Stan’s Obligatory Blog

On Sunday afternoon, Susan and I went over to Beverly Hills to visit the galleries at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The two current exhibits are:

• Ink and Paint: The Art of Hand-Drawn Animation
• Pulling Back the Drapes: Set Decoration Revealed

I’ve been to these sorts of things before, and they’re always fun to see.

The animation exhibit was interesting, and we got to see a lot of original artwork from cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s. And upstairs, we saw parts of sets of quite a few recent movies. We saw Indiana Jones‘s desk. Too bad he was denied tenure. We also saw The Chief’s desk from “Get Smart“, got our picture in the cave with the Mark 1 suit from “Iron Man“, and Susan poked around the props from “The Spiderwick Chronicles“.

It was a fun little afternoon, and we finished off with dinner at the French Quarter in West Hollywood.

This weekend is the big “Ink and Iron” show at the Queen Mary. This started out back in 2004 as just a tattoo convention, and over the years they have added music, motorcycles and hot rods to the show. So it’s turned into a Big Deal. But I still like to go just for the tattoos.

I went down there with Susan after the morning bike ride. We got to Long Beach about 2:00 or so. We went inside and just wandered around looking at all the tattoos. We got to visit with some of my friends who I know from going to so many of these shows over the years. That was fun. We also watched the Aerial Showgirls doing their show in the big open area in the center of the room.

It was a fun afternoon. As always, pictures are in the Tattoo Conventions Photo Gallery.

This evening, Susan and I went to see “Heavy Metal in Baghdad“, which is a documentary about Acrassicauda, which is the only known heavy metal band from Iraq. They started some years before the war, and the film included some video of them doing a concert in 2002. They said that in order to get permission for the concert, they had to agree to sing a song praising Saddam Hussein.

The band members said that at first they thought the war and the fall of Saddam would be good for them. But over time, they found that living and playing in a civil war zone was no good. When they did a show in post-Saddam Baghdad, it was in a hotel surrounded by concrete barriers and troops. And the show had to be over by 7:00, so everyone could make it home before curfew. Later, their practice room was blown up by a rocket, and all their instruments were destroyed. Finally, the film followed them as they escaped Iraq to Syria in hopes of finding peace there.

Overall, the film was kind of depressing, but also uplifting. It’s a triumph of the human spirit. Even under the worst circumstances, young men will find ways to rock out and bang their heads.

On Saturday afternoon, Susan and I went to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. I’d been wanting to go there for some time, and they were having an exhibit called “Chinaman’s Chance” about the Chinese immigrant experience. As it turned out, there wasn’t much to the Chinese exhibit. It was three artists whose art reflected their views of straddling the cultural divide. It was amusing, but not very filling.

The rest of the museum was nice, though. There was an exhibit of ceramics from China, along with other artifacts. One of the artifacts was a chair dating from the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644. When I read the card, my first thought was, “that’s one old chair.”

On Friday night, Susan and I went to Griffith park to do one of the evening hikes. Tonight’s was up Glendale Peak, which is one of the small mountains in the park. I’ve done this one before, but it’s a pleasant hike. And it’s also a good way for us to get some weight-bearing exercise.

On the way to the start of the hike, we saw a lone coyote hanging around in one of the parking lots in the park. On the way up, we saw a small frog in a little puddle on the side of the trail. And a bit later, we saw a couple of deer running around just above us on the hill.

By the time we were close to the top, it was dusk, and so we got a picture with the city lights and Griffith Observatory in the background.

The trip down was nice, since it was cooling off by then. And the nearly-full moon was plenty of light to see by.

It was a fun evening.

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’ve been doing the Tuesday night hikes in Griffith Park lately. It’s fun, and interesting to see what’s in the park right here in the city. Tonight was a different hike, where we went and looked for an old trail that was burned out in last year’s fires. We went up a fire road for part of the way, and then struck out on a faint trail up a ridge, just overlooking the Golden State Freeway. Such is urban hiking. We can be walking up the side of a mountain, but listening to the roar of a freeway. But we got a nice view of downtown L.A. at dusk, which was nice.

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.