One Week in the Mountains

I’m going on vacation for a week. I’ll be in Tennessee at The Appalachian Institute of Jurassic Being and Nothingness. I’ll fill you all in when I get back! Until then, enjoy surfing through Cyberspace without me!

2 comments | Life, Travel | posted on August 12, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Pixelated Nostalgia

Jesse Spears, whose job title runs something like “Draw-er of boxy cars, boobs, and sassy ladies/Vice-President of Development: Semi-Sarcastic Sentiment Division,” joined me and my fellow former child star/Mean magazine editor Mya Stark in “Little Osaka” (Sawtelle Blvd., between Olympic and Santa Monica) the other night for a delicious dinner at the Giant Robot restaurant, GR Eats. I’ve had a few different things there, and I think my favorite is the shrimp curry. Also, the veggie meatballs are like nothing else on Earth. Not to mention the mixed fries that have yams and dried banana slices in them (and I usually hate bananas!)– but I digress– I’m getting off track here.

After dinner we were wandering around Sawtelle, searching for a stationary store, when I looked up and noticed a big glowing sign on the second floor of a nondescript Japanese-style shopping center. “Pixel Memory Studio,” it read, and I couldn’t help hoping it was some sort of stealth marketing campaign/alternate reality game tie-in for a new Michel Gondry film. Actually, it was something almost as good: a Purikura shop.

But Pixel Memory Studio goes beyond the simple simulacrum of Purikura’s visual diabetes by offering a variety of Japanese video games and flashy accessories for girls to decorate themselves with: tiny dogs and shoes dangling from necklaces, lip plumper, snap-on eyelashes, cell phone charms, and creepy-snazzy artificial fingernails. Mya ended up going home with a pricey pair of bejeweled nails on her hands, with plastic bows portruding from their slick acrylic surfaces. “I’m gonna go for an evil queen look,” she gloated, before panicking at the loss of her motor skills. “Use your knuckles,” Jesse reccomended.

2 comments | Life, Los Angeles, Technology | posted on July 19, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Fabulous!

My Orbit commercial finally aired, during the MTV Movie Awards last weekend! Since I don’t have cable, I had to wait to see it on my friend’s DVR last night. It’s so weird and awesome to see myself on TV in this capacity. For the past two years, I’ve done a lot of extra work, but the last time I had a significant “role” on television was way back when I learned my expert dramatic chops: in my infamous Bounty commercial.

My roommate in the spot is played by Ian Crossland, a lovably intense young actor, musician, and deep thinker with a notable YouTube following.

The commercial was directed by the amazing Perlorian Brothers, who’ve been the creative force behind a boatload of hilariously weird commercials that you’ve surely seen and enjoyed (yes, the Perlorians almost exclusively deal in the rare breed of TV commercial actually meant to entertain its viewers) without knowing there was a unique authorial voice (well, a duo of harmonizing, discordant voices) behind them. There are some fun interviews with the Perlorians available at ‘boards and HaveAnIdea, which are online trade publications for people who are unusually obsessed with the advertising world.

Fun Fact: This commercial was shot in an Ambassador Hotel-adjacent penthouse that Ronald Reagan spent much of his life in.

21 comments | Life, Video, Work | posted on June 4, 2008 at 8:20 am
Dancing on the BBC / Dancing in Tin Foil

I like to dance. I wouldn’t say I’m “good” at dancing, and neither will I feign humility by dubbing myself a “bad” dancer. Can’t we just do away with such arbitrary dichotomies? But I think it’s not overly self-aggrandizing to call my dancing style an entertaining one. Regardless of what people think of my seismic spasms, I have fun when I’m flailing about, and that’s all that matters.

Below, you will find two videos that document a wide range of my bodily movements. On the left, I’m a robot performing a “tragic love/hate story” with my mad scientist master. My slick, sensual co-star Alex runs the blog Meccanik Dancing, a weekly chronicle of thrilling dance routines filmed in his bedroom. On the right, I’m a pixelated electronic rock star spinning behind a turntable in a British cell phone commercial. Try and spot my blurry performance! You can read more about that strange experience in an earlier post that featured a teal blazer and a horrifying haircut.

For bonus points, check out my 2005 submission to Learning to Love You More, the Miranda July/Harrell Fletcher cyberspace art project that has recently been made into an IRL book. I made a video of myself dancing for one of the many participatory assignments that comprise the site. You can also see me dancing in the streets of Echo Park for a Lavender Diamond video. Hey, I’ve got a pretty impressive resume here– Cirque Du Soleil, here I come!

