i'm getting lazy. i had an entire week to update this thing, but i wasn't crazy about the laptop at the house where i was staying. and i never made it down to starbucks with the laptop.
so... what's new... how shall i bring this all up to the here and now. might as well start with the fun stuff.
katrina. the body count estimate has been lowered, but the potential cost of the disaster is being set at possibly 200 billion dollars. that's roughly the price tag of our "war on terror." not counting the other places we've overthrown lately... just the iraq occupation is costing us about that much. so basically we have found ourselves fighting three wars. funny what happens when you get a fuckhead for a president for two terms.
there's been a lot of sissy jabber talk on myspace and elsewhere about "not blaming" people and "focusing on the disaster." even bush said it himself... "let's not bring politics into this."
ok, fine... well then can we bring fucking federal policy into this? like the bush administration's policy of cutting funding for the new orleans levees 44 percent? those breaks in the levees broke not from a category 5 hurricane. they broke because of a category 3. some homeowners are threatening to sue the government. i think they should.
the department of homeland security... that bogus dogmatic charade of an agency is responsible for fumbling up the system. merging FEMA into the dept. of homeland security didn't help matters. under staffed, underfunded and incredibly unfocused... this same agency doesn't even bother to monitor, much less patrol a huge chunk of our nation's northern and southern borders. its a joke. to bad the joke is on us.
i'm hoping that our new 200 billion dollar baby will shed light on the anti-war efforts in this country. we are approaching, by the end of this year - half a trillion dollars in unneeded spending.
"but shawn... why do you have to blame the president for the hurricane... it was an act of god?" well... true, it was an act of god. and it proves one thing.
no... not that god has reigned his vengeance on an immoral city... vegas is worse and los angeles would have been a much better place in which to "bring one's wrath."
nope... it proves to me that god hates red states. and blacks. and poor people. and children. and the sick... and the elderly... you think the well to do, affluent sex club owner and source-level drug dealers died in that disaster? wake up. if god is bringing wrath upon new orleans... then god is a meth head.
i rest my case. moving on... los angeles.
yeah. i had a pretty good time. the first night i unpacked, watched tv, planned the week, caught up on email...
monday afternoon i met up with the fabulous murky femme fatale known as mary jane. she moved to hollywood in 2001 from bham. we went to some funky punk rock thai place off of sunset? that was pretty groovy... then made our way over to the museum of contemporary art for the jean michel basquiat retrospective exhibit. some of his most famous works were inches from my humble face...
fucking amazing. so much so that i'll dedicate and entire journal entry to it later... i was moved. humbled. and shocked at the amount of work on display. easily over 100 works of basquiat.
monday night was pretty cool... i had made some connections and had secured a vip booth at the viper room on monday night and mary jane happens to have a best friend in the door man, casper.
t-rex's late lead singer marc bolan apparently got it on in the early 70's with a black chic... 'cause his son, roland, was headlining that night, and he's a brotha'. i was expecting a skinny british kid. i took some photos and drank a decent amount. ran up a huge tab... i should have been dead from alcohol poisoning. i wasn't even tipsy.
roland reminded me somehwhat of lenny kravitz back before he sucked. not as immediate a songwriter, but good nonetheless.
that night i stayed with the two marys - at this point we will call them mary j. and mary death. mary death, mary j.'s best friend is too young to drink, but not too young to be adorable. and of course she has a fake id. then there was the high-fidelity sleep over. this ranks among my more amusing of moments - laying in bed in an apt off of melrose, with two fetching young women snoring on either side of me, with the dvd "high fidelity" directly in front of me. ... and being a week from 31. john cusak. damn.
at some point over the next few hours, one of mary's lil' kittens took a tinkle on my jeans. fortunately i had a back-up pair of slacks. fun was had by everyone. it was good to see hollywood again. and to meet some great people. tuesday my mom, her best friend, and i - drove down to laguna beach for a few hours. typical swanky beach town. i took some pics on the rocks. good weather. i forgot how great life can be without humidity.
