"Still Life with Maximus"

Two weeks ago, opportunity came knocking at my door. He was dressed as a geriatric volunteer firefighter, soliciting donations in exchange for a photo shoot and a free 10 X 13 glossy family portrait. As inticing as it was, his timing was pretty horrible. This was early on a friday evening, and I was participating in my end-of-the-week, beginning of friday ritual, which includes smokin' one, getting chinkie-eyed, and ranting about how americans are stupid and Ron Paul is awesome while my ferret, Maximus hops around and makes me laugh. In mid-rant, there was a rapping on my chamber door from the previously mentioned "old dude", which triggered my wig out response. My first thought: DPS. Oh wait, I own property now, shit. Then who is it? I nervously scramble to the door, give the firefighter 20 bucks only because I didn't know what else to do, thank him and bid him farewell. I sit down on my sofa to examine the certificate he gave me for my photo shoot. How was I to use this? I have no family of my own, nor did I really want my pictures taken. I decided that this was obviously a sign of fate, who wanted me to succumb to her and have my ferret's photo taken professional, in a way that would pay homage to such an awkward situation. 

I thought to myself: This could be performance art. I will capture my state-of-being in this portrait, without actually having my picture included at all. What was I doing? Chiefing and talking about the world. Who likes to chief in this world? The Dutch and the Mexicans, of course! Thus, my "Still Life with Maximus" reflects two of the most prominent icons in Dutch and Mexican culture: The 17th century Dutch still life tradition, and the vivid Catholic shrines found in Mexico. 

So today, I took Maximus, along with a bag of objects which would be assembled together in the shot, to our photography session. These objects included: 

2 Florida Navel Oranges
A Virgin Mary Prayer Candle, 
One pack of Marlboro lights
Dead Pink roses from Valentine's day
The Bible
a banana
one bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey
An olive branch from Mt. Olympus in Turkey
3 rosaries: one of St. Mark's in Venince, one from the Vatican and another from Assisi
a bottle of holy water from the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus
A copy of "The Great Dialogues of Plato", Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and of course, Tucker Max's "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell"

So it's sunday, and I take all of these things to the photo session and wait for mine to begin. It's always an adventure when you take a ferret out in pubic, because most people are curious and pretty brave. When they ask, "Is that a cat?" I say, "No it's a ferret and he only attacks sometimes," but what I'm really thinking is, "It's a fuckin ferret, you dumb ass. Take your cat to the Chinese restaurant where it belongs and go get yourself an education." But in reality I just smile. At any rate, my appointment was just after church dismissed, and everyone dressed in their sunday best with grandma and grandpa, reeking of Cracker Barrel, sees me with a ferret, a bottle of whiskey and some rosaries. You can imagine the confusion in their minds at this point. Some questions that were asked by these onlookers included:

"So where are you from?"
"Are you Catholic?"
"Does the ferret drink the whiskey?"

Luckily, the photographer was a pretty cool guy, who seemed equally annoyed by all the stinky, dressed up old people. There are some great shots (as you can imagine) that will be posted on here in T-minus one week. I am elated, and only wish I had a video camera so that you could really understand and appreciate this experience. C'est la vie, n'est pas?

These photos served as inspiration for my project.