This is not the place you hoped it would be.
Was it ever that place? Did it really happen?
Is this even pizza?
What can we hope for when pizza is involved, really?
We seek comfort. We seek company.
We seek the closure of a pie, even a failed one. We fail.
This is not pizza. This is not home.
There are shadows here, burned in by a slow florescent fire.
There was an opening here, once, a passage through.
But this is not your dream architecture. This is not pizza.
You must trace your own maps. You must cut your own pie.
You look at me like I’m the weirdo. Like I’m the asshole.
Look. This is not my pizza. This is not even pizza.
Were you not listening to me?
This was a passage between.
And you are late.

Passion fruit growing over the tow yard razor wire, with the sky tuned to a dead channel.
Hangar 1018, Los Angeles.

Low End Theory Japan benefit at the Echoplex

The most amazing thing about Glow is that it actually happens. An uptight town turning their usually restrictive beach into a de facto free zone. Twice, so far. Art, performances, incredible community effort, yes yes. But in a city that bans all smoking of any kind, on a beach that forbids all human presence after 10pm, filled with huge midnight crowds of casual pot smokers, completely un-hassled by the omnipresent police… It’s no Carnival. But it’s as close as Santa Monica will ever get.

Glow is also ridiculous and annoying in a lot of ways. The gibbering ravers, the tourist trap funnel processes, the ubiquitous goddamn glow-sticks. But it also feels like a brief escape from fear. A small window of possibility. It doesn’t need to be all that large. Lying on your back, surrounded by thousands of people, listening to the sound of their happy surprise, an icelandic sailor’s song, and the waves at 2am — it’s enough.

Short video fragments of a sea chanty and a reading of Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

Stick to making movies, playing volleyball, breathing your smog filled air, sitting in traffic and surfing in your frigid shark infested waters. I really think you west coasters have been smoking too much medical marijuana to think anyone, let alone a football team, would give up Florida for the hell you live in.

Hey. Let’s not fight. We’re connected by the Interstate 10 — we’re practically related.

All cities have someone who dislikes them, even hates them. But Los Angeles may be unique as a target of reflexive worldwide disgust. It is disliked on a mythological level. It’s a metonym for everything that people hate about their own good cities. Pollution, disconnection, shallowness, disparity, violence, mediation, erasure… Los Angeles.

Romanticized places have to exist on some level as romantic fossils, and every flattering tourist asks the residents to measure their lives against a touristic ideal. One of the best things about LA is how it’s hidden behind a cloak of misunderstanding. It’s harder to suck the life out of something you can’t even see, much less understand.

Pity the romanticized places that have to measure themselves against the ideals of tourists. And pity the tourist who ends up lost in the narrow, winding streets of Los Angeles.

An encounter on Alvarado Blvd after the Black Cloud Citizen Scientist League gathering at Machine Project, Aug 23, 2008.

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown… the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here.

Look at that mountain
Look at that tree
Look at that bum over there, man
He’s down on his knees
Look at these women
There ain’t nothin’ like em nowhere

Century Boulevard (We love it!)
Victory Boulevard (We love it!)
Santa Monica Boulevard (We love it!)
Sixth Street! (We love it!! We love it!!)