Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Saturday afternoon, I went over to Hollywood for the big Tattoo Hollywood convention put on by BMEzine. I figured that because it was BME, it would be a good convention. And I also figured that a lot of people I know would be there.

When I walked in the door, I immediately saw The Lizardman. We’d never met in person before, I’ve known him from rec.arts.bodyart back in the days when he was a grad student, and before he embarked on his show business career.

I had a fun time schmoozing around and taking pictures. I met up with several other people who I’ve known online for years but never met in meatspace before. Late in the afternoon, Leslie came by, fresh off the plane from being out of town for the last few days. So I got to introduce her around, and she even has instant cachet in the tattoo scene, since she worked on the Modern Primitives book back in the ’80s.

It was a very fun afternoon and evening. Pictures are in the usual place.

This past weekend I took Lucinda down to San Diego. The plan was to visit Grandpa, and also to go to the Wild Animal Park. We went down on Sunday afternoon. When we got there, we picked up Grandpa and headed down to La Jolla Cove. I’d seen the seals there the last time I was in San Diego, and I knew Lucinda would like seeing them, too.

When we got there, there we no seals. There were people on the beach, and the seals were all out in the water. They were just sort of bobbing in the waves and waiting for the people to leave. Whenever one would make a move to come up on the beach, a bunch of people with cameras would run over toward it. And of course, the seal would get scared off. Rule #1 of wildlife photography is: You get better pictures when you don’t scare the animal away.

After the seals, we headed down to Balboa Park for dinner at Prado. As always, it was great, even if my friend Laura isn’t the manager there any more.

Since we hadn’t really seen the seals, I promised Lucinda that we could go back there in the morning. And we did. They were all snoozing on the beach. Lucinda enjoyed seeing them, and I got some good seal photos. As always, my camera rocks.

After seeing the seals, we had breakfast and headed up to the Wild Animal Park. We went on the tram ride around to see the African animals. Then we went and saw some of the other exhibits. We signed up for the ‘Photo Safari’ tour in the afternoon. This is the one where you ride in a stake-bed truck out into the Africa exhibit, and you can hand-feed a giraffe. I knew that Lucinda would like this. And it was fun. We all got to feed the giraffe, and also get licked by the big giraffe tongue. After that, we saw some more exhibits and the bird show before heading home. It was a nice weekend.

More photos are here.

A week or so ago, my girlfriend was telling me about her friends who live in Shadow Hills. That’s the horse neighborhood off Sunland Blvd in the northeast San Fernando Valley. She said that their neighbors have an emu and a llama named Lorenzo living in their front yard. So of course I had to find out where so we could do a sightseeing ride up there. It turned out that it was only about a three-block detour off the “No Tuna for Me” route that we do. So this was today’s bike ride.

It was a perfect day for riding. We started off across Pasadena and Eagle Rock, and then across Glendale into Burbank. We took Glenoaks Blvd up to Sun Valley and turned on Peoria St, just before the big dump. And then we headed into horse country. We wound around in there a bit before we ended up in front of the llama house.

There was a sheep, a goat, an emu, and then Lorenzo the Llama. They were all friendly and curious, and they came up to the fence to check us out. So we all got souvenir pictures with them. It was a good piece of weird Los Angeles sightseeing.

The route back went through Tujunga and Montrose. Then we stopped at Goldstein’s for a bagel before heading home.

It was a nice ride.

44 miles.
cycling

This morning, I built a new box planter for my back yard. I had some basil plants started in pots on the window sill, and I wanted a place to put them outside. So I built a little planter with some spare wood I had in the garage. Lucinda helped me fill it and plant everything.

Last year I went to the Los Angeles County Fair, and at the time, Susan and I hatched plans to enter my perfect blueberry muffins in the fair this year. Susan is out of the picture now, but the fair is coming up. So I decided to still put the plan into action. And I’ve even improved the recipe a bit since last year.

The contest rules don’t specify that the recipe has to be completely original, but I didn’t want to enter a recipe that I didn’t make up myself. The only exception here is the black walnut bread. That’s my grandmother’s recipe. I’ve never seen it anywhere else, but I didn’t make it up, either. The blueberry muffins and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are my recipes that I’ve developed right here in my own kitchen.

I think this will be an interesting adventure.

Last month, I went to see Cirque Berzerk. I liked it a lot, and I told Lucinda about it. And after hearing about it, she wanted to see it. Since the show had been extended into August, we had a chance, and we went tonight.

She thought that the crowd was pretty amusing. A lot like the crowds she’s seen when she went to tattoo conventions with me. And the show was great fun. She said that her favorite was the trampoline act, but that she liked all the acrobatics. It was a fun little evening, even if it did make for kind of a late night for us.

I’m going on a trip next week. Back to visit Texas and see all my friends there. This will be the first time I’m flying anywhere since last year’s trip to Texas. And I fully expect that there will be nothing like this. It’s going to be Great Fun.

I saw today that the Ketchum YMCA in downtown Los Angeles has the registration page up for their annual stair climb up the U.S. Bank tower. This is the tallest building in Los Angeles, tallest west of the Mississippi, and the 9th tallest in the U.S. 1,018 feet tall, 75 stories, 1,500 steps to the top. So you know that I have to try it. After all, I did the AON Tower stair climb back in April, and that was a good time. And I finished 24th out of 327 runners, which I think is pretty good for a first-timer.

I know that this will entail tremendous pain, and it should also be great fun. As they say on the event page, “Elevators are for Wimps”.

Sounds like a great time.

Friday night’s adventure was a trip to Cirque Berzerk at Los Angeles State Historic Park. The tent was set up in the middle of a dusty field, which seemed quite appropriate, since the Cirque grew out of an act at Burning Man some years ago.

The show itself was great fun. It sort of defies description, and about the closest I could come is to say that it’s sort of like a mash-up of “Cabaret” with a circus acrobatics show, performed by the Transylvanians from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. They had a live band and singers on a high platform at one end of the stage. They made a big deal about some seats being better than others, but even the far back row was only about 50 feet from the stage. The tent just wasn’t all that big.

There was a small fenced-in area outside the tent with a bar and a stage. The sign said that drinks were not allowed outside the fenced area, but they had a fenced corridor to the tent, so people could bring drinks into the show. The show itself was about an hour and a half, with a 20-minute intermission. There was a band playing in the outdoor bar area after the first show. They said that cameras were not allowed in the show, but I saw a lot of people at least attempting to take pictures. It was pretty dark in the tent, so I doubt that the pictures would have been very good.

It was very weird, and tremendously entertaining. Certainly worth the trip.

It’s the day after the last day of school. What are you going to do?

I’m going to Disneyland!

I took Lucinda and her friend Claire to Disneyland today to start their summer vacation. We did the whole bit, starting with California Adventure, then lunch, and then the rest of the day at Disneyland. We were there for about eight hours, and we rode a lot of rides. And the girls had a good time.

At the end of the day, we were all tired. We had dinner at the Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney before heading home. It was a very nice day.

As always, all the pictures from the day are in Lucinda’s photo album.