ok, so i told you guys not to mess with llamas, and now i’m telling you not to mess with blue jays. brian tried to scare a few of them away from our site cause they make this godawful racket and they straight swooped down on him The Birds style. Cliff caught it on camera except for the blue jays, so we have all been photo-shopping his friends in.

alexis’

mine

young’s

oh my god. big sur is gorgeous. i could type many paragraphs about how this camping trip was a great and memorable experience, but i want to let the pics speak for themselves. i will however rattle off some bulletpoint highlights

• alexis’ southern gothic ghost story cd for late night campfire lounging. spooky and amazing.
• seeing huge farm workers made of painted wood (i think) in crops on the drive down. one of these workers held 2 cabbage heads in front of his balls. no joke.
• rocky and waterfally swimming hole. majestic and inviting on the surface, ice cold and body numbing once we took the plunge
• ate the most delicious food. i’m lucky our group had some good cooks who knew that quality of grub doesn’t have to suffer without the everyday kitchen utensils.
• go-carts on the way back to the city. after years upon years of video games, i knew how to handle my business pole position-wise (pause). but with a person in the passenger seat AND a fear of going off course and having friends tease me about it, i was apprehensive as hell. my time was pitiful.
• although we spent $300 on groceries, we realized after we didn’t buy enough ice at safeway. then we saw all this freshly dumped ice out in the parking lot because the ice freezer broke. that was for the booze cooler. we’re so tacky.

my pics

leaving the city and saw that someone put walrus teeth on the john mayer gap ad

i love my toast camera case

this guy who sold us wood was a character out of a coen brothers flick

the water looks green here but it was crystal clear. the green is the reflection from leaves

cabbage balls

cutest lizard evar!

canopy @ malibu grand prix

swing down sweet chariot stop and let me ride

young’s pics

we ate brunch at a restaurant on the last day. alexis asked brian to sign for her while she went to the restroom so he signed it with hearts and a smiley face.

from now she should sign all her artwork that way. especially stuff like this.

p.s. if you like new rap, there’s a new UGK album that you should buy. (yes, i found out from reading the internet) and i finally bought it today. i swear it lives up to the hype and i think i might have to buy the instrumental version when it drops. the remix of “like that” has this sweeping john barry james bond thing going on which i love. actually, i’m almost positive that’s what that chorus sample is. how? barry is of my favorite scorers next to ennio morricone and bernard herrmann (yes, i am serious). and yes i like that talib kweli track and yes i am soft hands and have a backpacker past and what can i say i love earth wind and fire but i think you already knew that. you can’t hide from love haters. yay music!!!

so yesterday when i was going through my photo albums and reminiscing about all the areas i’ve explored in the bay area, i came across this photo i took the last time i was in Big Sur (2004?). we drove past this DONNY DARKO ass llama and were like “what the…?” it was so frightening. i was like I’ve GOT to take a picture. so we back the car in front of the llama and it’s starting to get even weirder, i can’t even describe the noises it was making. i had to get out of the car to get close and i’m freaking out and fidgeting with my camera and the noises are intensifying and it started shaking its head from side to side!! i almost expected some mutant john carpenter craziness to occur, like something out of The Thing. i finally took the picture, unfortunately the quality leaves much to be desired. I immediately jumped back in the car right when it was ready to spit on me. i had no idea. later i told a friend and he said, “yeah, that’s what llamas do, spit.” oh word?

moral of the story: do not fuck with llamas. especially scary donny darko ass ones.

here is the infamous picture.

sorry, i am not about to img src that shit because i don’t want to see this thing looking at me everytime i post a new entry here.

3 minute score for me loving the hell out of life right now
[audio:killthepower.mp3]

hi i love summer. saturday had the most perfect weather, i think mid 70′s? i got up at 9am called young and suggested that we go to st francis fountain for breakfast so i can get my bacon fix on. he was already in that neighborhood meeting with the manager of a community garden he wanted to join. so i biked there to meet up.

after a satisfying eggs sandya (bacon, avocado, poached egg on english muffin with hollandaise) he wanted me to see the community garden he joined so we biked over there. it was on top of a giant ass hill and that kicked my ass having just eaten and being hungover. the garden was cute, lots of heirloom tomatos, eggplant, strawberries, kale, green beans, etc etc. we left and rode around our hood some more. i saw an astrojump in the street and some scary mannequin clowns this man wanted to sell me for $25. i told him that clowns scare me and he was like “come on, just put them in your room” haha. he had a lot of great 1920′s drawings in frames though but i couldn’t have carried them on my bike.

