ice cream, ice cream everywhere

i got a job! I now sell the aforementioned five dollar milk shakes, i have become part of the problem.

On the left is the fail-safe hand-drawn letter the clears the path to employment via the golden road of pity. Make your application look like a seven year old did it and the job is yours!

I am a waiter-barista at the Frozen Monkey cafe in Hoboken where we dish out milk shakes, soft serve, fancy salads, paninis, and breakfast food all day long. I think this is the first time been making more money than ive been spending in about two years. Its dandy.










i finally got new shoes and it was just in the nick of time. the old black babies had a gaping grin forming in the side and pretty much all the trim had fallen off. my feet have been thanking me as the blisters stopped raging.

Today I was supposed to help Mike out with a photoshoot he is doing for a record cover but he tallied up all the suits and other people who actually needed to be there and the studio would have been just too jampacked if everyone ended up there. I did get to help out with the prelight session on Mikes roof, however, and that was a lot of fun. Ate pizza and took pictures till the sun went down. here are some photos.
























this is jim, hes been sharing studio space with us for a couple
weeks now, hes a really great artist and pretty funny guy. Hes english too (london) so the cultural differences make for ceaseless entertainment. http://www.jimtheillustrator.co.uk/
























more of the rooftop shoot- this is anna wolf and my boss mike perry. Theirs is the roof we were set up on. anna isnt as teensy as she looks in the photo, shes just set back a bit farther. dont get me wrong however, she is teensy.











i love this picture because im taking a picture of jim taking a picture of anna taking a picture of mike with stewart, the photo assistant in the background. its deep, really.

after this session was over, i got to model for some of the test shots. Anna asked if i felt like a canadian popstar which just confused me until i realized that that is the brand of popstar the shoot is for.

then anna shot down my self-esteem a little saying 'this is going to be so great with a cute guy in front of the camera--i mean not that ian isnt cute, uh--'

no, no, dont backtrack! let me know how awul and disfigured i really am.

here are some random photos from the city. industrial brooklyn, backside stairwells, trainyards, and wall street. Some snapshots taken while running errands.














































the beach at coney island. this picture basically sums up my summer so far. its been a tiring month but things are going pretty well.


im trying to draw more and i want to start a running website of new work but everything depends on what i can cram into postwork periods.

i hope everyone is well.

ian

lists

things i miss -

taylors birthday and fourth of july parties at the nevada lake.
making up nicknames for tim hart with hannah and tay.
shows at the old house of bricks.
my future wife robin.
shows at grinnell.
elliot kurtz sometimes.

things i love -

throwing banana peels at pidgeons
making mean faces at babies
drawing love notes for random girls in the park
thirty-five cent starcrunch snacks
showering with the lights off and music playing
writing in cursive

we wrap the whole thing in a tote bag full of vegetarian chili!

summer finally decided to show up. like anybody trying to be fashionably late, it made its absence felt before being obnoxious and overbearing. hot hot sun, sweaty ice-creamy people. i bought a five dollar shake yesterday. In pulp fiction, vincent vega cannot believe there is such a thing as a five dollar shake, but there is. and its cherryberry tastee d-lite.

this is faye and sam. they are awesome and we got ice cream and then pizza and then did a puzzle. and met some friends at washington park in brooklyn to fly a kite.

cory and brit and the cyclops kite. we basked in the sun which hurt my eyes because i slept in my contacts the previous night at samanthas birthday baby party. i fell asleep in a fort with my shoes on. it was thirty hours between lacing them up and taking them off.

















after pizza and puzzle time was over we went over to a thing on the roof of a building in brooklyn where i tried to take some nice skyline pictures but it was dark and all you could see was lights. A girl named Sophie lived at the apartment but i tried to convince her that it was my apartment and i didnt know why she was in it. im really hilarious if you havent noticed. the bottom photo was taken under the bridge in dumbo, brooklyn (best neighborhood name by far.)

and in an oh-so-careful way i will now show you where i work, being very cautious not to put in too much information, lest there be stalkers and murderers who enjoy my blog entries. However, if you do want to stalk me, it would take a minuscule amount of searching to figure out my home address, work address, email, phone number, natural haircolor, and employment history.

but first i would like to list things i enjoy about new york. puppies. they are everywhere and they are adorable. subway performers, adding soundtrack to my commute is dandy and you have my full support (but i probably will hang on to my change). Being a full-blown adult in a city (world) that caters to the 21 and ups with fervor. skylines make sunsets more interesting but it sucks trying to see the setting sun when lower east manhattan is towering all around ya. i love pizza. lots of it. big pizza slices from curt employees who arent amused when you somehow mess up the simple process of saying 'one slice please.'