wednesday we got up and drove most of the day... we were staying all week in anaheim which is about 35 mins south of los angeles off on i-5. we drove up into the city, over to the coast to santa monica... over to hwy 1... then up to malibu and beyond. i think we turned around when we hit ventura county... waaaay up there. the pch was beautiful and i spent some quality alone time on some stretch of malibu. lots of seaweed out there.
it took about 90 mins to get back to anaheim and a few hours later i turned right back around and went up to hollywood again.
wednesday night at the old rock club, the dragonfly - mary j. and many others were having a memorial rock send off for their friend j.d. who died on 8.21.05 in a car accident in florida. there were easily 400 people there and all the bands that played were close friends of j.d. mary j. and a few others were a bit torn up about him, but everyone managed to have a good time. i met danny from the partridge family and turned a photo opp into a bit of performance art.
i don't feel like getting into it. it was fun. later on me and the girls went shopping for food and went back to the apt.
about 19 seconds after getting back, mary j. disappeared into her bedroom... and mary death left soon after. that left me with a buzz, two kittens a camera and myspace. i made the most of it. i sent some funny and barely intelligible comments to some friends... took some wicked photos pf the kittens and then... goddamnit... i dropped my digital camera and broke the darn thing. luckily it has a removable memory chip. left with ever decreasing means of entertainment, i took it upon myself to drive back to anaheim around 3am.
it's amazing how fast you can get to anaheim from hollywood when you are driving 85mph.
i don't wanna get into it.
thursday i didn't do much. messed around online... marveled at how cool it was to put the sd memory chip from my dead camera into the slot of a plasma screen tv. damn. technology. spooky.
friday we went to universal studios "hollywood" and i spent the entire time in awe over how much of a commercial the place really is. a big scam. pay $43 to get into a theme park that plays music by universal artists, sells tons of swag from universal movies... and hypes upcoming universal releases.
what a fucking incredible idea. charge people to advertise to them. that's emotionally where my vacation ended. i edited the drum tracks for a song on the laptop... got addicted to hgtv... and tried to track down a few people in bham who apparently have better things to do than call me back.
the most surreal part of the trip... every plane i took was 5 mins. early.
now that's just crazy.
so... what's new... how shall i bring this all up to the here and now. might as well start with the fun stuff.
katrina. the body count estimate has been lowered, but the potential cost of the disaster is being set at possibly 200 billion dollars. that's roughly the price tag of our "war on terror." not counting the other places we've overthrown lately... just the iraq occupation is costing us about that much. so basically we have found ourselves fighting three wars. funny what happens when you get a fuckhead for a president for two terms.
there's been a lot of sissy jabber talk on myspace and elsewhere about "not blaming" people and "focusing on the disaster." even bush said it himself... "let's not bring politics into this."
ok, fine... well then can we bring fucking federal policy into this? like the bush administration's policy of cutting funding for the new orleans levees 44 percent? those breaks in the levees broke not from a category 5 hurricane. they broke because of a category 3. some homeowners are threatening to sue the government. i think they should.
the department of homeland security... that bogus dogmatic charade of an agency is responsible for fumbling up the system. merging FEMA into the dept. of homeland security didn't help matters. under staffed, underfunded and incredibly unfocused... this same agency doesn't even bother to monitor, much less patrol a huge chunk of our nation's northern and southern borders. its a joke. to bad the joke is on us.
i'm hoping that our new 200 billion dollar baby will shed light on the anti-war efforts in this country. we are approaching, by the end of this year - half a trillion dollars in unneeded spending.
"but shawn... why do you have to blame the president for the hurricane... it was an act of god?" well... true, it was an act of god. and it proves one thing.
no... not that god has reigned his vengeance on an immoral city... vegas is worse and los angeles would have been a much better place in which to "bring one's wrath."
nope... it proves to me that god hates red states. and blacks. and poor people. and children. and the sick... and the elderly... you think the well to do, affluent sex club owner and source-level drug dealers died in that disaster? wake up. if god is bringing wrath upon new orleans... then god is a meth head.
i rest my case. moving on... los angeles.
yeah. i had a pretty good time. the first night i unpacked, watched tv, planned the week, caught up on email...
monday afternoon i met up with the fabulous murky femme fatale known as mary jane. she moved to hollywood in 2001 from bham. we went to some funky punk rock thai place off of sunset? that was pretty groovy... then made our way over to the museum of contemporary art for the jean michel basquiat retrospective exhibit. some of his most famous works were inches from my humble face...
fucking amazing. so much so that i'll dedicate and entire journal entry to it later... i was moved. humbled. and shocked at the amount of work on display. easily over 100 works of basquiat.
monday night was pretty cool... i had made some connections and had secured a vip booth at the viper room on monday night and mary jane happens to have a best friend in the door man, casper.
t-rex's late lead singer marc bolan apparently got it on in the early 70's with a black chic... 'cause his son, roland, was headlining that night, and he's a brotha'. i was expecting a skinny british kid. i took some photos and drank a decent amount. ran up a huge tab... i should have been dead from alcohol poisoning. i wasn't even tipsy.
roland reminded me somehwhat of lenny kravitz back before he sucked. not as immediate a songwriter, but good nonetheless.
that night i stayed with the two marys - at this point we will call them mary j. and mary death. mary death, mary j.'s best friend is too young to drink, but not too young to be adorable. and of course she has a fake id. then there was the high-fidelity sleep over. this ranks among my more amusing of moments - laying in bed in an apt off of melrose, with two fetching young women snoring on either side of me, with the dvd "high fidelity" directly in front of me. ... and being a week from 31. john cusak. damn.
at some point over the next few hours, one of mary's lil' kittens took a tinkle on my jeans. fortunately i had a back-up pair of slacks. fun was had by everyone. it was good to see hollywood again. and to meet some great people. tuesday my mom, her best friend, and i - drove down to laguna beach for a few hours. typical swanky beach town. i took some pics on the rocks. good weather. i forgot how great life can be without humidity.
wednesday we got up and drove most of the day... we were staying all week in anaheim which is about 35 mins south of los angeles off on i-5. we drove up into the city, over to the coast to santa monica... over to hwy 1... then up to malibu and beyond. i think we turned around when we hit ventura county... waaaay up there. the pch was beautiful and i spent some quality alone time on some stretch of malibu. lots of seaweed out there.
it took about 90 mins to get back to anaheim and a few hours later i turned right back around and went up to hollywood again.
wednesday night at the old rock club, the dragonfly - mary j. and many others were having a memorial rock send off for their friend j.d. who died on 8.21.05 in a car accident in florida. there were easily 400 people there and all the bands that played were close friends of j.d. mary j. and a few others were a bit torn up about him, but everyone managed to have a good time. i met danny from the partridge family and turned a photo opp into a bit of performance art.
i don't feel like getting into it. it was fun. later on me and the girls went shopping for food and went back to the apt.
about 19 seconds after getting back, mary j. disappeared into her bedroom... and mary death left soon after. that left me with a buzz, two kittens a camera and myspace. i made the most of it. i sent some funny and barely intelligible comments to some friends... took some wicked photos pf the kittens and then... goddamnit... i dropped my digital camera and broke the darn thing. luckily it has a removable memory chip. left with ever decreasing means of entertainment, i took it upon myself to drive back to anaheim around 3am.
it's amazing how fast you can get to anaheim from hollywood when you are driving 85mph.
i don't wanna get into it.
thursday i didn't do much. messed around online... marveled at how cool it was to put the sd memory chip from my dead camera into the slot of a plasma screen tv. damn. technology. spooky.
friday we went to universal studios "hollywood" and i spent the entire time in awe over how much of a commercial the place really is. a big scam. pay $43 to get into a theme park that plays music by universal artists, sells tons of swag from universal movies... and hypes upcoming universal releases.
what a fucking incredible idea. charge people to advertise to them. that's emotionally where my vacation ended. i edited the drum tracks for a song on the laptop... got addicted to hgtv... and tried to track down a few people in bham who apparently have better things to do than call me back.
the most surreal part of the trip... every plane i took was 5 mins. early.
now that's just crazy.