MISSION OLYMPIC:

Ok so if you don’t live in West LA.. then you probably don’t know about the intersection at Olympic & La Cienega. It’s hella busy and both of the streets have mad traffic all the time. Even worse there is a gas station across the intersection where Johnny-Law likes to hang out and prey on unsuspecting scofflaws, drunk drivers and drug dealers (get a real job..those people are a vital part of the LA economy). Needless to say I wasn’t feeling it.

This is a day after the Pico missions so.. I was feeling bold, but let’s not get crazy.

But Yoda had to have these posters. She was adamant.

Our crew was a little different this time. Because Ice was MIA, and Detective Budd said he wasn’t down for it tonight. That left me, Yoda.. and Krunchy. Krunchy is actually one of my 6 roommates (ok..ok.. I only have 5)..he’s the one that only likes weed when he doesn’t have to buy it…we call him Krunchy because he was in the oven a little too long..and is a bit overdone.

So it’s me, Yoda and Krunchy…getting ready to bomb the Olympic wall. We have to set up shop almost 40 yards away.. because this is so out in the open. I know that this is the edge of Beverly and the beginning of the harassment area for LAPD…this is not a good place to get caught.

So we set-up shop in someone’s driveway. It has to be like 2am. There are few cars traveling up La Cienega and even fewer on Olympic. I’ve accepted the fact that I may very well get arrested and concluded that art is worth the sacrifice (though I reserve the right to change that statement should I wind up in county). Now let me tell you about Krunchy. Krunchy is a photographer and a painter…and he’s just loving this. He’s loving it so much…that he is making each flyposter a masterpiece. It’s 2am and I have Suki the street pimp and Michael Angelo as my posse when I defame private property…maybe I should have stayed in school?

So Krunchy and I are throwing these things on, one after the other…trying to look inconspicuous…as car sail buy. Ok, the wall is so fuckin’ long that there is nothing even remotely covert about this. I know that this is where we are going to get popped.

Another partner in crime Johnny Sabado drops by, he’s one of my roommates as well…and he says he wants in. We mob on this wall for 8 min’s before Yoda says we need to leave.

We pack up our shit and pile into the car to assess our work. For starters the wall is massive, we haven’t even put a dent in the paid ads…and then at the end of the row…Yoda sees that there are IPOD ad’s…and that we did not bomb them.

I think she is going to hit me. Krunchy chimes in “yeah…we gotta get his shit”… I see then that he has caught the revolutionary infection and is ready to give his life for God, mother and country.

Yoda flips another one of her world famous illegal u-turns and takes us back to base camp. It’s now become a personal assault on Steve Jobs with Krunchy leading the charge. We do a killer job of bombin’ the apple ads…and then we run out of fly posters….talk about coitus interruptus.

But we made our quota of 80 posters in one night. No bad for a lazy director, a guy who sleeps on my couch and a terrorist-turned-publicist.

This filmmaker gig ain’t half bad.

Cooprdog

MISSION VENICE:

So Yoda has had a bug up her ass all night to bomb Venice. Yes those are her words. This middle of the night covert shit is mad orgasmic for her, I’m expecting her to remove a gatt and yell “Westsiiiide!” and bus’ on some fools. So were down there by the circle on this street who’s name I cannot remember because I have a drug problem (my problem is you won’t fucking legalize it) and we are getting bold now.. and even better we have some cover since there is a construction tunnel with flyposters on the inside. And look who’s posters they are..the IPOD. “Gimme a fuckin’ poster”… I said and I gave it to Steve Jobs. I mean I don’t even know the dude…and for all I know.. he might be cool as shit and roll the fattest blunts this side of Philly (yeah..right!)…but I am so sick of the IPOD commercials…I’m tagging this motherfucker. And that’s how it started. In just three short hours I became a tagger… a bomber. Me and Yoda and Ice…put our ad’s over the man’s….if that ain’t some 21st century,-Robinhood-B-Boy- revolutionary shit..than what the fuck is?


Ok so we ended that night having ducked the cops on several locations and not even getting close to getting caught….it’s like 4:00AM…but man do I feel alive.


Cooprdog

MISSION PICO:

So Yoda makes the right hander (like mad illegal-from the left turning lane without a signal type shit)..and we are traveling east up Pico. So Yoda spots a flypost billboard and pulls over. Now realize that we are on Pico…which means you can see for almost a mile since it’s so fuckin’ flat. Even worse, this is a no-fly zone for LAPD. This may be a bad idea.

So Ice and I have yet to get out of the fucking car and Yoda starts to get pissed and says something to the effect of…. “is there a problem boys? Is Yoda gonna have to choke a bitch?” Now with my manhood bruised and my head spinning with nightmare scenarios of getting shot from behind with a pink sponge in my hand…I stagger onto the curb.

