| recent comments mjp said: I'm, uh, working on it. Right now. ~ Fly me to the moon, then blow that shit up! shane said: michael phillips,you are a fuckin madman,post yer next story... ~ Fly me to the moon, then blow that shit up! mjp said: Yes, that is a potential problem for people in 10,001. I often worry about... ~ Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this... damian said: indeed. ~ Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this... Scott h Florance said: The Christians believe Jesus Christ tis immortal and he lives forever. It is... ~ Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this... mjp said: Isn't there a NASCAR or gun or fishing or tabakky-chewing site you can go... ~ I can see for miles, but it's kind of blurry up ahead Andrew Olin Jones said: Hillbilly said you might turn off the smog but I don't want you to do that... ~ I can see for miles, but it's kind of blurry up ahead mjp said: My childhood box? I don't think anyone wants to open that... ~ Fly me to the moon, then blow that shit up!   previous ramblings • I can see for miles, but it's kind of blurry up ahead 2.18.08 • Simple is as simple does 1.31.08 • I feel the earthworms under my feet 1.22.08 • New boots and panties 1.19.08 • I haven't given up, I've just stopped trying 12.25.07 • I don't pray. Kneeling bags my nylons. 12.20.07 • So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night 9.19.07 • Grab the closet case by the horns 8.11.07 • Blogged down in the forum of my youth 5.23.07 • Hotter than July 5.16.07 • 26 Miles Across the Deep Blue Sea 5.11.07 • A rose by any other name, still doesn't smell so good 4.6.07 • Children of a lesser dog from hell 2.22.07 • Squid lights 1.9.07 • Cats and dogs 12.19.06 • Mission accomplished! 11.22.06 • Various tidbits of marginal interest to anyone 11.9.06 • Buddy, can you spare a town? 10.16.06 • A garbage can is somewhat precise. 10.6.06 • Another cantankerous rant - surprise! 9.25.06 • Hey, where you been? 9.1.06 • Geeeeeeee mail, @smog.net 7.27.06 • Oh good lord, it's a kid's show 7.22.06 • Sleeping dogs 6.28.06 • Dumb and dumber 6.21.06 • HDTV for $150! 5.16.06 • Thank you for calling the White House. My name is Krishna, how may I be providing you excellent service today? 4.28.06 • Decades and bits of centuries 4.24.06 • Secret Society 3.22.06 • Sometimes I don't speak right, but yet I know what I'm talking about 3.20.06 • This is the modern world 3.15.06 • Shakespeare never did this 2.18.06 • Who is Lonnie Tolliver, and why should you care? 1.27.06 • Scuttlebutt and innuendo 1.16.06 • Beware the fury of a patient man 1.6.06 • I feel 100 pounds lighter already... 12.30.05 • Dude! Your wiki is showing... 12.20.05 • Yeti spotted, film at 11! 12.19.05 • "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." 12.9.05 • Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this... 12.8.05 • Hey, what's with the torn up clothes, and didn't you have a shag haircut last week? 12.5.05 • Shameless self-promotion or a desperate cry for love? You decide. 11.18.05 • Further proof that drinking will kill you 11.6.05 • Big Apple dreamin' on a wooden floor 11.1.05 • Happy birthday to smog. Now where's my cake? 10.16.05 • I got nothing 10.4.05 • free within my own doom 9.25.05 • A Rambling Essay on Politics and the Bleeding Life Written While Drinking a Six-Pack (Tall) 9.12.05 • (There's Gonna Be A) Showdown 8.31.05 • Well, could I have her spam instead of the baked beans then? 8.28.05 • What has four wheels and flies? 8.21.05 • Don't think twice, it's all right 8.13.05 • My ass is getting cold sitting on this glacier... 8.11.05 • Capital radio 8.11.05 • nobody's fault 7.23.05 • secret santa 7.3.05 • everything we touch turns to rust 6.21.05 • on the edge of seventeen 6.13.05 • life at 300 baud 6.9.05 • 12 steps away from the screen, running 6.5.05 • shake a leg 6.5.05 • san pedro anarchy press, Inc. 5.22.05 • Z is for zealot 5.20.05 • Lenny Bruce was right 5.16.05 • bad meat in the can 5.12.05 • it's in the water 5.12.05 • you tell me 5.10.05 • what matters most is how well you're lit 5.5.05 • just keep pulling the handle, it'll all be over soon 5.3.05 • rust never sleeps 4.24.05 • randomness, chaos and deliverance 4.21.05 • baby was a black sheep, baby was a whore 4.20.05 • Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American dream? 