Eyes lit on sharp threats from dark lips

I am watching Inland Empire. The beginning is in Polish. A lot of play with focus and lighting. Use of artific, acting as if in a play and not a movie, hand held cameras. Even at five minutes in I know this will be a good movie. Fucked up.
But this blog entry is not about this movie.

Last night, as I turned 24, I was in Los Angeles watching HEALTH play at the Echo. I saw them once before with True Womanhood, but I was in the back and did not get the full experience. I think this is what the future of music should be. But won't be. The opening acts were also amazing.

First was Captain Ahab. A gabber techno mixed with pop and noise and rock and rap. It was just two guys. One guy, who looked like he should be in a metal band, sang and played a lap top. The other guy's, a young Jack Black type, only job was to strip down to his briefs and dance around, jumping into the audience and rubbing his sweat drenched body on people's bodies and heads. Kind of gross and amazing at the same time. Filthy lyrics added to absurd performance. The next band described them as "the future. not post-post-modern but pre-apocalypse."

The next band was Abe Vigoda. The most straight forward act that night. They were kind of hipster indie but with some noise, kind of Jesus and Marry Chain thing going, one member even had their t-shirt on. They were pretty good but not as exciting as the other two bands. I enjoyed the jokes they told between songs and over all nice contrast of happy funny personalities and kidding around with the sad songs.

I would describe HEALTH as if the 21st century had a new religion, this would be the soundtrack to that religion. Atmospheric noise with amazing drumming, this primal beat. One of the best live shows around. One of the best drummers I have ever seen. Impressive musicianship, band members being able to switch between many different instruments within one song. Kind of life changing. Makes me want to be in a noise band. . . . but this is not a band that I feel works on CD. I can't really listen to them. They are only bearable live. And should be seen live.
Here is a review I found, "While HEALTH’s records are good, they don’t hold a candle to the live performance. Jerking themselves around like puppets the musicians were electrifying, and that crypto-divine power transferred to the audience, who writhed and jumping about with total abandon. To be honest, the crowd did get a little obnoxious, with more than a few people spilling splashes of drinks on pedal boards — something that made the musician in me cringe. Although to some, HEALTH’s music might have sounded like utter chaos with occasional moments of sublime musical beauty, to me it was like they had taken the essence of no wave, post-punk, harsh noise and electronic pop and created an alchemical blend of all of it that was unbelievably intense and visceral. "



Today was an okay day. Went to work for a half shift. It was extremely busy and awful. Then I rushed home to do an interview with San Francisco Art Institute over the phone. It went alright, hard to gauge. The guy talked for most of the time, didn't let me say much - which is off for an interview. Then at night I went and got Indian food with some friends and co-workers for my birthday. It was a good time.

Do you think God is going to come down here and save you for being stupid? He doesn't save stupid people.

My new obsession is Scrabble. I play it online. I started after I watched a documentary about scrabble players. I have been playing way too much but I am finally starting to win and get scores above 200 points. The professionals memorize the whole dictionary. Not the definitions, but all the words in it. Here are some snap shots of my favorite games I've played. This will be boring for anyone other than me, but I wanted it documented. I am player 16665 (weird coincident as I got that random player name on same day that two customers had to pay $6.66 when I was working the cash register, something that has never happened before at this job)




(this last one was sooooooooo close . . . )

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I also finely watched "There Will Be Blood." Good movie. Great movie. But I won't go into a review since I feel most people have seen it already, and if you have not, just see it. I liked how part of it took place in Signal Hill, which is about a mile or two from where I live. It was nice to see what it looked like 90 years ago and how now it's where a lot of really rich people live.

Scenes from my "studio"

Who couldn't change? I have changed.

Fresh Like David Koresh!

Glitter Graphics

hmmmmmmm

Oh Sweet Lord! Coachella this year! I've never seen a festival with so many bands I want to see, here are the ones I am excited about:

Morrissey
The Cure
Antony and the Johnsons
Band Of Horses
Liars
My Bloody Valentine
Henry Rollins - spoken word
Crystal Castles
A Place To Bury Strangers
Genghis Tron
Leonard Cohen
The Black Keys
The Ting Tings
Atmosphere
Lykke Li
No Age
Paul Weller
Perry Farrell
Peter Bjorn and John
Public Enemy
The Horrors
The Kills
The Knux
Throbbing Gristle
X

The full line-up

too bad it's $265 . . . and three days long . . . Not sure if it's possible . . .

That's how people throw up Round II

That's how people throw up

(I'm guessing these images are copy-righted - I got them all off of Model Mayhem. If you see your image here and would not like me to use it, please let me know and it will be taken care of.)

No hands. I built this suit of armor with wooden arms.

A few days ago Yater asks me, "Hey, do you want to go to Las Vegas?" Of course!