7 comments | Life, Work | posted on April 15, 2008 at 5:14 pm
The Pisces Party 2008

A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office. “Doc, Doc, ya gotta help me!” he screams, “I’m going nuts! I keep thinking I’m a tepee, I’m a wigwam, I’m a tepee, I’m a wigwam! What’s wrong with me!?”

“Relax,” says the doctor, “You’re just two tents.”

I live in a house called Black Diamond. It’s four boys and three girls in a five bedroom house. The three girls all have Pisces birthdays, so we celebrate them together with the legendary Pisces Party.

This year’s theme was InTentCity, so housemates and friends constructed a hodgepodge of of wild, elaborate tents throughout the property with the goal of enticing all five senses. A gold mylar pyramid, a geodesic dome, a helium-powered bamboo cube, a bird’s nest only reachable by rope ladder, and a strobe-flashing mystical lake were just a few of the titillating installations we built for the party.

I constructed a snake-skin-coated lounge where I held one-on-one cult recruitment sessions. For each convert, I devised an entirely new sect, each with a unique creation story and set of guidelines for life. Participants were told to close their eyes and touch a variety of textural objects hidden inside a snake-skin pouch, and their responses to these unseen objects helped form the cult I would then ask them to join.

Most of the serious tenting went on early in the evening, along with performances from the amazing Mirror Mirror (all the way from Brooklyn), the kinetic Lucky Dragons, a spandex-sliding choreographed dance duo, and Michael Lucid of Pretty Things, birthing a loaf of bread. The real dance-party party stated at “late party time,” and went on until 4:00am, when the cops made us kick everyone out. Check out 22 pictures from the party after the jump!

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5 comments | Life, Los Angeles, Photo | posted on March 24, 2008 at 11:20 am
Mean Magazine, Reno 911, and Orbit Gum

I’ve been working at Mean magazine since October, and my first issue as Associate Editor is about to hit newsstands! I’ve got three articles in the issue: two interviews with fashion designers Luella Bartley and Peter Jensen, and a write-up on the insanely cool digital-only re-issue label, Anthology Recordings.

The issue also includes rad conversations with two of my favorite bands– ELO and Goblin– along with pieces on designer Brian Lichtenberg and Xiu Xiu, Devendra Banhart’s artwork, Totally Radd!! trading cards, an illustration by Alexa Shapiro, and much more. While you’re at it, check out the Mean website, which I’ve spent the last week completely redesigning. Issue 15 comes out March 18th, and you can pick it up at your local Borders or Barnes & Noble, among other fine retailers.

In other news from my crazy-busy work life: I booked an Orbit commercial recently! I can’t wait to see the spot, which promises to be hilarious– it comes from the uber-creative duo known as The Perlorian Borthers, a director/art director team responsible for some of the most entertaining commercials I’ve ever seen. I’ll write more about that one when it starts appearing between commercials breaks on Girlicious and Cavemen. In the meantime, check out my brief appearance guest-starring role on a recent episode of Reno 911! (That’s me on the right, with the tight jeans).

4 comments | Life, Work | posted on March 7, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Rudy Bleu’s Cyberspace Adventures!
Please welcome my BF/BFF, Rudy Bleu, to the blogosphere. He decided to put his years of DJ experience and zine-writing to use in the web 2.0 world, and the results are off the charts! Check out his blog at rudybleu.com, where he posts music recommendations, obscure YouTube gems, and original interviews. In less than a month, he’s already interviewed former Bis lead singer Manda Rin, JD Samson and Johanna Fateman of Le Tigre/Men, and M.I.A.’s 15-year-old protege, Rye Rye.

It’s not all music– Rudy’s also featured exclusive sexy comics form Pretty Things comedian Michael Lucid, and he’s got top secret plans for a super fun art project coming up. Oh, and he also posted about that Mariah Carey video I (unsuccessfully) auditioned for, in case you were wondering how that whole thing turned out.

Keep reading Rudy Bleu’s blog for frequent mp3 downloads and a whole slew of fun surprises that await just around the corner!

post a comment | Life, Music, The Internet | posted on March 7, 2008 at 2:09 pm
So L.A.


I don’t mean to be a showboat here, cause I really do have a strong sense of humility, I swear. But my life has been taking so many strange turns, I feel the need to plainly state them for the record– cause sometimes, the world is a little more absurd than you expect. So here’s a brief list of some sorta ridiculous things that have happened this week:

1. I went on an audition to play Mariah Carey’s boyfriend, in her new Brett Ratner-directed music video.
2. Bill Gates gave me $900.
3. I got invited to Paris Hilton’s birthday party.
4. I got paid to take pictures of naked men simulating sex.

