Rebel Rebel, you might as well

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You can get away with just about anything in music videos: flying, gushing paint instead of blood, and just plain not making any sense. They're like stylistic fevered dreams that, like dreams, don't always make sense but are pretty awesome anyway. Here's a (wholly incomplete) list of five videos that are totally bad ass without having any story of which to speak.

And before you ask 'Where's Bjork?' I purposely left her out (you'd be surprised how many of her videos actually make a weird sort of sense).

The Wombats - Let's Dance To Joy Division
Around the time that people start floating away, and we see stoic faced school children singing "Love will tear us apart"-- I give into my suspension of disbelief and enjoy it for what it is.

Operator Please - Leave It Alone
These high schoolers from New Zealand have done Jackson Pollock proud. I may not understand why these kids start fighting (then again, being in a band is stressful) or why they're gushing multi-colored blood everywhere like an Army Of Darkness remake, but I love it none the less.

Refused - New Noise
Bunnies, zombies, living mannequins? What? This whole thing is like a fever-induced dream, and the energy of the band does nothing to lower your heart rate.

Polysics - I Me My Mine
Here's a good example of what I love about the Polysics: they make little to no sense half the time, but they look cool doing it (even if they're not in this particular video). That little girl shows up in a few of their other videos, too.

Dir En Grey - Obscure
It'd only make sense that the Japanese would top this list, wouldn't it? This particular video is completely creepy and amazing, if you ask me. The thing is, though... what the HELL is going on? I mean, seriously?

Enjoyed the list? Help me make more! Every sunday I'm going to post another music videos list with a theme, but I can only find so many on my own! I need suggestions to keep this going! I don't care what genre of music it is, just send me a private message with a link to a video and which theme you think it fits in. I'll trim it down to the top five best. Here's a few to keep in mind:

Five Deceptively Simple Videos
Five Videos Involving Zombies
Five Live Performance Videos Done By Audience Members
Five Film Noir Inspired Videos
Five Best AMVs (Anime Music Videos)
Five Live Performance Videos
Five Videos That Are Montages
Five (Insanely Intricate) Single Shot Videos
Five Horror Videos
Five Videos That Give You The Warm Fuzzies

Last night was hella fun. For Apropos' first show, we had a hell of an awesome reaction from the kids who endured the snow to see some free punk rock. I'll give you a breakdown of the night.

After a short practice, a broke down truck, and an hour trip on the road we show up at The Wagon Wheel not sure what to expect. But hot damn, the parking lot is packed and a crowd of punk heads are standing outside smoking. We load our equipment and stand around awkwardly for a bit, trying to figure out what's going on. At one point we overhear someone talking to these two kids with a video camera "Man, stop recording us! Go talk to those guys! They're in a band."

"What band?"

"I dunno, nobody knows how to say their name."

I shout across the room, "APROPOS! UH-PRO-PO! Silent S, unless you're American."

They record us, and we talk about being a queercore band and stuff. When I get the video I'm posting the hell out of it. So after a bit the bands start.

To start out we had Three Days Ago, aptly named because they had formed three days ago. They were metal, but not bad at all. I don't know metal that well, but I liked them.

Next up was an acoustic guy named Eli Kay. Did nothing but covers of mostly 90s songs, and had a punk drummer backing him up. Altogether he was pretty rad, really nice vocals.

Apropos was third in the line-up, which was better than we were expecting as far as placement goes. We loaded up, turned on, and after a bit of hesitation on Alicia's part (goddamned drummers, too damned talkative) we broke out into our first song. Here's our setlist, with commentary (I fucking love listing things).

Equality Now is our intro song. It's straight ahead punk with simple repetitive vocals: What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Right now! It's supposed to be gang vocals, like a protest chant, but the others didn't learn the vocals (my fault) so it was alright. The crowd perked up right on this song, 'cause they were all punk kids and the two bands before were decidedly not punk. Big cheers after that one.

Next up was The Flesh I Leave which I kinda fucked up. There weren't a whole lot of people there, maybe 50, and most were sitting in chairs-- but this is when we got our first introduction to our dancers for the night. Just one guy at first, then three, haha, all hardcore dancers. Fun stuff.

