Last night was awesome.

This huge block party, all organized by a handful of punk kids, with an inflatable pool, bouncy castle, and slip n' slide. Sex on grass with fireworks above us. A million bands. Skinny dipping with a gaggle of Russian crust punks.

I love summer in Atlanta.

Tonight is house shows, more cook-outs, and something else I'm forgetting.

Tomorrow I'm taking pictures of a chocolate Labrador.

I'm trying to take the time to make friends with people right now. It's hard. You forget how much of a process friendship can be. I've been meeting huge numbers of great people over these last few months, and we're friends on Facebook, and we say "hey" and talk about our projects when we meet around town... but we don't argue with each other, we don't laugh at private jokes, and the silences are uncomfortable.

So lately I've been really making an effort to connect with the people who interest me; I stay through the superficial part of the conversation, I try and build a lasting connection, a shared picture of who both myself and the person I'm talking to are.

Unrelated, here is a picture of me taking a picture, photographed by scary_mary , who is mysterious.



Please pay special attention to my massively gnarled knee muscles. If my body was a brick house, 80% of the bricks would be in my knees and 10% would be in my calves. If I got in a kicking contest with a mule, I would win.

Recognize.

PS: I heard a person using the phrase "REAL TALK" in a conversation the other day.  They weren't being ironic.  I was terribly impressed.

Man, getting digitz always makes me feel awesome. Especially tonight, when I borrowed a special caligraphy pen from a friend in order to scribe digits on my arm. I am going to forget to bring my pen everywhere from now on.

If I told any of you that the Fishmarket party on the 19th would be unicorn/lion/sea turtle themed, I may have been lying. I didn't realize I was lying until today, when I discovered how many people wanted to loan me kiddy pools. This will totally be a pool party. You can still dress up though.

Looks like The Judies will probably be headlining, supported by a few excellent touring bands.

I'm sorry!

This is my brother with his cat.

One of the few men in the series, and one of the few whose faces are revealed. I am trying to figure out why it seems to fit with Adam.

I am regretting spending the night with that girl a few nights back. I haven't run into her yet, but, given the size of the circles I hang with, it is inevitable that I will see her again soon. I am dreading it.

All images courtesy of Mike Germon.

Too heart-healthy quotes from today:

Via Cedric, my next door neighbor, who does beats and stuff for rap and r&b, speaking to me a few days after the party:

"this is gonna be one of those things, one of those places people remember in 40 years, like... Haight-Ashbury, you know? Like I saw that girl playing the guitar by herself, and everyone was sitting on the floor around her. And I thought, damn, even I would sit on that dirty-ass floor to hear her!"

Via Mathew, a bike messenger I am pretty sure I've never met except through incestuous Atlanta bike kid association, speaking to my roommate Sergio:

"Oh, you live with Ben? Yeah, he's really fast."

Now I've got to go figure out how to print and frame/present photos for a show which is actually this Friday, not the Friday several weeks from now.

I am officially broken up.

Probably not a good idea to have been drinking coffee during the I'm Breaking Up With You speech, as it made me want to:

1. end the conversation as quickly as possible.
2. ride my bike.
3. pee.

I assume I'll be inconsolable for the next few days, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. 

Atlanta people, buy me booze!  Distract me with optical illusions, pretty women, and photography!

Good party!

But soooo hot.

Writing about New York. Starts with my brother in Charlotte, and that goes back to the times we used to walk together at night in Atlanta's summer.

My brother and I hate cockroaches, but love going for long walks together on warm nights. When we both lived in Atlanta, warm nights meant thousands of cockroaches massing from the sewers across streets and lawns. For my brother, sensing a single cockroach could ruin a walk - he'd spend minutes wiping away every last trace of a cockroach from his bare feet, cursing and shivering throughout the operation. I wasn't as bad, but it's still fare to say the crunch of a cockroach exoskeleton between my bare toes is one of my least favorite physical sensations.

But we'd go for these walks anyway, because I think we processed (and continue to process) risks and rewards differently from most people.

The traditional decision making process follows the Plus/Minus model: the decision maker weighs the benefits they'll gain from an activity against the definite and possible bad consequences of that decision. If the pluses outweigh the minuses, the activity is conducted. In this model, the decision maker probably wouldn't walk around Atlanta at night... or would at least wear shoes when they walked.

My brother and I make decisions using the Plus model: if an activity presents any benefits, we do it.

(I'll come back to this later)

So that might explain why I slept so little this last weekend. Here was my itinerary:

Saturday
8:30pm: arrive at the W Hotel in New York, visit with Grandparents and other relatives.
9:30ish: bar with Laura (Oglethorpe friend) and Patricia (friend of a friend, recent NYC transplant from Barcelona)
2am: stumble back to Laura's Harlem apartment for a few hours of sleep.

