Friday, December 27, 2013

Christmas/Easter

I recently got a post office box and I'm still getting junk mail for the woman who had it before me. For the holiday season I(she) got a flurry of magazines you could buy last minute gifts from. One of them was selling cured meats. Here is a picture of one offering. It's called the Easter Ham and it's boneless. Jesus! Not my kind of ham!

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Crabby

Here is a picture of me looking crabby at the annual Valley Ford Crab Feed to benefit the volunteer fire department. I was actually anything but crabby. I look forward to it all year long. $40. All you can eat.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Funny Art

Everyone wants me to make funny art. The problem is that nothing is funny anymore.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Halloween

This Halloween I didn't get dressed up and go out because I had to teach. Most of my students, I'm guessing, did get dressed up and go out because attendance was a little light that night. Before I left for class that day I threw an apple in my bag to eat later. I must have an apple. I am a teacher. But I didn't eat it. I got too busy or forgot or wasn't hungry. I can't remember. Anyway, when I got home that night I pulled the apple out of my bag and started to cut it up but my knife hit something. It was a thumb tack. In my apple on Halloween. I don't know how it got there and I still ate it.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

San Francisco

A quarter will get you 4 minutes on the parking meter.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Men and Photography

A while back a male friend of mine started sending my photographs of himself daily. It was his way of updating me on the highlights of his day. I mentioned this to a female friend and she said, "Oh! He must really like you!" I said, "I don't think so. I know something about men and I know something about photography. If a man is interested he would want photographs of you. If a man wanted you to like him he would send you photographs of himself." My female friend begged to differ. Eventually my male friend stopped sending me photographs of himself and shortly after that I met a man who was crazy about me. "Send me a picture of yourself! Please!" He asked. When I asked him what he wanted for Christmas he said, "A photograph of you, please!" For his birthday he wanted a photograph of me. And for Valentine's day. He helped prove my theory right.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Watching Out

I think I figured out one of the reasons why the photographless photographer doesn't take pictures anymore. After I got robbed at gunpoint in 2009 I stopped looking for things to take pictures of and started looking out for for danger. Maybe I should start photographing danger.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

To Teach or Not To Teach. This Is The Question.

Yesterday in my teachers union newsletter they had a page comparing college contingent teacher salaries to that of someone working at Walmart. Here are the stats. To work at Walmart you do not have to have a high school degree. To work at a college or university you must have a Master's or PhD. Walmart $9.13 per hour. Higher education pays $7.78 after all the work put into a class is done. On average there are 3 applicants for each Walmart job opening. For a faculty position there are usually 87 applicants per opening. Hmm.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

OMG GTA!

Oh my God! Grand Theft Auto 5 came out yesterday! I would not have known this if I didn't teach at a junior college. Some students missed class because they stayed home to play it and some left early. You'd think the school would have considered it a holiday and cancel all classes. Maybe it should have been a federal holiday. Or maybe all those kids should have gone to church instead. I guess it's the most violent version yet. Even my stripper student was complaining that it was too graphic and the language was too vulgar.

Monday, September 2, 2013

The Windy City

I don't know why they call Chicago the windy city. It can't be windier than San Francisco, can it? Here is a photo of me and my sister, Whitney, trying to walk down the street last week. Our friend Gaelan took it.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Fake Out

Somehow I started getting these strange catalogs in the mail. I'm not sure what I could have signed up for that would have made them start coming. They seem to be targeted at older liberal homebody cat ladies. I guess that would be minus the cat. One of the catalogs has a spectacular bed set. I showed it to my 6 year old nephew who looked at if for a couple of seconds then said, "What? That's a bed? I thought it was a dress."

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Angels

I think I figured out where angels come from. Texas. Who would have knew? They are older retired republican guys who drive luxury vehicles. Well, at least one of them is. I asked God to send me an angel and four days later there he was. At least I know an angel when I see one. Keep your eyes open. They are probably all around you but you can't see their wings.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Half and Half and Half

I saw a woman the other day who was half black and half white. She was born that way but then she also had Vitiligo. That condition that causes depigmentation of the skin in patches. Besides that she also had a very full beard. We like to categorize because it is easier and we don't have to think or question. This is called Occam's Razor. The theory that you should always start off with the fewest assumptions first because the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. But there can be so many subcategories. I'm starting to think this theory is razor thin.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Fe-mailman