I introduced Hurt as our shittiest song of the night. It's a kinda ska song that none of us quite have right, and the lyrics aren't finished. But everybody got into it.

We followed that with our New Song, which we had just written this week. It's slow right now 'cause, y'know, it's our new song. Not much reaction during, but people liked it still.

After the new song I dropped my guitar for What The Bullet Sang, mostly because I don't know the lyrics in full for this song. The reason for not knowing them yet is because the song is actually a poem by Bret Harte of the same name, so it's a bit tougher to commit it to memory despite how much I love the words. During this song I ran into the crowd, around the whole bar, and generally acted a'fool. I got mad props on it later, which is always nice ^_^

I picked up the guitar again for Sing You Sinners, which kinda blew because I can't seem to write lyrics for this song, so I 1) fucked up my (lead) guitar stuff trying to remember what I had, and 2) fucked up the lyrics like crazy. One of our best songs ruined by me, haha. Still, though, pit went crazy (what there was of it).

The last song we had planned out was DMZ, which went fine until the bridge when Eric seemed to forget there WAS a bridge, and everything kinda got jacked. We ended it out alright. I was a bit surprised by the lack of pit on that song, since it's our hardest song. Whatever, it was still cool.

After that they kept telling us to play more-- specifically to do covers (I know they were messing around, but I like to mess back). So I turned around and told Alicia to just do a punk beat, and Eric y Vanessa to just go from 5 to 7 real fast. It sounded like ass, I screamed incoherently, and there was actually a pit, haha. I called the song Every Punk Song You've Ever Heard.

They weren't content with that and kept calling for an encore. So I went into the crowd with the mic and was like "Okay, so then... what do you want to hear?" One guy said "Elton John!" I turned to the other guy, and he said "SLAYER!" So I went back on stage and said "Alright, Vanessa. Drop the guitar. Eric, just play something fast and scary. We're gonna do an Elton John song as done by Slayer, as done by Death From Above 1979." So Eric and Alicia just played whatever for a long time while Vanessa and I screamed randomly into the mics. I, again, went into the crowd and went between screaming the same line, then shoving the mic in someones face. Sometimes they'd scream, sometime's they'd give me that look like "OMG! What're you doing?!" It was awesome. Best part was this guy was there with his two younger girls, so I put the mic in front of the younger girl and she took a second before screaming something, haha. Totally awesome. She looked happy.

Ironically, during the song I came up with a really great idea of turning it into an actual song, so next practice we're going to write what is now called God Save The USA! (We're Not Okay, Baby)

Finally, long after our time limit was up, we were like "Alright, we're done!" But we weren't. They wanted a cover, so I shouted "ALRIGHT! I concede! We're gonna do a cover! We're gonna cover a song that we already played tonight!"

Someone in the crowd, who turned out to be Nick from The Distracted, came forward and was like "OH SHIT! You're gonna play a cover... of a song you already played tonight?"

"WHICH IS," I continued, "A cover of an 18th century poem!"

"That is the most punk rock thing I've ever heard."

So I grabbed the mic and, deciding my voice was giving out, asked if anyone else wanted to sing the song. After a moment this one kid shouted "ME!" and came up front. I asked if he even wanted the lyrics to which he emphatically shouted "HELL NO!" So, we broke into the song and he started screaming whatever. Halfway through the song he handed the mic over to Nick, and disappeared. LAter Nick informed me that the lyrics went "Elvis couldn't finish the song because he had to pee!" Elvis being the guy who was singing.

It was an awesome way to end the set.

As we were breaking down every one of us got bombarded by people giving us props. A lot of 'em were surprised it was our first show, haha.

The next band was Innuendo. They were fucking outstanding. A lot of guys were hounding on them 'cause it was two hot chicks and a bushy-bearded drummer. But they were legitimately awesome, and I want to play more shows with them.

After them was The Distracted. Some good straight up punk fucking rock. Again, totally want to play shows with them.

