Special occasion nights in Hollywood generally involve a lot of party-hopping. Sure, there are the people who have to get back in their car and go to the next event every twenty-six minutes because that is how long it takes for the last bump of cocaine to wear off. But it really does make sense to hit as many shindigs as possible in an evening. First of all, Los Angeles is such a vibrant city with so much going on at once, at any given time, especially on a holiday like Halloween. I know I don’t want to miss a thing. The hardest thing about going out at night in Los Angeles is blow-drying my hair. And the whole having to wear pants when outside of the house thing. Once I’m not naked and I’m wearing eyeliner, I feel like I might as well get full value out of having gotten dressed and a lot of my fellow Angelenos feel the same way.
Los Angeles tends to have a dress code where it is important to look good but not to look like you tried too hard. This means club-goers do not dress up as much here as I might enjoy. Happily, when it comes to any special event like Halloween, the dress-down rule goes out the window and everyone is encouraged to really do it up.
For this past Halloween, Blue Blood sponsored a whole lot of parties, in a whole lot of cities, in addition to doing a full on media sponsorship arrangement with the Hex Halloween event in Hollywood. My old housemates Perish and Eden Muse (pictured above and in our Halloween picture galleries), were the flyer models and Perish’s costume concept was to embody the future. “For …
The thing I love best about photography is the way it can capture and preserve a moment.
Most of my ephemeral moments have gone unrecorded. When I got to college, it was my twelfth school in twelve years. Moving that often gave me many qualities I like about myself, but it also meant that there were so many people, so many communities, so many adventures, and so many times in my life which evaporated with nothing to show they ever took place. Just my memories with no one to share them with. People who do not move can at least have conversations about “remember when . . .” but my friends and compatriots were scattered across dozens of countries.
I always loved when people showed me their photo albums and yearbooks and explained the most important images. Oscar Wilde once famously said, “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world.” Oscar was speaking of absinthe, but pictures are a lot like the green fairy that way. Sometimes a flattering photograph represents a loathsome situation and sometimes a hideous photograph is a reminder of something wonderful.
I reminded myself of what is most important about a photograph, while going over the scans for the two most recent photo galleries by Forrest Black and yours truly. These galleries are bittersweet. While I was going over the final edit to put the pictures in the BlueBlood.net system, one of the people pictured instant messaged me to tell me she had just had a nasty break-up with the guy, also pictured, who she was …
When a bunch of my friends went to see Nightmare Before Christmas for Halloween, I took a pass. I think director Tim Burton has one of the most beautiful and impressively realized aesthetics in film today. Unfortunately it bums me out that his misunderstood and offbeat heroes and heroines often accept their second class citizen status. Different does not equal lesser. I just can’t get with that, no matter how poignant the color palette or how extravagant the design. So I’m pleased to see such a master of darkly beautiful cinema taking on the vengeful barber of Fleet Street in his forthcoming adaptation of Sweeney Todd.
Also, I find the posters where Johnny Depp is reclining in his chair, with a straight razor in his outstretched hand, unaccountably erotic. I feel a little spark every time I see it online (thanks for advertising on my sites, guys) and every time I drive by one of the ubiquitous billboards in Los Angeles. There are just times when what turns you on is not what you would find convenient to be turned on by. (I will still shoot anyone who comes at me with an open razor because I always bring a gun to a knife fight. So don’t get any ideas; I’m just sharing my feelings.) You can check out the Sweeney Todd trailer below, after the jump. I’m not personally that big a fan of show tunes, but, damn, that is one gorgeous movie in both the lush scenes and the spare ones. Yumtastic and no mean feat.
For everyone searching for one of the most spectacular Halloween events Southern California has to offer, we’ve always had a great time at HEX Hollywood, and this year is even bigger than ever. Blue Blood is proud to once again sponsor this epic Halloween holiday party and we will be in attendance, shooting more beautiful pictures and generally having a blast.
This year, Hex Halloween is taking over the spacious historic Avalon theater, located directly across the street from the world famous Capitol Records building. This theater was the first venue on the West Coast ever played by The Beatles back in 1964 and is even rumored to be haunted by quite a collection of interesting ghosts and spirits, so I know a spooky good time is in store for us. There has even been one regularly spotted on the balcony where Amelia G and I will be taking pictures.
The list of performers, activities, and attractions brought together by promoter Xian and her dedicated staff is truly impressive. There will be five DJ’s accross several dance floors, a full program of individual talented performers including Zombie Girl, Inure, the debut of Hex/Rx, Monastic, and even a full Butoh-a-Go-Go show by the Corpus Delecti Butoh Performance Lab. I’m also personally looking forward to seeing the collaborative performance Aesthetic Meat Front (AMF) and Constructs of Ritual Evolution (CoRE), all of whom have been our friends for a long time and always put on unforgettable shows.