In regards to the naked men having fake-sex, it was classier than it sounds. For one thing, they were wearing crotch-socks. I’m currently working as a still photographer on my friend Dave’s independent feature, Pornography: A Thriller– a multi-layered supernatural mystery revolving around a fictitious early-90s gay porn film. Naturally, they had to shoot footage for the film-inside-the-film, and I had to take pictures documenting that.

Of course, I took a million other pictures on set of more modest going-ons, too, and here are a few of those:

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6 comments | Life, Los Angeles, Photo | posted on February 10, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Corndawg in the Hospital

Corndawg doesn't know what day it is.
He’s trying to figure out how much time remains until he’ll be released from his extended captivity, currently confined within the boundaries of one long, tired hospital corridor. A jaded hospital guard with slicked-back hair is leaning back in his chair, keeping a watchful eye on us to make sure we don’t help Corndawg escape. The place is air-tight– sealed on each end with heavy card-access-only doors, and filled in the middle with crumpled Doritos bags, goofy nurses dancing lurid, grotesque dances, and a pungent locker room odor.

“If you think about it, it really starts to drive you nuts,” says Corndawg. “I’ll just be lying in bed and thinking, ‘Why am I here? This is a place for sick people. This whole place was built to help sick people… but I’m not sick, and that’s why I’m here… wait, why am I here?’” Corndawg is here, in this cinder block Glendale medical center, because he’s participating in a medical research study for some giant pharmaceutical corporation, trying out a new cholesterol pill. He’s here because he’s trading his body for money in the name of medical research, and it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. They give him one 5-milligram pill and then he stays under constant observation for nine days while they make detailed notes on the side effects. And then he walks out with $2,300 in his pocket.


Since 2004, Corny has completed eight of these studies– and it’s at least partially how he funds his free-wheeling lifestyle. He talks to my roommate Liz, who’s smuggled him in some fresh carrot juice from Yum Yum Donuts, about where the best places to visit in Portugal and Spain are. In the past year alone, Corndawg’s been back and forth across the U.S. (often traveling on motorcycle with little more than his laptop, guitar, and trusty airbrush gun), down to Argentina, and overseas to Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. “It provides a nice cushion for an artist’s life,” he says of his intermittent medical studies. “It’s nice to not have to hitchhike or hop trains, when you can say, ‘Oh, I have an extra thousand bucks– I’ll buy a plane ticket.’”

Aside from the stuffy sterile surroundings, the conditions of Corndawg’s nine-day imprisonment aren’t so bad. He has his laptop and cell phone and he’s been watching the second and third seasons of “Lost” in back-to-back marathon sessions. Once an hour he’s allowed a brief respite from the fluorescent lighting– a few moments of fresh air on a secluded hospital balcony. Corndawg recommends avoiding the longer studies, however. In an 18 day study he once partook in, the effects of confinement began to sink quickly. Without exercise and meaningful human interaction, he sunk into a deep depression and slept 12 hours a day (actually, I should have asked if those feelings might have been related to the medication they’d had him on).


“Lie as much as possible on your screening tests,” he says– it’s a surefire way to guarantee eligibility. “Just answer ‘no’ to every question: ‘Have you ever fainted?’ ‘Oh, never!’ and then play dumb if they confront you about it later.” He also warns against radioactive tracers. “Those stay in your system for 30 years.” Likewise, he mentions, it’s not a hot idea to undergo the spinal tap tests. A couple brazen girls on the floor are undergoing double spinal tap tests, which require them to lay completely still for 48 hours straight. “It’s gruesome. They got up today and they were just stumbling around, on the verge of passing out.” But, he notes, they’re getting paid $500 a day.

Over the course of our conversation, Corndawg draws alternate analogies for his medical trials: at times he calls them a prison, but the next minute they become a vacation: “Sometimes I’ll fly out to a distant city, planning my trip around a medical study, and it ends up paying for itself.” That seemingly contradictory coupling accesses the heart of capitalism– his studies are just another way of exchanging time and personal risk for wealth and freedom. Corndawg’s willingness to bring it to such romantic extremes is either valiant or ludicrous, but it seems to be working out pretty well for him.

Let Freedom Bling.

