two truths and a lie

tomorrow will be a doozy. prepare yourselves.

walmart. is that where they sell walls?

no, but it is the only place in town that develops color 120 film. the pitfalls of living in upstate new york during a recession. the man behind the counter is named joel. his hair is completely white and his wire spectacles are completely round. he seems gruff, but has no expression. his accomplice is a much shorter man named moody with thinning brown hair falling to his shoulders. moody hobbles. a maniacal smile spreads across his face whenever he receives a roll of film to deposit in the film development box. it is obvious that joel handles all the customer transactions. wanting to catch the bus, i asked joel if i could check back for my film around 6. he stares off into the distance, then leans in and stares me in the eye. "you can pick it up at 5 minutes to 6," he says with the gravity of a promise and the indifference of a walmart employee.

i left to wander through store, eventually settling on the bottom shelf of their container section (mad spaces, yo! i smell a walmart performance piece in the works!) and reading on the road, in which i discover that the paragraph on page 81 about the mexican girl inspired my sex life this past summer. at exactly 5:55 pm i return to the photo counter. joel doesn't blink. he hands me four envelopes with my film rewound around their spools, held in place by a piece of transparent green tape.

also

this article on the history of crayola crayons is nothing short of amazing. reblogged via subtraction.com, because khoi vinh is my baby daddy.
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2008/04/22/all-120-crayon-names-color-codes-and-fun-facts/

these are some crayon colors on which i look back fondly, their names doubling as visual memories of a childhood spent wandering in the rocky mountains.

• mahogany
  
• burnt siena
  
• tumbleweed
  
• granny smith apple
  
• cornflower
  
• cadet blue
  
• purple mountain majesty
  
• wisteria
  
• timberwolf

weekend reading

counterclockwise from left: sweatshirt, jack kerouac, large scarf, converses, and stairwell tile. i have officially become a stereotype of disaffected youth.

tehuana dreaming

was browsing my typical read of trashy blogs when i came across this reenactment of frida kahlo's los dos fridas:



a lot of things are so weird and wrong about this photograph, starting with the portrayal of frida by models the size of her paintbrush. frida could swoop in and sit on them. she could frickin' eat them, and i think that should be celebrated, not contested through film. i'm also not a fan of the knee socks.

i saw the actual painting at the museo de arte moderno in d.f. i stood so close that i could see the little diego rivera she held in her right hand. underneath it they pasted a quote from kahlo, stating, "i am not a surrealist, for i paint only my reality." it was only then i fully understood the immense pain she must have felt at the time of painting.

been thinkin about _________

the real reason why i want so badly to develop my film from mexico is because one of the rolls contains an image of an ex-lover sleeping, which was then fogged when my camera fell to the ground and the plastic back cracked open. fate. regardless, if any part of that image survives, i have no doubt that it will become one of my treasured possessions. an unhealthy obsession with sleepers is one of the few things that clay aiken and i possess in common. however, even if i weren't invisible, i would still totally watch you in your room.

on a non-mexico note

blondie's 'heart of glass' is my latest studio jam. i must listen to it at least 10 times a studio session. she makes me feel like a gay man all over, knees weak in cowering awe of her perfect glitter blonde beauty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtGWVoLGAA8

d.f., black and white

this photograph sums up the character of mexico city perfectly for me. it did indeed involve tatuajes (tattoos), pestanyas (eyelashes), casual storefronts and dappled sunlight streaming through the trees.

the nicest compliment i've ever received

"what i like about your work, carol, is that you just seem to be most concerned with living life. the things you do just happen to be best classified as art."

retrato de la artista como interpretada por mexican fotobooth

monday afternoon i decided to go wandering in perhaps one of the most trite and unexciting places in a city: the commercial mall. it appeared like most malls anywhere in the world, except that the arcade had this absolutely wonderful photobooth that puts american photobooths to shame. it was spacious, with a paper backdrop, cameras sited at two different angles and a wind machine for your hair (would i that i had hair). for only 30 pesos ($2 USD) one could spend up to twenty minutes inside preening for the camera and then retouching the photo with an array of stamps, paintbrushes, and--my favorite--filters designed to make you look thinner. i would have spent more time loitering there, except that the couple outside was clearly wondering why i was taking so long. what can i say? it's not every day that a girl gets to be miss universe.



and i think that's the last of my images from me-ji-co, until i develop my film that (hopefully) was not fried by the customs machine. i have more documents and stuff, but i want to save them for compilation into a book. it's good to keep some things from the internet.

radiohead, d.f.

this is a camerafone picture of the stage while they played 'nude'.


this is a drawing of thom yorke as i remembered him, three hours after the show. what a beautiful human being. i think he must have been singing 'creep' or 'karma police' at the time.


55,000 people pressed against one another in a baseball stadium on a dark and drizzling night. bliss.

primero

mixtapes and landscapes

in a few days, i will be flying to mexico city to see radiohead. a friend just recontextualized it as thematically related to my thesis work, or, "roadtripping to a place to see a band". i never knew my intentions were so obvious.

OR. THAT. MY LIFE. HAS BECOME. AN ART PROJECT.

the last word

me: [to therapist] so, i think i'm really weirded out by this current relationship because it doesn't involve drug problems, sexual perversion or mutual co-dependency.

para la cena

sauteed kale, carrots, onions and cannelini beans in a balsamic reduction. und, beer!

playlist suggestions

• songs about rain
  
• music for the afterglow

in other news, there's nothing like 4 hours of stop-animating on a saturday afternoon to make you really appreciate the excruciating fragility of things coming into existence. is this why i do it?

thought

that edward scissorhands in spanish would be 'eduardo tijeramanos'. awesome? yes. i think i would be carola grapadoradedos.

and this much is truth

scenes from childhood

I used to con the neighborhood kids into using the picnic tables as a runway from which we would jump wildly into the air, with the intent that every time our muscles would be conditioned to travel a little further. I had been reading a lot of The Fledgling, by Jane Langton. I was obsessed with learning how to fly.