external monologue

darth demarco

this is another shot from the weekend, saturday morning when i was working with bob demarco on his house. we we're working in the room that will become the nursery and there's a great deal of lead paint that has to be stripped and/or abated to make it safe for children. here bob is suited up with his respirator standing in what will eventually become the floor of the new bathroom. last night emily and i were over there again stripping paint and had to wear the unbearable face masks too. its no fun trying communicate with those things on, much less breathe.

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Paul B mentioned in a comment yesterday that he's been working on the older brother demarco's (jason) house, in preparation for their next kiddo. you can see some strangely similar photos on his site.

saw two movies over the weekend, both of which left me with a quite a bit to think about. first was garden state, on friday afternoon. for some reason, probably because the trailer was so cool, i was expecting this movie to be stunningly good -- which is always a bad way to approach a movie. and actually, it was pretty great, but certainly has a few shortcomings. i'm sure mesh will dissect it nicely and since he and i tend to agree on such things and he's so much more precise in his language, we'll just wait for his review. the other was japanese story, a film my brother jesse has been wanting me to see for a while. has anyone seen this? i have to say its probably the least predictable film i've seen in a long time. very strange, very sad, and maybe a little disappointing. i don't want to give anything away, but i'd love to hear what others thought of it via email perhaps.

and finally... apple does it again. un-freakin-believable...

chris totten, private eye...

friday night was an impromptu bachelor party for ben thomas. we snagged him after he got off work at Cibo and began a late night pub crawl of sorts that ended at the city cafe (where all good chattanooga pub crawls end) at 4:30am. its been quite a while since i've been out on the town that late, and i'm probably still recovering, but if a bachelor party isn't the right time to catch a sunrise before falling asleep i don't know what is. i made quite a few candid portraits that night, which i'll be posting all week. chris totten here, at the city cafe, striking a very guy noir pose if i ever saw one.

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its monday. the beginning of what will prove to be another very full week. the demarco's are scrambling to finish up some remodeling on their house before their child arrives, so i'll be spending the evenings this week working with ex-roomie bob. any help would be appreciated, and if you're in my wednesday night small group, we're planning on working there this week instead of meeting at mesh's. then thursday morning its up to virginia for ben & anna's wedding festivities until sunday afternoon. to be sure, i am looking forward to all these things, but i'm feeling a bit like each hour between now and next sunday night is accounted for and that always makes me feel a little, well, stressed.

speaking of the wedding though, and the most important part of this post, we're trying to work out rides to and from virginia. so, if you know when you're leaving and who's going with you, please post a comment about it as i know a few people are looking for rides. for the record, i'll be leaving thursday morning early, lord willing, with isaac and kiko, possibly brent and lang? if anyone can chime in and confirm that'd be great. i know others are looking for rides on friday afternoon and even on saturday morning so please speak up.

and finally, a few blogs that i want to call attention to that i read regularly but haven't mentioned and whose authors i've never met (i don't think at least). first is nick herndon's, who had a great post early this morning. i'm enjoying his candid posts and his occasional photos. the other one is called dooce and is probably one of the more popular blogs on the internet. its the personal blog of a woman named heather armstrong who got some attention years ago because she lost her job on account of her blog. since then she's gotten married and had a kid and slipped into a horrible case of what i think is post-partum depression. she's a very talented writer and has grown on me as she becomes more and more transparent in her posts. please check 'em out.

and now, i must work...

creative discovery museum

this is the first photo i've really taken since last weekends wedding and music shots. i was leaving downtown, passing another of my favorite buildings, the creative discovery museum. for those of you not from chattanooga, it's a children's museum with really wonky and fun (read non-rectilinear) architecture. i've actually never been inside either, though i'd love to go sometime. i suppose i've been waiting for some family with kids to invite me along, but maybe a group of us "adults" should plan an outing. (fun fact: that website for the museum is one of the first websites i ever worked on, back in the summer of 1998 during my internship at three:HD. i think it may have been where i learned to do rollovers. strangely it looks like no one's touched it since...)

