Patrick Corcoran

An installation by Daniel Spoerri, in Paris’ Grand Palais Museum.

Continuing in the theme of Connor taking pictures, this is his first attempt at a serious portrait. Not bad for 4 yrs. old.

I let Connor play with my digital camera yesterday. I think he enjoyed himself.

I think sports photography is underrated by many….

I just like it.

Frank “12 Galaxies” Chu is running for mayor of San Francisco?

The S.F. Examiner gives him odds of 1,000,000 to 1. Not so good, given that the official electorate population of S.F. is less than 1,000,000. Something tells me I could get better odds than Mr. Chu.

Still, the newspaper was not entirely ungenerous in their assessment:

Name: Frank Chu

Occupation: San Francisco eccentric, sign-carrier

Why: No one would campaign harder than Chu, who has walked downtown streets for years with his incoherent “12 Galaxies” signs. An Emperor Norton for the 21st century, he would do less damage in City Hall than many current and former supervisors.

I was at Target with Connor today and upgraded my main chopping knife. Got a 7″ Henckels Santoku hollow edge. (It was $39 as a set with a 3″ sushi-style paring knife.)

Apparently Henckels makes no fewer than six different grades of this knife. Mine, the Forged Synergy, is the lowest quality. The higher end ones are almost $200 per blade. But even at the low end it’s a beauty. The blade runs through and over the handle, as a solid piece of steel. It’s also dishwasher safe, which I appreciate because I’m cruel to my knives.

Cutting with it is a dream. I can cut through the skin side of a ripe tomato without even holding the tomato. I was making a basil chiffonade, and all I had to do was drag the point of the knife across the basil using only the weight of the knife and it made perfect slices of basil. The hollow edge makes the knife thinner along the blade, allowing for narrower slices and for less “grabbing” when cutting through dense stuff. Slicing through a large onion was noticeably smoother with the slimmer blade.

It’s a poor workman who blames his tools. But it’s also a poor workman who has poor tools.

(BTW, I didn’t go into Target to buy a knife. It was an impulse, a consolation prize. I really wanted to score a food mill, because I’m making a creamy tomato soup for dinner. A food mill would be ideal for mashing everything up nicely while also pulling out the seeds and skins. But I must have been dreaming to think Target would have such a patrician device. I was also there to get Connor a new booster seat, and I scored him a beaut. It has comfy pads, an ergonomic headrest, suede paneling, and twin reading lamps, one over each shoulder. I kid you not. He doesn’t know about the reading lamps yet, but one day when he least expects it I’ll pop some batteries in there and rock his mini-world. I didn’t plan to get the super-deluxe, but the other dad who had arrived just before us in the booster isle grabbed the last one of the model I had my eye on — basically the same seat, minus the suede and the reading lamps. Connor wins, unknown kid loses.)

Slate is running a photo series honoring the tin can. Some interesting photos in there.

For me, this photo was the most powerful. Can’t really explain it, except to say it feels so… bleak. A harsh, bright light on modern life.

For some reason, Connor and I got onto the subject of Buzkashi. (These are risks when you’re trolling photography web sites with a 4-year-old in tow.)

Buzkashi… what to say? Perhaps the only sport whose rules can be conveyed in a single sentence:

Drag the headless carcass of a goat to your team’s goal before the other team does likewise, and don’t break any laws doing it.

Connor became interested in this when I told him it was dangerous. How to explain? It’s dangerous because the competitive spirit of humanity can only somewhat barely be constrained by rules and laws? Because the will to win is stronger than the instinct to avoid hurting others? Because the real golden rule is “me first”?

But as with everything else, all you have to do to change the subject at his age is change the subject. I pulled up a photo of one insect battling another, and all was well.

Please tell me you have kids and weird situations happen to you too….