It’s here. Stoked. These will go on the Hamburger Eyes site on Thursday. 800 pages, 3+ lbs. !
RAMPAGE
I live in Los Angeles again. I think I’m ready this time.
PREPARED FOR TERRIES
Did it. Book is done and at the printers. After 2 more days of computer crashing, I finally figured it out. I had to compress the shit out of the photos but at this point I don’t care. I am guesstimating the book will weigh about 3 lbs so already I am tripping on shipping costs. But first things first, it is turned in.
Now on to another book in the works and a new issue of Hamburger Eyes. Also, camera straps.
COMPUTER BLUE
Ok so I was gonna turn in my book last week Thursday, it is over a week later and it is still not turned in. I had everything done. I am not one to shy away from problems or issues that arise, I have seen almost everything go wrong with all kinds of projects since I have been doing this a while. But I found out the upload file size limit is 2 gbs. I have talked to multiple tech guys over there and there is nothing they can change about it. My file is 3.4 gbs. That’s ok. I will just compress my files down and I spent a week doing that. And then they tell me they were wrong, it is 1.6 gbs max file size upload. Ok. I will fix it. So I’m working on it and now my computer hangs on exporting the pdf. It is an 800 page document, so I know it was going to be tough on my computer. But it has been 2 straight days of crashes. I have deleted tons of stuff, I have cleared all the ram issues, I compressed files even further and no pdf. Also, it takes almost 2 hrs to export this pdf before it tells me it didn’t work. I have been at this all week. Taking a break tonight. But it will be turned in sooner or later.
Also, I was just reading what I wrote last week and wanted to add something. This 800 page book sums up the last 3 years of moving city to city, it sums up my excessive use of my phone as my main camera during that time, but wanted to add that it also sums up my use of social media. I deleted all my accounts like a month or so ago, which kinda makes sense why I feel like I’m ready to go back to a regular camera. I wasn’t mister post every 5 mins, but I would post regularly. And I really got into story mode on ig and snapchat and often found myself in time loops that kind of led to “projects”. For example the squirrels, on snapchat I would try to get a snap of a squirrel everyday. It was easy because there was like 100 of them living on my block at the time. That turned into a 12 page feature along with the cover of an issue of Hamburger Eyes. Anyways, I’m rambling. I’m excited to turn in this book and move on to the next thing.
PREVIEW
So I been thinking about doing a big fat book. I saw Kris Kirk do a fatty one and it came out cool. In fact, when I saw his I asked him to publish mine. He was down. We were thinking it would be around 250 pages and be released by last November. But it was killing me thinking about what the book is about or if it is about anything. We made some loose deadlines that kept getting pushed back but I couldn’t pull it together.
I cancelled it. I told him I can’t do it because I don’t know what to do. And if I did do it, it would need to be a lot more pages because I like to hide my weird photos by drowning them in a ton of pages. And it would be mostly cell phone photos. Which is totally fine with me but I didn’t want him to put his money and hard work into it if he wanted to make a super nice thing with a big box and screen printed covers etc like the way he did his. He didn’t care, he still would do it. But also I was thinking it would be stressful for someone else to edit these photos. The formalities were messing with me. I had to abort.
But a couple weeks ago I got the download from deep space. I’ll make the book about leaving SF and moving around a bunch and ending up in SD. It’ll be about being lost and wandering and found again. And I will edit it and publish it myself, since uhhh that’s what I do for a living. I am actually moving back to LA in about 2 weeks, so this book would kind of sum up this random 3 year journey I been on. I am also about to get a new camera and thinking about going back to a flip phone or some other lesser connected phone. So it will sum up that journey as well. I had been mostly using just my phone for photos and haven’t shot or processed any film since I left my darkroom in SF.
I started working on the book this past week and boom it’s done. It is photos from Dec 2014 – Dec 2017. In that time I did 7 issues of a zine series called “Koinstars”, 5 issues of another one called “EZ Beach”, and 13 issues of “Ray’s Reports”. If you have seen any of those zines or keep up with this blog then you probs have seen at least half the photos. This book highlights some of that stuff plus all the in between stuff and left overs.
This book is titled “Chrysalis” and is 800 pages and being turned in to the printers tomorrow. It will be out hopefully next week. Here are some previews and more on hamburgereyes.com
DESTINY INN
I been watching a bunch of movies lately, yet for some reason I don’t feel like reviewing them like I did with Black Panther. I have to rethink my reviews section. More to come.
TESTAMENT
WATER
Drove up to SF on a Friday, drove back on Sunday. Probs my shortest trip there ever.
There was a memorial for Ted. It was a beautiful day.
Shane was in town and that night Hightower played. I forgot to shoot any photos. I was drunk.
Troy has an El Camino.
My friends like to lurk alleys. There was this weird painting there.
BB and this butterfly hung out for a while.
Back to San Diego. It’s hard to explain my new lifestyle to my old friends.
Started working on my first “book”. It will showcase my “photography”. It starts out fun, but I think ends up weird. It’s going to be around 800 pages.
