Orpheus and Euridice

So while staying my last nights in the over luxurious "W" hotel I got a phone call from a friend of mine Rob Funderburk (http://robfunderburk.blogspot.com/). Rob is a very talented artist and an over all awesome guy. I actually met Rob on a shoot with a photographer Stuart Mullenberg, another talented all around great person. Rob had offered some work to me which I gladly took, a little pro bono project. Rob had created a mural for Chicago Opera Vanguard (http://www.4ringcircus.net/COV/season/orpheus.htm) , a theater group in Chicago. The piece was called Orpheus and Euridice, Orpheus was the son of Apollo was presented with a lyre and taught to play. He played it with such skill that no man,woman,child nor beast could withstand the charm of his notes. In the play the lyre was changed to a clarinet. The production was wonderful, great music, great choreography and in a great space! Rob had created the mural, it had very organic lines and he said he was trying to mimic the lines the actors were creating. I really enjoyed working with Rob and everyone at the Chicago Opera Vanguard.

Mexico City/Day 3

Its now time to do some serious post producing. Mark and I have been putting in some overtime processing all of these files. We have to edit and tweak something like 6000 files! We have already put in a couple of 16 hour days and it looked like we had another long night a head of us! We usually start at around 8:30 and work all day until around midnight hit the sack then wake up and start all over again. We had decided to go out once we had things under control and let our machines do some batch processing while we enjoyed Mexico City. Mark,Rene and I decided to go to the Zocalo and walk around check out some stores and go check out the new archeological find uncovered about 8 months ago downtown. Mexico city is pretty amazing with the Constitution Square, the Metropolitan Cathedral,Presidential Palace and all of the wonderful Mexican people! We decided that it was time to find a nice out door restaurant and get some tequila,beer and food. We found a wonderful place right next to the Metropolitan Cathedral, what a backdrop! Its funny to think that this time yesterday I was drinking in downtown Mexico City right next to a church that was built in the 1500's! Mark,Rene and I sat around for a while finishing off our food and drink and soon it was time to go, after all we still had editing to do! We eventually got back to the hotel drunk on beer,food and the beauty of the city. We were immediately regretting the last two shots of tequila once we got back to the hotel, its really hard to concentrate on editing photos once you got your buzz on. We prevailed, some how we fought off the pleasant warmness of being drunk and flipped our drunk switch off and got back to work. We worked until about 1:30 in the morning we finally finished everything and now we had to start packing , we were leaving for the airport at 7:00am. Gabe had actually met a girl at the show in Mexico City so he was on a hot date and didn't get in until around 4:30 in the morning.......lucky dog. Soon enough the phone was ringing at 6 in the morning giving me a near fatal heart attack as I desperately tried to remember where the hell I was. Oh yes Mexico City damn I have to go back to Chicago today!! I really was not looking forward to the frigid temperatures and the dirty hard snow. We all met in the hotel restaurant for one last breakfast, I felt a bit sad I had really gotten along with Gabe ,Rene and of course Mark. I enjoyed everyone's company everyday of this job ,it was an absolute pleasure and in a few hours the family would be broken up and displaced. I really enjoyed visiting these countries some of them where not the safest and some of their politics I don't agree with but the people I came across and met were wonderful, extremely friendly and warm.

