i am what i would call home
I am back in the Bay Area. I am about to give notice and start moving my things into storage, and then proceed apace with a move. I have been off the radar for several reasons:
1) In the space of five days I drove from Seattle to San Francisco, the next day to Los Angeles, the day after to Las Vegas...
2) In Los Angeles I caught Death Cab's set at the Inland Invasion festival which featured mostly bands from the 80s and the lovable Christina came along and later we hooked up with Martin from Giant Robot. I caught some of Tears for Fears and Martin and I got blown away by Devo. Jumpsuits are awesome. There was a hilarious scene in Ontario, California near the venue in the hills, where all the bands were staying and at the same time a class of '84 reunion was underway. Most of the bands who had played that day had their heyday in 1984, so watching the two crowds bump into each other in the lobby was really weird. Dawn and I snuck away, unable to find a CD player, and drove around listening to the final mixes of an album which when released in March next year will become one of my favorite albums of all time.
3) Spent my first few days in Vegas ever, which made a teetotaler like me feel hungover. I went to some bizzare crossover Xbox sponsored gig featuring The Walkmen and another band whose name shall go unnoticed and who have a song actually called indie rock n roll or somesuch. The Walkmen were great. I didn't even see the other band.
Then I figured out how to disceetly take a copy of Fable for my Xbox. Have I become such a Mac zealot that stealing from Microsoft actually gives me pleasure? The rest of my Vegas stay was wonderfully decadent, but bar none the highlight that's printable was Dawn and I renting Vespas and cruisng the strip. I was worried about Dawn at first who'd never ridden a scooter and those Vespas got a little bit of pickup on em, you know? But after five minutes doing laps in a parking lot she turned into hot mod babe and tore it up. Later we rolled craps with Bobby Flay, that chump who was disgraceful as the first American on Iron Chef. Dawn asked me to roll a hard twelve and I did right then and there. Sadly Dawn has discovered that she has the ability to tell me to do things and I will do them exactly as she commands me.
Walla told me to check out the daylight room in The Venetian, which we stumbled into after midnight - a bizzare hallway replica of the canals of Venice with a surreally believable painted sky and lighting that has the exact color temperature of a mildly overcast day at 4pm. All this disorientation is phenomenal. Somehow we left our room around 11pm and wandered out and came back and it was unbelieveably 6am. Las Vegas is, I believe, a blight upon the Earth that should be eradicated. But I had one hell of a good time there and look forward to going back November 2nd, election night, for Death Cab's show.
4) So I slept 4 hours, got Dawn to the airport, and then hit the road and diverted on back highways to get back to I-5, barely awake. I must thank Fleetwood Mac for keeping me awake - Tusk and Rumours are two of the greatest albums ever. I crossed terrain in California I'd never seen before - open desert. And it was so strange to ponder who might live out here; yards comprised of dry scrub and ramshackle mobile homes and everyone seemed to own five burnt out vehicles. I helped a lady jump start her car at a gas station, someone who carried everything they owned in the cab of their pickup truck, with a duct taped window. At the gas station I went inside to get water and there was an enormous rumble and the place shook like it was going to come down. I asked the attendant what that was - "Sonic boom from the fighters up at Edwards Air Force Base". Wow. Never felt that before.
5) And then I arrived home and my car was shot and I've been sitting in my apartment for a few days going on walks and thinking and trying to figure out how to fix 10 hours of mistracked DV tape, which I did.
So I am returning to life, slowly but surely. I've needed a few days to think about a lot of things, where I'm going, what I'm doing. And everything's better now. It's funny; you get in a period in your life where after bouts of dissapointment you declare that you will care no longer, that you've reached the point where you give up and realize no one's going to come along and make things better. And then all of a sudden they do.
I am going to work on the following for the next few days: starting to edit footage for a DVD release sometime next year of a band based in Portland. Two music videos I want to shoot really badly, one of which I've done the treatment for and await feedback on. A feature idea that's very vague but both Nick and I are feeling the need to investigate ideas about isolation, violence, the small things that hold the world together and what happens when they slip out of place. Blame it on the original Dawn of the Dead, the new DVD of which is awesome. I also recommend Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind now on DVD, and Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly which I finally snagged a copy of for myself, and I'm going to sit down this weekend and watch the 5 hour cut of Until The End of the World.
Oh also, did you know that if you have OSX 10.3 or higher and iChat A/V you can connect any DV camera to it for videophone usage? We're all going iSight crazy but I found out I didn't even need to buy one.
That's enough for now... Hope all sees everyone well.
