The End Of An Era (Part 3)

November 29, 2006: The infamous rat incident. You learn new things every day watching surveillance footage of your garbage cans. I, for instance, had no idea that rats could be so resourceful when seeking out food. You gotta respect the little bastards ...

The End Of An Era (Part 2)

This is one of my personal favorites: On August 8, 2007, my cat Wally became intrigued with something outside the of window and stuck his head in front of the camera. Look at those cheeks . . .

The End Of An Era (Part 1)

Today marks the start of the last week of filming for The Garbage Can Project. Robin and I will be moving to a new apartment next weekend and so on this, the final week of filming, I've decided to make a daily post featuring one video highlight per day. The above clip is from March 12, 2007 and features one of our cans being stolen in the middle of the night.

Didn't Your Mama Ever Tell You . . .

Didn't your mama ever tell you not to chew your finger nails? Well the above photograph is evidence of why she was right. I spent all of this past thursday night watching "The WB" in the Emergency Room at Rush Hospital waiting for a doctor to take a look at my infected pinky finger.

I guess I'm lucky but I've only ever been in the emergency room three times and each time for something completely weird. The first time that I went I was eight or nine years old and had been camping with my family in The Berkshire Mountains. I had a rather severe case of poison ivy and I woke up one morning with webbed hands. Overnight, all of the poison ivy blisters had merged together to form a wall of blister. My parents took me to the ER where they cut the blisters, wrapped my hand and sent me on my way.

The second time that I went to the ER I must have been about twelve or thirteen and like all of the cool kids at school, I had just gotten my right ear pierced. The day after it was pierced I had a baseball game and while I was at bat I had to wear a batting helmet that had hard plastic ear flaps. Needless to say, after three times at bat my ear had become so infected that it swelled up over the earing. After the game I went to the ER where they pulled the earing out through the back of my lobe. My ear is permanently pierced as a result despite the fact that I haven't worn an earing since.

My visit to the ER this past week was perhaps the stupidist visit of all. I injured my hand by chewing on my nails. I'm a chronic nail biter and must have been absentmindedly chewing away when I ripped my pinky nail a bit too far. A few days and a thousand germs later, my pinky swelled up like a beach ball and became discolored and disgusting.

A few days and a few anti-biotics later, the moral of the story is clear: Stop Chewing Your Nails People, Your Mama Was Right!!!!!

2 Weeks til' Moving Day (and a whole assload of boxes)

Here We Go Again

Well it is moving time once again. Robin and I just found a great new apartment on the north side of town and are getting ready to make the big move on March 1. For me, the first step of moving involves sorting through all of the stuff that I've accumulated in order to pair down and organize. Yesterday was day one of "Operation Nostalgia" and I came across some lost gems.


"The Three Bad Girls." During the summer of 1997, I had a job as a cook in the nursing home where my mother works in Croton NY. In August I moved to Guatemala where I felt more than a little homesick and where I eagerly awaited letters from back home. This photograph is of three of my co-workers from the nursing home, a real gem of a photograph (taken my Mama Git).

This photograph was made in the Spring of 2001 and is from my very first nude photo shoot. I was working as a bartender in NY prior to relocating to Chicago and was one day approached by a waitress who asked me if I would take some nude photographs of her. I was excited for all of the obvious reasons but also because I had always loved the old nude photographs of Andre Kertesz. As excited as I was, I was also very nervous. So on one of my days off she came to my parents house, took off her clothes and asked me what she should do. Feeling that I should be "pure" to my art, I set about shooting a few roles of the most conservative nude photographs you've ever seen. The whole thing was incredibly awkward, she wanted Playboy Centerfolds and I gave her images straight out of the urine stained apartments of a Dostoevsky novel. Oh young Git, so much to learn . . .

This photograph is from 2003 during a road trip with my friend Matt. I was helping him with a film that he was making as well as playing the role of a balding alien. This haircut was truly disgusting although it did get props in a Minneapolis dive bar where a punk rock girl came up to me and told me how much she loved my "Drunk Uncle."


This is a photograph that one of my parents took at their home in NY. It's the view of the back porch under a heavy blanket of snow. I love this shot.


So boys and girls, believe it or not there once existed a currency in Europe before the Euro!!! This is a two Franc piece from my first trip to Europe. As an undergrad, my studies had been devoted almost exclusively to the writings of Albert Camus. Camus has always been a real hero to me and I nearly wet my pants when I found myself in Paris walking the same streets that he had once traversed on a bicycle dressed in a nun outfit during the occupation.


Here we have a shot of Young Git reclining on his Grandmother's couch in Yonkers NY (circa 1986). I used to think this pink polo shirt was "The Bomb" (eat your heart out Kanye West!)


And finally, here we have photograph by the young Brian Ulrich from back when he was a mere student in grad school. I'm not sure if he ever did anything with this photograph but I've always had a real soft spot for it (this is from around the time that he was first beginning his Copia project).

And so, I'm off to pack some more. I'm sure there will be plenty more artifacts in the weeks to come.

Get Out And Vote!!!