Oh! Oh! Oh!

Hillary Clinton is cheating at Scrabbulous

barackobamaisyournewbicycle

hillaryclintonisyournewbicycle

in the Hizzouse?

So this was interesting. This weekend I went to LA to visit a bunch of old friends from various points in my life that I hadn't seen in a long time. On Saturday bunch of my friends from Emerson and I went to this dive bar in Tarzana (Tarzana!!) and hung out for a while. I had brought my digital 35 mm camera to take photos of friends, but after a while I noticed that there were some people there that I would make eye contact with, and they would automatically strike a pose. Bam. Like that. No prompting or anything. I instinctively took their picture quck before I thought they'd change their mind and then I'd marvel for a second at the absurdity of what just happened, and then move on. Eventually I figured out that they probably all thought I was one of those club photographers who work with some website that would post pictures of people who came there, so I guess i sort of played along. It was weird. I know tons of photographers, including myself, who spend so much time trying to seek out strangers who are willing to have their picture taken- and here I'd found this whole bar full of 'em- just throwing themselves in my line of fire!

So I thought I'd share that little nugget of information with my photo friends. Craigslist-models not cutting it? Drunk clubbers in the city. If nothing else it's entertaining-- Careful though. That first guy in red was so excited about the whole thing he stuffed in the lime, stuck the bottle in my face and all but poured that Corona down my throat. True story.

I bet he misses his teeth!

Also this is a great song. I would give my pinky toe to see him live--

Farewell Barbarosa!!

Ladies and gentlemen, the writers strike has finally come to an end.

We can go back to business as usual... new episodes of Heroes and Lost, late night hosts can have their monologues back so Leno can continue to make Clinton jokes, the Oscars can happen and so on....

With the gain of progress and success within the WGA, comes great loss. The real tragedy here will be the destruction of the most sublime work of nature this world has known in recent years...
...Conan's beautiful strike-beard.
I will miss that ginger shrub...

Seriously though. I know a lot of people think its lame and lost all its values and glamor, but I love the Oscars. And I think the red carpet is entertaining on so many levels... and I mean come on. Joan Rivers is monumental. She was born in 1933. How many other people do you know that can rock the stilettos, interview like 12 celebrities in an hour *and* say they were alive during the depression?? Not to mention she's like, 40% plastic. Kind of like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man! She will live to see the end of us all! What a rock.

ALSO! Before I forget.
The CCA Osaka Print-Exchange show reception is tomorrow from 5:30 to 7:30. Basically its a big collection of selected artwork from a bunch of work submitted by CCA students- and from what I've seen it looks *really* spectacular. Check it out if you're in the area! (free food!!! wine?)
["Pacific Overtures", Oliver Arts Center, CCA Oakland Campus]

RIP Rollei...

Over winter break I was trying to get into my car with a lot of stuff in my arms and off rolled my Rolleicord. Smash went the ground glass and mirror and god knows what else inside it... I couldn't even look! It was so sad and horrifying. After all the escapades we'd been though... all the things we'd seen and exploited... it was all over. Just like that. I will miss its spontaneous light-leaks and 8 exposures per roll of film. I will miss its terrible view finder visibility and the weird-colored images it would make... You were a good camera.

~1936-2008~ RIP ROLLEI-FRIEND!

I mourned/ scavenged craigslist for about two weeks and finally found a really good deal on a gorgeous Hasselblad... a gorgeous Hasselblad with a lot of emotional issues (I now realize). Due to a series of various lame-sauce misfortunes I havent been able to get the thing to produce a single 'good' negative yet. It needs a therapist asap.
My friend Jess reminded me of a great quote today by Charlie Chaplin; "Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles". This forced me to contemplate a lot of things... the pettiness of our everyday anxieties, the impermanence of this world, and most importantly how seriously rad it would be if someone you knew got a tattoo of Charlie Chaplin on their lower back. The ultimate tramp stamp.

Part II- OreGUN

So more catch up-- probably the last catch up because its all becoming so distant and arbitrary now! Piling on more and more time-dirt!
Christmas was great. Lots of family and children and food. Then about two days before New years I ate some bad salmon sushi before roasting one night and ended up being pukey for a few days- so I spent New Years in bed playing online Scrabble!

I'd been complaining to anyone who would listen for like half a year that I wanted to drive up to Portland. Beck and I finally made plans to go and caught the tail end of that huge storm that hit the west coast, which was pretty stressful but weirdly refreshing in a nitty-gritty kind of way. It felt good to struggle with chains in a snowstorm under the too-bright gas stations lights and freeze our fingers and scrape our knuckles and wrestle with tires on the snow-packed cement, and finally end up paying some short crazy guy named Patrick $20 to do it in 5 minutes. This was up in Weed, CA and it was coming down hard and it was already dark. We were trying to make it to my friends Rebecca and Joe's house in Medford. After about 5 painfully slow chainy-bumpy miles on the freeway, both the road and the sky cleared up. Absolutely vanished. Bummed we had just paid good old Patrick $20, but relieved we would have to drive 35 miles per hour all the way to Medford, we pulled over at some sketch truck stop and tore them off and threw them in the back of the car. Maybe 15 minutes later there's a glowing yellow sign saying chains are required over the California-Oregon border pass. We pull over with all the other pissed off people with 2-wheel drive and tried to tackle the chains again with our newfound Patrick-wisdom... the next guy was nice and only charged us $10.
Finally arriving at Joe and Rebecca's place -damp and delirious- and drinking wine and eating food with them and finally curling up in a nesty-bed together was one of the best feelings I've experienced in a long time. Probably since that time I had to report to jury duty last year... and after a crappy morning of sitting in their weird anxious lobby full of unlucky citizens getting pulled into court, I and a small group of leftover people were told we were off the hook... That was a great drive home.
The rest of the Oregon trip was very awesome and refreshing. We hit Eugene for a night, then two nights in Portland before we dragged our feet for 600 miles back home.
Here are the digital fruits of our travels. We tried to get as many phallus's as we could. I think we got four!

(phallus #1) (phallus #2)(phallus #3)

Ever since I looked at Stephen Shore's American Surfaces I've been really into photographing my food. If you have a camera-phone or a digital I think you should try it. Just for a couple days. See what happens.

Everybody vote tomorrow! If you're still on the fence or just havent done your homework, go here. Or youtube last weeks debates.

(missyouportland.)