Michigan gets a bad rap. Newscasters have thrown around terms such as wasteland or dystopia when describing our mitten-shaped neighbor. All of the gloom makes this peninsula seem uninhabitable. Despite visions of empty factories and urban prairies, it’s not true. This place has so much life. People really do live here.

So, I made a sign that read, “Tell Me A Story,” planted myself on benches and curbs in Lansing — and waited. The stories in this video are the uncurated result of that experiment.

What’s clear is that there is so much humanity and resiliency to be found. It might be hard to hear underneath all of the clanking, but even quietly, it’s impossible to ignore.

Environmental art is beautiful and fascinating, but often inaccessible.  This exhibit collects famous works of environmental art in miniature form, made out of found materials.  Situated at the base of a particularly thick tree, “The Pine Tree Art Museum” aims to bring environmental art to those who might not otherwise be exposed to it.

This is my underwear, on a wall.

This is the short story of one man who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Song featured: “Hiraethus” by Daedelus.

Centered around a faux cake made of salt, this performance was conducted by a theatrical carpet bagger selling an audience on the restorative benefits of his false confection.  The animated gif below was projected upon the carpet bagger while he continued to schmooze.  Audio from vintage ice cream trucks also played on loop.  Ultimately members of the audience were dressed in party hats and served pieces of cake.

[Due to technical issues, video from this performance is only available by request]

“There they were, faint beneath the inhuman glow of fluorescent lights. Boxes and boxes of idyllic little porcelain figures lay stacked and waiting. This was today’s job. This was tomorrow’s job. Tiny hand painted toddlers were about to consume my entire week.

Before this I never had a reason to pay attention to detail. I list boxes of people’s odds and ends on eBay for a living. It’s been a quick and easy way to make money. Normally, I’d pull out an item, look it up and down, write a quick description, and click submit. That is, until I started listing Hummel figurines.

At first, I listed the entire little lot — every single one in mint condition. It took a while to get over the fact that I spent more time looking into their fixed glossy eyes than I spent with actual people, but these were perfect. Well, I thought that these were perfect.

Scrutinous Hummel buyers (and they all were) refused to bid until they had questioned every last possible flaw of each uncomfortably cute figure. Forced to care, I bought a loupe and a book on official figurines. The Hummel Field Guide was like reading a Lilliputian dermatologist’s manual. Having to reference it often, I re-inspected each piece for malignancies. I scanned over and over for the cancers of improper care and age. Ignoring the hesitant smiles of the miniature German statues, my eyes examined their every inch. Under the magnifying lens, my life very quickly became filled with sickeningly sweet porcelain.

Identifying blemishes was not as apparent as I had expected. In the beginning I was convinced that their pallor was a defect, as if they had been in their boxes for too long. I quickly learned that this was normal, though their craquelature was not. Every time I saw crazing, my dry, white hands would make a note. I also recorded pieces with fleabites. These barely visible dots and pinpricks designated flaws in the initial manufacturing of a statue.

While surveying for fleck and hollow I casually glanced at my hand. My thumb, wrapped around a little boy playing an accordion, looked different to me. I couldn’t place it initially, but then I saw them, hiding there. Under the skin, almost imperceptibly, three dots formed a wart. Though small it marked my finger with a slight discoloration. Surprised, I put down the collectible and looked more closely at my finger. It was just a wart. Sighing, I picked up the boy once more and went back to work.

Over the next few days, as I listed so many cherub-like statuettes, my distracted eyes found themselves inspecting my thumb, then my hand, and so on. I tried to ignore my body, but slowly began to scrutinize it with more intensity than the Hummels I was listing. Trying to refocus myself, I would type away at my computer or squint through the lens of my loupe. This did not work – reminders of my body were all around. My gut loomed in the sagging bag of packing peanuts, while my yellowing teeth were hidden among the water stains and mold of the ceiling. I saw my pale skin in the concrete walls, my receding hairline in the wearing carpet, and the miniscule wart in each period typed. Overwhelmed, I closed my eyes.

