Woke up, felt slightly chirpy, until I realized that I’m [redacted], tormented ’80s-child and alterna-rock superstar. This was at about 11am, after a grueling and long night of watching hipster freaks dance at “Part Time Punks” at The Echo. At one point they played a Fall song, and I left the bar to feign dancing for two minutes. I guess you could say indie dance night isn’t really my thing.
Fired off some e-mails on the Craigslist about potential apartments, and received no immediate replies. Then I realized people were probably busy “working” or whatever, and maybe the world doesn’t start on my time, as I thought it might. So instead we ate breakfast and sat around for a few hours waiting for a delivery and trying to find motivation to leave the apartment.
Mid-afternoon rolled around, and we (Ilya, Michelle and myself) took off for Griffith Park, and we remained there until shortly after sunset. It was really quite beautiful. 360 degrees of horizon. The smog level was relatively low, so visibility was quite good. Here are a ton of pictures.
These first six pictures are from the trek up the path to our eventually post atop a mountainous crag.
one | two | three | four | five | six
Here we sat (Ilya and Michelle, along with my shadow), joking around, strumming the guitar, and watching the sun slowly begin to set. To our direct left, the infamous Hollywood sign, with a long dirt path wrapped around the hills beneath it. Feeling compelled by nature to do so, I strapped on my binaural microphones and took a solo 15-minute walk to a nearby peak. Here are a few photos from that walk (no audio as of yet).
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine
When I returned, I attempted to take a series of photos to make a 360-degree panorama picture, but since I don’t have the software to paste all the pictures together, I can’t share it at the moment. Wait until I (or, more likely, a friend with some time on their hands) figure(s) it out. Incredible.
Quickly, the sun disappeared behind the ocean, and we started our descent. Along the way, coyotes began baying at the new moon. Howls from every direction. Beautiful and harrowing.
The descent: one | two | three (check out the plane!) | four | five | six (looks like the cover of the self-titled Flying Saucer Attack album) | seven
Perhaps inspired by my own perceived photographic genius (in reality it’s the camera, not the camera-operator that enables quality photographs), Ilya snapped a few photos: one | two | three | four | five
We had dinner at a really tasty Mexican place. The chicken burrito was one of the best I’ve ever had. Between bites of his veggie burrito, Ilya pretended he was an amateur photog.
one | two (look at my dead eyes) | three
As we finished our meal, we were joined by Steve’s roommate Lyz (seen here with Michelle). She too fancied herself the next Anne Lebowitz, snapping two quick, in-the-moment pictures of Ilya and I (seen here and here).
After dinner we dropped Michelle off and drove to Lyz and Steve’s apartment. Steve’s brother Ross was there, and although we planned on leaving to go to Spaceland, we ended up drinking, joking around, and watching Idiocracy. Now it’s 3am, and I just received my first response to an apartment inquiry, so I officially can return to sleep.
