BREAK WEEKS 1 & 2

Break started off strong. Jesse and I drove down to San Diego on Sunday night. The drive was easy and we got to San Diego around 9pm. Monday started off unusual. Jesse woke me up for a change and I had to get ready with the quickness since I woke up really late. We still made it to City College on time. Today we were going to be giving a lecture to a an acquaintance of mine's class. She's a teacher at City and asked that Jesse and I give a lecture on our process and show some of work. I never had her as a teacher, I don't think she was teaching while I was at City, we know each other through AIGA events I have attended. The lecture went great and we hope we got through to at least one student. There were a couple that seemed to have their head on straight. We were there for about 2 and a half hours before we were on our way.


This was in the classroom we gave the lecture in. This was from the first AIGA meeting I went to at City. That was back in 2007. I signed in above the U. I wrote to be involved.

The next stop was Pokez. We hadn't been there in a long time and Potato Flautas were much needed. Other than Pokez we didn't have anything that we had to do so we headed over to the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown. There were only a couple exhibits and they were ok. Then we drove over to Pacific Beach and walked around for a lil while. The weather in SD was typical May gray even though it was April. It was also pretty breezy. After PB, we drove around and then went back to the house to hang out.







That night we went out to dinner with my dad and sister. My dad had asked me when I cut my hair. I didn't realize it but I hadn't seen him in like 9 months. Way too long. Anyways it was nice seeing my dad and we talked for a while before leaving Fudruckers down in Chula Vista. After that we headed home.



On Tuesday we went to the mall and walked around for a lil while. Jesse was in need of some sunglasses. No luck at Fashion Valley so we made our way to Urban Outfitters downtown. Tonight my mom wanted to go out to dinner with us so after walking around for a lil while downtown we went over to Venice in Normal Heights. After dinner we headed back to the house to pack up our gear.

Once packed up we went back down to the Valley to meet up with our Friend Jeff, his wife Trish and their son Romeo. It's crazy how much time has flown by. Jesse, Jeff and I were in the portfolio class together at City. Jesse and Jeff also took a class at Mesa together during that time as well. Anyways during our portfolio class Trish was pregnant with Romeo. Seeing how big Romeo was really put in perspective how long it's been since we had seen him and how long ago our class was. An hour or two later and we were on our way back to Pasadena.




Rome watching his movies on his iPod Touch.

Wednesday I headed over to Echo Park to hang out with Miguel. He was hangin out at Jakkie's house and Alex was there both of who just graduated with Migule who I had yet to meet. They were pretty cool and we just hung out there for a lil while before Andrea showed up. Then after a while longer we headed over to Prado for some drinks. While we were there Andrea's boyfriend showed up. It was good times as you can see from the photos.


Doing the TJ arm wave.


No photos for Migs


Mini wave


Group Shot...kinda


Da boys




Trying to hide


Deep conversation

Then on Thursday it was back down to San Diego. I was supposed to have dinner with my family. My Aunt was in town from Mexico with her sons. That didn't work out. A couple hours later I met up with Jimmy and Shawn. We hit up downtown. We went to Siren, a pretty chill rooftop bar at the Se hotel. Shawn would be playing there next week and we were just checking out the scene. Should be a pretty dope spot once the SD weather warms up.

While we were there I ran into an high school buddy of mine that was doing promotions for the club that night, Elgin. We caught up and hung out for a lil while. After a couple hours it was time to hit the road. We walked over to an all night dinner that I never knew about. After grubbing it was time to call it a night.

Friday I didn't do anything until the evening. Tonight I was going to the Padres game. I went out to Lakeside to pick Bryan. We went downtown and had some food and drinks before the beer fest that was taking place before the game started. Jason and Tek met us at Tavern before we walked over to the ball park. The beer fest was a bust. Too many people, small beers and they cost like $5 each for tasters. We promptly left the park and walked over to this spot we know of. They serve $2 pints and have a nice selection of beers. We were there for a handful of beers before Ana, Bryan's wife joined up with us. We didn't head over to the game until it has already started. The game was pretty boring and we ended up leaving around the 6th inning.


Jason and Tek.


Bryan sportin my shades and Jason.


View from our seats.


Petco Mascot? Bring Back the SD Chicken!


Jason and I.


Our next stop was the Fleetwood. A couple more drinks and we were off again. This time we were heading over to Santee and Noelle's parent's house. She was house sitting with Jay, so we hung out for a lil while. That was my Friday night.


Tek, Ana, Bryan at the Fleetwood.


Saturday was the Mayweather/Mosely fight and I was going to hang out with CJ and watch the fight somewhere. Around 6 I headed over to Cj's so that we could get dinner before the fight. Di, Cj, Caiden and I all got our grub on at West Coast BBQ which is right near Cj's house. I hadn't eaten here yet. I tried but they have weird hours. It was pretty good and a good start to the night. We were going over to Dustin's new house to watch the fight. There were a gang of people over there and it great to see a lot of people I haven't seen since I moved to LA.