Last up, and the guys who threw the whole thing together, were The Americommies. Goddamn, the place blew up when they went on. So much so a fight broke out in the middle of their set-- srsly. It was pretty lame, but it got contained and dissipated. I, unfortunately, decided to take that particular time to go outside and take a few photos, so I missed the whole thing. What I did catch of their show, though, was sick. Crazy good live.

We were invited to an after party with the Americommies and whoever else was going, but by that point it was snowing pretty hard and we were far from home. Drive home was kinda scary, but we made it.

So instead of going to an afterparty, Eric and I went home and got well rested so we could take a walk through the park and take fancy photos of the snow, then got tea at the local cafe. Pinkies up. Now I'm knitting a scarf.

God, I'm so gay sometimes.

Inspired by my last post, as well as staying up until nearly 5 AM looking at portrait photography instead of sleeping, I've decided to post my 20 favorite portraits that I've shot. Narrowing down the list was painful (the last two to be cut in particular), but this definitely covers everything thoroughly. I'm certain there's going to be shots in here many of you haven't seen. Every shot has a story, a reason, and a personal emotion attached. Too bad you'll never know them! HA! Srsly, though, I have loved shooting every one of these photos and working with all these models (even if I'm not on speaking terms with them). But I digress: I love these photos. So... Enjoy, and let me know what you think! I thrive on feedback, you have no idea ^_^

Also, there's one portrait I haven't added to this list-- a self-portrait. The reason being? It's my default icon. I took that, of myself. Fun, huh? Without further ado...
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20. Nathan Wright and Eric Zimmerman 19. Random chick at Venice Beach 18. Jimi Ceccini and Alex "Ace" Scott 17. Amy Silliman 16. Can't remember the guys name (and I worked with him for hours!), Gabrielle Lesaur, Melissa's friend, Melissa, and Charolette's arm is in there too (love you, Squiggles!) 15. 8 Inch Betsy 14. Neil, formerly of Lutheran Gun Club 13. Carissa Alva 12. Zachary Blough 11. Maverick 10. Grenadine and Beth Alva (hi, Mom!) 9. Drag queen at Seattle Pride '08 8. Couple at Seattle Prop 8 protest 7. Neil, formerly of LGC 6. Maverick 5. Jennifer Scheu 4. Tim "Max" Beard 3. Zachary Blough 2. Carissa Alva 1. Maverick

And don't forget, one more day to claim FREE PRINTS OF MY PHOTOS. There's a time limit for a reason, folks.

While we're still a month away from the end of '08, I figured I'd post my top 15 favorite photos from this year. '08 was a decisive year in my photography, those who've known me long enough may have noticed.

I've been into photography as a mild hobby since junior high. In high school I took my first photo class and found myself taking assignments as a school paper staff photographer, as well as initiated myself as a band photographer (inasmuch as I could afford). '06 I was forced into buying a decent SLR for a class in my first semester at Ai. '07 I took my first two out-of-class photo gigs for quasi-fetish projects, December Dismemberment Film Fest and BulletBoys.org respectively. One camera broke, and an even better one was given to me by my mother. In '08 it became my passion, right up there with music, writing, art, and comics.

I've made numerous friends and allies through my photography, from my high school friend Kristine to the many people on Buzznet and deviantART. I've been recognized for what skill I have, and championed for initiating projects like the 72-Hour-Photo-Project (which will be making a comeback in coming months). Without the constant support and push from friends and family alike, all of whom are extremely supportive, I wouldn't have half the interest or passion in photography I do now.

Thank you.

To show I truly mean it, I'm giving away free prints of my photos to the first three people to comment. Details below, offer ends December 10th. And without further ado, my:

15 Favorite Photos of '08

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GIVEAWAY RULES:
It's simple enough, really. Just be one of the first THREE (3) people to comment, and private message me which of my photos you'd like printed along with an address to mail it to. That's it. The only restriction is that it cannot be a photo of a model (unless it's my sister Carissa who has already given permission to prints). Last day to get in on this is December 10th. Photos are 8x10, or equal. I do ship international.

To find my photos, look here:
BuzzNet
deviantART