Like the real thing babe.

Some film I shot over the past few weeks in L.A., a collection of random details, just the way I like it.

A new year awaits, onto new ideas, new visions, new friends, new places, futures, life. Bring it on.

"I just don't want to be hun-gup on the wrong bets, it's like being hun-gup on the wrong poetry, the wrong people, the wrong side!"
"Everything's right side ," I say.
~ Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels

Your city lies in dust, my friend.

The first time Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin played they grabbed an opportunity that came to them while following the Sex Pistols tour in '76. A slot opened when one of the bands pulled out from playing the 100 Club Punk Festival, organized by Malcolm McLaren. Sioux suggested that she and Severin play with borrowed musicians: Marco Pirroni (most notably from Adam Ant) on guitar, and Sid Vicious on drums. The rest is history.

This song, Cities in Dust is about the volcanic eruption at the city of Pompeii. The song also references a shrine to the Lares Familiares which were mythological spirits of ancient Rome. The Lar was a guardian spirit that cared for the welfare and prosperity of the household.

If love could kill the way you thrill, so save it all for me.

Conrad Roset

Language is the house man lives in.

I love Jean-Luc Godard films but I hadn't seen 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle or: 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, until a friend of mine recommended that I watch it. It was so insightful, cinematically sharp, filled with his signature swinging 60's Warholesque color palette and pop art aesthetic. Laced with political, economical, and social irony, the film digs deep into the meaning of life in relation to objects, language, and visual imagery. What I found so interesting is that there's this very real but disconnected idea of time and location in the film. Throughout the movies sets there are these travel posters of various places around the world, and at one point two of the women have airline bags over their heads. It is a commentary on the process and effects that modernization has on society and humanity. This is in part due to industrialization and the ability to often overlook consequence in order to obtain certain objects as they become available to us. The object serving as a link, caused by our inability to ever fully communicate with anyone. But it is also how branding and visual marketing exercises control and distorts language. The narration is spoken by Godard in a soft whisper, with existential musings and metaphysical reflections, he poetically examines the meaning of life and the purpose of humanity. Made in 1967, the ideas and questions that are present in this film couldn't be more relevant today, especially with the mess we've created within our own society.
I am the world, the world is me.
We are the future.

"Maybe an object serves as a link between subjects allowing us to live in society, to be together. But since social relations are always ambiguous, since my thoughts divide as much as unite, and my words unite by what they express and isolate by what they omit, since a wide gulf separates my subjective certainty of myself from the objective truth others have of me, since I constantly end up guilty, even though I feel innocent, since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love, and be loved, and every failure deepens my solitude, since... since... since I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me nor the subjectivity expelling me, since I cannot rise to a state of being nor collapse into nothingness... I have to listen, more than ever, I have to look around me at the world, my fellow creature, my brother. The world alone. Today, when revolutions are impossible and bloody wars loom, when capitalism is unsure of its rights and the working class is in retreat, when the lightning process of science makes future centuries hauntingly present, when the future is more present than the present, when distant galaxies are on my doorstep. My fellow creature. My brother."

You filthy animal, you.

A little bit of this action.

It's all an ocean.

December 5th, 2009
There were days the thunder clapped so hard it commanded everyone's attention. The streets would flood with rain, dripping down lush Georgia trees, dark greens and cloudy electric, emotional skies. Shades of greys and shades of blues, we would run out to join the water, almost knee deep on a humid summer afternoon. No lemonade stands today, only time to get lost in the palette of creation. Almost drowning in the moment. Water is so intimate, a fluid life force, safely submersed and we can reach the sky. Scooping up handfuls of creation only to watch it slip through your fingers, the moments gone, splattered across the universe in tiny droplets.
Lights out.

Cars and the Big Cribs.

The latest and greatest. I illustrated this for my friend Yeti a couple days ago. He loves kittens and skateboards.
Get Wild.

I grew up like a changeling, To win the first time around.

THE COMUNE Spring 2010 is now online. Here are some of my favs:

Dr. Make Me Feel Good.

Fact: this song was written by Nikki Sixx about his famous drug overdose that caused him to be declared clinically dead before being revived by two adrenaline shots to the heart. This happened in Slash's hotel room on the 1987 Guns N' Roses and Mötley Crüe tour.

I love this. It really picks up when he flys down that snow slope, epic.

The warm California sun.

I love how Joey Ramone and Patti Smith basically had the same look, it makes me giggle every time I think about it.
These outfits are priceless. How did chicks even function with dudes walking around dressed like this? I'd just want to touch tummy's all the time. Bill from Bill and Ted definitely got his style creds from The Ramones.
Good song.
rock.

