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I wanted to go out picture taking and made Nathaniel go with me. I was heading to a Cao Dai temple in Garden Grove, but spotted a restaurant sign I wanted to get a shot of, so we stopped to get it.

Then I noticed across the street an adult book store, so I made Nathaniel walk over to it with me.

Then next to it was another adult place called Spanky’s, which was so nice on the outside, it looked like a really cool restaurant. There was an old 40s cop car parked outside it:

Then we noticed some murals painted on the wall in the back of the parking lot:

Interesting.

On the way back to our car, I said, “Do you think it’s cool to have a mom that takes you to adult book stores to take pictures?”

Nathaniel said, “That sounds weird.”

I’ve been doing this thing lately where I email a group of people and ask them to send me a song related to some theme. I compile them as a playlist and listen to it. One theme recently was songs about a specific (and real) location.

Daniel and I took a road trip up to Lake Arrowhead last week. I’d burned the location playlist to a cd, so I put it on. He kept asking who had sent which songs. Whenever a song that I had contributed myself came on, he always knew it was mine.

James Taylor: This is yours, isn’t it?

Yep.

John Denver: This is yours, isn’t it?

Yep.

He said, “I can always tell your songs because they’re the cheesy ones.”

Me: “They may be cheesy, but they make you feel good!”

Daniel singing along with the song, a few moments later: “Rocky mountain high, Colorado!”

Me: “See? They make you feel good.”

I set the pinhole camera on the dashboard of my friend Kim’s car and opened the shutter for about 30 seconds, counting in my head. I think the blur you see towards the middle is from Kim changing the radio–or me opening/closing the shutter. Cool how we’re all distorted, huh?

Next I flipped the camera around and shot the freeway.

In the Fashion District of downtown L.A.

Daniel needs to use our car almost all the time now, which leaves me with our truck. Our truck which has expired tabs because it didn’t pass emissions.

I never drive it far. Not because of the expired tabs, but because it’s not very reliable.

The other day I was driving to Santa Ana and a cop pulled up right next to me at a stop light. I had the radio on and didn’t really notice him for awhile. The song that was playing?

When I realized there was a cop next to me, I was careful not to drive ahead of him so he couldn’t see my plates. Fortunately, he was turning left and didn’t come after me. The line that was being sung as I drove away (at 2:54):

Oh mamma I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law

I just had to laugh.

I tested out my cell phone video capabilities at a small skate park in Long Beach the other day. It did pretty good, considering it was dusk.

It doesn’t look as good on youtube as it does on my computer, though, since youtube compresses it. Youtube also messed up the sound (conflicting codecs or something?) so I swapped out the audio for a song.

I went out to the desert on Saturday with a local Flickr contact to take pictures. I’d never met her before, but she works near me and lives in Long Beach. She uses the same sort of toy film cameras I like to use. It’s been fun to have her as a contact because I get to see local spots through her lens.

We went out to Yermo, which I’ve posted about before. A small, depressed town off the 15 in the Mohave Desert. I took pictures and pictures and more pictures. I hadn’t been out there without someone waiting in the car go get a move on before. It was so nice to just shoot for as long as I wanted. And fun to do it with another photographer. Patti was going behind buildings and places it wouldn’t have occurred to me to go, which made me get some good shots I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Here’s some random shots.

That’d make more sense if it just said “lunch bythelbs.”

So the other week not only were my parents and my brother visiting, but bythelbs was also down here on vacation with her family. We all met up for lunch at Downtown Disney.

I took this picture of us with my Fisheye camera:

I had the film cross-processed, which gives it the weird color. Oh wait. I didn’t take it, maybe William, my brother, did. Or Daniel.

Here’s a pic my dad snapped of bythelbs checking out what the Fisheye does:

Things I remember from this lunch:

• Daniel came along because he wanted to meet bythelbs, because she’s always sending me awesome and hilarious stuff in the mail.
• bythelbs felt bad that she wasn’t very entertaining during the lunch when I told her that.
• When I mentioned to Daniel later that he’d been incredibly quiet during our meal, he said, “That’s because I knew whatever I said would end up on a blog somewhere.” How right he is.
• I learned that Southwest has general admission style seating on their flights, and they’re known for flight attendants singing to their passengers. Kinda weird. And kinda AWESOME.
• I also learned that Michael Jackson made a short movie for Disneyland. Not just any movie. A 3-D movie conceived of by George Lucas and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. bythelbs got to see it. If you don’t believe me.

Geeze, I can’t really remember anything else. Stupid brain.

Except it was really fun to see her and I wish we’d had longer to hang out!

Because I needed to get food before Elijah got home from school. If he doesn’t eat first thing he is…let’s say, extremely difficult.

As I was wandering the aisles, trying to figure out what I should make for dinner tonight, I heard a voice on the store intercom say, “Security to the front door please.”

I figured maybe the guy I’d seen in the parking lot who had been shaking his pants and watching coins fall out of them onto the pavement was a homeless guy and was causing a problem, or something.

Then I got in the checkout line and noticed there were a lot of teenagers also in line.

The store is directly across the street from a high school and during lunch a lot of them run over to the store for food.

As I was leaving the store, I saw a security guy at the front door with backpacks on the ground all around him. Apparently they make the kids leave their backpacks outside.

I don’t remember why I was telling this story anymore. Except I just got done watching last night’s episode of 30 Rock with Elijah and when it was over, I complained that the story lines around Tina Fey are always lame.

He said, “Mom, if our family was a TV show, you’d be the one with the lame storylines.”

–

A couple nights ago I took Nathaniel and Dillon to see Sasquatch, a local band I know the drummer and bassist of. They used a photo Nathaniel, Dillon and I took out in the desert one night when we went camping for the artwork on their new CD. The band gave us free copies of the CD (we’re credited inside!) and free tshirts. And the show was fun.

I took my fisheye camera along because it has a pretty bright flash. A lot of people I know from an online music forum were there. Haven’t been to a stoner rock show in a long time. So it was really fun.

Here’s Nathaniel and Dillon:

Cas, the bassist of Sasquatch:

Me and my friend Adrian from Seattle, who I did not realize was in a band that was also on the bill, called All Time High:

It was really cool to see him.

Here I am with some other people, including Sean who used to read my blog but probably doesn’t anymore, since I’ve gotten so lazy with it.

Finally got to meet him! He’s the one waving.

Next up: The boys and I stumbled onto a war protest in Hollywood the other weekend. I took pictures.

I’ve been going out picture-taking a lot with a Flickr contact who is really fun. We love going to the same types of places. She’s really good at taking pictures of people, though, which I am not! She and I went to a spot where some train cars are parked last weekend and Elijah came along. She got him to pose for her! Amazing.

I can’t put the pictures right in my post because she doesn’t allow that on her Flickr settings, so I’ll just link to them.

Here’s Elijah on a train car.

Me and Elijah together.

I was nervous being up there.

And Elijah on the tracks.

It was a cool cloudy day, which we don’t get too many of around here. Awesome to take pictures in. I still need to get my film developed from that day.