Pen Pals | June 28

Several years ago — sometime in 2007 it would appear — I signed up on a penpal website. I think what stopped me was that they wanted you to pay like $5 for five addresses. Something like that, so I guess I just never bothered. Only, I had completed my profile and uploaded a picture. There was a free membership of sorts. Hell, it was two years ago, who knows.

Anyway, I get an email this morning from a young woman in Singapore. Well, not exactly. I get an email from the website, saying a young woman from Singapore wants to write to me. Sure. I go to the website and there are several other offers I've gotten since 2007 including two french men about the same age as me, married with kids...the works. I wrote them all back.

We'll see.

I like the idea of corresponding with people through the written word. And not so much email. I think it needs to be mailed letters. Something you look over more than once before printing it out, finding an envelope, getting a stamp and dropping it in the mailbox.

I read something on the website about the benefits of snail mail. One reason is that, especially in international situations, it can take up to a couple of weeks for a letter to reach its destination. Assuming you take a little time to write a response, and send it back, you take out the instant reaction of email. It takes longer to get there, so it had better be good. I think that's a valid position. I'm hoping this works out with at least someone.

Actually this started because I wrote an email to an author I was reading this morning. This is my new thing. If I like the book, I write the author. So far, everyone has written me back and I've stayed in touch with a couple of them. It's astounding really.

The author I wrote to this morning is Heather Lende and she wrote a book called, "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News From Small-Town Alaska". It's great. I wrote her to tell her how much I liked it, but that I'm only on page 69, which means I've barely started it. Which is true. I only cracked it last night and picked it up again this morning. But you can tell.

The Los Angeles Times called it, "Part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott" and USA Today says, "If you like the stories on Prairie Home Companion or Northern Exposure, you'll love some real news from small-town Alaska."

The New York Times had previously called Haines, the town where she lives with her husband and three children, "the real Northern Exposure". According to Lende, "Haines is so full of local color, that if they made a movie about us, no one would believe it. There's the controversial new Presbyterian pastor who's arms are covered with tattoos. The sewer plant manager who rides a Harley and has a ZZ TOP beard. The school principal is a Roy Orbison impersonator, who dresses all in black and sings "Pretty Woman" at fundraisers."

Other than the isolation, lack of medical care, and extreme weather, it sounds like a nice place.

P.S. I just finished the book. Basically I read it in a day. I cried like a little girl at the end. I highly recommend it.

Dallas, TX | Behind The Scenes

I've posed a video of the behind the scenes of my recent shoot in Dallas.

CrossIron Mills Behind The Scenes Video

Jersey Bros | June 20

I've been talking about doing a documentary on the South Jersey surfing community for years. I'm finally doing it.

My working title is Jersey Bros, a play on the term Jersey Boys and the surfer slang "Bro".

Jersey Bros: The Film

Russians Invade Woolworth's | June 18

We're in what used to be the home of Frank Winfield Woolworth, the founder of the Woolworth's Five and Dime's. According to Wikipedia, he started the first store with a loan of $300 and grew it into the largest retail chains in the world through most of the 20th century. He did okay.

Woolworth's mansion, Winfield Hall in Glen Cove, Long Island New York was built in 1916. The grounds of the estate required 70 full time gardeners and the 56 room mansion required dozens of servants just for basic upkeep. The home's decor reflected Woolworth's fascinations with Egyptology, Napoleon and spiritualism (a huge pipe organ that Woolworth learned to play late in life combined with a planetarium style ceiling to provide an intentionally eerie effect) and was built with no expenses spared: the pink marble staircase alone cost $2 million to construct. The full price tag for the home was $50 million. In today's dollars, that would run you about $500 million. That's half a billion folks. That's a lot of nickels and dimes let me tell you.

In 1978 the abandoned and largely gutted mansion became the home of Monica Randall, a respected writer and photographer married to a German businessman, who wrote a memoir of her experiences there entitled Winfield: Living in the Shadow of the Woolworths. Other notable residents of Winfield were the Reynolds family of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Reynolds Aluminum.

