Dave Raphael

If I had to pick, this would be at the top of the list of my favorite stencils Ive seen this year.  Would love to know who put these up.

My favorite partof this stencil is its size and location: small and low.  Its not so frequently that Jimmy Page (or anyone else in Led Zeppelin, Richard Cole included) meets your gaze as you wander aimlessly with your head hung low.  My second favorite part of this stencil is that out of the countless images he could have used, 1970 Royal Albert Hall cardigan Jimmy Page was the one the artist picked.  Awesome choice, haha.

Quite possibly the best footnote in pop history, the slaying birth of heavy rock was initially delivered to the British masses in a cardigan.  The depth of Page’s cool really hasnt even begun to be probed…  Let these quick yet awesome throw ups serve as a reminder of the secret history of wool in the annals of rock.  I’ll leave the how many more times or dazed and confused query for debate…

The first time I went to Burning Man, I had the good fortune to magically and randomly camp next to some truly amazing people.  Every year that I return, its always a high priority of mine to reconnect with this small group of people I first met in 2006.  When I caught up with David

and Susan

they almost instantly asked if I had met their neighbor yet.  Yeah, check it out, she’s taking apart her car or something.  Huh?

at its core, burning man is an arts festival and from my view of things, this element is really lost on many people who have never attended.  There is always something really cool to see there but I guess as with anything, there is also a lot of shit to sort through in order to find it…  I approached Drake’s camp with some well earned black rock city skepticism, but as it turned out, this was definitely the coolest project I saw this year.

meet Drake Logan:

Drake had put her car on a U-haul trailer in San Francisco, pulled it over the Sierras and parked it on a tarp in Nevada for the sole purpose of disassembling the vehicle down to as many independent nuts, bolts and assorted metal and plastic pieces as possible.  All for the sake of loading every single part into the U-haul, bringing it back to the bay and assembling it into some kind of sculpture.  Instantly, I was captivated by such a seemingly maniacal prospect.

People talk a lot of shit about what they want to do with their art projects and if I had overheard this on a Sunday morning in early August at Ritual, I would have walked out onto Valencia laughing to myself and probably would have told jokes to my camp mates about some burner pipe dream I heard about at hipster central.

But when I first heard about this project, the car was more than half taken apart and the tables were entirely turned.  I was pretty awestruck at the gravity of what was going on.  Its hard enough getting yourself and what you need to burning man, this was really taking things to the next level.

When you work with, or hang around artists for any amount of time, it becomes easy enough to identify the arc of any creative process.  A lot of time is spent thinking about how or why some action is going to occur.  A lot of time is spent preparing for that action once it is determined what that action actually is.  And then, at some user defined point, that action is executed and for me, that’s always the most exciting time to be around or in the creative process.  The thinking, planning and finishing all have their own mood but the doing is where I can usually catch the crest of that wave of energy, get up on it and ride it to the heart of the matter.

And that’s exactly where Drake was when I walked into her camp: completely excited, bursting with wholly positive energy, beaming that “YES, Im DOING this” light and everyone that got near her felt it.

After shooting for a short while Drake asked me if I had an opinion on the best way to get the top of the engine block case off.  It was then I realized the absolute best part of this project: Drake’s not a mechanic.  Awesome.  It was enough to drag a car out there to take it apart, but to go through that without expert knowledge on how to do it?  Amazing.

During the time I was hanging around, lots of people passed through and most were asked if they knew about cars or had any advice on the logical order to proceed with the task at hand, whatever it was at the moment.  This really blew my mind and totally transformed this project into something way way way cooler than what it had initially appeared to be.

Another thing not often understood about the festival is that it is truly a “leave no trace” event.  Once youve gone out there you realize how misused that phrase is.  There is no trash disposal at burning man.  what you bring in, you bring out, down to every little bit of trash you generate.

Its one thing to camp under those circumstances, but to fully strip an automobile and collect every single piece of material?  Ever break auto glass into a million pieces?  Ever change the oil on your car in your driveway?  Ever think about how many pieces of things are in a car?  crazy.

You can view a trailer of the documentary video Julia Robertson has shot of Drake’s work.

Drake’s show runs today, 2 November through 26 December at the Float Center in Oakland CA.  The opening party is scheduled for this coming Saturday, 7 November at 6 pm.  If you are in the Bay Area, might be worth stopping in to see how this evolved.

much like billy and ethel, Pipi de Poes

and Karl de Kater anxiously plan their vacation in anticipation of finally receiving their royalty check for all the spooooky photos they’ve posed for over the years.

royalteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.  now off to Alber Heijn for some aluminium foil and honey.

I put my bitch in the window for all the smokers to see.

I have an nine page editorial in the second issue of crack mag starting on page 91.  Check out crack mag!

This was shot over the summer, features FAKE putting up a piece at the soundgarden on marnixstraat, if you are local check it out, I think its still up.

you can link directly to crack mag #002!

check out more of FAKE’s work.

