BILL GATES---

Well, according to my father, a statistical analysis of my previous post dates showed that I would be likely to post again on March 26. Hopefully this is close enough...


Highlights today include A TRIP TO YOSEMITE (see above and below) with Kirsten, Greta, and Brian. Scenery ahoy!

I mean, it was really like scenery scenery scenery totally crazy and everywhere.
Kind of ridiculous, really. Actually it was a bit unnecessary.

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That's it for Yosemite!
Moving on!

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Back to San Francisco. Donuts! Donuts! Glazed and frosted! This photo is part of a donut diptych taken on the 4th of July at Bob's donuts. I can't find the other photo to complete the series though, but believe me if I could you'd totally feel like you were in an Edward Hopper painting. Or a William Eggleston photograph. Or, some really American art historical thing, you know what I mean.

Jeeze louise. Dolores Park what a scene. San Francisco's famous hang-out park, and this isn't even a special event I don't think. Like, it's just a sunny day and there are ten million people out with their tshirts on their head and everything.

This is Brian's '90s twee-pop album cover.

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moving on.

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Actually.. This is the just-outside-of-San-Francisco section. Uh, so there was this art zine that had its final issue in September, and on the back were these crazy directions to get to a SECRET FORT that this guy had built out in the wilderness backwoods of Richmond CA...

It was like "walk up this road for 10 minutes, then stand with your back to the 2nd palm tree on the left, and look leeward up the hill, and follow the scrubby path to the NorthWest for 23 steps, and then blah blah blah..."

So here is Kelly and Louis en route, looking kind of dubious. Note that I have been lugging this same tote bag around in photos for the last three years. BUT I just got a new bag which will make an appearance soon no doubt. I feel a little bad for the pictured bag (sxsw 2006 thanks Murdoch it has served me well) but it has totally disintegrated and is so grimy it's kind of embarrassing. Well actually I'm not embarrassed by it but I think Brian might be.

So cutting to the chase, Eureka! We have found it! It was kind of like... a human sized beaver dam? In a good way. It's kind of hard to make out in the photo sorry.

And it was a big hippie art picnic! And then a tape deck descended from a tree, and a woman played the cello and some trumpet players hid in the trees and played trumpets. And things like that.

Next up: London and Madrid.

Soon.

k

RETURN FROM THE DEAD

Well, now that anyone who ever glanced at this blog has removed me from their bookmarks over a year ago, I'm going to put up a goddam bunch of photos.

A ha. ha ha ha ah.

Update:
I live in San Francisco now
I finished my degree
..

PART ONE: OOOOOLD PHOTOS, SoCal


The above was taken during a trip to the desert approximately a year ago, with Brian and friends Kate and Deanna, to see the famed "desert wildflowers" blooming because we are just crazy flower-spotting eco lovers like that. Except it was practically dark by the time we got there due to our joint procrastination efforts, and the flowers were kind of.... subtle. NEVER MIND. Actually, the above photo is mostly there as Volvo-porn. You all know I'm not a car person, but nonetheless I say dang. Nice station wagon


Wildflower/desert part 2. Yes we swigged beer the entire time, why do you ask.

Brian in Echo Park, reaching for his pocket protector. Oh man I actually miss LA.


PART TWO: NEWER PHOTOS, BAY AREA
We left San Diego at about 10 pm July 25th-ish with our cars ridiculously overloaded with crap, and a futon mattress strapped to the top of Brian's car, and then we had to pull over because the mattress was about to fall off, then I drank a red bull on the freeway and tried to call people with my wireless phone headset thing, and listened to the great mix tape Merve and Jeff gave us and I lost sometime later, then we pulled over and slept in a rest area, then we got to San Francisco and loaded all our crap into a storage space, then we drove to our friend's house.
THEN 9 months elapsed.

Now it is now. Now here are more recent photographs that Brian took and then scanned. I promise I'm not always in the forest and stuff, usually I'm at work or sitting in my cold apartment, or eating a taco.
But I haven't used my digital camera in months (due to both laziness and hatred of the digital era... oh! here I am on the internet how did that happen), except to document the mold in our shitty apartment for potential legal purposes and to take photos of when my eye swelled up one time because I wanted to have a record of what happened in case I died of eye-swellage before anyone found me. So that's why there are no workaday photographs here.
Does anyone say "workaday" anymore? Did anyone ever?

Anyway:

Hello, I'm Kelly. I am posing in the misty rain beside a red barnlike structure, staring into the mid-distance as trees rise up atmospherically in the background.

Hello, I'm Kelly. I'm picnicking on a bit of concrete on a craggy bluff, wearing a 1970s outfit and needing a haircut.

Hello, I'm Brian. I do not condone this false application of my narrative voice.
It looks like I'm in New Zealand but I'm not.

BEST BAR I HAVE EVER BEEN TO.

