A No-Win Scenario

I've been meaning to write this for months but more things keep happening. My dad went into the hospital on labor day with problems. Long story short, they discovered colon cancer. A two-foot section of colon was removed as well as the lymph nodes. Lesions were found on his liver. The lymph nodes and liver were biopsied and tested positive. Dad's condition is getting worse every day. He's dying. Today was our first visit from Hospice.

A family friend who is a gastroenterologist had been telling Dad for years to get a colonoscopy. He never wanted to. This could have been discovered a very long time ago when something could have been done about it. He had already beat prostate cancer and a bump on the head which put him into a coma for a week. He seemed indestructible. I was convinced that he'd live to 100. But, nobody is indestructible.

I'm preaching here, and I don't care. I've had two colonoscopies already. They are inconvenient as fuck, but there is no good excuse not to get one. When your doctor tells you that it's time for one, he's not doing it to torturer you, it will literally save your life. Just fucking do it.

Addendum: Another one of my mom's sister past away suddenly in her sleep two days less than a month after her first sister passed. This is too much for the family to go through, and, I'm at my wit's end now.

Memento Mori

So, one of my Aunts died last week. She was my my mother's youngest sister. She went to take a nap and stopped breathing. Her friend, who is useless in a crisis called my mother before calling emergency services. When I got to the apartment with my mother, we were there about just before the police and 20 or 40 minutes after she had stopped breathing. I spent some time working, along with my father,  in for a funeral home, and so, I noticed that lividity was already setting in. Her friend was on the phone the emergence operator who told us to start CPR. I made him get her off the bed and on to the floor. I let my CPR certification lapse 10 years ago, and I was so nervous about not knowing what I was doing that I was freezing up. I was about to begin comprehensions when the police came in with the fire department and EMTs and paramedics on their heels. The professionals worked on her and pumped her so full of drugs that a slight pulse began. This is when they brought her to the hospital.

I had to leave the hospital and fetch my aunt's living will. When I got back to the ER, her EKG was flatlined, but there was a machine breathing for her. As per directions, the doctor took her off the life support with two sisters, a brother-in-law, a nephew and a friend present. She was suffering with Parkinson's and was in a lot of physical pain for two I am grateful that at least she went to sleep in her own bed in her own home and didn't wake up.

My aunt was an atheist, so we had a nice no-denominational memorial service at the funeral home, the one that my family is familiar with. Extended family, professional friends, and members of her book club were in attendance. Many people stood up to speak and had many lovely words about her. She was personally and professionally admired by so many people that it made me glad. It was a fine service, until the very end when things blew up.

This isn't not the place to go into details, or to try to assign blame. I don't know who is reading this blog. A huge row ensued inside the funeral home over my aunt's ashes. I had to step in physically, like a hockey referee, between one of my aunt's daughters (the one not currently living overseas) and one of my mother's other sisters, to keep them from coming to blows. Language that should not be uttered in a funeral home was used. It was all so white trash, so Real Housewives of New Jersey, that it was embarrassing. My mother, the matriarch of the family was besides herself. Seething, I roared at everyone to stop. After the repast, I called the funeral director's cell phone and personally apologized for my family.

Today, I pinpointed exactly where the confusion started. It was with an innocent misunderstanding on the part on someone other than the daughter and or the aunt. It's all settled now to everyone's satisfaction. But, it should not have devolved into this fury in the first place. I'm not going to have this any more. I'm 47 years old and an elder now. This is the day that I take over as head of the family.

Organizing My web Presence

From now on, my photography geek stuff is going to be on my special photography blog here:

https://jonfairchildphotographyblog.blogspot.com/ ,

which I have linked to my website here:

https://www.jonfairchildphotography.com/

Which is going to be the hub of Jon Fairchild Photography. My next step is going to get myself onto Instagram. That's the really big step that I need to take to get my work out there. 

 I'll still be here on this blog occasionally with more personal stuff. There is something going on that I really need to write about, but, it's going to take some time.

Cheers...

Jon

Changes

After ten years, I've pretty much lot my passion for my day job in the retail coffee industry. I can feel the company sucking the life out of me. It gives me health insurance and retirement benefits and helps pay the bills (barely). I'm looking for a way to get my chosen art for to at least pay for it's self. I'm searching for ways to get my photography seen and sold. I created a main photography site and a fineartamerica store and have them linked to this blog. I'll have more interesting things coming in the next weeks and months.

