720 evening

For some reason young lady riding the bus I don't believe that a certain r&b, model, producer of a show named after the neighborhood we are right now is going to wisk you away to exotic malibu when he is done laying track on the new Ginuwine album.

200

This is the 200th post of this blog. I am speaking to my new iPad. I guess it's a long way from writing it on paper with pencil.

It is nice to know that you are following my adventures in lala land. A friend of mine told me that she does use its name as her starbucks alias. Like me they always get her name wrong when she orders coffee. I got schooled one day by a very flirty coffee slinger and went back to my real name for a bit, but last week they called me Kristy Ann. I have had a coffee alias for years, i am keeping it as is. It is nice to know that my blog is running around ordering fancy espresso drinks.

A few months ago a started a facebook fan page. It is rather silly, but if you feel like "liking" me it is facebook.com/kittycattaraugus

In the next week or so i will be on this awesome blog, Style the Day. Which you should immediately start reading at styletheday.wordpress.com

That is if you were feeling like you needed more of me in your life.

200 whoo hoo!

still down

I am still computerless. I am posting on this ugly beautiful city as much as I can.

Blergh

My computer died. I may not be able to post for a bit.

bus blog-and then he passed me a mickey

The busses have been crowded lately.  I never knew why metro cuts their bus services in the summer in the height of tourist season with tourists who come from places that have much better public transportation than LA.  I have been riding lately standing up, arm being slowly pulled from its socket day by day, being spooned by my fellow community members just so we can all get to work at a somewhat reasonable time.

I guess we all have our different ways of coping, mine is to not have coffee until i get to work, so all that intimate closeness with other people is a deamlike blur. At 10:am when I am finally awake, I think to myself, why do I smell like cheap cologne?

The 20 something year old kid, he honestly looked 15,  next to me had a different take on how to deal with metro riding. That was sipping a big can of Tecate out of a Thank You, Thank You, Thank you bag, during his ride. When he picked up his phone to answer a call, his screen saver was two Mickey's tall boys nestled together on a counter.

Something tells me that more than metro riding has got him down.

in slightly less than an hour

I always loved the scene in Godard's Band of Outsiders where Anna Karina et al run through the Louvre as fast as they can looking at art. I want to do that one day. Run as fast as I can without getting caught. As I am sure many people have tried since 1964 with their berets, plaids and stripes. I got good practice a couple weeks ago, seeing 3 museums in less than an hour.

It wasn't purposeful these three museums. Our intention was to commune with butterflies, watch them flitter about and take lots of photos and call it a day, morning, whatever. Unfortunately, the butterflies can only see so many people at a time so we had to wait until they were ready to be seen. Oh Paparazzi.

So we ran around the Rose Garden, which was in a desperate need of a good trimming, for lavender roses because I hear those smell the best. We ran and we took photos of the toppling bushes.  I set my lens on the shade and took photos of giant hydrangea. I have so many photos of hydrangea, and their different colors due to soil. Pink, green, white, speckled pink and green.

Across the street was the California Science Center where I had never been and we took 20 minutes to see spaceships, satellites,  rocks, lobsters, tide pool simulations, all while wading through a vast sea of children in matching t-shirts who all wanted to touch live Sea Stars. We almost didn't make it for butterfly time, you cannot stop a train of children, because they all hold hands. The photos above is of the largest sea anemone I have ever seen, he is alone in a plexiglass case the size of an old television.

We joined the group of butterfly paparazzi at 12:30. I learned about them birth to death as I juggled my phone camera and digital camera. I think I have a problem. But in LA even the flora and fauna pose for the camera.

Here are photos from my time running around. (or perhaps a ploy to get you to look at my photo blog)

http://thisuglybeautiful.blogspot.com/2012/08/august-fifteen.html

http://thisuglybeautiful.blogspot.com/2012/08/august-twelve.html

http://thisuglybeautiful.blogspot.com/2012/08/august-four.html

Now all I need to do is learn that dance in a cafe.

btw:
Rose Garden =Free
Science Museum=Free
Butterflies=$3

Alphabet desert

I did not go to the desert. I am going in September. Where hopefully it will be cool enough to tour a 35 acre home and art space.

Memory is just a construct

The Museum of Jurrassic Technology is a maze.  I cannot tell if it is a museum based on farce or fact. Art or Science. It is dark and filled with 12pt text, it is impossible to read. So I really couldn't figure it out, but sometimes there is joy in coming to your own conclusions. Maybe that is the point.

I am a sucker for a good diorama, there are rooms filled with these. Painstaking miniscule environments. I got lost in the detail, wooden model trailers, fences and glued in trees and brown grasses. There was an exhibit of all the things left behind in our nations trailer parks. What I couldn't figure out was how all these things that were left behind, handmade dolls, drugstore dish sets were even remotely jurrasic or technological.

I watched part of a movie in German dubbed in English about the mapping of memory and how memories aren't real, but simply illusions. I hear that I missed the good part about an opera singer and a waterfall.

I saw an artist who inserted miniatures into the eyes of needles a play on the bible verse.

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Mark 10:25

I walked past tempests, illustrations of sunspots, eclipses, old wives tales and old curatives and up to the tea room. I found a set of stairs that led me outside, a quiet garden courtyard, my new favorite place in LA. Worth the price of admission alone.

I apologize for the lack of photos, they won't let you take them in the museum.

Museum of Jurassic Technology
9431 Venice in Culver City
Admission: suggested $5

Next door is the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Their exhibits are free.