4.16.05 • roses are red, violets are blue, i thought my hell had ended, but the devil is a crafty bastard with a sick sense of humor and a mean streak a mile wide 4.14.05 • rock the cash bar 4.12.05 • many rivers to cross 4.10.05 • imitation is the sincerest form of unoriginality 4.8.05 • if you are the big tree, we are the small axe! 4.8.05 • give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine 4.4.05 • and who the hell figured QWERTY was a good idea? 4.4.05 • your pope was nothing compared to this guy! 4.3.05 • you've got a TV...i've got a TV...we've all got TV's... 3.29.05 • hitler painted roses 3.26.05 • counselor 3.25.05 • she's still here, damn it! 3.21.05 • patience is a virtue, but resignation is for suckers. 3.13.05 • should have taken mom up on those violin lessons... 3.9.05 • last night a dj saved my life! yeah, maaaaan! 3.9.05 • if i had a hammer... 3.8.05 • caveman re-invents the wheel! film at 11. 3.7.05 • he's mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore! 3.4.05 • this is a public service announcement - with guitar! 3.2.05 • battlefield girth 2.28.05 • never give a media giant an even break 2.25.05 • 10 Things I've done that you haven't 2.24.05 • come back, bastard! 2.23.05 • hey, just because he likes Judy Garland records and the Tony awards doesn't necessarily mean anything... 2.23.05 • "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." 2.21.05 • I couldn't say it if it wasn't true 2.17.05 • The demons begged Jesus, "If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs." 2.11.05 • how to lose 10 pounds in five minutes! 2.6.05 • earth to smog, earth to smog 2.5.05 • my own private chernobyl... 2.2.05 • Estoy solo, pero siento que tu estas conmigo. 1.26.05 • confessions of an obsessive freak of nature 1.5.05 • death wants more death 12.30.04 • every mikkle make a muckle (ask a Jamaican what it means) 12.17.04 • things that don't suck 12.15.04 • what's it all about, mjp? 11.11.04 • old dog, new tricks 9.2.04 • if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all 8.15.04 • Frida Kahlo, Charles Bukowski and Joel-Peter Witkin have left the building 2.13.03 • R.I.P. smog.net 5.19.04 • almost cut my hair...it happened just the other day 4.23.04 • and we're back! 4.22.04 • one cocoa full a basket 2.14.04 • let's get ready to rumble 1.24.04 • brace yourself for a shitstorm 1.6.04 • it's my party, i'll o.d. if i want to 12.6.03 • pimp-a-licious 11.27.03 • on a clear day you can see the 18th century 11.9.03 • men are from mars, women are from vegas 10.14.03 • hit and run walker 10.6.03 • It's all cow, after all 10.2.03 • Johnny Cash is dead, Tower records is bankrupt, gawd save the fucking Queen. 9.13.03 • any history of mental illness? 9.10.03 • boggle: to hesitate as if in fear or doubt. 9.6.03 • pass the aspirin 8.27.03 • this is what i get for leaving the house 7.21.03 • safety in numbers 7.13.03 • god damn 7.11.03 • a million and one stupid things... 6.6.03 • praise Jeebus! 5.23.03 • Kennedy to John Lydon; "Oh, lighten up!" 5.20.03 • they say the French are cowards and assholes... 5.2.03 • I couldn't possibly be *that* fat! 4.19.03 • what's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding? 3.22.03 • this skunk's for you 3.12.03 • Monday's coming like a jail on wheels 2.24.03 • linux, linus, lomax, duck! 2.20.03 • FREE MICHAEL JACKSON! 2.18.03 • the weather in Los Angeles is cloudy 2.13.03 ©1995-2008 mjp | I can see for miles, but it's kind of blurry up ahead Monday, February 18th 2008, 10:08am It's a beautiful time to be a photographer. Just like it's a beautiful time to be in a real band with real non-computerized music, or to be an artist who paints something other than encephalitic pre-teen girls in frilly dresses with dead deer eyes that only appeal to perverted Japanese wankers and U.S. hipsters who would worship dog shit if you told them it was cool to do so.  