Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This afternoon, Susan and I went to the California Science Center to see the third “Body Worlds” exhibit and also the IMAX movie “Sea Monsters 3-D“.

The body exhibit had a theme of the heart and circulatory system. It was interesting to see, although a lot of the plastinated bodies were really just basically pieces of art, showing how the body works inside. Still, it was interesting.

The IMAX movie was great fun, chock-full of gratuitous 3-D effects. There were prehistoric sea reptiles swimming out of the screen and right into our faces. We had a fun time.

After the bike ride this morning, Susan and I went to the JPL Open House. Bein’ nerds and all, this was great fun.

We saw models of the three generations of Mars rovers, from the tiny Sojourner to the current Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and the relatively huge Mars Science Laboratory rover. They also had photos of Mars in 3-D. They gave all of us anaglyph 3-D glasses to use for viewing these.

We got our picture taken with the Sergeant missile. We also had a laugh at the “Rover Xing” signs. One building had a small exhibit of art projected on blocks of aerogel. And outside they had a rover demonstration where the rover drove over kids lying on the ground.

Finally, we got our picture taken in 3-D on Mars. It was a fun afternoon.

I got my renewed membership card for the Museum of Neon Art last week. They just reopened the museum in a new space on 4th St in downtown Los Angeles. And tonight, they had a reception for the new exhibits. I went down there with Susan from the morning bike ride, since we’d talked about it while riding up the canyon. With a membership, we got in free, and we got to enjoy some wine and snacks while looking at all the neon.

The new space is a very funky one. It looks like it used to be the lobby of a hotel in years gone by. There were big holes in the ceiling, and lots of new electrical wiring on the walls to power all the neon lights. It’s a bit smaller than the old space at Olympic and Hope, but it’s all right. They are still looking for a larger and more permanent space for the museum in the future.

The exhibits included one of soda neon signs, some regular neon artwork, and also a collection of photos of old soda advertising signs. It was pretty entertaining, and we had a nice time looking at it. And maybe in the summer, we will go on one of their neon cruises around the city.

On Friday night, I went with the L.A. Hiking meetup group for an evening hike up Mt Hollywood in Griffith Park. This is a pleasant little hike. Just enough to get warmed up, but not too hard. And doing it in the evening is nice, since it’s cool, and the views are nice.

On the way up, we took a combination of fire roads and some smaller trails. It was still daylight, so there was no problem finding footing on the trails. By the time we got to the top, it was just after sunset. Everyone had brought food and wine and such, and we had a little party on top of the mountain while looking down at the city lights.

Coming down, we took the fire roads all the way. By then, it was pretty dark, so the roads are easier to follow.

It was a fun little diversion on a Friday night.

Today was a special day. I took a day off work to go and take the Dearly Departed Tragical History Tour of Hollywood. I had recently found out that my friend Sherri shares my interest in Hollywood history and celebrity death. So we went on the tour together.

First, we met for lunch at Musso and Frank, since that’s Hollywood’s oldest restaurant, and many of the old-time movie stars who are stops on the tour had eaten there. We sat in one of the small booths and had our lunch before walking down the block to the tour meeting place.

The tour was great fun. We started off seeing one of the costumed characters who stand in front of the Chinese Theater. He was dressed as Batman, and he was carrying a McDonald’s bag. The McDonald’s bag was surely the detail that made it funny.

Early stops on the tour included the apartment where Bela Lugosi lived in his final days. Also the house alleged to have been the site of the Black Dahlia murder. And the La Bianca house where the Manson Family began their rampage back in 1969.

The next picture shows the house where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio lived during their short marriage. Nearby was George Burns’s house, complete with his initials in the concrete driveway.

The tour includes one bathroom break in a park in Beverly Hills. The one where George Michael was arrested for lewd behavior back in 1998. We all took turns getting souvenir pictures by the bathroom entrance.

We took a turn up into the hills to see Ozzy Osbourne’s old house, which was featured on “The Osbournes“. Then we came back down into Hollywood, passing the apartment where Dee Dee Ramone lived and died.

Overall, this was great fun, and made for a perfect afternoon getaway. I was able to forget for several hours the utter disarray and awfulness of my life. So this was a Good Thing.

We’re going to go back, too. He does a special Helter Skelter tour once in a while, and that’s surely not to be missed.