WEEK 1
It has been about one week since I quit all my social media, both my personal and business accts. So far I have gotten 2 Are you crazys and 3 I’m stoked for yous. Oh, and 1 Noooo. So that’s about 50/50. But just as I suspected I feel fired up and focused. I been working on photo stuff, planning some more big changes, plotting some vids, reading books, and blogging like a nut. Re-ignited the reviews section on this blog and adding photos almost daily to the Hamburger Eyes blog.
Check it out : http://hamburgereyes.com
B FOR BLACK PANTHER
I watched Black Panther last night and if you saw the trailer then you saw it already too. That’s right, all the best scenes were pretty much in the promos. There was a good plot, there was good acting, there was good themes, but for a Marvel movie I felt like there should have been more action. I give it a B. I really wanted to give it an A+, but I can’t.
Here was my set up though: 2 tickets $45. Popcorn, candy, and water $28. 2 hotdogs $20. Plus tax. I didn’t pay for all of that but still. It was my idea to go to the new “luxury” movie theater. I was excited to see this movie. I have the Moviepass where I pay $10 a month and I can watch however many movies I want. But you only get to use the theaters they choose for you and it’s the cheaper ones where you don’t get to choose your seats or recline them etc. For Black Panther I wanted to the works. I bought the tickets and picked seats on Fandango.
So you can’t order food at the counter, just popcorn and drinks. The big cushy recliners that recline almost fully horizontal and ambiance were perfect. They had these little swivel tables and a menu and a button to ring the waiter. We ordered food during the trailers. The movie is now about to start, where’s our 2 hotdogs? 10 minutes into the movie comes the food, not just our food but food for the whole row. It’s dark and they are mixing up everyone’s order. WOW, this is how they do it? Took me out of the movie for a minute, I got more than a little annoyed. But I got back into it.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead.
Movie opens in Oakland. I loved it. I am a huge fan of the director Ryan Coogler, he is from the Bay and has the talk of a person from the Bay. In interviews he wears Golden State Warriors gear so it was awesome to see “Oakland, 1992” as the opening title on a giant screen.
They start introducing all the characters. The villain, the King, etc. Good set up. The first act of the movie was great, the second act where the King is dead is great, but the third act is where I think they fucked up. This is where the best action should be, but it was just a big open field battle not very eventful like watch any Lord of the Rings movie to learn how to do it or watch Avengers. And then another already been done 100 times fist fight on some train tracks, watch any James Bond movie. If you are going to do it, you gotta go big please. There was actually only 3 main action sequences, movies like Fast and Furious have maybe 8 big time action sequences. The stakes are too high nowadays.
They had a scene in the beginning where the sister, who develops all the tech in Wakanda, scans the King’s neck to encode him to the Black Panther suit. Yet at the end Killmonger is just wearing the suit like what up. This reminds of me of Ironman 2 and 3 where anyone can just put on a suit and go nuts. Why spend so much time in Ironman 1 developing the arc reactor, getting to know his artificial intelligence, tinkering and creating gnarliness and then anyone can just put it on at anytime and do whatever they want. Also if the sister created the suit like Tony Stark, why can’t either of them disable the suit when anyone, not a hacker or techie, puts it on. The sonic things that run the train track disable the suit. Why didn’t the sister have a sonic disrupter in her arsenal? Klaw had one on his arm that he stole from Wakanda.
They spent a lot of time showcasing all the vibranium tech, yet when it comes time to get buck loco, the bad guys get away, the King dies, and everyone in Wakanda is getting their asses kicked all over the place. In fact in the end they have to disable both suits and maybe get lucky. And again lucky, the gorilla clan rolls up and saves the battle and they don’t seem to use vibranium at all. And another stroke of luck, the white guy saves the day by stopping Killmonger’s vibranium delivery. And why do your clothes have to shred into tiny pieces when you turn the Black Panther suit on?
I didn’t think Klaw should have died, he was rad. And I didn’t think Killmonger should have died. But in retrospect, I can see how they can bring him back. Like Black Panther can bring him to the lab real quick. Or catch him in the spirit realm and be like, “Come back and chill.” By this time in the movie some dude comes out to bring the receipt and tell us to leave our dishes, they will get them later. Why come at that time? Again taking me out of the movie for a minute, 5 minutes before it ends. And 15 minutes before that a baby started crying and acting up.
Anyways, if there was a bit more beefy action then I could bump up this B grade. I almost want to give it a B- but mostly everything was fine. I will watch it again and make sure I am not tripping for no reason. But I should also say some C and D movies are totally my favorite movies. Even though it may seem like it at times, I’m not an all A’s type of guy if you know really know me. McGruber anyone?
UNPLUGGING
I did it. Am still doing it. I quit all my social media. It’s just not as fun as it used to be. I deleted my personal accounts for LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. And all the extra Instagram accounts, I had like 7 of them. Keeping the YouTube. And the Yahoo for NBA Fantasy.
For Hamburger Eyes I deleted the Facebook Page, Twitter, and Tumblr. Still gotta get to the big followers one, Instagram. That one is tough to delete but it’s happening. Gonna keep the YouTube.
I feel free.
Gonna keep the 2 blogs, this one and the Hamburger Eyes one.
Gonna keep the Hamburger Eyes Email List.
Gonna be nice to chill.