April 27, 2006 – 12:33 am
One night while walking through New York with Russell, Mary, Shannon, and Russell’s friend Roman, we happened to end up in SoHo. Roman, sort of our personal tour guide to the area explained to us that during the day, SoHo is kind of like an alternate reality. “It’s full of models and people trying to be discovered by agents. There really isn’t a hair out of place. And even the guys. All the guys walk like this,” he says as he walks haughtily with his chin up. My reaction, not exactly what should have been expected after Roman’s description, was something along the lines of, “ohmygod, I HAVE to move here!”
My desire to go completely bankrupt by moving to SoHo was only increased when we walked past the corner of Prince and Broadway. My heart almost skipped a beat in excitement when I saw it. Prada! I tried not to seem like I was too excited by gawking, turning my eyes almost painfully back into my skull to get a glimpse at the spring line on display in the front window. On the way back from the cafe we stopped at for some tea, I demanded that we cross the street just to walk past the Prada store again. I nearly salivated when I saw the men’s collection through the back window.
Now, while I was perfectly comfortable looking at this beautiful clothing from a distance, I wasn’t exactly running to the front door. The scenario running through my head of what might happen if I did try to enter the store involved a man in an uptight French accent shouting “You are not worthy of Prada! Get out of here, you mere mortal!” and then me being booted out of the store by a giant bouncer-type guy in sunglasses.
I’m sure that this obsession with and pedestalization (okay, I just made up a word) of a clothing company seems a little bit unhealthy and people were quick to inform me of that. Mary told me that she would never be caught dead in a place like that. Russell told me that while the clothing was alright and pretty and all that stuff, it was way overpriced. But the way I see it, fashion like that is more like art. People pay millions of dollars for good art. And this is art that you can wear. So really, it’s not than unreasonable for a polo shirt to cost $800. Right?
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April 22, 2006 – 3:31 pm
It’s not that I don’t have things to talk about. I have plenty to talk about. That’s not the reason that I haven’t updated this site in more than a week. When I went to Europe when I was thirteen, I had to give up practicing piano for a month. When I came back, I had basically forgotten how to play piano and I really didn’t feel like learning how to again. I just stopped practicing and got really lazy about it and eventually, I was just like, “eff this” and I quit. It’s kind of like that. Except I actually enjoy updating this site. It’s just gone out of habit for me, maybe. I know that as soon as I get this entry up and online, the words will start falling out again. I just need a little unclogging post.
I just got back from New York City. Kind of. Like two or three days ago. Mary, Shannon, and I took the train down there for a week to hang out with Russell at his apartment. We didn’t really do that much, unless you call walking aimlessly around Manhattan and eating an unhealthy amount of Tasti-D-Lite doing something. I sort of liked it that way, though. It felt less touristy. I’m not going to say that I know my way around the city yet, but I’m getting there. We had a lot of stuff planned for New York…. like a podcast, a photo shoot, and an Easter breakfast, but none of that stuff really happened. So, if you want to see a slideshow of us doing stuff but really not doing anything all that significant, click here.
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April 12, 2006 – 7:56 am
You might be stopping by my site because you saw the article about it in the “Next” section of today’s Buffalo News. If so, welcome! Because some of my latest posts are all about my trip to Mexico and not really what I usually put on this site, I felt that maybe some sort of introductory post was needed. So….. Hi! My name’s Maxwell and this is my website!
I take a lot of pictures. My friends and I get together a lot to do little mini-fashion shoots that are tons of fun. Here are some of my favorites: The New Addictive Stimulant, Pierce Arrow, The Landmark Series, Buffaloberry – Roll One, and Buffaloberry – Rolls Two and Three. I used to draw a lot (not so much anymore) and you can see my Illustration archives here….. I also have a podcast that my friends and I put up sporadically. You can listen to the shows in the Podcast archives.
Although photography and art is mainly what I’ve been putting on my site these days, there’re also a bunch more other little things to look at here. The rest is basically jumbled into a bunch of little categories and I couldn’t possibly list them all right here…. Anyway, they’re all listed in the Archives page (here). So basically, just look around, explore, and have fun!
Hahaha. That quote at the top of the story that says “Just having random strangers reading about your life, it’s kind of exciting.” That made me laugh. And, Jesus, I say the word “like” a lot. Annnyway. Thanks for stopping by! Hope you come back soon!
(Thanks to Meg Healy for writing the great article and to Bill Wippert for taking that great picture of me — it’s totally going to be my new MySpace picture!)
April 10, 2006 – 12:09 pm
The last day in Mexico was a little bit tough. My mother and I left the hotel relatively early to beat the heat and get some more picture-taking in. When we returned to the hotel, we were dripping and our clothes were sticking to our bodies. This is only April in Mexico and it’s in the nineties. It’s supposed to be even hotter in the summer. I think I’d die.
