The Hypocrite (2021)

A recording of a story my friend Jack told me when I was first breaking into the industry:

 “It was at a party in a station bar like this one that I sold my soul. I live off my integrity, you know? My word makes me money. Gives me attention. Gives me access. But I really fucked my career. I’m drinking in a station instead of casting on the field. I can’t keep up with the audience. It grinds you down to get watched all the time, it really does. I don’t want to impose that on other folk anymore. Can I tell you about that day? Because I don’t want you to do it like me. I wasted my higher education. Don’t be like this, you understand?”

I was intoxicated at the time and didn’t understand the frankness in his voice. Sitting in a flickering room, rewatching my first tape and making notes for this very work, I felt it all too clearly in his tone, and the entire event began to replay in my mind. Every note stuck surely in my head but couldn’t hold a candle to the anticipation of reliving the whole ordeal in video.

That day I was seeing the world from a fresh pair of eyes. They were a week and a half old and still pinched my nerves when I looked into the reaches of my view. They looked like my old eyes, but I couldn’t resist the chance to add something unique: a splash of green at the bottom of my bark-colored left iris. Only a millimeter in diameter, this anomaly wouldn’t attract too much attention. I had already been immersed in warning of what that attention would do to my mind, and more importantly, my work. 

Jack snagged me after I got off that afternoon, and we hurried to my place to set up the drivers for my eyes and change the settings. I was casting in the evenings for a couple thousand viewers on a semi-regular basis at that point, but only with a subdermal lens, so obviously, this would be a significant investment and, God willing, a turning point in my career; salvation from blue-collar work. Having finished, we weren’t quite sure what to film, so we booted them up and started walking cross-station, ending up at a few of my favorite pubs. I wasn’t casting just yet, just streaming to my terminal at home and recording for samples and b-roll, so we didn’t worry much about censoring ourselves. The feed was growing shakier and more whimsical with each bar we hopped. Read More.

Personal creative writing project inspired by the gonzo journalism and the social contradictions of investigative reporting. May become a novel in the future.

 Cottonmouths (2018)

Sydney McCain, ten years old and seated soundly on a carpeted floor, had a pleasantly empty mind. She held two markers in one chubby fist, dragging them across her notebook. She stopped only to flick her 3d goggles down onto her face and see if they were working yet. She had pulled them out of rental movie box, and in her feckless ambition she had crumpled the bridge of the nose. They didn’t sit quite right on her face. A ways back was McCain senior, a woman of considerable years with the world weary eyes of single mother on a mission. Currently her mission was to iron Sydney’s yellow dress. This was made difficult by her shaky hands, an unfortunate result of her medication. Nancy McCain was a good mom by almost all accounts. She worked two jobs and did all she could to push her child to be her best self. For only ten Sydney was exceptionally bright, but simultaneously unmotivated. She found her Catholic school not nearly stimulating enough. Read More

 Party for two (2017)

Two thin knuckles rap against an old wooden door with a sharp clicking noise. Two knocks. It is eight fifteen exactly, and Gary Stein was apprehensive. It had been a very, very long time since he had seen his old friend, and he did not know what to expect. They had gone to school together once, a very long time ago. Benson was always a strange and capricious soul, subject to sudden fits of inspiration or madness. After Benson had dropped out he had completely lost touch with the man. It was as if he didn’t want to be found. It was quite sad, really, as they had been the best of friends. Gary had many a fond memory of he and Benson. On Friday nights they could be found in their dorm, making up for their work in a habitual late night crawl. The TV glow would show some comedy or another, and they would gorge themselves on snacks and write their hearts out through the night. However, all that changed when Bensons previously studious demeanor began to change. He began to fall into an obsession; he was endlessly fixated on this… Project. He refused to ever tell his friend what it was. That’s what really got to him, that his own best friend would hide it from him like that. Benson would constantly sneak off to work on it alone, stranding his friend alone in his room on many a Friday night to quietly drink himself to sleep with no company at all. The whole situation exploded on a fateful day when the two screamed at each other in a spiteful fit of emotion, having them both file for a room change. They never saw one another since. Gary often wondered what path his former friend had taken with his life, but never had the heart to contact him. Read More