Yoda is a pro. She has the wheat glue (which is some scary lookin’ shit… let me tell you…if an elephant would ever shoot a boogie out of his nose…this is the shit that would be attached to the boogie….you feel me?) and the posters and the brushes and she is going at it. She leaves all the passenger doors open to shield us from traffic seeing what we are doing. She moves in assembly line fashion. Slabbing this wheat glue on the back making sure the corners are well covered and barking orders at us. The shit is like pledging, I walking quickly but not too quickly staying an equidistance from Ice and apply my poster right next to the one he just applied, giving it a quick wipe with the sponge and fleeing the scene.

Yoda is running us like dogs and we hang something like 25 posters in 8 min’s… and then we quickly grab everything and get it back in the car. A mere 30 sec’s after we get all the shit back into the car and get the doors closed…and LAPD cruiser sails by. Yoda is fucking lovin’ it… “take that man...you can’t catch us were too fuckin’ fast!” It was at this point that I began to wish I’d paid slightly more attention to Yoda’s resume before I hired her. She is a fuckin’ terrorist…and I am going to jail…I fuckin’ know it. I swear to Christ she’s humming the Mission Impossible theme…but whatever.

Cooprdog

Fly-posting is not for pussies

Ok so we have four days till this thing jumps off. Four motherfuckin’ days till I know just how much of an ass I have made out of myself…am I worried… fuck no! I have a secret weapon.. and her name is Yoda (Yoda is the publicist with the superpowers).

Ok.. so since we last spoke…I picked up the postcards and posters from the printer…and the color is wrong, wrong, wrong….Jesus fucking Christ is this wrong. Now you’d think for $1000 and so-so customer service… that you could at least get the fuckin’ color right, but noooooo my one sheet is now a reddish brown instead of saturated yellow….see this is why directors yell a lot….motherfuckers be fuckin’ shit up!

But I do not have them time to go in there and tell Skippy and the rest of his slow-motion staff what color I was referring to when I said “a hot yellow”…but that’s my fault for assuming that I will be taken seriously with a short film. Lesson number 3,642…unless it’s a feature…they could care fuckin’ less. But that’s ok, because when I am rich and powerful there will be no coke & hookers for them….let them eat cake…well rice cakes, this is Los Angeles.

Ok so.. the posters were smaller than I was expecting. I mean these things are 11X17. Not the 1 million X 1 Million that I had specifically asked for…but whatever. So when I inquire about the size, Yoda tells me “oh.. these are perfect for the fly-posting”.

Now if you don’t know what fly-posting is, I will explain. It’s the posters that you see pasted on wooden paneling around construction sites and shit…a hand-bill is probably a more accurate description. Now Yoda is tickled pink that we are going to fly post tonight. I mean she has this giddy laugh like she just cut a motherfucker off on the 10. I know that I should be concerned…but a certain woman I know told me that I need to be humble and trust people more….so I am going with it.

Fly-posting is like mad-illegal. And consequently you have to do it in the middle of the night…Yoda calls them bombing runs. As Yoda explains it “…well you do it at night because you don’t want to get knicked by the Bobbies”. Knicked by the Bobbies…yeah ok Yoda.. how about getting shot by LAPD, because that’s what we are really talkin’ about here. So Yoda makes a crack about me be a pussy, and asks me “just how badly do I want to direct features?” See the kind of motivation you get when you run an ad on Craigslist.. but whatever.

Ok so it’s now 12:30am on Saturday night. Me and my boy Ice (yes I know someone named Ice and yes he has been know to cut a motherfucker…so what?) are chillin’ in my spot, smokin’ a fattie and trying to get our heads around this act of vandalism that we are about to participate in.

The phone rings, and it’s Yoda. “Be outside in five minutes..and for fucksake wear something dark”…and she hangs up. Yes, I am starting to get concerned. So me and Ice are standing out front when Yoda zooms up the street in her roommates car. Now that right there is a big bread crumb clue that rude shit is about to go down.. She stops the car abruptly and we hop in, she chirps off in an instant. So we are blowing up my street at a rather fast speed as Yoda barks instructions at us. I realize now how it feels when one of my friends (who’s in the army) jumps out of airplanes; you are given limited instructions; there are people speaking to you who obviously know more shit than they are letting on. But I continue undeterred. We are traveling north on Robertson, approaching Pico. Yoda gets in the left turn and a wave of fear floats over Ice an myself. I inform Yoda that west of us is only Pico/Beverweil which isn’t exactly homeboy or flypost friendly; after that there is Century City where there is no public parking (dude it’s like $18.50 an hr to park in the garages…it’s motherfucking Attorneyville and if you ain’t an attorney…you need to stay the fuck outta there) oh yeah and then there’s Westwood.. and we all know how I feel about Westwood.

Cooprdog