Mexico City/Day 2

The shows are finally finished! Now we have about 30 hours of post production to do hopefully we can knock that out in two days. Kirby, the head of Buchanan's decided that we should take a day off to go and check out Mexico City, I love that guy. So I decided that this would be a perfect time to go skateboarding! How perfect its January and I can skate outside with a short sleeved shirt on. I looked up the Fransisco L Medero Skatepark, a park I have seen in plenty of skate videos. We looked up the address and had a driver take us from the hotel, I felt a little silly rolling up to the park in a Lincoln Towncar. The ride to the park took about 30 minutes and we went through some gnarley parts of town. It was a great way to see Mexico City I really enjoyed the car ride plus I had the excitement of skating a park in another country! As we drove through the mean streets of Mexico City I was fixated on the people,traffic, and street vendors. Almost every inch of all the store fronts in Mexico City are filled with bad graffitti, a taggers paradise. I love the colors in Mexico vibrant colors on everything and great signage everywhere. We pulled into the park and paid 10 pesos to get in it was a huge park with soccer fields and playgrounds and of course the skatepark. It seems no matter what park I go to I always getter butterflies in my stomach,not from nervousness but from excitement. The park was sort of crowded with kids I threw down my skateboard and headed for the bowls,at last I am skating Mexico City! I checked out the bowls there are two medium bowls that are really fun, and there are 4 huge bowls that are pretty gnarly. The kids there were like kids at any other skate park hanging out with their bros, skating and having fun. Although my Spanish is terrible all of the kids I came in contact with were really cool ,we just communicated through skateboarding. Everyone was really cool the bowls are a little rough but really fun and I loved the fact that I saw so many girls skating. My friend Elyse is studying in Mexico City for a semester and we had planned on meeting up at the skate park a couple of weeks before. I didn't have her cell in Mexico so I tried sending an email in hopes that she would check it and we could meet up. As it turns out she didn't check her email but ended up going to the park anyway, I was skating looked up and saw her skating and I yelled "ELYSE!!!" She looked up in amazement, it was really nice to see a familiar face in a foreign land. We were pretty stoked to be skating in Mexico City together,we hit the medium bowls for most of the day. Gabe came along with me he busted out his video camera and got some footage. It was really funny I think these kids thought I was a pro skateboarder and they wanted to take a picture with me, it was weird and really funny. Soon we had to split so we asked Elyse if she wanted a ride home since we had a driver. Her place was near our hotel so we dropped her off, I got a quick portrait of her in front of her house and we said goodbye. Gabe and I decided to take our driver out for dinner we found a taco joint and ordered some grub and headed to back to our hotel. I felt great! What a day skating in Mexico City, the only thing I needed was an ice cold beer which was awaiting me at the hotel bar!

Mexico City/Day 1

Mexico City..... a mass of humanity a sprawling and never ending. There are so many cars here its unbelievable and everyone drives like a maniac. My first impression of Mexico City is over crowded, dirty, poor and bad graffiti everywhere. We finally pulled up to the W Hotel ,we have been staying at 5 star hotels in every city. I feel that when working like we are non stop, you almost have to have a really nice hotel to ease the weariness of travel and work. The show was actually the next day so we had our usual preparations,then we went out for steaks and whiskey. We are staying in Palanco, which is a section of Mexico City thats very very nice. Time flew as always and before I knew it we where on our way to the venue. The show was held at an old school in the zocalo of Mexico City. Driving thru the zocolo was amazing people everywhere and the streets and sidewalks are filthy in a good way .This place was amazing, stone work like I have never seen before, really great masonry it almost looked like a spanish castle from the 1800's. The roof of this place was gone and they had put a steel and canvas structure over the top , the sunlight was diffused by the canvas and really was beautiful light. The building is two stories with archways around the whole venue at each floor with the stage in the center. Elton John was playing with James Blunt at this show so I got to sit and take photos of James Blunt at the press conference. This was crazy paparazzi everywhere I felt sorry for the guy,he seems like a really thoughtful and caring person but part of me was thinking he was laying it on a little thick. The show finally ended and we found our rides headed back to the hotel to drop of our gear, grab a drink and head to The Four Seasons hotel for the after party. We pulled up and headed upstairs where The Edge, a production company we have been working with were partying along with Buchanan's executives, James Blunt and other random people. I drank about 3 whiskey and cokes and proceeded to dance my ass off to some of the worst house music ever, but it was fun and our crew was ruling the floor. Soon we left got back to the hotel Gabe, Rene and I decided to go to the sweat lodge at 4 in the morning. I brought a beer with me as the elevator doors opened I cracked it open and the sound was deafening it scarred the shit out of the hotel guard. He told us the sweat lodge was closed so we decided it was a good time to call it a night.