Most photo companies have a really hard time answering this question. At Wal-Mart we were in the low price/keep the customer happy no matter what business. Which meant that anyone who bitched and moaned loud enough got all the pictures they wanted for free. At the school photo places, we were in the yearbook business and if someone happen to buy a few extra images then we got to eat as well as produce a yearbook. At the place where I shot Shirners we were in the directory business, and if one or two of the old farts bought pictures,…
what does it matter anyway?
I hate my job, but then, I guess that a lot of people feel the same way about their jobs. You see people on TV and they say things like they are so lucky and they love their jobs and their lives and all of that. Of course, they are like rich and famous for the most part. Not that those things helped Britney much. Still, it would be nice to have a bit more money, ok, a lot more money would be nice.There is that old Zen bit about before enlightenment, fetch wood and carry water-after enlightenment, fetch wood…
I miss the old days when comics were funny
Once upon a time there were jokes. These were little stories with a beginning and a shock ending, with an optional middle.There is a setup:A hamburger walks into a bar.A bit of story:The bartender looks at the hamburger.Then a punchline:“Hey, we don’t serve food here.”Ha Ha.Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby changed all that a few million years ago in the fifties and sixties by making the optional part two of story telling so good that they didn’t need a punchline to get a laugh. Sienfield took it to the point of there being nothing but the setup and there never…
The rain, rain, rain, came down, down, down
Lots of water and wind and grey skies. The kind of weather that kind of depresses me once in a while. The house tends to flood in heavy rains. There is that whole damp and dreary business. I am not all that happy as a general rule anyway. Work has sucked for the past couple of weeks and then I have to work with a couple of the loonies that I don’t like. One I have had to put up with all week and she has been OK for the most part. The other is a kind of trainer or…
Lift that barge, tote that bail
My dear sainted mother was a big fan of musicals of all forms and sizes. As a result I grew up watching TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Broadway Musicals (Show Boat / Annie Get Your Gun / Kiss Me Kate / Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and so and so forth. I also got to see such turkeys as The Little Prince and Paint Your Wagon. The last new musical I watched and really loved was Victor/Victoria and that was twenty-five years ago. I might have liked All That Jazz, if they had hired someone who could sing or act…
The Family Life
I’ve been reading Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris and it is doing a wonderful job of making me feel totally inadequate. He talks about his oddball family and some of the oddball things that they do. I can kind of let his voice whine through my mind, as I have listened to him on NPR enough to have him in the sound effects library in my head. But really, like any book that strikes a cord with me, I think in my own voice. . I am not gay, but I did have a mother…
When in doubt read USA Today
It comes free with the room, which is why I read it at all. I remember when this little bright and cheery newspaper first started, it was a bit deal to have all that color in a newspaper. The fact that it covered the most germane and boring news it could find seemed to be a bit of a side issue. Hey, it’s got big color charts in there!The front page today covers a nice gamut from pills work as well as angioplasty-yes, I had to check the spelling-to the goal of most Gen-Xers is to get rich. Hmm, isn’t…
Thoughts on an old blog
My old blog had a handful of readers and the usual mob that passed by for an occasional glance before moving on to the NEXT BLOG. But it was the comments and the sharing of ideas from the regulars that was kind of fun and lead to obsession. I talked about life, the universe and everything, as most bloggers tend to. We tended to bounce ideas off each other and inspire posts in each others blogs. It was a bit of fun, but now that its gone I don’t dwell much on it. My blog is gone, while those I…
Dealing with the Public
I’ve been in the discount and not-so-discount photography business for about ten years now. In all that time there have been a lot of changes, film to digital, instant proofing verse three to six weeks, being able to see the images at once and correct minor flaws-like closed eyes or tongues sticking out.But there has been one constance through it all, the idiocy of the general public that shows up to have their portraits taken. You can put a sign three feet by four feet that says Portraits Enter Here and then later wander around and find people in a…
Premontion-a stitch in time saves none
Most movies that have time travel as a key element work from the foundation that time is plastic-think Marty McFly or Bill and Ted-that anything in any time line can be changed at will without there being any serious side effects. Although Prof Brown was often worried about there being an end of the universe event, that never seemed to happen. My favorite of the plastic universe movies is Groundhog Day, in which a heartless and self centered Bill Murray turns into a benevolent hero to virtually everyone in Punxsutawney.The other kind of time travel is the concrete determinism type…