Hello Everyone,
This entry will be lacking in pictures, but abunde in words. Let me just quickly explain: wi-fi in Big Bear lags too much for me to sit around and wait for the upload. Most of the pictures will go up on Facebook anyway (it takes way less time to upload to facebook), so you can just check 'em out there.
This week finds me in Big Bear, working on a very low budget project. The crew is rather small (15 people max?), but that makes it that much more fun. I'm staying at the StoryBook Inn, about one hour and a half away from Los Angeles, so if something catastrophic or awesome happens, I am fully ready to jump in my car and be back home for the grand event.
Let me recap a little bit the past couple of weeks. Several important things have happened. Cate K. has left town, for good. Although we have lost an always fun to have serious chiller from our adventures, we have plenty of good memories to laugh about. Like that one time Cate and I tried to go to Opening Ceremony after having a couple too many free PBRs at the Pacific Design Center, but didn't make it before the store closed. Because it was closed, we had to find the nearest bathroom which happened to be in a strip club. So yes, I am not ashamed to say it, Cate and I visited a strip club together. Not as racy as it sounds, seeing as it was only 7 pm, and there were no dancers or patrons in the club yet. Anyway, that's hopefully the only time I will ever visit a strip club (knock on wood?) and I am happy to say I got to do it with none other than Cate.
As sad as I am that she left town, I can't blame her. The SFV has recently infected me with that same old dying-to-get-the-fuck-out-of-there feeling. Maybe it's because I've been spending too much time driving around Van Nuys looking for crucifixes, or maybe it's because my dad's been on summer vacation and I don't have the house to myself anymore. Either way, I would like to congratulate Cate for leaving the nest (for the second time!) but also express a fair amount of discomfort about my own situation. Sure, ideally we're all supposed to get fab jobs post college and move into snazzy appartments where our friends can come over and act a drunken fool to our heart's desire, but so far I've been trying the unemployed, starving artist/philosopher/slacker/depenent thing. At this point in time, I've been doing a LOT of starving and a fair amount of art/philosophy/slacking/dependency as well. I'm going to venture a guess that my feelings towards my housing and job situation, which range from severe dislike to apathy, have also turned me off to some of the best Valley adventures. But I try to look on the bright side. I'm fairly comfortable, and I have more resources at my disposal than I know what to do. And even better, I can always blame the economy for my lack of results in the what seems like the infinite game of cover letter, resume, rinse and repeat. So i'm trying, trying real hard, to maintain a positive attitude and stay focused on my larger career and life goals. I need to come out of this rut eventually, and when I do, it will just the best thing ever!
For the past couple of weeks I have tried to keep busy either in Hwood and L.A. but have taken it upon myself to find things I love about the SFV. The absence of digital photos is due to the absence of my camera chord (have you seen it? do you have it? please return it to me). So until the thing sprouts legs and walks back to where it got lost from, I'll be sticking to film. I know that means a slow turn over rate as far as developing and posting, but I think it's totally worth the wait.
Event wise, here's what I've been up to.
On Thursday night it was the downtown Los Angeles Art Walk. I had been meaning to go to this for a very long time and Dylan finally convinced me to do it. So Brett, Jesse, Gabe, Dylan and I took the metro down town where we later met up with Jordan. Now this was something else... The streets of downtown were flooded with hip people of all ages, some dogs, and countless food trucks. It was seriously hard to navigate through the crowd of drunken girls in heels or oxfords and dudes in toms or nikes. It was pretty clear that the art walk has turned into a drunken hip fest, and I must say I was rather dissapointed with the art I saw. I can't give any specifics, but the overall feel of it was very commercial. I chose "commercial" as the word to describe it because all the art seemed to deal with subject matter that was trendy, over played and mostly a week ago's news to me. The methods and mediums were also not that innovative. A lot of assemblages of homemade objects juxtaposed with industrial materials, a lot of paintings in rasta colors, and a lot (A LOT!) of collage art that looked like it had been commissioned by Urban Outfitters resulted in a not very enlightening experience. I guess my expectations for art are pretty high. I usually want something challenging and innovative, not a recylced message or medium that I looks like it could very well come out of the bowels of Urban Outfitters or Anthropologie. Not to say there wasn't anything I liked, but I just thought over-all the work was mediocre at best. I dug the vibe and the crowd though. It's so great to see that there are a lot of young people in L.A. interested in art geared towards a community event. I'm going to go again as soon as I get back to L.A. and hope for some better work this time.
