Radiant Comics

Halloween has come and gone for yet another year. Just like every other day. And for another year I’ve gone down to NYC for a photo journey at the Halloween parade. This is my fifth year in a row going down there and I’ve never actually seen the parade. Except for a glimpse or two. It’s too much of a pain in the ass to actually see the big parade. I look for my own little ones.

I go to the streets around the parade and take pictures of people in their costumes. And people in general. There are plenty of people in costumes willing to stop for a snap. Some aren’t but rejection is just another part of life. There are more people in costume then you will ever see any other place at any other time. At least I don’t know of a place where there are more. Maybe Rio or New Orleans for their carnivals but it’s tough to top a half a million people in costume.

Before this five year run of all the many years I was in NYC for Halloween I only went to the parade once. It was before I started liking to take photos in large public crowds so all I did was watch the parade go by. I was never a fan of watching parades go by so I found it dull and barely remember it. I can’t even recall what year it was. In the early to mid 90’s I’m guessing.

The parade is quite different now. Even from the mid-90’s. First of all every other woman now dresses in a sexy costume for Halloween. And these are the women going to the parade not marching in it. In the mid-90’s maybe one in ten women had a sexy Halloween outfit. Now it’s seven out of ten. Halloween has become the official holiday of the short skirt and push-up bra. That’s my kind of holiday. Three years in a row of warmer than average weather helps too.

The second change is the crowds. Man how they’ve grown. Just five years ago, when I first went to take photos, I walked the parade route just ahead of the parade. It was crowded but doable. Now it’s impossible. The scariest moment I’ve ever had in all of my NYC experience was in that crowd three years ago.

I was with my two Steve friends, Hughes and Bunche, walking south on Sixth Avenue. We got near Fourteenth Street and it was madness. We were on Sixth Avenue in a river of people and we could only go forward. It was shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. You couldn’t even take a step sideways let alone turn around. We wanted to turn down Fourteenth Street and get out of the madness because up ahead there was no end of people in sight. It took twenty yards down Fourteenth Street for the crowd to abate. It was crazy. It must have taken us fifteen minutes to get from the middle of Fifteenth and Fourteenth (on Sixth Ave.) to our exit on Fourteenth street. All that time we were at the mercy of the crowd. I could see how a person could get trampled to death in a large crowd with no where to go.

Now we stay clear of Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue all together. Bunche was with me this year and we walked down Seventh Avenue. Plenty of costumes to be seen over there. And a little room. There are so many people out that there are not only barricades (between the street and sidewalk) on the parade route (Sixth Avenue) but there are also sidewalk barricades along Fifth and Seventh Avenues. That’s so the spill-off people, like us, stay out of the street.

One tip I can give you if you plan to go down to the parade is meet up with everyone you are going with ahead of time. I’ve found my cell phone to be completely unreliable at the Halloween parade. For whatever reason it doesn’t ring/vibrate. It just goes to voicemail when you call me or I call you. Or it just beeps at me when I try to make a call. And my phone isn’t the only one behaving this way. I guess two million extra people for the night on those cell phone towers messes up the system a little. Don’t depend on cell phones for meeting up. Plan ahead.

And besides, every cell phone call that I overheard was exactly the same. “Huh? What? Where are you? Huh? What? I’m not sure where I am let me look. Huh? What?” Yes, it’s a little hard to hear out on the street amongst thousands of revelers.

That’s another reason for meeting up first. Greenwich Village. I’ve ended up on the same Greenwich Village street three years in a row now. It’s a great street to shoot photos because a lot of people congregate there to go to the parade. It’s its own parade. And I still have no idea what street it is. Greenwich Village is another of those old Dutch parts of town where the streets run every which way. You have to hang out in the Village for a while to get to know your way around. Hanging out in NYC in general isn’t enough. That’s why everybody who wanders down there for the parade has no idea which street they’re on. Including me. We meet up in Madison Square Park before hand. Much easier. Don’t think because you know NYC that you know Greenwich Village. It’s different down there.

