And if you liked the video, then ho-lee buckets you need to check out the comments.  Just grade A internet flame-warrin right there folks.  Textbook.

Sheesh, what a title, right? Corny as it may sound its pretty spot on. Yesterday while at the beach (I’m not saying which beach because its the best beach ever and I don’t want you riff raff to spoil it) with my buddy Cliff, we found our goal for the rest of the summer: Pools.

Muhfuckin POOLS.

We gave ourselves a modest goal.  Hang out at 5 public pools by the end of summer.  Sounds doable.  I can’t think of a better way to kill the rest of a brutal half-summer in New York.  The first half of my summer was spent big.  Big plans, big ideas funded by a strange set of circumstances that left me flush with cash for June and the first part of July. That’s all gone now.  Spent on a pretty epic trip to Europe that ended with me running with the bulls in Pamplona, and almost getting clipped by one.  Another story for another time.

Now I’m broke.  I paid for that experience, in more ways than one.  As Cliff says, life is an amazing contract.  You have experiences, and you pay for them. Brilliantly stated. So, after sweating out a summer trip to Spain and running for my life from a pissed off 2 ton castrated murderer, its now about simplicity.  I have a longboard, enough food to get by, a little bit of herb, a buddy with a car, the greatest swim trunks ever (seriously, flee in terror) and a pretty loose goal – to hang out at pools. And on beaches. But mostly pools.

Today I scouted our first location. Kosciusko Pool in Bed-Stuy. My neighborhood. A five minute walk, a 3 minute skate. The pool is clean, huge enough to accommodate ten times the humans it does now, relatively clean, well patrolled, and wet. Its a pool for cripes sake.  It has so much going for it already that the rest is just window dressing.

So that one will be the first of many. We’ll be starting the weekend after next. We’re bringing a tape player to every one, with the following tapes – Talking Heads Naked; Talking Heads Stop Making Sense; Ministry With Sympathy; Ministry Psalm 69; Tom Waits Rain Dogs and Brain Tumors Brain Tumors.  Those are seriously all the tapes I own.  We’re going to be fine.

I’ll be documenting this whole trip because why the hell not, and I need something to write about.  I’m inspired.  I’ll be taking photos too, but mostly I’ll just be underwater.  See you there.

I’ll get back to updating more when I can. I love you guys.

I suppose I should be honest about how this whole “Speed Creating” thing started.  Around November, my girlfriend of roughly 4 years and I broke up.  I’m not trying to turn this into one of the closing scenes of My So Called Life, I just want to be honest about my motivations as opposed to my usual  practice of remaining willfully ignorant of the things that make me do the things I do.

One of the chief concerns I was having as the relationship kind of fell apart was “what makes me happy?”.  A heavy set of circumstances had me feeling pretty terrible about myself and “Who I Am”.  I didn’t really have a good sense of how to make myself happy or how to express myself…I was lost and not only was it a weight on my relationship, it was obviously a huge weight on me.  When I racked my brain to find a way out of the bouts of deep depression I often found myself in, I didn’t have any answers, save for this weird hint that “What Makes Me Happy” is “Creating”.  My whole life I’ve been drawn to making things…doesn’t matter what, just making stuff.  In the moments where my head is down and ideas are flowing, I’m not thinking of anything else and I feel great.

So that is what I set myself up to do.  Chase down my tiny thread of creative DNA, wrestle it to the ground and stare at it to see if it really held what I needed.

Around the time of the breakup I saw what Dominic Wilcox had done, and it immediately clicked with me.  There was no doubt that I was going to follow the same regimented path, to turn my potential happiness into a homework assignment.  I picked January, because the winter out here kind of sucks the soul anyway, and it could double as kind of a New Years Resolution deal.

I’m happy to report that this thing has been extremely eye-opening.  You’ll have to forgive the cheesiness here, but I made a pretty big realization during this thing – that I am on this earth to create.  Apologies for the hyperbole, but as a weapon I’m only pulling it out here because I plan on using it.

Up until this point I struggled to find a box for what I love to do…am I a “writer”?  Am I a “photographer”?  I’m not very good at design, but I love doing it, so could I call myself a “designer”?  I’ve had a Flip Cam duct-taped to my hand for the last 3 years…does that make me a “videographer”?  What the hell AM I?  I always considered myself a writer, but only because I do that more than anything, and it gives me the most crisis-laden stressful high of anything I do.  But I’m not all that great at making a career out of it.

I’m straying.  My point is, I learned (in one of many moments of forehead-slappery) that I am not any of those things.  I’m just a guy who likes to “create”. “Creator”, I suppose, but that is too specific and a little weird.  So I’m more comfortable with “Guy Who Lives To Create”…funny…I just tried to type “Guy Who LIKES To Create” just now, but I slipped on the “k” and put a “v” instead….giving me “lives” instead of “likes”…ha…the K and the V are nowhere near each other on the keyboard.  Even I don’t know what I’m thinking.  Wow.

So, that being said, I LIVE to create I guess.  All of those things I listed above – writing, photography, video, music, design – flick the exact same switch.  The same light goes on and off no matter what triggers it – writing about zombies, making music with Ben, taking light painting photos, shooting in the snowy streets with my Holga, cutting and pasting like a madman in Photoshop, sketching, ironing on letters – all of that provides the same simple impulse that I’ve been chasing my whole life.

