Storylog

Experience in Miami is as fluid as its geography. Rolling, glassy turquoise waves melt into the fine sands of the beach, which kisses the city. South Beach, at any time of the day, is a fantasy. Art Deco buildings are illuminated by pastel-colored lights and it feels as though Mickey Mouse should be dancing in the streets or posing for our photographs. In the early morning, a street sweeper comes and cleanses the roads of any dirt we may have created.

The Pig Pink Restaurant, known for unfinishable portion sizes, sells dinner plate-sized chocolate chip cookies. Big, tasty, and lacking sustenance. People are giddy and awake with the crumbs of these cookies.

On one extreme, South Beach is nothing more than a pretty backdrop to the filthy rich. People whose ultimate catastrophe is a Botox malfunction. And people like us – spring breaking college kids – are simply here to bear witness to a world that we will never really understand. Middle aged men in multi-thousand-dollar suits, their long hair pulled into tight ponytails, wear Armani-clad younger women on their arms like Rolexes. People like this enter the world out of red Ferraris and do not, under any circumstances, glance at us. They drink themselves to sleep at night. He probably has a secret male partner and an alternate existence. Drenched in everything they ever wished for, these two are the saddest happy people in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Davesecretary is the pseudonym of a Canadian guy in his mid-20s who grew up in the small town of Aylmer, Quebec. He shared hundreds of highly entertaining true stories about his life on several blogs and websites (all of which are now inactive).There are backups of a couple of his original posts here and here.

THE ORIGINAL STORIES WERE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS.

“The caps make me feel like I’m running really fast with dave and he is yelling to me because you have to yell when you run and when you do it always sounds super important.” – lazy shell

A spelling and grammar corrected, lowercase version of these stories can be found HERE.

Read the rest of this entry »

Down the farm roads we went, threading along the Iowa-Missouri border, leaving a plume of back road powder in our wake. We were bent on getting lost and had made good on the plan. We drifted through an endless maze of corn and watched as the sun dipped low and set its own path toward Nebraska.

There’s nothing quite like corn country to set your mind right, to empty it out and fill it back up with soft thoughts and gentle notions. This was exactly what we needed, seeing as how we were swapping our life in San Francisco for a new one in Chicago. Sure, we could’ve hopped on a plane and jumped straight into the new world. But it seems wrong to jerk the mind around with such violence. So we meandered toward our new life instead, a soft breeze at our back bumper and an uncertain sky ahead. (read more @ stray matter)

It’s the tail end of the lunch shift. I pretend to watch the office girls walking past the front window as I eavesdrop on two of my customers. I know that’s not very polite but it’s an interesting conversation. Besides, I’m bored. “I don’t know,” the younger of the two men says. “I thought Id be happier at this stage in my life.”

“What’s the problem?” the older man sitting across from him asks. “You’ve already made all the money you’re ever going to need.”

“Yeah,” the younger man says sadly. “But being rich isn’t all I thought it was cracked up to be.”

“It never is.”

There’s a long pause. Finally the younger man says. “My wife’s upset that we don’t have children. The doctors say we probably can’t.” Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I discovered a man, maybe he’s in his 70’s, maybe he’s 80 – doing Taekwondo by the East River. After a quick introduction, we get to talking, or rather he gets to talking. He is happy to demonstrate Taekwondo but more than that – he is like a lot of the old people I meet – or maybe it’s all people I meet – he claims to know all secrets of the human heart, as well as the human brain. He has the answer to all of the world’s problems.

He is French. His name is Jean-Paul. And he is on his seventh trip around the world.

I believe him. Of course, I believe just about anyone. And then he rattles on for about a half hour while I click some portraits of him. He finally concludes with the wizard-like pronouncement that Americans are spoiled, that we are terrorists, and that what this country needs is a good military government. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is a *true* story. It amused the hell out of me while it was happening. I hope it isn’t one of those “had to be there” things.

On my way home from the second job I’ve taken for the extra holiday ca$h I need, I stopped at Taco Bell for a quick bite to eat. In my billfold is a $50 bill and a $2 bill. That is all of the cash I have on my person. I figure that with a $2 bill, I can get something to eat and not have to worry about people getting pissed at me.

