Photoblog: One Day In Los Angeles

WHEW! What a day indeed. Still haven’t shot the Run Fat Boy Run review, but after seeing this post I think you won’t consider me a slacker for today.

Last night Zack brings up the fact that he’s been allowed to film this show happening at a club called the Key Club. Count Smokula playing with the Radioactive ChickenHeads? FUCK YEAH! So I get him to put me on the list as a photographer and grab some shut eye for the next day.

LA Zombie Walk

As it turns out, this very same day, ending at the very same club, the LA Zombie Walk is happening. So we get to the club at 7 and there are dozens of Zombie peeps just chilling around the entrance to the club. Naturally I had to take photos, which you can see below (thumbnails linking to larger versions). There are a few more in the flickr set.

The Radioactive ChickenHeads feat. Count Smokula

Not a bad start, eh? So we get our fancypants “Media” stickers [how fucking cool is that?!] and head into the club. The lighting was enough to cause an LSD relapse, not to mention the Zombies milling around and ordering Gin and Tonics. The band is still getting ready in the back when Count Smokula comes out and says hello to Zack and meets me. He’s talking a bit on his cell phone at the time, which only added to the unsettling feeling of having a sober hallucination. A guy with full on Bela Lugosi makeup and Mardi-Gras style flashing bead necklaces with a leopard print fez talking into a cell phone? I need some air.

Then I got to say hello again to Bill Manspeaker just before the show started.

And man oh man did it start.

Let me say first that I had an inkling about what I was getting myself into. A cautious conscience told me to keep from mind/mood altering substances just in case. But there’s a big difference between seeing this shit on youtube and watching it explode live in front of your face. It’s enough to drive you mad with giddyness, I tells ya.

There’s something to be said about watching people with cartoon Chicken Heads on rocking the shit out of a club with a full-on Dracula garb, accordion-playing Jewish frontman. It is by far one of the best gigs I have ever attended. Take that last line with a bit of salt though, as it should be obvious by me using the word “gig” that I’m as green as the fresh grass when it comes to seeing bands performing live.

Towards the end of the show, Smokula invited Bill Manspeaker on stage to sing a bit. Much to my giddy schoolboy glee he did a version of Green Jello’s “3 Little Pigs” with a Zombie instead of the Big Bad wolf. He also invited all the Zombies in the club on stage with him that resulted in a lurching, teeming mass of karo-syrup’t, latex makeup-covered Zombie moshers from hell.

God I love Los Angeles sometimes. Some selections from the set below.

Fate! At Baby Melt

With a few hundred photos and grins on our faces, Z and I head to the car and start riding home. On the way we pass by this cool looking comic book store and on a whim decide to scope it out. I recall a few weeks ago looking for vinyl toys and such out in Venice, so I was down to investigate. We park and walk to…

Where a veritable cornucopia of comics and trinkets lay illuminated in fluorescent glory for all to behold. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t as “Angelic Chorus and Godly Light” as all that but it was pretty fuckin’ sweet regardless. I bought my first two vinyl toys there, and if money some day comes in I will expand my collection faster than my waist. Hopefully.

But I’m poking around and browsing through all the cool art books and staring, mouth agape at these incredibly bad-ass figurines when Z shows me this comic. It’s called Girl Scouts (or something to that effect) and according to Z is about these chicks who sell weed in girl scout cookie boxes and sabotage large corporations. He also mentioned the artist’s name, but I can’t for the life of me remember and Z is asleep at the moment. It’s driving me mad. EDIT: His name is Robert Paulson. Ok, so it’s Jim Mahfood.

After we poke around a bit, we notice something going on in the back of the store. There’s music and people with those red plastic cups you see so often at high school birthday parties and college frat keggars.

As it turns out, the artist that Zack has been following for YEARS and idolizing is having this art party TONIGHT at THIS store with another artist from San Fransisco named Dave Crosland. Drawing LIVE! Needless to say Z was reeling with the nature of the cosmos and things of that nature. He talks with him a bit and we are allowed to film and photograph them as they are working as well as the final pieces.

I partake in the free beer and 80′s rap being spun live while Z focuses on getting some decent footage on his camera. I hold back from snapping every few seconds by reminding myself that Z is working the video camera and I’m on stills. It’s a weird switch to flip.

So we hang, snap photos, roll footage and leave grinning from ear to ear about how awesome a day can be. And then I ended this blog.

More photos in the set

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