March 30, 2008
THE LAST 11 DAYS IN A HUNDRED PICTURES OR LESS
Hi Dad.
30 second exposure c. 2 am.
One night, in the hall outside my grandma's room, my dad told me about missing his old days as a photojournalist. Every assignment would start the same: he'd hitch a ride on a military transport to someplace like Panama/Salvador/Mogadishu with a change of clothes, a couple cans of food, water, tons of film, cameras, 10 grand in cash and a satellite transmitter to get the photos back to the bureau. "You'd land and the military would tell you it was too dangerous for you to even leave the airport, but the airport people or local authorities would demand you leave, and so you'd go outside and try to hire a driver to take you around so you could get the story." He smiled huge and grew animated. And then he said "But it's just not like that anymore." Celebrity news, the death of the newspaper, everything going to digital and video; those are the divides for both my dad and my mom, who spent their entire lives doing jobs they loved that no longer exist. In 1990, my dad spent several weeks in a hotel room across the street from the Vatican embassy in Panama staring through a viewfinder in eight hour shifts in order to get the first pictures of Manuel Noriega surrendering.
Now he edits pictures of forest fires and Britney and the like in LA.
Drove to the Lou for a day. Flooded the whole way.
Waves lapping the edge of the corn field.
Then back to Indiana, into a nuclear sunset.
She's still alive, my grandma. Miraculously lived through.
3 am, new room in the oncology ward. There are open rooms there my aunt says, that is why there was a whole wing of life or death grandmas there. Some people never seemed to have any visitors. It was depressing as fuck. I think I just turned my heart off and tried not think about the people I love who's death I may one day have to show up for. The new rule is no one I love or like or know a little bit is allowed to die anymore.
On our way to the library the next day, me and Dad stopped at the old timey playground and abandoned park with the best slide ever.
Double-slide, extra long, with bumps in the middle. My dad, for scale, is about 5 foot 8.
The slide was slow cos no one has been sliding on it lately. My dad took this one. I got stuck at the bumps. It's not kid-greased. My dad suggested we get some wax paper and come back. He said thats how they used to do when they were young. There is a scar on his forehead from busting his head here when he was 11, at his dad's company picnic.
For the last few years, I have been thinking I need to buy this slide before it gets torn down. But that would also mean I'd need to get some land to put it on then too. The steps say "FUN-FUL".
Maybe I could also get this as part of the deal. It goes dangerously fast.
Returned home, where Wyatt was posing with his legs crossed.
It was almost warm, Lil' No-No was out on her steed.
Weezall went to the Boredoms. I think the last time I saw them was in 1992, opening for Nirvana? I have no idea why I have skipped out for the last 15 years. I feel like I would remember if I had. We stood directlty under the center of the dome in the middle of the room, and the sound was totally different, with a thunderous stereo mix, a loud, singular hi-hat that seemed to be coming from the far right corner and pristine glossy notes everytime Eye hit the purple gtr plex.
For JR's birthday, he said all he wanted was to go Margies for a sundae. Look at the eagerness in his face.
I know, man, 34. I can't believe it either.
Yr sundae arrives in a big plastic shell and then you pour fudge-choco goop on it.
Meanwhile, back at Casa Boracho, Chicago's most dangerous rock critic was finishing the crossword.
The coffee table is a rosetta stone of any bachelor pad.
Then we walked downstairs and saw Monotonix, from Tel Aviv. The singer looked like a Doug Henning/Gallagher baby and kept dropping trou for a sac n' crack revue.
And then he put the trash can on the drummers head. Fun and funny.
FINI.