The highlight of the trip was finding this very small cafe called the Lost Souls Cafe in an alley downtown. It was fairly isolated from the crowd, and they served some of the most delicious $5 sangria. Although it suffered from the same short comings many cafes suffer from, namely bad art from patrons, hip music from 10 years ago and an incomplete set of Jenga (!!!), the atmosphere was pretty good. They had some sweet couches to chill on, some really good food and drinks, and board games that facilitated a couple hours of fun.
On Saturday night, the gang went to the Beatles performance thing at the Hollywood Bowl.
Here we are, armed and ready to go with over 12 bottles of wine from TJ's (so we could each have one a piece), various ingredients for tacos, umbrellas and a blanket! Needles to say, the ratio of cheap wine to person invariably turned this into a shit show of hilarious proportions. The performance was um...not that great, but fun was had regardless. We were shushed several times during the show, which lead to me arguing in hushed tones that "you know what, this is supposed to be a communal experience!".
This night convinced me of several things:
- I still can't stand Beatles covers because the originals are the best
- I cannot drink an entire bottle of wine in under one hour
- People don't get what a communal experience is, and if they do, they're so not down
- We have fun together no matter what the hell happens.
So in light of all this, I just wanna thank Kami for planning this out, buying our tickets, reminding me to get beans from the store, and over all being fucking awesome! I will miss this face when you will be gone, but we're not gonna talk about that right now.
Anyway, that's it for now. It seems like I will have a lot of down time while I'm here. My responsibilities on this shoot are minimal, which will give me a lot of time to read, write, make calls and wish I were doing this instead:
This entry will be lacking in pictures, but abunde in words. Let me just quickly explain: wi-fi in Big Bear lags too much for me to sit around and wait for the upload. Most of the pictures will go up on Facebook anyway (it takes way less time to upload to facebook), so you can just check 'em out there.
This week finds me in Big Bear, working on a very low budget project. The crew is rather small (15 people max?), but that makes it that much more fun. I'm staying at the StoryBook Inn, about one hour and a half away from Los Angeles, so if something catastrophic or awesome happens, I am fully ready to jump in my car and be back home for the grand event.
Let me recap a little bit the past couple of weeks. Several important things have happened. Cate K. has left town, for good. Although we have lost an always fun to have serious chiller from our adventures, we have plenty of good memories to laugh about. Like that one time Cate and I tried to go to Opening Ceremony after having a couple too many free PBRs at the Pacific Design Center, but didn't make it before the store closed. Because it was closed, we had to find the nearest bathroom which happened to be in a strip club. So yes, I am not ashamed to say it, Cate and I visited a strip club together. Not as racy as it sounds, seeing as it was only 7 pm, and there were no dancers or patrons in the club yet. Anyway, that's hopefully the only time I will ever visit a strip club (knock on wood?) and I am happy to say I got to do it with none other than Cate.
As sad as I am that she left town, I can't blame her. The SFV has recently infected me with that same old dying-to-get-the-fuck-out-of-there feeling. Maybe it's because I've been spending too much time driving around Van Nuys looking for crucifixes, or maybe it's because my dad's been on summer vacation and I don't have the house to myself anymore. Either way, I would like to congratulate Cate for leaving the nest (for the second time!) but also express a fair amount of discomfort about my own situation. Sure, ideally we're all supposed to get fab jobs post college and move into snazzy appartments where our friends can come over and act a drunken fool to our heart's desire, but so far I've been trying the unemployed, starving artist/philosopher/slacker/depenent thing. At this point in time, I've been doing a LOT of starving and a fair amount of art/philosophy/slacking/dependency as well. I'm going to venture a guess that my feelings towards my housing and job situation, which range from severe dislike to apathy, have also turned me off to some of the best Valley adventures. But I try to look on the bright side. I'm fairly comfortable, and I have more resources at my disposal than I know what to do. And even better, I can always blame the economy for my lack of results in the what seems like the infinite game of cover letter, resume, rinse and repeat. So i'm trying, trying real hard, to maintain a positive attitude and stay focused on my larger career and life goals. I need to come out of this rut eventually, and when I do, it will just the best thing ever!