The other day I was out in the neighborhood with my friend, Norma, and we ran into my mailman who is a woman. I guess that would have been a mail woman at one time before it became a mail person and then a mail carrier to be completely neutral. I waved to her and she waved back. My friend, Norma, used to be a cop in Oakland before she retired. If you met her it wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to go out on a limb and guess that's what she used to do for a living. Plus, she wears blue t-shirts a lot. Norma says she is mistaken for a man more often than she is assumed to be a woman. She says that when she waits in a line the clerk will say to the people in front of her, "Can I help you, Sir? Can I help you, Ma'am?" But when she gets to the front of the line they just say, "Can I help you?" So, I ran into my fe-mailman while I was with my friend who is a female man.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Magic Number 4

Today I got picked as a juror in a criminal case. I am juror number 4. The case is expected to last for 4 days. The bailiff, the prosecuting attorney, the defense attorney, and myself all have spaces between our front teeth. Oh, wait. I'm not supposed to talk about all this. It could jeopardize the case.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

It's not raining cats and dogs...

it's raining mouse turds! Every summer the mice move into the light fixture above the kitchen table and every time they do a little house cleaning then I have to as well. Luckily they are not the best house keepers.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

MVP MVP

I got MVP (most valuable player) award twice in one week on two different soccer teams! That never happens. It's not because I'm good but because I had two key defensive plays that saved each game. "How did you do that?" People asked me after my saves. "I don't know," I had to answer. I am an unpredictable player. My friend Pao, who is on one of my teams, says my goals don't make any sense. I'm starting to think my goals in life are like my soccer goals. They need to make more sense.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Stretching the Mind

On Saturday I went to a yoga class at my gym and the teacher said something that changed my life. First he was going on and on about doing you own practice and not to compare yourself to anyone else. The same stuff yoga teachers always say and the same stuff we need to hear over and over. But then he said, "When things aren't going right for us we have a default feeling." When he said that I realized what mine was. And now that I know what it is I can change it. What is yours?

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Annual Update

Every year I go to the psychic fair and have my aura photographed. Here is this year's image. The woman reading the photographs told me that it looks like I like what I do. That's the red part over my heart and the orange on the outside of my aura. She is right. Too bad I don't make much money doing what I like to do. She also said some other stuff but you don't get to know what that was.

Friday, May 10, 2013

When The Sky Falls

Out where I teach at Diablo Valley College they have a big 1950's looking cement pond in the middle of campus. Every spring it is full of ducklings and goslings. They are so cute you want to jump in the water and grab one and squeeze it till it's head pops off. But you know if you tried something like that a mama something would come after you and pinch you with its beak. Yesterday I was in class and I heard a goose calling someone. Sometimes they sit on the top of the building and make a bunch of noise but this sounded different. I looked down three stories to the ground and there was a mother goose standing next to a gosling that was sitting beside her. "The others are up there!" Someone pointed to the top of the building. Not a good place for a goose to build a nest since they are all about the water. How did she think she was going to get them there? "Bad parenting," someone else said. I went down by the mother goose where a crowd was gathering. Everyone was looking up where the two goslings on the roof were running back and forth trying to figure out how to get down. Then the second one fell. It managed to miss the cement and bounce off the dirt that was padded with pine needles. It looked stunned for a second then got up and went and found it's mom. While mom was distracted with the other baby I scooped the seated one up in my hand. The mother goose did not put up a fight. She didn't try to pinch me with her beak. It was almost like she let me have it. Just then the third chick fell from the sky and this man, who had been keeping his eye on it, caught it. He put it down and it joined its mother and its sibling. Canada Goose goslings are yellow and brown but the yellow is almost a florescent green. I squeezed the one in my hands a few times then tried my best to get it to walk but it couldn't use it's legs. I handed it over to my student's mother and she drove away with it off to the bird shelter. The mother goose let anyone stand next to her except for me. She would start hissing at me if I got too close. She gave me one bad egg but she wasn't going to let me have a good one. I have a feeling the goose who couldn't walk has a better chance of survival than the two healthy ones. Happy mother's day!

