[THE WORLD ACCORDING TO KLAUS] Pointless LA Nights with Jerry Hsu and Whoever Else

Photos by Olivia Jaffe

8:15 on a Tuesday night during another swamp heavy LA summer.  A crowded sidewalk outside Family Books on Fairfax Ave.  Lots of fitted caps and Marlboro butts.  Lots of cautious once overs and overs of people you know you’ve seen a million times, people who know they’ve seen you a million times, but neither of you know each others names and there’s no way you ever will because neither of you are going to stop pretending each is just another face you’ve never seen before.  That’s just not how things work in LA and we all know that.

You probably already know each other’s names and a whole lot about each other thanks to the internet and the way people tend to talk but you can go on acting clueless and uninterested for years to come, until that time when you’ll finally shake hands in line for the bathroom at a Black Lips show and front all the geniality that you’d provide a complete stranger.  So until then people stick to their clicks of 3 or 5 who hunker together in little closed off pods on the sidewalk, sneaking contrived and uninterested peeks over each other’s heads to try and snake a glimpse of another clique’s  identical–yet seemingly alien–closed-off world.  I find my pod on crutches drinking Rolling Rock by the door.  Supposedly has photos up inside.

*Jason Landau, a critical pea to my pod as well as a notorious liability.

Its hotter than anyone could really want it to be inside, and off come the beanies flannels and leathers.  It takes a moment to realize there’s photos up at all, until its possible to wade through the narrow arteries lining the walls, clogged with half-interested page-turners and pony-tail browsers, and into the small back room.  An empty white box, hung with maybe six pictures total (Ed Note: There were actually eleven, but counting is clearly not Klaus’ strong suit).

I’m always on my guard at photo shows, half because I have a crappy attitude and half because today it doesn’t take a whole lot to be a “photographer”.  As long as you can afford a camera and have the guff to introduce as one, you are already one hell of a photographer.  I know because I’ve got the camera and I’ve made those introductions.  It’s not hard.  With all the subjectivity that comes with photography, and really the lack of any articulate, refinable skill (e.g. a fine pen stroke, hours of piano practice), the art form is mostly a showcase of luck and timing, and if you ask around you’ll find there really isn’t much luck to be had.

I’m also typically wary regarding the work of high-profile individuals acting outside their original realm of credibility, just because they have the means to do or be so.  Like Shaq’s rap debut, Dave Grohl’s Sound City (a terrible, terrible misinforming movie that you should never watch if you have any decency or self-respect at all) or Stephen King’s Rock Bottom Remainders.  The integrity of the work must be put into question.

With all this in mind, in tow with my aforementioned crappy attitude, a good most of the photos–8×12 in their glossy white frames–struck me with an irony so clear that I can even remember most of the impressions enough to describe them (no easy feat for Klaus).  A torn and yellowed mattress, sopping a black and mysterious pool of blood, propped abandoned in a desaturated suburban cul-de-sac.  A black and white POV shot of the twin towers collapsing–as seen from an IN FLIGHT, airplane television (there’s absolutely no way that was a real picture).  A light-bulb cooking in a microwave (maybe it was just the inclusion of the light bulb that tricked me into thinking I was actually having an epiphany).  “Getty Images” crudely spray-painted on a gray wall behind a flimsy chain-link fence.  Our boy Jerry’s got perspective.

An ice sculpture of a man melting into the sidewalk snapped me out of my analytic graze and back into the wet reality of the miry body heat settling everywhere about the room.  The herds on the sidewalk obviously came to that notion long before, and the pods drifted their separate ways, to separate Hollywood bars and those geocentric ramblings that teeter eventually into sexless nights alone.

I drove the 13 miles back to Venice on my empty tank, and drank beer in my friend’s rooftop jacuzzi at his parent’s mansion, talking about Japanese garage rock mix tapes, staring at the starless sky and remembering how I just drove halfway across town on a jobless salary to spend half an hour in a sweaty room with six pictures (Ed Note: Eleven, Klaus. Eleven) in white frames taken by a cultural relevance named Jerry Hsu whom I’ve never met in my life, and probably never will because we have mutual friends, mutual interests, and live together in the same city that just so happens to be Los Angeles.

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Next up: Yasi managed an interview with Jerry.  You’ll probably take just as much from it as you didn’t from this article.