A dozen definitive Generation X Movies

A word about the word:
Before Douglas Coupland dubbed my generation "Generation X", the term was the title of a photo essay by the great photographer Robert Capa on youth people coming of age just after World War 2, the young people of the 1950s. The term never caught on. This was my parent's generation, ironically. The term could have fit them just as easily. As we stand twixt the Boomers and the Millennials, they stand between the Greatest Generation and The Boomers, they, too are, in the words of Tyler Durden in "Fight Club", the middle children of history. My dad's older brother served in the war, my dad was only 16 in 1945. My dad was in the service during the Korean conflict, at the same time, my mom was in high school with bobby socks and poodle skirts. My dad's older siblings had Glen Miller, my dad had Stan Kenton. My mom's younger siblings had the Beatles, my mom had Tony Bennett. They married in 1956. They saw the civil rights era. My mom's younger sisters went to Woodstock. In 1969, my parents had me.

Just for fun, I created a list of the definitive movies of and about my generation. They are in a semi-chronological order ranging from the seventies to the the end of the nineties.

1: The Bad News Bears

I'm talking about the original one, of course, with Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal. In spite of (or because of) all the fighting, and the cursing, and Coach Buttermaker's drinking problem, this movie shows a surprisingly sympathetic look at childhood in the 1970s, even if, like me, you didn't play little league.

2: The Legend of Billie Jean 

First of all, the scene with oh-so-lovely Helen Slater at the swimming hole (right before the jerks started messing with brother Binx's scooter) had my 16 year old adolescent head spinning. I don't think I ever really recovered. H.S.'s Billie Jean Davy goes on to lead a full blown youth rebellion that had us all cheering. Fair is fair!

3: Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Why did I include this popular comedy? They called our generation slackers, and nobody put as much effort and talent into the fine art of slacking as Ferris.

4: The Breakfast Club

Throw a bunch of students from completely different high school cliques together in Saturday detention and they learn that they are all equally outsiders and misfits. Nothing defined Generation X better.

5:  Heathers

Wynona Ryder and Christian Slater team up to kill off the snobby popular kids in school only to see the plan backfire when their victims become even more beloved in death. This very black comedy is a defining movie for a generation characterized by bleak irony and practiced nonchalance.

6: War Games
Thanks to genius boomers such as Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, we were the first kids to grow up with our own computers (Sorry, millennials, it's true). A cyberpunk thriller before there was a word for it. Mathew Broderick plays a teenage hacker invading pre-internet bulletin boards looking for free games to download, only to inadvertently activate a NORAD war game scenario that nearly begins world war three.

7: Reality Bites
Lives of the overeducated and underemployed in the 1990s. Gen-X queen Wynona Ryder documents the romantic and career troubles of her friends with a camcorder.

8: Slacker
The very title of this movie is that hated word that the Boomers used to define us with. You've seen the "Keep Austin Weird" T-Shirsts. In this series of vignettes, Gen-X director Richard Linlater takes us to Austin, TX and gives us a grand tour of the weird circa 1991.

9: Clerks
Kevin Smith filmed this no-budget flick in black and white at the convenience store where he worked. It gives us a day in the life of no-future 20-somethings in Leonardo, NJ who spend their time doing such things as debating the ethics of blowing up the second Death Star and judging people by the movies that they rent.

10: Grosse Point Blank
A movie about growing up to realize that life doesn't turn out the way you imagined. This film tells it's message using the unlikely scenario of John Cusack as a hit man with an existential crisis going to his 10 year high school reunion.

11: Swingers
Struggling Brooklynite trying to get his shit together as a comedian in LA while sampling the mid-1990's neo-lounge scene. The film has some hilarious scenes for anyone who lived through that time period, the most uncomfortable answering machine scene ever put to film, and a cameo by swing revival band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

12: Fight Club
Rounding off the list, we finish the journey from The Legend of Billie Jean's fantasies of youth rebellion to "the middle children of history" beating the living shit out of each other in order to feel alive for just five minutes.

I'm going to leave this list at a dozen. What movies would you include?

    

So, What's Up?

As you see below, I just posted another camera review. It's been a few months, but, that doesn't mean that I haven't been shooting. I'm posting most of my photos to Flickr now. My day to day activities are typically survival mode (work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat). I got tired of complaining about politics and decided to do something about it. I met someone running for congress in my district and will be volunteering for her. My incumbent congressman really has to go. Ever since he rose to party leadership, he lost touch with the people he's supposed to represent. He's become too comfortable to be a good politician. I'll write more on that as things develop.

Olympus Stylus Epic

I was cleaning out my basement when I came across my old Olympic Stylus. This was one of my first favorite cameras. I hadn't seen it in years and thought I had thrown it out or sold it. In short, I thought that it was lost to me forever. Well, there it was, with a dead battery and a 24 exposure roll of Fujicolor Superia 200 in it. The first thing I wanted to do, of course was finish up this old roll of film. I put a new battery in the camera and it started right up.

