CA über alles.

Recently, I was invited to an advance screening of Milk, the new Gus Van Sant film about gay rights activist and first ever elected gay politician, Harvey Milk. The film was amazing but what i really took away from it was a sadness and disappointment. Not just at the film's storyline which was definitely somber, but, the fact that in this year of 2008, 30 odd years after Harvey Milk was assassinated, 25 years after his assassin walked out of prison for a mere manslaughter charge, and in the same year the first ever black president was elected running on the platform for change, California was still unable to go forward and pass a proposition allowing gay marriage/civil unions.

some of my favorite photos from the summer:


darin hungover on the bus back from baltimore.


Obrycki's blue crabs in b'more: black pepper rub instead of old bay.


prospect park art.


coffee ocean.


heather's pool party at the parent's house.


one attempt at a Tijuana photo shoot.

SADDER DAYS.

today, the first thing i saw around the corner from my house was this awesome lady waiting for the bus. gentrification is such a gnarly topic of discussion here. i feel like the area is about to explode with anger at all the condos going up but the the irony lies in the young transplants like myself who argue against the gentrification of "our neighborhood." the problem is none of us has a right to say. we all exploit the neighborhood and enjoy the perks that come with the "white-ing up" of this neighborhood. five years ago, my friend was mugged and pistol whipped in this area. now, we all stumble home black out drunk with iphones in our pockets.



after a nice saturday morning ride, dan hart and i ended up at the base of the brooklyn bridge where we stopped and rested amidst the future couples all suited up, stuffy and stiffly posing above the laid down photographers working overtime to get that right amount of majestic bridge in the background. it came as a shock that dan hart had never tasted the wonders of the brooklyn ice cream factory. we finished our chill down with a nice scoop of vanilla chocolate chunk. nothing like finishing a work out with some delicious milkfats.



i don't like mornings or mondays... i don't like mailmen... i just like lasagna. i really wish this fit.

kitchen delight

jim and darla just moved not too far from me. bushwick and montrose. i'm pretty amped about it. they have an amazing space. i love when they live nearby me. they take such good care of me. i journeyed over to their new pad to check it out the other day and it was immediately "do you want coffee?" and jim puts the kettle on to steep. darla inquires if i am hungry and when i say yes she examines the contents of her fridge, decides what she needs and heads downstairs to the bodega. ten minutes later she's making pressed sandwiches in the skillet and chopping fresh ginger for our smoothies.



then, they blew each other. and i was like what? but i guess they are just open like that. ah, marriage.

p.s. things that have happened lately: someone broke a glass over my head (i am fine), i started to pay back my student loans (yay! growing up?), i've got 37 days no smoking cold turkey, and my tax return is looking like $722 with a $600 rebate. check me out in the bay area this summer!

DAY THREE

it's pretty mellow, strolling down camden high street. it's genuinely nice out and john, who've named gene after the character in wet hot american summer, decided to stay home because he has a meeting with the masons around two. so, ben and i are taking our time to make each other laugh and enjoy this 'alone' time as it comes so infrequent. it was really nice looking at all the amazing vintage stores. there are a million vintage clothing and record stores there as well as a tons of different eateries. yay! sounds great!!! not really. it's not so much an outdoor market as a swap meet or mall that happens to contain a little sunlight and a few older items. in all fairness, ben bought some awesome old men's magazines and i wanted all these records and jackets and pants but something was seriously off. then, i realized that every record was not on sire or rough trade or warner like it should be. all the covers were slightly incorrect and when i looked at the backs i realized most of these albums never existed outside of theis continent. i believed them mostly to be bootlegs. there were some good records and i eventually picked up a few. i came across a sandie shaw single cover of the smiths "hand in glove" and an awesome copy of the buzzcocks "everybody's happy nowadays." we kept walking through the ridiculous camden, stopping eventually at a pub to have a piss and a pint. it's a flawed logic really: we stop in pubs because we have to pee but we buy another pint we furthurs our necessity of flowing liquids out of us. it's nice having a pint at one p.m. in the UK because most of the pubs have these awesome huge windows that let in a revealing amount of daylight and it doesn't frighten in a way that reminds us that we are having a drink in the middle of the day. no, we are pretty happy about it and sit down to have a pint and do some drawings. i am pretty happy about what i drew in that bar. afterwards, we head back home on a bus and sit up top the double decker bus. i sing the smiths, ben asks me what i am singing, i tell him, and he says whatever i sing out here that he doesn't know he figures is either the smiths or morrissey. back at the hostel, we wait for gene and decide to go for indian food. two years ago, laurette and i picked up some amazing indian on brick lane so that's where we are headed. i begin to feel like real shit along the way, gassy, bloated, and i have yet to shit on the trip at this point so my body is starting to tell me something. it's a bit dodgey when we exit the train and walk to osbourne street where all the many indian places attempt to solicit you in there restaurant in many engaging ways. free drinks, etc. we end up in one that looks packed and aren't offered anything. i could give two shits and do. i shit all over that bathroom. i pee'd out of my ass for a good fiften, twenty minutes before even looking at the menu. back at the table, i am feeling slugish, tired, not hungry. i try to get something down, order water to which the guy gets angry so i change it to a Cobra, large indian beer. i really don't need the beer, the samosas are grossa, and the saag is decent. i fall asleep all the way home on the trains and get in bed around 930 and have a good sleep finally.