Caiden playing at the table with his cup and plate.



Sunday was a lazy day and I ended up leaving in the late evening.

Monday Miguel had asked me to take him to job follow up interview/meetings. I took him to the first place which was on the miracle mile, aka Wilshire, which was really close to LACMA. After that we went and got lunch at this BBQ place on La Brea and Santa Monica. It was ok. While we were eating this other place called Miguel. So after eating we were on our way over to Venice. Once Miguel was done with his second meeting we drove over to the LA Gun Club to get our blast on. He had mentioned going here the night before but I figured he was joking. Anyways he selected a Baretta .9 and a .38. I hadn't been shooting in like 10 years and it was a blast. I definitely need to go back soon. And I still haven't lost my touch. Don't mess with me! After going through a couple targets and boxes of ammo it was time to head home. I was pretty tired and in need of a nap.


Miguel on the .38


Hammin it up for the camera.


Me, handling the .9

Tuesday Jesse told me about Broken Social Scene playing an in-store at Amoeba Records in Hollywood. I had heard about this on Oh My Rockness.com but had forgotten about it. So when Jesse reminded me about it I was down to go. The show was decent. they played for over an hour and had some dope horns come our and play with them. After that we went across the street to Unami Burger. Hands down the best burger I have had. After that I don't want to eat another burger from ANYWHWERE! Anyways after that it was time to head back to Pas and call it a night.


View of BSS from the second floor.


Mexican Coke mixed drink. Another reason why I love this place.

Wednesday I woke up and started cleaning up my room. I unpacked my stuff and started doing laundry. I was supposed to go back to Amoeba with Eric and Chris to catch the Flying Lotus in-store but was tired and didn't feel like doing anything.

On Thursday I went and finally saw Dirty Hands, the David Choe flick playing at the Sunset 5. It was pretty good and inspiring. I had heard about this movie a couple weeks back and was looking forward to seeing it.



On Friday it was almost a repeat of the day before. this time I was going to Westwood to see the Banksy movie, Exit Through the gift shop. The movie while about Banksy wasn't about him. It was about the guy who wanted to make a documentary about Banksy. It was a good movie and very inspiring.


Bad photo of the couches you sat in at the Westwood Lankmark.

After the movie I headed over to Otis. They were having their grad show and I wanted to check it out. After searching for parking I finally made my way over to the campus. I am very fortunate to be able to go to Art Center. Visiting Otis made me even more grateful than I already am. Art Center has an awesome campus. Otis's campus is more like an office building. Anyways the show was kind weird. Art Center's grad night seems more oriented to getting a job in the sense you are able to see a good deal of the student's work. Where as at Otis they only had walls or a small stand to put work on and the work was maybe 1 or 2 projects. Not a great way to see what someone is capable of. After walking around all 6 floors of the building it was time to make my getaway. As I was walking back to my car a couple asked me what I thought of the show. I said I am not the best person to ask, but thinking back maybe I am. Who knows. Anyways there was some good work but it was far and few between.


Going behind enemy lines.

I don't remember how I found out about the Chaz Boroquez lecture at the Hammer museum on Saturday but I was really stoked about this. Eric and Chris went with me over to the west side to see the maser of West Coast gang graff. I planned ahead and broke out a brand new huge sketch book to get Chaz to hit up in.


Third line in the bottom part says Enrique.




Chris and Chaz

After the lecture we headed back to Pas. Gabe was coming up so we could see the 15th anniversary of the Latinologues. Gabe had acted in the Southwestern College production of the play and wanted to see Rick Najera, who wrote the play, act in it's re-mex for this special occasion. The play was pretty funny and I got to see one of my crushes Odalys Garcia. I used to watch her all the time on Lente Loco back in the day. She is still pretty banging today. After the play we got some grub at Fatburger before going to get some drinks. We ended up at Bigfoot Lounge.

As we were leaving Fatburger I went to the car as Gabe went to the bathroom. While I was waiting in the car I noticed something near the windshield wiper arm. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. As I got out of the car it was infact what I thought it was, a Crawdad. I looked around to see if anyone was watching me because WTF was it doing there. When Gabe out I said look whats on the cowl. He had the same reaction as he looked around to see if someone was messing with us. Anyways he returned the favor and put the guy on the car next to us before we left.





Sunday was another lazy day. I made chorizo and eggs for breakfast before I took a long nap. That was pretty much my day. One week left of break and lots to do.

Random Photos.


Best FB status update of the week goes to Stefan Bucher.


Break...


You know the feeling you get when you see an ex girl friend who is doing better without you. It's like that but worst when it's your old car. Somewhere in Colorado doing better without me.