biked back and hung out at young’s place for a lil bit before heading to the mall to see superbad and meet up with francis. it was his birthday and young made some cupcakes and wanted to bring one for him, but didn’t know how to transport it so it wouldn’t be a mess. so he sculpted a bowl out of foil and was carrying it around like it was his baby, trying to protect it from getting smashed. the wind was fierce and i was so waiting for that frosted cupcake to rise and hit him in the face like a cream pie. he’s lucky.

kale is strange looking

he got a labelmaker

he spent $15 on seeds at the mall. superbad was just ok to me.

when i got home, there was this big purple pinata in my living room.

i was so tempted to smash it. my roommate’s always bringing home funny stuff

Later that night…i went to maverick for jason’s 30th birthday and had a flat iron steak with the most amazing cornbread i’ve ever ever had. there was so much comedy at the table. i realized recently that all of my friends are damn funny people. the past 3 days hanging out with any one of them, i’ve noticed myself laughing like every 5 min. after maverick, we went to the knockout for big booty bass nite and my girlfriend kristy was standing outside

stef and serg got jason a mac dre shirt

i started watching Life in the Undergrowth and decided i’m going to make copies of the series and give them out to friends. i feel i need to spread the gospel of David Attenborough/Alastair Fothergill nature documentaries cuz i think i love them as much as i love beer (exhibit a exhibit b). Life in the Undergrowth is better than Planet Earth (which is still amazing) and just as good as the Blue Planet. they make the most ethereal and original nature documentaries ever. i’m always shocked at how they can record wildlife so intimately mimicking human behavior. not to mention there is humor and a perverse tone always, i think i counted 9 times where Attenborough said sperm in the first episode alone. slug sex is really disturbing. there is even a scene where 2 scorpions engage in a western kind of dual complete with faux ennio morricone music standing face to face a few inches apart and they can’t decided whether they should sting each other to death with venom or make a scorpion baby together. it’s brilliant. the writers, the music, narration, editing & photography are top shelf. did you know that some snails have mouths where their stomach is supposed to be? also there were some prickly centipedes that were so cute with their different colored stumpy legs, it reminded me of something from Spirited Away until they devoured their prey in slimy the blob style horror. what i like about this particular series compared to the other two is that Attenborough is narrating on location instead of from the studio so you can see him touch 3 foot long centipedes or hold a pinhead to a mite. he also walks amongst a plain of termite hills which is seriously not of this world.

i’m a total nature show junkie and i’m still amazed at how much more i keep learning about nature’s idiosyncrasies. It’s gonna suck when David Attenborough retires. i can’t believe he is 80 years old! Before I knew what he looked like, I pictured an elf or jockey narrating.

he rules. you can read up on his great career in wildlife broadcasting here.

weird, yesterday i was thinking how funny it is that people who don’t live in California get weirded out by the idea of earthquakes like they happen frequently here. then in the middle of the night i get woken up by one at 4:45am. it actually seemed pretty strong, but i find out it was only a 4.2 and none of my crap fell over, surprisingly. epicenter turned out to be over in oakland. on the news, they were showing all these stores with like 20 broken bottles of wine on the floor mixed in with cotton balls or fallen books mixed with boxes of tylenol and hair products. there’s a bookstore/pharmacy over on Claremont which seems strange to me, but i guess isn’t really. i was hoping they’d show a store with like 30 raw steaks scattered on the floor with lots of calculators. i’m still really tired and haven’t had any coffee. if a 7.0 or greater hits in the middle of the night, i’m gonna be in serious trouble because i’d be too sleepy & apathetic to take any kind of cautionary action.

anyway, this lil psychedelic gem from the first Red Krayola album came on my ipod this morning and i hadn’t heard it in a while, thought i’d share it. Mayo Thompson’s voice is an acquired taste much like David Thomas from Pere Ubu or David Byrne with that faux-neurotic offkey singing, but i don’t think it’s too much here. This is off of The Parable of Arable Land and it doesn’t really have a name. Most of the tracks on there are simply called “Free Form Freakout.” i know this is probably really ignorant of me to say, but it’s curious to me that a band/person as strange as Mayo Thompson could come from Houston, TX but i guess you can say the same thing about the Cleveland punk scene in the 70s. there’s a line off one on the songs on parable where Mayo blurts out “eating babies for nourishment!” and it makes me laugh so hard.

