I just walked Dot around the block in my overalls and slippers. In my hand, a cold Coors Light and over my head, a full moon.

I hope that image stays in your head tonight! :-P

Down Under Mixtape

Props go out to Mr. Brian Holst, currently residing in Australia, for his seamlessly constructed new mix of goodness. Brian, a DJ, put together this Down Under Mixtape, downloadable for our listening pleasure and I must say, it's rather motivating. I took the mix with me on my latest run up Runyon Canyon here in the hills and enjoyed the beats and sounds.

Check the mix out and download it here: http://files.me.com/brianholst/fc0vrs.mp3

Here's what you're listening to.

1) Basement Jaxx / Raindrops
2) Yuksek / Tonight
3) Lykke Li / Little Bit (Villains Remix)
4) Miami Horror / Make You Mine
5) Annie / Anthonio
6) My Morning Jacket / Highly Suspicious (VHS or Beta Dee Jays Remix)
7) Pnau feat. Ladyhawke / Embrace
8) Tough Alliance / Neo Violence (Shazam Remix)
9) Röyksopp feat. Robyn / The Girl and the Robot
10) The Potbelleez / Don't Hold Back
11) Empire of the Sun / Walking On A Dream (Treasure Fingers Remix)
12) The Ian Carey Project / Get Shakey
13) Datarock / Give It Up (Kissy Sell Out's 4x4 Cello Mix)
14) Editors / Camera (SebastiAn Remix)
15) Miike Snow / Animal (Punks Jump Up Remix)
16) Cazals / Poor Innocent Boys (The Shoes Remix)
17) Munk / Down In L.A. (Shazam Vocal Remix)
18) Sia / Buttons (CSS Remix)
19) Coldplay / Viva La Vida (Thin White Duke Remix)

Kudos, Brian!

Paying the Rent

It’s three in the afternoon and I’m just starting my beautiful day. This morning (read: afternoon) I woke up to Travis’ alarm, signaling the thirteenth snooze command that meant we’d over slept the eleven o’clock mark by two hours. I really don’t have any problem with this right now. I’m enjoying life without a permanent job—at the moment at least.

The breakfast that might have happened at eight this morning—some pumpkin toast and apple cinnamon preserves, whilst thumbing through the appropriately contrasting Instinct and Pottery Barn—brought with it some comfort and a new perspective on life as it has become. As I wrote out the first rent check for our new West Hollywood apartment, I remember back to the time when I thought I would never say I was going to ever live here. For me, West Hollywood was always a cliché plastic place where I could get my rocks off on a Thursday night and then venture back to school. Now, that cliché is home.

I’m finding the presupposed and the new in this place. While it might be obvious to say that my boyfriend and I, sitting around lazily, reading through home furnishing magazines and queer rags, thinking about a run up Runyon Canyon later this afternoon with our dog, Dot, is something this town has seen before, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that we are making a unique space for ourselves.

NPR is on and apparently Chrystler is selling out to Fiat sometime this week. We had a wonderful group of friends to our place for a house-warming party that still has me glowing. Travis will be riding his bike to work later today and I’ll probably go for my run up Runyon. In all of this, this place is ours and will continue to become ours. Our neighborhood is not just stereotypically full of plastic queers and boys running around in underwear. Our neighbor, Jane, an elderly Russian woman greets us every morning as we get up to walk the dog and tells us, in broken English, how cute Dot is. We’re making a home for ourselves in a town that I always looked at as slightly unsophisticated and tragically superficial.

Honestly, I’m pleasantly surprised and a little disappointed in myself for making such assumptions. I’m learning about home as I make it in Los Angeles. I’m beginning to open up to the possibilities in store myself, my boyfriend, and our new life in WeHo. And that starts with going to drop off the rent.

Despite the dismal decision by the California Supreme Court today in upholding Proposition 8, I'm turning on "When You Say Nothing At All" and thinking about my wonderful boyfriend and all that we share.

Maintain thankfulness for what you have and continue to fight for what you should with the passion that the former inspires.  This seems to be an acceptable working definition of dignified, sophisticated attempts at social change and I hope to embody such a definition.