I say it's a great time because I feel the inevitable pendulum swing away from the dead and dying and back to the living. It may not happen tomorrow or next year, but there are a whole hell of a lot of disenfranchised youths out there who are aching for some truth. One of the ways they are finding their truth is with old music equipment, old artistic technologies, and crappy, less than precise photographic equipment. I have taken about 30,000 pictures in my life - no exaggeration - I used to carry a camera with me everywhere I went, from the time I was about 15 years old and stole a Canon FTb, which, I can say at this time, kids, please do not steal shit. It's really not cool. And I got my ass kicked really bad for stealing that camera, so I'm living proof that crime doesn't pay. Of course, ass kicking and all, I hung on to the camera. I went on to steal enough dark room equipment to develop my own black and white film and prints, and for a lot of years I did just that. Amazing friends and family with big old prints that they oohed and aahed over then stuck into drawers. If they could find drawers big enough to fit them.  I used that Canon until I was about 21 or 22 years old, then I traded it for a really big bottle of Jack Daniels and picked up the Minolta HI-MATIC AF2 pictured here. I still have the Minolta, in fact I took some pictures with it a couple of weeks ago. That camera went to a dozen countries with me and just about every U.S. state except Alaska and Hawaii. It's basically a point and shoot camera, but I got some wicked, wicked pictures out of the fucker. Very high quality and very much recommended since you can get them on eBay now for $10 - $20! Then, dear friends, the dark days came down like putrid Seattle acid grunge rain. After 20 years of relying on the old trusty Minolta, I took out the batteries and put it away in the drawer to make way for the Kodak DX3600 Yes, a digital camera.  At first my joy knew no bounds - "Jesus christ, I can hold this thing above my head and see what's in the frame through the LCD readout on the back!" Yeah, that was great (actually, I still think that's the only worthwhile feature of a digital camera). "Holy shit, I just put a giant memory card in here, I can take 6,395 pictures! Wooooo!" Yeah, yeah. If only the pictures didn't look like flat, dead flowers, run over by every car in a funeral procession, sucked of all life and color. I can barely put my disappointment with digital photography into words, except to say that I took maybe a few hundred pictures over the course of 6 or 7 years with the digital camera, that's it (and before you say, "Yeah, mjp, that Kodak is a piece of shit, try a real digital camera!" --- I did, I also used Carol's Canon Power Shot G3, which is (was) a pro camera, far from a piece of shit). So, honestly I kind of gave up on photography. Because really, what is there to photograph anymore? Well, as it turns out, there is quite a bit left to photograph. Behold the Holga 120 CFN.  Let me list some of the great features of the Holga for you. You can buy one of these Chinese made masterpieces for $25 - $40, it leaks light, there is vignetting of the prints when you shoot 6x6 (kinda like looking at life through a toilet paper roll), very vague try-to-guess-if-it's-right focusing, and an imprecise and imperfect plastic lens. As if that weren't enough, the flash will go off twice if it is in the mood to do so, and sometimes the back falls off while you're using it!Sweet jesus, how could you not love a camera like that? Oh, did I mention that there's a little color wheel that rotates around the onboard flash so you can flash in blue or red or yellow? Come on man. It just doesn't get any cooler than that. Listen, there are probably a million different 35mm cameras just as clumsy and error prone out there, but the Holga shoots 120 film for honkin' big 6x6 negatives. Oh yeah, kiddies - negatives 4 times the size of a 35mm negative (or is it two time larger - I was never any good at my gozintas...). So you can make big square prints featuring all the aforementioned fuckups and unpredictability. Long story short, the Holga makes photography fun again. When I shot with expensive cameras, the majority of the pictures sucked. It was like you should only push that shutter button if something important or artistic was