Sunday
8am: wake, take subway to South Pier
11am: meet Patricia, who is late late late. Take ferry to Governer's Island, walk around and look at art stuff for a few hours.
5pm: wedding
Incalculably later that night: drunken drive with my parents out of Forest Hills to stay the night at an Uncle's house.

Monday
7:30am: wake, subway to Penn Station
10am: Megabus to Boston
3pm: arrive, meet Kyle in Cambridge (Harvard triangle/square)
That afternoon: walk around a lot, get drunk, have adventures
1am: rudely abandon Kyle's nice friends to drive to her house near Hartford, CT
4:13am: sleep

Tuesday
6:50am: wake, drive with Kyle to a train station, rush off to train instead of saying goodbye properly
9:30am: arrive back in NY at Grand Central Station, take bus to LaGuardia.
11am: fly back to Atlanta.
3pm: arrive, go straight to work

Anyway, this doesn't make a lot of sense because I believe I'm discussing a few different things at once. I will write more in the future. Also, I took pictures of my brother washing his cat.

Webcast of private at home concert. Musician gets a good reason to practice, plus awesome feedback.

Hay cat.

This is a poster for our next concert. I am pretty excited. We've got a band flying in from NY, a puppet show, and at least a handful of firedancers. Also it is a costume party. I don't go to parties unless they are costume parties.

Also, this is the third time today that I've been introduced as "Ben from Fishmarket." Fishmarket is what we call my warehouse. It is funny how titles work. Sometimes I introduce myself as Ben, booking at Fishmarket. And other times I introduce myself as Ben, photo/interview guy at burnaway.org.

I feel like I am trading money for these titles. Like I can either earn a real living and eventually buy a plane ticket to India. Or I can earn a fakeass living, never own/buy anything of +$800 substance, but hold a variety of hipstercred titles and associations.

Anyway, I think this poster is hilarious. I am making fun of:

myself
hardcore show posters
sexuality
myself
myself
font
graphic design.

My new intern* sent over a transcript of the interview I did last Friday with Vicki Kelly, who recently organized a really huge art show in a section of Atlanta most people consider the ghetto.

Once you read this excerpt, I think you'll understand my hesitation to let anyone see these interviews until they've been heavily edited:

Ben: Um, yeah so, I guess, can you tell me where you’re coming from just in relation to the fourth ward art world first?

Vii: From the …uh. Well the old fourth ward is kind of you know everybody there’s my family and I’m really far away from, so I spend a lot of time there. I have the businesses are very important to me there so I wanted to bring my people and more culture to the area, and … yeah…you know bring some money to the area, and just like let people be aware of the … [stammers] nobody really knows what the old fourth ward is. Nobody knows. When I say the old fourth ward, it’s like people automatically assume like it’s a horrible place and you shouldn’t even drive through it. So it’s, just a matter of getting more people out there. Because its,.. what fourth ward I believe is can be an epitome of Atlanta, in a sense. It’s where you can go in Atlanta to experience every single level of Atlanta. You’ve got like rich yuppie people and you’ve got a whole bunch of hipster bikester… biker riders because you’ve got like the bikepack dunks, you know? Its um..not a lot of and [laughs]…then you’ve got like crack heads and people asking you for money constantly and you can get your car broken into and, I don’t know. But at the same time you can find opportunity there that I think is in one of those little sections of Atlanta, that’s easier to find.

Ben: Is there a... just to be clear that the old fourth ward is sort of harmless, chip of the card? Like the structural part between Ponce and …Memorial?

Vii: I would say, I think it ends at DeKalb. I’m pretty sure it ends from Ponce and DeKalb. Maybe North to DeKalb. Nah, I think its Ponce and DeKalb.

Ben: And the piques sort of weird too, I mean that’s an area with a lot of history, I guess. A lot happened there too.

Vii: Like Martin Luther King

Ben: Yes. Everything. you know and then..leaders from right there.[had trouble listening to it]

Vii: It’s the most visited state park, I believe in the country. Someone had told me that once, but I’m not quite sure. [Laughs]. Yeah, there’s a ton of history there.



I've included this picture from one of my most recent cat washing photoshoots as a chaser to that long block of text.

* Yay!!!!

From Lauren Greenfield's photo essay on personal grooming habits.

Great stuff.

(other Greenfield photo essays: Fat Camp, Girl Culture.)

I don't know if I saw Ra Ra Riot on a bad night or something, but they are really no good. Like laughably so.

I danced to their music, but I was being ironic.

A day in my life picture/narration thingy below.

Link to post on the ADIML community.

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( 56 pictures. )