1) In the space of five days I drove from Seattle to San Francisco, the next day to Los Angeles, the day after to Las Vegas...
2) In Los Angeles I caught Death Cab's set at the Inland Invasion festival which featured mostly bands from the 80s and the lovable Christina came along and later we hooked up with Martin from Giant Robot. I caught some of Tears for Fears and Martin and I got blown away by Devo. Jumpsuits are awesome. There was a hilarious scene in Ontario, California near the venue in the hills, where all the bands were staying and at the same time a class of '84 reunion was underway. Most of the bands who had played that day had their heyday in 1984, so watching the two crowds bump into each other in the lobby was really weird. Dawn and I snuck away, unable to find a CD player, and drove around listening to the final mixes of an album which when released in March next year will become one of my favorite albums of all time.
3) Spent my first few days in Vegas ever, which made a teetotaler like me feel hungover. I went to some bizzare crossover Xbox sponsored gig featuring The Walkmen and another band whose name shall go unnoticed and who have a song actually called indie rock n roll or somesuch. The Walkmen were great. I didn't even see the other band.
Then I figured out how to disceetly take a copy of Fable for my Xbox. Have I become such a Mac zealot that stealing from Microsoft actually gives me pleasure? The rest of my Vegas stay was wonderfully decadent, but bar none the highlight that's printable was Dawn and I renting Vespas and cruisng the strip. I was worried about Dawn at first who'd never ridden a scooter and those Vespas got a little bit of pickup on em, you know? But after five minutes doing laps in a parking lot she turned into hot mod babe and tore it up. Later we rolled craps with Bobby Flay, that chump who was disgraceful as the first American on Iron Chef. Dawn asked me to roll a hard twelve and I did right then and there. Sadly Dawn has discovered that she has the ability to tell me to do things and I will do them exactly as she commands me.
Walla told me to check out the daylight room in The Venetian, which we stumbled into after midnight - a bizzare hallway replica of the canals of Venice with a surreally believable painted sky and lighting that has the exact color temperature of a mildly overcast day at 4pm. All this disorientation is phenomenal. Somehow we left our room around 11pm and wandered out and came back and it was unbelieveably 6am. Las Vegas is, I believe, a blight upon the Earth that should be eradicated. But I had one hell of a good time there and look forward to going back November 2nd, election night, for Death Cab's show.
4) So I slept 4 hours, got Dawn to the airport, and then hit the road and diverted on back highways to get back to I-5, barely awake. I must thank Fleetwood Mac for keeping me awake - Tusk and Rumours are two of the greatest albums ever. I crossed terrain in California I'd never seen before - open desert. And it was so strange to ponder who might live out here; yards comprised of dry scrub and ramshackle mobile homes and everyone seemed to own five burnt out vehicles. I helped a lady jump start her car at a gas station, someone who carried everything they owned in the cab of their pickup truck, with a duct taped window. At the gas station I went inside to get water and there was an enormous rumble and the place shook like it was going to come down. I asked the attendant what that was - "Sonic boom from the fighters up at Edwards Air Force Base". Wow. Never felt that before.
5) And then I arrived home and my car was shot and I've been sitting in my apartment for a few days going on walks and thinking and trying to figure out how to fix 10 hours of mistracked DV tape, which I did.
So I am returning to life, slowly but surely. I've needed a few days to think about a lot of things, where I'm going, what I'm doing. And everything's better now. It's funny; you get in a period in your life where after bouts of dissapointment you declare that you will care no longer, that you've reached the point where you give up and realize no one's going to come along and make things better. And then all of a sudden they do.
I am going to work on the following for the next few days: starting to edit footage for a DVD release sometime next year of a band based in Portland. Two music videos I want to shoot really badly, one of which I've done the treatment for and await feedback on. A feature idea that's very vague but both Nick and I are feeling the need to investigate ideas about isolation, violence, the small things that hold the world together and what happens when they slip out of place. Blame it on the original Dawn of the Dead, the new DVD of which is awesome. I also recommend Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind now on DVD, and Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly which I finally snagged a copy of for myself, and I'm going to sit down this weekend and watch the 5 hour cut of Until The End of the World.
Oh also, did you know that if you have OSX 10.3 or higher and iChat A/V you can connect any DV camera to it for videophone usage? We're all going iSight crazy but I found out I didn't even need to buy one.
That's enough for now... Hope all sees everyone well.
1 Comments:
Ooooh, so much disdain for The Killers...
It's like grapefruit juice in my eye!
~Christina
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