xtcian

thanksgiving all-stars!

6/16/02

Wow, what can we say about this picture? A few things I'm sure of: I'm the photographer, and I'm using one of those unbelievably shitty 110 cameras with tiny film and a snap-on flash bulb, the kind I don't think they even make anymore. It is Thanksgiving 1978.

In the middle, turning around, is my sister-in-law Melissa, with her hair in full waffle late-70s regalia. At far left is her soon-to-be husband, my brother Kent (they got married three years later). The two people at far right are my brothers Steve and Sean, and my Mom smiles from the rear of the picture. Naturally, I have no idea where my Dad is, but I'm sure everyone in this picture can, if called on the phone right now, offer their conjecture.

What is really cool about this picture are the walls; I remember them being in a state of spackle-bedecked disarray for months. My dad, usually Gestapo-like in these control freak years, let us put a bunch of silly drawings up there and doodle all over it. Drawing on walls has been a family idee fixe for a long time - we drew all over the back of the London house, and there are some amazing pictures of Kent and Steve drawing on the walls of their condemned house in Hollywood, not long after their father, my mom's first husband, died in a car accident. There's something so wonderfully anarchistic about defacing a home wall. We did it in the Pink House as well, with a giant map of North Carolina; all guests were invited to mark the spot where they lost their virginity.

The yellowness of this picture is one of my favorite things about the 70s, and now all of my memories, preserved in photographs, are canting yellow along with them. The only place this picture will not get any more yellow is right here on the internet, which fascinates me. We've managed to slow down time right here on the blog.

And one last thing. Michelle says she is a vegetarian, but look at her in the picture (bottom left) - she's holding aloft the seared leg of a dead bird like she was the flesh-gorging victor of a feast in Valhalla. I mean, it's smeared all over her face. The girl is 29 now, but she's obviously in full-blown denial.