I'm just finishing up one of those weeks where something keeps you up all night every night and wakes you up too early every day. Yesterday I finished up editing a video with a deadline. I sat at my computer and edited for 30 hours straight, with one break to run to walgreens for some of those energy shots that fill you with constant fear. Well not getting to sleep in is one of the problems with renting a house that's on the market.
I've had trouble finding rental properties everywhere I've been the past few years. Every house is for sale, but not many are for rent. I think a lot of the mortgages have ballooned beyond the monthly market rental rates, and it seems all of the neighborhoods are starting to grow tumble weed... wait... sidetrack. Tumble weed? Is tumble weed alive or dead like dust bunnies? If it's rolling around and still living, then that would make it the most underrated plant I know of. I'm still in awe over the fact that ivy can grow it's wimpy little arm through a tiny space in a brick and then expand enough to crack the foundation of a building. I am sure we could make so many beautiful analogies about ivy, but really I just want to talk about how I live in a house for sale in the mountains.
The problem with living in a house for sale is that you have to be prepared at any time to be woken up by a real estate agent and a carload of people to come trampling through. This may not be a big problem to those of you with day jobs, but those of you who take naked pictures for a living and sleep 'til noon may want to just go and buy one of these million houses on the market, or at least get a proper rental. You can probably imagine that Amanda and I own more than enough things to creep out the average home shopper on any given day, and last week we were at our worse. We took everything out of our room and built the most elaborate set that I've built to work with in a long time. For the past few years I've been against doing a "Christmas" shoot, but this year we had incentive. So we took everything out of our room, bought a second hand fake Christmas tree, 5,000 ornaments, vintage garters, nylons, dress, bras, and gifts for the videos wrapped 50 prop boxes, and started sleeping on a mattress for the past 5 days in one of the 3 unused rooms in the house.
We normally keep the house in show house condition, but this is my work and we hadn't had a real estate agent by in a month. We shot from Sunday evening until Monday morning and went to bed around 6:30 AM. I woke up to a voicemail at 10 AM from a real estate agent who wanted to come by and see the place. You have to understand the terror of this call. I mean, our landlord isn't going to let us continue living here if the agent says it looks like a scene from Requiem for a Dream. We've got bed frames and cabinets and desks all turned on their sides and upside down everywhere... bras hanging from trees, vintage panties and nylons trailing through the house... a little mattress on the ground and these damn pee puddles we keep finding. Seriously? The dog weighs 3 pounds and drinks about two thimbles of water a day, where the hell is all of the piss coming from? Fuck it... there's absolutely no way we could let anyone into this place. The kitchen had been completely usurped by dishes and empty buddy snack wrappers. It's anyone's guess as to where these dishes came from, for I do not recall seeing or eating anything in the past week save these Little Debbie brownies and those Wheat 'N' Cheese crackers that I have developed an unhealthy relationship with. Also, we have been making our own colloidal silver in the kitchen. If you are not familiar with what a home made colloidal silver generator looks like, then you are not alone. Let's sum it up by saying that it isn't a set up that would look legit to some Arkansas fishermen trying to buy a house. Well Loki was having his usual laugh by sending us that old sales agent 3 and a half hours after we were done shooting, but I have one card I can pull. They don't have a key to the house... so we jumped out of bed, and took off. I don't like to lie, or i would have called and said we weren't home... so I left and called from somewhere in town to tell her we weren't home. That didn't seem to be a problem, as she replied that she had been by and shown it already. NO! and HOW? Well it would seem that they came by, knocked, and found one of the side doors unlocked... So anyway.... they came into that nightmare. We are hoping they don't tell the landlords that they need to kick us out if they ever want to sell this place. She said the guy was only interested in the structure and they all figured we had "some projects going on".
Well that leads to another point of concern. Old B and E Robbie next door has been creeping around like that beast from the "I would do anything for love" video, and i know he watches through our side window. So the other day he would have seen Amanda wrapping 50 empty Christmas boxes. I can just picture him getting all excited by seeing these possible treasures that could be his if he were just to risk one more forced entry burglary. In some ways we are hoping that these giant wrapped boxes may work on our favor. A lot of them are filled with random house stuff of zero value, yet leave so much to the imagination. We can only hope that if Robbie breaks in, he'll use up all of his time looting this giant pile of treasures. We can only imagine what Robbie would hope to find in this illusionary pile of Christmas giving... The first pressing of very album ever released by KISS? A full oak crate of aging Jack Daniels? The worlds largest block of crystal meth? A couple of gagged and bound lot lizards? A full set of new socks? A letter from the governor esponging old Robbie's record from any old mishaps... One can only wonder at what material good Robbie dares to dream about at nights.
