chase the light

My first official New Zealand shot. I can now say that I brought to many pairs of shorts to New Zealand. Even funnier is the notion that I brought a swimsuit. Who am I kidding? Look at that. That’s penguin weather. I ventured out to the west coast of NZ today to see some real landscape. About 30 minutes north I hit this stretch of coastline that was getting beat up. Imagine your hands freezing and your eyes drying out from the wind. I found a cemetery on the way back and was amazed at how well kept every grave was. After I got back to Wellington I walked around the wharf area and over to the Te Papa [LINK] museum and checked out some of the installations. Including a rooftop one of a eyeball made of bottles.

Happy Independance Day! Hold on, they don’t do that here. Oh, well next best thing. A car auction! Friend George [LINK] needs a new car because basically his sucks. So we head off to an auction in my cool ass rental car with cd player and overhead light that no one else can seem to figure out. Dumbasses, all of ya. After nearly getting slaughtered by a giant truck and me trying to reconfigure the road by slamming the passenger side into the curb, we arrive. Between the large echoey hall, the guy talking a 100 miles an hour, and the kiwi accent, we couldn’t make out a single word the guy said. It was comical. Auctions are hard enough in your own country. One car that sold for $25 caught my ear. And that’s kiwi money. A car just sold for $12.50!? What?! They didn’t even push it in. Half the cars did have white smoke coming out of them. I’m not a car expert but that’s usually not a good thing. A funny first outing in Wellington.

After about 10 hours I arrived in Auckland at 4:30 in the morning. Since the international terminal is not anywhere near the domestic one you have to walk. Finding myself dragging 1000lbs of baggage in 40 degrees from the international terminal to the domestic one I’m cranky. Off to a good start. I completely missed July 2nd in the process of flying over the international dateline. I got on the flight to Wellington and arrived there at about 9:15. Mike, the shoeless kiwi guy from Weta I’d heard so much about, picked me up. George [LINK] was there and we visited for a moment while I got my luggage together and then he went off to work. I met Eric [LINK] who was also flying into work at Weta and we all went over to get our housing in the city. Since Weta was picking up the car rental and the housing tab while I was there it was all taken care of and I was able to just go crash on the bed as soon as I arrived. So that’s my little white abode down below. Reminds me of San Francisco a bit. In fact a lot of Wellington does. It’s rainy, it’s windy, it’s hilly, and I’m already freezing my ass off. The rear windows, which I marked with a star, look out over, well, uh.. not much. I was starving so I decided to make my first foray into the city below. The closest thing I could find and feel comfortable with was a Chicken BLT at McDonald’s. Blech. It tastes lousy here too. Apparently those are New Zealand’s favorite fries also. Notice it doesn’t say best tasting. At least I’m not hungry anymore. With all two people I know in New Zealand working, I was stuck cruising around the city solo today.

Woo Hoo! Off to New Zealand, Weta, and Lord of the Rings! I’m trading in my warm L.A. summer for a blustery winter in New Zealand. My parents drove up tonight to drop me off at the airport. They figured they weren’t going to see me for about 6 months so they hung with me until I had to go to the terminal. Three people die in this terminal a few days later when some sicko opens fire on the El Al airlines counter. Crazed gunman always suck. Anway, it’s actually kind of nerve-wracking moving to a foreign country that you’ve never even visited. What if they’re all robots or something. Places only seem real to me once I’ve set foot on them. I mean, I can read all I want about Italy this, or Chile that, but until there’s land beneath my feet, I’ve only been told it exists. What if I’ve been lied to my whole life? It only exists in words and pictures before that moment you walk off the plane. So I’m going to go make New Zealand exist. At least to me.

