eric... lyon... antibiotics

my brother eric was born in Lyon, France, when i was 2 years old. from the very beginning he was the most american of the 3 brothers, maybe it was the freckles... i put together this slideshow opening with a picture of eric in france. the other pix eric took earlier this month upon returning to Lyon, the city where we both learned how to ride bikes... the city where it all began:

Lyon is the 2nd largest french city after Paris. it might not be the fashion capital & is a lot less flashy, but just as cosmopolitan, much sunnier & known as the capital of french gastronomy. many top chefs in Paris & around the world hail from Lyon. the city has some of the best restaurants in the world.
the Rhône streams across the city before providing the backdrop to the famous wine country known as Côte du Rhône that reaches the French Riviera a 3 hour drive down south. a 2 hour drive east takes you up the French Alpes. i remember in the winter we'd escape the rain for the snow, at the chalet that belonged to the Guerlains (the family who own the Guerlain perfumes). my mom had somehow become their friend & we'd go up there and spend the winter days building snowball towers. we'd make candle holders out of the snowballs assembled in pyramid towers, and light up the candles at night for eric & me, my mom, and her friends to enjoy while having evening picnics in the snow, or simply from the warmth of the chalet. i miss the snow...
i don't ever remember dads or men being around. i remember maya, my mom's finnish friend whose french husband had died. she was a young gorgeous widow who lived on our street & was figuring out how to take care of her family alone. there was françoise, the aristocratic wife of a big shot lawyer & her daughter jennifer who was my best friend back then. we were practically sisters haha. i remember when françoise had a car accident, and one of her sons flew through the windshield & died. jennifer was in the hospital for a long time & i would go visit her often. we were only 4 or 5 i think. we went to the same school together, our mothers holding our hands every morning & afternoon, on our way & back from school on rue de créqui. we lived close by each other in les Brotteaux, the "upper east side" of Lyon, and would play for hours in the "parc de la tête d'or." this park had dears in it -we called them bambis- and other animals, almost like a zoo. years later, soon after jonathan's birth (my youngest brother), we moved up to brussels. saying goodbye to jennifer was the first time i think i experienced overwhelming sadness, anxiety, and fear of loss. we wrote each other many letters & would be reunited over the summers in provence where they owned a countryside farm type thing we would go to once in a while. or on the french riviera. my mom, bothers & i would stay in a fancy gated community where my mom's best friend from brussels (and from the congo where they grew up together) owned a villa overlooking the mediterranean. jennifer's villa was right on the beach, but not a sandy one; it was all cobbles or whatever u call it. i always found it so bizarre, a beach with no sand. it would hurt sometimes but it was exciting, and there were no big waves, so it was nice for swimming. and there was emanuela, the wife of the italian consul; her daughters were older though. i can't remember their names. their birthday parties were girlie & fancy in a very old money kinda way. they intimidated me a bit, all i remember is that there was always tons of treats at the italians... as for my dad, he was somewhere in africa, business as usual...
so in my previous post i mention how eric is off to afghanistan. it seems so surreal... well here's his email announcement about it today:
I have been sentenced yesterday (Monday) to 365 days of forced labor in Afghanistan, courtesy of the US Navy. My sentence starts November 19th, I'll be flying out to San Diego (or what'll be left of it) for
in-processing, spend my time from November until February in Kansas for some GI Joe training (with some time off for good behavior during the holiday period) then go to Kuwait around 28 February to be sent to everybody's dream destination, Afghanistan. I won't be eligible for parole before I have spent 200 days in-country, that'll give me plenty of time to take some pictures, and you'll just have to wait a little to see them, probably no earlier than Nov 2008.
A submariner in a land-locked country, makes about as much sense as having a texan in the White House!
urgh, i still can't believe my own over educated super smart brother is going to be in afghanistan with a bunch of morons. i know i know, even morons don't deserve to go to war, but fuck, it seems so absurd they would resort to sending folks like my brother as well...
back to me, i have some sorta sinus & throat infection, and some skin rashes on my fucking face. of all places! i feel like a 12yo with acne & low self-esteem, which was never me... at least not in appearance. i faked it good. maybe it's karma, for ignoring the pizza faces back in the day. i don't remember ever making fun of them though... anyhew, i'm taking the antibiotics, cleaning my rashes & applying the cremes, and i'm praying to the greek gods that everything clears up before i land in washington d.c. on thursday. if i can find someone to keep chicho for longer, since i don't want my neighbor to have to take care of her for more than i asked, then i'll stay longer than scheduled on the east coast to spend more time with eric, maybe go to nyc, who knows...

rrromantical headbangers

i'm partied out before the party is over... friday night was the best. 1st, wanna was in town for a day, to deal with some LA business she had to resolve. so i drove through rush hour traffic to go see her at amy's house. i made a salad of endives & red beats with roquefort cheese, a little balsamic & oil, salt & pepper, a pinch of cinnamon & a few drops of lemon. we got to the beach around sunset & caught up in front of the pacific while chicho was running around freely. how so rrromanticallll!!! later on we got some dessert on abbot kinney in venice before taking wanna back to LAX. i fucking luv wanna so much. it was great to see her since she's moved back east to do her art stuff & all that...

