The news stops for no one

I was with Guillemette when the Pope died. We were on Elizabeth street viewing GQ's curated collection of photographs by servicemen and women from Iraq. She said she was disappointed by the show. She had expected to see a different side of the war. The photographs represented similar views of war and of being a soldier that already appear in magazines and on TV.

We wondered if it was because, living in a mediated world, people take pictures that reflect what we expect to see reflected through what we already see. I said the show probably reflected the curatorial bent of GQ magazine's editors. Of some 10,000 photographs by 1,000 photographers, less than 100 made it to the walls of the Nolita gallery.

We walked out of the gallery into the rain. Simone sms'd me but I didn't have time to check the message. We walked to Cafe Gitane and then to Ceci Cela for coffee. Guillemette ordered a cappuccino. I ordered a cappuccino, and Guillemette chimed in, "and a Paris Brest?" I didn't know what it was and so ordered one. She said it was sinful. She told me stories of eating them when she was younger, and how her aunt would buy her cousins one every Sunday after mass.

As we sat and drank and tried to dry out, Guillemette's phone rang. A sign above her head read "No cellphones in this room." She answered. I checked my messages. Simone's message told me the pope had died. I looked at Guillemette and said the pope had died an hour ago. It was her editor on the phone. She had to get to work. Posted by eku at April 3, 2005 10:18 AM