last time i saw suilma, she looked like a little boy.
a brilliant actress, but when i showed her photos i had taken of her on set,
she cringed and her insecurities set in.
so i promised her the next time i was in l.a., i would shoot her as herself.
i adore suilma because i imagine if i ever had a little sister,
she would probably look just like her,
freckles and all. :)
the rest of the photos (with her sweetheart steve) are up on mackive.com.
joey once told me i couldn’t get into johnny cash
because i would never understand the plight of the working class, white man.
so why is it that so many deer tick songs break my heart?
“i am the boy your mother wanted you to meet,
but i am broken and torn…”
“listen jack you’re on the wrong side of the tracks,
at least now i don’t have to walk it all alone.”
i am that boy, and that line,
those lines pretty much sum up my sentiments.
• • • • •
i spent saturday with them in los angeles for prefix magazine.
was warned they had a reputation for being degenerates,
but they turned out to be really sweet guys.
john is an elusive cat.
he writes beautiful lyrics,
but is unapologetic about his vulgarities.
and randomly after margaritas,
he dropped down to one knee, slid a ring on my finger and asked me to marry him.
playful bantering aside,
i’m a sucker for expressive faces.
in the span of ten hours,
he gave me more awesome pictures
than i was able to get the entire four days in santo domingo last month
(haven’t even bothered to post pictures from that trip).
a part of me wishes he were just some schmuck who lived in new york,
just so i could have someone to take pictures of all the time.
i’ve been pining for a muse.
the rest of the photos are up at prefix.
currently listening to:
“ashamed” was one of my favorite deer tick songs.
it wasn’t until i heard it live saturday night that it has become one of my favorite songs.
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** updated **
someone uploaded “ashamed” from saturday.
the enchantment of that performance is lost in the crappy compression,
but i’m still grateful that it was recorded.
aly and josh put together an amazing trip;
the most fun i’ve had in a very long time.
between julian, ben and everyone’s instagram installed iphones,
i found it unnecessary to take pictures.
this is mostly for me,
but some indelible memories:
being surrounded by good people for a change.
interacting with brash new yorkers daily can get tiresome.
(newfound respect for dancehall and added the term “daggering” to my vocabulary.)
late one night, with her foot in the beach sand,
kim scrawled “kim <3 veanne."
i had always hoped someone would do that for me, never thought it would be her though...
but yeah, i love this girl.
the food.
(lovebirds julian and elisa)
while the boys were out at a bachelor party one evening,
the girls hung out in the hot tub (at villa sur mer, where we spent the majority of our time),
talking about how much we hated balls.
one afternoon, charlie and i swung back and forth on the hammock,
thwacked out of our minds, laughing uncontrollably for the longest time, for no reason,
and i said to him, “lets jump off the cliff.” which we did.
brandon and i almost got married there.
i mean, he’s the coolest fucking guy i’ve ever met so it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time,
but then we sobered up and realized it was idiotic, the most trivial detail being we live on opposite coasts.
we’re all sorts of ridiculous.
josh’s dj set. and when he dropped back-to-back bobby brown at this bar.
(the birthday boy and his harem.)
waking up late sunday afternoon,
dancing and floating around with melissa and kim on our cottage terrace to al green’s “no one like you.”
last sunset in negril,
surrounded by everyone, but was by myself at the edge
when tyrone, this sweet boy who lived in the town over,
who i had met the previous day, who had cooked all of us the most delightful lunch,
sat down next to me.
“i have been looking all over for you. i came here this morning asking everyone where you were.
i want to tell you something.”
i started daydreaming about staying in negril,
wondered what it would be like to take him up on his offer,
stuffing my face everyday with jerk chicken, beef patties and curried lobster,
moving at a slower pace,
maybe taking on a few web development gigs here and there,
taking pictures here and there.
i was sure i could live in negril and be happy.
last night in negril,
curled up in the hammock with brandon and a bottle of rum.
somewhere in between
giggling because we could hear the fat man and his prostitute having sex in the cottage across the garden from us
and him trying to convince me that i was in love with him,
i was reminded again
how there’s something quite beautiful and sad about the fleeting anythings (moments, romances, adventures).
and then blink,
i’m back in new york working fourteen consecutive days on things that do not thrill me.
i wish i had space in my apartment for a hammock.
all photos by:
of course, to truly understand the scope of the trip,
one should visit the entire gallery of 2,425 photos here.
currently listening to:
giant panda guerilla dub squad rang through villa sur mer the entire week.
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“in these times” (their latest album) is pretty damn solid.
download in itunes here.
most wicked mix of two drum&bass tracks, riding for five minutes and forty-eight seconds.
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charlie and i jumped off a cliff.
ps. some people were confused, so to clarify,
yes, that is me and charlie jumping off a cliff, not a stock image.
ben is that good.
currently listening to:
every little thing gonna be all right.
