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I guess I should say that day one for me is really day six for The Jon­benet, the band I’m on tour with, but we’re just gonna go ahead and call it day one. I left my apart­ment this morn­ing at 5, got into LAX 12 hours later, met up with a guy from Hous­ton named Jason who drove me out to Escon­dido to meet up with the band. My flight was freez­ing cold and I was locked into the win­dow seat and couldn’t get out to hunt down a blan­ket. It was like being a pris­oner on some kind of fly­ing ice cham­ber of death. It was horrible. 

Also, another note: Los Ange­les is huge. There was noth­ing but moun­tains and desert and tiny lit­tle towns for hours and then all of a sud­den, there was was LA. grids of houses and build­ings extend­ing to the hori­zon in every direc­tion. No other city on earth can match this one in terms of sprawl. It’s amazing. 

Escon­dido is either a south­ern sub­urb of LA or a north­ern sub­urb of San Diego and it took us about two hours to get there from the air­port. Get this though: Jason had french friend from Del Taco wait­ing for me in the car. Can you believe that? The guy’s a real class act. He proved it again later when we stopped in San Cla­mente for soft serve from stand by the high­way called Burger Stop. (Note to Cal­i­for­ni­ans: if you’re ever in San Cla­mente, it’s worth check­ing out. 24 fla­vors of soft serve, and also the home of the “Chile-​​Dog”.) The first lick of my ice cream sent it plum­met­ing earth­ward, my cam­era break­ing it’s fall. So bull­shit. The nice lady behind the counter was nice enough to give me a new cone.

The gig was at a space and sci-​​fi themed pizza joint called Killer Pizza from Mars and the place looked like it hadn’t changed since it first opened in, if i had to guess, 1993. The dudes there were crazy hos­pi­tal though. They feed and watered us, and let us hang around long after clos­ing shoot­ing hoops on their old school arcade thing. Three local bands played, and I took pic­tures of some of the fun­ni­est look­ing peo­ple. It was good. The kids at the show were all in high school and they seemed to dig the Jon­benet guys the best, and they unloaded a bunch of merch.

We’re in the van now, dri­ving along the Pacific Ocean. Can’t see it because it’s totally black, but I know that it’s there. Kind of awe­some. We’re head­ing 9 hours up north, straight thru the night, to Chico, which, we were told buy the guys at Killer Pizza, is the point of ori­gin for much of California’s med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­juana crop. It’s by a mas­sive state park called Bid­well, so I’m hop­ing we get to hang out there for at least a lit­tle while to cap­ture the scenery. 

So that’s the deal so far. Sorry this is a rushed post, I’m dying to get some sleep, so future ones will hope­fully be a lit­tle more thought­fully crafted. And there’s so much hilar­i­ous shit that’s hap­pened that I’m leav­ing out, so I’ll try to be more on top of it for the sake of pos­ter­ity start­ing tomor­row. And, obvi­ously, there will be pic­tures and things and I’ll intro­duce you to the dudes as time goes on. K? Later.

I dropped a cool $300 at B&H today on these 45 rolls of film and a tri­pod. In about an hour, I’m fly­ing to LA to meet up with a guy named Mike. Mike is going to drive me about 100 miles south to Escon­dido, where I’m going to meet up with The Jon­benet, the band I’m going to be tour­ing with for the next three weeks. It’s gonna be killer. And I don’t mean to get myself in over my head here, but I’m going to try and do a post every cou­ple of days from the road. Talk to you then.

Some­thing that’s going to bum my mother out when she gets the New York Times tomor­row: Robert Rauschen­berg died on Mon­day, and for some rea­son we’re just find­ing out about it now… a whole two days later. 

I don’t have a whole lot of insight to add on this other than to say the most inter­est­ing thing I learned about Rauschen­berg recently was that he and Jasper Johns were lovers on and off for the bet­ter part of for­ever, which, you know, makes a whole lot of sense. 