6 comments | Interviews, Life, Photo, Video | posted on January 31, 2008 at 1:03 am
Tied to the 90’s

Maybe it’s Hillary Clinton’s cyborgian persistence, or maybe it’s just my compulsive cultural consumption of the “90210″ DVDs– but wouldn’t it be rad if we could just go back to the 90’s? Everything was so uncomplicated! Cell phones were for millionaires and coke addicts, we were not yet tethered to the realms of Myspace and Facebook, and Bush Jr. was still just a recovering alcoholic that no one gave a second thought. We were never asked to choose between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and gas prices were cheap enough for even slacker Gregg Araki characters to go on extended road trips.

Everyone just rollerbladed around the streets of San Francisco in pastel shirts and cut-off shorts, listening to cassette tapes on their Walkmans and quipping “Don’t have a cow, man.” When they were forced to work, it mainly consisted of serving up burgers at The Peach Pit or dancing in record stores with Liv Tyler and RenĂ©e Zellweger. They traded zines, watched the skies for UFOs, and played Sega Genesis. But, alas, there are no time machines to allow us to return to that idyllic golden age. I feel like Jeff Lynne, tragically trapped in the future!

Anyway, I must apologize for my absence. I’ve had a busy month, working more frequently at Mean Magazine, and also doing some still photography for a friend’s independent gay horror film. Here are 21 pictures: some taken from my car while inching through traffic on the west side of L.A., and some taken in a dry state park that has been used in a million movies, out near the cold desert of Palmdale.

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4 comments | Life, Los Angeles, Photo | posted on January 24, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Crazy Christmas Wishes! Really Wild!
3 comments | Life | posted on December 14, 2007 at 7:42 am
New York, etc.

I spent the last week in New York, visiting my good friend (and fellow Davis High School alumni), Herrie Son. Her boyfriend, cinematic wunderkind Kyle Komline, took us to the Explorer’s Club - a pseudo-secret society of Upper East Side geriatrics dedicated to traveling the globe and eating tea and cookies in dedadent trophy rooms. I won’t go into detail, I’ll just tell you that if you have two legs and live in New York you owe it to yourself to find your way to one of their public events. And they’re only five dollars with student I.D.!

We also went to classy, intimidating men’s clothiers Turnbull and Asser and Jay Kos, and a masqued ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mimi Zora took me to a WGA screening of the new Woody Allen movie (stop it Woody, just stop it) and a hilariously bad T.G.I. Friday’s in Times Square. I did all the requisite vintage shopping in Williamsburg with Herrie, and my formerly cyberspace-friend Michael took me to a crazy Chinese supermart and a Project Runway 4 party in Park Slope. I sat in on some NYU classes, including one taught by Antonio Monda. All in all, it was fun. And that’s how I spent my vacation! Would you like to look at some pictures? You can do that, after the jump.

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5 comments | Life, Photo, Travel | posted on November 18, 2007 at 9:17 am
There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of my favorite filmmakers. Watching Magnolia at the age of 12 was a major turning point in my adolescent development, and single-handedly inspired my desire to become a filmmaker. I was lucky enough to work as a P.A. on the set of There Will Be Blood last August, after harassing Anderson at a rare public Q&A earlier in the year. I spent a lot of time on a dusty ranch near Palmdale operating the air conditioning unit, assisting the video assistant, and lugging buckets of fake oil from place to place. It was an intense, fascinating experience, and gave me an amazing first-hand perspective of the day-to-day realities of filmmaking.

Me and P.T. Anderson at the There Will Be Blood wrap party. This picture is more than a little hilarious.

I saw the completed film for the first time in its entirety on Monday night, and I’ve been slowly processing it ever since. As one can tell from the trailer alone, Blood is a complete departure from Anderson’s signature style, in both content and form. The distancing from his earlier work is deliberate, a definite attempt to approach filmmaking with a different aesthetic and with a fresh set of talent. Leaving the comfort zone payed off in spades: Blood is a precisely crafted minimalist masterpiece.

In fact, I was surprised just how minimal it was, especially for a film that runs two and a half hours long and spans thirty years of California history. There was even less dialogue than had been laid out in the already sparse script, and several scenes of zealous theatricality had been toned down or removed entirely. By taking away the frog rain, pop songs, prosthetic dicks and decadent dialogue of his earlier films, Anderson has allowed himself to focus entirely on a careful study of the film’s anti-hero, Daniel Day Lewis’ magnificently callous Daniel Plainview.


Don’t get me wrong– I absolutely love the sugary opulence of the aforementioned filmic devices in Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love. I can’t get enough of Anderson’s magical realism, ADD ensembles and whimsical distractions– but with Blood he proves that beneath the surface-level bustle and embellishment, there is an undeniably epic foundation of cinematic talent at work.