Wrapping up the lasts of the Hummels, I placed it in a box with the tag “will not list,” and then clocked out early. With my hands in my pockets and my sleeves pulled all the way down I turned out the lights, locked the door, and walked to my car. In the driver’s seat I let out a deep breath and removed the little hula girl from my dashboard, placing her face down in my cup holder. Driving away from the parking lot, I was stopped by the red light before the freeway. I looked at all of the cars passing by, all of the people in their little boxes, neatly packaged and buckled in. Sitting there, watching the cars drive past, I repeated myself saying, I’m not flawed, I’m normal, I’m not flawed, I’m normal, I’m not flawed, I’m normal. As the light turned green I pulled my little box onto the freeway among the others. Merging into traffic, I desperately wanted to believe that everyone else, strapped into their own tiny car, was just like me.”

“In a taxi cab two wide we sat three across.  No seatbelts buckled us in, rather we were
glued together arm to arm, squished intimately between the car doors.  Outside of our windows
Cairo as we knew it seemed to transform itself.  Normally Cairo was an aimless city that bustled
in all directions.  Cabs drove fast when there was space and slowly wiggled six or seven cars into
four lanes when there wasn’t.  Pedestrians calmly walked into traffic, fearlessly ignorant of the
minibus’ passing only twenty inches in front of them.  Street vendors walked and ran and
shuffled and hobbled along.  Everything seemed to move according to its own course.

This afternoon was different though.  The whole city appeared to be moving together.
Cars and pedestrians accumulated to form one jumbled caravan heading northwest.  If it wasn’t
clear before, the flags draped over every last vehicle said it all.   There was only one reason for
the northwestern exodus that day.  The Cairo International Stadium.  Football.

Honking at each other, beeping back and forth, all of the drivers voiced their allegiance
with their steering wheels.  In red, fans of El-Ahly, in white, Zamalek.  Passengers didn’t just
wear their colors, they were surrounded by them.  Flags of all sizes hung out windows and lay
draped across car hoods.  Ugly dashboards were muffled, covered in fabric and fringe.
Appropriately colored tapestries and other team paraphernalia disguised even Kleenex boxes.
Having the two best football teams in Africa and the Arab World, in one city, produces a pretty
intense rivalry.  Every single Cairene football fan makes it blatantly clear whose side he is on.

We inched onwards and our car spat, splattered, and sputtered from the wear of twenty
years of use.  Every time we moved even ten feet, the chatter of the stadium seemed to double
beyond our passenger windows.  We spent about forty-five minutes squeezed into the backseat,
grasping our prized imported American fruit snacks and bags of Egyptian muesli with sweaty
fingers.  Then we parked.

Starting about a mile away, we pushed through a heavily male crowd.  From that far back
we could see only two things – the stadium, seemingly eating its way out of a large hill, and rows
of soldiers in black riot gear, meshed together into an imposing human fence.  The closer we
came to the soldiers the more human they seemed.  Not that they were more friendly or showed
any sort of emotion on their faces.  That was not the case.  Instead, their helmets turned in a
reflexive chain reaction, amorous dominos, visibly and sometimes audibly lusting after the two
women on either side of me.  A few soldiers grunted, others moaned.  Their noises made it very
clear how sexually repressed Egyptian men are.  Though there were few, no Egyptian women
elicited this response.  In fact nothing else elicited a response from the guards besides the very
pale, very American ladies I was with.  By this point the two were used to the lecherous looks
and catcalls, but this was something very different.  Hundreds of men.  Loaded automatic
weapons.  All staring intently. They attempted to act coolly in the face of so many leering eyes,
but it tacitly disconcerted them.  As the only man among three of us, (and the one with the most
elementary Arabic skills) I was dismayed by an overwhelming sense of helplessness.  If anything
had happened to my friends, say a groping, sexual assault (both of which are not uncommon), I
would have been unquestionably useless.

