Except for spotting weights as the work-out buddy of Cristiano Ronaldo (where he’d really open up while he lifted), I can’t think of a better way to spend a lunch hour than accompanying Joan Jett around Union Square as she approached strangers with PETA vegetarian starter kits.

The kits can be found in newsstands all around New York City.

Joan’s story can only be told in pictures, all licensed Creative Commons (with attribution):

Meet Joan.  Joan’s a rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer and actress.  Kristen Stewart just played her in a highly-acclaimed movie about her life.  No, she’s not 32, she’s 51, if you can believe that shit.  Joan looks good.  She has been a vegetarian for 20 years.

Joan has vegetarian beginner’s kits.  She wants to give one to you.

To me?

Yes you, Hat.  Joan asks, “Do you care about animals and your health?”  Joan asks if he would like one of her kits.  Hat gladly takes one and talks vegetarianism with Joan.

Now everyone is happy.  Joan is happy.  Hat is happy.  But Joan does not yet see those women with strollers over her shoulder.

Excuse me miss, but do you like animals?  Is that your blond baby?  Is he a vegetarian?  Let me tell you about the health benefits of vegetarianism for women.

Look at these beginner’s kits and don’t worry about the girl’s shirt behind you; it doesn’t mean that she eats cats.  Did you know that the  turkeys you buy at the grocery store can’t have sex?

Thank you Mrs. Joan, we will share these kits with our Mrs.

Hello Head of Hair, do you care about animals and your health?

Yes, yes I do care about animals and health.  Let me take a look at one of those beginner kits you have there.

Thank you for caring about animals, Head of Hair, it was nice to meet you.  But wait…

…who is caught in Joan’s eye?

Why it’s another person who cares about the tortured lives, environmental degradation and unnatural diets of factory farm animals.

Joan rocks.  And so does PETA.

Click here to see more of these Creative Commons photos of Joan Jett at Flickr.

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I took my nephews to a massive pillow fight in New York City’s Union Square for International Pillow Fight Day.  Roughly 150 cities were scheduled to participate in an event that is aligned with the so-called urban playground movement.  Aside from the occasional crusty pillow and whiff of B.O., it was a blast (that’s me in the third shot).  All images are licensed Creative Commons 3.0 (please link back here):

Tonight Paul Auster, as a I type this post, only an hour after that photograph was taken, is speaking before a large group of people on the fourth floor of Barnes & Noble Union Square, the must-stop for anyone who has written something worth knowing about.

The choice this evening was Invisible, and for me the event ended a horror before it began.  I left shortly after taking these shots.

I had planned on quickly saying hello to Auster.  He, Salman Rushdie and I had a small conversation last year at a breakfast honoring Israel’s gift to literature, Amos Oz.  I wouldn’t expect Auster to remember some party chit-chat from 2008, yet it makes a good re-introduction as photographer’s routinely identify themselves to the subject.

But it was made impossible by a man who was almost a penciled caricature of a paparazzo. What made it comical to me (not to anyone else) was that there was absolutely no need to go paparazzo.  He and I were the only photographers there, and it was Paul Auster in a bookstore not Britney Spears on a red carpet.

I should have known the guy was trouble.  The entire twenty minutes before the start he wanted to go on-and-on with me about the guy with Alzheimer’s who won the Nobel Prize for something he did decades ago.  He talked about things I don’t care about, like Einstein and fiber optics, and the tragedy that only now this guy gets the big prize as he suffers from memory lapse.

Most photographers don’t want to talk.  Maybe over the years they see the same photographers covering the same events, and friendships develop; otherwise, they get in and out and don’t want to hear a random photog’s life musings.

Not this guy.  His eyes were so bloodshot that they barely looked like eyes since the inflamed skin surrounding them was the same puffy red-pink shade as his cornea.  It all blended together in a fleshy wrinkled mass.  Somewhere in there I saw blue irises, drowning. His hair was so badly dyed–the gray, coarse base with what looked like a black dye-job over a brown one–it resembled a toupee.

B&N Union Square, despite its size, is somewhat intimate.  Often, I am the only photographer there.  When professionals show up they know from experience to respect the venue.  A bookstore is not the place to start shouting, “Mista Austah!  Mista Austah!  Look left!  Now above!  Mista Austah, toyn some to tha right!”

He did this while Maria, the curator of these events, was in the midst of her introduction of Auster, causing everyone to stare in our direction to a point that Auster, holding up his index finger like a schoolteacher, had to “Shhhh” the guy.  He was making a spectacle of himself (and by association, me).

These photography sessions don’t last forever.  You’re expected to take a few shots and then let the person alone.  Not this guy.  He wouldn’t stop photographing Auster, gesturing, yelling loudly, “Mista Austah, one maw look down please…”

Every photo I took has Auster, lips pursed, staring at this fool.

Auster looked at me and I nodded in a sign that I got what I needed.  I turned off my camera and looked at this guy still going nuts with the flashes.  To stop the endless shots that had long worn out their welcome, I moved in front of the guy’s camera and made the quick introduction to Auster.  Flustered, he only brightened with recognition when I mentioned the Amos Oz breakfast.

Then he was called up to the podium.  I turned toward the exit embarrassed.

The images on this post are licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution; any re-use is permitted but please link back to this post with credit.

John Hodgman, known for his personification of a PC in Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign and as a correspondent on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, has just released the audio book of More Information Than You Require. Below are my photos for its release at Barnes & Noble’s Union Square megastore.

The images on this post are licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution; any re-use is permitted but please link back to this post with credit.

Tonight I had the supreme opportunity to listen to Nick Cave read from his new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro.  Katherine Lanpher interviewed.  A lot of Cave’s friends were in attendance, as well as best-selling author Larry Sloman, who I photographed on the red carpet at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.

The event was the Barnes & Noble Upstairs series (like Jane Goodall’s visit), and the store has been staging some first rate billing in the last year.  Good job on the events, Union Square B&N.

I haven’t returned to the photography–I sat out the Brooklyn Book Festival yesterday and attended a Wikimedia New York City meeting instead–but I did upload a few shots for Cave’s Wikipedia article, as well as a shot of Lanpher with Cave.  I hate seeing a brilliant man’s article suffer.

Below is a photographic essay of the evening (feel free to share your experience if you attended):

The last three I gave to the Creative Commons and may be reused (click on them for the license and to download higher resolutions).