My daughter takes very interesting photographs, most recently of her dolls. They're somehow strange and glamorous and sweet all at the same time. Sweet and weird. I can see things about her toys I think she sees when she photographs them: they look real, almost like they have an inner life. Sometimes she poses them together in an interaction that speaks of another world.


I asked her what to call the first photograph here and she said, "Hi, People!" And the second: "Baby Blue Eyes."

Obamania has hit. I guess I'm feeling a little trepidation that the gallant candidate will turn out to be like all of those boyfriends of old who looked so good, at first, and then turned out to be rats and super rats, as Holly Golightly would say. Like the Democratic Congress. Remember the joy when we voted them in last November? And what have they done? The Senate just passed another spying bill... What happened to the impeachment proceedings we were waiting for? How about ending the war? Can change come from within a corrupt system? We have to wonder. Meanwhile, Blackwater, a private company contracted by the U.S. government, kills innocent Iraqis, and the U.S. government shakes its head and says, Well the problem is there's just no way to prosecute this.

But back to my daughter's amazing photographs. When I was out in L.A. last year I met the nightlife paparazzi Cobrasnake and showed some of them to him. He liked them. I like his photographs too, which you can see at www.thecobrasnake.com. He's gotten very famous now and some people like to poke fun at him. But I like his stuff; it's good. He captures L.A. nightlife in all its silliness and celebro-sessiveness and slick neon style. Sometimes his subjects start to look like the signs along Sunset Boulevard they're drawn to like bugs to a zapper. He photographs with great energy; he's got an eye for the freshness of kids. He's not just a paparazzi, really, but a pop artist. And I think he's about 22...