kind of selling myself

So as part of my master plan to make some financial swings whipping my camera around, I will be adding a big fat button to the sidebar of my blog here. Which if you are looking at this in Internet Explorer will likely appear at the bottom of this page for no apparent reason.

The button will look like this:



And when you click on it you will see a gallery of prints you can choose from and buy for your very own. Framed or not. How fabulous is that. Now go shopping!

falling silent

I've been quietly working myself up to the excitement that would be Night Train to Terror's biggest show ever this weekend, with tales spinning out in front of us of their name on billboards in the York area. They were headlining. This was huge.

So we arrived at the event, sponsored by Coors Lite, mostly alone on the stadium premises on the Penn State, York Campus. Synthetic-looking Coors Lite Girl™ was there to plasticly announce Coors Lite drafts were a buck! Then she disappeared on the toy dunebuggy with promoter into the woods for making out. Doormouse, who opened for Night Train at their last show at Small's in Harrisburg, was there opening with pretty sleepytime drones magic. Then a couple other bands played. Begin downward spiral. Freakishly warm day (albeit likely more seasonally appropriate) had cooled to a clear shiver. Enter worst band ever. They take the stage and not only announce but descriptively unveil their drunken state to the shrinking audience. Which they reiterate throughout their performance, moreso than actual singing. Or that tuneless, soulless act that might, if one were also likewise trashed, be mistaken for singing... which mysterioulsy the enthusiastic female audience members knew every word of. Probably including the chorus of Dude we're drunk.

Five minutes after their set was to end they announced they would be playing one, no, three more songs. Daggers shooting out of our collective eyes. Two songs and fifteen minutes later, Night Train is moving towards their instruments and promoter is hot on their tail, to inform them that the cops showed up and there have been too many complaints from the neighborhood folks. Night Train will not be playing.

The lads were paid with a case of The Crappiest Beer™ and sent home. The utter antithesis of the Best Show Ever.



refrain © Laura Kicey

The only saving grace was this visual sliver of silence that cropped up early on in the night.

If anyone who promotes shows in the Philly area would looooooooove to give Night Train a chance to play out in these here parts hit them up. NOW

In other promotional news, a few nights ago I went to the Adrienne Theater to see a play starring Sonja Robson, A Few Small Repairs. A ficticious tale based loosely on the story of Jackie Onassis' aunt, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter 'Little Edie" and the decrepit mansion they lived in.

Like I told her after I saw it, it was so much like going to these abandoned places I love and then being able to see the invisible story the photos I take would tell if they were full of people. It was a tragic and bizarre tale wrapped in a comedic gown. Go see it on stage if you have a chance, otherwise you might want to check out the documentary Grey Gardens which I am chaffing at the bit to see. Netflix give it 'ere!

Sponsored by your mama.

at a loss

Usually being fully cognisant is the recommended state for drivers to be in. However, when I switched into autopilot on a Saturday afternoon somewhere on the Northeast Extension on our way to Trevorton for Easterly consumption, I missed my exit and stumbled, once more, managed to land smack dab in the middle of someone else's madness.

Mr. D concocted an alternate route that took us up Rt. 93 and through Hazleton, the most racist city in the US. He had told me it was a fascinating place that we should shoot, and while I believed him and had quiet fantasies about moldering abandoned buildings, to see with my own eyes I knew would be a special thrill.


truth justice woitko © Laura Kicey

Before we got to the city, we rumbled through Beaver Meadow which was truly its own flavor of special. I almost caused us to drive off the road (accidentally, I had already driven off the road with purpose a number of time already) when we spotted a mindblowing cluster of sculptures in the woods across the street from wild arrangements of garbage and handpainted signs with a pickup truck with the words HOMELAND SECURITY painted on the side, with large chartreuse plastic 'aliens' at the wheel and cowboying it in the bed of the truck.


abomnible © Laura Kicey

Vegas' wow factor has long worn off and this... uh.... display at a random residential corner in Hometown America was enough to stop us in our tracks. Its intensely exciting to run across these largely ignored but obviously amazing things. Just when you think you are lost, that is where we find it. Joseph A. Woitko, you and your likely underappreciated genius, I salute thee.


......................

One might have suspected I was dead from the level of activity over this way, but I have been actually at my most alive and kicking, if not shooting of late. I took a major step forward professionally last week. The repercussions of which I don't think I can fully appreciate even at this moment with things in the works as they are. While I haven't fully left my design job, I am not going to be a full time employee for much longer. Instead I will be there a few days a week so that we all might enjoy pork products back on the homefront and the remainder of my time will be spent marketing my photography and learning how to make this blog a more useful tool.

So I will be packing up this particular url and nesting the bits in laurakicey.com at the end of my redesign extravaganza.


peel © Laura Kicey

This rather grand move has been a mostly unspoken wish for some time now. Flickr confidence can only go so far... its more like getting drunk and talking to hot girls, and once you sober up, asking yourself if you can really reach the same level of bravado? Well, I can't think I can't any more. Up there with some of the greatest risks I have taken of all time, I am going to lean a little lean on my camera and see if it can hold me up.


my name is no man © Laura Kicey

I've had a fairly fantastic run of luck and a fairly high level of the intangible internet infamy. Its time to put this in more hands and on more paper.