Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Saw this today in the L.A. Times:

Alison Jackson: Confidential An exhibition of photographs toying with the notion of celebrity. M+B, 612 N. Almont Drive, L.A.

This is an exhibit of photos of celebrity look-alikes, staging the pictures we’d like to see. The photos cover a full range:

• The impossible: Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and their baby;
• The improbable: Madonna ironing her clothes;
• The completely plausible: George Bush looking perplexed by Rubik’s Cube.

This looks like a hoot. Have a look at the gallery on their web site: http://www.mbfala.com/Jackson/Jackson_Confidential.html

This afternoon, we all went over to West Hollywood to see “What Would Jesus Buy?” at the Sunset 5. I think that this may be the first time we’ve taken Lucinda to see and art-house movie, and it turned out to be quite a little adventure.

The film follows Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping when he and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir go on a nationwide tour to try to stop the commercialization of Christmas and to raise awareness of the costs of our consumer culture. They visited the Mall of America, Disneyland, and lots of places in between, preaching the gospel of anti-consumerism. It was hilarious.

For a special treat, the director was there to answer questions after the film. The film was produced by Morgan Spurlock, who did “Supersize Me”, and this film is done in a similar style, with Reverend Billy and the choir doing guerilla ‘interventions’ at big-box stores and malls. He uses his bullhorn to preach of the coming ‘Shopocalypse’. They also performed exorcisms of credit cards to drive out the demons of debt. Overall, it was a fun time, even though Lucinda was the only child in the audience.

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 she 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.

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.

It’s time for the July edition of the Body Art Expo. This is the big tattoo show at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds. They promote it pretty heavily, and it usually gets a good turnout.

I usually go to these things on a Saturday, since that’s the big party day at them. But this time, I couldn’t go then, so I went on Friday night. This is usually a little slower and a little less crowded. But that’s all right.

I saw several people I’ve met before at these things. So we got to compare and see who got what new tattoos since the last time. That’s always fun.

Shannon had a booth there this time, so I was able to visit her, and also got to see Amy eating a big tub of popcorn. If you knew Amy, you’d know that that’s totally out of character for her. But she was desperate for food.

Overall, it was a pretty fun time, even though it was a Friday night.

Today we went out to Santa Monica to Track 16 Gallery at Bergamot Station to see “The Secret Life of Cows“. This was a photo exhibit of digitally composed photos showing real cows in weird, funny, and impossible situations. It was tremendously amusing.

Sadly, they’d sold out of the book, so we didn’t get a copy. But we are going to order one from the gallery next week when they get more.

We also browsed around some of the other galleries. We saw some nice art, but nothing that quite matched the cows.

So if you’re in L.A., head over to Santa Monica and see this. If not, get the book. It’s great. The show runs through August 4th.

We went to the IMAX theater in Exposition Park today to see “Wired to Win“. This is about the 2004 Tour de France and how the brain adapts to competition. It was pretty interesting, and the racing footage was pretty well done. In particular, the shots of what it looked like in the pack were very realistic, and they captured pretty well what it’s like to be in a 200-rider peleton.

We also went to see the “Goosebumps: The Science of Fear” exhibit in the museum. That was pretty interesting. I’d never even realized that there was such a thing as “Fear of chickens”. Apparently, fear of creepy, crawly animals is a big thing, so they had an animal exhibit where people could pet a small snake, a giant millipede, and a giant hissing cockroach. Lucinda liked the snake a lot.

Also, they included a section on collective fears of society. It was pretty funny to see the collection of things we’ve been afraid of. Sharks, microwaves, and rock-n-roll. It was all there. But my favorite was the bit about bicycles.

Afterward, we headed home, but not until Lucinda could play on the ropes at the ‘Big Lever’ exhibit outside.

And just for the record, I know what it’s like to ride in a big peleton. Here’s a picture of a Category 1/2 race at Super Week in Milwaukee from 1978. Like Waldo, I’m in it:

Today we went up to the San Gabriel Mountains to do another hike. Since Lucinda did so well on Echo Mountain, we decided to try Strawberry Peak.

We headed up to La Cañada to the Angeles Crest Highway. We got our day pass for the forest there and then drove up the mountain. Near the top, we saw a plume of smoke ahead. We’re having an early fire season here this year, due to the dry winter, and our first thought was that it was a brush fire. But when we got there, we were greeted by a scene straight out of “The Road Warrior” The Angeles Crest is a favorite road for people to ride ‘crotch rocket‘ motorcycles. It looked like two of them had met head-on in the turn there. Both bikes were lying in the middle of the road, one of them on fire. Both riders were lying a short distance away. One was moving slightly, so he was still alive. The second was still. People were there directing traffic, and they said help was on the way. And people have asked me why I don’t ride a motorcycle. Heh.

The hike up was pleasant enough, aside from Lucinda wanting to stop and drink water every 100 feet. It was a hot day, and the creek in Colby Canyon was completely dry. We hiked up to Josephine Saddle, where we sat in the shade of the water tank for a bit before heading up the peak.

The final climb up the peak is the highlight of this hike, since it includes some interesting rock climbing. Lucinda liked it, but she also was a little scared by some of it. She’s been on climbing walls before, but this was a real mountain with no ropes or safety harness.

We climbed to the top of the rocky portion just below the peak. At that point, Lucinda wanted to go home, so we turned around and headed down. It’s more important to us that she come away from the experience with a good memory than it is to actually reach the top of the mountain.

On the way down, Lucinda drank the last of the water, and we vowed to bring more along the next time. She also had to be carried for a bit. I hurt my back the last time I carried her, so Cathy had to do it this time. Still, we had a nice time.

Today we took Lucinda to the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum in Hollywood. She’s been wanting to go there for several years now, ever since she saw the building with the T-Rex head sticking out of the roof on Hollywood Boulevard.

The museum itself is perfectly located. It’s in the middle of the tourist-trap section of Hollywood Blvd, right down the street from the Chinese Theater, and diagonally across from Hollywood and Highland. Inside, it’s a weird collection of stuff. Some of it old, some of it morbid, some of just plain weird. Pictured here is the vampire killing kit, the two-headed baby skeleton, and the most unbelievable of all, an original press kit from “Mr. Ed“.

Like I said, it’s a weird collection of stuff. But it made for a fun afternoon. Now, if only the Museum of Death would re-open…

Today Lucinda and I did the hike up Echo Mountain. This is close to our house, and it was a nice day for it. The actual hike is about 2.5 miles each way, and the climb is about 1,400 feet.

We started at the trailhead at the top of Lake Avenue, and we headed up the trail. Lucinda did very well. She maintained a good, steady pace most of the way. She didn’t even complain, aside from wanting to take a few breaks when we came to spots of shade. After we passed the 2-mile marker and I told her we were almost at the top she started running. This was the first time that she has done an entire hike like this unaided. Last summer when we climbed Mt. Lassen, she did about half the hike riding the mule.

Along the way, we saw some interesting nature sights. There were lots of lizards along the trail, and a hawk soaring overhead. And there were some nice cactus flowers near the start of the trail.

At the top, Lucinda had fun poking around the ruins of the former White City. She was going to try out the Echo Phone, but she got self-conscious about yelling into it. We sat down and had some snacks amid the ruins. And she particularly enjoyed looking through the rubble of the old powerhouse.

Finally, we headed back down, covered with dust. Overall, it was a fun day.