So Sunday morning we drove out. It was cold and foggy but a great time. We met up with my friend from Sate College, Brittany, who lives there now. I won about $8 in one cent slots but probably spent $6 playing them, and since our hotel room was free (since the economy is so bad they are in desperate need of tourists/gamblers), the only thing we payed for was gas to get there and food we ate. On the way back, there was snow on the desert. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'm not going to write more about this trip but just post photos:


On the way to Las Vegas:


. . . and there. . .






Brittany tells my fortune:

Collaborative painting:









Brittany shows me her art:


Monday:


New York, New York:

Lions at MGM Grand:


Caesar's Palace:







Leaving Vegas:

I was not inviting a guessing game

Today was slow at work, well at one point I had like seven orders at once, but the rest of the day was super slow. Rain and new pre-made food combined . . .

After work I fell right asleep, wasn't even tired, just happened. After my nap I went to see Doubt with a co-worker, Jasan. It was pretty good, I give it a B maybe. The acting was great and the plot was good and emotional, subtle and subdued intensity. Ambiguity and the inner workings of a Catholic school. The colors were nice but over all the cinematography was boring I thought, not artistic enough for me. Some cheesy shots. But the story and acting made up for that.



On my way home I ran into Clancy who I used to work with. I opened the car window and he asks "want to get a drink?' I don't drink but we went to the bar anyway, and by the bar I mean the only bar people from work ever go to - which happens to be two blocks from where I live, and there we ran into Michelle, and to a lesser degree Justin. Not sure where I was going with this story. Maybe a social life is starting to develop for me, even if it is a vague one.

Sunday, Yater and I are going to Las Vegas. Just to get away from SoCal I guess.

Sie ist ein Modell und sie sieht gut aus

I created a photographer account on Model Mayhem. Add me as a friend if you are on there, or just stop by to take a look.
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In case you miss me, here is what I look like . . . I can't decide if I want to cut my hair off or grow it long again . . . to help decided there is a pole on the side ----->

'Lectric Lover

It's been in the 80s. Usually it's nice to get lost when it's this warm. But it hasn't been. Long Beach/LA are not places to be lost, it's annoying. You know where you should go but because of traffic you can't make a turn and so on, anyway . . .

Last few days have been about getting home at 3am. Saturday night I went to see a midnight showing of Clockwork Orange at the Art Theatre. It was fun to see it on the big screen and to see people dressed up as Droogs.

Saturday I went to Hollywood to see Hunter Revenge after being so bummed out in the summer when I was at Warped Tour and could not figure out what stage and what time he was playing . . . The show was at Cinespace. First off the show was late, 10:30pm till 2am. And let me tell you, Hollywood at 2am is not pleasant. Deserted. Only homeless people and hookers and a few clubbers. Random security guards. The only places open are hot dog stands and tattoo/bong shops (now I have no idea who the hell would want to mix those two things . . .). Anyway, Cinespace is a pretty cool club. It was like three or more clubs at once, and I think they might have a restaurant and an art gallery there too. To get to the stage you have to go through all these bars that have back doors that lead to more bars. I think there were only two of them, but it felt like a lot more. Each room had it's own DJ playing songs and then each DJ had a different kind of projection on the walls, like old 16mm films overlapping each other and so on. The stage also had videos projecting onto the bands. And I thought the combination of bands was great, everyone was a different style of music.

(FYI: the photos are shitty quality because it was really dark in there, so I had to use high ISO and slow shutter speed)

The first band was this 80s style retro heavy metal band, Sorcerer. And not hair metal, but like leather clad judas maiden kind of thing. I wasn't in a position to take any good photos, but the crowd was full of men in leather with long hair and beards, so that was pretty good. A movie about cavemen was projected onto the band.

Next was the Library. Kind of hard to describe this band. Imagine if Midnight Oil was formed in 2008 and was influenced by everything between 1980 and now, but especially by early 90s gay club music. The singer had a silver diamond studded whistle around his neck, but then the rest of the band looked ten years younger than him and were dressed in the high of nerdy post-hardcore fashion. If that makes any sense.







Third was Hunter Revenge. Hunter being AFI's bass player, this being his solo project. The main different I found was that the bass sound was lot more prominent and more distorted than on the CD, which made the music a bit more aggressive. Sadly it seemed that by then most of the hipster kids left and maybe 1/3 of the crowd was left. I wish that they projected a movie while they played, but oh well. Kind of hard to remember all the details I wanted to write about after two days. . .












The last band, Devil's Orchestra, was awful. Maybe a good idea, mix video, painting, and music together, but since the band played some kind of prog rock and the painter was less than 2nd rate (using house paint and spray paint), I left after the second song. The only cool thing about them is that they projected one of Mathew Barney's Cremasters mixed in with Battle Royal. I also liked how the guitar player and drummer where on two risers on the sides and the bass player below them in the middle, kind of an odd stage set up.



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(I am making a silly face because I was hoping Hunter would make one too, but oh well)