morning newspaper

went home this weekend! social butterflied, bought some shades.

thought about selfishness and how it might be nice one of these days to enter into a selfless period in my life. wondering if art is selfish. also wondering if art is melancholic.

mainly while floating in the cold water of the local creek i though a lot about the difference between my two homes. roads in texas are wide and lonely. they are terrifying because no one cares if you go 80 miles per hour and crash. roads in los angeles are attention-deficit and crowded. they are terrifying because everyone cares if you break the law, and no one cares if you fuck up. this is an apt metaphor for life in both places, and perhaps a call to a more pedestrian way of life.

generic announcements

got back from coachella monday morning. haven't slept for more than 4 hours a night in almost a week, need some time to process the absolute physical, mental, and emotional intensity of the experience. my thesis animation will be playing in a film festival this weekend, and my photographs of mexico city will also be exhibited this weekend at a gallery show about urbanism and graffiti art. yay for life and art.

while digging up my photos of mexico city, i found an old self-portrait that i had really loved but never dared to show in crit. our situationist punk rock printmaking professor at the time was telling us about an artist who drew into the reverse side of fashion photos so that "wounds" would appear in the front, and i carved the e.e. cumming phrase 'to eat flowers, and not to be afraid' into this one. salvaje!

appetite for destruction

catalyst: i still had a bit of alligator left in my freezer, and like any legitimately broke beatnik, i was not about to let a $15 cut of swamp meat go to waste. after thinking through everything that had gastronomically gone wrong with the last time i tried to cook this vile creature, i made some adjustments and ended up with the best tasting gator of my life. i think the alcohol helped.

alligator in red wine reduction

1/2 lb alligator, cut into strips
3/4 cup pinot noir, or some other red wine
2 T balsamic vinegar
1 T sugar
2 T olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

heat the olive oil in a saucepan. saute the alligator until it is no longer translucent, about 3 minutes. add the pinot noir, balsamic vinegar, and sugar. mix well. simmer on high until most of the alcohol has boiled away, leaving about a T of sauce, about 10 minutes. salt and pepper to taste. serve over micro greens with the rest of your pinot noir, and revel in your mastery over natural predators.

on a brighter note

wild turkeys! in your front yard! in central california!

how i'm feeling right now

um, cranky. cranky and overworked.

2 comix for the price of 1

hopefully the last comic explains the anticapitalist title and intentions of the series? maybe maybe? i've been -SURPRISE- busy with one thing or another, but hopefully projects will start to make their way onto the internet more steadily - because trust me, they're happening. art art art, work work work, boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend. that's seriously what my life has become, with 'apply to grad school' as an undercurrent through it all. the only thing missing is the think think existential reflection think. remember the days when we were required to read books and produce thoughts? oh man.

i bought a dslr last week. right now i'm using it to indulge my vanity on lookbook, but i trust that it will eventually be put to good use. exhibit a: in a month, i will be breaking it out at COACHELLA ELLA ELLA ELLA AYYYYYYYYY!

soul consomme

having a shit-tacular day at work today. luckily, these two never fail to cheer me up:

stellet licht

silent light, carlos reygada, 2009

i have the sudden urge to take my view camera home and take mmm-mmm-chiapas-good images of the texas landscape. airport security will not like that. logistics are forthcoming. still, it's about time i started playing around with my sexy old-is-the-new-new toy!

and i mean, for all interested, this is the doodle i made at work the other day. whateva whateva. i am animating the last act of my current project. then epilogue! then credits! then away to new york for my postbaccalaureate show we go!

fake plastic trees: a haiku

thom yorke -- you fish lipped
lazy eyed autistic fey --
you're not of this earth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKd06s1LNik

public service announcement

moving this week! no time (or internet connection) to update. i spend my mornings packing and my nights unloading. somewhere in between i am at work trolling craigslist for cheap furniture. images of my sexy art-studio-cum-bed to come. i feel sore, sleepless, inundated, and fat--which was basically every day of my collegiate life, but something to which i am not so accustomed now.

first date: a haiku

you checking for lumps?
trying to start a fire?
gentle circles please

a place to bury strangers

reading some commentary about a show i recently attended, makes me wonder if journalism nowadays is all about wallowing in the possibilities of language, rather than portraying an authentic (? authenticity always in question marks ?) account of what occurred. for further example, see jonathan gold's food journalism, which, in its sumptuous prose, testifies more to the palate and imagination (and what an imagination, mr. gold!) of the author than the food quality itself.

the show i went to, they projected images of a moving desert onto the bandmates, and their music in fact felt like an outlying wasteland. every now and then the reed-thin lead singer would semicircle backwards in stilted motion like a cougar on the prowl. there were strobe lights. there were fog machines. the most disturbing part of the show when when, under the blinking retina of the strobe light, the lead singer smashed his guitar to the ground and began tearing out the strings as if he were gutting a dead animal (the word desiccated keeps coming to mind as a phonetic description of the horror i witnessed, even though the meaning doesn't match). he destroyed two guitars in this fashion. i was in the front row trying to take pictures, which meant my head hurt more than usual after the show finished. i went home, laid on my bed, and felt feverish for 2 hours.

received an invoice for my car insurance payment yesterday. boo! must start considering grad school, or selling my art, or selling my body. southern california, i will never fully love thee.

portrait of a saturday morning (no. 2)

morning ire, teal background

the unbearable lightness of being and other stories

boyfriend and i decided to do something "aesthetic" for a change and drove to a ghost town for a night. it was nice to get out of los angeles. topics in the car included absence, lost loves, and mexican food.







saw quite a few shows this week. record label for whom i work was having a showcase of two of their bands. one was more photogenic than the other. in photographic parlance that means they were better at lighting themselves.


(bad veins)






(division day)




this girl is having so. much. fun. sooooooooooo much fun. can i express to you how much fun she's not having?



and then i saw patti smith on the santa monica pier. she was really badass and it was a lot of fun, but i was so far away from the stage that pictures of her and her band would be irrelevant. instead here are some tough dudes who like patti smith:




and that, my dear, is that. i'm tired.