This is out of control.

You're A Woman, I'm A Machine.

New mixed media drawings up on my website and more on the way.
Check it out yo.

Death from Above 1979 covering Bloc Party's "Luno".
Allow me to share my undying love for DFA1979 with some thoughts about it's sort lived genius and the current career paths of it's founding members. MSTRKRFT is pretty amazing and great to dance to, but I become unspeakably thrilled every time I hear DFA1979 and just wish they had stayed together longer. I miss Sebastien Grainger's mustache and sexy vocals. I mean this guy sang and played the drums like a badass! The drums on this track are phenomenal! That is an example of true talent and skill right there. While I like it, his solo stuff is just ok, and his voice does most of the work. It seems more invested in indie pop and softer, it's not hard without Jesse. It's just good but not bangin. Jesse sings, plays the drums, the sax (oh yes), the bass, guitar, keyboards, and writes and produces. Power duo.
Now that's real deal Holyfield.
Boys bring the noise. Live fast. Play fast. Smash some shit.
You know the routine.
Ah, the good 'ole days... thank god for Black Lips.
oxox

Blood thirst and a feast for your eyes.

Robin Black brings us another deviant issue of The New Tough featuring Richard Hell (hellz yeah), Andres Serrano (holy shit), and a bitchin babe with multi colored eyes. My friend, set designer and artist Ali Gallagher contributed this month, killer. Sink your teeth into that.


Every time that I sell myself to you, I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to, I will tear the petals off of you, rose red I will make you tell the truth.
Yes, I went there, you know you love it.
♥

Everybody wants somebody's fantasy.

They don't make them like this anymore.

Your kind is hard to find.

Here's some photos from the last couple of weeks spent in San Francisco and L.A.

No One Made Me Stop.

Vintage Cramps t-shirt for Christmas, peaz? Only in my dreams.
I love how Lux looked possessed, so obsessed.
Sweat, stage rolls, black latex pants falling off, delicious.

Lollipop.

Cocoa made this of me last year.

Head of the class.

Recall the tune that has placed us gracefully.

R.I.P. Larry Sultan, 1946-2009.

Tell me baby are you lonely...

Ah-mayyyy-zing. Chug Life from Pony Attack!!

Bound for a star with fiery oceans.

Photos from the Hubble Telescope. This just blows my mind away, I'm not even sure how a camera could capture something like this. In 2014 NASA plans to attempt to view the first stars in the universe with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. That's pretty ambitious, how can they even prove that? How can we really prove anything? Some things will always remain in the dark.

Driving home from SF at 4 in the morning last thursday, the moon hung it's majestic crescent smile in the dark sky. I thought about plucking her majesty away from her mystery, robbing her grace to steal her for my own. All the stars looked so close I felt like I could reach out and touch them or swoop them with a net. Fog surrounding the highway making it impossible to see the road ahead of me. I felt this feeling as though I was moving towards something, something I couldn't see but was definitely there. I felt a strong sense of purpose en route, and I didn't feel this way because I was physically moving towards L.A. in a car, down a dark highway. I felt the future, I felt my whole life. Every moment, revelation, experience, all impossible to relive. With tired eyes squinting to see the road shrouded in mist, stepping on the shoulders of anxiety, I found a moment of clarity and I knew it was all going to be alright.
Just look up and never say never.

The Horror.

I'm back in L.A. for now, Saturday I had an art show over at Good Form that was so much fun! I don't know why I leave, I love this city. Photo updates and all sorts of love on the way.
My friend Corey Smith has a new website up, check it out yo, he's super rad.
Corey Smith Time Travel.
He also just did an interview on Trend Lab.

Dancing in Dark.

We went to see our talented friends Asa Ransom in Oakland. Cold night and warm souls. Like echoes from another memory, echoes from another life. Reverb. With ancient eyes. Cloudy bay skies.

Poetry is the art of divine madness.

Ideas and images I've become involved with. A dictionary of experience, touching silky souls, searching through the papers of the heart. It comes and goes in waves. While emersed in it, it seems as though that's all there is. Caught up with the current. But that was just last week, two weeks ago, yesterday, tomorrow.
le grand reve.


























December 5th, 2009
Cars are so strange, these pods rushing by with whole lives locked "safely" under their seat belts. How many people just passed me? and who were they? Where are they going? What are they thinking about?
Transporting souls and physical forms in metal objects. Communicating by blowing horns, revving engines. They are so unnatural to me and I begin to detest them. But here comes a super pimp, black capped, cobalt blue, long bodied one. Shiny sparkle blue car paint like the color of my favorite nail polish. He rides low to the ground with small clean silver rims, like shinny dapper shoes, and I suddenly find them appealing again. Rolling away smoothly into the evening, the beginning of an interlude building up into the night. Random bits of collective consciousness, spoken thoughts float through the cold San Francisco window. A woman giggles, tonight I listen from a warm bed near Haight street.