Also, he said once, “The artist’s job is to be a wit­ness to his time in his­tory,” which is pretty spot-​​on. Not sure he’s the first to have ever said that, though. I was.

Also worth noth­ing: doing a google search Rauschen­berg pic­tures evently leads you to this guy’s myspace pro­file.

Here’s a whole slew of obit­u­ar­ies to read.

Robert Rauschen­berg, Amer­i­can Artist, Dies at 82
Robert Rauschen­berg, 82; influ­en­tial artist mixed paint­ing, sculp­ture and cast-​​off items
Obit­u­ary: Robert Rauschenberg

Wash­ing­ton, 2007

We Wasser­stroms attend Syra­cuse Uni­ver­sity com­mence­ment every year even though we haven’t sent a stu­dent through there in decades because there is such a thing there as the Wasser­strom Award for Some­thing or Other set up in mem­ory of my grand­fa­ther and my grand­mother really likes us to be there when it’s given out. I’ve never been before because I until now I’ve had the lux­ury of not liv­ing above the Mason-​​Dixon line. Now that I’m here in the City I don’t really have an excuse, so off I go. Not that I’m nto per­fectly happy to do it, you know, my grand­mother, who is 86, is always pretty hilar­i­ous dur­ing these fam­ily things. 

The only rea­son I haven’t left for the air­port yet is because I have to wait for the clean­ers down the block to open at 7 so I can get my nice clothes. (My grand­mother has sug­gested that I “look nice” about 500 sep­a­rate times, in phone calls and in emails.) So, I’m sit­ting here pon­der­ing my trip, ini­ti­at­ing all the scrab­u­lous games that will have to keep me enter­tained all week­end and, of course, pack­ing. And so I have this kind of funny real­iza­tion. My bag of gear eclipses my bag of clothes and what­ever but like 100%. It’s big­ger. It weighs more. 

I’ve basi­cally brought the same shit with me on trips for the past year or so, though there are a cou­ple recent addi­tions that, out of con­text, seem pretty crazy. I’ll start with the nor­mal stuff though.

• Mix and match com­bi­na­tion of cam­eras depend­ing on length of trip, type of trip etc, but not usu­ally fewer than 2.
• Film
• Com­puter
• Var­i­ous cords and chargers
• Cell­phone tap
• Dig­i­tal recorder
• Between 1 – 3 New Yorker magazines
• Mobile broad­band card
• Sketch­book
• Draw­ing pens

That’s the real list. I’m not even kid­ding about any of it. And all of this shit fits neatly into one of those camera-​​and-​​computer bag/​backpack type of things, and I carry it all on with me lest things get man­han­dled or bro­ken. I often have to stand shoe­less at secu­rity, explain­ing what var­i­ous things are, that this is not a video cam­era, it’s a still cam­era, it’s not dig­i­tal so I can’t turn it on, etc.

You may be won­der­ing why I need a cell­phone tap and accom­pa­ny­ing recorder when I travel, or, per­haps, why I would need these items at all. Broadly speak­ing, I need them for the same rea­son I need the sketch­book and the var­i­ous back issues of the New Yorker: I get ambi­tious when I travel. When I travel, I expect to use the extra time sit­ting on planes and in air­ports, wait­ing out delays, etc, to do all the things I’ve been mean­ing and want­ing to do but haven’t had the time or incli­na­tion in the midst of the daily grind.

So the tap and recorder. There are all these sto­ries I have bounc­ing around in my head that, if I actu­ally get around to writ­ing them, could be sold to any one of the news sites I’ve writ­ten for in the past cou­ple years. So they’re for all the phone inter­views I would con­duct doing the report­ing for these stories.

• Total num­ber of poten­tial inter­views: 23
• Total num­ber of trips I’ve brought the record­ing equip­ment on: 4
• Total num­ber of Inter­views con­ducted: 0

But, you know, maybe this time will be the time. Any­way, I have to go to the clean­ers and then get to JFK. Talk soon.

Team Gallery, April 2008