Obama's People

David Axelrod by Nadav Kander

Hillary Rodham Clinton by Nadav Kander

Josh Lyman Rahm Emanuel by Nadav Kander

Via A Photo Editor.

The New York Times commissioned one of my favorite photographers, Nadav Kander, to shoot Obama's staff in his distinctive style, for their special Inauguration issue.

The geek in me appreciates the great behind-the scenes-feature too. So that's how Kander lights. Interesting.

sketches

If I remember right, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a sketcher. I didn't know shit about art, but I knew I wanted to draw. I think I started by tracing. Then I'd draw bahay kubos, horses, and soldiers (I think I wanted to be in the infantry). I later found out that my dad could, and still, draw pretty well. They gave me pens and paper and let me have a go at it. As I got older, I drew portraits of US Presidents (Lincoln) and Philippine heroes copied from a series of children's books. I also drew my own comic book heroes and such, and wanted to have my own strip like Hägar The Horrible.

I also used to paint. I also later found out that my dad's lolo was a working painter. But I had no talent or patience to master the medium. It was such a tedious process mixing paints, linseed oil and hardening compounds. I wanted something quick. Which is why I suppose photography is perfect for me. But maybe, for the heck of it, I should start sketching again.

The only reason I thought about this is because I came across the blog of one Rommel Joson, and I think his stuff are awesome.

i'll be fat

Fatter, to be honest. Anyway, so I tried The Baconator from Wendy's. Here's what it looked like in the ads:

And here's what was delivered:

Was I disappointed? Hell no. In this day and age, who really thinks they're going to get what they see on TV and on print. Especially when it comes to food.

Also, the Baconator was GREAT. How can you go wrong with the taste of melted cheese, greasy meat, and bacon? Bacon is awesome. There's nothing like wafer-thin, crispy fat attached to a dead and deep fried pig. In this world. You know what was really considerate and thoughtful of Wendy's to do? There was nary a superfluous, sacrilegious veggie in sight. None of that awful, sickly tomato liquid to run down your neck. No leaf of lettuce to dillute the taste. No pickle to make me gag. (I could've used some onion though.) And I washed everything down with a thirst-quenching Biggie Iced Tea. None of that sugar-free stuff.

Anyway, based on this spot on review, (which bases this on Wendy's corporate site) a Baconator, in terms of bad stuff, is the equivalent of each of the ff:

Sodium (1920 mg)

180 Pringles potato chips
132 Doritos Cooler Ranch chips

Calories (830)

10 Rolling Rock Light 12 oz bottles
4 Dodger Dogs
5 7-Eleven Cola Slurpees 12 oz
3 Chili Dogs from The Varsity in Atlanta
33 tablespoons of Oscar Mayer Bacon Bits
83 Life Saver Five Flavors candies
166 Starbucks coffees of the week 12 oz
4 Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnuts
Enough Pam No-Stick Cooking Spray to cover 138 10-inch skillets

Fat grams (51)

10 Dolly Madison Zingers
3 orders of A&W cheese fries
4 Dairy Queen banana splits
22 Oreo cookies
51 cups of Froot Loops
10 servings of KFC mashed potatoes with gravy
22 Mrs. Paul's Crunchy Fish Sticks
23 3 Musketeers funsize snacks
1 Sara Lee frozen cheesecake
6 ounces of Oscar Mayer hard salami
19 Chips Ahoy cookies
4 Jimmy Dean Pancake and Sausage on a Stick, chocolate chip flavored
68 Aunt Jemima microwaveable pancakes

A whole frozen cheesecake?! That means it's all good. But check on me in the morning.

geezer

A friend of mine brought it up after seeing Benjamin Button: Did forty-year-olds in the 60's really like The Beatles?

I don't know. But it makes me wonder, what the freak did my parents, who were in their teens in 60s, listen to? Did they ever like music the way I like music? If ever, when did they stop listening? And did their music ever inform their adulthood?

Speaking of adulthood, when I was younger, I often wondered what ever did make old people seem so terrified. It was like life had given them so much cause for fear. You could see it in their eyes when they ask you to come home early, to stay away from certain people, to do what they do.

That was just two years ago. Nowadays, I'm slowly coming to grips with the terror of life myself. And I wonder if I can, if haven't been yet, make it out unchanged.

Maybe not, because as it is, I've gone soft. I like early nights just after one drink (or no drink). I watch, or at least say I'll watch, what I eat. Staying in is suddenly always appealing.

Going soft also means suddenly liking black and white photography again. Or finding nice photos nice. And then there's also liking old OPM. I've been meaning to look for Odette Quesada and Ric Segreto lately. Maybe these things were always cool and being young just made you want to push the boundaries a bit. And getting old is all about self preservation.

book ends

So, the last time I checked in on about books, I was re-reading Dumas. Yeah, that's not happening anymore. In my re-reading of The Three Musketeers, I now remember that I love Dumas because of The Count of Monte Cristo, and that love was reaffirmed by Georges. Musketeers was fun, but over the holidays I've added more books to my already towering pile of pending books. I had to move on quickly.

And I moved on to Alan Moore's Voice Of The Fire, which starts off with a story of a prehistoric man. It's the prehistoric man's narration so it's written with a limited vocabulary and syntax. It's a bit daunting but it's genius when you realize that the evolution of language affects the evolution of a consciousness that affects the evolution of language that affects... Anyway, this chapter is hard to read, and it's a hard way to start the book (whose chapters you can read out of sequence, I think), but I'll make my way.

But that's become increasingly difficult to because a friend came home from the US and got me this:

With a mouthful of a title, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac is a Freedarko.com-produced book. Borne out of a blog, you'd think that it's just an example of new media trying to sell more via old media. But maybe the blog was already brilliant to begin with because it's actually a funny, articulate, well-designed book on the significance of particular NBA players in... everything. I think. I'm still trying to figure out if it's about the myth of players, their impact on culture, and others things, significant or otherwise. But if for nothing else, it really looks great. Check out some of the pages I ripped from Amazon:

The book I really asked for, and got (score!), was Annie Leibovitz at Work. I'll be honest, based on that cover, I was hoping for lighting diagrams and some technical how-tos. How amateur fanboy of me, I know. But it's all behind-the-scenes narratives, and anecdotes about some of her famous pictures. A lot of which I already know about from her older monographs. But it's a nice, gorgeous book to add to the collection. I haven't gone in beyond the first chapter so I'll have to wait to see if I there are newer stuff in it.

One of my favorite books from last year was Michael Chabon's Gentlemen Of The Road. Not only because it's written in serial format ala Dumas, or that Chabon lists Dumas as a major influence, but because it's a fun, swashbuckling adventure with a lot of heart (ala Dumas). Anyway, I liked it so much that I got a copy for my eldest godson. He's turning 9, and let's see how his mother explains war, swindling, gender-bending, and the other exploits of a giant African Jew and his bosom buddy, a Frankish Jew, in the Middle-Ages.

The Frankish Jew, I hear, is an homage to a character named Elric of Melnibone, created by Michael Moorcock (to whom Gentlemen is dedicated). I obsessed about Elric and was about to give up finding the books here. I even downloaded the ebooks already. But I dropped by National to spend the GCs I got for Christmas and look what I found:

They had two covers available. One was a minimalist white cover with a nice Tolkien-esque illustration. And there was this gaudy one. I picked the gaudy one because the Foreword was written by no other than Alan Moore.