I met Ash in a crosswalk outside my apartment almost three years ago to the day.  At the time she was living across the street from me, had blunt bangs, red hair and stopped me dead in my tracks.  I was working on the Sex and The City Movie that autumn and she had just moved back to NYC.  At the time, she was just one of those people you meet, want to have high hopes for, but never REALLY think will hang around.

three years later, she’s one of my closest friends, one of the best friends I have ever had and positively at the top of the list of creative partnerships I could ever dream to make.  Sometimes, you bump into some stranger and things just work out.  Or maybe Im just blessed, or both.

Our friendship has been born of fish right from the start.  Barring one time my mom cooked us chickens when we were out shooting at my parents house, we recently concluded every single meal we’ve eaten together over the last three years has been fish.  righteous.

Two weeks ago, we met up for our weekly sushi obsession, I had a long week on the TV show I currently work(ed) on and after dinner she went out to meet some friends and I got on my bike desperate for some exercise.  Shortly thereafter, I got into an accident, broke my shoulder and a phone call later the pirate is at my house changing the ice packs under my shirt and making fun of me for crying like a girl at four in the morning on a Saturday night.  You couldnt possibly ask for a better friend and I never could have imagined one.

I cant really move my arm too much, so shooting film (or more succinctly, developing it) has been the last thing on my mind.  Our relationship more or less revolves around hanging out and taking photos and since the accident we hadnt shot anything, I hadnt left the house and everything was all fucked up.  I was jonesing to get some kind of normalcy back into my life, she had been shopping for me since I couldnt really move too well and the next thing you know, her night off turned into dinner party madness and it was the perfect excuse to try to see if I could one hand a rangefinder.  I always need an excuse to use the wholly detestable M8 I got a few months ago and this was the perfect occasion.  The camera really is the most frustrating, fucked up and infinitely awful thing to use in practice, but the video images it produces are kinda cool in its own video way so there ya go.  Im crippled right now, so consider that as my excuse for using the damn thig.

I had hoped to go out to this cajun place we like but leaving the house was fully out of the question, so the evening quickly turned into things to do with a catfish at home.  Aside from being the coolest chic on earth, Ash is a born again motherfucker in the kicthen: bitch can cook.

Discussion about rice turned to potatoes, indecision about shrimp or fish led to lets do both and we invented, by proxy of my limited cooking tools, a casserole with au gratin potato base, supporting fried catfish topped with mushrooms and steamed shrimp with a generous helping of onions and peppers.  All this thickened with a heavy cream and butter base baked to silly perfection.  Can you say insane?  no, really.

We’ve cooked countless times over the years and honestly, this meal was worth breaking my shoulder to eat.  It was.  We made the total food orgasm.  And I dont even really liked cooked fish…  Foods.

There is nothing quite like an injury to inspire pause and introspection.  Im super lucky and fully grateful to have someone this awesome as a permanent part of the circus.

thanks for the goodness Jones.

I have some work featured at http://sepulchra.com/blog/?p=682 to accompany some field recordings inspired by our first president’s small wooden wife.  no, wooden teeth.

photos from the Gorman adventure replete with the small wooden wife and studebaker hawk yet to come…

my brother recently moved back to town.  sadly, he wont sell me his bareknuckle, leaving me with the burden of yet ANOTHER custom build project (this is a disease you dont want) but it was great to see him regardless…

the wine menu looked enticing, but I just got back from the bay with the snob brim riding high on my best afternoon hat, and it was still early…

a long discussion ensued about the shit hand it is to have drawn a life in NYC, how much we both want to get out and all the reasons why we wont.  Now that he’s back, it’s nice not to carry this burden of loathing all alone but there is a big part of me that feels so bad for him, he was out, I was jealous, now he’s back, and as great as it is to not have to drive for two and a half days to see him, it pretty much completely sucks.

unfortunately enough for our social outing, he got one of these infernal fucking things.

the distraction of food brought Im the operator with my pocket calculator to a succinct close, and we were right back into cursing life in the big apple, or whatever it is that the experience of living here amounts to: wanderlust, suffering, anxious scramble to find the ejector lever in a stinging, blinding cold sweat lined panic before the flat spin anchors you to your seat for those last moments of terror before passing out never to scream again, whatever.

on the walk home, I figured the highlight would be someone’s toaster threatening to burn down the cover of Physical Grafitti, however

we were both amused at the arrival of the most cliche of all NYC moments, the stuff of which makes a tourist’s trip remarkable but simply makes the locals totally jaded:

this stuff might excite the the rubes from purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain but as illustrated, the natives are trained to point at the models by three or four, imagine how old this shit gets in your thirties…

uber fun afternoon.  lots (lost) of thoughts to process, but its nice, lucky even, to live near my bro again.  welcome home fucker.

buried under a mountain of film, I took the M8 out to the pool to celebrate the end of the summer with my favorite Pirate.  while it is the most abysmally designed thing *ever* to be conceived by a German National, it can lead to some nice photos if you can stand the frustration of using the damn thing.  Pirate just leads to good photos just by showing up, would be nice if computer camera did the same thing.