Friday, October 15, 2010

Rico Rodriguez will be in my Entourage!

Ok...my image consultant is going to kill me, nevertheless, I do not know what other way to describe Rico Rodriguez, the child star from the TV series, "Modern Family" than to say "He is the 'Coolest' kid in Hollywood!"

I worked a Promo for his K-mart web-series in Times Square and actually had a chance to Pow-wow with the little star for a brief minute. It was my roommate, Cate's Birthday so I had Rico give her a little shout-out... Enjoy!

The best part about this kid is he instantly just stands up straight and begins to smile once cameras are put on him, whether they are big news cameras or just little camera-phone devices, he smiles so graciously and perks up so lovingly, you can;t help but want to invite him to hang out with the big kids when you play football on saturday! When I am famous... Rico Rodriguez will be in my Entourage!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010


OH MY GOSH! Look at that crack... or should I say chasm! My soul was humbled today in the presence of anatomical grandeur... Photo by Martin Funck.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Heretical Book of Ellis

This Sunday I volunteered to teach Sunday School at Church, and here's what I came up with!

The lesson in our manual was Lesson 5: The Creation. Being the visual artist that I am I decided to make a supplementary handout for the class that I was willing to draw myself that illustrated the simple steps from our pre-existence in heaven through the seven days of creation. A simple task right?

Well, by the time I laid pencil on paper, or better said "inexpensive bic pen on paper," I started improving upon my original design. I have always been intrigued by natural science and physics, and I was actually a physics major my first year in college. I have always been intrigued by how much true Science and true Religion actually do not conflict, especially in the arena of The Big Bang theory and Evolution so I decided to include a few side-notes in the visual handout I was making.

As you can see below the earth icon, the first of my "few" side notes were notes reminding me to explain that the King James translation of the Bible was weak and modern translations of the original hebrew show that in the first "period" God separated the heavens from the earth, thus allotting 500 billion years for the Big Bang o do its job naturally. At that point I figured that if I was willing to make a few sidenotes on the Big Bang, why not include a few more about evolution in the Old Testament... so I did (see more below Earth Icon).

This of course became an addiction.

After the Evolution notes I could not resist showing how, though man did not come from monkeys, he definitely descended from simpler forms of human life, i.e. Homo Erectus, Homo Habilus, and so on. Some of these cavemen were massive, and though homo sapiens eventually evolved alongside them to become the chosen vessels into which God "breathed life," that these massive earlier men suddenly went away, thus prompting the more than seven references to giants on the Old Testament and Book of Moses! (See Genesis 6:4)

And...now that we've conquered Big Bang, Evolution, and Giants, and at least one major Old Testament's observation of paranormal phenomenon, then why not take the full plunge and talk about Isaiah's observation of flying orbs, german foo-fighters, and how "UFO"s, both foreign and domestic, and the string theories and space-time continuems that make space their travel possible can explain God, Heaven, and a whole lot of other things!

By the time I was done, this masterpiece was the final result(see attached photo)! It was a Saturday night and I didn't want to have to break the Sabbath by photocopying my little eight and a half by eleven piece of heaven, (Yes, this was my Saturday night) so I quickly ran to the local FedEx-Kinkos on Park Ave.

Unfortunately, the 8.5 by 11 piece of paper I originally drew on was so loaded to the margins with pictures that I had to photocopy it onto an 11 1/2 by 17 piece of paper fro it to fit. To help me figure out the machine, the local kinkos guru, we will call him Marcus, and his expertise were enlisted. He came over to the machine helped me load the document, and then raised his eyebrows when the final products came out. He asked for an explanation of everything on the page and we got lost in doctrinal conversation for the last half-hour that the store was open. Before finally peeling ourselves away from eachother, upon the stern reminder of the manager that the store was closing, I gave him the first copy of my hand-out (now a full-blown double-page spread titled "The heretical Book of Cardon: Non-doctrinal musings for Sunday School") the copies of the prophet cycle and the origins of the book of Mormon I had drawn for him right there in the store, along with a copy of my business card and an open invitation to church, all stapled into one.

He thanked me heartly and then proclaimed, "You should write a book, man, really, you should write a book!"

I think I will...

Monday, March 15, 2010

The best Rappers in NYC are homeless (photo pending)


P-diddy and 50 cent,

Step aside, because homeless person number 34267 just started breakin' down right next to me on the Staten Island ferry. And let me tell you, he's got flow! The homeless here in New York are an elevated breed. They rap, they pontificate, and they profane with a shameless abandon to which us performing artists can only aspire.

What is this guy doing going to Staten Island? He should be on his way to Universal Records!

Pirates of Staten Island



The Dread Pirate Blackbeard ain't got nothin' on us!

