Photo Guy

I will be the first to admit that in I can be a bad tourist. I try very hard not to be an Ugly American, with all the baggage that implies. But I do think I wind up being an Amusing Japanese, as I have this tendency to take pictures of everything I can find. This is especially true of things like animals, as for some reason I believe that stray dogs in Peru are fundamentally unlike stray dogs in the States. Probably has something to do with it’s political ideology, or the fact that it ages siete anos cada ano instead of seven years for each one as our dogs do. And clearly this difference has to be documented for posterity.

Nonetheless, I was startled last week in the Orlando Airport to see what, by all indications and accents, were normal, red-blooded Americans taking pictures of a Starbuck’s. With the possible exception of selling china cups emblazoned with the name of the state of residence, I cannot figure out what unique quality of this particular caffeinated outlet would cause anyone would do such a thing. A Starbuck’s is a Starbuck’s, and they’re all the same, equally good or bad, unless we’re talking the Starbuck on the original Battlestar Galactica who was a much better character, but a lot less hot then the buxom female Starbuck on the 2000’s version who is probably best known for sharing a bathtub with the Big Bang Theory’s Howard Wolowitz. But I try to be understanding, because during my traveling days I was working on a photo montage called “The McDonald’s of the World.” Guess it’s a case of the exposed film calling the photographer black.