Apple Jacks. Apple Jacks. This is 45 min south of San Francisco and I was on a day trip with Brian and we took the back road and LOOK at this apparition, Apple Jacks emerged from the fog, bikers were out front gripping brewskis, a hippy bartender was inside looking like Sonny Bono in that film where he plays the girl's dad and he and his wife run a health food cafe and wear matching tshirts, I actually just looked up this film and apparently it doesn't exist, does anyone know what I'm talking about??
?
Also at Apple Jacks there was a big cauldron/pot of bubbling something sitting on top of the iron fire place.
Neil Young lives 2 miles down the road.

OK that's it, fatigue has set in, and I am no longer able to control the fonts. Times new roman whyyyy

Best Video Ever



Why is this clip so good??

YE OLDE PHOTOSE

Woah - tardeeeee. I scanned these photos what... hmm... well, a long time ago. Back while I was still a San Diegan in fact. Now I'm not, but I'm going to post a bunch of old pics as a kind of SoCal nostalgia (not really) Tour of My Old Neiiiiiighbourhood. Anyway most photos are copyright Brian Schumacher, taken with a REAL old school camera, just like they did in the old days.

Number 1: view from our living room window. Blue blue Cali sky, with as much cloud as we pretty much ever saw. Palm trees n' shit.

Number 2: view from our alley. Not our alley, but the one beside our house. Scenic alleyway if I do say so myself. When I was teaching girl-scout-film-camp a few weeks back, we came to my house (I drove them in a mini van) to film a scene from their movie (lesbo vampires, more or less) and we walked through the alley and there were five homeless old guys sitting there and they were all like "hey ladies" (lasciviously, to the 14 year old girl scouts) and from then on the girl scouts thought I was tough and lived in "totes the ghetto".

Number 3: Jaroco Market across the street. Go lomo camera! beautiful! This is where I would buy beer.

Number 4: The Turf Club bar and steakhouse, beside Jaroco (so also across the street more or less). They give you a raw steak and you grill it on the built in grill inside! Wowsers!

Number 5: Kelly in a terrible, terrible mood about to leave for LA for the weekend. I think my hair was better then than it is now. Sad.

WHAT WHAT WHAT. Blogger isn't letting me add any more photos?? I am dumb. Ok, I'll continue this posting very soon. One day I will post some photos from my new home in San Francisco, only 5 blocks away from the FULL HOUSE HOUSES (that's right, New Zealanders, come visit me and revel in the full house glory).

love,
Kelly.

NYC, Christmas '07

Well, I was in the Big Apple, the city of dreams, american dreams, for a couple of weeks. It was awesome as expected, except that there was NO SNOW. Anyway...


Uninteresting photo of the Chelsea Hotel, location of many culturally important events and debauches.

Brian eating a doubles. A delicious Trinidadian concoction involving two greasy little fladbreads, smushed together around curry-chickpea mush with hot sause and tamarind chutney. All this for only a measly dollar! In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 5min walk away from where we were staying. What a greasy little treat.

ART. This is a piece by Urs Fischer in which he took a jackhammer to the floor of the gallery, and excavated a big hole like 12 feet deep or so. Wow! So subversive! Really questioning the notion of the Gallery, Urs! No actually it was pretty good. Look at Brian standing in the hole - I bet he got dirty shoes! Also notice that every single person is wearing black. It is the way of the New Yorker. On that day I was wearing white and red, like a cheerful little Santa Claus in comparison.

Oh yeah, and this is a photo of me eating part of Paul McCarthy's art which was entitled Santa With ButtPlug. Long story. Anyway the art was made from chocolate and it was pretty tasty.
Oh yeah, and this is me eating a piece of Grand Central Station (or whatever it's called)! A ridiculous light show! You can't hear the patriotic and Christmassy songs that were playing, but they were sure playing.
Cat with scarf. We cat-sat this cat and made him wear a scarf sometimes. I think he was into it. Have I turned into one of those people who takes millions of photos of cats and posts them on the internet??? Uh oh. Time for an intervention...

Xmas eve at the apartment, festive meal of fake meat sausages and mashed potatoes. Brian was wearing a little Colonel Sanders red tie to mark the occasion.
Ice skaters in Central Park on Xmas day - so romantic! La la la! We ate hot candied nuts and walked all around, everyone was out in the park walking off their turkey. It was VERY nice.

Obligatory subway shot.

Friend Susy and her (TWIN!) sister, and her boyfriend, in Katz's, the famous NY Jewish deli, and home of the equally famous when Harry met Sally "I'll have what she's having" fake orgasm scene. Katz's was PACKED and I just ate pickles because most things were meat and cream cheese, two undesirable foods. The place is so Authentic that it is constantly thronged with tourists (like us! although of course I like to pretend that I'm really a local, but I'm not fooling anyone with my white and red couture!)

OOH ARTY. Brian as a blur in Chinatown.