I wouldn’t call There Will Be Blood perfect: most glaringly for me, at least on the first viewing, were a few unexpected moments of misplaced humor that dampened the impact of crucial moments. I’d also be interested to know if Anderson was satisfied with trimming the film down to a “mere” 158 minutes, or if we’ll ever see a Coppola-esque four hour director’s cut. While it may not be a masterpiece, Blood is a terrific film– undoubtedly one of the best of the year– and an important step in Anderson’s slowly blooming canon of work.


On the technical side, Robert Elswit’s photography is gorgeous, and the monumentally unnerving score by Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood brings the film to a place of transcendence. Nothing needs to be said of Daniel Day-Lewis’ brilliance– I can’t imagine anyone else taking home the Oscar this year– but it’s worth mentioning that Paul Dano really turned it out in a difficult role, skillfully portraying a preacher with major delusions of grandeur. Young Dillion Freasier was impressive as Daniel Day-Lewis’ melancholy progeny, especially for a non-show biz kid– Freasier was cast on location in Marfa, Texas.

The Hollywood Reporter has a well-written review that’s worth a read, and for fellow P.T. Anderson devotees, there’s always Cigarettes and Red Vines.

12 comments | Life, Movies, Work | posted on November 8, 2007 at 9:17 am
The Oldest Teenager on Catalina Island

I had no idea where we were going at 8:00am on a Monday morning, but I was ready for anything. My boyfriend, Rudy, was taking me to an undisclosed location for an all-day birthday surprise. Technically, my 20th birthday was on Tuesday– so this was my final day as a teenager– the last dawn before my bones would begin turning to dust, as all things must. As we exited the freeway, I figured we were going to Catalina Island, as the only other obvious destination at the exit in question was the Long Beach Aquarium, and we had been there for our anniversary.

The ferry ride over was Rudy’s first boat trip, another indelible benchmark in one’s life. Luckily, he enjoyed the sensation of seafaring travel. As we pulled away from the shore, we could see a dark cloud hovering over the entire horizon– the ashes of half a million acres blowing off into the Pacific. Living in Los Angeles, you get used to this smog… but this is something else entirely. For the past three days, there has been a sepia tone filter covering the sky, causing the normally flattering sunlight to become a harsh reddish-orange.

Catalina, however, was a pleasant distraction from the havoc raging throughout Southern California. Neither Rudy nor I had ever been to the island, and I was excited to find it an even more peaceful, magical place than I had imagined. We spent the day exploring the town of Avalon, rather than exploring the untamed interior (about 20 square miles of wilderness, where wild Bison roam). In Avalon (population 3,100), the de rigeur mode of transportation is golf cart. There are many beautiful homes that reminded me of Bay Area architecture, and the “downtown” area is filled with every kind of touristy business you can imagine.

Most of the tourists were on their way out as we arrived, returning home from their weekend reprieves. We wandered the beach alone and took a bus tour of the area with about a dozen other quiet visitors. We played a game of air hockey in an abandoned arcade, ate at a couple of fully satisfying restaurants and completed 18 holes of miniature golf. Check out my pictures after the jump!

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3 comments | Life, Photo, Travel | posted on October 24, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Cute Boys in Tuxes


Listen to “Highschool Lover” by Air [download]

R. Crumb did it best with portrait illustrations of girls from his high school yearbook, but it was a project by wunderkind photographer Brad Troemel, aka Very Young Millionaire, that got me thinking about high school crushes. That project, “Every Girl I Had A Crush On In High School” displays a no-frills-at-all succession of 24 black and white yearbook scans.


These girls’ identities are placed only within the context of the author’s admiration for them, most likely an unreciprocated feeling. They’re portraits of tragic conflicts in emotional agenda– Cupid’s misguided arrows that strike every teenager at least once. Frozen in time, these girls, who have by now become young women, are even more distant than they were at the ground zero of their implicit rejection. Back then, they couldn’t give the author what he wanted– now, all they can offer is a universally identifiable sense of nostalgia.

It’s like something out of Wong Kar Wai: “At the high point of our intimacy, we were just 0.01cm from each other. I knew nothing about her. Six hours later, she fell in love with another man.”

I scanned the senior portraits of some of my own missed connections. A few of them I knew, most of them I never even spoke too. All of them are presumably straight, and a couple might even come across this post, adding a whole layer of Web 2.0 self-awareness to all of these misguided adolescent notions. Anyway, as I edge towards my twentieth birthday, here are a handful of ghosts from my almost-bygone youth:


5 comments | Art, Life | posted on September 30, 2007 at 9:55 pm