“Free-Form Freakout”

[audio:redkrayola.mp3]

i used to think for the longest time that Thompson couldn’t sing straight or turn the art-school filter off on his vocals and composition, but then i heard this song with Gina Birch from the Raincoats singing backup. it’s slightly off-kilter for enough charm appeal, but for the most part it’s traditional and poignant sounding. i’m posting this for contrast, but bear in mind there is approx 15 years difference spanning between the two:

“Old Tom Clark”

[audio:oldtomclark.mp3]

i saw Rescue Dawn and enjoyed it. it’s probably one of the most conventional movies Werner Herzog has made as far as the story structure goes, but it still had his touch all over it like his weird sense of humor, lots of madmen (both the violent and the ‘good intentions’ kind), intensely intimidating (and breathtaking) scenes of the jungle/wildlife and strange but endearing bonds born out of the most dire and anomalous circumstances. i was a little scared when i read the examiner review and they mentioned Rambo in it, which I guess i can see cause it’s about Dieter Dengler. Dengler was the subject of Herzog’s documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Rescue Dawn is Herzog’s dramatized film about Dengler’s experience in 1966 in Laos. He escaped a POW camp deep in the dense nowhere of the jungle after his plane got shot down and his story of surviving is nothing short of a miracle. any fictionalized movie based on his experience during the Viet Nam war inherantly has “suspense” and “action-adventure” built into it. So yeah, it has elements of a popcorn flick and it had some flaws, but it’s not like Herzog is having an identity crisis or anything. Christian Bale plays Dengler like the subject of any Herzog movie: a guy with unreal optimism so stubborn and unwavering that it’s dangerous and borders on delusional. However unlike a lot of Herzog’s movies, this personality trait (or disorder depending on your take) ends up working out to the subject’s advantage. Although the title of the movie can’t help but remind me of Red Dawn, it isn’t pro-patriotism or gross heroism schmaltz like the trailer makes it out to be at all. the killing of ‘the enemy’ isn’t done in a macho celebratory light but rather out of complete paranoid desperation. god the trailer is garbage though. i guess they have to entice the broader audience with that kind of teaser. It’s just a good dramatic story that would (and did) make a decent and satisfying movie. what can I say though, I’m a total sucker for “man vs. nature” stories and read Lord of the Flies 4 times in 7th grade and The Most Dangerous Game like 1000.

uh.. here is a photo of werner with an AK-47 on location

i assume for gunning down leeches in the mekong delta

i’ve had danzig stuck in my head all day, but i don’t know the words so i’m making stuff up and cracking up to myself like a total ass. motherrrr, tell your children to get off my lawn, tell your children to file my taxes…whoahohhhoh…. MOTHER!

to make matters worst, i see this re-edit and am cackling so hard. it’s a hysterically funny epic. i’m talking beyond beyond!

first, young showed me how to open and extend these cameras last night:

i like the lens and i think they take 120film.

anyway, i scanned and cropped about 30 of these found photos. it was a pain in the ass

this was one of the few color ones:

after looking at the expiration date on some of the film, i’m pretty sure these are from ’91-92, which might explain the ‘losing my religion’ aesthetic on the first batch i took snaps of? anyway, i attempted to google the person for a contact email but it’s a too common of a name.

while going through the clutter bomb disaster that is known as the back storage room in my house, we came across many boxes of photos, proof sheets, misc. camera and dark room equipment that belonged to a previous tenant. my roommate has no idea who it belonged to, since he’s only lived here since 2001 and judging from the clothes on a lot of these proofs i’m guessing it was around the late 80s early 90s. some of them were really interesting, so i kept like 1/4 of it- about 2 boxes of proof sheets and full size photos, some film that i don’t know how to use and is probably worthless, some alien agfa camera, and a small box of negatives. haven’t had a chance to look closely at the lot, but here is a quick overview. i’ll actively scan and post good ones in the future

agfa pd16 folding camera?

box o negatives

look where his foot is!

if i’m home after work on tuesdays, i listen to The Best Show which is tom scharpling’s radio talk show from 5-8PM on WFMU. the topic this last show was “5 people you’d least want to have dinner with.” this was one i couldn’t resist calling in for since i love to rant. even though i was nervous as hell cause tom is intimidating and yells at callers at lot:

[audio:audreycallstom.mp3]

my voice is very nasally. i didn’t hear him say jimmy page in that multiple choice character test. and no i didn’t go jogging right before i called. thats how bad my nerves are with any kind of public speaking

the knockout is my favorite neighborhood bar. they have the only color photo booth i know of in the city, they carry budget beers i like such as miller high life, sometimes bands i like play there, and thursdays is bingo night from 8-10 followed by club donuts

you get a bingo card with every drink.

