I've had incredible shoots all month, but the Montreal experience of working with sweet folks like kaffeine and ValCapone took the cake... gotta get the sites up. I must, I must...
The hits just keep on coming! There isn't much justice in the world, but perhaps what's currently happening to me has some root in my distant past. Today's theory: in 3 past lives I was a blind monk who did really good deeds, an angler-fish who never mated & lived all her life in the same cave dangling her lonely glow-bait, and a small male dog born without eyes, a tongue or a penis who was nonetheless forced to pull heavy sleds across the tundra.
Spent much of yesterday on the Toronto Islands helping four August-born folks celebrate their birthdays. Frolicked on the nudie beach. Frolicked in the bushes. Frolicked a little more in the bushes. Had minor scheduling mess-ups with two of my sweeties in one day. Today I am mosquito-bitten and awestruck. I believe I have since last writing experienced definitively the transition from merely 'schtupping & being schtupped' to 'doing the nasties'. Darn near all of the nasties, I think. Closed the (semi? sometimes? sorta?)-clothed part of the day devouring elk, rare. I'd go back for the rest of the beast (and its cook for good measure). Yum.
This weekend is Caribana, a local annual process of separating many, many people of African, Afro-Caribean and Indo-Caribean descent from our money en masse. The actual parade was many [this is now being typed by the ultimate naughty secretary who's actually not a secretary but she fits very well in Sodome's lap], many moons ago transformed by corporate silliness and moved to a desolate, god-forsaken fenced-in stretch of concrete across the nether end of the city from its previous path through the heart of downtown.
Of late, there's a spontaneous, unofficial Caribana parade every year, which does occupy central downtown: Yonge St. Between Wellesly and Queen. Unlike the Trinidadian Carnival-inspired revelry after which the official parade is modelled, what happens on Yonge Street the past few years is highly contemporary North American. It's all about bling, T&A, and very slick-looking youngsters offering each other lewd invitations to get into the already-crammed back seats of their oversized Detroit gas guzzlers. Everybody's dressed in their finest, but the costumes that signify hip-hop culture these days read to me a lot like class drag: middle-class kids dressed up in the poor-folks-made-good glitz of TV gangstas. Maybe I'm a bit too old, too cautious about the consumerism & mob dynamics to ever get fully swept up in the throng, but I love the energy; love to watch my people get up in the faces of this scared, stranger-phobic, anti-sensual town. Culture needs to be a little dangerous to be relevant. I'm fairly sure that the primary danger we pose in this instance is to ourselves, but there is a crackling edge of risk and aggression that keeps me very interested on the edge of the festivities, year after year.
Caribana's always been insanely overpoliced, but this young, shiny people's nighttime unofficial parade has more cops tied in far more knots than the parents' parade ever did. Three different uniformed police forces cluster in groups of 10 or more; three or four groups to each side of a block in the densest blocks of the parade.
I walked the route on Friday night with the cinnamon girl. Underdressed for the festivities, we watched more than we were watched. Extravagant hair, extravagant bagginess of clothing on folks doing the butch thing. Extra-extravagantly small clothes on deliciously big people. (Booty shorts take on an entirely different mien wrapped up and almost around a chubby, protuberant black booty than they might around a lesser backside. Wow. We had ample opportunities for comparative observation.)
I had my cameras out, but all I was motivated to point them at was the brand-new mobile police surveillance unit; eight vehicles in a parking lot tied together with a couple million bucks worth of wiring and wizardry, approved and installed just before this year's influx of scary black people.
Only in Canada. Not.
The hits just keep on coming! There isn't much justice in the world, but perhaps what's currently happening to me has some root in my distant past. Today's theory: in 3 past lives I was a blind monk who did really good deeds, an angler-fish who never mated & lived all her life in the same cave dangling her lonely glow-bait, and a small male dog born without eyes, a tongue or a penis who was nonetheless forced to pull heavy sleds across the tundra.
Spent much of yesterday on the Toronto Islands helping four August-born folks celebrate their birthdays. Frolicked on the nudie beach. Frolicked in the bushes. Frolicked a little more in the bushes. Had minor scheduling mess-ups with two of my sweeties in one day. Today I am mosquito-bitten and awestruck. I believe I have since last writing experienced definitively the transition from merely 'schtupping & being schtupped' to 'doing the nasties'. Darn near all of the nasties, I think. Closed the (semi? sometimes? sorta?)-clothed part of the day devouring elk, rare. I'd go back for the rest of the beast (and its cook for good measure). Yum.
This weekend is Caribana, a local annual process of separating many, many people of African, Afro-Caribean and Indo-Caribean descent from our money en masse. The actual parade was many [this is now being typed by the ultimate naughty secretary who's actually not a secretary but she fits very well in Sodome's lap], many moons ago transformed by corporate silliness and moved to a desolate, god-forsaken fenced-in stretch of concrete across the nether end of the city from its previous path through the heart of downtown.
Of late, there's a spontaneous, unofficial Caribana parade every year, which does occupy central downtown: Yonge St. Between Wellesly and Queen. Unlike the Trinidadian Carnival-inspired revelry after which the official parade is modelled, what happens on Yonge Street the past few years is highly contemporary North American. It's all about bling, T&A, and very slick-looking youngsters offering each other lewd invitations to get into the already-crammed back seats of their oversized Detroit gas guzzlers. Everybody's dressed in their finest, but the costumes that signify hip-hop culture these days read to me a lot like class drag: middle-class kids dressed up in the poor-folks-made-good glitz of TV gangstas. Maybe I'm a bit too old, too cautious about the consumerism & mob dynamics to ever get fully swept up in the throng, but I love the energy; love to watch my people get up in the faces of this scared, stranger-phobic, anti-sensual town. Culture needs to be a little dangerous to be relevant. I'm fairly sure that the primary danger we pose in this instance is to ourselves, but there is a crackling edge of risk and aggression that keeps me very interested on the edge of the festivities, year after year.
Caribana's always been insanely overpoliced, but this young, shiny people's nighttime unofficial parade has more cops tied in far more knots than the parents' parade ever did. Three different uniformed police forces cluster in groups of 10 or more; three or four groups to each side of a block in the densest blocks of the parade.
I walked the route on Friday night with the cinnamon girl. Underdressed for the festivities, we watched more than we were watched. Extravagant hair, extravagant bagginess of clothing on folks doing the butch thing. Extra-extravagantly small clothes on deliciously big people. (Booty shorts take on an entirely different mien wrapped up and almost around a chubby, protuberant black booty than they might around a lesser backside. Wow. We had ample opportunities for comparative observation.)
I had my cameras out, but all I was motivated to point them at was the brand-new mobile police surveillance unit; eight vehicles in a parking lot tied together with a couple million bucks worth of wiring and wizardry, approved and installed just before this year's influx of scary black people.
Only in Canada. Not.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
lemonkid:
Well chosen.
lemonkid:
