December 10, 2003

Trip to Cali Part 1: NYC To LA

Not working sure leaves you with a lot of free time...Facing the beginning of winter in New York, I bought a cheap Jet Blue ticket and headed out to California to visit Ross, Jordana, Grant and a slew of others and three-legged trip to Los Angeles, San Francisco and finally, North Fork, California (to visit Ross & Jord's family ranch where Grant moved for a few months to work on his book).

Wednesday, December 10th

I was was waiting on the curb for a cab when a livery car pulled up and agreed to take me to JFK on the cheap (suh-weet!). This guy was a character, because he picked me up near Chinatown, he kept wanting to talk to me about Chinese people. He asked me "Hey, didja ever notice how Chinese ladies don't really have any butts?" Before I could answer, he launched into this story about how a relative of his worked for some jean company and when they wanted to sell their jeans in asia, they had to redesign them. "See, I'm not trying to be racist," he saw me laughing at his story, "I'm just trying to say that it's scientifically known...they have different butts!"

Goodbye to the blustery, rainy, already getting dark at 4:30pm east coast!

Hello, Long Beach. Woo.

jordana, ross m — From the airport I headed right to Ross & Jordana's house in the valley. I had a wonderful dinner and then after a few hours of catching up, we all went to bed.

Thursday, December 11th

Remember this little guy? No, not the booby, the baby! That there is Ross and Jordana's wonderful lil' son Dashiell.

dashiell, me — Some of you may remember him from back in October of 2002, when he was just a leeeetle baby. Here's a pic from back then when Ross and Jord were getting ready to move to LA and we went out to Ross' parents in NJ to see the baby and see them off.

dashiell, ross m — Fast forward fourteen months and little baby Dashielle's all growed up! Have you ever seen a fucking cuter kid in your life? Seriously? Here proud Papa Ross as Dash gives his now famous Arnold-esque "whatchoo talking about, Willis" sideways glare.

dashiell, ross m — Hahahaha. Cutest. Kid. Ever.

dashiell — And check him out throwing down with a god damned b-boy pose! Kid's not even two and he's already coldlampin!

me, ross m — After bidding farewell to Dash and Jord, Ross took me to VH1's production offices to show me the television pilot (that he created and exec produced) starring none other than...

grant — ...Grant Stoddard.

The show's tentively called "Granted," and that's really all I can say. Here's hoping it gets picked up!

The editing room where they were working on putting together a final edit of the pilot.

dashiell, jordana — Ross had to stay late at work so I met up with Jord and Dash to get some dinner.

Dashielle is a messy eater. Hahaha.

dashiell, me — But his patented "mean face" all but made up for it.

laura — Later that evening, I got a call from Laura Sosin (aka "Special Sos") who you might remember from the last time I went out to visit LA. We agreed to meet up at a party that the LA Weekly was throwing to celebrate their 25th Anniversary. Here's Sos with two friends who names I've since forgotten. (Sorry, as soon as I talk to Laura I'll come back and fill them in!)

laura, me — Hahaha.

So we're all drinking and dancing and having a good time when all of a sudden, a troupe of bellydancers come out of nowhere and bum-rush the dancefloor.

This bellydancer girl was amazing - her hips were doing things I'd never known hips to do.

It made me want to nuzzle her hairy pits.

I heart her. (Mad props to Laura's friend for snapping this pic).

laura, tavis — Laura, Tavis and their friends who are engaged to be married.

This girl was fucking awesome. She was this tiny little five-footer wearing a sateen prom dress and was all by herself on the dancefloor completely freaking her own shit. As she was dancing she deliberately raked the crowd of onlookers with her eyes totally daring someone to go out there on the dancefloor and get drrrrrrrrty with her. Quote of the night goes to Laura's friend x, who out leant over to me when we were watching her and goes "That girl's sooooo looking to get fucked by a stranger tonight." Hahahahaha.