The actual taking of the photos is tough. You have to talk with strangers and ask for their photo. Most are fine with this but not all. My friend Bunche is much better at this part than I am. He’s a big weirdo too but somehow more approachable than I am. Strangers like him better and respond better to him. I notice that when I work and am non-verbal i.e standing in amongst the crowd quietly shooting video or photos people pay me no mind except maybe to smile or nod. But when I talk they are often startled no matter how polite I may be. But I’m used to being a big weirdo.

And it’s hard to get really good photos at the parade. Taking pictures in the dark with a flash does not usually make for the best pictures. Shooting in video mode with available light is also a challenge. And there is not much room to back up and frame a shot. I don’t think I’ve made a good photo yet out of all my Halloween shooting. But I hold out hope. It’s fun to dress up and got out anyway.

I was flipping around the old boob tube again making my way through the block of “news” channels when I ran across a show that never fails to annoy me. It wasn’t a news show because the odds of finding news on one of the 24 hour news channels is about one in three. But that’s a complaint for another time.

The show in question is called: “The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch”. The premise behind the show it that the host, Donny Deutsch, interviews celebrities and business people about their success and how they achieved it. Donny is a bit of a kiss ass especially with some of the more famous celebrities but that only bothers me in a minor way. Most interviewers are kiss asses otherwise they won’t get other interviews.

No, what bothers me is that this show’s main reason for being is supposedly to let us all in on the secrets to success so we too can emulate these smiling people who all have plenty of money in the bank and who float along on a happy cloud all day. Seriously, this show has some of the giddiest guests you’ve ever seen. Being that a lot of then were basic middle class people who hit it big you can understand their fits of giggles. Still, it’s not the people themselves who bother me. It’s the “advice”. It’s nearly all useless.

The show only shows you the ones who made it. Often the reason one person makes it and the other doesn’t is just dumb luck. So when Donnie asks them how they made it we end up hearing such wonderful advice as, “You gotta pound the pavement” and “You gotta have a web site”. Huh? That’s it? That’s what you got for us?

Donnie Deutsch is clearly a bright guy. He can ask some clear and precise questions. But he buys into the “everyone can succeed if they just try hard” story when life proves over and over that is not the case.

The guests come in three categories:

The Hollywood celebrity type who is one of the beautiful people and has managed to parlay that into a career in acting, singing, or whatever. When they are asked about their success they give useless answers that wouldn’t help a single one of us non-beautiful people. Not one of them is as smart as Paul Newman who when asked what was the secret of his success said, “Dumb luck”.

The business tycoon type who was born wealthy and gained even more money throughout his life so he thinks he’s special and actually deservers all his riches. Donnie really kisses these guys’ butts. No one ever says the secret to their success is to have wealthy parents. The lack of insight is astounding.

Joe or Jane middle class who came up with some product and hit it big. These people have smiles so wide they can’t stop grinning. They’re like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Everything went right for them and they’re living the capitalist dream. They are all generally pretty nice but their advice is usually around the “go for your dream” level of banality. Donnie eats that stuff up.

I want to hear from the failures. At least some of the time. Dumb luck can be blinding and a lot of the people on this show can’t see a thing. People can learn a lot of things by analyzing why the failed. Trying something and not succeeding will make a curious person wonder why and then try another way. I lot of knowledge can be gained by trying these various ways.

Meanwhile most people don’t want to give luck credit for their success. People want to think they deserve success. That they are special. So they mythologize their rise to fame and fortune. That’s what annoys me so much about this show. All the mythology masquerading as fact. Most of the advice should be followed by, “And you gotta get lucky”…

Alright, I was flipping the channel and landed on “The Big Idea” again just long enough to catch a “plan for making you first million in five years”. Step one was “make a sacrifice”. The women lived in a cheap $300 a month apartment (this was in 1988). That was her big sacrifice. Step two, and I love this, was to save $300,000 in two years. What the hell? Even with a $300 dollar apartment who can save 300 grand in two years? That means you’re making 200 grand a year. And if you can do that you are well on your way to a million. This show is lunacy.

I discovered something new today. Drawing out doors when it’s windy out is not easy. I headed down to good old NYC to sit in Bryant Park for one more afternoon before it got too cold out. I hadn’t been able to get down there since the end of July when the weather was warm and toasty. Of course I was worried about it being too warm then. How a few short months changes things (he says as if no one else has ever noticed the seasons).