For the past couple of weeks I have tried to keep busy either in Hwood and L.A. but have taken it upon myself to find things I love about the SFV. The absence of digital photos is due to the absence of my camera chord (have you seen it? do you have it? please return it to me). So until the thing sprouts legs and walks back to where it got lost from, I'll be sticking to film. I know that means a slow turn over rate as far as developing and posting, but I think it's totally worth the wait.
Event wise, here's what I've been up to.
On Thursday night it was the downtown Los Angeles Art Walk. I had been meaning to go to this for a very long time and Dylan finally convinced me to do it. So Brett, Jesse, Gabe, Dylan and I took the metro down town where we later met up with Jordan. Now this was something else... The streets of downtown were flooded with hip people of all ages, some dogs, and countless food trucks. It was seriously hard to navigate through the crowd of drunken girls in heels or oxfords and dudes in toms or nikes. It was pretty clear that the art walk has turned into a drunken hip fest, and I must say I was rather dissapointed with the art I saw. I can't give any specifics, but the overall feel of it was very commercial. I chose "commercial" as the word to describe it because all the art seemed to deal with subject matter that was trendy, over played and mostly a week ago's news to me. The methods and mediums were also not that innovative. A lot of assemblages of homemade objects juxtaposed with industrial materials, a lot of paintings in rasta colors, and a lot (A LOT!) of collage art that looked like it had been commissioned by Urban Outfitters resulted in a not very enlightening experience. I guess my expectations for art are pretty high. I usually want something challenging and innovative, not a recylced message or medium that I looks like it could very well come out of the bowels of Urban Outfitters or Anthropologie. Not to say there wasn't anything I liked, but I just thought over-all the work was mediocre at best. I dug the vibe and the crowd though. It's so great to see that there are a lot of young people in L.A. interested in art geared towards a community event. I'm going to go again as soon as I get back to L.A. and hope for some better work this time.
The highlight of the trip was finding this very small cafe called the Lost Souls Cafe in an alley downtown. It was fairly isolated from the crowd, and they served some of the most delicious $5 sangria. Although it suffered from the same short comings many cafes suffer from, namely bad art from patrons, hip music from 10 years ago and an incomplete set of Jenga (!!!), the atmosphere was pretty good. They had some sweet couches to chill on, some really good food and drinks, and board games that facilitated a couple hours of fun.
On Saturday night, the gang went to the Beatles performance thing at the Hollywood Bowl.
1
2
Here we are, armed and ready to go with over 12 bottles of wine from TJ's (so we could each have one a piece), various ingredients for tacos, umbrellas and a blanket! Needles to say, the ratio of cheap wine to person invariably turned this into a shit show of hilarious proportions. The performance was um...not that great, but fun was had regardless. We were shushed several times during the show, which lead to me arguing in hushed tones that "you know what, this is supposed to be a communal experience!".
This night convinced me of several things:
- I still can't stand Beatles covers because the originals are the best
- I cannot drink an entire bottle of wine in under one hour
- People don't get what a communal experience is, and if they do, they're so not down
- We have fun together no matter what the hell happens.
So in light of all this, I just wanna thank Kami for planning this out, buying our tickets, reminding me to get beans from the store, and over all being fucking awesome! I will miss this face when you will be gone, but we're not gonna talk about that right now.
Kami's famous drunk face transfers to the hung-over part of the adventure as well. Photo taken in Santa Cruz, developed this week!
Anyway, that's it for now. It seems like I will have a lot of down time while I'm here. My responsibilities on this shoot are minimal, which will give me a lot of time to read, write, make calls and wish I were doing this instead:
Oh Santa Cruz, I miss you so!