just kidding. those aren’t all mine.

i won early and chose a ping pong set for some dumb reason.

lindsay was smart and chose a plant

i ran into my old friend Cas which was a nice surprise. he moved here last week from san diego

he’s fast with the face-cover whenever i break out a camera. here’s an example from 5 years ago

here’s the stage the bands play on sometimes

after bingo was club donuts, a bi-weekly nite where bands like lightning bolt and tussle have played on. sometimes it’s an all DJ nite of disco, post-punk, no-wave, robot music blah blah

you know it begins when there is the mysterious placement of donuts on bar counters and tables by some kind of donut ghost. like the tooth fairy or santa claus.

*spider-man 3 spoilers*

i finally got around to watching the spider-man 3 and it was so disappointing and painful. i don’t know what sam raimi was thinking with some of his decisions. it reached a whole new level of cornball even for a summer blockbuster, so cringeworthy during some points that i had to close my eyes like i always do during the bathtub scene in the shining. i’ve always liked peter parker because he’s always suffering and awkward and i loved the romantic story with MJ the girl next door. he’s like the most sympathetic and human super hero i can think of: dirt poor, hyper-sensitive, hopeless romantic, pathetically goofy but badass & engaging when he’s on a winning streak. but so many of his sympathetic attributes were portrayed so heavy handed and cheesy that i couldn’t handle it in this one. i couldn’t take all the close up scenes of parker crying. it didn’t make him sympathetic at all, it’s like they knew the qualities that made parker likable and exploited the hell out of it, putting him through the wringer every 5 minutes and making him weep and having everyone and every little thing rip his heart to shreds. there were so many moments where it felt like raimi forgot how to give his characters depth and reverted to evil dead camp, which i do enjoy, but only works on a small budget scale and with bruce campbell (and only him) hamming it up. i couldn’t get into it, all these cartoony moments of turmoil and rock-bottomness. it was such a cheap and transparent way to tug on the heartstrings. also, i’m usually down for stories that warn about the dangers of complacency but not when hedonistic peter looked like this DB:

i can’t stand that jared leto guy and his horrible horrible band of posturing jerkoffs. also seeing this made me realize what a lame villain venom is. seriously, he is the worst and so overrated. i can’t believe i thought venom was a good villain at one point. what the hell. venom seems so dated like when you played tony hawk and rage against the machine was blaring as the soundtrack and you thought you were so awesome. maybe it’s a 20-something thing. i hope they wise up and dr. connors finally turns lizard in the next one. it’s better when parker’s mentors turn evil cause it takes the whole idea of “kill yr idols” to an entertaining and explosive level of emotional conflict. the most redeeming thing about this spider-man was the convincingly stoic sandman and the brief bruce campbell cameo. i hope raimi learns from his mistakes for the next one because i believe he has the smarts to deliver quality big budget entertainment that isn’t on some crappy waterworld kevin costner in waterproof leather underpants bullshit. even more smarts and sense then his fellow successful splatter-comedy classmate peter jackson with lord of the rings. i thought spider-man 1 & 2 were pretty good and that his creativity and wit still shined through all that cgi stuff.

there is a bright side that has nothing to do with spidey. when i got home i decided to look through a couple volumes of my marvel universe set from ’83 and when i got to the K-M volume, i came across this hilarious character named Lockjaw:

yeah…it’s a 1200lb bulldog with a fu manchu/cop moustache and little antennae and has the ability to teleport. i love it. i know there must have been many clouds of smoke in the Marvel offices during that time, but this…this is a huge accomplishment. here’s another picture of Lockjaw which looks like he’s using the subway train as a formidable weapon against The Thing but it’s probably just a steal beam. i want to believe it’s a subway train but that doesn’t make sense. then again, a teleporting bulldog with a moustache doesn’t make much sense either

the discovery of Lockjaw almost makes the $15 i paid to see spidey in imax worth it cause i wouldn’t have been motivated to go through these issues again

monkeys are not cute, they’re scary. i don’t like them and i don’t understand this tradition of watering down their image to depict them as these cuddly & warm creatures when they’re unpredictable, territorial, and capable of intense violence. in that movie aguirre wrath of god, there’s an infestation scene w/ klaus kinski that makes my skin crawl. i also saw an episode of Nature on PBS where aggressive baboons in south africa mug people in the parking lot for their groceries like total thugs. the people they confronted were stunned and slowly backed away from their bags like they were being held up by gunpoint. i’m familiar with evolution and all and understand we are primates, but it still weirds me out how human they are. i find it unsettling and therefore necessary to talk shit about them

