Category Archives: Video

Reindeerspotting: escape from santaland

junkies, snow & the arctic circle

This is kind of amazing:

reindeerspotting: escape from santaland

Well, not really amazing… more topically delectable.

Like kick-ass NY Italian Ices (which I’ve had many times before because its awesome) eaten with a palate altered due to the current acid trip that it’s on… mild… very, very mild acid trip. But altered non-the-less.

What can I say? I love drugs. Even the most familiar story and events rendered exciting with a change of scenery, language and addition of the arctic circle.

…and reindeer, apparently.

Related articles

so now then…

…we all get better?

Maybe I haven’t been trying hard enough.

or… maybe dismantling is just that. If I were to let go… I’d never come back …never be able to function again …because I’d be left with nothing.

In that vein, maybe I have tried. I have tried just as hard as I am supposed to. I, in my own way, atleast,  listened. and, possibly, lost everything that I am. Its an adorable thought, I am aware. One of young, wide-eyed artists living a fantastical version of reality. One that I had adopted and glued myself to; nails boring in, clenching on for dear life… for years. But I suppose, at some point, something dislodged itself. And this notion (of who I am) floated away with it. But I was still holding on to something that was a familiar shell of something that was once something else; something solid.

Over the years, my hands progressively loosened their grip because, I suppose that part of me knew. At some point, I let go just enough.

But maybe “just enough” is too much.

Maybe that is how it happened.

Because these days, I begin to remember then feel that something is terribly wrong.

The Buzzing. It has returned. But it’s different somehow. Altered. Time, place and events have rendered it exactly the opposite of what it once was. I don’t like what it has become. I don’t like it.

I’ve forgotten to preserve the only thing that’s important to and about me.

…all in an effort to function.

as a human being.

in society.

I’m not saying that I haven’t grown and evolved in this process… it’s just this subcutaneous feeling that I may have done something catastrophically irreversible.

And maybe that is the trade-off.

…so now then?

‘…like crack’

Or rather:

 …like crack : pseudo-hipster “the office”-style.

aka 

The ‘When Drugs & Hipsters Collide’ Ultimate Super-Post!

Awesome! …and also the reason (though an interesting point has been brought up) pseudo-hipsters and hipsters are douche bags.

I mean, I’m not offended when anyone says ‘like crack’. I love it. I wish it spreads and generations and cultures of people start comfortably throwing it around… I mean, like the proverbial grand mother at Thanksgiving or the African kid (that doesn’t speak English) at his tribal gathering.

Nothing would make me happier.

…with the exception of crack.

Brought to you from the crack vault beneath 23rd Street (it’s kind of like a wine cellar for crack. …well, there is wine there, too).

Hollywood ASST

So, again, the author here is going crazy posting semi-off-topic things. I am not trying to alienate. But, to be honest, roughly one-third of my time I was tweaked and wined-calm was on a desk of a Hollywood exec. Which, now, that I think about it is not that uncommon in Hollywood. Maybe a bit uncommon for an assistant. But my most mild, ‘controlled’ and last hurrah was on a desk talking to a client of one of three bosses I had at the time on Mid-Wilshire. Lest we not forget the long ago and faraway “…this took a bit more planning” (which incidentally has been updated with a small time and space thing and makes it a total !must-read!). Well, then, there was that interim thing that I had shortly after.

Why am I telling you any of this? Well, it’s possible to carry-on as a functional human being… furthermore, excel at the human being/efficiency stuff while on meth and 2 buck chuck at 8AM in the morning. And long hours, man. You gotta love what you are doing. Tweaked and balanced-down, I was happy as a clam. Also, gregarious-enough and insightful and able to bring it back around to the parts of the business that related to the parts of art in film. And because I’m going to post this video. You see, even though I am once again, in the city that never sleeps, I will always miss my years in the city that never cares. It was quite serendipitous.

This is a relatively old video, but the folks at 23rd Street love the occasional reminiscing. We promise that we will get back on track with the self-loathing after-drug stuff soon.

American Idiot (the musical) and me (the liar)

YaY!

There It Is!

Well, first thing’s first. It’s been a while, but the ‘forever liar’ thing that comes alongside drug addiction has reintroduced itself into my, now, faraway (ish) existence. During this sort of transitional period, limbo, etc… I’ve been able to throw it into my layered mix as a person in a subtextual manner while creating this cocktail of my person that is, say: the author v 2.0. The crude sort of ‘I’m no longer a hardcore drug user’ goal/endpoint was to become a normal, functional person… then it was to become adult.