We got a taxi to the airport and nearly had a heart attack when we saw the thousands of people lined up to get checked in. Luckily, perhaps because we came two hours early, the line for U.S. Airways didn’t have anybody in it. We checked our bags and went to our terminal. After a little while, we were escorted by bus to the airplane. The plane was a little less than desirable. It was uncomfortably warm, noisy, shaky, and there was a weird smell coming from something. My mom didn’t seem to mind too much, but I thought it was basically the plane ride from hell. My iPod stopped working and the only things that were showing on the flickering TV screens were trivia questions. I had to entertain myself by flipping through spanish editions of GQ over and over again. Not only that, but I had hardly eaten anything all day and the only food served were these pathetic bags of mini-pretzels. All of this while putting up with the irritating southern drawl of the flight attendants. It was basically a three-hour ride of torture-boredom.
After we got off that awful plane, we needed to pick up our bags, have them inspected, and then check them again. Once again, I was a little bit surprised by how easy the so-called inspections were. All we basically had to do was flash our passports and walk through. I really was expecting something a tad bit more intense than that, coming back into America and all. We get hastled more on the border to Canada than we did coming from Mexico.
We took another plane for about an hour back to Buffalo. We went back home, gave out presents to my sister and father and I started to upload the pictures. It took so much longer than I had expected to upload all 194 photos. When I woke up this morning, they were still uploading. I checked my Flickr bandwidth status, and I’ve already used up 25% of this month’s allowed bandwidth! I’m going to have to be more careful when I go down to New York this Thursday.
I decided to skip school today since I had absolutely no clean underwear and no good clean clothing to wear. Instead, I decided to finally get those prints that I promised to everybody who donated to my camera fund mailed and then write this little blog entry.
To see all 194 photos in a slideshow, click here. To see them in an album, click here.
April 8, 2006 – 11:46 pm
Our final two days in Mexico have been a bit more of a success, at least culturally, than the first few. After staying in the extremely non-tourist Chetumal for two days, my mother and I were driven back to Playa del Carmen (a much more resort-like commercial town) by a professor named Alfredo.
On the way to Playa, we stopped in a small town called Tulum to see ancient Mayan ruins. It was a bit too hot to really explore and get into the pyramids and stuff, so we spent a lot of the time cooling off at the beach next to the archeological site. We got some pictures at the little ruin doodads and those should be up and online when I get back to Buffalo.
The beaches here in Mexico are really very gorgeous. None of that green, algae-filled water and rip-your-skin-off rocks like in the states. Here, the sand is pure white and the ocean is, well, ocean blue. I didn’t actually go swimming here, but my mother and I have both dipped our feet in the water.
When we arrived in Playa del Carmen, we parked the car and dragged our luggage for a few blocks until we got to The Plaza Hotel. Although my mother now denies it, I recall her saying that we were going to be put up in the best hotel that this town had to offer. It certainly seemed like that’s what Alfredo thought it was. But my stomach started churning suspiciously as soon as I laid eyes on the hotel, but I wasn’t sure because Alfredo kept flipping out about how fancy it was.
When we got the room, I found out that my suspicions were well-founded. I thought that the hotel we stayed at in Chetumal was mediocre, but it was a palace in comparison to this place. Not only were there rips and mysterious, blood-like stains on the sheets and pillow cases, but the room also came equipped with creepy-crawlies on the walls and dirt on the unwashed floors. I was worried that I might sound too whiny, as I usually do when it comes to my anal-retentivity about hotels and living spaces, but I think my mother found the place a little bit shady, too. As soon as we put down our luggage, we left in search of a better hotel. We found one at the end of Playa’s main commercial street and we got a reservation for the next night right away.
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April 7, 2006 – 10:44 am
The flight to Mexico wasn’t too bad. The first plane we took was really, really tiny and you basically had to duck down to fit through it. The second plane was much bigger, but still had a kind of ghetto-esque feel to it. There was this ancient American Airlines instructional video that they showed instead of having the flight attendants show you how to strap on your junk. I thought that was kind of corny…. The customs was a lot easier than I had expected. I was imagining something along the lines of clothing removal and anal examinations, but all we really had to do was press a button and walk out the door.
We were greeted at the outside of the airport by this Mexican professor guy…. I think his name was Fernando…. and this other Mexican professor guy named…. Miguel. They could hardly speak English and we could hardly speak Spanish so most of our conversation was confined to small talk. For the five-hour car ride from the airport in Cancun to Chetumal where we’re staying for now. It was a little bit torturous as the conversation dragged on from small business to the hurricanes, to the environment, until eventually the guy, out of topics, just started just pointing out every resort we passed along the way. “Uh, there’s another resort. And another one.”
As we were driving along the single, two-laned expressway, I was struck by how much poverty we saw along the way, the shacks and mounds of rubble that seemed to be everywhere. I knew that Mexico was basically third-world dirt poor, but I really wasn’t expecting that. At first, I thought that people were just working at these rubble heaps, like it was their job to clean them up after the hurricane or something…. But as we kept driving, I began to wonder, these people live here? There are some pretty hard core ghetto places in Mexico. I basically wanted to jump out of the car every five minutes and take a picture.
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