Whoa... just went off a bit. Well.. here are a couple of pictures from said project. December!
Free for the weekend! I finally made the full length uncensored version of the Apnea "Heartlands and heartache" video. 6 minutes of Apnea above ground and under water. In and out of clothes. Set to the music of "Among Wolves" and "Urak-Hai".
So this is just a weekend present. Happy Thanksgiving =)
We've been avoiding our neighbor since we started staying in this house, having been forewarned about him by our landlord. I believe she used the word "derelict" and then apologized. She looked me in the eyes and said "there's just no other way of putting it".
I imagine I'll get into the long and short of this man in a proper story over at Filthygourgeousthings.com, but i feel the need to do a short purge at the moment.
This man: 1) Touched a tattoo on my face within 30 seconds of meeting me. 2) Asked me if I'd done time 3) Boasted about the time he's done 4) Asked me what "Y'all do over in that house" 5) Asked me if i make a lot of money 6) Sized me up and down about 6 times 7) Got in a prison style staring contest with me that I forced myself to win for fear of waking up to this man in my room tonight. 8) Sized up the exact worth of the gold I'm wearing 9) Looked like fat Ozzy with the perm and a wizard tattoo 10) Sloshed around his glass of 1 PM whiskey. 11) Told me he's normally out driving trucks but will be around for a while. 12) Does not believe that a man has to stop wearing Judas Priest shirts after his 55th birthday 13) Is probably in the bushes outside my window now.
People from other countries always ask us why we own guns. That's the thing here... You have to own guns, because everyone else does. Everyone in this fucking state is armed and a good third are on meth. So there's your answer to why I'm armed. And if you don't see me posting for a few weeks, rest assured that this man has come in our house, emptied our offices, and is now downloading Meatloaf videos on youtube in some room somewhere while waiting for pseudoephidrine to react with hydrogen gas or however the hell these people cook this shit up in these goddamn motel rooms that keep blowing up. I mean what a fucking welcome wagon. "hey neighbor! How much you make? I'm gonna have to touch your face for a second and slosh some whiskey on your leg while I keep a lookin behind me and calculating the grams of gold you have on your person at this time."
Mixing hot lights and the Sun on a rare day where someone was watching over my shoulder the whole shoot. I really have a problem with shooting while someone is watching me. It really makes things akward for me. I could never be one of those big production shooters. I would just end up in the green room alone... going through all of the oreos like Nigel.
I think that it has payed off the few times that I have shot with some daylight and my own lighting. I'm not sure why I don't do it more often. One of the problems is that I don't really hit a work stride until sun down. I don't know why this is, but I just like to work at night. I've tried to change the pattern many times with no success. Amanda even tried us on this INSANE schedule where we were waking up at 1 AM and going to sleep around 5 PM in an effort to work in the first part of our days. All that happened was a weeks worth of mild schizophrenia.
I love working with this model for the record. Good night and thank you. 1/1
The day of this shoot was just one of those horrible days all around on my part. I was depressed and going through a down cycle in life, coming off of some mood stabilizers that had been doing their best to live up to their job description, and in the middle of a major life transition. We tried our best to shoot this night, but it wasn't a good time to for either of us. I obviously can't go on about other people's personal business, but I don't seem to have much of a filter on mine. I know that if I don't feel really comfortable in a situation I can really fuck up a shoot... or at least I feel like I do. Who knows. I can't judge my work anymore, as I've been so burned out on photography and all of the bullshit that seems to go along with it.
Soon I will have completed my ninth year of doing this, and it starts to grind. It's all of the drama and darkness, the bullshit and tears and so on. And everyone wants to be beautiful, but no one wants to BE beautiful. And honestly I'm getting way off track from anything to do with this particular model, of whom I have been friends with for years and am just starting to rant in general as I often do at 3:00 A.M.
I seem to have had one of those days where all of the elements add up to me just losing more faith in people and wanting to run as far from them as I can, which is probably how I ended up in the mountains. One of those days where I have those thoughts of retiring to a job of landscaping or grocery bagging. Sometimes I just feel like the negativity all around just soaks into me weighing me down like a man swimming in a business suit. I should take a break and count my blessings... think about the people I have met with gold in their hearts and try to work up some psychic strength.
This top picture... I feel like old George Washington would like it. Maybe He would hang it on one side of a double sided frame and switch it back to some drawing of an eagle throwing spears and shit when Martha came around.