The Stylus Epic was introduced in 1997 as part of Olympus' popular Stylus line of 35mm cameras. Olympus made some terrific, clever 35mm compact cameras. The stylus cameras from this era had gorgeous, artistic lines and a funky sliding clamshell cover. I've already told you about my Trip 35. Other Stylus models had zoom lenses, but the Epic has a fast and sharp fixed Olympus 35mm f2.8 lens. Not only is it a great lens, but the lack of a zoom mechanism allows the camera to keep it's pocket size. The shape of the body is very attractive and helps you easily slip it into a pocket, but I prefer the leather belt pouch. The plastic body is covered in a nice, creamy gold paint. The shutter button is gold colored. The camera turns on by putting open the clamshell cover and turns off by closing it. The back door has a window to let you know what kind of film you have loaded. The viewfinder is surprisingly clear. When closed, the shell protects everything in the front of the camera, the lens, the viewfinder, and the light and focus sensors.

The camera is very simple. It has a smart multi-point auto focus The controls in the back include buttons for flash modes and a self-timer. It has "quartzdate", which allows the camera to imprint the date on the film, which would show up on one of the lower corners of your prints. This was a thing in the nineties. You don't want to use it.

It has a "panorama" switch, which causes two plastic leaves to block out the top and bottom sections of the film. Film is rewound by pressing a little button with a tip of a pen. And that's all the camera does. No crazy modes, just a simple little pleasant point and shoot which looks really nice.

So, I was shooting a roll of film that was at least ten years out of date and probably more, so I didn't have a clue as to how the pictures would come out. I thought that it would be interesting to surprise myself. The washed out colors of the expired film gave the photos a wonderful vintage look which I love.

Steampunk World's Fair 2017

The 2017 Steampunk World Fair was on the weekend of Friday, May 5-7. It took me a while to settle on what camera I wanted to take, but, I finally decided to dress up my FE2. With a couple of brass pieces, it doesn't look out of place, in fact, most participants who have cameras with them carry around their usual modern black polycarbonate wonders. I wanted my camera to become part of my new steampunk persona, the high-adventuring magazine photographer, Jersey Jack. I didn't do anything permanent to the FE2 and I'm in the process of steampunking a camera that looks a little more worn for Jersey Jack. This is much too pretty.

I took four rolls of Ilford XP2 with me. I brought one lens ( a Nikon 50mm series E), and a Tiffen soft focus filter. The series E lenses were made by Nikon in the late seventies and early eighties for their compact consumer SLRs. The 50mm series E is a bargain today. They are very sharp, and can be found on Ebay for $50 all day.

The theme for this year's SPWF was "The Fires of Inspiration" and steampunk's neo-Victorianism goes perfectly with photography. The 1880's until the turn of the 20th century was a time when photography first began to be taken seriously as a fine art form under giants of the craft like Hoboken native Alfred Stieglitz. The ethereal quality of the work they created is a great source of inspiration for an aspiring photographer.

The SPWF takes place in and around the Radison and Embassy Suites hotels in Piscataway, NJ. This was the view of the atrium my floor in the Embassy. The atrium in the Embassy is one of my favorite spaces, it's a good place for a Victorian promenade.

Eric, one several friends from college who always shows up to this event.

SPWF is a festival with artists and all kids of live acts, one of my favorites is Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band. In addition to their scheduled concerts, they are known for their late night dance parties under the hotel car ports. Their arrangements mix funk and carnival music.

In most of the night shots, my shutter speed was way to slow, even when shooting wide open. The motion blur on this one looks semi-interesting, though. If I try this again, I'll experiment with pushing the XP2 up to 800 asa.  

Electric violin and a wearable speaker.

Nicole Py is the photographer from The Devil's Darkroom studio, specializing in wet plate photographs. She hand mixes her chemicals, coats metal or glass photographic plates with silver emulsion, and then develops the exposed plates under the dark tent seen behind her.

Nicole's final ferrotype image of me. I think that next year I will go back for another. Photo credit: Nicole Py, The Devils Darkroom https://www.thedevilsdarkroom.com/

Belly dancer and band.

Stephanie, a paramedic on staff at the event.

Nighttime concert with ENSMB and This Way To The Egress.

She reminded me of the Borg Queen...And speaking of Star Trek...

Inside and outside, there are plenty of vendors where you can purchase top hats, goggles, brass gears, custom leather crafts and other great items.

In line for a hamburger, I met Her Grace, Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryan, First of her name, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Protector of the Realm, Khalessi of the Great Grass Sea,The Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, and Queen of Mereen. I like the arm tattoo.

From the glass elevator, I saw her on the floor of the embassy promenading in her shimmering hoop dress and endeavored to catch up with her.

This kid didn't seem at all interested in what was happening on the stage.

The crazy looking contraption is a vehicle of some sort.

Very Mad Max looking.

And, finally, Steampunk with lightsaber.