Yesterday, a storm was a brewin', but that didn't keep Martin Funck and I from going out on our planned tour on the Staten Island Ferry. Not wind, nor rain, nor... I can't remember the phrase, but you get the point. We took the 1 line down to the South Ferry Station where the Staten Island Ferry awaited us. The Ferry is one of the great public benefits of New York City. It is a well kept barge that leaves every half hour from Manhattan and with relative speed transports thousands (if full to capacity) of people to Staten Island. It is just small enough of a boat to remember you are in water as it dips and floats into the docking bay, yet it is large enough to provide a firm footing while it cruises through the bay, slicing through wakes and waves instead of being bounced around my them.

About those waves...

The first one, pictured above caught me by surprise. Martin and I should have seen it coming though. We wanted to get good nigh-time shots of the Manhattan skyline in the background as we returned from Staten Island toward home. The second floor of the boat was packed with people trying to do the same with their camera-phones and i-pod touches, so we headed downstairs. Outside were only a few young tourists from Belgium huddled against the doors, as far from the edge as they could get, with their hooded jackets completely secured over their heads. Martin and I looked at each other with excitement, seeing all that space to take photos. We assumed that the bottom deck, exposed more openly to the recently broken rainstorm, was all that was chasing the cowardly land-lubbers upstairs to huddle around their ipods and camera phones. Well... there was a lot more than that chasing them upstairs.

No sooner had Martin and I set up shop for a wide-angle lens glory shot of Captain Cardon Ellis braving the unforgiving storm than, BOOM, the first of what would become periodic bursts of epic tidal waves hit the deck, roared upwards in a plume of glory, and attacked the bow of the ship with anyone else crazy enough to be in the deck with it. Yeah... that was us.


Big Business vs. Small Business!


Acting is interesting when you are a six foot five inch tall, slender, male. Just this week I was cast as "Big Business" in a FedEx commercial produced by Manny Castro of FVGproductions. Apparently, despite the fact my grandfather escaped abject eastern European poverty, fought the Nazis in the Polish Brigade of the RAF, and emigrated to America with nothing but the clothes on his back, because his chromosomes are male and light-skinned, and look good in a suit, less than one generation later) I will be cast to represent everything liberals have branded as wrong with capitalism, America, and the world... a.k.a. "The Man."

It was a very entertaining shoot. The gist is as follows. I represent Big Business and I am mentoring several "proteges," small business owners, and showing them the ropes of making a profit. All of these actors were 5 foot to 5 foot six inches, so you could see there was a dramatic visual contrast in the cast. All of my omniscient capitalist wisdom is summed up into one piece of advice, "to Think Fed-Ex first for all your shipping needs." Supposedly, FedEx's 1800 office locations and online small business shipping tools make it possible for small businesses to pull more profits.

I do not know how true these claims are, as I have never owned a small business that included shipping. I do know however, that when we had to get the signs made for the commercial, the same signs you can see in the attached picture, we first went to FedEx/Kinko's and they were going to charge us 30 dollars per sign so we crossed the street to Staples and got the same signs made for half the price!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Under the Island (The Forgotten Underground)


One of the biggest blessings of having friends who are profesisonal, award-winning or up-and-coming photographers is that you get A LOT of unforgettable and impressive photos. If anyone reading this ever wants to feel better about how they look I suggest they schedule a session with Salvadore Brandt or Martin Funck and their self-conciousness will go away. These men are magicians. The latter, Martin Funck, my roomate for the month of March, who I recently also met in Berlin, is the author of the attached photo.

I met Martin while visiting my friend, Emanuel Millar, on set at Babelsberg Studios in Berlin. Martin had met Manny last year as an extra in "Inglorious Bastards" and Manny (Emmanuel's nickname) invited him to come to America to pursue more of his modeling and photography career. Once again, while in Berlin, I was the benefactor of knowing Manny and his circle of artist friends and I met another master. This time, his month-long planned trip to America fell perfectly into my roomate, Catherine's, month-long planned exodus from Manhattan so we struck-up a roommate bargain for the month of March.

Two days after I arrived back from Berlin, Martin touched down at JFK airport, camera bag ready, and flash-batteries charged. Martin Thanked me today for "always having good ideas," about photography. I realize my good ideas are nothing more than inviting him along with me on my daily adventures and social gatherings, introducing him to interesting people, and then mentioning to them that he is an award-winning German photographer, who would love to take complimentary photos of them for his portfolio. Of course, no-one hates good photos of themselves so the people I introduce him to become "good ideas." Nevertheless, I thanked him for the compliment.

