against me?

i never thought i'd see this thing again.

Monday night my dear cousin came to play with Against me! at Slims. I called up 15 year old me who then texted 18 year old me [the revive] and we all headed down to the rock n roll show. I danced and bounced and screamed and punched and at the end of the night slept like a rock star. The next few days were another story.

As i was bidding farewell to dear cousin, i called after him that if he were to run into Michael cera on tour, he knew what to do. Low and behold the next day, last night, i awake from somewhat of a slumber to this text:

"with michael cera. pretty funny. and no i'm not kidding. in Pdx"

so i may have called him like 4 times and sent a few too many texts. i was pretty out of it. we wont get into all that, but needless to say, this is all getting too weird. every time i am down in the dumps, i get that much closer to meeting him. someone needs to make me sad more often.

the girl who's smile you forget

my trip back home was wildly successful. now i am sitting at work sipping on some tea with everything and nothing to write on here. My little lonestar, Ariana, sent me a message from houston a week ago alerting me that her friend made out with Michael Cera while he was in Austin that few weeks ago. That's a shame.

I think its time for a rather large change, though I am not sure what that might be yet. Last night I saw Tiny Furniture by Laurie Simmons' daughter, Lena Dunham. I had slept all day after waking up with alcohol induced shakes and decided I needed to get out. It may have made me even more melancholy than before, but i certainly enjoyed it. Yet another person that I would love to meet and probably never will. I am sick of friends that are only around me when it is conveniant for them. I have so many projects and no drive to do them. I want to go to the snow tomorrow.

Happy new years eve. my other half is in town but i was too drunk to really see her when i saw her.

MIssed encoutner #423809482349023

I think I have blown the chance of a lifetime... I need to be much more aware.

http://www.ontheredcarpet.com/Michael-Cera-tours-with-super-group-Mister-Heavenly/7821626


FIRST TOUR DATE: SAN FRANCISCO. Only 8 days ago. I fail. Notice last tour date in Austin TX. I now have one of my best friends who lives in Austin, Peter Dontfailme Smith, on the lookout. My world is in his hands.

UPDATE #2

my beautiful little Gigi Mevlana, who has since uprooted from our dear city and transported herself to santa brobrah, has revealed to me that our Michael Cera is in her town now. She has her eyes peeled for me and knows what to do.

Also i have drafted her for our excursion, if she doesn't find him.

2:46pm

like a true artist... just turn all obsessions into a project right?

right!

UPDATE.

A couple o' cool kids just came into the museum visiting from Toronto. I asked them if they know or have ever seen Michael Cera and they said no.. BUT! They did give me a bit of valuable information: Brampton.

Canadian suburbs here I come! One step closer.

i feel like..

i am just not producing enough work this semester to keep this thing happy. im sorry, it must've been something i ate.... this fall just hasn't been productive. well to be honest it's actually just been a series of failures. but this winter will be different. among a lengthy list of project ideas.. there is this:

so i've been kinda like this lately..

to fix it i will fly to here:

get one of these:

pick this one up:

then we will drive to here:

and proceed to find this one:

and in between i will take photos of everyone who leads me to him. then when i meet him i will say, "hi. do you want to watch battlestar galactica with me?"

it is the Michael Cera Project and it is coming soon to a coffee table book in a living room near you.

a conversation i once had at a bar.

“Hi.”

“Hi,”

“Hows it going?”

“Pretty well. Where are you from?”

“Guess.”

“Australia.”

“The other one.”

“The other one?”

“Yea, the other one.”

“England?”

“No. The other one.”

“The other one of what?”

“Australia.”

“I thought you weren’t from Australia?”

“Im not.”

“ok. I’m Amanda.”

“Tristan.”

“Where’s Isolde?”

“What?”

“ok.”

“So what do you do?”

“Do we really have to do this?”

“It’s what people do”

“How about what I don’t do?”

“ok.”

“I don’t play soccer.”

“Not at all?”

“That’s not part of the game, your turn.”

“I don’t like spaghetti.”

“Ok we can do that too. I don’t like black holes.”

“What? That’s absurd.. They are barely relevant to you.”

“That’s not true.”

“ok. So what else DON’T you do?”

“I’m bored with this. What do you do?”

“I’m a scientist.”

“What kind?”

“The scientific kind.”

“I feel like a lab rat whenever I am at ikea.”

“ok.”

“ok.”

“bye.”

“bye.”

from the mouths of babes.

made this for my last digital project. all found. bought a set of negatives from the flea market last summer... family photos mostly revolving around some infant. also in the pack was this clipping from a newspaper, presumably the infant's birth announcement. the announcement doesn't even give the mothers name... just says "wife of mr blah blah" for each. further proof of how lame dudes are.

not that i needed any!

i want to include this somehow too for "hold me tight and think of home" because it is quite literally something we would do if we had thought of it first..

Bird.

Here are some websites of her work. Please check her out, you will better understand how magical she is.

http://birdvision.weebly.com/

http://courtneykziegler.blogspot.com/

.hold me tight and think of home.

this is my best friend. she is my other half. my lobster. i haven't seen her in a million years. but when i did, we had adventures. we traveled around the world, upside down, to the moon, into stardust, and raped the city. sometimes without even leaving our rooms. one day she left and started to do all of these things in reality. and without me. after her departure we both struggled. there were phone calls at all hours of the morning. she was lonely in her new city. and i was mixed up and destructive in ours. she was starting new, and i was slipping into the cracks of old ways and new heartbreak. i grew weak without her strength, and let myself fall victim to people and emotions that i have always held no interest in before. she fell in love with someone new every day, and i got my heart broken by people i had known for too long. my last two years without her have been a very interesting period. i lost my spontaneity and ease. no longer would i dash around the city on adventures, turning my phone off and ignoring reality, with the comfort of her to guide us. i became conscious and paranoid. i had to be involved and connected to everyone and everything for fear of missing out. i allowed certain characters in my story to abuse me and control my movements and thoughts.

