the things we think but do not say

I know I’m milking this one, but I finally got this uploaded into a properly shareable format. Mileage Run - the movie, as presented by You Tube. For info about this mini trip go to an earlier post here.

After seeing so many amazing experts during the research of this Chicago guide book I just worked on, I remembered a thought about the idea of expertise I had a while back.

To me, it’s always just made sense to find and make friends with experts. I love experts and I’d like to think that I’m and expert too (at least a few areas). And by expert I mean someone that is extremely passionate in their love of any topic. Whether that’s a professional expertise in software or engineering, or a personal expertise in sneakers. Many times you don’t get paid to be an expert in your area of interest. But it’s great if you are. So when I look for advice, tips or the inside scoop on anything (music, consumer electronics, fashion) I seek out those experts and make them my friends.

I’ve always been attracted to the idea of being a specialist. It’s inherent that you put yourself (and more importantly, your point of view) into a smaller group of the populace. And the greater expertise you gain in your field of interest the greater the potential for a demand for your point of view. Now of course, being an expert in the mating habits of the Peruvian mole rat might not get you on the guest list of many post-Oscar award night celebrations, but I’d like to think that within Peruvian mole rat circles, you were Big Man On Campus (BMOC).

I’d love to one day make a study (perhaps a documentary) about what common threads there are between all experts. Is there similar personality profile between experts in astrophysics and criminal psychology? Is it the pursuit of knowledge to the Nth degree? How much of one’s ego drives someone to be a specialist?

For the last two weeks I’ve been working on probably the most fun project in years. For me it was the perfect alignment of a few objectives: my ambition of being a photographer, my dream of designing a book, and creating a celebration of Chicago’s uniqueness. All at the same time.

At the studio, our clients we often asked us, “what’s good in Chicago?” Well, if you polled everyone you’d get a bunch of different answers including cool bars and restaurants to interesting stores places to cultural places to go look at. Our studio also have many imports from our other studios for days, weeks or even months at a time, asking the same question. The funny thing is, the places we’d recommend don’t change that much. There’s new places all the time that come and go, by the staples we’ve recommended for years. And after years of not having this information collected in one place we thought its about time we did.

After a frantic planning phase and four days of intense photography all around the city (only two parking tickets!) we collected 2000 photos and produced a kick ass guide book to Chicago. A guide to the more curious places. A curious guide if you will.

The book features places to go shop, places to go eat, places to go stand and watch people and places to go have a drink. The many people in the studio contributed and have given their personal voices in their write ups that I think this book should be able to stand with the many other guides that exist.

I have no idea if this book will make it to the public at large but we’re getting a super small batch made as a proof of concept. I’m just happy to live in such a rich city of unique, fascinating places. For now, I would recommend the book ‘eat, shop, chicago‘ as it does a good round up of places, despite it’s overly gushy, girly writing.

Lastly, the photo above is part of a spread featuring the Trixies of Lincoln Park. May they live long and produce even more beautiful, vapid people!

Broadcast live on C-Span this weekend, Stephen Colbert managed to pull off a massive coup giving the closing speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. He managed to insult the entire audience full of White House Press Correspondents who simply don’t know where to look or when to laugh. And best of all, he gives the President a total roasting, when he’s not even sitting less than ten feet away. I don’t understand why the WHCA didn’t expect that he might pull such a stunt. He manages to take shots at the Bush Administration, at the Associatied Press, at national media in general and of course George W. himself. Stephen Colbert’s balls must be massive indeed.

It seems that this video has had a huge impact on them internets, generating hits like “The Chronic-What!-Cles of Narnia”, but interestingly general media is apparently in two camps about his speech (that is, if they covered it at all). One camp, like I did, found his jokes the most cutting when the silence in the room was deafening. Some saw these moments as evidence of a comedian bombing. I guess Tucker Carlson will never quite got the joke after his reaming from Colbert’s mentor, Jon Stewart.

Catch Stephen Colbert’s performance here on YouTube in three pieces before it get’s pulled. Alternatively there’s a edited version here on Google video. And finally a transcript of the entire speech can be found here.

Sorry for all the links but it’s an exciting story.