Rockin @ Four Months

Well it has taken a while to post this but about a month ago I went to NYC for my 4 month post op visit. It was a rocking good time with a lot going on. I decided to spend the weekend hanging in NYC before I hit the doctor's office on Monday. However I first I had to get over the trauma of seeing these Super Bowl Champion logos from a distance and getting this Pavlovian WOW!! from thinking "The Patriots" and then remembering it was the freakin Giants that won the Super Bowl!! But I got over the pain, kinda, and then hooked up with my friend and awesome photogapher Elizabeth, www.elizabethwaughphotography.com and headed down to Chelsea. Actually, we almost had a tragedy as the guy who took this picture stepped back to get a better frame and almost went off the platform onto the tracks!! So Chelsea, land of art yes,
but I also found this cool garage where if I ever decide I want a Street Machine this guy will be glad to outfit my car with a Nitrous Tank! So we walked around the galleries and while I didn't find too much of interest it was fun to play with Liz's intense eyes and the poppy paintingsand have her get into being an object d'art But enough art. What I was really excited about was the evening's event. A guy who had the same surgery with me runs marketing for Madison Square Garden, or "The Real Garden" as he calls it and he gave me VIP passes in his luxury suite to see a heavyweight fight featuring The Russians, Klitschko and Ibragimov. It was a huge crowd and Billy Joel's daughter sang the national anthem and she can really sing but at one point she did seem to sound like Maya Rudolph's version of our anthem on Saturday night live..Oh well..its a thin line between passion and absurdity. But back to the fights. The bout before the main fight was this Irish guy Duddy, vs. a guy from Montreal, Smichet. Now Duddy was cleary the favorite and there were vendors with T-Shirts and irish flags etc, and Smichet was brought in for a beating. But, as even the Duddy fan with the brogue in our box noted, Smichet won, but as the other guy in our box noted: "It's fixed..Duddy will win" and he did. So bring back Don King and fairness to boxing!! Now the main bout between this 6 foot 8 inch central casting 44 knockout lout Klitschko, and this scrappy guy Ibragimov who couldn't find his way around or under the pathetic and somewhat spastic looking jab of Klitschko was 12 rounds of yawning for us so we took the opportunity to take a photo. So the fight ended and Liz and I avoided the celebrating Russians and headed up to our friend Andy's place to crash, Andy being the best host in the world! And I looked forward to crashing and getting up the next morning and having one of my favorite things in the world besides coffee, a seeded roll with the butter already spread and the roll cut in half for easy eating on the go. One of my peeves about Boston is that when you get what is called a "bulkie roll" the butter is always a frozen lump in the middle....it's just uncivilized. One of my other favorite things about NYC is that you can get a good shoe-shine on the corner while watching people go by. I was just walking around and this guy yells at me: "Gotta take care of those boots..." and he was right so I hopped up and I left with shined shoes, one of the few things you can do for small money and no mental effort, that makes your day just a little better. And it was with shined shoes that I went to Dr. Su the next day and was given an outstanding report, implants in place, bone healing, muscle strength coming back, and in another two months I should be in full bore. This is Dr. Su and his physician's assistant Dr. Blair who together are the top hip resurfacing team in the US. Yes, you didn't know you could become a surgeon while still a teenager! Actually one of my cycling buddies went to Harvard with Dr. Su for undergrad and while teenager is pushing it ..he's close! Anyway I don't care if he is 11!! My hips feel great and I am looking forward to cycling this spring and summer! In fact when in NYC I discovered that they are creating bicycle lanes that are totally separated by a curb from traffic and have separate lights for bikes!!! Now that's rockin!

Bi-Lateral Hip Resurfacing Accomplished

So here are my new hips courtesy of Dr. Edwin Su, his great staff including Blair who sewed me up with stitches as tight as a seamstress working in an atelier in Paris. Special Kudos to The Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC, (#1 in the USA for orthopedics), and Smith & Nephew manufacturing, (cause good parts are key). Now as you can see, (because you know how to read x-rays), this picture taken 4 weeks after surgery show all is well in hip-land and now we wait for bone to grow around the socket.Except fornot lifting or walking with over 20 lbs. while standing, no jumping up and down, and definitely no bungee jumping), I have no restrictions in terms of movement. At almost seven weeks out I am on spin bike with resistance and working up a sweat. I am walking on treadmill and lifting weights seated or lying down. I do physical therapy 3 times a week and scar massage at least once a week. I feel really good and I am super happy I found this procedure and could have it done before my hips were too messed up for this operation. In fact when I came out of surgery my friend Robert told me the doctor said that had a waited even a little longer I would not have been able to have this procedure. When it comes to elective surgery you want to know you had it done at the right time because I was thinking, if I waited a just a little longer they would come up with artificial cartilage or some solution that didn’t involve cutting or drilling. And yes, I had a lot of fear about this operation and it did involve major cutting and drilling from just cutting me open to get at the hips to reaming the femoral head to make it a little smaller to wacking the new hip hemishpere into place! I did get fearful at times yes I was on the phone with my surgeon on the way to NYC requiring a pep talk to keep driving torwards the hospital instead of away!!