We walked swiftly past the first barricade of riot police to the entrance of the stadium.
As I learned later, this was only the second of a number of arbitrary obstacles.  Before us, the
crowd split ways.  We looked down at our tickets — the only directive apparent was the word
theleth, or three, referring to a bleacher type level of seating.  With a bit of broken Arabic, basic
charades, and exaggerated facial features we managed to get a good idea of where to go next – or
at least which enormous line to queue up in.

To our left nearly five hundred men stood in line on a sidewalk, bordered by the backs of
more riot police.  As usual we tried to quietly blend in, casually taking our place in the back.
Standing there, people watching, I felt suddenly alone.  I turned around.  There was no one there.
I was the last person in line.  My eyes snapped back and forth looking for my friends.  Then I
noticed them.  Beyond the line of riot soldiers, a large man with a rifle was taking them by the
arm, gesturing to them.  One of the two spoke back to him in Arabic.  I could only pick up a
word or so from where I stood.  Amriki, Amriki, this is what I heard.  The friend speaking
gestured over to me, sending the soldier my way.  His gait was wide and would have been almost
cartoonish if I hadn’t been so scared.  He parted the soldiers next to me and pointed.  “Ante
Masry? Ante Masry?” He repeated.  I responded with two palms held outwards as they shook
back and forth, “Le’e.”  “No. No, I’m not Egyptian.  I’m from America” “Le’e. Ayna min
Amrika.” I gagged back. He took my arm and pulled me through the line towards my friends.
Then he pointed once more, but this time towards the gate at far end of the line.  The three of us
looked at each other.  There was no way we would cut in front of so many patiently waiting fans.
“Le’e shookran, No thank you,” we replied and began to walk back to our place in line.  “Le’e,
Le’e, Le’e,.” the soldier’s voice snapped from behind us.  We stood still at once and took an
anxious breath.  It was clear there was no other choice.  The two girls and I bowed our heads and
walked briskly down the line, while the eyes of every soldier and crowd member followed.

This was the first time any of us had seen one man discriminate against his own
countryman in favor of a foreigner.  It was a disturbing and alien sight.  Never before had I been
so humbled.  Never before had I been so ashamed, nor had I ever been so distraught about simply
being American.

After years of US event protocol I wrongly assumed that this first line would be the last.
It was in fact one of three arduously lengthy lines.  Each required a new set of assumptions, more
broken Arabic, and more hand wagging.  For a foreigner, these were three appropriately
monumental trials – seemingly characteristic in a land of tombs guarded by mythically
complicated pit falls and passages.

The passage through gate one marked the beginning of two new lines, forms that more
closely resembled twin monsters than orderly queues.  These, we later learned, were due to the
fact that both teams shared a single stadium.  Fans of Zamalek and El-Ahly sat in neighboring
sections, safely protected from one another.  Divided into lines, one red, one white, each row of
men grumbled and gesticulated at the other.  We paused to assess our options and immediately
made each line aware of our indecision.  As we consulted each other the crowd assessed our
clothes, loudly voicing their opinions at us.  The faces of fans in red sneered at our three white t-
shirts and made the decision fairly straightforward.  Instincts of self-preservation kicked in
automatically and we escaped into the comfort of the white line.  In its uniformity it was the first
place where any of us had felt some sense of belonging that day.

Unlike our experience in the initial line, no guards who patrolled the second felt the need
to awkwardly single us out.  Instead, we waited patiently in line, mostly in silence, just watching.
Beyond the two lines, rows of military transport trucks were parked in formation.  Just beneath
these vehicles we witnessed the most perverse example of what came to be known as “habibi
love.”

Habibi is an Arabic word that literally means “my love” (habibity is used for females).
This love isn’t necessarily a romantic or platonic love, instead it ambiguously refers to both
types.  Stereotypically, sexuality in Egypt is conservative and strictly heterosexual.
Homosexuality is met with absolute revulsion and is a crime punishable by execution — because
of this a bizarre contradiction emerges.  Based on the assumption that nobody would consciously
reveal his homosexuality in public for fear of death, masculine affection is openly displayed.
Grown men walk through the streets arm in arm.  Others sit at cafes smoking sheesha and
lovingly holding hands.  It was one of the few cultural characteristics that continued to baffle me
even towards the last days of my time in Egypt.