Ahhhh, for such a believer in the continuous to think in such a retarded discontinuous manner.

And, now, I find myself here. Relatively functional (on prescription medication)… much more confident… and having my biggest asset to anyone being that I am young and hip and cool and intelligent. Privy to all the blinking lights that is this new communicative sphere of technology while maintaining my cute techno-geek humanity, and furthermore, making older people wet with my generationally-genetic makeup of pieces of three or four mini flares of generations and how that translates into $$ that they understand can only happen moving forward.

All of this meaning that, in time, I have… grown up a bit (not enough, some say), remained focused on the reason for the (now, prescription) drug usage (to remain a functional human being), and capitalized off of the movie “The Social Network”… redefining the word ‘adult’ in a monetary/business sense.

Great.

So, one can now be young and immature but a feasible money machine… an employee… a business-person. But it’s still not really socially acceptable to be a drug addict. Thus, this returning loathing feeling of having to lie (at least in omission) for the remainder of my life.

Rewind:

Dated: 24 Jan 2002

Secrets & Lies

Sitting in physical therapy today, with my hand warming from the heat pad, I felt that my life was full of secrets and lies. Why am I in physical therapy? I injured my wrist. How? I got an infection. Oh, in your wrist? Yeah, it got septic and I had to undergo five weeks of IV antibiotics. How did you get the infection? Um…that’s where I have to start lying to people. Well, I don’t know. These things sometimes happen spontaneously. Um, I was drunk and I fell. So, no one really knows the whole truth. Then, there’s the doctor. I have a doctor’s appointment. ‘doctor’. Meaning psychiatrist. I’m on this ‘medicine’ that I’m not supposed to drink or do drugs on. I’m just going to be lying forever to everyone. That can’t be good for my karma, huh? But I guess when it comes to psychiatric assistance and intravenous drug use, it’s more efficient for me to lie. I mean, I gotta do what I gotta do, right?

This could be a million years ago, as far as I am concerned. Shortly after the IV coke and well-before the IV meth. This was a specific lie of times past. But the feeling, now, is still similar.

See, I’ve sort of stumbled upon a business ‘mentor’ of sorts whom thinks that I am the bee’s fuckin’ knees. Apparently, I have integrity and there are three things he hates… one of them being lying. But if I really were to be truthful… this would never go down, you see.

So, there’s that. Kids, if you do drugs, to this capacity and make it an integral part of ‘you’ as ‘you’, even 8+ years down the line, there will still be times that creep up on you where you feel like you… as ‘you’, again have sort of condemned (not in a god-way) yourself a liar forever.

So, that sucks.

Okay, so… Finally!!! American Idiot!!!!

ummm…. strobe-y.

I have a million things to say about the show. I fuckin’ love Green Day. And I appreciate them the most for being one of the only artists to create art reflecting the transitional generation that exists between X & Y…. the suburban ennui… and the fact that I can play songs with three chords on the guitar.

But for current 23rd Street purposes (drugs and all), the author, here will focus on 3 things.

1. It is a musical, so it’s on a stage. I don’t have to tell anyone that everything needs to be larger, bigger in breadth than say, a film. Details are conveyed in different ways in these two media. Though, American Idiot plays with this notion as well. The blinking boxes and the media. So, Johnny, becomes a bit of a junkie after leaving suburbia. A needle-type junkie. All good. Whatever. Our seats were pretty fuckin’ good, though. But still. But the theatre prop needle is there, as is the prop spoon and tourniquet. And the actor mimes shooting up. And all the televisions built into the backdrop project an extreme close up of sizzling powder in a metal spoon. It was what it was… but still, it gets me. My thighs, oddly enough, tingle. And possibly because I knew how much of a prop everything is, I watch closely at Johnny and his tourniquet and his needle with laser-focus intent. There’s no need to say that I love it and I hate it and I knew this was the most safe kindergarten version of the act… so, it was safe for me to stare.