Since I work at home that means some days I just have to get out of the house. One of the ways to do that is to take the bus into Manhattan and hit the park that I used to spend my mornings and lunch times at when I was working in the city. Bryant Park. It’s up on 40th-42nd streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Not a big park by Central Park standards but I like it. It has tables and chairs so I can sit and draw. Most parks only have benches.

So I hit the park on Saturday. It was uglier than usual. The park not the Saturday. They are in the process of setting up “The Pond” in the middle of the park. That’s basically a big hockey rink that people can skate on in the winter. Since giant tents come along with the pond the park is essentially cut in half. The view from north to south is blocked. I was a little disappointed. I was never a fan of “The Pond”. I don’t skate. But winter is coming and it gives people something to do.

I walked around the park a little to find a good seat. My usual shady section of the park which is so nice in July was too chilly this October day. Plus it was right behind the tents and had the ugliest view. So I walked over to the open side of the park and found a good spot near the 42nd Street- Sixth Avenue entrance. I sat down to draw. And I did.

I was having a good time except when the wind was blowing. It was warm enough out in the sunshine (around 60 F) but the wind was whipping. It gusted often and long. If I were just sitting there doing nothing it would have been okay but trying to draw in that wind was awful. I had to hold the page down as best I could with my left hand as I drew with my right. It was like drawing on a tiny sliver of paper.

One thing that especially stood out as I was sitting is that a lot of tourists visit Bryant Park. Maybe it’s because the park is so close to 42nd Street or maybe it’s because the library with its famous lion statues are on the Fifth Avenue side of the park. I don’t know. But I’d guess at least half of the thousand people in the park today were tourists. You can tell because they are the ones looking at everything, taking pictures, and speaking in languages I don’t understand.

My drawing day was shortened because of that wind. I pulled out a couple of pieces of paper but they proved impossible to hold still so I changed to my sketch book. Only my piece of blotter paper was in danger of escaping my grasp when using my sketch book. Still the wind would try to turn the pages as I drew. En plein air season is over for me. This is football weather. Go Giants!

Alright. I’m a mint fan. As a mint fan I’ve been disappointed with the tins of Altoids mints that I have purchased over the last few years. As I’ve stated before they’ve been curiously weak. But being a mint fan I tried a couple of the new flavors that I saw in the store. Creme de Menthe, which tastes like the original but is artificially flavored, and Spearmint. I enjoyed both of them as they were strong and I will be getting some more. That brings me to the eternal question. What to do with an empty Altoids tin?

I’m a fan of boxes, tins, and containers because you can put things in them. That beats having things hang around willy-nilly getting all mixed up with each other. Altoids tins are particularly cool little boxes too. Hinged and metal they are a far cry from the disposable plastic and cardboard of other mints and candies. The only problem is that they are really too small to do anything with.

Sure I have a few tins lying around with small art supplies in them like spare pen tips, little erasers or some such but most of my tins have been thrown into the recycle bin over the years. I’ve even seen Altoids tins made into iPod cases but I’ve never had any inclination to do that. I’ve never found much use for those empty tins.

So now I’m going to try out a new idea for those empty tins. I’m going to paint them. Not the outsides but the inside metal bottom. I only came up with this idea because in my eternal quest for drawing tools I noticed that Sharpie sells oil based markers that are made for drawing on any surface including metal. I’ve never seen these particular Sharpies in any store so I never knew of them but I just put an order in with an art supply web site.

I’m not even sure what I’ll paint on the inside bottom of these boxes. They should be secretive though. That would be cool. I mean, who would look at the bottom of an empty Altoids tin? If I were a member of some secret society, cult, religion, or political party we could all have secret symbols painted on the inside of tins that we only showed to each other to establish our bona fides. How cool would that be? The tins even squeak a little as you open them adding drama to the whole scene. If you want it to be really secret than throw some mints on top of the painting.

People would be more likely to use the tins as frames though. You could open the tin like a book and set it on a shelf so that the picture on the inside bottom is showing. That might make a nice objet d’art but I like the secret society symbols better.