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louis menand, one of my favorite new yorker contributors, has a fascinating piece in the latest issue. he writes about the average american's lack of understanding of and concern for politics. being someone who is slowly developing an interest in politics after years of total apathy, the opening paragraph caught my attention. ("In every Presidential-election year, there are news stories about undecided voters, people who say that they are perplexed about which candidate’s positions make the most sense...") the point of the article is that elections usually aren't decided on the issues that are being bandied (sp?) about, but instead often come down to gut feelings (as with most things in life, IMHO): "Voters go into the booth carrying the imprint of the hopes and fears, the prejudices and assumptions of their family, their friends, and their neighbors. For most people, voting may be more meaningful and more understandable as a social act than as a political act." even if you're not interested in politics, its worth the read merely because menand is such a fine writer and thinker.

free-friday-mp3: "Norfolk & Western is both a defunct rail line from Virginia and a band from Portland, Oregon." or so their website claims. i found them this week via the decemberists because Rachel Blumberg plays in both bands. here's terrified, from their newest album.

from the balcony

another shot from the balcony at lamar's of isaac wardell and the totten brothers. you can see david totten in the back and special guests mason nealy and james on keyboards. mason played with both headlining bands that night, isaac and dawn kinnard, another artist for whom he does production. there are more photos from the show at a new gallery i've put up here.

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not much to say today... guess i'd better get to work.

totten on the drums

one of the shots from the show at lamar's on sunday night. this was after isaac and his band had taken the stage to finish the night up. chris totten on drums here, as seen from the balcony. its usually hard to get pictures of chris as he's always hidden down behind his set, but lamar's frees me up to be a little more creative with my photographs.

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i've made reference a number of times to the building that my church is trying to buy. currently we're raising money for the down payment and if you'd like to contribute you can do so now a couple of ways. today i got the PayPal donation page set up: http://cornerstone-opc.org/gift.

from pitchfork - looks like the decemberists have been hard at work. can't wait for that new album...

'38 cadillac

another shot from amanda duffie's wedding. a friend of a friend had agreed to let them use his 1938 classic cadillac for travelling to the reception and leaving for the honeymoon. i spent a few minutes photographing the car and then was approached by the owner. we spent a few minutes talking and he explained that he allows couples to use the car for "free" as long as they make a donation to his church's building fund at an episcopal church downtown. this got us into a long discussion about everything from worship style to the "homosexual question" that's been such an issue for the episcopal church recently. turned out to be a pretty neat guy, and he sure loves his cadi.

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announcement: the (southern) kirby's had their kid! fern caldwell kirby. mother and child are healthy. pictures here and here.

if you haven't already seen this on josiah or mesh's blogs, the new wes anderson trailer is online finally.

and lastly, interpol is beginning to push their new album. if its anywhere near as good as turn on the bright lights it could be album of the year. they're posting new songs every week i think.

lollipop bride

another weekend full of photography. my battery died friday night, otherwise i'd probably have some entertaining photos from the lookouts baseball game that night. saturday we attended amanda duffie's wedding (emily's summer roommate) and even though i wasn't hired as the photographer i had a hard time keeping my finger off the trigger -- and weddings at lookout mountain pres church are particularly beautiful. here, amanda got ahold of a big green lollipop right before i start shooting. later this week will be photos from isaac's show last night at lamar's.

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saturday night we saw napoleon dynamite over at the mall. i'd heard mixed things going into it - everything from a big thumbs down to comparisons with wes anderson's best work (rushmore, royal tanenbaums). but i have to say that in the end it was neither and i really enjoyed it. at first you think its just a cooler-than-thou movie making fun of nerdy people who live in idaho, but by the end of the film you're identifying with the nerds all the while laughing your head off.

isaac's show was a blast last night. all of the bands put on great shows, but more than anything the sound was nearly flawless. shows at lamar's typically suffer from poor sound quality but isaac forked out a little extra this time to make it sound better and boy was it worth it.

new tags, finally

i probably shouldn't admit this publicly, but the tags on my car have been expired for the last month. which, in and of itself isn't that big of a deal. (certain roommates of mine have gone years with expired tags.) however, i've also been driving on tennessee tags for a full year since moving to the state of georgia. i guess i thought there was a slim chance of me moving back over the border this summer so i just put off becoming a real-deal georgia resident as long as possible. but now i am one.

so, i want to know what's cool about being a GA resident? the hope grant for college i suppose, but that doesn't do much for me. state income taxes - ugh. what else? GA residents, do speak up...