2. I once had a tryst with Mr. “Leaving West Hollywood”. He liked the song “Give me Novacaine”. (That’s how it’s spelled). This was… still is, the one song that makes me feel a bit sick. Possibly because I’ve coined Mr. “Leaving West Hollywood” as his moniker in reference to the grudgingly sad alcoholism of “Leaving Las Vegas”…. which aforementioned tryst was. Marinating our livers in alcohol in an apartment in West Hollywood… I cannot really even think of it to this day without feeling bad. “Give me Novacaine” is a number in the show. I thought about Mr LWH while watching it. It makes me feel a bit sick. It also makes me, for seconds, miss him. He is a good guy. …and he is now fine, it seems. As fine as any of us can be, anyway.

3. Lastly, for now, the show has this same youth/adult discontinuous gloom as I did. Somewhere toward the end, the punk kids from the beginning come back, dress-shirts and ties… power suits… some still un-grown punks… a young amputee war veteran. Like these things are the only options. I realize then, that I used to think this, too. Youth… Adult… and never the twain shall meet.

How adorably naive was I?

And now, I give you 2 options:

option #1:

Pros: is comprehensively the better of the two.

Cons: very strobe-lighty (which affects the viewing quality quite a bit) & has stuff  (faggot, fuck, etc.)*bleeeped* (ghey).

Pro or Con: a bunch of Billie Joe talking in the beginning. But if you believe this to be a con, and don’t know how to “fast-forward”, you are retarded.

option #2:

Pros: Exactly as you would see it in the show (curtain and all) & strobe doesn’t affect viewing quality at all.

Cons: Camera person is high. Focusing on all the wrong things.

& just because its my favorite:


In the end, if you can, go see it.

PS. I don’t like AFI (the band) all that much at all really, but I just found out that Davey Havok played St Jimmy (drug dealer) in the cast that I saw. eh. No Billie Joe to say the least, but atleast it wasn’t Melissa Etheridge.

Cancer is Funny

It really is.

Watch this. “The Big C”, they call it now… Showtime renamed it from “The C Word” (What it was originally titled in the version they showed to the network)… and appropriately so. I know this, of course, because this is the kind of stuff that I just happen to know…. like carpenters know how to hang stuff up on walls. ..don’t know if I’d call this a perk, but living and working in the location and business of Hollywood for five and a half years, one has to retain something.

The Big C on Showtime

It’s also different in tone from the unaired pilot. (…that I happen to have on my person… if by person, one means computer). The doctor is older and British for one and like a completely different actor (this class, is what we call re-casting the role; ‘going in a different direction’.)

In addition, the recasting brings to the forefront, to an even larger degree, Laura Linney’s subtle MILFiousity. Which would explode the cap off of a certain friend’s MILF-ecta*

*specific category of “Trifecta”… “Trifecta” itself, short, or an informal version, of “Ultimate Trifecta (Top 3) Chicks to Fuck”… though, to be honest, I may have taken liberty there with the completed, formal title of the informal Trifecta. eh… I tend to do that.

You’ll see the difference when and if I decide to post it. I’ll decide to post it, when and if, someone reads this and decides that this what they would like to have happen. I’ll never know unless someone comments, though. …which may never happen because no one reads this. Then, class, we can have a discussion.

Thank you, drive thru.

What does this have to do with drug addiction?

like… everything.

P.S. okay, no one reads this thing, so: The Big C (pre-air)

discuss…

the follow

To refresh the palate, like ginger is supposed to do during a sushi dinner. Though, honestly, I never eat the ginger as it’s crazy stringent and thus, not a pleasurable experience… so I can’t be sure that it actually cleanses anything.

Very much like this. The Follow is absolutely, can’t-deal, kick-ass. Wong Kar Wai and Clive Owen. And the fact that Clive Owen can be one of those actors in a Wong Kar Wai film. And the fact that I interned at The Shooting Gallery in NY (I guess in between my long drug jags… and possibly… definitely before the needle). It’s all so reminiscent and mildly adorable as interpreted by this version of myself staring downward at that version of myself in a moment partially frozen in time.

But my point… much like ginger, The Follow, only in name (given by the author and the author that doesn’t dig the ginger, at that) cleanses the palate. It’s actually the anti-ginger (if ginger does what its said to do), now that I think about it.

…or maybe not. …who knows? My metaphors can only go so far in the daytime.

It’s real function?…

…That its AWESOME! In the most lackadaisical, non-intrusive way.

Yet another interlude brought you by the folks at 23rd street.