Bad Things
This was without a doubt the quickest week I've ever seen rocket down the highway, about to slam into the brick wall that is this weekend. Min's shoot is more of a test of endurance than I'd initially thought/hoped as its threatening to swallow up yet another weekend. Crazy how my weeks are my easy days, no?
But things have been rescheduled accordingly, as we had poker tuesday (lost six bucks) and the film paper got extended a week. A week...wait that means...its due on March 8th, which means...ep, wait for it.... BIRTHDAYPALOOZA next weekend! Now I'm not sure if Nate's and my plans of a massive BIRTHDAYPALOOZA (all caps is absolutely required) will bear any fruit (or fermented fruit and oranges for that matter) but here's hopin'. At the very least, it would be nice to have any kind of celebration devoted to me, and only me (bwaha). Well that's not true either, as Nate's is a day before mine, but you get my drift. So, I hope you, ahem, have already got a present in mind heh. It'll hopefully be an event of massive proportions, as my birthday last year was, meh, alright enough. Laura, Houston, and Leighanne were there so that was awesome...but this year, March 5th's on a friday, and must be treated as such. Ahhh, yes, very nice. Enough about me.
I recently purchased the Book's Food for Thought, as having consumed Lemon of Pink voraciously throughout the past week (or weeks now?). I haven't fully let it sink yet, though I really enjoyed Lemon of Pink's cohesiveness and particular sound which isn't what Food for Thought was about. Interesting stuff. And that Walkmen album is only getting better; those vicious sixteenth (or thirtysecond?) power chords in "The Rat" kinda hammer and dent your skull in after a while, only to let the mantra-esque sweet vocal melodies to soothe and massage it afterwards. Check it out if you haven't already. It's time for me to stroll up to Norris to meet some friends and wait around for two hours for Charlie Kaufman/ Michel Gondry showing of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tickets to go on sale... them tix be smokin' hot. Too bad the iPod is having some serious problems (!) what does exactly does it mean when its flashing a picture of a folder and exclamation point and won't turn on?? (Answer: Bad things.)

"I Thought She Was Waiting For You"
I thought Andy and Ryan were messing with me and set the clock forward a couple of hours, but I leapt out of bed when I realized that it really was 2:30pm, and I really did sleep through my 9-12 class this morning (photography again, argh) and then some. The odd thing is that I remember turning off the alarm and showering- its just that I don't remember anything afterwards.
My sense of time has officially been wrecked. I played awful/wonderful pop songs of middle school until the morning with Krista and Fuchs, something I haven't done in forever. I've been neglecting my baby for way too long; Fuchs probably plays it more than I do now.
So I run downtown, catch a Purple express, and tow the remains of my FM3a to Central Camera (hoping I won't be too late like yesterday). Thinking of everything that needs to be done tomorrow, everything that needs to be done for today, and everything that needed to be done yesterday, my brain was completely wrapped around the Book's Lemon of Pink when out of nowhere I see and meet the most beautiful girl in all of Chicago. I ran up the steps to the camera repair office, and I see her waiting to pick her camera up. Now, I've never believed in love at first sight, maybe hotness at first sight, but I've never been so instantly enraptured in anything before than I was with her. Just everything about her, how she joked, how she laughed, her eyes, and the way she bounced back everything I threw at her. I have no idea where she lives, where she goes to school, nothing, except her name, Kelly. So, big deal, we exchanged glances once more, she left, and then so did I, and that would be it. Except that I'm writing about her now, and I couldn't think of anything else, any of the thousands of things I have to do and prepare for, except for her. Mushy Mush. I'm such a corny romantic.
And then, apartments have been found, and decisions must be made. Dinner must be had at Norris, papers must be done before the weekend, and poker must be done tonight. Classes must be registered, and favors must be fufilled. Plans for work and plans for play (Birthdaypalooza) must be made soon, and projects must be finished tomorrow. If I stop thinking for too long, something will snap, and thus chugs along the routine and order of the day. But my thoughts are never what they're supposed to be, and never about who're they're supposed to be, and then I find myself waking up at 2:30 in the afternoon...

And just to make the weekend complete, Mortimer "Jacques" Walrus passed away sometime this afternoon. I don't really know what to say, just that I feel awful about it. The guy was sick from almost day one, and I was way too busy/(irresponsible?) to take care of it. We got the medicine for him a few days ago, but it was too late.

Moment of silence.

Weekend Death Toll: a fish, a camera, and the already slight optimism of a future in film.

