talk about ferris wheels!

talk about get the ball rolling...i went into a bar last night determined to get a job and walked out with one. proof that if you set your mind to something you can do it. its only part-time but its enough to get started :) i also made an obnoxious necklace. i found a bag filled with thousands of beads that apparently didnt make the awesome color cut back in my younger days. being the pack rat that i am, i saved them all and this was one of those liberating moments when i, the pack rat, can say 'i told you so'. ill probably never wear it....and never throw it away since ill MAYBE have some use for it when im 65. see following...



yesterday i slept til 3 which oddly left me a bit rattled since ive been on the run so much lately. i decided to stay up all night and day today to fix my schedule so i can get to bed earlier tonight. today i want to:

walk down to the pool and jump in fully clothed just because im feeling bananarific.
work on todds hunter s thompson painting since its still not done and his birthday was a couple months ago. woops. heres what i got so far...

answer at least ONE of those 800 numbers that keeps calling me.
feed the snakes.
make an epic playlist and reconfigure my shuffle.
finish resizing jamaica photos and videos.
take a picture of a stranger.
bake some cookies.
try to stay awake.

early this morning i had a conversation with someone very close and it made me realize that i truly am a lunatic. when in rome....shhhhh it made sense to me.

which reminds me...how is YOUR banana bonanza going? check out this crafty little piece of joy...

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/16/nana-saver/

another thing...theres this guy andrew curtis who made a pretty awesome video.


Cinco De Mayo Carnival from Andrew Curtis on Vimeo.

here are a few of the details if youre interested:
Shooting 1 second exposures every 2 seconds. A total of 2683 images in this video, played back at 12fps. Shot on 2 consecutive nights. First night was the panning tripod. While we were shooting, a guy called me back about an ad on craigslist for his Peleng 8mm fisheye. We went and picked it up at midnight and brought it along the 2nd night, when we did all the still shots.

i will never stop being inspired by barry mcgee. ever.


this is also fucking amazing...


sorry this is really entertaining to me...




have a good day and eat ya nanners!

<3 jes

ya mon!!

oh jesus. where to begin....
coachella was a lot of fun but wayyyyy too hot. ryan and i nearly drove one another insane but in the long run it was totally worth it. i got to spend some time with a few of my favorite ladies and met eugene, a walking piece of art, from SF. pool parties galore and lots of walking around in the desert heat. its all kind of a blur.

the jvc video premiered on the biggest screen ive ever seen at the motley crue press convention and we massive amounts of fun. a few weeks later, the video was finally done being edited and was premiered online on the following sites:
http://www.heavy.com/video/47843
http://www.streetfire.net/
http://www.spin.com/
http://www.motley.com/
http://www.buckcherry.com/
http://www.paparoach.com/
http://www.therockvine.com/
http://www.mobile.jvc.com/
somehow through all of this, i ended up on a billboard in times square which is absolutely insane to me. the video reached over 300,000 views in the first week and is now already over half a million :)

i set sail to jamaica for five days to see my cousin get hitched and i fell in love with yet ANOTHER place in this world. i had a six hour flight to north carolina on which i met an awesome flight buddy named zach. we had a rediculous human squashed between us nearly the entire time who was oddly a dentist with a pill popping and drinking problem. both of which we had the privilege to experience in such close quarters on a long flight. mid-flight, a lady had a seizure and we had to make an emergency landing in arizona which meant that all the drinks the three of us ordered had to be sadly confiscated for landing. once we popped back up into the sky, the steward (are they even called that anymore or am i living up to my elderly nickname?) felt bad for so abruptly disconnecting us from our baby bottles of liquor that he felt the need to get us wasted for free. wow. drunk at that elevation was an experience ill never forget....or maybe i would have if zach and i hadnt DOCUMENTED our entire flight in my sketchbook!!! we traded ipods and computers only to find that we love all the same music so we synchronized our favorite songs to play at the same time through our head phones and rocked out all night while we wrote it all down so we could remember it later. im not exaggerating when i say our row was the ONLY row in the entire plane awake and fully wasted. we took FULL advantage. best. flight. ever. after we landed, we hung out during our layovers in north carolina and ventured outside to climb on a water fountain and mini bomb it with stickers. we met a random in chilis who i convinced to write in our flight journal...six pages later, we made a new friend and had a couple drinks in the bar at 8am in a state ive never visited. rediculous. see following...





