"we are a nation of forgetters" -ld

Wailing of the Birds

LA on the cheap HHH

Cost: $8
Where is it? Between Hollywood and Sunset, between Edgemont and Vermont, hidden behind ugly stripmalls

I finally found a willing participant to tour Aline Barnsdall's Hollyhock House with me a few weeks ago. It is a sprawling estate on top of Barnsdall Hill, in the Los Feliz neighborhood, built for the oil heiress in the '20s. You can tell by the quote from Frank Lloyd Wright that he and Aline did not see eye to eye. (We thought lovers spat) I think he was fired and re-hired from the project at least once.

We unfortunately got a tour guide that had only done the tour once before, that day. She couldn't really elaborate beyond what her white 4 x6 note cards said. Also, the tour was colored by these two yokels who loved loved loved puns and joking around. So whenever the guide told us to..

"watch our heads"
They replied "Well, I think we would need a mirror for that."
They were in their 50s, no excuse.

Hollyhock is a gorgeous maze of a house that has been fantastically restored. Frank Lloyd Wright has great attention to detail and made a lot of interesting functional pieces. This house was built in what I call his mexic-amerindian phase as you can see with the "abstraction" of the Hollyhock seen below:

(Do you see the flower in the geometrical shapes, I don't)

And the other houses he built in the area like the Ennis House and Sowden House which you may have seen in a couple commercials and a season of America's next top model. (by the way you can rent Sowden house for $3,900 a night, 3 night minimum)

A lot of what we saw were replicas and adjustments, since the house went through some ownership changes after Barnsdall left, including the USO who demolished the kitchen and turned it into a formica hell.

Aline had envisioned an artist compound with a theater, gallery and studio, much of which is still standing and is being used for that very purpose. (see my post on Excavated Shellac)

I recommend going at $8 a ticket. I think I will do it again soon, maybe the tour guide will be off book/cards.

sometimes wherever you go, it is right in front of you

It is strange the way when I start reading something, all of what I do coincidentally relates to it. I hear people at dinner parties talking about it, I see it written in the margins of notebooks, it is mentioned in international symposiums I attend (that last part makes me sound really smart, doesn't it?) It is a name I have heard uttered so many times over the past month and a half.

Roberto Bolaño

The book everyone is reading is the Savage Detectives.

Why now, why is everyone reading this book? Is it because we have this strange obsession with Visceral Realism?

I think it is because this book makes anyone's life story interesting. We all just want to tell our stories right? To have meaning, make an impact on the world, isn’t this why we tweet, blog, let out our inner monologues out on facebook, without regard that it is insanely immature or an invitation to stalk.

It is just about these kids running around town, telling you what they did, who they have unrequited love for, what cafes they have gone to, which of their friends are full of crap, how many orgasms they have had, time spent interviewing each other and writing sub-par poetry.

Hidden in there though is a list of the who’s who of counter-tradition literature, surrealist authors, that some times sounds a bit name-droppy, but is really a primer of who you should be reading. (according to him at least, an original hipster of sorts)

The overall consensus being, I might bore you, but you will learn something.

I guess the same is true, for me, I might bore you, but you will learn something.

"Unrequited love is the only love I know, the other doesn't belong to me"- Cesar Moro

trying to make sense of the non-sensicle

Your team won LA....Riots? Really?

bus blog-not for the masse transit

On July 1st bus fares will go up, yet again.

single fare: $1.50
day pass: $6
monthly pass: $75

So if you work minimum wage a day pass will be almost an hours worth of your pay.

All that M-ing might make you want to buy a car. Which kind of defeats the purpose of mass transit.

middle

I book-ended the week of my birth with a band. Both shows being the antithesis of the other.

Show one a sedated crowd in a field at the jazzreggae festival at UCLA which should have had the name r&bundergroundjazzjamreggae stare fest, but not as catchy I suppose. LA crowds treat their performers which such ambivalence.

"So I paid money to see you, I don't give a fuck, you bore me and I am probably better than you blindfolded"

Mainly I felt under-prepared for the event, not enough sunscreen, no blanket, not prepared for the discrepancies in sound. POP!

Seeing Q-tip made me nostalgic for my Minneapolis hip-hop days, but it made me realize that it was more the crowd I missed than Miss Bonita Applebaum.

Show 2 was extremely intimate and my first time attheecho.com (side note that rainbow ^arabia is there every Monday night this month) The crowd was small and all that KCRW could muster. It was better this way a show for people who actually like music then liking the scene although it was echo park, so maybe I was oblivious to the scene-sters

The band was Quadron my new favorites and masters in genre jumping. Each song on their album is different and catchy for being somewhat off beat. Coco has an amazing sense of soul for someone who is so very young and I feel that it will only get better with age. I will leave you with what I feel like might be their most popular hit, but keep in mind only one other song shares a similar feel, but the rest of it is equally good.



If I wet your appetite at all for them, the rest of the album is better.

Happy birthday to me!

If I were you this weekend-doing good tastes good

It is on again kids.

The 4th annual No Cookie Left Behind Bake sale to raise money for Share our Strength

If I were you I would buy extra for me because I can't make it this time and this is one of the greatest events that will happen this weekend.

that and my friend T getting her MLIS.

um

I have a case of writer's block and the mean reds.