What does it all mean?
The continuum of experience.

Sky High.

Seriously where have I been? Marilyn Minter has a show at Regen Projects it's ending tomorrow and I just found out! I didn't even know about this place! If you're in L.A. and you haven't seen it, you should go. I would make the closing reception but I am currently on a flight to San Francisco. When I say currently I mean it literally. I had heard the tales of greatness but had yet to experience it myself, Virgin airlines is currently blowing my mind away. Free WiFi, purple lights and sexy aesthetic, mini tv's, leather seats and choices, not to mention a really creative/hip safety video. Always my first choice from now on, followed by Southwest because they happily change your flights without penalties. Virgin is the way of the future. Forever a fan.

Also, I am not trying to be a hater, but I stopped by the photo show at Smash Box Studios last night and I have to say I was shocked, and not in a good way. While the show was good, I expected to see a lot more images that really pushed the envelope. It's hard to get it, I would know, I'm still trying to make that one image that leaves me at a loss of words, but I have a lot of learning to do and my time will come I am sure of it. I just feel like in New York the show would have been completely different and much much stronger. Not to mention the photos were tacked up on the walls, yes, tacked, at 11x17. I felt like I was in art school during critique in an advanced photo class. Times are rough but come on L.A. step it up! Presentation is soooo important, and those images should have been treated seriously. If you're going to have such a great name bring the glamour. The party was supposed to run until 2am, but when we got there at 12:00 am the place was trashed and all the booze was gone. So yeah, not such a good look. I spent the rest of my night eating calamari and pizza with truffle oil on it over at Jones on Santa Monica. If you haven't eaten there you are seriously missing out.

Lastly, I just have to say it. What is the deal with everyone treating facebook updates like therapy sessions? I just don't understand why people feel the need to tell 350 million people why they think they've just had the worst day of their life. Let's get real here, things could be worse, you could be living in a third world country or suffering from a life threatening illness that you can't treat because you lack financial income and healthcare. So someone pissed you off or you're in a fight with your boyfriend, boo hoo, get some real problems or be thankful you're alive and healthy. There I said it. If you do feel the need to vent there are websites specifically designed to be used as an outlet to harbor your emotions such as: Group Hug or the ever so popular FML. What I suggest is that people start thinking positively and looking into the present and future, rather than dwell on the past and supply the world with unneeded negative energy. We are in an economic crisis here, yes, it's hard for all of us, but we have to be thankful for what we have and let our smiles shine through the disappointments and let downs. Go out to the desert and watch the sun set, remember what it feels like to be alive, and for that moment let your worries fade away. Trust me, you'll feel free. Can I get an amen!

I find it hard to tell a lie.
Love ya!

I want to know you.

I like this picture, but I mainly wanted to post this song.

Fwends.

A portrait I shot this morning of friends Kate Power, and Lauren Graham. Kate is a designer, curator, and visual artist, and Lauren is a filmmaker. Apparently in their years of friendship this is the first photo of them together, ever. Whoa. Didn't know that until after the fact. I was just messing around and testing lighting. I like that.

Do you like the blues?
Left Memphis Chicago bound, Miss Koko Taylor for you.

I want you to know...

These photos are a collection from the past month, they were taken in San Diego, L.A., Big Sur, and San Francisco.
Note: If you're considering getting a chest tatt or any tattoo for that matter, why not get something beautiful? Thumbs up on cheetahs and buffalo skulls, thumbs down on American Eagles tearing through shit, ya dig?
Going back to SF until the 10th more photos to come.

As the future at your fingers gently unfolds.

I shot these with Cocoa in Big Sur, it was like the setting of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. Rolling coastlines, redwoods, castles, valleys, and coves. So incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing, the pure flame.
♥
Open your eyes and your heart.
Love Life.

Put your game face on.

Oh God, show me the way.

We went on a filming adventure a couple weeks ago with Asa Ransom to the Bronson Bat Caves in Hollywood. Here are some photos from the journey. Sorry they are so pixelated, blame blogger!

Roam around the world.

We are having an art show, click on the flyer to read the info!

Superficially thinkin, about the rinsed out blonde on my left...

Back in L.A. for a few days, photo updates from San Fran soon! I have been drawing for a show I have coming up on the 12th, more on that later... Here is a collection of photos that inspire me this week.
So into it, no turning back from here.

