A few days ago, I was looking at a recent issue of Sports Illustrated that featured photographs from a current exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles called “SPORT: Iooss & Leifer,” looking at more than 40 years of sports photography from the two legendary SI photographers.
Now, I became familiar with Walter Iooss Jr. as a child because my dad grew up with him in East Orange, NJ, and played stickball with him. He also admitted to questioning Walter’s manliness at the time for walking around with a camera all the time. Well, that camera led to Iooss covering some of sport’s greatest icons — Michael Jordan, Joe Namath, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus — and photographing some of the world’s most beautiful women for SI’s annual swimsuit edition.
(Way to go, dad!)
Anyway, I checked out the exhibit’s web site and posted a link to it via Twitter, adding that my father played stickball with Walter in East Orange. The venue tweeted me back saying that it was “a great connection.” I then replied to ask if the video portions of the exhibit would be made available on DVD for people like me who can’t get out to L.A. for the show.
Well, today a David Scharff from the Annenberg Foundation tweeted me to say that a SPORT DVD is definitely in the works.
That’s all well and good, but when I get tweeted by somebody, I like to know more about him or her. So I usually check to see if they have a link to a web site on their Twitter profile. David didn’t, so I turned to Google.
As it turns out, David Scharff was once a songwriter and singer for a New York-based band known as The Student Teachers.
Never heard of them? Well, most people probably haven’t. But oddly enough, I have heard of them because one of their songs, “Looks” (listen below) has been covered and performed quite often by one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Mike Doughty.
And while I don’t have any personal connection to Mike Doughty (besides following him on Twitter and going to several of his shows) or The Student Teachers, I feel a personal connection with Mike Doughty’s music. So it’s just kind of funny how my dad’s personal connection to Walter Iooss Jr. led to my having a Twitter conversation with somebody who wrote and performed an obscure song made somewhat less obscure by one of my favorite musicians.
Brian Kelley 