oh yeah, i went to a barbecue in queens today with my brother and his girlfriend and met a couple cool people. we talked about important things, like being prepared to choose a gender if your baby is born with both male and female parts. i wrote down my designer info for someone, it was like a business card but with more elements one might attribute to a letter from a small child. it was a good day, my bro is ok by me.























you can't really argue with the first door but the second one is kind of disheartening. knowing theres someone out there hailing satan and scribbling his name on doors is kind of sad in a way. i wonder if he's trying to get closer to satan by doing this, forming a personal relationship and all. i wonder if satan knows that the man is trying to get in touch with him. i wonder if satan would be interested in getting to know the scribbler, maybe playing scrabble or something with him. i wonder if satan already has a solid group of friends or if hes actually a lonely dude. they could be just a couple of lonely dudes together. it would be beautiful. kind of like a movie.

I've got it! it would be called 'Sympathy for the Devil!'

I'm just too good sometimes.

this is my work. i need to find out the history behind it but judging from the facade, i would say it used to be a ketchup factory. when i first scoped it out, i was a little confused, it seemed to be a janky neighborhood what with all the barbed wire and satan graffiti but the space is actually pretty nice once you get in there.

Well, i guess if you like warehouses.







































this was my one of my first projects (disasters) with mike. there werent any boxes big enough to mail a framed piece which needed to go to a show in australia so i built one out of foamcore. flash back to sophomore year and the realization that

A) i cant cut straight lines
B) i cant measure all that well and
C) i really cant seem to make anything pretty.


oh well, ill stick to the ugly stuff and keep on keepin on.



speaking of work. i have to hop on a train in three hours and head into the city. i should probably jump on that sleep train, i heard its headed for dreamtown. night everybody, i miss you guys but im having a great time.

bacci e abracci,
ian rabbit vens

range rovers

ian- im not a fan of manhattan

sam- me either
too much fakeness and too crowded

ian- yeh. expensive tourist garbage
people pretending to be glam

sam- they don't know what real glam is
but we do

ian- hahahahhahahaha
we are soo cool

shit weather

today started dandy, i went to the shop-rite a few blocks away, walked Buddy, ate a PBJ and went into the city to see the new Guggenheim exhibit with Dylan. The slightly rainy weather of the morning turned into a damp, freezing, windtunnel once i got into Manhattan.
this was the installation in the lobby of the Goog, the artist is cai guo-qiang. im not usually a fan of flashing lights and hanging hondas but i was ok with this. my favorite, though was this one-
ninety-nine wolves running towards the same dead end. i stood underneath the stream and stared until i realized one of them was looking at me. i loved the exhibit.

I ate an italian sausage from a street vendor and it was amazing. Walking home last night i happened upon a midnight soccer game. i walked into a coffee shop trying to decide between iced coffee and regular coffee, they told me they were giving away iced coffee.

there are so many umbrellas.



these are some flower in front of a shop in hoboken, color in the city always seems twice as bright.

miss everyone at home. so it goes.

alligators

is everything smarter prettier and tougher there?!?!?!

ten times all of those

nooooooo shiz

i went to a bar tonight where you buy a beer and get a free pizza
it was the best day of my life

whoa
a whole pizza?

its probably the size of a small
yeah

yes
but regardless

eight slices and all

bam
so it is heaven

at least in alligator lounge
me and dylan sat next to some girls who turned out to be lesbians having a bad night

new pork sitting

eighteen hours between the midwest and jersey shore. 11 pm we started the voyage, 5 pm it ended with unloading a uhaul with a ton of crap in it and wishing i was dead. we arrived in hoboken, nj and i set up my little camp in my brothers place. by camp i mean im sleeping on a couch with a suitcase and random junk in the corner and books on the coffee table.


driving was a blast! having slept three hours the night before, i was more than prepared to operate a high-profile vehicle at two in the morning on an indiana highway.

i flattened a penny with a cleveland rock and roll stamp, that was the highlight of the pitstops. well actually the real highlight was Bruce, the gas station attendent with bright red fingernails that stretched and inch in front of each digit. they were lovely, his manicurist is a pro.

buddy, my brothers dog was riding shotgun. i think he did his business in as many states as we passed through.

my favorite state as far as scenery goes was probably the very beginning of new jersey, or the end of Pennsylvania. pennsylvania had the Appalachian mountains with
all the different colored trees while jersey was just lush green and rock formations.

five hundred dollars in gas to drive halfway across the country, how much caffeine and sugar did i shove down my throat en route.