Tissue and Bone.

Video for "Ready, Able," from Grizzly Bear's 'Veckatimest.' Directed by Allison Schulnik.

Make a decision with a kiss
Maybe I have frostbite

The Twins.

Cocoa and I went to Big Sur. I love Nor Cal. Helen in her anguish calls upon "Winged maidens, daughters of the Earth".

"They are mantic creatures like the Sphinx with whom they have much in common, knowing both the past and the future," Harrison observed. "Their song takes effect at midday, in a windless calm. The end of that song is death."

With your heart in handfuls, forbidden flowers.

Justin Wallis loves bunnies and cupcakes just as much as I do. He illustrates shy, sheepish adolescence. Influenced by video games, anime, Angela Anaconda, Lisa Frank, and stuffed animals, his work reads a sweet story of innocence. I bet he's been drawing with markers his entire life. He probably loves Michel Gondry, likes to wear vintage sweaters, and receive handwritten notes on loose leaf paper. He also goes by the name of MILKBBI and you can view his website
Here.

Wildwoods.

I haven't been so great on the updates lately, been in San Francisco on a hiatus. But, luckily there are a ton of photos and updates on the way over the next couple of weeks so stay with me! Here's a collection of photos that sort of convey what's on my mind lately.
I miss you.
♥










November 22nd, 2009
Words. Words they take on these meanings that seem to be bigger than yourself. Oh but they aren't. We are all here trying to communicate this life, these emotions, these thoughts, joys, let downs... All too complicated it is. Let's just get lost here with Chet Baker. Take walks down dark alleys with Kerouac into midnight bars full of life, spilt drinks, pure sounds of laughter, and sassy brunettes on bar stools. Forget about Neeley O'Hara and cold swimming pools. Keep it simple, ya? Night cats, green parks in November, passions written in faded ink on torn worn life papers. That's all I got for you, the rest is too personal, boring ghosts, I just want the tall trees and clean air. For now.

What goes on in your mind?

For those who are unfamiliar with his work, Christian Marclay made these fun images in the early 90's. They weren't the most challenging to make but still nonetheless interesting. The concept of deconstructing and reconstructing images in order to comment on the way visual culture can be interpreted and received as a society never gets old. We're still doing it now, and won't we always? Like a frosted mirror, we try to reflect what we see. Andy Warhol saw the future in a tin can. Repeat, repeat, repeat, fail, repeat, succeed, repeat.
I love old interviews with artists and being able to look at how their work develops over a lifetime. As I watch myself grow and my own work develop it's something to look up to. Look to your contemporaries, those you admire. Research is important, knowledge is inspiring. Look around and listen, there's a lot to take in...underneath the neon sky.




Marclay: There is an implied violence in photography because of its cropping quality. Photog-raphy is about stealing, displacing, chopping up. The camera is a sharp weapon. Like sound recording, photography is a mechanical device that tries to simulate life. The recording and the photograph, both incomplete reproductions of nature, come together as record/ album to reinforce each other in their illusion. Like the "Charmin' Chatty" doll, the record is inside the body. You pull a string and it speaks. It's an aural accompaniment to the visual appearance. If you only saw one of the Body Mix pieces, it would have less of an impact, you might think, oh, what a nice coincidence! But when you see so many you have to wonder, what is going on here? Patterns begin to emerge. The amount of crotches and breasts and legs makes them almost so unoriginal and formulaic. The newer albums, like Michael Jackson's Bad, are more ambiguous or subliminal. It's not so obvious, but his hand is on his zipper — he finally unzipped it in the new video — and he's wearing a lot of make-up but, at the same time, he's trying to look very macho. There's a lot of bondage imagery. He is playing with his own gender identity. That confusion is used as a seduction device.

Feed you Accuracy.

Last Saturday I went to visit my dear friend Debbie Cupcake and we took a trip to Blacks Beach in San Diego. We climbed down this amazing cliff to get down to the beach where we watched the sunset and I took photos of her in one of her designs. The paragliders and random naked men walking by with backpacks on was an added plus.
Sweet Cheeks.

Purrrrfect Pleasure.

Saturday night was wild! Asa Ransom played at MFG's night at Three of Clubs, as a redo of the Halloween party that got shut down early. I was feeling my feline nature come out so I rocked cat ears, a leopard jacket, top and high waisted underwear designed by my friend Cupcake. Earlier that day I took photos of her at Blacks Beach in San Diego, California's last nude beach. Stay tuned little mice. Meow.

Sigh, Sweetheart.

The higher you go, the further you fall.