ok. Let me look. Yeah, looks like you did… (and then he’ll ramble off some words about web development, words like internet and html and Why did you do that?)
Me: Sorry.
Jake: It’s ok.
And then Jake fixes whatever it is that I broke, at which time we go back to talking about how great some book is or how much we each love, in our own unique ways, fast food. Ok that’s a lie Jake is a vegetarian but whatever I’ll break him with my incessant photos I send him of me at the drive through at Wendy’s.
By God’s grace, and I truly believe that, I’ve had a tremendous friend for 3 years that I’ve yet to meet. We’ve almost met a few times, but a face-to-face interaction always seems to escape us. One time I was driving around the Northeast and I made it all the way up to New Jersey, which I thought had to be really close to Rhode Island (surrounded by land, not water). Sadly, it was another 5 hours away. So close!
Me: Hey Jake. Do I have to take a boat to your island if I make it up that far?
Jake:
Me: Hey Jake. Do I have to take a boat to your island if I make it up that far? To Rhode ISLAND? Hey Jake.
Jake:
Me: I’ve got all day, Jake.
Jake: I know you do. Oh how I know you do.
Me: Jake.
We are destined to meet in the real world at some point, or at least we keep saying that. 3,027 miles from Washington to Rhode Island (something something joke something) seems worth the drive at this point. And what a good story that would make, especially when we actually meet and everything is incredibly awkward.
December 4th, 2009 | link
Batu Caves
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
He/She was eating a banana. Why so cliché, monkey?