Oh man, life can be cruel. Today I’ve been packing and getting ready for the big move to New Zealand on Monday. All afternoon this fly was buzzing around my house, so I finally decided to give it a break and try and show it the door. Ya know, why not, they only have a short little life span. Anyway I go over to the lamp it’s buzzing around and try and shoo it away. It keeps avoiding me and I’m about to kill the thing when just then I swat at it again. I accidently hit the lamp and it tilts to the side and the dumb fly goes right for lamps ledge that was tilted up. Oh man. You stupid, stupid, little fly, I was trying to help you.

I’m moving to Wellington, New Zealand until the end of the year to work on Lord Of The Rings. I’m keeping my place in L.A. since it was kind of last minute and I really like where I live. They’re providing me a place to live and a car for the duration. So financially it’s not really any different on the bills side of things. Actually a bit better. I’ve got everything on auto pilot while I’m gone. All my bills can be paid automatically or by phone and the rent is taken out of my checking account.

Meet Mark, Dan, and Wayne. Yeah, hi Mark, I saw your face on a mud flap and was interested in your services. This was parked in front of my house and my immediate thought was, “If I ever own a company where my face was on a mudflap, I’d know that something’s gone horribly wrong.” Say hi to Mark at mark@westtruck.com or visit him here. [LINK]

Alana Gentry [LINK] and “friends” at “The Gig”. Sandro [LINK] emailed me this flyer of a friend of his that was playing at “The Gig” Saturday night. He thought I’d be interested. Well yeah, a girl with a guitar, count me in. Try finding parking around Melrose on a Saturday night though. I almost drove half way back home before I found a spot. Of course I always do my homework on someone before going to a show. Where they play, do they have any recordings? You know, curiosity stuff. Musicians who wear hats on stage always seem much more serious. Like it’s a sign to leave them alone because they’re concentrating. Just an observation. Elton John wore some pretty silly hats though so maybe my theory isn’t quite refined enough. If you take enough photos at a show, you inevitably get an armpit shot. There’s always somebodys head in the way too. “the GIG” logo sticking out her head looks like a hairy condom. Drummers really get screwed on the whole visibilty thing. Except that “Night Ranger” dude who sits on the side and sideways like here. [LINK] Alana introduced her Grandfather who was out in the audience. I have to give her credit because it’s kinda hard dance around the stage all sexy and shit when your family is hanging out at your show. There are photos of me on that other camera. I do exist. Go visit his site sometime. [LINK] That photo might actually show up. Alana came out after the show and acted very vampiric. I do know the girl on far right in the background was v e r y friendly. That would be Emily. Oh Emily. Then there was the blonde. I left MY Kangol cap in the car. The next band was threatening to come on so we left. Tah dah.

Who lives in “Youngwood” Court off of 3rd street? Norwood Young, a black entertainer who I question is actually sane.

28 years ago this house started to cause me much pain. Since the debut of “Happy Days” in 1974 I’ve heard every joke in the world about being a “Cunningham”. Does Fonzie live up stairs? Hey man, your sister Joanie is hot. “Sit on it Richie” My name’s not even Ritchie… My mom still gets called Mrs. “C”. What was once a fine Scottish name is now synonymous with Middle America. Little did I know I live a couple miles away from the house exterior that was used in the show. So I went for visit. Looks pretty much the same.

So, Santa Monica has the widest and longest sandy beach you could ever imagine, and yet this guy gets his kite caught in the one powerline out there. It just dawned on me today that it’s almost impossible to photograph a sunset over the water in Southern California because most of the beaches face south. Why do I know this? I found myself all the way up at Zuma Beach before I gave up trying. So here’s a shot of Zuma Beach, the sun going behind a hill, and me about to pack the car and leave. Ok, so I gave up on the sun, but the moon came out. The moon is 230,000 miles away, and my car has 220,000 miles on it. I’m almost there. I suppose I could have spent the last 9 years driving to the moon, but there are no 7-11’s along the way.

Today was one of those days with one cloud in the sky, sparkly blue water, and a fire red sunset. Spent Father’s Day down at my parents and bar-b-queing out on the boat. Cruised around the harbor a bit and just relaxed till I slowly slipped into a food coma. It was a hard day. Think I’ll sleep now.