so, one of the ‘highlights’ in the jungle episode of planet earth was a segment on chimpanzees. i thought everything was cool. they were showing the chimps hanging out gorging on figs and it was all so innocent and calm. later, about 30 of them banded together creeping about the jungle in stealth mode and then suddenly declared war on their rivals’ territory, shrieking and wielding branches as weapons. it was insane. then they ripped apart a rival chimp and starting eating it, which was traumatizing. cannibalism is already messed up psychologically but adding more to the inherent mindfuckery of it all, their mannerisms reminded me of people. they weren’t digging into the carcass with their mouths like lions & tigers do. they sat in a circle and shared the entrails and organs amongst each other with their hands. it was like a sit down dinner with the family. one of the chimps held out its hand while the other was cleaning out a skull, and it obliged and courteously passed the skull to him. strange & scary. it’s behavior that seems both civil and uncivil, the civil being the sharing & good manners and the uncivil being the war waging & cannibalism. one minute eating figs and another minute an enemy’s brain? i don’t get it. strange how chimpanzees are our closest evolutionary relatives and yet they get down with eating their own. there’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

in conclusion, monkeys are not cute. eating brain is NOT cute. and paul frank is wrong

aside from violent chimpanzee gangs cannibalizing their rivals in the jungle, this has to be by far the most terrifying and perversely beautiful segment from the planet earth series. cordyceps fungi attack insects, infiltrating their body and mind “like something out of science fiction” and causing weird alienlike deformities after death. it seems like nature’s version of invasion of the body snatchers mixed with a little of macabre david cronenberg special effects

only it’s the real deal. nature is so awesome. i can’t wait for these dvd’s to come out next week

dogs, turkeys, bunnies, vietnamese beer, flora & fauna, spooky sheds, trout heads, nephews etc

martin short….am i crazy?

brain injuries from a fall…. jesus that’s sad. but he did lived longer than most expected.

when i was 19 or 20 i burned many of those hilarious drawings out of breakfast of champions onto a small wood box and gave it to a boyfriend who was a kurt vonnegut fanatic (and a champion stoner). i wish i still had that. i still laugh when i think of the phrase ‘wide open beavers’ including his illustrated interpretation of that. also in high school i made a puppet movie inspired by his writing for my english final project. i think vonnegut was probably one of the first ever authors that i got into seriously and made me actually want to read during a period where a majority of my idle time was spent either watching tv or- watching tv. my attention span was short as hell, more than your average teenager i think. vonnegut taught me how to read… for fun? the concept was so foreign to me as a person who was (and mostly still is) visually stimulated.

anyway, rest in peace to a damn funny pessimist. (and so on.)

biked to the ballpark last night with young for giants opening night, mostly for the fireworks. i always feel that as an A’s fan i have to explain myself when I go to that park, but it is too scenic for me to get all lame sportsjerk about it. met up with my old roommates dave and brice, sat in the upper upper deck and section 333 people were folding up their free “go giants” signs into paper airplanes and throwing them from up on high to the diamond. the ones that didn’t make it to the field ended up hitting people in the head rows below. ours got confiscated by the usher before it even took flight. we rode around after the game and fireworks downtown along the embarcadero and i snapped things i saw.

i’ve been tripping over this since yesterday:

i don’t know christian paine, but i guess he likes the photos and retarded sense of humor on this site. he took this old photobooth snap of me with BFF/#1 enemy Young dorking out bigtime and made it into an awesome poster that i will cherish eternally.

here is his site christianpaine.com. if you want to skip the Ben Gazzara clip (um, 1000 style points for that) and go straight to his art, click to enter and there are all his illustrations, paintings, and films. i hope i didn’t blow up his spot by posting about this, but it is so random & weirdly uplifting that i can’t not post about it. so yeah christian paine dude, i like his style.

these ducks were total dorks. they saw that young had a bag of bread from about 30 feet away and they waddled over so fast that they kicked up a bunch of dirt. it was too much. mike and young attempted to feed by hand thinking that a duck bill clamping down on the fingers wouldn’t hurt, but they found out that their mouths were full of little rocks and sand. in addition a few ducks hopped up and down trying to grab the bread from our hands. it was comedy. i would like to keep a duck as a pet but that sounds illegal. plus i feel weird about it cause i find duck delectable and ducklicious. yeah, i just wrote that.

i like how the video starts with a duck snatching a
piece of bread off the ground and then running away fast