I signed up for yet another cooking class tonight. This time it was “Saveur Cooks: French Classics”. This was a slight departure from the other cooking classes I’ve done at Chez Cherie in that the recipes and menu were provided by Saveur magazine, rather than straight from Cherie.

We all got a little Saveur tote bag with some food samples and a recipe booklet in it. The dishes that we got to see done were the Gougères, the Salade des Moines, the Gratin Dauphinois, and the Poussin Vallée D’Auge. All the demonstration was done by Cherie, who is very entertaining, and also answered questions along the way. At the end, she demonstrated making chocolate soufflés before we all headed up to the tables in front to eat everything she had made.

It was a very entertaining evening, and I’m going to try out some of these recipes Real Soon Now.

Tonight is Art Night in Pasadena. And there was a group doing a bike ride around to visit all the museums. So, in the interest of getting out of the house and having some fun, I put the light on my bike and headed over there.

The group met in the courtyard at One Colorado. It was a pretty big group. We started out riding to the Norton Simon Museum, which I’d never been to before. We had about 30 minutes there before going on to the Pasadena History Museum. The exhibit there was about the history of the purse. A bit odd, but very entertaining. Then, on to the Armory Center for the Arts. The collection there was more to my liking, with lots of very strange pieces, and some that were outright disturbing.

There was a short interlude at the main Pasadena Public Library. They had coffee and snacks there. A very nice woman I’d met on the ride bought me a chocolate-chip cookie there, which was very sweet. Both the woman and the cookie, that is.

Next and last was a double at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and the Pacific Asia Museum. The PMCA was very nice, and had a lot of interesting pieces. Also, I got a nice picture of Pasadena City Hall off the roof there. And that was the rest of our evening. By the time we all trooped over to the Asia Museum, it was 10:00 and they were shutting the doors.

Still, it was a very fun time.

Tonight I went to see “Varla Jean Merman Loves a Foreign Tongue” at Ultra Suede in West Hollywood. I went with my friend Nick, who is also a big fan of Ms Merman.

We got there early, so we got to sit in front. We shared a table with the one non-gay couple there. I’d met them at Varla’s show last year.

The show was very funny, and overall it was tremendously entertaining. And afterward, Varla held court in the back of the room, selling DVDs of her third video collection, signing autographs, and posing for pictures. Nick and I both remembered to bring our cameras this time, so we got our souvenir pictures with La Merm.

It was a fun evening.

Today’s plan was that Lucinda and I were going to go see the final stage of the Tour of California over at the Rose Bowl. But it was raining today. The race was still on, but standing outside in the rain all afternoon just didn’t seem like it would be all that much fun. So I talked to Lucinda, and we decided to go to Musink. We brought along her friend Alisha, since she’s also an “L.A. Ink” fan. I took them to visit the High Voltage Tattoo shop in Hollywood last month.

We got down there at about 1:30, and it was already hopping. It was the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen on a Sunday afternoon at a tattoo convention. We stashed our jackets under the table at my friend’s booth and set off to wander around. They had a sign up at the High Voltage booth that said that Kat, Kim, and Hannah were going to be greeting fans at 5:00. We talked to the people in the booth and asked them what time we should plan on getting in line, and they said 4:00.

We wandered over to the vendors’ building, and Lucinda and Alisha both got little glitter temporary tattoos. I also stopped off at the Burning Angel booth just to show Lucinda’s second-grade school ID to Joanna Angel. In her picture, Lucinda had a bright red streak in her hair, just like Joanna has now. She thought that that was very cute.

Back in the tattoo building, we saw Kim at one of the booths, so we stopped to talk to her and get a picture with her and the girls.

By this time, it was about 3:30, and a line was already forming to meet Kat. So we got in line. The sign had said she would be out at 5:00, but she came out earlier, since the line was so long. We all got our pictures with her, and she also signed Lucinda’s shirt that we’d bought last month when we visited the shop.

After all that excitement, we went back to the vendors’ building and Lucinda bought a set of makeup brushes, and I got a print from Matt Kotch, who is an artist who does paintings of weird sea creatures.

By the time we left, it was time for dinner, so we stopped off and ate before heading home.

It was a fun time.