Upstairs, in the Avalon’s Spider Club, there will be magicians, contortionists, hypnotic hoop twirling performances, and much more, all to the sounds of Gothic Darkwave Synthpop from some of the best spooky DJ’s the West has to offer. And, it wouldn’t be Halloween without …
People always think I am making it up when I tell them that Robert de Niro guested on Sesame Street and taught Elmo how to be an actor. This is a good time of year to take a little acting training to round out your Halloween costume, give it that extra spark. So here is YouTubian proof that I was not hallucinating when I saw de Niro on the Street. And also some nice tips on how to imagine and pretend, if you are dressing as a dog or cabbie on October 31st. Robert de Niro is very convincing as a good source of riboflavin.
The following are the top three definitions of Halloween, as voted on by the users of Urban Dictionary:
”(1) An annual excuse for girls to dress like sluts and get away with it.
Girl 1: I’m going to be a ______ for Halloween.
Girl 2: What’s your costume look like?
Girl 1: I’m wearing my ______ underwear and _____ bra and heels.
(2) celebration where little kids dress up and get candy, teens dress up, get drunk, and go get candy, and adults dress up, get drunk, and give out candy, funny how things all work out.
im dressing up as a farmer for halloween. im so cool.
(3) the day that makes the other 364 worth living.”
For a lot of people Halloween is the one day out of the year that they can truly be themselves. It was always my favorite holiday and then one year it seemed like almost a let-down, like it wasn’t really any different from any other day. Which, in a way, meant that I guess I’d made the right life choices to get to be who I wanted to be all the time, but, since then, I try to pull out the stops when October rolls around, so it still feels special. Sometimes trying to pack so much into one short time period makes me melancholy and high strung around Halloween, but I generally end up feeling good about it, after all is said and done.
As usual, this year, Blue Blood is the media sponsor for a ton of events. The ones Forrest Black and I will be personally shooting at include the just passed Release the Bats Nine Year Anniversary and the upcoming Hex Hollywood Halloween 2007. You can see what we shot …
I first wrote and published this article October 29 of 2005, but it is that time of year again and I’m simultaneously having a lot of fun and really stressed out from being stretched so thin. We’re crazy busy, so I’ll make this brief. The “Blue Halloween” article has not been available through the Blue Blood site navigation since the redesign, and I was thinking that this is the time of year when some of you might need to hear this.
Around Xmas-time, a lot of apparently normal people get completely freaked out. They just want everything to be so so so very perfect. They tear up at the very thought of how perfect they want everything to be. They spend more money than they can really afford on things that neither they nor their friends and family really need. But- but- but it is Xmas and everything has to be so so so very perfect. If there is the slightest flaw in the ornaments or the gifts or the comfy sweater, then it is like there is no good fellowship among mankind, no peace on earth, no family love, blah blah blah.
Just try wandering through the mall around Yuletide and you will see the stress level I am talking about. I can look at that objectively and just sigh and think they need to relax and maybe get more mistletoe.
But Halloween rolls around and, ooh boy, I am singing a different carol. I just want everything to be so so so perfect. I mean, if every day is Halloween, then Halloween has to be super duper Halloween, right? Almost everyone I know is totally off the rails right now. Everyone I come across is so edgy that the slightest thing blows up into World War III.
Blue Blood and Gothic.net would like to bring you all the opportunity to win a screening of the Rob Zombie re-imagining of one of the original gangsters of slasher flicks, Halloween. The grand prize is a screening of the film for the winner and twenty of their most intimate friends, as well as a Rob Zombie grab bag including a limited edition T-shirt, CD’s, the Devil’s Rejects DVD, and the House of 1000 Corpses DVD. Four runners up will also win their own grab bags.
You know how sometimes you and your friends like to smear yourselves with vanilla-flavored corn syrup with a lot of red food coloring in it and take pictures? Well, if you are familiar with the Halloween series, go ahead, bust out those mask and knife collectibles, and take the most Halloween iconic shots you can and submit them over at the Rob Zombie’s Halloween Contest site to win.
Fine print: real murders void eligibility to participate.
Special occasion nights in Hollywood generally involve a lot of party-hopping. Sure, there are the people who have to get back in their car and go to the next event every twenty-six minutes because that is how long it takes for the last bump of cocaine to wear off. But it really does make sense to hit as many shindigs as possible in an evening. First of all, Los Angeles is such a vibrant city with so much going on at once, at any given time, especially on a holiday like Halloween. I know I don’t want to miss a thing. The hardest thing about going out at night in Los Angeles is blow-drying my hair. And the whole having to wear pants when outside of the house thing. Once I’m not naked and I’m wearing eyeliner, I feel like I might as well get full value out of having gotten dressed and a lot of my fellow Angelenos feel the same way.