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Collisions

On Saturday I went downtown to see some shows. 3 photographers have show up right now where they have either woven or somehow interlaced more than one photograph together. Must be in the air. Or the water. After I went downtown I met my brother's new friend. When I was growing up my best friend was named Daisy Dern. Funny thing is, my brother's friend, Daisy, looked a little like my best friend, Daisy. Daisy Dern, like myself, doesn't have a middle name. When people asked us what our middle names were and we would tell them we didn't have one they just assumed that we didn't like our middle name and they would say, "Come on. Tell me what it is." Well, The new Daisy has a middle name and it is Alice. Her birthday is also 3 days later than the old Daisy's birthday. One Daisy is a country singer and the other comes from British royalty. Kinda the same thing just on different sides of the pond.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Puzzled

The other night I got home from a 13 hour work day but I wasn't ready to go to sleep and I didn't need any more information to go into my brain. I didn't want to read or watch tv so I started to put a puzzle together. I just wanted to look at shapes and pretty colors. When I went back to work two days later a man walked into the photo lab and asked for Alice Shaw. He was delivering a bouquet of flowers. The card read, "I hope this brightens your day!" And it did but that was it. It didn't say who they were from and I can't begin to guess who sent them. Now I have two puzzles to work on.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Oh Brother

I have two brothers. Virgil who is two and a half years younger than I am and Dexter who is 15 years younger than myself. Yes, to answer your question, same parents. The other day someone asked me if I was my brother's mom. I know they weren't talking about Dexter because he wasn't even there. It's that damed gray hair. Making me look like I'm 69 years old. Funny thing is my brother Dexter, who is 32 years old has about as much gray as I do.

Monday, April 15, 2013

The Photographless Photographer

For the past few years I've been interested in an aspect of photography that has fascinated photographers since its inception. Photographing the Invisible. The Unphotographable. There are shows and books on the subject. From attempting to capture ghosts on film to trying to represent Jesus. I am working on putting together a class on the subject. Then there is the Photographless Photographer. This is something completely different. This is me. My tax form says I'm a photographer but I'm not quite sure about that anymore. Recently I went on a whale site seeing trip and I was the only person on the boat that didn't take any pictures as well as the only photographer on board. But I didn't want to put a camera or a phone in between me and my experience just so that I could experience it again later. Those pictures of the whales will be in my head forever. There is a title some artists give themselves that most photographers can't stand. It's when someone calls themselves "an artist who uses photography." It usually applies to someone who wasn't formally trained in photography but who uses the medium as their primary form of expression. I have to admit that this type of work is sometimes refreshing because the individual is not caught up relying on unspoken rules that photographers abide by. Maybe I should start calling myself "a photographer who uses art." I used to leave my images untitled. I wanted to leave them open to interpretation. Eventually I started titling works to direct the viewer and in my last show the title of each work ended up being half of the piece. One could not exist without the other. I wondered if eventually the work would go away and only the words would be left and, sure enough, recently I started writing a book. It's fiction. I see the characters and events in my mind's eye. If someone read it they would have their own. These are pictures I don't have to print, or frame, or store. Other people can't copy them. They float around like images on the internet but nobody else gets to see them.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Things Keep Coming Up Roses

There is a big, beautiful red rose blooming in the back yard right now. Too bad it smells so strongly of cat piss and shit back there that you can't smell the rose. That reminds me of my trip back from NYC in February. My flight was delayed about 5 hours and I got bored and decided I needed some chocolate to entertain me and keep me awake. I picked out a four pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups(I guess that is the standard size now) at the airport News Stand and got in line behind a very well kept looking young woman in a fur shawl. She looked like a Saudi princess. She had her arms full of items to purchase and a pile at the counter. She spent almost $300 there. I know the airport is over priced but, really. She handed the checker $400 and the checker handed her back a hundred spot. It took forever to get to the front of the line because the checker had to wrap ceramic mugs and trinkets individually and fold a bunch of t-shirts. She should have kept the 100 bucks for the extra work. I found a place to sit and ate two of the Reese's before handing the remaining two over to a friend who I happened to run into on her way back to SF as well. She was on a later flight than mine but hers ended up leaving before mine. I asked my friend if she could watch my luggage while I visited the ladies room. I walked into the restroom and pushed a stall door open. I have a knack for finding the most disturbing sites in bathrooms. The toilet was filled to the brim with paper, a seat cover, and a huge shit. Sprinkled on the floor around the toilet were the petals of a red rose. I have a feeling I know whose crap that was.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Whale of a Tail

On friday I spent the night on my friend, Angela's, boat. There were 7 of us and we all woke up at 5am and sailed out to the Farallon Island, 30 miles off the coast, where we got to see about 12 whales on their migration north. Two of them were so close to the boat we had to turn it to get out of their way. The closest one was 20 to 25 feet away. I don't have any pictures to prove it because I forgot my camera, but it really did happen.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Seeing Double