Lucinda and I have become fans of “L.A. Ink”, so when they said that they were going to put on a tattoo and music show, we put it on our calendar. As it turned out, Lucinda decided that she didn’t want to go in the end. She was intimidated by the prospect of crowds and noise. But, since tattoo shows are one of my most favorite things, I went by myself.

I went on Friday afternoon. Getting down to the O.C. in Friday traffic was a bit of an epic journey, but I got there all right. And parking was free, which was a nice treat. That sort of made up for the steep $28 ticket price.

When I got inside, I saw that it was going to be a good show. There were notices on all the doors warning us that “each person in attendance irrevocably consents to being filmed or videotaped and releases the producers and users of such film or videotape from any liability…throughout the world in perpetuity.” Well, that about covers it, don’t you think? It was only 3:30, and there was a good crowd there already. And the camera crews gave it a circus-like quality that most tattoo shows don’t have. I wandered around and found some of my friends and talked for a bit. Then someone said that Kat Von D was at the High Voltage booth and greeting fans. I figured I had to get a picture with her to bring home for Lucinda, so I went and stood in the very long line for my turn. I don’t normally get star-struck, but Kat seemed very nice, and she was hot. But then again, I have a known weakness for pretty girls with lots of tattoos.

Wandering around some more, I went into the music room to see one of the tattoo contests. The stage was good, but the lighting wasn’t. So it was hard to actually see the tattoos. then I wandered over the the vendors’ building. I walked in and saw that Burning Angel had a booth, and Joanna Angel herself was there. (Remember what I said about pretty girls with tattoos.) So I had to stop in and talk to her a bit. She was also very nice, and I got a good souvenir photo with her.

Back in the tattoo building, Hannah’s new tattoo was finished. But before she got up off the table, the camera crew had to come down and film the crowd around her and also go in to the booth and film her. Then she got up and went to get some food.

My final encounter with the stars of the show was when I got to meet Corey. He was standing in the aisle with a tray of french fries. So I got a picture with him to show Lucinda.

The rest of my time there was spent just wandering around and schmoozing. It was a very fun afternoon and evening.

Photos are in my tattoo conventions photo gallery.

Lucinda had the day off from school today, so I made plans with Shannon to take the kids to play in the snow at Mt. Baldy.

We drove out to Claremont and then headed up the hill. We stopped at the visitors’ center to get parking passes for the day, and then we went up to the snow.

Lucinda, Isabel, and Mars all played in the snow, riding saucers down the hill and generally getting wet and cold and having a good time doing it.

I just stood on the sidelines taking pictures. I grew up playing in snow, and while it was fun, I don’t particularly miss it. But this was a first for Lucinda, and she enjoyed it a lot.

This evening, I took Lucinda to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at Cal State Long Beach to see Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. My cousin Irene bought us tickets so that Lucinda and I could have a night out together. We saw them two years ago at Caltech, and it was a fun time.

The show was a lot of fun. As always, the ‘dying swan’ was hilarious. I still think we’d enjoy it even more if we knew more about ’serious ballet’, but it’s still fun.

This afternoon, I took Lucinda and her friend for a little adventure in Hollywood.

First, we went to West Hollywood, where we went to M+B to see the Alison Jackson: Confidential photo show. This was a fairly small exhibit, but it was very amusing. I bought the book so we can see the rest of her photos.

After that, we went to the park in West Hollywood. The girls played there for a bit before we headed back to Hollywood to visit High Voltage Tattoo. This is the shop in “L.A. Ink“, which Lucinda and I have been enjoying recently. When we were first watching it, there was a scene of a person walking out he front door, and I recognized the JONS market across the street. And I realized that the shop was right around the corner from our old condo in Hollywood. So I’d promised Lucinda that I’d take her there to visit. We gawked for a bit and I bought Lucinda a shirt. And then we went home. It was a fun little afternoon adventure.

Today is New Year’s Day, which means the Rose Parade here in Pasadena.

And my two most favorite things to see at the parade are:

• The look on the face of the kid who just marched 5 miles carrying a Sousaphone;
• Seeing a broken-down float getting towed away.

And what’s up with that ‘chin strap across the nose’ thing?

Anyway, my day was complete very early on. After that, we headed back home to see the horses. Along the way, we saw the band kids all sitting and chowing down on In-N-Out burgers. For some reason, I find that amusing, too.

