Not for anything other than I finding it interesting how I sounded four years ago:

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November 23, 2005

Lighting up Christmas

Aside from the chilly climate we’ve been getting sporadically lately, I know it’s Christmas when I start liking tobacco ads a little bit more.

I’ve always been a huge fan of tobacco ads, ever since the first time I saw the taciturn Marlboro Man ride his faithful horse across rivers and plains of the American Midwest. And they’ve been running that ad, in various forms, for practically forever.

There’s a huge part of me still wants to be That Man, weathered, strong and silent, but minus the lung cancer. There’s a part of me that still longs to be damned to riding my horse, all by my lonesome, with the snow-capped mountains of, er, Montana, in the background. (It’s gotta be Montana. I saw a publicity photo of Kevin Costner and his latest bride. They were married in his ranch in Montana, and it was That Mountain they had in the backdrop. A ranch in Montana with that sort of view is almost enough to convince me to eschew the idea of having the sea in my backyard. As long as they have wifi, a decent movie theater, and a nice, clean photo lab. And an honest-to-goodness Chinese restaurant.)

Back to tobacco ads. I like them even more during Christmas, when they show these nice log cabins with orange-tinted windows, to imply that there’s a fire going on in the fireplace, keeping the cowboys comfortably warm. I even like the ones by Hope, where they show a barkada skiing off a mountain (in Montana), and then coming together by the familiar fireplace to light a cig, as they drink hot choco in their nice, and neat sweaters.

I get warm and fuzzy all over just seeing these ads. And that's Christmas for me, forget the giving. It's the chance to dream about being the cowboy in Montana, or about having preppy friends over by the fireplace for a hot drink. It's the chance to get all silly and sentimental, without feeling stupid for it. Because, really, there’s a light of hope, when you light a Hope.

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I now know that Kevin Costner's ranch is in Colorado.

Alec Soth and Larry Sultan

Alec Soth is up blogging again, somewhat. He's a guest blogger at Little Brown Mushroom, an independent publisher. Very art.

Alec's last post is on the recent death of Larry Sultan, a photographer whose photos inform my idea of photography. He's known for photographing his parents and the porn industry in California.

The NY Times obit is HERE. More obits and tributes to Sultan can be found linked at Alec's post.

cable car

I forgot to tell you that, last weekend, I was in Hong Kong again. Last time I was there, I told myself I'd make time to take the cable cars on Lantau Island to the Po Lin Monastery. There's a giant Buddha on the mountain with a swastika on it's chest (apparently the symbol's very Buddhist and not at all racist).

Whenever I travel, I try to do a bit of the pseudo-cultural, touristy thing. Partly because I like taking pictures of people taking pictures (tourists!). So this trip to the monastery was it. Also, I've never been on a cable car, suspended hundreds of feet in the air. I have a heights thing, a real fear of it, to be specific. So this was supposed to be cathartic.

And cathartic it was. We got stuck in mid air for what felt like an hour, but was most likely for fifteen minutes. It was a bit terrifying for me but we've been in tight spots before (elevators, during fire drills), and I was really laughing at the incredulity of it all. We even have a video of the event for posterity, and for leaving behind messages, just in case the cable snapped.

But we made it, we're alive, and that cable car fiasco made it to the top five moments of 2009.

When you think about it, all our problems are a bit bourgeois. When we fail, we do not die in the cold and of hunger. If we die young, it will most probably be because of the drink, all the fat, and whatever else is there in excess. Our failure will not be our extinction. We will just live our lives with the stench of a promise left unfulfilled and expectations never met.

So we labor not to feed ourselves, or keep our bodies clothed and sheltered. We hack our way through this life to define ourselves. We take risks, because the alternative, a defeated, embittered way of life, just sucks.

These can be scary times but I know you can do it. I believe in you. That's it. Sorry to have gone Oprah (or Paulo Coelho) on you.

At Outerhope's gig and album launch yesterday:

K: Listening to their music makes me want to run through a field.

M: Or swing from a branch of a tree.

K: Or blow soap bubbles.

M: Pinwheels! Fly a kite, or lie on the grass looking at cloud form bunnies!

K: Yes! Then they hump, multiply and suffocate us all.

M: Yes, Armageddon.

Or something like that. Still, how did we get from a dream pop band to an end-of-the-world scenario?

a day for the absent

I woke up this morning, before 5am, and I found pictures of you. I sometimes forget we have lives of our own, until I see pictures of you.

I remembered that, yesterday, while buying a gift for my dad, and books for myself, that I had also gotten Outerhope's second album, a day for the absent. Quite apt for the morning I'm having, and their music is helping me ease into the day.

And so I'll take this chance to say that Outerhope's launching this new album this weekend. Details here.

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Like I was saying, I was getting a gift for my dad yesterday. It was his birthday. My dad says that by May next year, he'll retire from the job he's had for over two decades. I seriously doubt that, but my wish for the man is that he'll find some time for rest and what whatever else this life has for him. So I decided to get him a book. Picking one out was a bit of a task.

I first considered stuff by Dumas or Chabon but thought he might find them frivolous or irrelevant. Then I thought about brainless fun like Tom Clancy or Dan Brown but decided that he might find them too pedestrian even for a former Reader's Digest fan. I considered non-fiction by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, but that's really more about me than it is about him. Finally I found Manila, a photography monograph by Ricky Davila. Which is perfect since it's about shared things: photography - my dad used to shoot, gave me my first camera, lent me his old lenses; and Manila, the city we both love.

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I woke up this morning, before 5am, and I found pictures of you. I sometimes forget we have lives of our own, until I see pictures of you. But to be honest, I'll be fine.