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some local news items of import:

1. Isaac Wardell (aforementioned roommate) is having a CD release party this coming sunday night at lamar's for his new CD bells and whistles. mason neely, his co-conspirator and producer on the album is coming down from philly just to play with him and the totten brothers will be jamming their hearts out. this is one show not to miss. the fun starts at 9pm. you can read mesh's review of the new album and his profile of isaac here. (yes, that's my photo...)

2. the AEC has released the final list for the fall indie film series. i'm pretty stoked about the line-up. as usual, it starts stronger than it ends, but i'm usually burnt out on indie flicks by that point anyways so it just saves me the trouble attending.

oops - almost forgot the mp3 again: strange bird by bobby bare jr. don't know too much about him, but i've been enjoying his tunes lately.

more laughter

another photo from the wedding weekend in greenville. lang decked out in his white linen tux jacket hams it up with charity while they wait around to get their pictures taken. that's justin "wilson" walton in the background with new fiancee heather, for those of you from covenant.

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for the geeks out there who read this blog: i've found a new website with some really good reading. its a guy named paul graham, an author, and the creator of the programming language arc. lang tipped me off to him with this article about great hackers and i've been reading some of his other stuff since. i think i'd like to get his new book.

(oh, and for those of you who didn't catch it yesterday because i only posted it in a late afternoon update, wired seems to like the folks at freeipods.com. beware the spam though - i'd use a temporary hotmail account or something if you can.)

more benanna

i haven't been shooting much since the recent wedding weekend. shooting 25 rolls of film in 3 days can make you not want to pick up the camera for a little while. at the same time though, i have to admit that after weekends like that where i spend so much time taking pictures i really wonder if i shouldn't take a shot at making it as a photographer.

anyhow - that said, this photo is an old one. probably from sometime in april i'd guess - an afternoon at la altena with ben, anna, paul, and the martins.

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i think this is the next album i'd like to buy. its funny to me how hot will oldham is recently. granted, hot within a very small subculture, but two tribute albums in one year? (granted, one of them done by himself.) but this one looks and sounds pretty good. now i just have to find it somewhere.

freeipods.com update: so, i still don't know whether this thing is a scam or not. it appears that some people are actually receiving iPods, so i wanted to push my referral link again. quite a few people signed up under me before, but hardly any of them completed offers. this may have been because the eBay offer was only working occasionally. i had to go in and do the real rhapsody offer, but its pretty quick and easy and only costs 99 cents. so, if any of you out there want to help a fella out, i only need three more referrals.

UPDATE: looks like the freeipods.com thing is pretty legit, at least that's what wired says. so come on, jump on board!

birmingham mailbox

a mailbox not far from matt alison's house in birmgham. we were loading people up for the trip to greenville on friday afternoon and i fired off a few shots while waiting around.

(on a side note, i'm finding that my camera, the nikon D70, is consistently underexposing things by nearly a stop when its in aperture priority mode. does anyone out there have a D70 and similar experiences? maybe i just like my images overexposed, or at least more than the D70 software does? this image for example is over-exposed a full stop, if i remember correctly.)