then an tipped me on the justice "secret" party in a loft downtown LA. rita came with me & she pulled her credentials to skip the line & walk right in. i never take my camera with me anywhere, but somehow that night i had it. here are my pix:

big black bouncer:


hot kiss in the crowd:


big mouth:


hipster stripes:


sneaker love:


blonde kiss in the crowd:


poser heels:


i'm with jesus:


hands up:


crack ass:


paaarty:


vcr alert:


handshake & a smile:


kettle cock:


floored:

my favorite pic is the on of the absolute worse that could happen... to have dark skin with coke falling out of your nose. years ago at some industry xmas party, i had a coke induced nose bleed, even though i hadn't even done any yet that night. well i had the night before, and maybe even the night before that, i can't remember. it certainly had been a white xmas here in el lay! but i don't recall ever walking around in public with coke pouring out of my nostrils...

the nose bleed was awful though. i was just standing there at the bar. what i thought was a runny nose turned out to be a blood bath. i left all the drinks i was getting for friends on the bar and ran to jason, the man i was dating back then. or were we still dating? can't remember either. we were partying together, which is pretty much what we always did together. i hid behind him as the napkin i was holding to my face was being drenched in blood. my hands were covered in blood. i had to hide in the bathroom for a good 20 minutes. my fucking nose wouldn't stop bleeding. that was my most embarrassing coke induced situation ever. u know all the cokeheads at the party where just going about their shit thinking "sucks to be you dumb ass" and all i could think was how unfair it was to have that happen to me, and i hadn't even done any that night!

anyhew, back to the picture. i don't know this guy, but rita was talking to him & i asked to take their picture. i just told them to look up so i'd have a better angle of the vcr... good ol' VCR (i.e. visual coke residue)!

saturday i was going to go see sinden at the echoplex but i got too cozy at home. tuesday will see justice again, then wednesday jose gonzalez woohoo. i might bring my camera again... jose's show was also sold out but andreas nilsson, my favorite music video director at the moment, got me on the list today. yay!

pix + style notes

here are some pix of the neighborhood festival downtown LA last week-end... it was kinda like a mini mini coachella, and felt like going to a rave kinda. the vibe was very 90s to me, but the fashions & sounds are still very much 80s infused... ok, maybe the early 90s are on the edge of coming back already. it's already happening. we'll see...

chromeo stud & kid sister sandwich...

mia struttin it...

marrrio rrrules...

clean romance...

pictures by azalea - www.place8.com

music aside, it's still all about the skinny skinny jeans, nike high tops, converse, vans, haircuts most commonly seen in the silver lake & echo park areas of los angeles (comparable to manhattan's east village & lower east side, or brooklyn's williamsburg & fort green)... oh, and middle eastern scarves are still everywhere as soon as the evening temperature drops to 75 degrees or lower. wasn't that sooo last winter? or the one before? i lose track... hip is so hip it's just not so hip sometimes, you know. still it's entertaining i guess. at least i didn't see anyone wearing those hideous rubber gardening cloggy croc monstrosities; they're commonly found on the feet of the 30/40-something yuppies & their offsprings.

these croc people go hand in hand with station wagon saabs, volvos, subarus & hybrids. the 30-somethings-plus that night had a mature & comfortable sense of style. more of an audi, vw, mercedes & bmw crowd i'd say, very USC parking lot. or simply the unpretentious & practical toyota or honda kinda people. as for the eccentrics, their sense of ease was attractive if nothing else. they should be driving deloreans. there were of course the obvious kind who drive range rovers cuz these days u gotta be able to afford being an eccentric with a touch of hippie. or they drive their rich friends' spare range rovers. they're a dime a dozen in LA! shit, i'll drive your range rover anytime! and then there's me, with my 4-door 1973 bmw bavaria. capricious but unique. i've only seen 3 other ones on the streets of LA. stick-shift & manual windows. manual everything. runs great now that i've poured more money into it i should ever have. i just luv it. it was jackie o's favorite car!

the music was great & the backstage crowd was boozed up & fun. the main crowd was interesting in small doses. it's good to catch up with the whole american apparel crowd on bad drugs & the cool college kids coming to their own. shit i used to be one (but my drugs were better at the look of it), and i have to say the skinny jeans are much cooler than the super baggy jinco pants i once sported when at USC in the 90s. if i found an old picture of myself in'em i'd have to destroy it... i didn't see a single boot cut pair of jeans either. skinny uniformity! boot cut is sooo turn-of-the-millennium anyway. remember when 2000 sounded so futuristic-ish? remember when vintage was 60s or 70s? at this rate 90s will be the new vintage before we know it. ok, back to the basics: if u can't go skinny, then just go straight. u just can't go gay & fat. that would be totally gay, in a bad way. so follow these rules & you should fit right in... then again, we're not the ones who need to fit in. we're in! or is it "in" to be out? one thing's for sure, being out is totally in, "in" actually being "in." am i losing you? are you out??? that's sooo in! ok, well, just say NO!

overall, the kids --yeah i call them "the kids" now, urgh-- were cute, some cute & sexy, some completely obliterated, some having chemically induced fights or amaaazing moments they won't remember, some rolling around on the floor, and most dancing the night away. anyhew, it was a little much. so i stuck to the vip/backstage area a lot, where i bumped into friends & met willie from the bronx. willie introduced me to his drunk friend from ny who hates el lay but moved to rancho fucking cucamonga 2 years ago. duh! she thought silver lake was on the west side or something; she's never been. poor thing. then again, where the hell is rancho cucaracha? do u know? does it even matter? so willie flew back to nyc the morning after. i'll probably never see them again but we shared some good laughs. it's the little things...

all these pix were taken backstage except for the one of the adorable straight couple making out on the sparse grass patches. rolling around on a bed of dust is sooo the best. i remember when... oh no, wait, i don't remember. whatever, rock on!

for my friends in new york