DAY TWO

if you awake at five am it's probably for a couple reasons: one, you mean to wake up that early for work or a jump on the day; two, your friend woke up early and is waking you much too humanly early with his natural goings about. so, you and your colleagues awake hours before continental breakfast and you all wait. you all sit and wait. you ask when breakfast is and the guy at the front desk just says "breakfast time." i was not aware that there was a universal breakfast time in the UK. one of you goes upstairs to shower and the other two of you including the original culprit responsible for early rising head over to hang and hope for mcdonald's to open. the two of you have delicious breakfast sandwiches, hash browns and coffee each. you haven't eaten mickey d's since the last time you were in europe. afterwards, you head to the tate which is great and filled with hot young girls, a pub where you consume sausage sandwiches and pints of fuller's london pride, and hit the outskirts of churches you lack any desire to enter. john keeps ducking into churches you again do not want to go into but before you have any voice in the matter he's disappeared into the dark doorway of another church. ben and i joke about us burning if we enter the church but eventually are forced into stealing john away. one of the churches was bombed by the nazis and revealed upon bombing a part of the bible. ben said "see the nazis were good for something." we hit the steps and wait for john to do whatever inside st. paul's cathedral and then head to another pub to wait for john to go the masonic temple to set up a meeting of minds. we have a few beers, head home, take a nap, chase down a bar recommended us by ben's friend's where there are many young kids, and i do mean kids you only have to be 18 to drink in a bar out here, and as much as i feel old i know the two dudes i am with are even older, they have boddington's on tap, and the juke box is rad and free. this one girl comes up to ben as asks him if he has a "swizzle," he asks "a what?" she says a swizzle and he states his lack of knowledge inre a swizzle and she exclaims OHYOUREAMERICAN! we decide to leave after john somehow overtakes the momentum of the conversation between ben and this girl somehow turning it into a name drop of his bar in brooklyn, the one that is permanently plastered on the back of his tee shirt he wears almost 24-7. she retreats to her friends and we decide to bounce back to piccadilly circus which is basically times square london. we attempt to find this after hours joint marchese recommended me as every bar begins to close in the area. john asks one closing bar for any bar open at this hour and we end up in the UK version of TGIFriday's. it's called O'Neills and you can imagine. it's mostly asians and shitty top 40 songs. i get angry in this cartoon irish pub, have a shot alone and finally get my mates to bail. we end up finding the roxy, marchese's joint, get wasted on two for one beers and head back home with my belligerent friends in 20 pound cab. i attempt to communicate online with a friend back home but the keys on the board feel tiny to me and it takes me way to long to formulate words. i eventually give up. i find john soon after and he is hanging in a van around the back of the hostel, drinking and smoking with five other people. it's hot box central and after half a smoke i feel sick and head upstairs. john kisses some random black girl on the top of her head and she looks confused. back in the room, we find ben face down on the floor, sad and drunk, saying he wants to go home. i talk him down and we all go to bed.

DAY ONE

sunday I arrived around 8am exhausted from an inability to fall asleep on the flight whilst having two old men to the left and right constantly in my personal space. i hate sitting in the middle and so i slept one whole hour on the flight. we met up with ben at his terminal and then headed into the city. it was easy to find our way in but difficult to maintain our hysteria as the automated female voice on our tube repeated the terminating destination of our tube at cockfosters. laughing ensued on our parts over and again but, for some reason the brits were not equally amused. delirious, we stumbled to our connecting train and made it to our hostel in the swiss cottage area. it's right off the jubilee line which was nice as it helped us get to some off the big sites already. after check in, we headed down to the waterloo stop where i attempted to get ben and john to eat at "fishcoteque" with me. no takers. side note: i am aware that there are many different ways the british say things and i love it so will be documenting some of my favorites i.e. the fruit drink at mickey d's called "fruit shoot." genius. next, we walked across waterloo bridge as the combination of delirium, lack of sleep and sustinance started to take its toll on us. the worst jokes started to become funny as we walked under the shadow of Dirty Dancing the musical, lion king and Buddy, the buddy holly story. i wondered how they pulled off the plane crash scene in the end of the play. we walked to the masonic temple so john could peer in only to have john declare after the fact that "of course they are not open today, it's sunday." we ate fish and chips after all, ben found bones in his and mysteriously stopped touching his fish. i ate mine but started to get paranoid that i had a bone in my throat. the day began to really take it's toll. we walked to get coffee, found a TV in a trash bin and ben said look at that tele in the bin, and i muttered the telebin. you had to be there, for sure. after a cup of coffee that didn't help, we stumbled onto hundreds of "fruit booters" in-lining down charing cross road. we laughed and took photos, then, headed into trafalgar square and eventually the national gallery. saw that anamorphic perspective painting that reveals a skull when you stand to the right. that was cool. some some gilded stuff which ben said more people should "gild." i agree. we walked to buckingham palace where i was literally falling asleep standing up. it was bad, real bad. i bought two red bulls at the tube which also didn't help and began to scare me. we made it to piccadilly circus, found ben's casino, registered, and found out they don't even have hold 'em. an old sickly looking asian dude coughed on me. should i get a TB shot? Bird flu? finally headed back to the hostel, took a nap, had a pint, realized how tired i was and went back to bed around 7pm. i now can't fall back asleep as john's snoring keeps waking me up and i've slept eight hours already. so, i write, i'll smoke a cigarette, watch the sun come up and have breakfast on the house. hopefully more fun and less sleep tomorrow. i am not known for being the party pooper. what's the deal? love, ryandale.

i drew today

neu yerr's rza-lution iz two drawed more. this was toodaids. get it.
pea. ess. i really love the fiery furnaces alloffasudden.