philly

Today's the day. No, I don't mean this day, the day SiCKO comes out. Perhaps people will buy tickets to SiCKO with their new Jesus Phone.

SiCKO is playing locally at the Ritz East. It's good. Really good. I saw it last week and I'm most likely going to see it again in theaters.

I was asked to take photos of a Freshout Media show last week. I immediately said yes as my favorite Philly group was headlining - Subliminal Orphans. The shot above captures the energy the group brings to the stage. This is the second time I've seen them and their on-stage presence has only gotten better.

I'm not ready just yet to put up a set of my own edit from the show, but you can see the edit Freshout Media put together from the DVD I dropped off to them in a slideshow here. It's fun to see which photos another set of eyes likes and to see how they order them in a slideshow like this.

[7.20.07] I finally got around to editing a set of photos. They're up here.

On Saturday night, Lady and I went to see SiCKO, the latest film by Michael Moore at the Ritz East. Lady's already put her up her thoughts on the film here. We loved it. And to make the experience extra cool, we filled out questionnaires from the studios because we were part of the first general screening audience to view the film; and according to Moore's website, every single sneak preview was sold out.

SiCKO is different from Moore's other films. There's less of his jowly face in it. There's a Rutgers hat on his head for lots of the film (in addition to his Michigan State Spartans hat of course). There is less (limited to about 15 minutes of the 2h 3m of the film) sensationalism in this film. This film is not partisan to either major political party.

This film is heartbreakingly sad to watch. If you've experienced life without healthcare coverage, it will be particularly touching. If you've experienced life without adequate coverage, it will be particularly touching. If you have the ability to relate to another human being's problems, this film will make you cry. I was tearing throughout the entire visit by the Americans to Cuba.

The film takes you from Colorado to Philadelphia to California to Missouri to Michigan to Canada to France to England to Cuba.

This film is perfect in that it is completely accessible to the average person. It dispels myths of the horrors of a state run medical system. Sure, they have their problems, but so does ours. Approximately 250,000,000 Americans have coverage and approximately 50,000,000 do not. This film is about the quarter billion who do and the service they receive, or do not receive. Canada, France, England and Cuba are all smaller countries with tens of millions if not hundreds of millions fewer people. But also with billions less in monetary power to provide for their people yet America lags far behind in the basic service of making sure its people are healthy and practicing preventative care.

I think of myself as a pretty well informed person. Not so much when it comes to the issue of healthcare, but I know what's going on in our system even though I avoid doctors of all sorts like the plague itself. But seeing the things that are free in crazy socialized healthcare countries like Canada, France, England and Cuba, it was just astonishing. People would laugh at Moore when asked questions like how much it costs to have a baby in a hospital [answer: $0 in England] or the price of 30 pills opposed to a prescription of 120 [answer: the same under England's NHS].

Learning when England decided to change their healthcare system to a universally covered system was astonishing. It was 1948, just after World War II as most of England was rubble and bankrupt, they decided that no person should go without coverage. Good show.

I've been very fortunate in my life. My mother was a (and still is) city (NYC) employed pharmacist when I was growing up. We had coverage. I was a pretty healthy kid. I didn't have any allergies. The only surgery I ever had was a cyst removed from the roof of my mouth. The only emergency room visits I can recall was one particularly bad bout of the flu and a sprained knee in high school while playing soccer. My teeth were (still are!) slightly crooked, but not so bad as to need braces. My eyes are probably my biggest directly health-related expense as I have glasses and contacts. When I've had coverage (currently do), I haven't needed to go to the doctor. When I didn't have coverage (several years), I didn't need to go to the doctor. I fear a traumatic incident putting me in the hospital with crazy bills to pay and my carrier dropping my ass like a bad habit. Hopefully that day will never come.

The film wasn't all tears though. It was quite funny. His funniest yet for me. You can't have a wide release like this without something to lighten the mood a little here and there. The film was a good length. I could've stayed there for another two hours, but I'm sure most can't. I think he's really gotten the hang of it now and his films will be more and more piercing as he continues to make films which I hope he does. But in the meantime, there is SiCKO and it is a must see. If for some reason you can't make it to the theater - say you're bed ridden because your carrier dropped your ass like a bad habit forcing you to work three jobs to pay off your hospital bills or simply having a child without someone to watch him/her for a few hours to see the film, pirated versions are available online (yes a solid week before the full release of the film on June 29th). After watching it; go buy the DVD in a few months, I'm sure it'll have all kinds of goodies on it and you'll know some money will be going back to the people who put up the money for this film to be made. Moore has said in the past that he'd rather his films be seen via pirated versions than not at all; but it is the studio which owns the full rights to the film.

