sage vaughn is love. love is sage vaughn.

New York, you have until October 29 to see LA painter Sage Vaughn's gorgeous diaphonous landscapes and anthropomorphic gang paintings, in which a jagged estuary of bluejays, spotted owls, robins, hummingbirds perch on razorwire fences and telephone poles, their breasts tagged and tattooed with vatos locos and latin kings in olde english, baseball logos, and Chanel imprints. Do it now. The language on the dactyl site is not quite how i'd put it (children gone feral..)/... my feeling, and the parts that made me cry (as I am wont to do), was tapped from the austere beauty of birds stuck in the thistle and bramble of the manmade: the notion of endangerment (how small they look against the sky), and yet the hopeful subtext of animal adaptation, steelhardiness. After that, I thought of: Cesar Chavez and a bomb Cadillac, boy from highschool smalltown gangs so atrisk, how i wish it really were true that gangstas don't die, they get fat and move to miami, Bobby Lovato, mi vida loca, que tal. And, of course, the resolute delicacy with which the birds sit.
Sage Vaughn is a particularly special human.
Cali introduced me to him briefly and the first words from his mouth, after "Nice to meet you Julianne," were, "You're amazing!" I believed him.
All Cali's friends that I met are painstakingly open and emitting supernatural amounts of loving kindness. The kind you earn by living--some breathtaking respect for life after divining the right reasons for them (respect, and life).
Cali, too, is an exceptionally open, enlightened and special human.

The rest of the night unrolled and i rolled with it, rolled with the LA crew living extraordinarily, all, and I picked up stories like I'm Harriet the Spy:

A photographer who lived with the Zapatistas but refused to play a vampire in a music video on the principle that "I am not a vampire." (the same photographer who described a plane crash in which he nearly died as a major drag).

A lady who rechristened herself "Sweet" and, after surviving the JetBlue flight (the one), reinforced her moniker by worrying for three hours before the crash landing--not of her impending dramatic death, but whether her impending dramatic death would fuck up the art opening.

A feisty young fellow who acted on a popular cable television show, who sat sideways and said to me, "I just spent the whole summer doing the new Spike Lee movie." (Yo it's called a JOINT!)

A junk-shop clerk with an actual diamond surgically embedded into his right incisor.

And dear old Dan Monick. Oh Dan Monick, city pages alumnus, minneapolis uber-dun, photographer of HoldSteady cover photo on the new (and as yet forthcoming) issue of Hit it or Quit it. Oh Dan Monick, you and your stunning ubiquity!

(PS look at dan;s gallery, click on music, and click on the third photo down on the left for my favorite, his portrait of andrea echeverri. pps i am sewing myself a copy of that dress as we speak)

Last night, it was like I spent it in Los Angeles.

Also, if you are looking to sell your used
karaoke machine to a household of three
exuberant young women who will love it
like it has always been ours, please email
julianneshepherd@yahoo.com.
Sondheim's "I'm still here!" guaranteed