Today’s soundtrack: I, can’t, stand, up, for falling down
Today at 8:02pm: Engulfed in the smell of burning kalbi.


Going nuts with the camera today. Having one of those days where everything looks hot as fuck in the viewfinder, then you get home and find it was all crap. Still, that’s the great thing about filmless, you can just shoot and shoot and shoot ‘til you get it right.

Severely slept-on album: “Pod,” by the Breeders. Hellbound hellbound hellbound hellbound.... Dug it up a few weeks ago. I borrowed it from my friend Charles when I was living in Brooklyn in 1992 and forgot to give it back. Well, what does he care, he’s married and has a kid now. Lives in Maine. I think the kid’s three now, I bet he’s never heard of me.

What a good night! Tonight on a rooftop in Chinatown was the Last of the Barbecues. I like that, it sounds like Last of the Mohicans. Joanne was the hostess and Cia cooked. The chow was killer, like you would fight people to eat this. At least I’d fight you to eat this.

Joanne’s a single Chinese girl living by herself. Across the hall from her is an elderly Chinese family. They let us borrow their Mah-Jongg tables to take up on the roof and put the food on. They worry about Joanne and try fixing her up with suitors she doesn’t need.

Twenty, thirty people showed up and it was the best kind of crowd: Unpretentious creatives. No annoying lawyers, “look at me” actors or icy chicks who work in finance. No moody painters, idealistic grad students or therapyheads with performing arts backgrounds.

Someone stole Moonberry’s fucking wiper blades. I swear there are cats in this city who’ll steal the milk out of your coffee. Anyways it rained for a few minutes here and there, temporarily dampening our spirits and the barbecue charcoals, but then it subsided and we ate like animals. You know the food is good when the conversation dies down and everyone is just focused on cutting marinated meat with their teeth.

Lam, Shady and Joanne can speak English and Cantonese. Cia, English and Tagalog. Moonberry’s fucking quadrilingual. I can barely speak English.

Every barbecue we go to, Shady gravitates towards the grill and just handles shit. I haven’t touched a pair of tongs once this year, and will probably never have to if I keep living with the guy.

If you could look at our previous incarnations back during caveman times, Shady was the guy who always got the fire going. Mike the Player would be the decoy used to lure wild animals out into the open while the rest of the group threw rocks at it. Me, I was back in the cave drawing pictures on the wall.

During the span of a private party there are always actually two parties. The first is with all the guests and lasts for two-thirds of the time. Then a shitload of people leave and you’re down to your core survivors. At this point people sit rather than stand and the conversation gets a little more intimate.

I stayed for the second party, there were maybe ten of us. Three of the guys were Mars, Handsome Dan and Jimmy. They’re funny guys individually but when you put the three of them together the laughs start rolling, like making a Funny Bomb out of volatile chemicals. I laughed so hard my face hurt. Some of the jokes were cruel but c’mon, those are the fucking funniest kinds.

One of Joanne’s friends from Hong Kong was there. Nice guy named Wallace, minimal English. Towards the end of the party Wallace disappears and inexplicably returns with 50 bucks worth of weed. Everyone started to pass the dutchie from the left-hand side but I abstained.

I think I’ve said this before but I won’t smoke weed because it makes me slow and dull. I’m not especially tall or good-looking so my wits are all I’ve got and I need to save them shits. Plus everytime I smoke I end up eating like eleven pizzas afterwards.

The whole time we’re at the party, our friend Emi has been in me and Shady’s apartment, prepping it for a photo shoot she’s doing tomorrow. She needed a loft space so we told her she could use it.

I had no idea what a big deal it would be until a bunch of delivery guys showed up Saturday afternoon to drop off the equipment. Monster lights and she’s hooking up a huge seamless backdrop. One of the lights is so big it looks like it puts out the fucking bat-signal.

Shady and I walk home through Chinatown around 2am. “Emi called,” Shady mentions. “Said she turned the place upside down.”

Sure enough we get home and our place is a wreck. Everything has been taken from the living room and shoved everywhere else. Chairs in the hallways, mattress in the kitchen, I can’t find the garbage can, etc.

At one end of the loft there’s a huge, white seamless hanging from a rack, balloons everywhere and a bubble-blowing machine. It’s kind of surreal. I’m tempted to turn the bubble-blowing machine on and sleep in the pile of balloons. I wonder if I’m non-photogenic in my sleep.