For more info (including video of the mansion, visit Winfield Hall)

So why are we here? We're doing a photoshoot for a Russian retail client in Moscow. Our model is actually from Moscow, so we're as authentic as we can be with a Japanese photographer, Australian hair and makeup artist, Texan stylist, and a couple of New Jersey art directors in a mansion on Long Island.


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A couple of things about the house we learned. The organ in the ballroom is the largest residential pipe organ in the US. Also in that room was the first picture window ever in the US. A picture window is a large window with a huge, ornate frame built into the wall. So instead of framing a painting, it frames the view to the Italian gardens in back. The enormous marble fireplace came from a French castle.


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The shoot went fantastic. Our model was beautiful and moved well. The clothes were amazing and Stephen, our fairy queen, did his usual magic and the hair and makeup were spot on.

As usual it was a long ass day. We went up the night before and stayed in NYC because we needed to leave the city by 7am to make to the house by 9am. We wrapped the house at 6pm, caught an 8pm train which got me back to Philadelphia at 9:30pm and I got home 11pm. But I didn't really get to sleep until 1am.

The Gift Of Flight | June 15

I’m sitting in First Class on my way to Dallas, but we took off about two hours late, which means instead of getting in at 9:30pm, we’ll land around 11:30pm. I have to pick up a rental car, and get to the hotel which in Dallas is at least 45 minutes away so I won’t even get to the hotel until after midnight, and I have to get up at 7:30am. Man, I’m sick of traveling.



It makes me think of the comedian Louis C.K., and his riff on how spoiled we all are. We live in incredible times, are wealthy beyond measure as a country, and have access to the most amazing technology imaginable. And everyone is unhappy.

He tells the story of being on an airplane and they announced that for the first time ever, they were offering free wifi on the plane during flight. Everyone opened up their laptops and there it was. Fast and free. A little while later, they made another announcement, this time saying there was some problem with the wifi and that they apologized, but that it was down. The guy sitting next to him said with disgust, “This is bullshit.”

Louis thought it profound that here was this thing, free internet access at 35,000 feet, which hadn’t even existed fifteen minutes earlier, and already this guy was pissed because he felt someone owed him something.

“You’re flying! Like a bird! Isn’t that enough?” he cried. He also said everyone should have only one expression while flying, then he leans back in his chair with his arms outstretched on the armrests and a look of total terror and glee while crying, “Ahhhhhh!”

People talk about air travel as if it was the worst experience of their lives. I’ve done it. Everyone who travels much does it. We’re all spoiled.

People will say, “You’ll never believe what happened to me. It was the worst day of my life. First off, we were delayed 30 minutes, then we got on the plane and SAT on the runway for another 45 minutes. I was over an hour late! Can you believe it?”

The flight from New York to Los Angles takes six hours. It used to take three years by wagon train. People died. Others were born. You arrived with a whole different group of people than when you left!

So, yes I will arrive late to my destination. I won’t get as much sleep as I’d like. (Actually, I’ll probably get about the same amount of sleep, I just won’t drink as much as I would have at the hotel bar.) And yet, the flight attendant just handed me a hot towel to wipe my hands and face and any second now, she’ll be giving me my free cocktail. A little ice, a little rum, a little soda, a little straw. It’s still in a plastic fucking cup, but what the hey. I’m writing on my computer and listening to music with my Bose noise canceling headphones, eating my peanuts. It could be worse.

But I’ll tell you the problem with this. You start to think, okay, this really isn’t so bad. And then the next flight you’re back in the cattle car with all the other cows. And you’re cramped and hot and the guy next to you is even fatter than you are, and it’s taking forever for the drink cart to get to you and you’ve never been this thirsty in your whole life, the guy in front of you insists on leaning back in his seat providing you with a view of the top of his head but not your book, and you ate something you really shouldn’t have and now your stomach is rumbling and you’re praying you can wait until you get to your hotel before you need to do something about it, and that’s when you remember why you hate to fly.

The thing is, I DO like to travel. I like discovering new cities, restaurants and bars. I like meeting new people from different cultures and drinking with them. I enjoy bringing my camera and taking pictures of exotic places. I do like to travel.
I hate to fly.