If this were, like, 1841 I could paint nuddie pictures in the tins. Men with fancy facial hair and pipes would show each other their tin collections as they sat in each others dens and giggled because their wives didn’t know what the tins really were. Nothing like getting one over on the wife to get you through the day. Of course the internet has the nuddie picture market all sewn up now so that’s out the window.

My new paint markers arrive this week and I have a couple of empty tins lying around. I’m still throwing ideas against the wall but I’m going to have to figure out something. There has to be some use for these stupid things. And, yeah I know, college kids put their weed in them. That doesn’t help me so you don’t need to tell me your college weed stories.

I got new camera this week. It’s a Nikon Coolpix S60. My other cameras are still good, I bought them both three years ago, but it was the small size and touch screen shooting that sold me this one.

My Pentax Optio 750Z is my older (2005) pocket size camera. Even when I got it it would be considered a little big for a pocket sized camera but it has a swivel LCD screen and that is what sold it to me. I love swivel LCD screens. Plus it is really no bigger than the pocket sized film camera that I carried for years. “Pocket sized” as a concept has gotten smaller.

The new Coolpix S60 is truly a pocket sized camera. It is probably about half the size of the Optio 750Z. It’s also much more of a point and shoot as it doesn’t offer all of the controls over the camera’s shutter speed and aperture as the Optio 750Z (or my completely non-pocketable Nikon Coolpix 8800 also from 2005).

What the Coolpix S60 does offer is touch screen shooting. The whole back of the camera is a touch screen. You go through all of your settings not by turning dials or pushing buttons to scroll through menus but by pressing your finger (or stylus) to the virtual touch screen buttons.

What is really cool is that you focus and set the auto-exposure by pressing on the touch screen. If your subject is off center there is no more centering him, autofocusing, and then recomposing with him off center. Instead you compose any way you like and then press your finger where you want the camera to focus and read the light. That’s cool. Only the shutter button is mechanical.

The drawback to this kind of shooting is that the camera is small and slippery. The touch screen and polished exterior leave little for my big old hands to grip. Constantly poking around the back of a camera, that I found a bit of a struggle just to hold on to, takes a bit of care. And the lens is in the upper left hand corner (as you shoot) of the camera and my fingers very easily got in the way.

My solution to all of this was my mini tripod. I have this small metal tripod with what can only be described as “bendy” legs. I bought it last year to try out as it is quite small and pocketable but I never liked it. The “Home position” of the legs is all of them straight down under the tripod head. You have to bend the metal legs out to make it into a tripod. Getting all the legs at the same angle to level the camera isn’t easy. I quickly went back to using my much bigger “mini” tripod that is designed more like a full sized one and not in any way pocketable.

Yet is was that “Home” position on the bendy tripod that was the solution to my “small and slippery” problem. I screwed the tripod onto the bottom of the Coolpix S60 and used it like a handle. The bendy tripod is only about five inches tall when in the home position so it’s the perfect size. I won’t be carrying the little tripod with me all the time but it’s easy enough to slip into my pocket or bag when I need it.

I had to adjust to there being no swivel LCD when shooting the Coolpix S60. I’m used to “Shooting from the waist” with my cameras. That’s when you swivel the LCD so it faces up and lower the camera to waist level. I shoot looking down into the LCD. Having to hold the camera near eye level to shoot is an adjustment for me.

The biggest problem I have with the camera is that it’s no iPod Touch. I have all of my photos on my iPod touch and it’s a joy to look at photos on that machine. The software on the iPod Touch is a dream. Looking at, changing between, zooming in, and recomposing while viewing photos on the iPod Touch is smooth and easy. Not so with the Coolpix S60 software. Looking at the photos on the touch screen was a bit frustrating. The interface is slow and not precise. It’s even worse than looking at the photos on a regular digital camera with regular buttons. Nikon has to improve that part of the software.

Overall this touch screen shooting has got me excited. I’ve been bored with photography for a little while now and this something new has piqued my interest. Now I’ve got to go and actually look at how some of the pictures I took turned out.