Baby Sleep

Evan sleeps on his back, his arms stretched out, his face perfectly calm. When I hold him, and he finally relaxes and falls asleep after howling and raging against losing consciousness, his muscles give way and he becomes heavier. His body submits perfectly and completely.

I never sleep like that.

Omar

I was sitting at the Ravenna Tavern way back in 2003, drinking beer and filling my lungs with second hand smoke, when I noticed a tall fellow with long hair staring at me. His eyes were intent on something, (later he told me he was checking me out because I looked "like a psycho"). I thought he was an ass tack looking for a date, or a fight. Below him on the floor, sitting calmly, surveying the room, was his dog, a big Sheppard mix of some kind, with a startling, and instantly recognizable intelligence. It was obvious the dog was taking the man out for play time and was patiently waiting for him to drink his fill.

The tall man with the curious stare was Harrison "DJ DOC SUPERFREAK" Rommel, and the majestic pup, was Omar the Great. The greatest dog who ever lived. At 14, Omar recently died in his sleep...we all lost an incredible friend.

Some diads are perfection; Harry and Omar were like Hendrix and his Strat; they were meant to be together. Harry told me he knew Omar was his dog when he sat calmly in his tiny cage as other death row inmates at the animal shelter barked, growled and paced. "It was like he was waiting for me to show up".

Omar was a mountain dog. Harry took him climbing in New Mexico, Colorado and Washington. I went on a "hike", as Harry called our 12 hour torture-fest up Mt. Pugh, with Omar, who chased marmots all day long and sprinted up to the top and back down without assistance on a trek that damn near killed me.

Omar's greatness was many things...but the most unique thing about him was his otherworldly intelligence. When Harry started dating a woman (who turned out to be a pain in the ass), Omar vanished on the morning of her first overnight, and ran to an X-girlfriends house, who walked Omar back to his apartment to find Harry and Miss Lunatic having breakfast...this was Omar's vote on the new flame. Omar could coax a treat out of the most jaded bartender by making his eyes get bigger, so it looked like he was about to cry! He once guarded a disabled child all day long at a park where he could have been rolling in pooh, or chewing on dead things like most dogs; instead, Omar never left the girls side, and would block anyone who approached her. He was practical as well...once jabbing me with his nose until I woke up and got off the couch I'd passed out on, it was his couch and it was noon, time for me to go.

I swear he walked through walls...he could get out of a locked house any time he pleased and we could never figure out how in the hell he did it...my amazing pal, the ancient Buddhist monk in a beautiful dog's body. He will be deeply missed by everyone who ever knew him.

Ch-Ch-Changes!

Since my last post we have purchased a new vehicle, become pregnant, and put money down on a new rental...

Life has exploded, turned upside down, gone in reverse, increased in reverb and echo and become that much more fascinating.

My respect and admiration for women grows every day as I watch Kim change and suffer and expand and glow like morning sun.

WOW!.....(mouth hanging open)

Lunch with the President

In 1987 I had lunch with Gerald Ford.

I was a senior at Homestead High in lovely Fort Wayne Indiana, on assignment as a photographer for the school newspaper. A pal of mine whose grandfather golfed with former president Ford, wrote what must have been an impressive letter, begging Gerry to pay a visit to our school...to give a speech, gag down our food and shake hands with members of the student government and newspaper staff.

The school auditorium was packed with students and friends of teachers and administrators no one recognized. Our government teacher and baseball coach, Keith Potter, was pale and overdressed, scurrying around giving orders in a thin controlled voice, he looked like he might soil himself at any moment.

Ford rolled in like Elvis, Secret Service infested the school like jacket wearing cockroaches, and he was safely at the podium, ready to give an instantly forgettable speech.

I moved down the marble steps of the auditorium, camera at the ready. Secret Service shadowing my every move.

I shot several roles of film and some of my pictures made it into the paper. Later, my negatives were confiscated by Mark Kornman (sp?), our publications teacher.

At lunch Ford was pleasant and at ease, fielding questions from pimpled journalists and eating cafeteria food.

He was among us for several surreal hours and then poof!...back to class.