Admittedly it’s better than the stagecoach, but I’m not sure it’s necessary to revert back to the frontier days to appreciate how far we’ve come. I don’t sit around constantly amazed with electric lights, the modern combustion engine, or how a package I mail from New Jersey gets to Canada overnight by making a pitstop in Memphis, Tennessee.

What I want is for things to be just a little better. Most things have gotten better over the years. Or at least faster and smaller. But flying, this thing that used to be so glamorous, is now a light form of torture. The airline I fly regularly got rid of glassware after 9-11, for some inexplicable reason and even after the other airlines brought back proper glass glasses, my airline stuck with the cheap plastic cup. This might not sound like a big deal but for what I regularly pay for airline tickets, I think they should spring for the stemware. The food they feed you is one step up from hospital food and the staff are underpaid and surly. I can’t think of another industry that can treat it’s customers so badly and stay in business. They can’t actually, that’s why the government has to keep bailing them out.

People are constantly telling me how great it is that I “get to travel” like I do, and at least partly so, they’re right. I’ve gotten to see some cool places and experience wonderful things.

But it’s not all glamour. There’s lots of endless waiting, traffic jams, cramped spaces, lack of sleep, bad food, dirty cabs, dirty cab drivers, hotel rooms that are too hot, hotel rooms that you could hang meat in, hangovers, lost luggage, delayed flights, canceled flights, airport security, customs agents, and that doesn’t even get into the self-absorbed, egomaniacal, pushy, demanding clients. What does it tell you that when I get home I want peanut butter and jelly, a glass of juice and my own bed?

On the other hand, the flight attendant just brought me German chocolate cake which is pretty good and I just ordered another drink.

And that’s how they get you.

Sunday Papers | June 14

I love the Sunday New York Times. I love everything about it. The feel, the smell, the sense of delight and anticipation. But I have to admit, it’s gotten a little ridiculous. It now costs me $6. Maybe it’s the recession talking, but that’s a hard pill to swallow, especially since I can read the entire thing online for free. But that’s the rub.



I like the paper, not the news. There’s something about the discovery of opening the paper, one section at a time and reading it from cover to cover (except for the boring parts). Also, the Sunday paper tends to include more lifestyle fluff. A little world events so that I stay informed, and then articles about baseball umpires, or a new burger joint in Tribeca; the baseball scores and the book reviews. I can read the same articles on my computer, but it’s not the same thing.

One of the problems with the internet (and modern technology in general), is that it’s too easy to scan for only the things you think you want to read. In the old days, after remote controls, but before digital programming guides, you channel surfed. You might pass by something and stop, watch for a bit and get hooked. That rarely happens when it’s just a title on the screen of your television, let alone something you recorded on your DVR. The same is true with online news. You skip a lot more of the things you didn’t know you were interested in.

Another thing about the paper. I’m definitely one of those people who likes to read the paper in order, and in pristine condition. I will pull a paper from the middle of the stack to get one that is in good condition and I bristle if someone rifles through a part of the paper I haven’t read yet. If I’m paying six dollars for this thing, I want first dibs and you can have whatever I’ve read when I’m done with it. Not before. Is this strange and uptight? Probably but I don’t care. The newspaper is a singular thing. Taking a section out of order, or before I’ve read it is like me grabbing the book your reading to read a chapter, three chapters ahead of where you happen to be. And dogearing several pages while I’m at it. You just don’t do it in civilized society.

My one caveat is that I’ll let Jane have the magazine first because she doesn’t usually do much damage to it. It’s bright and shiny and attracts a lot attention, but for the most part, it’s even fluffier than the Sunday paper.

And the funny thing is, for all my concern about the paper, when I’m done with it, I either throw it away or put it in the mud room for use as a fire starter at a later date. For something that is so disposable, it’s strange even to me that I hold it such high regard.

But I also know I’m not alone. Not even close. Habitual newspaper readers are notoriously particular about their habits. I’m sure a quick Google search would turn up plenty of essays, articles and rants on the very subject.

