Edit: I’ll be playing alone.

***

I am pleased to announce that Fakeproject will be playing the Aquarium with Why? and The New Instructions.

Information:
The Aquarium (Dempsey’s Upstairs)
April, 7 2008
Why? with Fake Project and The New Instructions (early All-Ages)
226 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Fargo, North Dakota 58102
Cost : $8

Here is a flyer for the show. I hope to see you there.

Due to some behind-the-scenes mixups, another band was scheduled over Fakeproject.

Fakeproject will not be performing at the Aquarium on February 19th.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled behavioral programming.

I’ve had my share of police encounters, here and abroad, public and private. When I say “police”, I mean all watchful eyes with agendas. I lump in security guards and enforcers of all kinds, including well-meaning housewives with mobile phones, minivans, and too much time on their hands “keeping an eye on things”.

Years ago my friend CM was subjected to the brutality of the Chicago police, and spent a night “detained” but not arrested. Around that time, there was an interesting video posted to the web from an independent videographer which demonstrates not only the “tricks” authorities use to get you to turn off the camera, but the things one can say to fend them off. (Windows Media, 7 minutes, 18mb)While I don’t recommend making smart-assed comments as this narrator does, I do recommend watching this video. Pay attention to the tactics of both sides. Put yourself in the photographer’s shoes and see if you wouldn’t buckle.

I am hosting the video here because I was unable to locate it on the web, despite numerous searches over the last few years. I found it on a decaying CDROM in a bin of old junk.

There are a few other sites documenting your rights as a photographer. The classic is Bert. P Krages “The Photographer’s Right. Know it. There’s another worth reading: Andrew Kantor’s Legal Rights of Photographers.

I have a few police officer friends, here (NL), Germany (WM), and Russia (MA). They are not the subject of this post, I respect them and their work.

I have amassed a collection of photographs numbering in the multiple tens of thousands. A substantial portion of them lack beauty, or at least visual aesthetic quality. But that is more an artifact of purpose than a lack of effort; many of those photos were taken to illustrate an idea, capture an unusual juxtaposition, to pose or perhaps even resolve an empirical question.

I’m going to begin posting them here, observation by observation, plus contextual information.

Sometimes, by observing only the base of something, it is possible to know concretely what is on top of it. Green shingle bits and black tar fragments from the Minard Hall gutters betray a green-shingled roof above.