Strollin'

Strollin'
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

Sometimes when you have nothing to say it's better to just stay away until you do. Advice I'm taking to heart these days.

Weekend Notes

Mural Famelia
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

There really are none. However, if you like the photos I've been posting here lately you can find more of them here.

Now go out and enjoy the weekend. I am.

More Friday T'oughts

New Carpet Sales
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

I was browsing photographs at Chicagoist Prime's website yesterday. She's been taking a lot of black-and-white shots lately and attributes it to an article on creativity she read. Since I planned on running some personal errands today and would not post to Chicagoist I sent an e-mail to her that I agree with that assessment. I know that for me taking shots in black-and-white has done wonders for developning my eye when I'm taking pictures - I look at something and wonder what it would look like with no color. It's as though by removing the color from a picture you're actually breathing life into it.

Sounds extremely obsequious, I know. But there's something to that. Take a look at the shot above this post, for example. It's a red sign with a few blown lights on Archer. I removed the color and gained a completely different perspective.

Nowadays I'm experimenting with the sepia levels in my Photosuite software to mixed results. I'm also thinking of buying tinted monochrome lenses for the rangefinder to tinker with the contrast when I shoot film. I would not have done this if I hadn't learned to shoot black-and-white.

Have a wonderful weekend, folks.

Drying out

The Spirit of '76
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

I found this old RC Cola ad in between monsoons yesterday (I think I drowned my iPod in the process). Take a look at how intact it is. This has to be thirty years old; judging from the stars-and-stripes decoration on the "r" this was probably a bicentennial ad. The corner grocery where I found this was like a veritable shrine to the 60's and 70's; I almost expected to find a bottle redemption program inside. I'll be posting more photos from that on Flickr in the coming days.

In the meantime, did you know that we've seen an increase in wetlands over the past ten years? Yup. All the Department of the Interior did was count golf course water hazards as such. This is your "outrage at the Republican Party" moment of the day.

Golden Heart Snack Shop

Golden Heart Snack Shop
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

I'm soaked to the bone after taking snapshots all afternoon, but this hot was worth all the rain and cold. My only regret here is that it wasn't dusk when I snapped this.

Look for a new "South Side Cheap Eats" review on Chicagoist in the morning after ten a.m.

GOOD Friday

My "guido" swipe from last week aside, I like reading the B News. One of their best regular features is their "A View from the Neighborhood" series - videos of the neighborhood shot by two local boys back in 1985. Wednesday's video - the "It's kind of dismal in here" visit to a tv repair shop and corner grocery at 31st and Wells - was laugh out loud funny. Reminds me of growing up on the northwest side. I swear to whatever you find holy my uncles never met a cocktail waitress they could not flirt with. Uncle Red in particular was particularly adept at this. I remember when my cousin Pat got married in '87 the waitresses were clearing the tables for dessert. Red handed the bread basket to our waitress and said with a leer, "You want these buns, baby?"

And it fucking worked!!

Technically, it is Music

The Nubian queen over at Enjoy & Exciting weighed in on Queensrÿche the other day. It seems that she bought their new "Operation Mindcrime II" and hadn't fully listened to it.

Well, I have and it's not bad. Did they really need to write a sequel? No. But it does rock in places, the songwriting is solid, and the story is coherent - a follow-up rather than a track-by-track recasting. It's a revenge fantasy that picks up after Nikki, the junkie hitman protagonist in the story, is freed from prison after eighteen years and sets out immediately to kill Dr. X, the shadowy head of the pharmaceutical company that controlled Nikki in "Mindcrime: I". It makes a nice complement to the original, both sonically and lyrically with its social and political commentary. But don't compare it to "OM: I" even though that might be next to impossible, the albums are made in two different eras. And if anyone couldn't figure out after eighteen years that Sister Mary committed suicide in the original "Mindcrime" (hope I didn't spoil this secret for anyone) you deserve to be let down.

In this post nu-metal musical landscape it's so refreshing to hear guitars tuned to "a" and solos. Solos, I tell ya.

Thje best part of "Mindcrime: II" is the voice of Dr. X: Ronnie James Dio. HIs vocals on this album possibly mark the first time in Dio's adult life where he isn't singing about dragons, rainbows, or majicks.

To Erin

Quitting Time
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

Regarding your review of Opera today: LOve ya, sweetheart, and I know the meal wa free. But you and I have wildly differing opinions on "north side" and "cheap eats."

More Mural Goodness West of Halsted...

Youth Center Mural 2
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

This mural gracing the youth center on 32nd Street deals with the theme of inclusion; that we should be celebrating ou similarities and not belittling our differences.

This must be what the guidos "Farnese" over at B News meant when they mentioned my "(perceived) exoticism (of the neighborhood)" a couple weeks back.

Friday T'oughts

I don't have a problem with organized religion, personally. Just the fringes. To my eye I don't see a difference between an al Qaeda fighter and, say, Ralph Reed. Or Osama bin Laden and Pat Robertson. Or Mullah Omar and Jerry Falwell. Religion has its place in peoples lives if it effects a positive influence. I find myself thinking about it more as I get closer to forty, wondering if there's something after this existence. Where do all my memories, my life experiences, go after I'm gone?

But that's a personal battle I need to grapple with. The theme of this post is religious fundamentalism and how its really nothing more than a carpool lane to damnation. That's why I read this article in the New York Times this morning with a fair amount of interest. It's refreshing to be reminded that there are some churches who don't distort the teachings of Christ for their own personal gain, particularly that sticky "render unto Caesar" bit after Christ cast the moneychangers out of the temple that seems to trip up so many conservatives these days.

Moonday

Randolph Street in Color
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

So I don't watch "The Apprentice" but I found this series of commercials to be very interesting, in only that Chevy and NBC don't seem to get that the quickie ads are intended to be critical. Enjoy them while they stay up.

Real Men of Genius

I'd like to congratulate my old friend Mike Zapata, publisher of Make Magazine, on joining the litany of people who've crossed the bad side of the Reader's Liz Armstrong. It isn't necessarily a hard feat, but the way you did it really stands out.

She did, however, mention the magazine. Any publicity is good publicity.