And even after the operation I feel that it doesn’t matter how many medical shows you watch on TV with the competent caring staff. When they were wheeling me down the back hallway to the operating room which without my glasses looks like the back of a kitchen at a large hotel I start thinking that something is definitely wrong and that I have arrived at the “Hospital of Horrors” and that soon my body parts will be dispersed all over the world for the best possible price,
And while I know I am supposed to be wheeled into Operating Room #1 I have no way of knowing if I am actually going to arrive in Operating Room #1. But I comfort myself by knowing that I will recognize my doctor and his assistant realizing much to my dismay as I am wheeled into the room that everyone is in surgical masks, shower caps, and other means of concealment. Luckily, the anesthesiologist was from New Zealand so I recognized his voice as he proceeded to very efficiently knock me out!
But let me backup. I showed up at the hospital Tuesday morning in good if somewhat tense mood. But hanging in the patient waiting room with other people was distracting and it was only when I walked through the doors into the pre-op area and put on the gown with the mandatory ass reveal did I start to get nervous. Well luckily my friend Robert was with me as my hips and upper legs were shaved and labeled and signed by the doctor. ES are my surgeons initials and #1 means cut here first! It didn’t even matter that I was doing both as I had to select an order in case they had to stop halfway through to get home in time to watch “House”. So after I was prepped I waited in bed making "My Name is Earl" phone calls to make sure that I had made all needed ammends and went into surgery with a clear conscience. But they came to get me pretty quickly so I didn't get to everyone which is why you probably didn't hear from me.
So I am excited to be healing and looking forward to cycling with my new resurfacing buddy
who doesn't know he is my new re-surfacing buddy. (I shot these photos of Floyd Landis at the 2005 Tour de France final time trial!) But his parts were also manufactured by Smith & Newphew and they sponsor him as a cyclist and I am asking them to sponsor me on my MS ride this spring so you never know. I'll update the blog in the coming months and start asking you for donations to my MS ride!!!

Zipper Project Party #1

The 1st ever Zipper Project© Photo Shoot Dance Party took place on September 29th at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge. It was 1/2 photo shoot and 5/8 dance party. DJ Jesse Allen of Beat Connection spun the tunes, really spun, not some laptop digi-thing. Vinyl baby. We got some really good press in the Daily Candy and in the print and on-line version of the Metro.http://www.metrobostonnews.com/us/article/2007/09/28/01/5311-72/index.xml I set up a backdrop and lights
and when people were in the mood I photographed them in the spirit of revealations. There were wonderful moments during the evening and while the project is ultimately about intimacy and requires a quieter and more collaborative shooting environment people did get into the spirit of unzipping

unbuttoningunhookingunwindingwindingfindingrevealingalmostand just plain having funIt was a long night and I heard rumour that gallery people were seen discussing the hey dey of Studio 54 in NYC at 6 in the morning. I will be continuing now to work on images for the Zipper Project© over the next 6 months so if you know people who are interested in revealing the smallest, or biggest, part of their inner or outerselves please have them contact me at jonathan@starkview.com. And a special thanks to John and Nathan of the Pierre Menard Gallery - www.pierremenardgallery.com - for hosting a unique and wonderful time.

Florida in August

So I headed down to Florida to visit my Mom and to have a little R&R with my friend Andy.
One of the things I love about Florida is the amazing juxtaposition of people and stores that don’t co-exist anywhere else that I know of. You have retirees from the North driving around in BMWs while the local workers that thrive on the retirees drive around in pick-up trucks till they retire and then they drive around in BMWs while the immigrant work force still bicycles to work, which in Florida is no small feat.
And then you have the juxtaposition of stores.
One of our favorite places to eat is Skorpios, a Greek restaurant
sandwiched in-between a Pet Grooming place and a Tanning Salon that sells Smoothies. Even that combination, first, expose yourself to intense un-healthy uv rays and then have a nice anti-oxidant drink to prevent cancer is so Floridian!

So this is me and my Mom tastefully photographed on the mural of the Greek Isles inside Skorpios. Yasoo!




This is another one of our favorite spots, Mom’s Kitchen. Food is great, prices are cheap, and with the Early Bird special you can eat as much as my friend Paul does on our Tuesday night dinners when he isn’t buying! And you can tell by the cop car that the food is really really good…or free.

Well after a few days with Mom I hooked up with Andy to take a ride down to South Beach.


Andy rented a red Mustang convertible. Oh yeh, you do get double takes from da ladies, (aka 16 year old Cuban girls), and yes, some of the guys in South Beach asked for a ride....

So our first stop was City Place in West Palm where we took a trolley ride to Clematis St. where there was restaurants and live music…Oooohh... High Octane….” Smoke on the Water…” Well both the street and the music had a VD like atmosphere so we actually told our waiter forger it after he brought our sodas and we left! The high point was the driver
and this great group of girls on the trolley!
We then cruised down to South Beach where I had to get my picture taken along with the other riff-raff in front of the Versace Mansion, now a hotel where you can pay $ 1000.00 a night for a room or $ 5000.00 a night for Gianni's old room, or they will pay you 10,000 lira a night if you will sleep with Donatella in her room.
Further along the beach there was this cool family of 3 generations of women from Costa Rica who sell necklaces made from dried Bananas and Coffee Beans.
And then as we walked down Ocean Drive we found all kinds of Disneyesque characters from the Cigar Girl
to the Mermaid
and of course, the Life Guard.
Don't ask me, she said she saves lives.
So all in all, a pretty fun trip. Now the flight back was a bit awkward. Let me just say that I sat next to someone who asked the flight attendant for the extender. It wouldn't have been so bad but she brought a meal on the plane, (go figure), and when we hit turbulence her tray and beverage went flying because the tray couldn't go all the way down because of the girth of her...well you get the idea. But I caught the soda mid-air, switched seats, and besides my attitude about flying these days: Arrive alive, the rest is details.
J