Me: “Hi, I’d like one seven layer burrito please, to go.”
Guy: “Is that it?”
Me: “Yep.”
Guy: “That’ll be $1.04, eat here?”
Me: “No, it’s to go.” [I hate effort duplication.]

At his point I open my billfold and hand him the $2 bill. He looks at it kind of funny and

Guy: “Uh, hang on a sec, I’ll be right back.” Read the rest of this entry »

When discussing what “makes” a great portrait with Exposure Compensation‘s Miguel Garcia-Guzman, we quickly realized that we couldn’t really agree on much. So we figured we might as well ask some other people, and we sent out an email to a large number of photographers, fine art and commercial, bloggers, curators, editors, and gallerists: “What makes a good portrait? Could you provide us an example of a portrait that you really like – either from your or someone else’s work – and say why the portrait works so well for you?” to publish what we would get back on our blogs, as a collaborative effort to get a little bit closer to understanding the topic. Below is what we got back from those who managed to find the time to write something. Our thanks to everybody who contributed! (read more @ Jörg Colberg’s weblog)

After a quick Google search, I found out that this story is fiction. The way in which it was originally presented led me to believe that it was authentic. Click here to download the original PDF (updated, works now) version of the story, written in 1987 by Thomas Lera. I will research the stories I post here more thoroughly in the future—this one was just so damn compelling!

Due to the overwhelming number of requests I have received to tell about my discoveries and bizarre experiences in a cave not far from my home, I have written the following story. All of these events happened to me during the past few months, beginning with my journey into a familiar cave in December 2000 and ending… well, it hasn’t actually ended yet.

I have included photographs that were taken during my many trips into the cave. I have also created a few illustrations to help the reader get a better idea of what things looked like in the cave. All of the photos were taken by me, or one of the few people I went into the cave with.

If you think these events sound far-fetched, I agree. I would come to the same conclusion had I not experienced them myself.

I will divide the text into two colors for the sake of clarity. The black text is taken directly from my caving journal – and the italicized green text is my comment as I reflect on the experience. I will do my best to convey the thoughts and feelings I had during the entire event. The actual names of the other individuals involved aren’t used. Read the rest of this entry »

My second-grade teacher never liked me much, and one assignment I turned in annoyed her so extravagantly that the red pencil with which she scrawled “See me!” broke through the lined paper. Our class had been asked to write about a recent field trip, and, as was so often the case in those days, I had noticed the wrong things:

Well, we went to Boston, Massachusetts through the town of Warrenville, Connecticut on Route 44A. It was very pretty and there was a church that reminded me of pictures of Russia from our book that is published by Time-Life. We arrived in Boston at 9:17. At 11 we went on a big tour of Boston on Gray Line 43, made by the Superior Bus Company like School Bus Six, which goes down Hunting Lodge Road where Maria lives and then on to Separatist Road and then to South Eagleville before it comes to our school. We saw lots of good things like the Boston Massacre site. The tour ended at 1:05. Before I knew it we were going home. We went through Warrenville again but it was too dark to see much. A few days later it was Easter. We got a cuckoo clock. (read more @ The New Yorker)

One morning twenty years ago this month, I opened the front section of the Washington Post and read that my friend Stephen Peter Morin had been executed by the state of Texas for capital murder.

There are two reasons that that sentence, while accurate, felt awkward to write.

First reason: it has been a long time since I thought of Morin as a friend. He was a twisted, manipulative and malevolent person, and if I hate anyone in the world or out of it I hate him.

Second reason: I knew him as Ray Constantine.

But Morin was his real name, and for a number of months in 1981 I spent just about every day with him, generally enjoying his company.

“Ray Constantine” rode up to the front porch of my mother’s house on his bicycle one day to ask whether she knew of apartments he could rent. Her current partner is one of my favorite people in the world, but my mother had phenomenally, staggeringly bad judgment in men in those days: by that evening or the next, it seemed, he had moved in with her. (read more @ Creek Running North)