interrupting the story for a moment

So yeah, our coherent narrative has to be interrupted for this breaking story: I have a darkroom! I developed film! here, proofs: Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Then I got on a plane

So I woke up at the ungodly hour of 5am after all that madness and grabbed all my stuff and walked over to the gf's (who wasn't yet anything other than an interesting friend) house, and woke her up, and she drove me to the airport. I like morning flights, you never end up done with everything and having hours to kill before them. It's always wake up and go. Anyway, I get through security and put my shoes back on and have just enough time to get a burrito before I get on what might be only the second or third direct flight of my life; really quite nice to get on one plane and get off at your destination after a nice litle nap. Anyway, I disembarked, got on the bart and headed to my hotel; even napping on the plane I was still exhausted, so I took another nap. Then we went out to Seemant's house boat, docked in Oakland, and had steaks and chips and a ton of beer. People talked, I got reasonably inebriated, and then we all tried to take the ferry, but it was closed early for fleet week. So, we all got back on the BART and went back to our respective hotels. Then I did something that seemed like a good idea at the time: I opened the window. Long story short, I was sick for two days with what I thought was a bad head cold, but turned out to be bad allergies. A day of cold medicine and a day of sudafed and then finally claritin did me right and reduced my symptoms to a headache. Which is why, in case any of the people who were there are wondering, I looked and felt slightly off all week. Other than that, it was a week of meetings and eating spectacular food and a lot of walking. LOT of walking.

Picking up the Thread

So I'm dogsitting, and generally bored while my lady is out of town (If you're reading this, I miss you), so I figure I should pick up the thread of "things that happend to Matt Mills" somewhere, and the best place is probably the punk show I wnet to the night before I flew to SF the last time. I was sitting around watching star wars with a friend, and I get a text message from Kerry that says, "Come to the Speakeasy, bring your camera. Copperheads and Boom Bang." And then another that says 'Really, I'll pay you.' I was bored with the whole star wars scene, having watched it approxamately 12 bazillion times as a kid, I still remember all the lines. (yes, I'm a nerd). So I ran home and grabbed my camera and went to the show, which hadn't even started yet. There were some beers. Remember, I'm supposed to get on a plane early in the morning and fly out to meet all my coworkers in San Fransisco; thinking of this and my empty suitcase, I took it easy on the beers. It was a punk show though, which you can't really attend without a little drinking. But you know that. So, beers are consumed, and then the copperheads come on and rip through their set like it was talking bad about their mothers. Really fun, fast set. I couldn't understand any of the words, of course, but that's not what matters, really. What matters is the noise and the speed and the croud being into it, all jammed up right next to the stage, and the lead singer thrashing around and falling to the floor because so much of his energy is going into the song he can't even stand because there's nothing left, and the drummer soaked with sweat and exhausted, and the guitar player jumping up and down and playing as fast as he can to keep up with it all. Either that or we were all a bunch of drunk roaring idiots. Then the Boom Bang came on and solidly kicked some more ass; if the Copperheads were a warm up act, the Boom Bang was a bonfire. I know I use a lot of superlatives, and some of you out there are probably wondering if I'm full of shit or what. I think I just happen to go see stuff at rad moments. I vaguely remember these guys from the last Norman Music Fest I was at, and I wasn't that impressed. the show at the speakeasy was altogether different. They were right on the bleeding edge of good rock and roll that night. And if you don't believe me, here are the photos: After all that I went home and threw my shit in a bag (this was one of those times a packing list comes in handy) and slept a few hours and got on a plane...

the last two months, condensed

So the last two or three months have been a bit of a blur. I turned 27, found a spectacular woman, got situated in my new job, took three trips of a week each (two to san fransisco and one to mexico), decided to start shooting film again, drank, ate, and told stories, and generally lived it up. There are some photos of all this. They are coming soon, I promise.