Los Angeles 4

My last day in L.A.


Whoops.





The entire reason I was in Los Angeles was to attend the final Scion Installation 4 opening. The show had been up and running for about a year or so and this was the last chance to see everything before it's auctioned off for charity.




at the opening, Sarah Bennett!


Shepard and Vivian.


I asked Travis to make a face. He wasn't this bummed, I promise.


Cody Hudson


Emma Forrest, backpack model.




The guy on the right was super psyched. (see below)




my photos!


These guys showed up! Killer! (3/4 of these dudes are from Ohio)











So it turned out that super good friend Jessie and myself were on the same flight back to New York the next day. Go figure. I picked her up and drove her to the airport the next morning and while we were waiting for the plane Clark showed up. Apparently he was on our flight too. Clark and I live in New York, Jess lives in L.A. Super, super random.




We all vowed to figure out how to sit together. Me and Jess ended up sitting next to each other which apparently super sucked for the the third woman in our row. She asked to be re-seated pretty much right away after realizing that our chatting/ photo taking wasn't going to end anytime soon. We ended up with a third empty seat for Clark but he was passed out 10 rows ahead.




Home!

Los Angeles 3/ Mark Slaughter

post Municipal Waste, Mike mentioned that his friend Eric was DJing at a house party downtown. Sounded fun enough.


Eric (from Ohio)


and his records!!!


!!!!!


















In person Eric isn't scary at all. He's very sweet. He helps build machines that throw cars 50 feet in the air for a living amongst other things. It's bananas...

Clearly Eric has some incredible LPs however up to this point thanks to three excruciatingly horrible bands Eric had only been able to play maybe four songs! Awful! He tried to keep the third band from playing all together by ignoring their 'we're ready to play, dude' head nodding while blistering all 18 people in the crowd with random Metallica demo songs but it didn't work. The third band went on stage and Eric was resigned to not play his LPs again. It was looking pretty bleak. And then....


James! (from Pasadena, CA - home of Van Halen)











I almost crapped my pants. No joke. You can't tell by these photos but James has an INCREDIBLE voice. He sounds like King Diamond but waaay more Mark Slaughter/ Vinnie Vincent era which is a good thing, I promise. They (his band, White Wizzard) even covered Girl's "Hollywood Tease". I had a few things to do the next day but I canceled my plans and braved Culver City to Hollywood worst most-awful traffic to shoot these:

Los Angeles #2/ Municipal Waste!!

Los Angeles #1

I've been on all sorts of small domestic adventures lately - adventures that began in beautiful Worcester, Mass with Skeletonwitch a few posts ago. All along the way I've been running into friends from Ohio. Los Angeles was no different. I flew out on business and discovered that Municipal Waste was playing a secret show at a bar the size of a cat box.

Mike (from Ohio) came with.
I forget the name of this band, I tried to look it up online but couldn't find it for some reason. Infernal Combustion? External Eruption? Something like that.
This guy is playing left handed guitar but with the guitar flipped upside down. This is major. Major. Major. Major. He shredded. I love New York more than any city in the world but our heavy metal scene is a pea compared to the eggplant that is Los Angeles in the vegetable aisle that is a heavy metal. Does this make sense? Are you getting what I'm saying? This band (Internal Pollution?) shreds and they're one of many sick southern California metal bands. (See also Merciless Death and well, Slayer).
Ethereal Prostitution (?) ended their set by smashing all their equipment.
All except this guy who's guitar probably cost him over a grand. He kinda tucked it under his arm and slipped quietly off-stage. These guys were great.

Up next:

Crom! Shredding!




About half way through their set the singer literally left and let some super-fan finish singing.
He killed it.

The Gossip

Shot in April, 2008.

Worcester metal fans/ From the Shadows

Super solid New Hampshire metal crew. Sickest dudes ever!



I was smart enough to get everyone's email addresses but not their names. Typical. If I had to guess, decoding their emails, this is Paul and Charles. I'm assuming Paul is in the process of growing his hair out!














T.J. I noticed his Metal Church shirt from across the street!








amazing...

Skeletonwitch!

A few years back my friend, Alex took me to see Skeletonwitch play in their hometown of Athens, Ohio. They covered Iron Maiden's 'The Tropper' which pretty much sold me on their amazing-ness not to mention their drummer was maybe 10 years old at the time (kidding, I think he was 16... maybe). Since then I've seen them a few times when they roll through New York and holy shit they're the sickest band ever. Don't miss them if they play your town. Seriously. The have a smoke machine. It's major.
I took a bunch of photos of the guys when they came through Worcester, Mass and then again in New York City this past April.



another reason why I'm crazy proud of these guys is because they more or less hail from Ohio, my home state. Not that I love Ohio terribly however thanks to super sick bands like Skeletonwitch, Teeth of the Hydra, Early Man, Deadsea etc. etc. I'm beginning to like it more and more. Also my best friend of 23+ years just moved back there and got married (but that's a future blog. Keep checking back!)


New England Metal and Hardcore festival in Worcester, Mass


Scott (from Ohio) and Eric




















Derrick AKA Mullet Chad (so totally from Ohio)


Chance and Derrick


Derrick and Nate












brothers (from Ohio)


AM photo sesh a la nice tits AKA Mustaine.

The band headed off to Philly and I returned to New York. A few days later...


BB King's New York City
























more to come!

Juliette Lewis out-takes!

Juliette Lewis and the Licks shot for Nylon in Los Angeles!

Civ in Inked!

I shot this in Long Island recently at Civ's tattoo shop, Lotus Tattoo. When I first moved to New York tattooing was illegal in Manhattan and I remember everyone and their brother going out to Civ's place to get work done. Thanks to Todd for hooking this up!

Costa Rica part 4

Okay, first off, these are gross. All of us managed a week in Costa Rica, no flip flops. Vans mid-tops the entire time. Damn straight.



We decided to take the "Extremo tour" and go zip-lining! Andy's making devil horns in those big ass gloves just in case you can't tell. We were getting pumped!












First zip line!












It really wasn't that scary at all. Kind of peaceful actually. Brandy's kidding here...












This is the closest I got to shooting a photo while zip-lining. Shooting photos from a mile and a half up while suspended from a single cable seemed a little daunting at the time.









There was also repelling!



and a crazy "Tarzan" swing. I didn't do the swing. It involved a pretty gnarly jump that I just wasn't gonna attempt. I hate vertical free fall. Almost as much as I hate flip flops. Anyhow...






After Steph, Ryan and Andy took their turn a woman behind me in line wisely suggested that I videotape my friends on the swing. Duh. I have some pretty sweet footage of Brandy but am currently not tech savvy enough to get it from my camera to my computer.






After zip-lining we stuffed our faces and got on the longest bus ever back to San Jose.


















Last night in Costa Rica!









The end!

Costa Rica part 3/ woobies!

after semi- sloth hunting and nature walk we decided to hire a car and head toward Lake Arenal to see a real deal volcano. While driving we spotted some little creatures off the side of the road and our driver, Herman was nice enough to pull over and let us feed them. This was one of the most amazing things that's ever happened by the way. These little guys are so cute it makes you wanna puke. I almost flattened Ryan leaning over him to get a better angle on these images. I think Ryan has footage of Brandy feeding these guys. They're the cutest little woobies ever!



cute!



cute!



holy crap...



cute!



cute!









Mordor







We went to some incredibly ridiculous touristy hot springs water park place that night and had a blast sliding down insane water slides and stuff like that but no photos cause I didn't wanna ruin the cameras with all the water. Oh well.






the next morning...


















Jeep Boat Jeep


















hahaha...


















Cheers!