now i am here. two years later. i have broken free from these patterns and allowed myself to be free again. on my own, with my own two lobster claws. i miss my silly adventures with Bird, but now i am in the place to pick up with that again. the sense of freedom i have acquired is unexplainable. i am ready to confront aspects of my life that i was never prepared for before with ease and beauty. and she and i have begun to connect again.

i call this the dawn of my magical period.

in honor of this new period, i will be constructing a series of multimedia, montage, "film" stills combining a bit of her work, found art, and my photographs to document a few of our old adventures. i will be constructing scenes with our images that show the magic of our adventures using scans or different images of us. i will be including notes we wrote to each other, sound clips from songs we shared, hopefully sound clips of our conversations, and film clips that remind me of us. my ideas are somewhat scattered right now as this is the first time i have really worked out side of the dark room aesthetic to create something and i am not a huge fan of photoshop. i am basically flirting with a bunch of ideas right now. i will be scanning some artifacts today and see where it all leads me. it should end up like a story board of an animation, with some static film stills and audio tracks intermingled. stay tuned!

rocktober.

Today we took a visit to the Oakland museum for a private curator talk on the museum's photography collection. In the gallery of the f64 images, i decided it would be interesting to start a new show series called 1/1000. Or something. A new representation of contemporary themes in west coast photography. What themes and genres would be focused on? I would want it to be a serious survey of 20th century photography and its basic themes, much like the f64 group was focused on a square or rectangle format, mostly 8x10, black and white aesthetic that Photography historian Naomi Rosenblum describes as:

"...what surrounded them in such abundance: the landscape, the flourishing organic growth and the still viable rural life. Pointing their lenses at the kind of agrarian objects that had vanished from the artistic consciousness of many eastern urbanites - fence posts, barn roofs, and rusting farm implements - they treated these objects with the same sharp scrutiny as were latches and blast furnaces in the East. However, even in California, these themes look to a vanishing way of life, and the energy contained in the images derived in many instances from formal design rather than from the kind of intense belief in the future that had motivated easterners enamored of machine culture."

I think it could lead to a very interesting movement. I just strive to create more of a bond between photographers in the bay area, like the one that was evident in the early part of the century. I do worry how it would be received among critics and older photographers... food for thought!

I am positive, however, that such a survey would include many modern photographic trends that i am not particularly a fan of. ah well.

this is england.

11 am: Morning class is canceled, no where to be until 4. Molly has just made a large pot of coffee and cigarette butts from last night's party of three adorn every plate, ash tray, old cup and vase that has been abandoned within the last few days. records are homeless from one end of the room to the other, and molly, kevin, and i squeeze on the abused love seat built only for two. "I fucking love this movie." this is repeated all morning. It is not only beautiful and tragic, but it makes you want to be a lot of things. a little boy in rural england with silly sweaters and large trousers, for instance. something about this movie makes you want to fight, for everything and nothing in particular. it makes you want to riot in the streets, but also sing silly british songs and shoot tin cans in an empty field. Is it the sense of time and place that brings forth these conflicting emotions? the characters development from loneliness to a brotherhood that progresses into ugliness and loneliness once more? I am not sure, but I fucking love this movie.

scan-o-rama.

All my teachers are so against disorganization, but i like it. it makes every day a scavenger hunt! negatives are little presents in my giant claw machine of a life. here are a few of today's winnings...

the wild things are right outside your door.

it's like, when do you realize that a place ceased to be your home? maybe even a long time ago..

and maybe its time to find a new one?

or maybe you have but you don't know how to break it to yourself..

hold me tight and think of home.

home for my mothers 60th birthday. home is now such a bittersweet place.

sure missed my nieces and nephews though.

good thing i am a photographer. shoulda taken a picture of the one austin drew of me, basically a smiley face with a septum ring. going to lacma on tuesday to see the Baldessari show. if only the weirdness in my life could inspire something... anything!

later, skaters.

maybe tomorrow..

as of late this is how we drink greyhounds. big and fast. i spend most of my nights watching movie trailers but the only movies i ever see are rated PG. summer makes me miss some certain people more than any other time of the year. so i start listening to stupid bands and stupid songs and really i just need to listen to more rock n roll.

also i should be doing artsy things and trying to make money. but when i dont know what i want it is very hard to focus on new things. even worse when i can't get what i want. which is more the case here. this summer started out really fun, now i feel kinda let down by it.

time to hop on the greyhound to anywhere!

PS:

this fourth of july you will find me dancing to da funk in chinatown. PREtty patriotic, i know.

ropey puppy?

HAPPY STOLEN LAND DAY!

In honor of all of the salamanders coming out to play.

happy summer. i have touched maybe one camera this summer, but thats ok. here are a few of my summer obsessions.

First off, Captain EO has recently made its second debut at disneyland and i have found it pretty inspiring for some sort of photo shoot to come. perhaps a one time only fashion shoot?

Also i have created a few summer fashion guidelines. well really just one, and ive been trying to stick to it, but its hard in this city due to intense climate change on a daily basis. basically my summer slogan is, "if i can picture myself walking the streets of rome on a summer day in the 1950's, its a good idea."

think audrey hepburn in Roman Holiday of course. and now i know this seems simple, and theoretically that's the point, but for me it is a bit of a challenge. until now, i had yet to realize how eclectically i dress. so i've been starting slow, putting on one "interesting piece" every morning and keeping the rest of the outfit quite simple. at the end of the summer i plan on throwing out most of my closet and treating myself to a new wardrobe of "classy" clothes.

thats all, happy fourth of july all. time to go get some whiskey get my america on.