Parties in LA are a little strange because you have to drive everywhere so everybody can't get all stupid amounts of drunk, because they have to drive home. And if the bottom line is, having to spend 4 hours of carefully monitoring your drinking (while there's FULL OPEN BAR ALL NIGHT) really just isn't all that much fun - so by 1am the party had pretty much cleared out. Which means that when the band Bad Religion showed up (who were my favorite band of all time when I was 14), they only played to a room of 50 people (have of whom were still at the party only because they were waiting to sober up so they could drive home).

The masses of humanity will always have to suffer. You tell 'em, Dr. Graffin.

Brian Baker (what up, Dag Nasty) and Jay Bentley. Wooo!

Happy 25th Anniversery to the LA Weekly. Thanks for the free booze and show. Yay!

Friday, December 12th

On Friday morning, Jordana (who is a painter) took me to the Hammer Museum to see Lee Bontecou's "Retrospective." Here's a cool, drippy permanent installation in the museum's lobby.

I love going to museums, but enjoy them infinitely more if I'm there with someone who knows alot about what we're seeing and can contextualize it for me. Jordana is one of those people.

Lee was one of the first female artists to gain widespread recognition in the 1960s.

She become known for creating these super-creepy canvas and wire sculptures.

These pics are all sorta shitty and totally don't do her work justice - they're absolutely striking in person. (You're not supposed to take pics in the museam and I was forced to snap all these ninja style when the guards weren't looking.) Anyway, towards the end of the 60s, Lee started moving away from the scary-looking scultures that she was known for and started more organic flower-like sculptures that were met with tepid critical reactions. So in the early 70s she stopped exhibiting and pretty much dropped out of the art scene. Well it turns out she's spent the last thirty years working and all of the stuff she'd been working on (that nobody's seen until just recently) is completely amazing.

I managed to capture a few pics of these scultpures from the mid-seventies, where she was going through a period of creating all these crazy, Egyptian scarab beetle-like scultures...

...but then I got caught taking sneaky pics and I had to put my camera away. Her most recent sculpture is some of the most beautiful, striking art I've ever seen and I the exhibit completely overwhelmed. I think I heard that this entire 150+ piece show is coming to New York City this summer - if it does, you should go see it.

After Lee's gallery, we went across the museum and check out Roger Hior's work - he takes metal objects (like this BMW 7-Series engine) and dips them in a copper-sulfate bath

Pretty neat, right? You LOVE art, I know.

Speaking of art, in the museum's gift shop I was looking at a photography book and there was this photographer that took quotes about photography, wrote them down on notecards and then photographed them. Then I came along and photographed them.

I'm so post-post-modern, yo.

brian w, charlene, grant, ross m — After the museum, I drove back to VH1's production offices to meet up with Ross, Grant and Charlene. Grant had been up at Jordana & Ross' ranch house in northern California working on a book and Charlene was out from London visiting him. He had to come back down to do some voice-over work for his pilot.

brian w, grant — Brian Wahlund (one of the producers of the show) and Grant. (PS - Check out Grant's beard! He'd been living on the ranch for a few weeks and decided to grow a mountain man beard).

grant — Hahahaha.

dashiell, grant — After leaving VH1, Ross, Grant, Charlene and I headed back to Casa de Martin and Dashielle and Grant were reunited (to make that "Whatchoo talking about, Willis" face).

dashiell — Hahaha. Check out Dash wearing Grant's "big boy" shoes.

charlene, dashiell — Then Charlene held him so he could dance while wearing them.

charlene, grant, me — Friday night the three of us went out to The Short Stop in ~~West Hollywood~~ Echo Park...

charlene — ...and played the Addam's Family pinball machine - the 2nd best pinball game ever (c'mon, everyone know The Twilight Zone totally takes the cake).

"Fumes, quicksand, toxic waste, it´s all ours!"

charline, me — "Fifty million!"

charline, me — "Hee hee hee, you´re a funny guy!"

charlene — Speaking of funny guys, check out the dude we met on the street as we left the place. His name was Brian as well. He wears his sunglasses at night.

On the car ride home we found this one street where all the home were done up all crazy like this for Christmas. It was neato.