Just the other night, I learned of the passing of my friend and comrade, photographer Laura Sullivan – a.k.a. “Isis” – earlier this month.

I first became friends with Isis and her husband-to-be Michael Sullivan (a.k.a. “the Cubster”) in the late summer of 2007, when Isis and I were on the editorial board of the DC Independent Media Center and working together in the DC IMC’s foto/video workgroup.

Along with our comrade Daryle Lamont Jenkins of One People’s Project, Isis was covering the neo-fascists before it was cool. Under the collective pseudonym “Town Hell Posse” she, Daryle, Michael and I covered Ron Paul rallies in Philadelphia and Tea Party batshittery at rallies on Capitol Hill, and at healthcare town halls in Reston, among other zaniness.

Isis showed me the impact – and fun – of not holding the camera straight up and down all the time; she was a staunch proponent of what they call the “Dutch Tilt” in the business – or what Isis used to call the “Batman Angle”.

She got me to loosen up on my newsreels, to let go of the “straight” approach – to editorialize, to use music, irony, cynicism and sarcasm more in my storytelling style.

In 2010, Isis and I had the honor of being asked to leave the DC IMC editorial board for being “too radical”. No, seriously. Too radical for the IMC.

Thanks so much, kiddo; it was too fucking grand.

“Great Caesar’s Ghost!”
–Perry White.

“Information Age of hysteria
is calling out to Idiot America!”
–Green Day.

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Continue reading "Laura “Isis” Sullivan, Photographer: an Appreciation" »

On top of all the uprising and rioting and pulling down statues and all that other great stuff, it looks as if Dan Snyder has finally gotten the message and is changing the name of the Washington, DC NFL franchise to something that isn’t a horrid racial slur.

With a decision like this, of course, there also comes the usual flood of suggestions and proposals — and I’m certainly not one to shirk my creative duty.

I, for one, think the new name of the team should be the Washington Covids, because our policies and attitude have been like a plague around the world, and also because Americans are pretty much banned from entering any other country on Earth at this point.

And, as luck would have it, the July 8th Washington Post featured an article which basically details the moaning and wailing from NFL sponsors and TV advertisers if the pandemic precludes any chance of even actually playing a season this year. It’s pretty obvious they don’t really give a shit about the sport; they just need some guys playing football to put on TV so that all the corporations who flushed down all that marketing cash can show us their goddamn advertising.

So, basically, no NFL = capitalism takes a bath. Cry me a goddamn river.

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Continue reading "Hail To The Covids!" »

By now, you’ve all heard the tale of Permit Patty, the San Francisco woman who called the cops on an 8 year-old girl for selling bottled water in front of her home; calling the cops on black kids doing normal kid stuff seems to be a big trend among the pasty these days. It’s also interesting to note that Patty is also a Hillary Girl; it figures that she’s a Demanding To Talk To The Manager kinda gal.

Talk about the banality of tyranny; the American Stasi has turned out to be a bunch of middle-aged white women with mobile phones.

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Continue reading "The Wine Stasi" »

ya got rats on the West Side,
bedbugs Uptown!
What a mess! This town’s in tatters!
–rolling stones

So, what’s the deal with New York City, anyway? Is it hypocritical — or schizoid? I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, while checking out the news from NYC about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the attendant right-wing racist street zaniness. New York City’s always had this outward image of a progressive, multicultural, hip city — a cradle of the US labor movement, the birthplace of outfits like the Yippies, the city where people like Andy Warhol, Peter Max, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith first emerged as major artists — versus a long-present simmering vile nasty core of racism and class war, where Amadou Diallo and a host of other Black Americans and African immigrants were brutally tortured and murdered by the police, and systematic gentrification drove the poor and working class out of places like Tompkins Square and Brooklyn.

I was recently discussing this with my friend Isis, a cohort in the Town Hell Posse and native New Yorker. She seemed totally down with the wormy, rotten core idea, and filled me in on New York City’s historic record of racism, xenophobia and classism. “Y’know that old Stones song, ‘Shattered’? That pretty much says it!” Suddenly, the conversation shifted to sketching in some plans to go to NYC to cover the big anti-Islamic hate rally being held on September 11, and how we could use “Shattered” for our motif and background music; my mind suddenly fixated on the line that goes go ahead, bite the Big Apple — don’t mind the maggots!

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