Krysten Ritter of Breaking Bad fame was nice enough to let me into her apartment. She has a new show on ABC called Apartment 23, along with Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek. Gosh I remember when DC was on- that must have been the birth of Emo right there. She also gave me one of those juices you can buy at WholeFood for nine dollars, I know Bill Cunningham won’t accept a glass of water on assignment but boy those are good.

Director of the new movie “Gainsbourg,” on a press junket, hotel room, etc. I didn’t say I was from “Horse and Hound” magazine. You’re wondering how I got that photobooth into the elevator huh?…

David Lachapelle and David Salle for NYT

Only one column so I helped it out a bit. Thanks to Brendan and Demetri, and everyone at CBS who pitched in- I didn’t bring that 10K lighting up the background…

New word of the day: Xoloitzcuintli (show-low-eats-queent-lee).

full story here.

Joe and Mamina.

What do you get when Chris Noth, Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan, Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland get together?

Five very pressure filled minutes. But I loved them. Full story here.

Natalie and I agree, he is a catch…

I had the good pleasure of meeting, riding with and photographing Pablo Airaldi in May of 2007 for NYT…

I got a call recently from the VV to request images of Pablo, no mention of why, but they really liked what I sent and said that it was a possible cover.

It’s not the cover that is remarkable, it is Pablo’s story. We didn’t discuss much that day except the story, do some cool pics of Pablo on the streets of New York in different cycling garb, a style piece, and I suggested we just cycle and find locations that worked, which he was all for. Pablo was riding a fixie, and I loved watching him descend the Brooklyn Bridge locking up the rear wheel every once and a while. I lumbered along after him on my mountain bike. (I’m old enough to remember when it was necessary variously to have: a Banana Seat Bike, a 10 Speed, a Mountain Bike….I skipped the BMX phase…)

Anyway you should read the VV story, it is very current, it is an individual story about an immigrant, which we should recognize as very common.

I am sensitive to the whole notion of “immigration” – Neither of my parents are in the country that they were born in, and now, neither am I. By “law” I have rights to three passports but carry two- on from jus soli and the other by jus sanguinis to get fancy- born in Canada to an American mother. I have a third option available to claim British Citizenship through my father and his father, although my father was born in New York to British parents…what a bounty of passports simply being thrown at me! I have to wonder- what are we all so sensitive about when it comes to people born south of the border? East-West doesn’t seem to get everyone so worked up.

I am oversimplifying-Pablo was convicted of a felony- had I been convicted of a felony while in Canada I do not know how the immigration authorities would have handled my case-as far as they were concerned, I was an American from birth, so I suppose you cannot deny something from someone that they already possess.

Everyone accepts that this is the country you come to to get a new start-certainly things were good enough for me in Canada that I didn’t need to come here, I wanted to. I have never been to Uruguay. I am told it has a high standard of living relatively in South America, and is progressive and democratic.

What the story boils down to, as so many stories do, is that if you have money and can hire better than a public defender, your troubles will likely go away. No one will talk about rewarding bad behaviour, consequences, etc. “Used to be” that this country was a place for people with no money to come and work and create a new life. Now that we are the “haves,” we are insensitive to the have-nots. And unless we all get down to making babies real soon, we need immigration simply to prop up social security and medicare for all those boomers who used to be on the side of immigration but now seem to be against it.

Update: so I wrote all that last night and was going to post it and checked the VV story again for the link and evidently he is out!-