happening. I felt like that was a waste (and that I sucked as a photographer, which may be true, but now it doesn't matter anymore). With the Holga it isn't a waste, it's a surprise and sometimes even a miracle. Beat that. on Monday, February 18th 2008 at 11:11am, carol es said: You make me want one! I am still using the G3 and need to upgrade, but I have been wanting to instead go back to my Nikon FG that I've had since I was the same age as you were when you stole that FTb. It's the wait that provokes me to stay digital though. Sometimes the lab takes a week for black & white. I think that's the problems with waiting for something "artistic" to happen with the old cameras... but everything will look artistic with a LOMO type camera, so you sold me. Thanks, buddy. on Thursday, February 21st 2008 at 6:29pm, Chuck said: Thats awesome - you should post some of those pics - phillip greenspun style! on Sunday, February 24th 2008 at 9:46pm, holga lomo said: your really slow getting on the lomo-holga bandwagon buddy. people have been using these toy cameras for for years. you aren't a trailblazer your a follower. on Friday, February 29th 2008 at 7:13pm, Parallax said: You can't take a real picture with a lomo/holga anymore than you can paint a real picture with and elephant's tail. One is about as accurate as the other. All of your cameras have been awful but if you have to pick one go back to the Canon. At least you can focus it. on Monday, March 3rd 2008 at 12:32am, mjp said: Right. You guys know this is old hat, right? So why should I write about it, right? You cutting edge motherfuckers probably used lunch boxes for purses before all the other little boys in your special school. That's great. Good luck on Project Runway next season, bitch. I write about things that turn me on, or piss me off. Things that make feel PASSIONATELY one way or the other. So take out all your old LOMO photos that predate mine by seven years, you know, the ones that feature all your fierce friends and their glittery rave acne and stick them up your bored and lonely little asses. You wouldn't know what to do with a creative tool if it hit you over the head like an old Bee Gees album at a Disco Sucks rally, you pomo mofo's. I got your Holga, bitches, and my worst will make your best look like Christmas snapshots from one of those old disc film cameras that people carried in their pockets to take pictures of their piles of cocaine in 1980. I got you beat and I don't even try. on Monday, March 3rd 2008 at 1:14pm, carol es said: art snobs. don't listen to them. it's probably the same person that posts insults on my blog. faceless people that feel the need to burst other people's bubbles are just weird, kinda fucked up people with issues bigger than yours or mine. on Saturday, March 8th 2008 at 8:54pm, justine said: i could never be seriously insulted by someone who can't tell the difference between 'your' and 'you're'. on Sunday, March 9th 2008 at 3:40am, cunningham said: mjp, youse a funny guy... well said, sir. well said. on Sunday, April 13th 2008 at 5:20pm, nln said: WOW..I've been LOOKING for a camera that will give me the perspective of looking at life through a toilet paper roll. I'm sold too! :) on Tuesday, April 22nd 2008 at 12:47am, Andrew Olin Jones said: Hillbilly said you might turn off the smog but I don't want you to do that cause little Hillary (we call her Hilly) said your not as pissed off as you used to be but she doesnt really know cause we only show her some of your stuff, the stuff without the REALLY rough language. But I tell you one thing buddy, little Hilly usually knows what shes talking about. Good luck. Dont turn off the smog or we wont be able to breath anymore. on Wednesday, April 23rd 2008 at 12:40am, mjp said: Isn't there a NASCAR or gun or fishing or tabakky-chewing site you can go post on? Your schtick was old the first time around, but it just never stops. You're like Kudzu of the ass, or some other imaginary creeping disease that never quite goes away. If you have any compassion you'll let an African family adopt "Hilly" and give her a good life. Take her away from the misery she lives in now. smog.blog powered by buddy V2.0 |