My life with a cameraphone - Part 2

June 12th, 2008

The year is now 2007(ish[ism]) and I’ve left Berkeley, I’m now back in Lynwood and apparently still quite obsessed with bizarre signage. At the same time, I’m working my BA in Film and managed to wrangle myself a highly prestigious position as a local substitute teacher. My new obsession? Elementary kids bad grammar and just bad writing. I go over, read their work, give them a bit of support and then ’snap snap’ on my cameraphone. I also seem to be more conscious of having the camera on me all the time and snap a couple of once in a lifetime ‘Impressionistic’ photos. Oh, I also got far too drunk and threatened to take some theater usher to court while snapping pictures of him in my stupor.

First the signs.

What Poise! What form!

The hip snack!

Pressed repeatedly until broken

Her face, her face is the topper

yes, I'll have the pork choops

Then there’s the kids…

IN YO FACE

Kids drawing MLK

trouble with his Multiclutations

poor poor woman

I also managed to capture the culprit of the googlie eyes on my mom.

This next one requires a bit of explanation. Essentially, theres a noodle place in Little Tokyo that has a sort of gimmick. If you can finish their hottest bowl in under half an hour, your Polaroid goes on the wall of fame. 25 minutes later, after much laughter, bathroom heaving and more laughter, I remembered the cameraphone and managed to capture an image of my brother’s face recoiling in horror.

Every year I manage to make it out to the Oktoberfest celebration down at the Alpine Village. It’s always generally free to get in and the atmosphere is pretty fun. Occasionaly frats show up and turn it into nonsense, but it’s generally a fun thing to do. On this particular occasion we decided to stop by even though it was pretty obvious it would rain and the event is somewhat outdoors. We drank, it rained and we continued to drink. I can’t believe my camera survived the moisture and managed to catch these great shots.

And finally we have the grand opening of the Sherman Oaks Arclight theater. Let me set the mood. Friend “R” scored tickets to the grand opening of said theater and invited me to go catch Denzel Washington act like Tony Montana in some movie or other. I drink on the drive over, in the parking lot, on the walk to the theater and right into the entrance. THEN, I notice this soiree has free booze. Drinking. Getting paranoid. Start feeling eyes staring at me (Me and “R” are clearly the only “ethnics” in the gala). The movie starts and “R” goes to get his seats. I tell him I’m going to the restroom and black out. ‘Apparently’ I attacked an usher, called him a fucking racist, told him I worked for the LA Times and I was going to shut the place down, snapped a bunch of pictures of him and other security guards and was asked to call my friend so he could take me home. “R” was called, but having turned off his ringer, it went to voicemail. He has yet to delete this hilarious conversation consisting of me mumbling while security guards admonish me in the background while asking me to put my ‘camera’ away. I don’t want to put all the embarrasing mess in here, but here’s a couple gold ones.

So that’s it. Clearly I’m very wary of having a camera with me, if I can remember to pop it out in a drunken argument. I don’t know if having the ability to record any event spontaneously has changed my life for better or worse, but I definitely plan on quickly turning on the video record if stopped by police. Maybe it can net me a nice settlement?

Entry Filed under: Observing