Ok, well I'm not going to include any photos of famous things like the Statue of Liberty or whatever, but here's me in a bar! Way more exciting. I think this is Enid's in Nth Williamsburg/Greenpoint. That is NOT my purse behind me on the left, just so you know.

MOO. Some kind of stuffed water buffalo thing at the Natural History Museum, which totally was amazing.

Oh no, wait, here's the Statue of Liberty. Amazing, right. You have to take a boat to see it up close, and obviously I don't care about liberty that much.

Wooh! Back in California! Fuck yeah. Of course San Diego continues to be terrible, but there are some things you just can't deny, like sunsets and palm trees! Hmm...

Thank you New York for a good time!

SUMMER ENDS & I GET A HOUSE

So, I still haven't sorted out the other disk of holiday photos yet, but I had a few on my camera and some ones of my new apartment, so you can look at those to tide you over while you WAIT, on the edge of your SEAT, for more pictures of grand canyons and stinking hot deserts.

We were somewhere just north of Sacramento when the drugs began to take hold. Some scappy kid was hitchhiking at the side of the road, and I said "let's give the boy a lift". But Brian was all "What? No!! We can't stop here! This is bat country!"
...
We drove from Portland to San Diego in a couple of days, staying on the Interstate 5 for most of the way. It's nice enough until you really get into California, then it's hellish dry valley farmland for ever, with huge trucks all over the road and the worst rest areas ever. Where I'm pointing is about 2 hours north of San Francisco, and it's right in the middle of the worst shit. Actually, it literally smelled like shit now that I remember. For a while it smelled like rancid oranges, and then it smelled like putrid pukarific animal shit. I didn't breathe through my nose for an hour. Guano! Bat country!!


Well, long story but we were going to stay in a lovely campground just North across the bridge from San Francisco. The campground was full, so we were driving to another one when Brian put the car in a ditch. He had actually turned-out to let some fast dude go past, but he turned-out like a speedster, and ended up with two wheels on the road and two in a ditch. It was kind of impossible to move the car. We called triple A (like AA but with another A because America likes to be more extreme) after getting a ride from a local to somewhere with cellphone reception, and blah blah blah but after various misadventures and half-a-beer in a divey and possibly anti-tourist bar, and after someone yelled at Brian that "San Francisco's that way!!!" a har har I guess he looked too URBAN or something, we got pulled out of a ditch by an angry tow truck driver and the volvo was A-0k. We drove to a beach that the local woman had told us about, and slept in the car after quaffing bad wine from these crappy expandable camping cups that I had become obsessed with. Hard times, I tell ya.


Then we woke up at the crack of dawn and drove back towards civilization, and we were still all sleepy-eyed and saw all these ELK. Hanging out by the road like they were the bosses.

Driving towards San Francisco and the bay bridge appears as does the city behind, and I was like "San Francisco is the best city in the WORLD!!!" although maybe I just meant the most attractive city in the world, but anyway it's true that I totally love it. We ate big apple fritters from Bob's donut shop, and I seriously can't remember what else, but was good. Then we drove home and the car was being an arsehole, and then we were back in San Diego which is more pain than anyone deserves.


Not only back in S.D., but also living in my goddamn STUDIO for three weeks while we looked for an apartment. Uurgh. Two people in one white cinderblock room. It was fine and all, but I sure as hell didn't get any work done.

Plus there was nowhere to SHOWER because the pool makes you pay over the summer, so we resorted to hosing down in the courtyard outside the studio. NOTHING TO SEE HERE - JUST ME 'N THE PLANTS!!

Woah! So this almost looks like Brian is a hip architect designin' something while sitting in his crazy-tiny apartment. Right?? Or maybe it just looks like my sad LIFE. This is my kitchen, people.

Actually, THIS is my kitchen. After looking at a grand total of one apartment, we applied for and got it pretty much straight away. It's kind of the only place I wanted to live in San Diego. And here I am making mini lamingtons (!) from scratch for our housewarming party. People were very impressed even if they didn't fully grasp the cultural significance.

This is the LIVING ROOM. Nice wood floors but notice all the BROWN AND ORANGE everything. Why??? I didn't intend it to be this way. I mean, it's good and all, but a little formica wouldn't have gone amiss. The problem is that people in San Diego have shitty taste, so all the stuff in thrift stores is shitty in turn.

Looking towards the kitchen from the living room. I only included this shot because it shows Brian wearing baggy jeans and jandals and looking like a rugger.

The little cute half-a-table just inside the kitchen. All that alcohol is what people left after the party. Including almost a full bottle of Bacardi. I've had more rum in the last week than any time since 1998.

The stoop. Stoop stoop stoop. Inside that gate to the left is the very melrose place-esque courtyard. It has a fountain. A faux spanish style fountain. Mmm hmm.

And the long view. I wish I lived in the weird bell tower thing. Oh well...