Dark Daze photography blog

This really should have been posted a week back, the penultimate blog from the Cali trip as its now been a while since we got back, and its even been a fair while since our luggage turned up too. I’m not even gonna use this space to complain that it went missing, that the delivery company tried to leave it at the fire door of a tower block of flats as ‘no-one was in’, I wont spend long on describing the weird dampness of the clothes inside, the ruined polaroids, and that the Chicano lady I had smuggled back in had passed away a few days before I finally got the case back. But what I will say is don’t fly US Airways, ever……. not even if they offer you cash money, a chance to sit in the captains seat, and first dibs on the plastic sealed, indescribable hot slop they churn out once during the flight. Yeah sure we booked a bit of a budget trip, but still I have never seen airhostess’ that damn lazy in my life. When we got delayed in Philadelphia (what were we doing in Philly…..?…..well you shouldn’t ask, it’s the bloody elephant in the room, but still, we had to get a connection there from our internal flight to the transatlantic flight). By the time we got off the plane they were already paging us for the connector flight 2 terminals away, or a frantic ten minute dash, if you were any of the amblingoldrespiratorpushinsodaswillin Yanks that got knocked over by 6 UK heds doing that strange run that wearing jeans slung far too low causes then you shoulda just got out the way innit.
Anyway, we made the connection,
the luggage didn’t,
and then we sat on a frozen runway for 3 hours.
The US airways staff figured then that if they served the food and showed the one movie that was available (it was some shaky plastic 80’s plane with one screen at the end of the centre aisle) whilst we were still waiting for the plane queue to the de-icer then they could spend the rest of the flight napping, dribbling into the coffee and practising their hostile stares and put downs. Believe me ladies you got that shit locked, no practise required!!!

Back in LA, it’s the last day being recalled here, and the others from HA have spent the last evening going to the 7th Letter office again, which apparently was finally opened up. Some shift in the space-time continuum occurred apparently. Whilst Jiroe and Ods plan the next day.

—- This was it on the last day of the stressful, eventful trip, instead of hanging at the beach laughing at the muscle freaks and the 80’s boob jobs (oh man I could write an essay on that shit, were plastic surgeons just practising back then, seeing how much of any kinda material they could squeeze in before a rupture happened? I’ve seen ladies out here with more cc’s of landfill in the chest than we’ve got bodies under the Millennium Dome), we decided to roll on down to a river in east LA and visit a huge Hall of Fame.

Jiroe, Odisie and I had gotten up early and found our way to a Home Depot. Its like a big big B+Q, outside loads of Mexicans are lined up stopping you on the way in and on the way out, offering to do work for you, they line the gates and exits, is this just an LA thing? Inside Jiroe and Odisie were busy gettin paint mixed by a dude who looked like a mash up between Richie Valens and Eddie the kid from the Munsters, the original one, not the shitty new colour series. He took paint mixing real seriously, and didn’t seem fazed by two twitchin excitable UK writers, wearing dubbins t-shirts ordering Gallons and Gallons of two kinds of Disney Blue, a fair few gallons of red, gallons of black and a trolley full of rollers. So $200 and a few arguments later about colour schemes and doo-dads we rolled out the depot, and loaded up the HHR. They thought long and hard about getting the Mexican dudes to do the roller work, cos it would look gangsta for the flick and they seemed pretty eager to get involved, but it didn’t happen….

We fired up the beast of an engine, rolled out the gates of the parking lot, running over a few feet as we went and pulled out into LA traffic, crossed the central reservation and pulled into the Osh parking lot. This is America, you can’t walk anywhere…..

I spent my time sat in the car wondering if I was ever gonna get to hook up with Lou O’Bedlam the dope photographer that was part of my reason for coming to LA in the first place. But the signs were looking promising, it was maybe only 8.30am and we had almost all the paint, and now they only had to choose some tins that matched, a few hours to paint the dubbins maybe, then soon i would be kicking back with Lou, sipping a beer, and nerding out about polaroids, and how fun it is to get to take photos of hot girls, and them be really pleased that you even wanna……oh man i love those hot girls…….. anyways i snapped to out of my daydream, no-aircon-onLAHeat-hallucination and ten minutes later they were back in the car and we rolled round to fill up on corned beef hash and in odisy’s case a chilli omelette, I love chilli but not convinced by that early morning combo.

I admire good ideas, and I have a lot of respect for Odisie and Jiroe, but I have a lot more of both admiration and respect for stupid, pointless ideas and this was definitely one of them. An hour and a half of driving and I was dumping them at the side of the 4 lane freeway, buckets of gallons of paint, rollers, tins, backpacks, changes of clothes, cameras, laptops, tripods, all piling up in the brush next to the dusty road, a no stopping zone so I spent half hour driving around looking for somewhere to park, on one side of the bridge/river was a massive gated community, with a sheriff patrolling, on the other was wilderness stretching to the mountains. I chose the nature trail and parked in some lakeside area, and took the long walk down the rumbling truck heavy road.

Mulshing by the time I got back,

Odisie was busy sketchin some fuckin huge blockbuster letters,

you can see from the shots they posted how damn big they are. It was pretty cool under the bridge and they were working fast but still this was gonna be long and hot.

The chance of meeting Lou O’ was slowly sliding into the water yet again, and I really owed the dude to see him, but I couldn’t leave them in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal an the sheriff rolling by, without a ride. Some dude wearing a cronk hat then rode past on his horse yes thats right fo’s i said Horse, dude was rocking the four hoof silver shoe rims, and crossed the river, how often does that happen at the Hall of Fame, a couple of local kids on bmx rocked by to watch and smoke some ditch weed. Some things are the same all over the world…..

2 hours in and this was turning into some huge mission, neither of them had stopped,

and it was dead quiet, except for the rumbling of traffic overhead and the rushing water one arch over, as they pushed rollers up and down against the huge sections of bridge, slowly covering up the tags, throw ups and odd pieces that were there. Like I said you can admire hard work but when combined with some dumb ass stupidity then sirs I will doff my hat to you, a pointless but tireless work ethic is pretty cool, and they worked head down arm aching busy.

There isn’t much for me to say about the pieces, they say it themselves, big blockbusters standing tall on a river somewhere in east LA, ambassadors for the Heavy Artillery and another successful UK invasion, maybe this trip was a bit more quiet than the first but you gotta get your footing right sometimes.

Maybe a bunch of Mexican dudes would have finished this in half the time, but where is the self satisfaction in that. Anyways they got to stand back and think “yeah I just blew the entire final budget of my holiday and 6 hrs of my last day, standing in the shade, with my feet in cold water, rolling paint on a wall that I might never see again, and which I cant even do justice to in a photo, but feel dead proud I did it.”

The casualty list several gallons of paint, two pairs of trainers, one vintage pink shirt (red paint splashes cheers Jiroe), one volcom white hoodie of dubious Ross/Russian origin, a fair few tins of paint, a 1/4 tank of gas there and back, rollers, $250+ and one trip to visit Lou O’Bedlam which never happened…. Sorry buddy, but it had to be done. The first HA crew to drop Blockbusters in LA.

Bless Up LA.

Posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 8:43 am in California One.