 Sharks (2015)

Imagine an old sepia print, taken with a pinhole camera, however, this image has been restored with modern photographic technology, printed out on large glossy paper, and framed on a wall. The picture is an allegory, one that depicts the beautiful and amazing land shark. This incredible creature is gracefully hovering in the air, as land sharks often do, as hundreds of small creatures bow before it. In fact, the entire forest of critters is squeezing into every nook and cranny to see this fantastical and mystical beast. The land shark displays an expression -­‐-­‐ a subtle one albeit, because of its flat head and glazed, motionless eyes -­‐-­‐ of serenity and perfection. He is clad in a flowing, brilliant-­‐white toga, and two sandals dangle from his mighty pectoral fins. A chorus of angel sharks is singing the song of the shark-­‐ kind from high above. The scene has been completely re-­‐mastered in lurid glow-­‐in-­‐ the dark colors, and hangs in a white-­‐walled museum gallery.

On the opposite wall there is another image. This one was never a beautiful photograph; it looks as if it were made last Tuesday by a ten-­‐year-­‐old with Photoshop. It has been printed disproportionately, and doesn’t fit exactly on the wall. This portrait displays the hideous, parasitic liquorish shark, wallowing in a pool of melted walnut fudge. Around it the terrible and lifeless village of CandyLand lies in ruins. There are also animals bowing here, but they are bowing for another reason: they have fallen victim to CandyLand’s harsh conditions. This land is devoid of any nutritious food, and in the summer, the candy melts into putrid puddles.

These pools are not only drowning hazards, but can trap small animals in their sticky, yet sweet, clutches. They say that in the Spring, the candy emits a mist of crystalline sugar, which hardens over the skin of all who are unfortunate enough to come to this blasted heath. In this image, the bottom-­‐feeding liquorish shark is falling prey to its homeland’s ill conditions. Oh the irony!

At this point in the story you become confused. As you stand viewing these colossal images, one beautiful and serene and the other sweet yet dismal, you start to wonder as to the nature of the allegory behind this pairing. “Hmm,” you think. You may even ask yourself, “What could these things mean? What could they say about the artist?” Whether or not you said these things aloud, a man with grey hair and a large beard standing next to you suddenly imposes himself into the narrative. He smells like a dusty library and you can see the remains of the museum’s five-­‐ dollar soup-­‐and-­‐sandwich combo in his facial hair. “They mean to represent the entirety of life!” he exclaims, spreading his arms obnoxiously. He then brings his face uncomfortably close to yours and shouts, practically in your ear, “Life has no reason! Life has no rhyme! There is no understanding life! The artist is trying to convey a series of random and nonsensical events, to demonstrate that life is all just a bunch of disconnected happenings! The only one who can make any sense of it is you! The artwork only exists in your own mind!” The man starts to laugh so interruptingly loud that a museum custodian has to escort him out of the gallery.

Another, less aggravating, yet equally bizarre man, starts to scratch his goatee. He is incredibly tall and has slicked back hair that gives his head the overall shape of a radish. “He’s right, you know. The artist picked these images for the explicit purpose of perplexing you. He wanted people to see something different, demonstrating that no one person can define life. It’s quite brilliant, actually.

However, if you look closely, you can discover several unfortunate flaws.” You lean in to locate the flaws the gentleman is talking about, but you simply cannot find them. “Can’t see ‘em? Well, if you looked very closely, you could see that there are no flaws! Ha! And I am actually the artist!” He gives out a long laugh, puts his business card in your coat pocket, and struts out through the doorway. You shake your head and rub your temples. You’ve never particularly liked art, and this entire experience is too much for you. You sigh and slowly exit the museum.

Looking through your coat later you discover the card still neatly folded in your pocket. You slowly unfold it, and your eyes go wide. You drop the card at first, but eventually bend down and pick it up. You run it over and over in your head, it says [REDACTED].