we said our goodbyes and parted ways.

from north carolina, i flew solo to jamaica only to be greeted by a two hour long immigration line which totally blew because i was stuck in line with someone who kept farting...but leave it to jamaica to redeem itself because when i made it to the main terminal, i was greeted with frosty red stripe which i fully took part in. i had two hour long bus ride from the airport to the resort during which i saw tons of hotels and houses that looked like enormous pastel dollhouses, houses smaller than my room made out of scraps literally next door to these castles and also convinced the driver to sing the ever so stereotypical 'day-o'. see following...



when i arrived at the resort my family and i had a few houses on a hill all painted the colors of fruit loops, each complete with its own backyard pool and a fridge filled to the brim with liquor and about a lifetime supply of red stripe. i swear they drink it like water. at this point i was peeing pure alcohol so when nighttime rolled around, my vision was a bit depleted. i stubbed my toe so hard that i dislocated, and fractured it. ha ha. it hurt like a bitch and kept me out of the next days events which allowed me to spend some time video chatting by the pool with one of my best friends danny all day.

day three was the wedding and im just making a guesstimate here, but my grandma abducted the microphone about 5 times to sing for all of us. it was painfully entertaining and i got plenty of videos of her being a diva. go grandma! the day progressed in tons of pool jollification, pool volleyball with a bunch of strange people from all over the world and plenty of vodka pineapples to make it even more amusing than it already was. i actually shredded volleyball and since id never played before i was super happy about the whole thing.

day four, i woke up bright and early to go on a sketchy glassbottom boat complete with two jamaican comedians. i saw a ton of nude beaches, a giant coral reef, out of this world resorts and private beaches complete with local families taking full advantage of the turquoise water. from there, i escaped to the pool and convinced my grandma who has never learned how to swim to come romp around with me. she held onto a float and appeared to be having a blast. go me! from there we went to ride horses for a few hours through jamaica and ended up in the ocean. our horses went so deep in the ocean that only their heads stuck out of the water and it was one of the most unbeatable experiences ive ever had. talk about being in the moment. we learned all about jamaicas history and hung out with some locals on the beach.

we got back to the resort and went down to the beach and hung out with a jamaican photographer who was the first person working there to not be a super creep. he had tattoos and liked decent music so we all hung out for a bit and made plans to meet up later and go to a beach party. we then went into town on a shopping trip and got to take in even more sights and sounds of the jamaican culture. some jeweler made me try on a $7,000 watch and i pretended for a moment that it was actually mine while im pretty sure the jeweler pretended for a moment i was his. it was fun then he offered me weed. off we went back to the resort and we ate yet another amazing meal accompanied by even more red stripe and went to the strangest mothers day celebration ever. some guy was making creepy music on a keyboard and the resort conjured up the idea to line up a bunch of moms so we could all awkwardly watch them stand there...see following and dont forget to enjoy the music...



i got ready to meet our jamaican photographer friend. it sounds super sketchy but i suppose some of the most memorable and exciting things usually do. it was totally worth it. we drank red stripe in the ocean all night and listened to live music with his friends and talked about the differences in our countries for a few hours. jamaicans dont have 'problems' they call them situations. ya mon! did i mention his name was damaly rose? pffff uhhhmazing.

day five, i limped down to the buffet one last time and filled up with even more fresh fruit and french toast. it was time for me to venture on back to california and everyone was crying. did i mention i havent seen that side of my family in over twelve years? i took in the two hour long bus ride back to the airport like id never be back and then arrived at the airport. i was genuinely bummed when i got on the plane to fly back home and i was even more bummed when i found out i had the exit seat right next to two microscopic unbearable children whose parents were nowhere to be found. i imagined having to throw them out the plane onto the blow-up slide in case we crashed and it made me laugh. no flight will ever beat the flight with my flying buddy zach.

so ive been back in california for a week or so trying to get back into the ring of things and not doing such a great job. theres too much amazing stuff going on. im waiting for this grand finale to end but it just doesnt seem to be happening so i came home today and im going to make myself get back on track. i moved to this shit town for a reason and now im going to get the ball rolling....but first i have to upload 1098723049720491 pictures.

<3 jes