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to the 100th.
i look like the crazy old cat lady with the disheveled hair;
been up all night glued to the bed,
trying to finish a website redesign for the boss
before my flight to JAMAICA in three hours.
brooks says,
“it ain’t a proper vacation unless you come back with an std…or a baby.”
happy pi day!
i left williamsburg early last year. the neighborhood had radically changed
and i was tired of being lumped in with the pool of smug, disrespectful hipsters.
opted for a neighborhood with a more old school brooklyn feel
and traded the backyard for a stoop and exposed brick.
but within a year, the family-run grocery down the street
was replaced with a fancy, organic, overpriced “food market,”
3D (best jamaican beef patties and oxtail stew ever) was pushed several blocks south
and a bunch of niche boutiques opened up on franklin.
but the cops still hang out on every other corner,
and a few months ago, stray bullets from a shooting killed an older woman a few doors down from me.
i don’t know where i stand in all of this.
but this speaks volumes. #smug
(construction on the original location of 3D)
i wonder how long until this gem of a storefront is removed.
i should just give up and move to manhattan.
currently listening to:
since i started learning the ukulele this year,
friends have been sending me awesome links to ukulele covers.
this one came from victor, george harrison by jake shimabukuro.
if that gushing feeling you get when you fall for someone was a melody,
it would sound something like this.
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when i raise my trigger finger all you f** hit the deck.
currently listening to:
only the OG junglists knew what i was talking about.
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a quick paris weekend was more trouble than it was worth
so i spent my birthday in town.
had dinner with two of my best friends, phan and kim.
these two crack me up.
kimmie suggested i embellish my blog so that when i’m old and senile,
i can look back and be like, “oh wow, i was so cool.”
and then our dinner conversation became absurd, silly prattle.
“if you skydive naked, do you let out like, the biggest queef when you land?”
“what do you say to a girl with two black eyes? nothing, you already told the bitch twice.”
but then we started going through our bucket list and i realized how simple mine was
and that i could pretty much accomplish all of them this year if i tried hard enough.
some of the things included?
• jump off a cliff
• ride a camel
• aurora borealis
and then i hung out with some friends on a bus (with michelle).
this bus.
adorable jenni took a bunch of pictures, but my stupid mug is in all of them.
so i’ll spare you.
currently listening to:
i’d like to think we were dancing to this song in the picture above.
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i had dinner a few nights ago with phan and two of his finance friends.
listening to the two of them talk felt like watching a pissing contest.
money money hot bitches dumb bitches “only time i want to see fat people is in the gym”
and all i kept thinking was, wow.
i am so far removed from that world.
talent is sexier than muscles,
and a sweet guy would win my heart any day over a guy with disposable income.
but not like it matters anyway,
because no one loves me this year
so i spent valentine’s evening with a pizza,
editing pictures from a quick shoot from the previous day.
the rest are up at mackler studios.
currently listening to:
i think this is my favorite winehouse track.
since i’ve come on home, well my body’s been a mess.
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kirk asked me to design the book cover
for his finding my soulmate, one nightstand at a time.
so i drew inspiration from my past,
the specks that each left a moment
that made me think, “wow. this person could be the one.”
i wanted to capture these moments
in polaroids, in a pile, on a table.
so i sat down and thought of all the whimsies,
and i scribbled and scribbled and started to shoot.
but before i could finish shooting the collection of girls,
he decided to go in a different direction.
oh well, can’t win them all.
it’s sort of become a tradition,
quiet upstate cabin trips every few months,
to get away from the commotion that is new york city.
some random pictures from the weekend.
currently listening to:
tony’s weekend playlist made me sad at times.
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came out again when we were in death valley the following evening.
he sent me this picture yesterday when i got back to new york.
that little nub on the right, next to the bench, that’s me.
currently listening to:
the bends on repeat all day.
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currently listening to:
it’s been a bob dylan, billy joel kind of week.
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day one of picture-taking fun in the desert.
tom, my partner in crime.
i want one.
little moon,
little star,
and fading contrails
make for a smiling veanne.
whenever i’m in san francisco,
i make an earnest effort to see best friends, old friends.
and then benjamin shows up at the dive
and i haven’t seen him since he was in law school six years ago
and now we’re both wearing matching leather jackets and scarves,
looking like we’d be brother/sister
and he says, “christ, do you fucking age?”
and i remember again how much of a crush i’ve always had on him.
currently listening to:
he introduced me to the two toms ten years ago. (pynchon & waits.)
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cousins get together at suzanne’s in the outer sunset.
she showed us a photo book she made with shutterfly
of all our family trips and gatherings from 2011.
aimee was very upset she was unable to make it,
so she texted all of us this photo strip to show us how broken up she was
(she has a talent for making ridiculously, awesomely ugly faces).
it’s uncanny how much she looks like me in the third picture.
aimlessly wandering around my hometown.
luke actually took this picture of me with his iphone.
mmmmm
onnnnnn
sterrrr!
currently listening to:
this is my favorite song about san francisco.
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back into bed, or into my arms.
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