The Week is Finally Here
Wow, what a weekend...I did the math, counted the hours, and it turns out that I worked 88 freakin percent of the weekend off. 88%! You can attribute it to the most disastrous, chaotic, and "professional" film shoot I've ever experienced. This is that professional music video I talked about earlier for this band Sleeping at Last, with Ryan's friend's brother Matt Ornstein directing. It was so awful that all of my friends (including myself) were this close to walking off set. Yes, that bad. I won't go too much into details, just because even trying to describe the whole experience is exhausting, but here are some select scenes of the weekend:
1. Getting yelled at by Matt for carrying the 24hp camera, as he ordered me to 2. Eating for the first time Saturday (calltime @10am) Ravioli with my bare hands (as silverware was absent) as the producers giggle like girls passing blunts around 3. driving and parking up and down Michigan Ave looking for the winnebago's sideview mirror that got clipped by a bus 4. talking on the phone and hearing the winnebago back into a chevy dakota
But the worst part of everything is that my camera that I got for Christmas broke on set because I was helping the director set up a tripod while he was having a hissyfit. They better be paying for it and get their insurance to cover it, or I will raise hell. I don't get mad often, but man, this is one of my most prized possessions (and most expensive) and if they don't fix it from their own disorganization and idiocy I'll...well I can't do much about it but I will hound Matt down like a bitch and make me give me his money. Phew, had to get that off my chest.
At the very least, it'll be cool to see the video on MTV2 one day, sit back, and say "I did that shot. That shot too, and that one." So its very nice now having some time to sit down and, consequently, work on the site! Added a big post about photography class below, read it and leave a comment if you like. I'm thinking of changing the title of the site...what do you think of it? Too dumb? Too Beatlesque? Suggestions? Hopefully my next post will be about the movies and music I've checked out recently (see right)... let's hope the week is a little more relaxing this time round.

Nice to Meet You
So today in photography we had our Light Project due, so as usual on due dates, we posted our minimum of four prints on the perferorated wall and critique them for the full three hours. This is the first time, or at least one of the first times, where I'm not dreading the critique; usually I rush to do these photo projects the day before and come out with pretty embarassing and petty prints that I'm not satisfied with at all. This time, though, while I did shoot the entire project the day before, I actually had no major complications in processing and developing my film and the actual pictures themselves turned out pretty decent! I went with Suzy to a bunch of bars (the Keg, 1800, etc) to take a bunch of shots of interesting lighting while she did some NNN story so it was a nice change of atmosphere.

Anyways, it turns out that in each photo project, I do a lot of self-portraits and usually pick at least one of them for display as one of my final prints. This project was no different, and I picked this shot I did (as you can see on the left) of me holding a lighter in the darkroom downstairs and holding the shutter at Bulb for a few seconds. My eyes are wide and my face is almost being devoured by the white light of the lighter. Well, Pam (the prof) asks me what it's about, I tell her the story, and she slips a "hmm" and pauses reflecting on the picture.
"It's curious Miguel, all your self-portraits have this quality to them... you've displayed a self-portrait every project?"
"I think so."
"I mean, this picture, and all your self-portraits all connect with each other and show this...other side of you-- they look like completely different people."
Huh? "I mean like your other selfportraits you did for the last assignment, your expression on each of them is this... "zonked" out expression and show this.."wildness" that....I don't know I mean-"
At this point the class echoes this quiet murmur of acknowledgement and agreement, completely following on Pam's thought.
"I don't know you seem like this...," she looks at me and puts her hand out,"quiet, conservative person... I mean you don't talk much in class, but through these pictures it seems like you're letting out this completely outside quality of you that... I don't know if you're giving us tiny glimpses of your life outside of class! But these self-portraits are very curious and interesting... they don't seem like you at all."

The self-portraits I've displayed in class before are all on the left. I didn't know how to feel about this... I wasn't sure if I should be offended? Or take it as a compliment of my photos? Or what? This incident completely proves what I've been thinking about and an earlier post I wrote on Xanga, which follows here:
"So I have determined after last night that I must bring a notebook with me at all times, like one of those little ones that you can fit in your pocket or something. I realize this is incredibly "hipster" and immediately labels you as "arty" but whatever, I'm beginning to realize that I may look like a completely different person to everybody I know- preconceptions and perspectives can be so wildly different than our own viewpoint that it's mindboggling. I mean, have you ever thought about that? I know how I see the world, and you know, it is wildly different than it was a year ago, and even more so two years ago. But can you imagine how other people see it? You can be a completely different person in another person's eye, almost unrecognizable from your own standpoint I would say. Kind of a scary/important thought that's been pressing on my mind, but anyways..."

Isn't that scary? If you were to put how you view yourself side by side with how someone else sees you, they could almost be unrecognizable to each other. There's so much power in perspective and perception. In my photography class, I don't really know anybody... there's this girl that was in my drawing class last quarter that I'm friendly with and there's Anthony who, even living with him last year in the dorm, I've only begun to start talking to. Those conversations are limited, but even they probably have different perspective on me. In that drawing class I had with Cara, I mainly talked the entire time with Pedro and was kind of a blabbermouth-- very social. And Anthony, just by living in the dorm and now the same floor with me, has certain perceptions of me and what I do outside of class. In photography, I barely talk at all... I'm probably the youngest in the class and there are all these uberhip and trendy chicas who look like they just walked out of a Belmont thrift store display.
So, I'm posting these pictures on this site to see what y'all think about them. Do I look pyscho/zonked/arty/aloof in these photos? What are your impressions, if any at all, of these self-portraits? Why is this bothering me so much? Ah, geez.