Can we get a chain put on this or something? Yeah, it’s all nice n’ purdy until the thing starts claiming ownership of your camera bag, bracelet, pant leg, etc. The Shambala Preserve [LINK] is a way station for abused and unwanted big cats set up by the actress Tippi Hedron. Otherwise known as Melanie Griffith’s mother. Orcas no.1, Tigers no.2, and Toucans are no.3 on my favorite animals list. Factoids: If you shave the hair off of a tiger, it still has it’s stripes. A three legged cheetah (pictured) can still run 35 miles an hour. Don’t squat down to the ground to take a picture. If you run from a cougar it’ll chase you. Elephant keepers have the highest insurance premiums. You don’t nueter a male lion because it will lose its mane. It’s hormonally driven by testosterone. I’m armed with all sorts of new random information after this visit.

The mathmatical formula of babies. Charles and Lisa’s little girl Isabella. She needs to start walkin’ and talkin’ real quick so we can drag her around Ireland. She’s the coolest little baby, but vacations are now on hold for a bit.

90’s Journal flashback. This has nothing to do with today. I was just thinking about whales and remembered I had some footage of orcas that I shot a few years ago. The fantastic Kathleen and I flew up to Washington to camp and then hit a concert. I cut the footage out of a longer video of the visit to the San Juan Islands. [LINK] It’s really shaky as the boat was fairly small. This is the J-Pod of resident whales off the west coast of San Juan. The girls have small dorsals and pectorals while the boys can have huge ones. The large male seen is called “Ruffles” because the back edge of his dorsal fin looks like a potato chip. The pod is run by the dominant female. Much like a herd of elephants. There’s your Orca trivia for today. Cool, I even have diagrams. I can’t begin to tell you how much I love orcas.

Ok, it’s really a male Odocoileus virginianus. Ya know, I’ve driven by this house many times on the way to work and thought the deer was a bit odd. Now that they’re trying to sell the house, it seems reeeally odd. As soon as that house is sold that deer is history. They might as well take it with them. If they’d had a real one, that would be cool.

Wells Fargo, Wilshire Blvd. “If You want to have your own pen, just buy It, but don’t Take me away, because Somebody else needs me. Thank You.” Someone needs some run on sentence and capitalization lessons. I like that it was written from the pen’s point of view, and that it wrote it on itself. It’s doomed.

Little secret here. Mother’s Day at Magic Mountain. The only time of year to go because you pretty much walk right on to all the rides. Not a lot of Mom’s want to go to Magic Mountain for Mother’s Day. You’ll find them at Disneyland where the lines are longer. Of course you get motion sickness in about 2 hours because you can ride so many coasters. You have to call your Mom sometime during the day too. Or take her out to dinner the day before, like I did. We actually ran into people from PDI in San Francisco. They’re in the know on this too and drove all the way down for the day.

The smog must be rolling in. Ok, it’s smoke from a fire. I was driving through the Kenneth Hahn Recreation area. Lucky him, he gets oil pumps in his park. Other than the smoke it was a nice day. See the big dark blotch in the blue sky. I just discovered I have a cracked lens. #$%@!!! Time for a new camera. When did that happen? Update: It was just a little piece of plastic that got stuck on the inside of the lens and looked exactly like a crack. Odd.

In the scariest part of downtown L.A., this underground art exhibit and musical party was pretty fun. All over L.A. today there were 4:20 events. “Anyone” took the stage at about 11:30 and put in a great show. Sometimes the smoke got so thick the band disappeared into the lights. I got someone into the show for free and he offered me some “herb” for the favor. I politely declined. That’s a DJ on left, he sucked. So after the show they tie this guy up and pull him up to the ceiling by his feet. Then they start beating him with sticks! Not until candy started falling all over did I realize he was a human pinata. Whew.

It hasn’t even opened and I’m already sick of Spiderman. More Sony propaganda advertising goes up on the lot.