That's Seger Park at 11/Lombard, 3.25.07, 11.50p. Those incredible halos of light are a result of lens flare from my Yashica Electro 35 GSN rangefinder 35mm film camera. At f/1.7, crazy things are going to happen with light. I really like it. This was the first roll of film I went through in a solid 4-5 years.

It was a challenge to get the 36 exposure roll finished. I forgot I had it for a little bit. Well, I wasn't shooting much anyways for a couple of months because I was busy with work too. Taking out the film camera which is "limited" to ISO400 was quite a difference. It's crazy how modern digital cameras effectively have, built into them, five or more different grades of film built into them. Crazy I tell you.

The first roll of 35mm film went well though; I'm very happy with the results. I shot with TMax400 without cheating exposure to dial in higher/lower ISO ratings - straight up 400 for 31 frames. I'm gonna get me some slower film and some color as well and run it through to get a better feel for what I'm working with.

The folks at Photo Lounge did a wonderful job with the processing and the 400dpi scans on CD I ordered. Now I just have to get into the darkroom and start printing. Good god, I'm gonna have to start reading up on paper grades as well!

The rest of the roll is up on this flickr set.

That there is an empty canister of 35mm Kodak TMax 400. I finally finished (well, I cheated and left 5 blank after a discussion with Tony and SeaDragon) my roll and sent it to Photo Lounge for processing.

Yes, the good people at Photo Lounge just opened up YO! Darkroom, but I gotta get myself reacquainted before I go ahead and develop my own film just yet. I would very much like to take a class and print a few of these myself before the summer is over. Oh to get back into the darkroom…

I'll surely post the results very soon. I took down manual EXIF info for the entire roll. Crazy.

I think my favorite farmers' market in the area I've been to is the one at South St and Passyunk Sts which runs on Tuesdays from 2p - 7p. It's put on by Farm to City. If they had the bread guy from the Fairmount Thursdays, I'd be totally set. The apricots pictured above were $3.50/pint. I had four of them earlier in the day leaving three for the shot. Apparently, apricots aren't easy to photograph. I fiddled around in Photoshop CS2 for a bit, but that's about as close as I can get to their true color. They are delicious and they're from Beechwood Orchards.

I got a few things from the Kauffman's Kitchen stand including these two bars of local soap made from goat's milk. 3oz. bars for $2 each. They smell wonderful. Lady and I recently switched to bar soaps (to reduce the plastic we consume) and are currently using Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap - specifically the peppermint. But once that runs out, we'll give these a go.

Kauffman himself, I presume, was handing out free samples of this delicious bacon dressing using s quart of string beans he bought from the farmer next to him from Lancaster. His investment paid off as the $4 jars of dressing flew off of his farm stand. I too was hooked. It's some good stuff. He said that there was quite a bit of egg in them and I could taste it. Delicious. He said it's good hot or cold, over salad or as a marinade. I also picked up a dozen eggs from him for $3.

I bought a box of chocolate chip cookies with bits of rolled oats from Big Sky Bakery which made the trek from Wilmington, DE. At $6.75 a box (about a baker's dozen) I said to myself "These fuckers better be good" and good god are they worth it.

I love the farmers' markets. Hanging out at them simply makes me feel good. I can't really explain it. I guess it's just after living my whole life not knowing where my food really comes from and then being able to walk up to the person who picked the produce or whipped up the goods the night before and asking them about the goods is just so freakishly earth shattering for me. It's awesome. These people know their products better than anyone in any grocery store could possibly know their products.

Buy Fresh Buy Local

That's my pops at my cousin's wedding in July 2006. I think he's holding a table centerpiece.

Happy Father's Day!

The NY Times wrote a story last month about a new comedy website called Funny Or Die which was started by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's production company with some serious dough from Sequoia Capital, one of the biggest venture capitalists in the biz. I didn't think that the original The Landlord bit was so funny, but hey, 34M views counts for something.

I was wasting time and just plain not going to sleep when I went to the site just now and watched one of the funniest bits I've seen in a while, a spoof of David Blaine's street magic. This is actually the second, more refined one. The first one is here. It is embedded below. If you can't see the embed, the link to the video is here.

It helps if you know who David Blaine is and if you don't it's not going to be as funny, or funny period.

I've seen a few of these pasteups around town lately. This one was around 5th and Pine or Walnut or so.

Who's behind them? What do they mean?

Lady's brother was in town for the week and she, knowing how big a baseball fan he is, decided to take him [and me] out to a game.

Phillies v. the White Sox on June 12th. It was a pretty good game, it kept us all entertained. We were up in section 310 a few sections short of the right field foul pole. We had ice cream (the two of them eating out of plastic Phillies helmets), we ooh'd and aah'd at the home runs and enjoyed a home team win (they ended up sweeping the Sox).

It was quite a different view from this one I had from the luxury box back in September of 2006, but this was much more fun.

Click on the photo above for another shot from the stands.