Blurry lolo

Grad Show Saturday April 24, 2010

This was my first official grad show. It only took me 4 terms before checking it out. Now I have been to the GPK area during Industry night but I never really checked any other areas out or been on the actual graduation night show. I noticed week 13 that the halls were starting to fill up with sketches from Transportation Design. Then I realized it was the school's 80th birthday. ACCD was going all out for it's 80th.!

Saturday morning I woke up around 10 and promptly decided to go back to sleep. I finally decided to get out of bed around 1:30. I didn't sleep that late because I was tired but only because I could. I cooked my self some food and then cut my hair and showered up. By then it was around 4:30 and the graduation ceremony was underway. The graduates were being announced around then. This is the first term that I have actually known people that were graduating. Kelsey is someone I met through friends, she was in Illustration. Miguel I introduced myself to because I saw that he was friends with an old friend from SD that I worked with back in the day.

Screen captures from the webcast

Kelsey


Miguel

After the ceremony was over I relaxed some more before getting ready to leave for the grad show. Jesse and I headed over to the Rose Bowl to park but weren't able to find any place that was designated for Art Center. We headed over to school to see that everyone was parking there. Art Center FAIL! After parking we headed over to see Kelsey's wall. She wasn't there but her set up was pretty cool.


Kelsey's fabulous wall.



After walking around the Illustration area we headed on down to Photo Stage 1 for the GPK area. I have to say that I was kinda underwhelmed by the work as a whole. It's not that the work wasn't good. There just wasn't a lot of it that was shown. After walking around and talking to friends we left to go get some food. We heard there was a party going on at a bar in Korea Town so we wanted to make sure we were ready to drink.


Nice school like Art Center, Why wouldn't they have a table full of chips.


Cool project.


Miguel and Lilly.




Interesting way of showing a poster.




Environmental piece by Jenny.






Nik and Steve "borrowing" some ties from security.

Jesse and I headed over to La Estrella before Picking up Frank and Brett. Around 9 or so we made our way over to Frank's before heading out to K-Town or as I was calling it GPK-Town(since it was a Graphics party(Graphics is known as GPK at Art Center)).

The spot we were heading over to was S Bar. When we walked in it was as it a slice of Las Vegas was hidden in an office building in LA. We definitely stood out as this was a locals only type spot but that didn't matter to us as it made for an even better night.

Eric was our source of info for this party. It was Jane Ro's party, who I had met a couple days before when I was helping Miguel set up. There were a bunch of other GPK'ers there too. Here are a couple pics. Make sure to check out the rest here.


Eric getting comfortable on the floor.


Jesse getting comfortable in Eric's glasses.


Kevin and Jesse looking totally sober.

After spending a couple hours there it was time to call it a night and head back to Pasadena. All in all it was a great night, but I am sure you can tell from the pics.

WEEK 14

What a week.

Monday started off well. I had picked up my final for Com Design 4 from Kinko's the night before. Of course they fucked it up and it needed to be redone. Anyways I headed over to school a lil early and got to class with some time to relax. Class went well and I think I did well. Nik came in and did his usual critique. Soon after that class was done and I was on my way. As I was leaving I saw Jesse hanging outside of the cafeteria. He was waiting for Dom so I didn't head out quite so quick. After a while Dom was finished with his Com 3 final. We headed over to the parking lot and braved the jungle before leaving school. Once I was home I worked on packaging before calling it a night.


ACCD Jungle


Stopped at this place on my way home. Definitely not recommended but simply because of the price. The food was ok.

Tuesday's Printmaking final was pretty lax. After Tony talked for a while we were done. I immediately took off to go down to Commerce to Royal Paper Box to get some oversized SBS Board for my packaging final. I was able to get what I needed and headed over to hillside. Miguel needed some help in setting up for grad show. I didn't do much but I guess even a little help, helps. I was there for a couple hours before heading over to Kinkos. After my print was done it was printmaking time. I needed to clean and burn a screen. I was able to get the screen auto hazed and then coated. Unfortunately I didn't allow the screen to dry all the way. When I was cleaning off the emulsion I blew out what I had just burned. It was late so I wasn't able to do anything else and I just cleaned off the screen and went home.





Wednesday was going to be a busy day. I woke up around 10 and was out the door by 10:45. My first stop was at Midas to get a smog check. My registration was due in a couple days and needed to get that done asap. After about 30 minutes I was back on the road. I headed over to hillside to take some pics of Jesse's Info final for him. After a couple hours it was time to run some more errands. Jesse needed his Editorial final bound and didn't have time to take it to A1 so that was my next stop. Before I could do that I needed to cut down the SBS Board that I had gotten the day before. I also had to head over to the library to check out some books to help with my Modernism final. Then it was off to A1. After dropping that his book I headed home.



While walking around school I find Jesse and Erik recreating a scene from Indiana Jones.


That was for Eric's Info final so he could project on.