Up and At 'Em, Adam Ant

Every morning during my childhood my mom would wake me with the same line.  She would come into my room and say, "Up and at 'em," but would tack on "...Adam Ant!"  I always wondered who this Adam the Ant was and why he was able to get "up and at 'em" with so much ease.

Granulated and Refined, Graduated

The graduation experience feels much like a time I went body boarding with my brother.

The San Diego waves were welcoming to two Colorado boys trying to act like they knew what they were doing under a warm California sun.  After an hour or so of awkwardness and spitting out salty sea water, I managed to catch a particularly "good wave."  I felt pretty damn accomplished as I rode it towards the shore, my board, with my body perfectly balanced on top,  riding in the crest of white wash on the top of the curl.  I could see the sleek curve of the cold blue water below me.  The power of the wave, as it catapulted me towards the sand felt like someone had tied a pickup truck to my belt and hit the pedal.  I gripped the front of my board, trying not to let the power of the wave throw me off its back and I'm sure I had a shit-eating grin plastered across my face.  As the four-foot crest carried me closer to the beach, I reveled in the experience.

However, the wave preceding my monster was beginning its retreat to the open ocean and began to pull my wave with it.  In a couple of seconds, the waves had come together and the power of the first redirected my wave out from under me.  I sat in mid air, like the Coyote aboard his ACME rocket, having just gone off a cliff and waiting for gravity to kick in.  The faceplant into the sand taught me quite a lesson.

I'm on my way back to California tomorrow.  Back to a new apartment in West Hollywood, a wonderful and loving boyfriend, his beautiful dog, and the prospect of a very exciting summer.  Looming in the background, is of course, the sudden Coyote-in-mid-air feeling that comes from a busy three weeks culminating in a full-stop.  Finals, family, graduation, friends, accomplishment, home, Kyle's graduation, parties and prospects are leaving me quite anxious in the face of a new chapter.  The job will come, the adventures are to begin, and I'm sure I'll find a wonderful way.  But for now, I'm trying to at least get in touch with this feeling of slight,  not exactly uncomfortable anxiety that seems natural of these times and keeping it from disrupting my thoughts.

Like the sand that I hit after my wave ran out, I have been granulated and refined.  What was a block of stone in the beginning, is now a multi-facetted collection of millions of parts - experiences, people, places, times, adventure, lessons.  A beach as a whole, made of parts - granulated and refined.  Tomorrow, the beaches of L.A....

Web Kiss

Lovin' on my handsome man - thank you interwebs!  :-)

April 1 - April 5

My last days in the Adams House will be spent collecting a photo a day.  These represent parts of, people, or times in the house that I will always remember as part of this quintessential experience that I am so blessed to have enjoyed...

Drove home on Tuesday night to surprise my parents.  I'd never done the drive between Los Angeles and Colorado in one shot, but it was exceptionally fun - even in the dark.  Thirteen hours ended up being:

- leave The Adams House at 11:00pm

- six pit stops for coffee (total of $7.23 for six cups)

- three shooting stars

- finding out that country music keeps me more awake than any other genre

- hitting 300 miles at 3:30am, just outside Vegas

- my car's moon shadow on the pavement

- dedicating every crooning cowboy love song to my beau

- remembering a wild morning of under-age gambling at the Virgin River Casino in Mesquite

- 4:11am, Arizona state line

- listening to Thriller and thinking of Erin's dance moves

- 4:33am, Utah state line

- the awesomeness of Beethoven's 7th Symphony with the sunroof open and the stars more brilliant than I ever get in LA

- 6:30am, I-15/I-70 junction

- hitting 500 miles at 6:20am

- running into a gas station and finding that they sell "Extreme Coffee" and wondering if what they really mean is just "espresso"...?

- 8:02am, iPod dies after having gone through 327 songs

- 9:40am, Colorado state line

- 12:00pm, almost give Grandpa a heart attack when I show up unexpected at his front door

- 1:30pm, almost give Mom a heart attack when I show up unexpected at her office

- 883 miles

Manifesto from the back porch at 2am...

Another something I've discovered in myself to live by:

I seek to make every connection meaningful--to make others revel in what I find compelling about them.  People are the biggest draw for inspiration and I hope to inspire them in the same way.  I wish to turn what I see in their characters back onto them so that they might find the beauty within that they already know exists.  And to show others that same beauty...