Jane has told me, “My father was just like that.” And while she admits that I am not alone, she is completely oblivious as to why something like this would matter. She simply doesn’t understand.

But then again, she dog ears pages of her books which sends me straight up the wall. My books generally look like they haven’t been read when I’m done with them. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I care that hers look like she slept on them (which she probably did). I just know I do.

And that’s the thing. If you’re sitting next to me reading YOUR paper, I don’t care what you do with it. Desecrating books still bothers me, especially if they’re library books, but you can’t solve all the world’s ills yourself. But there’s no earthly reason why I should accept anything less than what I want with MY paper.

I just took a break and tried to light a fire in my outside fireplace. I used half a newspaper (or at least what seemed like it) and because everything has been wet here for going on a month, I had to resort to a chemical firestarter. The newspaper wasn't even good for that.

Maybe I'll just read the paper online.

Margot | June 13

"He's been taking pictures of you since you pushed your way into the world!" my sister-in-law Bernadette called out.

She's right. I was in the room when Margot was born and took pictures of everything. I mean everything. I don't know what I was thinking, but I definitely got caught up in the moment. What are you really going to do with actual pictures of the birth. Hang them over the fireplace?

Regardless, Margot has often been my muse. One, she's beautiful; two, she likes having her picture taken; and three, she's 10 and can't drive or date. For the moment, she's a captive model, available whenever I need her.


(click on image to enlarge)

But if there's one thing about Margot, it's that she has her own ideas about things. I thought clients were bad. She has more opinions and art direction than anyone I work with. But, she's a good model. Handles direction well, and is more or less patient. Although that's starting to wear thin a bit. I guess as long as she continues to like have her picture taken, she'll put up with me. At least until she begins dating and driving, which we figure is in the next couple of weeks.


(click on image to enlarge)

You can see her website at Margot Okeefe

Animal Kingdom | June 9

Cris, my producer, is telling us about Olenski, a production assistant who worked for him in Indonesia. It's not clear whether Olenski is his first or last name but regardless, it seems a strange name for an Indonesian.

In addition to being a production assistant, Olenski is a snake shaman; a snake charmer if you will. He's the guy they go to when you need snakes for your shoot. Snakes have special significance in Asia, so there's a lot of call for snakes. Also, Olenski is just an all around nature guy.



One time, they needed butterflies and so Cris was asking the art department about it.

"Why don't you ask Olenski?" they said. Cris did and an hour later, Olenski arrived with a box full of butterflies. And this, according to Cris was in the middle of the city. No one knew how or where he got them. He just did.

Another time, the director was looking up at some bird in a tree overhead and mentioned how nice it would be if they could get a bird like that. Olenski was called and he climbed the tree, grabbed the bird and delivered it to the director. How he did it, no one could answer. He literally climbed the tree and grabbed the bird.

But the story that, to me, comes through as the quintessential Olenski story has to do with snakes.

Cris had a conversation with Olenski about snakes wherein Cris told him not to bring Cobras anymore because they freaked out the clients. Olenski nodded in understanding and the matter was dropped. A couple of days later, they needed snakes, and of course, Olenski had brought a canvas bag full of them.

But when it came time for the snakes, Cris saw that they were in fact Cobras.

"Olenski," he said, "What did I tell you about Cobras. They freak everybody out. I told you no Cobras."

Olenski answered with complete conviction, "But Cobras listen!"

--

In keeping with the animals theme, there was another fellow that Cris worked with (he couldn't remember his name) that had literally grown up at the Jakarta Zoo. This guy was world famous. He was flown to zoos all over the world to work with animals that couldn't or wouldn't mate in captivity. He would go live with them, sometimes for weeks, and they would relax.

"He would talk to them," Cris explained. "In Indonesian of course, not animals noises or anything. And after awhile they would relax enough so that they could mate." He'd worked with everything from rhinos to eagles.

Walking through the zoo with him was something to behold as all the animals seemed to notice him and call out to him.

One time, Cris was following him through the zoo and this guy entered the otter cage. Cris said he never saw anything like it. The guy started talking and the otters all lined up in front of him in a semi-circle and listened attentively.