Jesse's dog food packaging in the gallery.


Miguel getting some gallery love to before he blows this pop stand.


Grad show set up.


Catching a sneak peak of Kelsey's wall.


Jesse setting up his Info final.


Some jumped over it.


While others walked over it.


A couple of illustration teachers asking him what he was doing.


Jesse's final was about Orphan's in Iraq because of the war.

I was pretty tired and as I was pulling up to my place Lizee called me. She wanted to grab a bite to eat. After laying down for a little while she showed up. My back was starting to kill me but we went out to eat anyways. By the time we got to Rubio's it was really hurting me and I knew I was done for. I took a Vicodin hopping that would help but it didn't and after dinner I took another. I ended up passing out. I woke up around 1:30. Gurkin messaged me around 2 that he was hungry and wanted to know places around us that were open late. After he got food he came over and hung out for a little while. We ended up watching Justified since he hadn't seen it yet and he was hooked.

Thursday morning I woke up in a lot of pain and immediately downed 2 more Vicodins. Since I wasn't able to get out of bed I just waited for the warmth to take over and I passed out. I woke up a couple times through out the day but pretty much slept the whole day. I ended up getting out of bed around 10 and was hungry. So Jesse went and got us some food. I was able to get out of bed but I didn't' think I was going to be able to make it to my packaging final the next day. Unfortunately my Modernism final was a big casualty because when I attempted to do that I found out that I really needed to be in the library and since I was out of commission I wasn't able to get that done. Fail! Oh well I didn't put any work into that class so that's what I get and deserve.

Friday I woke up and was in better shape but I was still at maybe 40% which was better than the 1% I was at the day before. Since I was feeling somewhat better I decided to try and make it to my packaging final. I needed to print up some presentation boards and head over to Kinkos. While at Kinkos two people from my packaging class came through, Ben and Jeff. You can almost always count on running into someone at Kinkos no matter what time of day it is.

After getting a quick oversized b/w print done it was off to packaging. I showed up and had my table set up pretty quickly despite my back. Class was long as usual and I know I did good. Dan even asked me if I was taking Packaging 2. I told him probably not but he really encouraged me to take it. Doubt I will but who knows, the thought is now in the back of my head.


Friday of Week 14 hitting hard!


Two in one class

Later Friday evening there was a party at Mentone. There was also a gallery opening for David Choe in Beverly Hills. I just discovered him and am really hyped on his stuff right now. So Chris and I headed over to the west side to catch the opening. When we got there the place looked closed. After parking and walking over we found out that it was indeed closed. The gallery closed at 8. For normal hours I can see that but for an opening…thats nuts. We were both hungry so we decided to find a spot to grub at. Chris through a couple spots out and one really stood out. Soul food. He called them but they were closed. It was about 9:45-10. The next idea was Oaxacan Mexican Food. That sounded good to me, and it was off to Venice. After driving around for a bit we were on the street next to this taco truck. Chris ordered this pizza looking thing. I decided to get a torta and some tacos. I have to say this truck was pretty good and I will definitely go back when I am in Venice. After grubbing there was still plenty of time to head over to the Mentone party. We ended up getting there around 10:45.




Be on the look out for it.


My torta and taco.


Oaxacan Pizza as Chris called it.

The party was in full swing and there were a lot of people in attendance. There were even some fire eaters. I didn't bring my camera since I didn't plan on attending. We ended up taking off around 12:30 and heading back to the pad. Frank, Brett and Eric came too. They all got Jack in the Box and hung out for a little while.




Eric adding multiple status updates to Jesse's Facebook.

Saturday was grad show but that deserves its own entry. So head on over here.

Sunday was clean up day. Well sort of. I did laundry and cleaned up my room a little. It didn't need that much cleaning up I straightened some things out. Jesse did dishes and cleaned up his mess in the living room. I cleaned up my stuff from the work table. The house needs more work when we get back from sd.

After cleaning up I started to pack and get ready. We were both going down to San Diego. A woman who teaches at our old school asked us to give a lecture. She didn't teach when I went to San Diego City College but I know her through AIGA. At the Y Conference she asked Jesse and I to give a lecture on process and multipage documents to her class. Sounded like fun so we said sure. You can see how things went next entry.

Anyways before heading down to SD, there was a party going on down the street that we had to make an appearance at. Bridgette and Erik were throwing their end of term party at Bridgette's house. Her place is pretty big and the front yard had a three lane slip n slide as well as a bounce house and dj set up. I was immediately greeted with a Margarita from Erik. We hung out for a couple hours before making our get a way to head on down the coast. This was defiantly a great end to a busy term. Make sure to check out the Grad Show entry as that day was an adventure in itself and the rest of the party pics here. Until next time!


I love this pic of Crystal!


Slip n Slide


Grace pretending to be asleep.


What's a party without the cops showing up?