We went to the parking lot where they had most of the horse trailers. Lucinda and her friend got to pet and feed carrots to the horses. While they were doing that, I watched a guy practice rope tricks, and I also got to see Miss California Rodeo.

When we went back home, we were treated to the always-surreal sight of horses grazing on suburban lawns, and people riding past our house.

It was a fun day.

For the day after Thanksgiving, we headed down to see Grandpa in San Diego. The plan was to go visit, take him to lunch at Prado, and then go see the Midway aircraft carrier museum.

The lunch at Prado was nice. We also got to see our friend Laura there. She manages the place, and it appears that the never leaves there. I guess that’s just how it is to manage a big restaurant. But the food was good, and the presentation was first-rate.

The Midway was interesting. Its active days spanned from the end of World War II through the Vietnam War. They had a lot of the older airplanes on display on the hangar deck. They also had several flight simulators on the hangar deck, and they were selling rides in them. Maybe next time we’ll have to try them.

Up on the flight deck they had newer airplanes on display. The A4 reminded me of the time when I was working in San Diego and one of them crashed down the street from my office. We heard it go by and could tell by the sound that something was wrong. We all ran to the windows in time to see the plume of smoke and the pilot drifting down on his parachute. It still amazes me that he was able to aim the plane for the parking lot between two office buildings before he ejected.

There were also exhibits about taking off and landing on the carrier. They had retired pilots giving talks to explain how the process worked. It was pretty interesting, and it’s really amazing that they are able to make it look (relatively) easy.

Overall, it was a fun day.

I also got a new sign for the Animal Crossings Gallery.

On Friday night, we went out to Santa Monica to the opening reception for “Plays Well With Others”, which is a collaborative art show with Sharon Kagan, Leslie Yagar, and Lana Shuttleworth. Lana was the artist who did the “Cone Migration” show that we saw recently.

This new show is a single large piece in the gallery. It’s a poppy field suspended from the ceiling, with poppies made from dyed coffee filters, pieces of traffic cones, and crocheted yarn. And we got to meet the artists, which was a fun time. I’d been looking forward to meeting Lana, since I participated in the Cone Migration. And in the photo, be sure to check out her purse made from traffic cones.

It was a fun evening.

This afternoon, Lucinda and I went down to Carson to see the last day’s races at the Elite National Championships at the ADT Center velodrome. We went this last year, and we liked it enough to go back this time, even though nobody we know was racing this time.

We got there just as they were starting. For some reason, we had to go through metal detectors at the door. I’m not sure what they were trying to prevent there.

The events we saw were the team sprint, keirin, team pursuit, and the Madison. They were all fun to watch, although the Madison is the best of the bunch. It has lots of action, and it lasts long enough that you won’t miss the whole thing if you go to the bathroom.

There were a few crashes in the Madison, including one that made a little gouge in the wood surface of the track. They ‘repaired’ this by putting some tape over it.

I also found it amusing that there were at least two riders competing there whose fathers were champions back in the ’70s when I raced.

The final event was an exhibition race. They have a track racing program for kids, and they had a short kids race at the end of the day. Lucinda wanted to try track racing, but when she tried getting on the bike they had there, it was just a bit too big for her. So she needs to grow about another inch or two before she can do it.

We got to see some good racing, and I got to tell a bunch of old ‘war stories’. Overall, it was a fun afternoon.

Our afternoon art adventure was a trip out to Culver City to Bandini Art to see the “Cone Migration” show. This show is all art made from traffic cones. Lana Shuttleworth placed cones all over Los Angeles and let them get beat up by traffic. Then she collected them and made art out of them. It’s an interesting idea, and the art she made was very nice.

It’s also an interactive art in a way. They had a pile of cones in front of the gallery, and visitors are encouraged to take one and ‘release it’ somewhere. So of course, we had to do this. I thought it would make for an interesting piece of performance art to take the cone along on a bike ride and place it somewhere. When we were leaving, we picked out a cone to take along.

Since we were out on the West Side, I wanted to go see the Museum of Jurassic Technology. This is sort of an art project museum on Venice Blvd. It’s kind of like entering the world of “Eraserhead“, which I thought was amusing, but Cathy found somewhat disturbing. It’s filled with lots of strange things, including an entire room devoted to memorializing the dogs of the Soviet Space program. They had large oil portraits of the dogs, including a special shrine for Laika with a little candle and a quote from Tsiolkovsky.

