Wednesday, June 06, 2001

Embarrassing Photographs of Brad on Official Documents

SIXTH IN A SERIES. COLLECT THE WHOLE SET. TRADE THEM WITH YOUR FRIENDS!



I ran across this a few weekends ago while sorting through a half dozen boxes of old files cluttering the small upstairs room that has been destined for five years to become a gloriously large walk-in closet and is finally fulfilling its destiny.

My friend Michael and I traveled to England together in the winter of 1997, staying in a little hotel in Brixton and tubing into the city or other points of interest each day. Our leisurely stroll to the Underground each morning took us past The Fridge, an imposing gay nightclub, and -- to my Anglophilic delight -- several of those red cylindrical post boxes, the likenesses of which grace die-cut postcards sold for 75p in the shops.

Because we would be there exactly one week, we both took tourist passes for the Underground, allowing us essentially unlimited travel for a modest price. The pass kit consists of a green TravelCard -- indicating its valid dates on the front and with a magnetic strip on the back permitting it to be fed into the automatic turnstiles -- and a photo ID card, pictured above. The TravelCard, we were assured by the earnest, blowsy and balding gentleman who sold them to us, was not valid unless accompanied by the photo, to be produced upon demand.

Naturally, in seven days, we were not asked to produce a photo corroborating our identities even once.

I'm ambivalent about this photo, although as quickly processed photobooth style pictures go, it's really not half bad. My hair is much longer than it's been in some time, but I still manage to display The Enormous Forehead of Doom. Four years later, my hairline is still receding at a pace on par with the dollar against the pound.

That's not a mullet style, by the way, just the shadow produced by the flash, I swear.