The other night I was having a hard time distinguishing my water from my gin and tonic.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Fuck 'em

If they aren't going to make bras that fit me then I'm not going to wear them.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Never Never Land

I think I figured out where Never Never Land is. That island where Peter Pan lived where nobody had to grow up. It is really San Francisco. Only we don't call it an island we call it a bubble. With my wages I will Never Never own my own house let alone Never Never be able to leave my rent controlled apartment because I'd have to pay 5 times as much for the same amount of space and I Never Never even make 5 times my rent. You Never Never have to get married and have kids if you Never Never want to because all tradition is out the door here. Gay people have Never Never been treated like grown ups so they Never Never have to act like one if they don't want to. I Never Never go out on the weekends and Never Never take advantage of the things the city has to offer anymore after getting robbed at gunpoint. And I Never Never get asked out on a date ever anyway. Alice in Wonderland is living in Never Never Land. She is wondering why she lives there.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Alice S. and Alice S.

When I went to NY I finally got to meet my friend's daughter who she named after me. Here is a photo of Alice Shaw and Alice Shehadi.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Handy Nasty

A little over a week ago I was staying at a friend's apartment in the lower east side of Manhattan. I woke up and got myself a cup of tea and as I sipped it I noticed a large book on the shelf. It was on the Han Dynasty but all the letters were capitalized and the space between the N and the D was very slim and I wasn't wearing my glasses and I'm dyslexic to start with. To me it read, HANDY NASTY. I wondered what that book was all about.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Don't Try This At Home

If you decide to get strep throat I wouldn't recommend pairing it with bronchitis. But if you do you mind as well add your period on top of the mix just to take things up a notch. I guess there are worse ways to spend Valentine's Day. Right?

Monday, February 4, 2013

People

People Who Look Like Me and people who look like how I used to look.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Hood

A friend of mine, who I met last summer abroad, asked me what my neighborhood was like. I think this picture says it all. Half the folks have fancy ass cars and the other half have beat up old ones.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

There is a first for everything

This month I got my very first real studio. It is the perfect romantic artist's studio. In a shabby part of town, nice light all day long, and over looking a parking lot. It makes me so happy to go there it makes me want to cry. I introduced myself to a guy who has a studio downstairs and told him that it felt more like a tree fort than a studio and he replied, "Yeah. You will get used to it."

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Life and Death

Yesterday I rode my bike downtown to see some shows at the galleries. When I got there the police had blocked off some of the streets. There were traffic jams, cars were honking, nobody was happy. While I was at the Paule Anglim Gallery I looked out the window and saw a pro life march heading down Market Street toward the ferry building. I left to go home and rode my bike up Geary Street thinking I could avoid the madness by cutting across Hyde. When I got to Hyde there was a funeral procession up and down the street as far as the eye could see. It was a mess. Maybe if the right to lifers and the funeral goers had teamed up they could have brought that guy back to life.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Oops

On the way to work out one morning I passed the gas station between my apartment and the gym. The umbrella, or whatever you call the roof that protects patrons from the sun and rain, had tumbled over. I wondered how it had happened. There has not been any wind. It is winter here and the wind doesn't come until the summer time. I got closer and saw what went wrong. The worst welding job you've ever seen.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Dog Hair and Spider Webs

The other day before I went to work I walked to the bank. On the way there a woman almost ran me over. Twice. Once when I was in her way in the crosswalk and the next time when I was in her way on the sidewalk. When I got to the bank I couldn't make my deposit because someone had graffitied all over the ATM screens. I gave up and went to work. I've been painting a house out in Orinda. Yes, students who are reading my blog, I make more money painting in a week than I do teaching two classes for a month. Anyway, it is nice an quiet out there and it smells good and there is parking everywhere. No garbage, barf, or human shits on the sidewalk. "Why do I live in the city?" I thought to myself when I got out there. Later in the day I went to deposit my check at the ATM in Orinda and watched overly self entitled people honk and yell at each other from their Lexus'. Isn't there an in between? I am trying to figure out where that is. God, please don't let it be Pacifica. The most beautiful place in the world with the worst weather and the worst architecture. The house I was painting had spider webs all over the ceiling. When I was on the ladder they would get all over my face. There was also fluffy yellow dog hair all over the floor and when I painted along the baseboards the dog hair would get all over my face. Here is a photo from the house on New Year's Eve. Guess what I also did on New Years Day?