This scanner rocks-- I just scanned a doodle I did in History of Film today of Scott Curtis as a Romero Zombie ("MUST EAT...BRAINS..."). Maybe I'm just extremely vain and narcissitic, but its very surreal to see your drawings (and even handwriting) through the scanner and on your computer. It gives it this other quality, that almost seperates and distances it from your perspective, that I really like. This is hopefully what this site will be all about- NOT a vanity project but more of a method to spur my creativity (drawingwise and writingwise) and encourage it. But I don't have time to upload it, I must grab a bite to eat at Crowe and slink into the shadows of the darkroom; whence forth I will nay venture out. Photo project due tomorrow; I'm trying to figure out a way to get by with only one roll (I think it might work) but nonetheless I will probably be in the darkroom til 10 (whoopee). Maybe later tonight I'll post it up, and set up a response comment system as well. If not, I would say for the weekend, but I'll be working on a professional music video shoot in Chicago for the band Sleeping at Last! Never heard of the band, other than they've been touring with Switchfoot, but its pretty exciting to be working for a professional film shoot with all these L.A. types. Hopefully, I'll be still photographer for the shoot, which is great considering they might pay me, and if the band likes the pics, they might pay me too and I might get published somewhere (!). However, this is a remote possibility, so at the very least it'll be a good experience-- it just has the potential to be something fierce. Okay, must grab a turkey croissant sandwich!

We have Visuals
Ah, jeez. After many hours of experimenting, figuring out how to use this newly acquired scanner, and trying to find a decent picture manager online, I think I've finally come up with a working system. I replaced the Anna Karenina book cover with some pictures I took with John last summer at an abandoned chemical facility across my neighborhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You have NO idea how hard it was to actually make this work! Geocities is completely unhelpful, so is yahoo pictures, and ultimately I found this weird New Zealand photo site. It's still kind of a pain in the ass to manage it, but I think I finally got it down.
You'll find that when you click on the image, it should open to a high-res scan of it in a different window. It seems as if my HTML copy-and-pasting isn't too Mac-friendly...I'm just learning all this so I'll say I'll fix that soon but I'm a bit clueless on how- I'll try to get my friend Jeffrey to help. As of now, enjoy these scans. The first image is pretty self-explanatory; I saw that powerline everyday driving out of my neighborhood back home- I like the assymetrical lines and flow of the image. The second photo is the Batmobile: that summer's ride of choice. That sucker's survived hurricanes, crazy drunk drivers, and LSU-tequila juiced nights, and is highly worthy of respect and reverence. The rest are pictures of the facility; I have many more but I just uploaded those as a test to try to get this working. Oh, except for the guitar pic-- that's my pride and joy. A few more tinkerings and the site should be ready for unveiling-- as for now I really should stop messing with this and start reading.

A New Day, a New Blog
Hello everyone; for some reason I devoted the entire afternoon and evening today to the glorious act of "blogging." See, I wrote a lengthy post on my old webjournal, on Xanga, and then when I posted it, of course, some internal error server deleted the entire post. I HATE Xanga, and decided to check this place out, as I'm booting Xanga. And so, not content in settling for a preprogrammed layout, I tried making my own layout, learning HTML, etc. Ultimately I came up with a strange hybrid, as you see here, stealing various aspects of various blogs. I'm gonna fine-tweak some more stuff with the layout and things as I learn some more tricks.

As a general layout, hopefully the space to your left will include drawings and photographs I've done; as of now it's a pretty picture of the book I've been trying to read this quarter. To your right, you will find links to sites I visit quite a lot, for good or for bad, and you'll find a glimpse into what media I'm surrounded with at the moment. Films will be the latest I've seen (hopefully posting my reviews for them here as they'll appear in the sidebar), music will have the songs/albums I'm obsessed with at the moment (also hopefully there will be reviews of the song as I post them) and books that I'm currently in the middle of. Ultimately, this site will be a continual glimpse into my thoughts but more importantly what I'm passionate about at the moment, posting my feelings and thoughts of the images, films, and songs that I'm constantly absorbing.

So yes, this sounds like it does require continual regular posting, something I'm not too great at, but I'm trying. This blog, as my Xanga blog, will hopefully give me a chance to write more often. I by no means consider myself a great writer, but I enjoy it and would like to improve. Oh,and it would be way cool to have the music links on the right link to a snippet of the song- does anyone know of any site like this I could link to? Also, does anyone know how I can store and post my own images? I just realized I don't even have a comment-dealio thing set up, so I'll fix that tomorrow. I can't freaking believe its 10:00pm already! Time for some work.