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morris is back from japan! he arrived late last night and was picked up by chris totten and immediately carted off to the a.c.newman show. he swung by the office this morning and handed out various japanese gifts in very yaegashi style. his phone's not hooked up just yet, so if you want to find him, i'm probably your best bet for now.

an interesting editorial in the NYTimes today by the drummer of semisonic, author of the new book So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales From a Drummer's Life.

wedding weekend

over the weekend i took photos for two different weddings, in two different cities. this shot is from wes hollowell and and leesa boykin's wedding down in greenville, alabama in lower alabama (or LA, as the locals call it). i think it may qualify as the most southern wedding i've ever been to - a pre-wedding party at the country club where the whole town turned out complete with personalized beer coozies and a wooden canoe filled with ice and PBR.

then yesterday afternoon i photographed jana sault's wedding in oak ridge, tennessee. jana is orthodox and their wedding ceremony was a traditional orthodox one and i think it was probably the most beautiful ceremony i've ever seen. i shot it all with traditional film so i don't have any images to share just yet, but between the special ceremonial garb the priests wore to the continual chanting and choral singing throughout i was entranced.

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i've still not seen before sunset, but mesh appears to have loved it so now i'm looking forward to it even more...

coptix flowers

the flowers in front of our new offices. didn't quite come out the way i'd hoped. no time to blog though - gotta run meet a contractor over at the church building.

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ps. check out mesh's thursday-free-mp3.

new church

i mentioned a few days ago that i was going to go look at a new building for cornerstone church. this is the steeple of what used to be marble top baptist church in the southside. currently we're in negotitions regarding a final price in our offer on it. at this point it seems like it could go either way, but it sure would be great to get it. maybe we'd change the name to southie presbyterian church. or maybe first church of the south. more details as things progress.

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a random thing i've been thinking about: grocery store discount cards. the older i get the more aware i become of how much information various corporations have about individuals and their shopping habits. fast food nation alterted me to this a little bit, but a conversation with emily the other day has got me thinking about these discount cards and how they allow winn-dixie/kroger/yourfavoritegrocerystore to track your purchases and to more precisely target their marketing. not to mention selling your information to various other corporations. maybe i'm paranoid, or maybe i know how easily i'm swayed by good marketing, but suffice to say i try to use my winn-dixie card as rarely as possible. i mean, have you ever noticed how eager the attendants are to swipe your card? even if you're just buying a pack of gum? right now WD will give you a dollar if they forget to ask for your card. weird. oh, and here are some articles about it.

hmm... can't wait for that new coop to open here in chattanooga.

lil monty

getting off to a slow start this week as far as photos go. a very late night post tonight. things are pretty hectic at work right now and i'm trying to get out of town again this weekend for another wedding so i'm burning the midnight oil. this is joel, or monty as you may know him from his blog comments. he's the youngest montgomery brother. this photo was from tim's graduation weekend. joel got lobster at the atlanta fish market and suited up in his lobster bib before digging in. he's headed off to start school up at roger williams university in rhode island any day now. do you leave next weekend joel?

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it being as late as it is, i don't have much time to write, but i'll just push this sufjan interview over on pitchfork. i've only read part of it, but its pretty fantastic.

goodbye's all around

we said goodbye last night to paul and capria, chris and anne, and brook. it was a rich but sad time. daniel unfortunately couldn't be there. evidently a friend of his was killed in a car accident and he had to leave town early. hence, he gets top billing today.

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busy, busy, busy - no time to write today. hopefully a better update tomorrow.

congraDulations

as i mentioned before, my brother tim graduated (with high honors) from georgia tech last week. i snuck down and caught some close-up shots of him as he worked his way towards the stage. in very monty fashion, he'd misplaced his tassle before going on stage, but moments before his row was called up someone passed him a spare one. now he's got three weeks off before he starts his master's program. i think he and the wife are headed up to pittsburgh tomorrow to spend some time with eldest brother jesse and angelica. wish i could be there.