By their vehicles, a number of the soldiers ambled in circles, looking for ways to keep
cool in the hot July sun.  Some leaned against trucks.  Some stood and waited it out.  Others hid
from the glare, finding comfort lying beneath the military transports.  These soldiers didn’t
appear as separate bodies, instead as one large camouflaged mass.  Despite having so many AK-
47s and semiautomatic weapons packed in between, the troops spooned with the affection of
sleeping infants.  Their smiley faces beamed towards us as they quietly cuddled in the shadows.
The three of laughed inaudibly at the strange digression from our own army’s “don’t ask, don’t
tell” policy, careful to be discrete in our hilarity.

After a great deal of waiting our line of white moved slowly towards the next checkpoint.
Guards inspected our tickets at the second gate and looked us up and down.  They nodded and
we proceeded through this gate to the third line, which for lack of any other difficulty was mostly
an exercise in patience.  Time to think in line three brought me more anxiety.  If it was this
difficult to enter the stadium, getting out might be just as hard.

Four at a time the men in front of us moved through the final set of gates.  There, guards
grabbed tickets and without thought casually threw them into the air.  Behind them it rained a
confetti of red and purple tickets.  The hologrammed papers reflected the sun as they fell,
covering those waiting in an attire of silver and gold.  When it was our turn we walked forwards
and cautiously handed our tickets to the soldiers.  After an acknowledgement we hesitatingly
stepped forward, almost surprised to have finally entered the stadium grounds.

Ahead of us, a lone vendor frantically waved a handful of hats, flags, and banners, as he
fought with the screams of the crowd in the stands beyond.  High above him the backs of fans
leaned over the concrete edge of the stadium.  They fearlessly wavered in and out while shaking
their own sports memorabilia and fists into the air.

To the left of the vendor an immense and dark tunnel marked the last passage between
our seats and the three of us.  In this tunnel the cries of the stadium and the mass of entering fans
squeezed together into a racket and chaos almost unbearable; it was exciting, it was terrifying.
We were thrown forward out of the tunnel and into the crowd.  The intensity of their cheers,
though clearly for their team of choice, felt somehow directed at us.

With the continued rush of the tunnel we made it past the concession stands selling
ketchup and kabob flavored potato chips.  We ran to the stairs, then down them.   We ran past the
rows of wailing men.  We ran past the fans shrieking through horns.  Only steps ahead our empty
seats waited patiently.  The three of us screamed, joining the din of the crowd, as we forcefully
threw ourselves into the chairs.  Instantly and with an almost paparazzi like fervor, dozens of
men around us took out their cameras and cell phones.  Unashamedly, they marked the end of
our journey into the stadium with picture after picture of my two “beautiful American” friends.
It felt imposing and triumphant and unreal.  I was scared and thrilled and unsettled — and the
game had not yet begun.”

Times have been hard lately and people are looking a bit glummer than usual. I decided to head down to Lansing and Cleveland with a backpack full of bubbles and see what I could stir up. This happy video is a document of those two trips mixed with a bit of post production.

Song featured: “Choir from ‘The Sun’” by Mirah and the Microphones.

Using stickering/graffiti and lyrics from Tennessee Ernie Fords’ song, “Sixteen Tons,” I wanted to draw a connection between coal mining days past and the tenuous ties Lansing (and greater Michigan) has to the auto industry.

Song featured: “Great Day (Instrumental)” by Madvillain.

This is a compact visual retelling of the novel Demian, by Herman Hesse. Made in the vein of a cinematic trailer, construction paper characters and type were created, scanned, and then manipulated in after effects.

Song featured: “Long Live Mice in the Metro” by Colleen.