Jodie Ponto Photography

Photos from All Hallow’s Eve’s Eve at Mike’s Place Pub in Nelson, BC.

This is Lorraine.

Lorraine likes to dance.

Lorraine likes her dog.

This is Lorraine’s friend Captain Violet. She likes saving the world one item of purple at a time.

This is Lorraine’s friend Catrina. She likes speaking Spanish and cavorting with dead things.

This is Lorraine’s friend Sven. He likes polka dot dresses.

A few weeks ago I swore I would no longer allow that philandering bastard Fall to toy with my heart (see Chronicles of an Autumn Love Affair).

However, the lovesick are never the most reasonable creatures and despite my resolve I have since dropped everything and fled South after him. We are currently trying to make our relationship work in Nelson, BC.

Once upon a cold-snap last winter Miss Quincy holed up in her cabin with a bunch of other hooligans and made a new album (“Your Mama Don’t Like Me“).  Featured in the video below are Ben Nixon (Mossy Rock Productions), Reno Fitch (Folky Strum Strum), and Peter Mynett (Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra). I documented the recording sessions with my handy-dandy still camera too – if you have a hankering to view those photos click here.

When this lady sings I always wish I was in some dimly-lit lounge straight out of an old black & white film wearing a gown, sipping a martini, and resting a cigarette between my fingers with one of those long holders.

I’m not going to lie, when I looked out the window this morning I screamed bloody murder.

That’s because Mother Nature was out there smothering the life out of everything with her snow blanket. On the verge of hysterically calling 911 to report the massacre I was witnessing,  Robert Plant convinced me otherwise.

As he sang, “Apple like a cherry, cherry like a rose”, I noticed some tiny red crab-apples glowing like roses and generally paying no attention to the white death coming from the sky. Seeing no reason to be upset about it if they weren’t, I put on my mittens and boots and went outside to photograph all the still living things I could find.

“So, how many brothers & sisters do you have?”

It’s a small-talk question I’ve grown to dread. I always find myself fumbling for a flippant answer like, “Oh, I’m one of those (l)only children” … all the while seeing the questioner’s eyelids lower with the sudden suspicion that they’re talking to a spoiled & selfish brat who is probably very unhappy, lonely, and dysfunctional.

Us only children have had a bad reputation ever since the late 19th century when that jerk of a psychologist G. Stanley Hall claimed that only children could not be expected to go through life with the same capacity for adjustment as children with siblings because “Being an only child is a disease in itself”. Media of the time jumped on board with Only Child Syndrome, one journal stating ”It would be best for the individual and the race if there were no only children”.

Well, I’m here today to rescue “Only Child” from its stereotypical pairing with the word “Syndrome”.  Yes, I’m sibling-challenged, but I think if you look at the following photargument you’ll see it has not created a maladjusted monster at risk of contaminating the human gene pool.

EXHIBIT A:

Some people might argue I’m casting my dinner bowl aside like a grubby & ungrateful little princess. However, I would argue my mother forgot my usual puréed caviar & Baby Dom and the storm-scale temper tantrum on the horizon is completely warranted.

EXHIBIT B:

Some people might argue I’m exhibiting classic signs of early onset couch-potatoery, most likely caused by a lack of young playmates. However, I would argue that without young playmates to distract me I had already developed the capacity to meditate deeply on the meaning of life … and look darn sharp while doing it too.

EXHIBIT C:

Some people might argue I’m seeking solace from my fortress of sibling-less solitude in cocoa’s comforting arms. However, I would argue beaming out from behind that beater is the grin of someone who knows something the rest of the world doesn’t, namely the hidden health benefits of chocolate consumption.

EXHIBIT D:

Some people might argue I’m a walking flashcard for classic signs of exhibitionism, most likely stemming from being reared in a center-of-attention type environment that bred a being with the unquenchable desire to remain the center-of-attention by any means necessary. However, I would argue that the sheer magnificence of my flexibility renders this point null.

EXHIBIT E:

Some people might argue if I’d had siblings to sadistically torture I wouldn’t have manifested masochistic tendencies towards engaging in activities such as putting my own tongue in the vacuum cleaner. However, I’d argue that … well … really, it’s hard to argue with sadomasochism and perhaps on second thought we could scrap this piece of evidence as irrelevant to the case, which I think has already been sufficiently made.

Here’s another one of my favorite old photos. Just like the last old photo I posted, it’s from 1952 and features my Grandfather looking nonchalantly bad-ass.

I’m also fond of it because it’s hand-painted, which is a look I used to spend hours mucking around with photo paints trying to recreate (that is, until the whole turpentine incident caused me to question the very core of my relationship with paints. … we’ve since decided to spend some time apart, but I hope once we work through our individual differences our love can be rekindled).