One of the "good ideas" we met this week was Lindsey Campbell. A dear friend of mine from college, Lauren Campbell, has a sister, the young woman in the photo with me, who recently moved to New York to attend a prestigious hair academy that will soon be featured in a television pilot. Anyway, no sooner had I met her and some friends on Monday for our weekly FHE social gathering at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, then Martin was fixing a shoot-date with her for that Saturday.

Lindsey had a beautiful smile and is one of the only girls who I've ever seen pull of bangs well, so I decided she would indeed be a "good idea" to shoot.

I often accompany Martin in his photography escapades as a liaison between him and the American Public. It's also just a selfish guise to have some fun in New York and vicariously make people happy by presenting them with a beautiful piece of art, in which they are the focus. In this case, Lindsey showed up to our apartment, we took some photos of her in variously natural lit parts of our Gramercy apartment, and then decided that we would head out into the grundge of the neighborhoods south of us to try and get some "edgier" shots of Lindsey.

I had mentioned hearing of an abandoned subway station somewhere downtown and talked about funky graffiti that could be spotted in the East Village so we headed out into the downpour of Manhattan. I credit God for having led us to this perfect location. I had no idea where an abandoned subway station was, nor which ones would even look grimy enough for some "edgier shots," as New York City's standard of cleanliness per station varies drastically. Nevertheless, we headed out into the cold and followed our general impulse to head southeast. Before we knew it we found ourselves in the Delancey Station of the J train South into Brooklyn.

While inspecting the station we saw that way at the end of the station, there used to be a mezzanine and a stairway that led somewhere but was now sealed off. The subway station was ancient so we knew the sealed-off door had to represent passage to some lone, forgotten underground. Luckily, through some man-holes carved into the side of the station, one could see that many years ago, before the station was modernized, there was an entire other terminal about 30 feet in front of where the current subway station was. To get to it, however, one could no longer go up the stairs and walk over, you had to jump onto the live tracks in between subway passings, climb through the maintenance slots over the electric-current lines that power the subway, and jump into the next station.

So... we did.

It was definitely a dangerous manuever, and probably somehow a violation of the Patriot Act, but nevertheless, a completely worthwhile endeavour. We ran to the end of the track, climbed down the steel service ladder onto the tracks, hopped through the service hole and then found ourselves in a different world. This half of the forgotten station was covered in graffiti and trash. So long had it been since life traveled through this station that the iron subway tracks had actually been ripped up or dislodged in some parts. Everything was covered in a magnetic, ashen, dust. It was silent, and the darkness swallowed any echoes.

It was actually a somewhat scary experience. Everyone knows there are people that live in the subways and the place was so completely dark and amplified each whisper so much, and there were so many orifices in that underground arena from which spooky noises could come that one could not help but get a little goose-bumped on occasion. Complex and cankered ventilation shafts bored into the ceiling of the subway tunnel, brilliant engineering in the 30's to naturally syphon carbone-dioxide-ridden gas into the fresh air above, would occasionally emit the eerie soundtrack of a whisper whisper of people walking on the sidewalk, over 30 feet overhead. There was also a mattress and well-covered bedding arrangement in that part of the station that looked recently occupied, who's unknown owner was out doing unimaginable errands, so we knew we were not alone.

Because the J train eventually shared the tunnel with this abandoned station again about 120 yards further down the tunnel, the ocasional passing of the J train would be preambled by a rumbling you could feel in your knees and then a light at the end of the tunnel we were standing in. And though we could see there were not even tracks in some of the places were were standing to lead the train to us, you still felt doomed as the J train came hurtling down the tunnel, it's deafening roar and screaming brakes finally screeching to a halt only 15 feet east of us. I couldn't help but think that some crazy serial killer or simply coked-up murder-loon would easily have enough time to hide in the shadows until a train was going to pass, and as it did, he could leasurely take us by surprise, killing both of us with a knife or a shotgun, or a bazooka for that matter, so deafening was the noise, and never even alarm people in the train station next door because anyone who's been to New York knows the passing subways sound like screeching karackens for 45 seconds as they hurtle past (a terrible run-on sentence, but complete nonetheless).

At that point my mind was just having too much, and far too dark, of fun and so I had to calm myself saying, "if God led us to this great photo-shoot spot, I doubt he would be putting us in harms way." Nevertheless, the space did inspire a treatment for a "Blair-Witch Project" meets "the Duel" screenplay whose treatment I will write tonight!

All horror-movie thoughts aside, we had a great shoot, met the homeless man whose mattress shared our abandoned train station mid-shoot, and returned over the tracks and into civilization without injury. We even passed an MTA employee on the way out that saw us emerge from the probably forbidden domain and he seemed to shrug it off as not a problem. I love New York. Check back soon for links to the entire cache of photos from the shoot that will be posted as soon as Martin finishes "touching them up" a.k.a. removing my copious acne from them in photoshop.