I’m not saying I found my life’s purpose.  That would be a little much.  I did find though, that I had been neglecting a massive part of what made Me “Me”, and I’m glad to be reconnected to it.

I also learned more about where my skills are.  I learned that I am pretty good at writing zombie stories, that I am able to edit videos that make me laugh, that I am not a very good musician but I love to make noise and record it, that I can almost execute an idea with a photograph, that I have a basic understanding of design and how to make something look halfway decent, and that when pressed (especially when pressed) I can create at the drop of a hat.

Like I’ve always said, none of the stuff I make has any illusions about being “good”, but that’s not the point.  It is all still an expression.  Good or bad, the switch gets flicked.

With the motivation behind this thing out in the open, I hope I can continue to do this stuff.  I want to just keep doing something every day because it really does make me happy.  Don’t worry though, I wont meticulously blog about it.  I’ll just do it because I love doing it.  I highly recommend it to everyone…whatever your talents are, use them every day, and then do some stuff you are less than talented at.

Day 1 – Optronics 4-1 with Oceans in Space  [VIDEO]

Day 2 – The Lightpainting Mini Booth

Day 3 – Allegedly Hilarious T-Shirt

Day 4 – Disposable Camera Photos

Day 5 – Photoshop Vs. Jandek

Day 6 – Photos From the MiniBooth

Day 7 – Desert Lightpaintings

Day 8 – Noise Tape Layout 1

Day 9 – Noise Tape Layout 2 + Download

Day 10 – Noise Tape Layout 3 (Black Metal?)

Day 11 – Optronics 4-2 With Oceans In Space  [VIDEO]

Day 12 – Fuckin “Art”, Brah

Day 13 – Movies That Bugged Me Out as a Kid – Body Parts

Day 14 – Brian Tumors Download

Day 15 – Zombie Fiction – “Cakewalk” Part 1

Day 16 – Recaptured:  L5D – “Advanced Ants Dance”

Day 17 – Lil B @ Highline Ballroom  [VIDEO]

Day 18 – Mirror Lightpainting

Day 19 – The Battle of the Red Dragon  [VIDEO]

Day 20 – Ke$ha Slowed by 800%

Day 21 – Anthony:  A Life (In Three Parts)  [VIDEO]

Day 22 – The Scum Noise Tape Full Download

Day 23 – Cocktail Napkin Zombie Story

Day 24 – Zombie Fiction – “Cakewalk” Part 2

Day 25 – Zombie Fiction – “Untitled” Part 5

Day 26 – Blizzard/Apocalypse Music

Day 27 – Canvas Drawing

Day 28 – Ghostbusters Firehouse Holga Photos

Day 29 – Allegedly Hilarious Lil B T-Shirt

Day 30 – More Holga Photos

Day 31 – Drew is an Art Dealer Now  [VIDEO]

Like I said, my shit is completely lost over here.  I’ll recap all the madness tomorrow OR WHENEVER THE HELL I WANT because January is over!  Suck it, speed creating!

I’ve had this debate a few times with different people.  Well…I don’t know if it could necessarily be called a “debate”.  It usually goes like this… “Why the fuck do you like Lil B?  He’s terrible” and then my answer usually goes something like “Well, I don’t think he is an awesome rapper or anything, but he is definitely an interesting hip hop experiment…”

Or something wanky to that extent.  But really, the dude is an interesting rapper…he makes a video basically every week, he has a fucking ambient rap album, about a thousand myspace profiles with unique songs on each, he’s been wearing the same pair of shitty Vans for about 7 years (which seems minor, but in the footwear-obsessed rap world, I count it as significant), he name checks Antony and the Johnsons as one of his top 5 favorite new MC’s, and his only official release is a self-help book written via email and text message.

Does this always add up to good rap?  No.  But in there, spread thin through all the output is some greatness, and for what its worth, he is not formulaic.  So I think we need him out there pushing the boundaries, no matter how offensive to “rap” sensibility he may be.

Anyway, one of his signature lines is “Hoes on my dick cuz I look like (insert crazy name like “Jesus” “Mel Gibson”, etc.)” and its awesome.  After his first New York show, my friend Jesse and I had a blast running through the streets thinking of new people/things to look like.  “Hoes on my dick cuz I look like MAYONNAISE”  BAHAHAHAHA.  See?  Hilarious.

So the idea hit me to make another (allegedly) hilarious t shirt.  This is a prototype, if you want to buy one, hit me up warnberh at gmail dot com.  I will only charge 25 bucks each.  Custom made!   Hoes on my dick cuz I look like I make iron-on t-shirts!

Shot these a few nights ago to turn into a gift for my brother, who is a firefighter and kills for anything fire-related.  So I went and grabbed some shots of the firehouse from Ghostbusters with my Holga.  I was shooting on some crazy film I bought on a whim.  It had a ridiculously low ISO so I had no idea how they would turn out but man, I really like the results.  There are more on the way from the same roll.

Below are the firehouse shots, as well as a compilation I put together to print out and send to him.

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