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it's been a while since we've had a freebie-friday mp3 on here. that's partially because i forgot, and partially because i haven't been struck by anything i've come across lately. however, a few days ago i discovered a band on subpop called rogue wave. they have a new album out called out of the shadow and it's got at least one cool song on it: endless shovel.

looks like its going to be a busy weekend of going away parties. one for the ammons on saturday night and then another for the jausens and others on sunday night. tomorrow morning we're going to look at a potential new building for cornerstone church and its actually kinda close to downtown. sounds promising.

and michael mann's new film collateral comes out today, which i'm really looking forward to.

parent's night out

last night our wednesday night small group put on a parents-night-out for the couples with young children at cornerstone church. this is 1 year old (i think) esther brantley. we took care of five kids, aged 4 months to 4 years, and had a lot of fun doing it. granted, we had them outnumbered nearly 2 to 1, so i would definitely say that if there was a winner at the end of the evening, it was the babysitters, not the babysat. however, ender doe did threaten to stage a coup towards the end of the evening when he began throwing stuffed animals on top of the flourescent ceiling lights. lucky for us, the majority of his cohorts have a difficult time walking on their own and were therefore unable to join in the rebellion. suffice to say though, young children are probably the best photographic subjects there are. they're almost completely unaware of the presence of the camera and when they are their posing is often more entertaining.

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nothing else today - gotta get to work.

self-portrait IV

another month (and more) has passed and its time once again for the self-portrait. however, since many of these "self-portraits" end up being taken by someone else i'm wondering if perhaps i should just call it the monthly portrait. anna williams shot this one while we were eating at sawasdee with brady a few weeks ago. he passed out cigars at the end of the meal and anna caught me posing gangster style.

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news flash: charity asked me to annouce the going away party for the Jausens', Ammons', Brooke Cone, and Daniel White this sunday night at the martin's house. as usual, the invitation is open to anyone who'd like to wellwish any of these folks as they depart lovely chattanooga. here's the info from charity's email:

We are hosting a going away party this Sunday at our house at 7 pm for the Jausens', Ammons', Brooke Cone, and Daniel White. All are invited, but please BYO beverage. We will have toasts and words of farewell. It will sort of be our first "Sunday night @ Lang and Char’s" in our new house. So, anyway, I thought your blog was a good place for an announcement.

honk - it's my birthday

as i mentioned yesterday, friday was emily's birthday. when i woke up early that morning to leave for atlanta, i walked out to discover my car had been shoepolished by a certain friend of ours (her blog handle starts with nut and ends with meg) with the message you see here. it also said "birthday girl" and "sing to me" down the side windows. you can imagine all the attention we got on I-75 that day (especially from the truckers) and in the rush hour traffic on a friday afternoon in atlanta. the best part was driving around in chattanooga later that evening by myself, smiling to the confused honkers expecting to see a birthday girl when they pulled past.

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the village - i won't say too much about it here for fear of giving away some crucial plot twist - however, i have to say i found it both strangely satisfying and disappointing. those of you who have seen it can probably understand what i mean, although perhaps you only found it to be one or the other. i think, in theory, the conceit of the film is fascinating and yet one major issue stands out to me that keeps me from getting on board fully. vague enough for you? grace alexander put it well last night when she said that shyamalan always leaves her slightly disappointed. his films look to have so much potential and then finally seem to fail at one small point.

wedding pic

another month has flown by, so i'm supposed to have another self portrait today, but i've not taken one. so, for the time being it's a photo from the dixon/ewing wedding. thanks to totten for scanning and posting this shot of mine on his blog. rumor has it the dixons are back in chatt-town, but i've yet to come across them. (if anyone has information as to their whereabouts, do let me know so that i can pass along more photos to them.) this was taken right after the ceremony while the happy couple was slogging through one posed photo after another. hopefully my candid photos helped them relax a little bit.

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a very busy weekend with many photos that i'll post later this week. a brief synopsis: tim's graduation from georgia tech on friday morning (with high honors, no less), lunch at the atlanta fish market, a birthday dinner for emily at the meeting place that night back in chattanooga. saturday was a bit more relaxed, with a pleasant evening on the walking bridge for chefs under the stars. (well, pleasant aside from the fact that emily's phone fell into the tennessee river... anyone trying to get ahold of her, just leave a message and she'll get back to you.) sunday afternoon was a birthday party at home for emily and one final one at our place last night. quite the celebratory weekend.

tonight, we're going to see the village at 7:30 at the bijou for anyone who's interested. i've heard good things about it but also been told not to read or find out anything about it ahead of time; always a good sign. see you there?