recently, as my lovely girlfriend’s birthday was approaching, i found myself scrambling to figure out a knockout birthday gift for her. she is a woman of refined tastes but modest needs, and sentiment seems to go far. lucky for me, i’m pretty damn good with the sentiment. of course, seeing as how i set a precedent early on in the relationship with maybe a few too many grand or (grandly sweet) gestures, i kind of set myself up for a level of expectation on the birthday gift that i suddenly wasn’t sure i could live up to. the only outright request coming forth was to bake a very specific and foolishly decorated sort of cake (which will not be pictured here), but that certainly wouldn’t count as a gift. at least not by my estimation.

luckily, as the day was approaching i noticed an article in entertainment weekly with marc maron. marc is a comedian, former air america radio host, and now a prolific podcaster. also, my girlfriend loves him. a lot. she seems to have no tolerance whatsoever for talk radio in nearly any form, but is a loyal and rabid fan of marc maron’s WTF podcast. the article mentioned marc recorded his podcast in his home, which happened to be only 7 miles away from where i lived. aha. . .

i sent maron an email through his site, explaining my situation, explaining who i was, hopefully explaining that i’m not a hack, and asked if he’d let me photograph him as a birthday gift for a strange girl he’s never met. typical for me, the email was too long and too wordy, and a few days passed with no response. i was starting to get nervous, trying to figure out any sort of gift that’d be as good as the gift of marc maron. but then, marc maron saved my ass. i was actually at my girlfriend’s house when i checked my email. two lines:

“I’m in. I like pictures of me. When?

Thanks, Maron.”

we ended up being able to schedule the shoot about a week and a half before my girlfriend’s birthday, which gave me ample time to print them and throw ‘em in a frame. i set up a small studio in marc’s living room, and he was great. sometimes i’m a little nervous with comedians, they often tend to do shtick. from what i knew of marc before meeting him he seemed a more introspective, darkly neurotic, pessimistic sort, so i figured we’d get along all right. we may have similar sort of oh-shit-what-now worldviews, and whatnot. i explained what i wanted to do, something simple, on a white backdrop, in black & white, and he was all in. even though i expected to have not more than 10-15 minutes with him, marc was actually really patient and suggested many things that i never thought he’d go for. at one point he said “hey, i have a devil hat.” that’s not something you hear every day, so i couldn’t pass it up.

it was actually really nice to do a shoot like this in this sort of context. usually when i shoot celebrities it’s for a much different audience. maybe you shoot it for the specific photo editor and you try to gear it toward what they might like, maybe you gear it toward what the magazine might need, or what the thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of faceless, nameless readers might like. the things you want from the shoot for yourself often have to take a backseat to other priorities, as time and freedom to dictate circumstance is often very much in short supply. what a lucky thing to be able to do something like this for an incredibly specific audience, for just one person.

in the end, i made two prints for the birthday present, 10″x13″, framed. you might think it strange to give a shirtless picture of some other dude to your girlfriend as a birthday gift, but let me tell you. . . it went over great. at first she didn’t know exactly where the pictures came from, but she’d been on enough shoots with me to know that they were my pictures. the realization slowly dawned, he was at marc maron’s house. and then she realized that the whole thing was set up just for her. i did have the fleeting thought, though, as i was giving her the wrapped, framed prints, “wait, he was awfully quick to take off his shirt. . .is marc maron flirting with my girlfriend?”. still, she never saw it coming, and marc maron made me look like a hero. thanks, man.

i have looked like this for two thousand, eight hundred and one days. after thursday, i’ll look different than i ever have before.

this week i’m headed off to orlando to the cardiology 2010 conference. i’ll be speaking and signing books there saturday night (2.13.10) at the disney contemporary resort. if you’re in the neighborhood please stop by and say hello!

as part of my presentation to the conference i made this short film. this conference is mostly a medical one, with 26 of us (out of 900 attendees) being classified as “miscellaneous.” a long while ago i met a CHD researcher who told me that one thing doctors and scientists often miss out on is information on the emotional lives of their patients. given that, i wanted to show how some of the subjects from the book are doing now, as young adults out in the world. they’re dealing with the same things we all have to contend with – school, the future, family, love, fear. and they’re all a whole lot more interesting than listening to me speak!

my recommendation: watch it HERE, full screen, in HD for best results.

on september 23rd at 12:36pm my niece, willamina, was born. so i’m now officially the coolest uncle in the room. (okay, the only uncle in the room.) here are pictures from her first day of life – 7 lbs, 13 oz, chubby and healthy and beautiful! happy birthday, guppy!

congratulations to my brother, james, and my sister-in-law, emiko!

norma is my mother’s neighbor. she walked by while i was setting up in the alley to film my brother and his wife on father’s day. many people who walk by photo sets jokingly say “hey, you gonna take my picture, too?” i always answer yes to this question, and find that when you actually do it they become much less brave. i think the photo above is norma’s feeling on the picture-taking process. i can’t say i blame her. actually, these days, that expression sums up quite a bit for me.

(music by merle travis, available here.)