We all enjoyed the cone exhibit. And I liked the Jurassic Technology. It was all very deeply weird, but I like stuff like that.

Tuesday was the last day of our trip, and I had one more thing on my list to see. Since I had to be in New Jersey, I couldn’t miss the chance to visit Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst and pay respects to Joey Ramone. I’ve been a big Ramones fan for almost 30 years, so it was a necessary stop.

Chelsea* directed us to the cemetery. Then I stopped in the office to get the exact directions. The woman working there was very helpful, and she said that Joey Ramone was probably the most famous and most-requested person buried there. She told me to go to the northernmost road through the Jewish section of the cemetery. Then look for the two pillars marked “New York Social Club”. Joey is buried three rows back in that section, right next to his mother.

After that, we went down to Liberty State Park in Jersey City. Since we’d missed the Statue of Liberty on Monday, I found out that we could just make it there if we made the 12:45 boat out to the island. So we got on the boat and rode out to the statue. We didn’t have time to stop off at Ellis Island, since we had to make our flight home at 6:00. But Lucinda got to see the statue close-up, which was the whole point.

When we got back to shore, we headed over to the airport. We got there early to check in our rental car, since we’d been told we’d have to fill out an accident report. The guy who checked us in looked at the car and just said something like, “it looks fine to me” and we were done.

So we had plenty of time to have lunch while we were waiting. Then we got on the plane for the trip home. Newark is apparently notorious for delays around that time of day, and today was no exception. We left the gate about 30 minutes late, and we actually took off 90 minutes late. There was a huge backlog of planes that apparently were all scheduled to take off at 6:00.

Once we got in the air, the trip home was just fine. When we were going over New Mexico and Arizona, there were some big electrical storms below us, and it was interesting to watch the lightning from above. I tried taking pictures of it, but it was hard to do it justice.

Overall, it was a pretty fun trip.

* The GPS navigator unit offered a choice of several different voices. But Lucinda didn’t like the ‘American English’ one, since when it said ‘left’, it always sounded like ‘bleft’. So we switched it to ‘British English’, which sounded much more cultured and mannered. And that was when Lucinda decided to call it ‘Chelsea’.

Monday was our day for sightseeing New York City. We rode the train in and met Cathy’s cousin Michelle and her family at Penn Station. Then we all rode the F train up to 63rd St and Lexingon, and then walked over to Central Park.

When we got to the park, Lucinda wanted to climb the big outcrops of Manhattan Schist there.

Since we had only limited time, I wanted to go to the model boat pond to show Lucinda the statue of Alice in Wonderland there. I used to like climbing on that when I was a kid, so I thought she might like it, too. Lucinda figured this out. When we were going there, when I told her about the statue and how I liked to climb on it, she said, “So you want me to climb it so you can take a picture, right?” Our child is very perceptive.

After seeing the pond, Lucinda and Christina wanted to go to one of the playgrounds for a while. Then we walked back to Lexington Ave and got on the #6 train downtown to Grand Central. Then we took the shuttle train over to Times Square and then the #1 down to South Ferry. That’s the station that is built on a sharp curve, so there are little hydraulically-activated metal platforms that move out to meet the train doors.

When we got up to Battery Park, we found that we were too late for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. So we just walked around the park a bit. We saw a wild turkey there. Apparently, there is a population of wild turkeys living in Manhattan now. We thought that this was kind of strange, but after seeing the bear in New Jersey, we were ready to believe just about anything. Since turkeys are not good fliers, the speculation is that they walked in over one of the bridges, which is a funny mental image.

The final stop for the day was the East Village to visit with my old friend Thaddeus. I’ve known him for about 35 years now, ever since my mother was his high-school guidance counselor. And somehow, we’ve kept in touch all these years. This was the first time I’ve seen him in many years, so we got to meet his wife and daughter for the first time. We all went out to dinner at a little Latin American restaurant across the street from their house. I was amazed at how the neighborhood along Houston St has changed over the years. I always remember it as being a place where there were groups of homeless huddled for warmth around flaming trash cans. Now it’s really quite nice there.

So, aside from missing the Statue of Liberty, we had a nice day.

Finally, I have a photo from the pond in Central Park. It’s my latest Canon commercial. Have I mentioned recently that my camera rocks?