Free Range Human has finished their latest cd. "Last Chance" takes one final shot at mesmerism through cut and hack and compose and theft techniques....features Miles Davis, Brett Underwood, John Goddard, Grass Family Reunion, Hemingway, James Garner, Alan Watts, Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn, Jim Jones and the grumblings and final speeches of 900 people about to drink cyanide.

Drums, words, guitar and production by Paul Hiatt.

Thanks to Kendall Conrad for photo editing.

If you want a free copy leave your info in the comments section.

New Kind of Meaning For Sale

Like anyone with eyeballs and ears and the smallest sense of awareness, I find the culture of mass consumption, where all things are promised and emptiness is delivered, to be frightening and sick...and in need of destruction.

I subscribe to the notion that most people attached to consumer pop culture are sleeping an uneasy sleep, cut off from both internal and external realities, awaiting the next pellet of purchased hope, with vague uneasiness and bruised bank accounts. With eyes half closed they willingly cede their mental and spiritual landscape to the agents of fear and sell.

And IT is everywhere and IT is where most of us want to be. Where the action is. In the know.

To turn away from crass commercialism and constructed reality, is to turn away from civilization, to be cut off, alone in a cruel landscape where wrinkles and allergies and sexlessness await.

Thank God for culture jammers like Adbuster Magazine...where you can purchase an anti-purchasing awareness kit:

A radical new aesthetic vision by Adbusters editor-in-chief Kalle Lasn. Equal parts memoir, manifesto, scrapbook, and revolutionary design manual, this book is an urgent call for artists, designers, architects and communicators to re-engage with the world.
Richly illustrated with highlights from 15 years of Adbusters design activism (and featuring the work of Banksy, Andy Goldworthy, Jeff Wall, Edward Burtynsky, Ryan McGinness, Andre Serrano, Dah Len, Robert Mapplethorpe, John Goto, Mark Tansey, Gregory Crewdson among others), Design Anarchy probes the historical roots of commercial design culture, the cultural impact of the post-modern sensibility and the problem of aesthetic recuperation. Along the way, it proposes two revolutionary new schools of design philosophy and practice: True Cost Design and Psycho Design.
In the battle for a new kind of meaning, Design Anarchy is 400 pages without precedent.
THE AUTHOR
Kalle Lasn is the founder and editor-in-chief of Adbusters magazine. He has been a key figure in international activism for well over a decade. He was the prime author and driving force behind the First Things First 2000 Manifesto.
SCRAPBOOK EDITION
A different take on Design Anarchy, one that achieves a richer expression of the anarchic ideal. Includes an array of handcrafted ephemera, doodles, clippings, transparencies, leaves, sandpaper, stickers . . . plus the Production of Meaning DVD.
NOTE: The scrapbook edition is not eligible for the student/teacher discount.
SHIPPING:USA and Canada: about 10 daysUK, Europe: about 2 weeks

You can't buy "a new kind of meaning" but you can sell an above- it -all aesthetic to those looking for a way out of the sickness.

Unfortunately it's not that easy.

Great Americans

Recently, a man in Pennsylvania pulled a gun on his 7 year old son's football coach because he wasn't getting enough playing time. The 40 year old was arrested after the un-named coach filed a complaint.

I want to know about the son. Is he a capable football player, overlooked by an insensitive buffoon of a coach? Or does he lack miniaturized blood lust; a passion for inflicting pain on other 1st grade savages.

We can gauge the gun fixated father's level of dementia if we know more about the son's ability to tackle, block and run. If the son can't finish a designed play, or shies aways from bone jarring hits (like most normal humans), the coach is only doing his job by limiting the boy's exposure to an unpleasant, and potentially dangerous situation, and the father is completely insane, off his nut...delusional.

If the boy loves smashing others and can follow plays, but is being ignored by the coach, the father is not, according to American sensitivities, insane, but John Wayne like...saving his boy from a horse thieving coach, a bandit out to rustle away juniors playing time.

And it must be black and white! Nuance is un-American, contemplation is UNAMERICAN!

Thoughtful deliberation is......