--

Not to be outdone, Wade, another producer told a story about a time in his youth. They used to like to take hallucinogenic mushrooms and go a different place each time in order to experience them. One day they went to the zoo.

Wade was wandering around the zoo and found himself in the primate hall. It was a "U" shaped room with chimps and apes surrounding you. Wade was tripping pretty hard at this point and was wearing sunglasses. As he walked into the room, he noticed the alpha male chimp...and he was staring at Wade. Of course, Wade's first thought was, "Is that monkey staring at me?" but dismissed it as paranoia brought on by the drugs. But then the chimp began to get agitated and rushed the bars, screaming at Wade. At this point, all the other primates, most of whom had been laying around lazily, began to jump up and down and scream as well.

Wade claims he had done nothing unusual, but just assumed that this monkey knew he was wasted, and for whatever reason, did not approve. But even this he had to question as paranoia until a little girl near him pointed at Wade and said to her father, "Daddy, the monkey doesn't like that man."

Wade left quickly, his murky memory suggests he might have even run, and has never been back.

He's afraid the chimp will remember him.

Goshen | June 8

Recently my oldest daughter moved out of the house, for good this time I'm told, and so we celebrated by inviting 26 young women to come live with us. Twenty five of them are a chocolate brown and one lone white girl. Jane named her Cracker.


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We've had chickens ever since we moved to The Tavern House, ten years ago. It started with just six. I wrote a story about it called Chickens In The Brothel. A month or two ago, we were woken to blood-curdling screams coming from the chickens. It just goes to show just how well I sleep that instead of being alarmed and getting up to check out the commotion, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

As it turned out, some small varmint, possibly a fox, weasel or some such animal, got into the chicken coop and promptly carried every chicken off we had except one small hen and the rooster who was able to fend off the attack, mostly unharmed.

I can't tell you how disconcerting it is to buy and eat eggs from the grocery store once you're used to eating fresh eggs. It's almost not worth the trouble.

So we have new girls. We don't need, nor do we really have room for, 26 chickens. But that's the minimum you can order. They need to travel in packs to stay warm or they die. So we have the word out for friends who might want a few hens of their own.

We still have to decide what to do with Warren, our current rooster. He's beautiful but we've been a little off hatching our own chicks and if you don't need your eggs to be fertilized for hatching, there's really no point in having a rooster other than the crowing, which in my opinion is kind of nice. On top of which you only need one rooster for something like every 50 chickens, so if we end up with 15 or so, even one rooster is a little much. His favorite girls end up a little abused and after awhile have no feathers on their backs where he rides them in the act of love. It might be the end of the road for old Warren.

It will take about six months before they start laying eggs, so until then, it's either no eggs or store bought.

Seamus, our dog, turns into Nana (Jane's name for him taken from the dog in Peter Pan) as soon as the chicks arrive. He quivers and dances in excitement and licks each one. He believes they are his personal charge until they grow up and then he likes to terrorize them by running around the chicken coop and sending them into a frenzy.

For now, they're living in a tub full of pine shavings in the screen house. They have food, water and a heat lamp. And they have Cracker to pick on. Life is good in the country.

Warsaw, Poland | June 1

Today is our meeting with our Polish clients….or potential clients actually. This is a pitch. But our meeting isn’t until 3pm, so we have time to see a little more of the city. Back to olde town we go.



Storybook land. That’s what it looks like.



Bob looked for gifts, and Klaudia and I wandered around, me taking pictures mostly.



Mostly, this area is full of tourists, so it’s not exactly like we’re seeing the real Poland. Whatever. You can’t get a true feel for a culture or a place by spending 48 hours in it. You get the guide book version.



One Polish client told us that “traditional Polish” restaurants were for tourists. Polish people wanted to eat Italian, sushi, continental, etc…, just like everyone else. If you wanted to eat traditional Polish food, you had your grandmother cook it.



