Happy New Year from the Party Pauper

What better way to start off the year than by posing with Pee-Wee Herman?

New Year's Eve began with Carlos, my brother and I vegging out in front of the TV watching Knowing Me, Knowing You, which is sort of like what might happen if Larry David hosted a talk show (although this precursor to I'm Alan Partridge also predates Curb Your Enthusiasm by almost a decade). It can be difficult to watch, but it's incredibly funny. Rent it.

There were numerous parties going on across Los Angeles last night, but since none seemed to be in walking distance, we opted to hit two. We said goodbye to a shitty year while chatting and dancing to French pop with new friends in Koreatown. We then headed to North Hollywood to hang out with some old friends for the opening hours of 2009.






My friend Daniel has become my favorite subject for these photography experiments.









Daniel was doing something in the living room that could only be described as interpretive dance. Today, I spent some time trying to figure out if there was a way I could load them into iMovie and make a video. That didn't work out at all and so I ended up fooling around with Photobooth.

New Year's Eve

Still trying to figure out what we're doing for New Year's Eve. I have an idea, but nothing will be set until tomorrow. There are just too many options and none are within walking distance.

Paradise Backyard

For Juan's birthday, someone (Juan, Carlos , I don't know) came up with the Paradise Backyard theme. This theme is based on the legendary club Paradise Garage, a club that none of us ever attended on account us being children in Los Angeles at it's peak. We knew the club's greatest hits thanks to a list in the back of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (a must-read). Carlos, Nelson and I took the hit list and went through our own collections. I think that between the lot of us, we had most of the tracks. (None of us, though, had Klien & MBO "Dirty Talk," which I have been looking for on vinyl for years.)

Carlos, aka DJ Kid Charlemagne, made us all scream when he did a spot-on mix of Kraftwerk's "The Robots" and Yazoo's "Situation."





I didn't get any photos of Nelson DJing, but I did shoot him getting all pensive by the bonfire.



Fire photos were the popular last night.









Since I've essentially retired from DJing, I was backup last night. This was my set.

Stevie Nicks "Stand Back"
Alexander Robotnick "Problems D'amour"
Yello "Bostich"
Donna Summer "I Feel Love" (Patrick Cowley mix)
Yoko Ono "Walking on Thin Ice"
Chicago "Street Player"
Dinosaur L "Go Bang"

It was fun. I do miss DJing sometimes, but I don't know if or when I would ever play a club again, mostly because of severe time restraints (like, last night, I had to leave at 11 because I had to be up this morning for an 8 a.m. phoner with someone in the Netherlands). But also, I guess that part of it is that I feel disconnected from what's popular right now. Like, I just can't get into the whole things-that-try-to-sound-like-Daft Punk movement, despite my love DP. Nor can I relate to the Serato phenomenon. The more people tell me how easy it is or how many things you can do with it, the more I don't want to use it. I like vinyl because it has clear technical limitations. For example, you have a relatively small range in which you can adjust the pitch. Because of those limitations, though, there is great room for creativity. It's a challenge and you have to push yourself in terms of selection and technical precision to make the set work, but there's no better feeling than meeting a challenge.

The Lovin' Spoonful Said It Best

And so I quote the dad rock classic "Hot town, summer in the city/Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty."-- The Lovin' Spoonful "Summer in the City"

We're in the midst of a heat wave right now with temperatures reaching record highs for June (112 in the deathtrap I call home, the Valley, and not much better anywhere else in the city).  Whenever we have a heat wave in L.A., all conversations eventually center around the scorching weather and are peppered with lethargic moans of, "Oh my God, I just can't take this heat anymore."  It's as though none of us can remember the previous Labor Day Weekend (because the last holiday of the summer is always gruesome) when we were wilting in nightclubs whilst wondering if maybe Al Gore is onto something.

The hardest part about going out in Los Angeles during the summer months is getting out of the house.  At home, there is air conditioning, a supply of tap water and a freezer in which one can insert one's head if all else fails.  At home, you can sit around in underwear or, at the very least, a pair of cut-off jeans that have since developed ventilation holes in publicly inappropriate places.  Inside nightclubs, the air conditioning stops working once the club fills, water will cost you and you will spend much of your night fighting with someone over a spot in front of a rinky-dink fan.  Plus, you kind of have to wear clothes.  Well, maybe you don't need much in the clothing department if you're a looker, but for us ordinary people with flabby arms and legs that haven't seen a razor in a few days, shit needs to be covered.

At 10 p.m. or so, right after One Life to Live ended, we headed out to the Echo Curio in Echo Park to see the Tleilaxu Music Machine and friends.  It was ninety-five degrees in the car and far worse inside the tiny art gallery.  When we arrived at the venue, there was a massive crowd gathered on the sidewalk, leading us to believe that perhaps the show had sold out.  In fact, it was simply a matter of the fans' inability to cool down the venue that resulted in the crowd hanging out on Sunset Blvd. in between the live sets.  We caught Winners, a local electro-punk with a penchant for singing in falsetto and doing the macarena to songs of patriotism.  Tleilaxu followed with a short that was heavy on the gabber beats.  Dude's a madman, essentially turning this curiosity shop/art gallery into a sweaty mosh pit filled with PLUR.  After he finished, the room was schvitz-dank and smelled unsurprisingly like Sunday afternoon following the afterhours club.

We headed over to the Mountain Bar in Chinatown afterward, where our friend Cromdre co-promotes and DJs the party Pinche Way.  We got there just in time to catch Laco$te play and I think it's just better for everyone involved if we don't mention that performance again.  In the downstairs area, Icy Lytes played a live set that was glow-stick madness in the best way possible.  

And so the night ended with this pointless tale's two protagonists wandering around Chinatown until they ended up at Hop Woo, home of tasty steamed buns and massive bowls of duck soup. 

By 3 a.m., when I finally laid down to catch up on the sleep that has eluded me this past week, I thought about how a night that almost ended with me falling asleep in front of the TV turned out to be an evening of thrills, good and bad.  The hardest part of surviving summer in the city is getting out of the house.

It Warmed the Cockles of Our Nerdy Hearts

A few weeks ago, we were at this Super Bowl party in a backyard in Highland Park and these two friends of ours mentioned that they had some friends who lived down the street and they were going to call and tell them to stop by. One of our friends mentioned that the guy in the couple does prank calls.

"Like Longmont Potion Castle?" Carlos asked.

"Actually, he is Longmont Potion Castle."

Carlos and I looked at each other and beamed with a mixture of disbelief and happiness for we love Longmont Potion Castle.

LPC released at least one CD back when we were DJs at KXLU. It was one of those discs, like Miranda July's work, that you could put on in between songs that don't quite mix together. Plus, the LPC calls are freakin' hysterical. So, when we started dating, we were always quoting LPC, particularly one involving a guy named Gomez.

"What do you want from me? Do you want jewels?"

"I'm a very extravagant man."

Mr. Longmont Potion Castle did end up at the party and we did get to chat with him. He was cool. We were cool. And the memory of the Gomez call lives on in our minds. Alas, I couldn't find a Gomez clip online, but you can check out more audio at MySpace.

Here's an interesting LPC interview and another one over at LA Record. Longmont Potion Castle 6 came out last month.