We had our presentation, which went well, and met back at the hotel, where it turned out, our clients were staying as well. Long story. One client was from Krakow, and the other, Budapest. We decided to eat at the hotel that night since our client recommended it highly. As he put it, if you want to go out and see the city, that’s fine, but if you want the best kitchen, eat here. The restaurant’s executive chef is the famous Jean-Georges Vongerichten. He was half a dozen restaurants in New York alone, in addition to Singapore, Vegas and London.



It was phenomenal. And cheap. With two bottles of wine, the bill was less than $400. That’s very good.

Warsaw, Poland | May 30

We left late last night from JFK airport, the absolute worst airport to get to from anywhere. No matter what you have to go through three boroughs to get to it and there’s always traffic. On top of it, I was not flying business class, which I though we’d agree to not do anymore, but since this a pitch and client’s not paying for it, I got to ride in the back with the great unwashed. I brought a DVD player, my laptop, a book and several Ambien. I hoped to be unconscious.

It’s a nine hour flight.

Well, I slept some and actually felt more or less human when we landed. We made it to the hotel, showered, changed and met back downstairs to go explore the city a little.



Our hotel, Le Meridian, sits right on the edge of Olde Town Warsaw, and directly next door to the Presidential Palace. My room looks down on the courtyard in front of the palace and I can watch the Presidential Guards do their thing.

I’m traveling with Bob, our new business development guy, and Klaudia, one of our art directors. Bob is here because this is a new business deal and Klaudia because she speaks fluent Polish.

We head out from our hotel and walk towards Olde Town. Olde Town is very cool, but looks very much like other old sections of European cities I’ve been to. Not that this is a bad thing, it’s just that Europe starts to look like Europe after awhile. Just a different language.

It says a lot about how young American culture is, but all these old European cities look like Disney sets to me. Obviously, this is where Disney got his inspiration, but it’s odd to see it in person. It all looks like fake facades, where if you walked behind there would just be plywood and a naked lightbulb swinging idly.



The Poles seem nice enough, certainly friendlier than the Russians, and they seem to have their shit together more. After all, they had a pretty good head start on the rest of the former Soviet Union, so they’ve had more practice with capitalism.



We stop at an Irish Pub, because I have decided that I have a duty to visit an Irish Pub in every country I travel to. So far, I’ve been very successful. Didn’t see anything in Costa Rica, but I’m sure if we’d spent more time in San Juan, we’d have found one. The pub itself was very cool. It was a labyrinth of caves really. Stairs that went up, then down, and cavelike rooms with curved ceilings that reached the floor. And like a lot of Irish bars in other parts of the world, there was nothing Irish about this place beyond the fact that they sold Guinness. They didn’t even have a decent cider, which was my real purpose for stopping in the first place. But no matter, we’d gone to the trouble so we stayed for a proper pint of Polish ale. Not bad. Had my first shot of Polish vodka as well, and sipped it on ice. Very nice.



We left the pub and entered another large square surrounded by restaurants and stores with apartments above. Like Paris, nothing taller than three or four stories. Eventually, we found ourselves a little outdoor cafe and sat down. We ordered a cheese plate, champagne and strawberries, and large plate of pierogies.



While we were sitting there, a young bride and groom, which we had seen earllier getting married at a church built in 1725, walk by having their picture taken by a photographer. I run out of the cafe and catch up to them, snapping away.

Two of the things I love about Europe are the quality of the cheese, and the price of champagne. Sure you can get lots of nice wines, but I can get those at home. You can’t beat high quality champagne and cheese at rock bottom prices.



We were eating light because we figured we’d still eat dinner somewhere later, but when the time came, we ate dessert and had more champagne at a small restaurant near our hotel, then went to bed.

Well, Bob and Klaudia went to bed. I decided to try another Irish Pub and find my cider. I walked several blocks away only to find people inside and the door locked. I knocked and the guy who opened the door pantomimed that they were closed. I walked away feeling very forlorn.

I walked back the way I had come and decided to stop in at the place across the street from the hotel. It sat on the corner and had been busy all night. Turns out, it’s sort of like an America diner, only everyone stands, drinks beer or vodka instead of coffee and eat fish instead of eggs. A waiter from the restaurant we visited earlier is there and he beckons me over and buys me a shot of vodka.

My bed beckons.