Riding the rails-expo line

Last friday I took the Expo line as far as it would take me. Past Venus Stationary, past the NHM and its butterfly pavilion, a garage sale where you could also get a hot dog and chips with soda and a chicken dinner, watching the neighborhood change. Wondering how this line would change it. I was on a mission to feed my soul after a hard week. I knew what I craved, the literal and figurative after a week of so much black and white. Culver City is a strange place for me, a place I worked for years, a job I hated, maybe I needed to go back to that space to remember how lucky I am. But it also holds a strange place in my heart.

I got off the train, for some reason the place wasn't familiar to me, I never realized that there was a park by the Actor's Gang, and I began to wonder where I was. There are so many things about this place that is different. No Beacon, new businesses, papered up windows. I walked west to Honey's Kettle to eat fried chicken and listen to soul music for a while and think.

I wanted to experience some parts of Culver City I hadn't experienced before, a Culver City that had nothing to do with boring client meetings and that snobby waiter at Le Dijonaise.  My visit to the Museum of Jurrasic Technology and the Center for Landuse Interpretation will be in another post, because I am afraid that this post will get too long.

Walking around Venice a boy came up to me holding a statue award saying he was the best video game player in the world. I am inclined to believe him.

Walking back to the train I befriended a couple of marketing men, who were coming back from a mad men style client lunch, they were giggly and smelled of alcohol. We joked about how the community center at the top of the Baldwin Hills overlook is always closed.  We were friends for 15 minutes. The time it took to walk from Trader Joes to the Expo Line Station and to their stop.  Sometimes it is nice to be nice to someone and never see them again.

At Pico, Sailor Moon and a couple of her friends I didn't recognize got on the train. I admired a girls jetpack made of two two liter coke bottles strapped together and painted gold.

Later I let someone who worked on the Expo buy me a drink.

brain block

Having a little writers block. There are posts swirling around my head, but I think they aren't cooked yet. The include, but are not limited to:

Riding the rails-Expo Line edition

Museums of Culver City & my new favorite place

Upcoming trip to the desert

I am still posting on this ugly beautiful city, mainly because there is no need to expound verbally.

I leave you with a song that has been on my soundtrack for this summer and I hope to be writing again soon:

RB

Ray Bradbury was my great-gradmother Kitty's cousin, which made him related to me somehow, 3rd cousin, cousin twice removed. We were both born in "Green Town" we both thought libraries were world openers. I also know that he missed his wife and I hope that they found each other in the whatever's next.

I know he knew I was a writer. The autograph pictured was to me for my first year of an arts based high school I was accepted to for writing. This autograph is in "Green Shadows, White Whale" which is the story of him writing the screenplay for Moby Dick, directed by John Huston.

Unfortunately, that is all we knew about each other, that we were both writers.

Here is a great letter from him, in the fantastic blog Letters of Note, about the importance of libraries.  It reveals something very interesting about writing Fahrenheit  451.

click here.

Perfect Dome of Sound

The desert is a mysterious place with a lot of arrows, filled with paradox, where New Age meets Good News in strange ways. It is lonely beautiful, alien, harsh, and surreal. This is why I love it so.


On Easter we headed to Integratron to celebrate a birthday six months late. An auspicious day to celebrate birth, re-birth and prolongation of life. 5 of us ventured out into the desert to see if we could live just a bit longer. The Integratron compound is a place with many lounging spaces and a colorful hammock village, and a mirror to reflect upon once your experience ends. We hammocked until it was time to get our sound bath, taking advantage of the bright desert light for photographs.

I had read a little about the story behind this place summarized in my last post. This exposition was told to us as we were laying face up on yoga mats interrupted by odd interjections of laughter by our host. I decided that if I continued to listen to him I would laugh too and no one else was laughing, they were listening intently excited for the healing properties that would enter us through the symphony of quartz bowls that would soon be played.

Our experience was through a pop up sound bath, which you share the experience with strangers, well those who are not in your group. They do not do pop up sound baths often because of two things and they said these rules as a warning, that if this happened, they would re-think ever doing a sound bath again and only do sound baths in group form.

1) Turn off your cell phone
2) no snoring, because it ruins other people's experiences by interrupting the pure sound of the quartz bowls.

My friend and I have differing views on whether or not you can help sleeping or snoring, but I feel like if it is going to ruin others experiences, I don't want to be that person. The ruiner. Not other people feel that way. Like the bear shaped man who fell into a similarly bear-like slumber during our session.

Determined to not be that person, hell, I don't even know that I snore, I found another way to experience integratron, with my eyes open. I stared up in the skylight and as those bowls rang out and filled my body that needed saving with sound it shook my right side. I watched the clouds drift by changing shape, turn into lines and dots, pull and compress.

I am not sure that I will live 50 more years, those things we can never tell, but I may remember at 130 what happened to me on Easter 2012. What I did leave with was a higher sensitivity to sound, voices, water trickling, shuffling of feet on the rocks of the parking lot louder. When we ate lunch at Pappy and Harriets and when a child lost their shit because they were leaving, it was one of the loudest sounds I had ever heard and when I was at home listening to music as I fell asleep, it was one of the most beautiful things ever.

Forever Young

A long time ago, but within the last 50 years, a man who happened to be a tesla scientist was kidnapped and given a mathematical equation by the Venutians to help save the human race. This equation formed a blueprint, a blue print for a perfect dome of sound. The sound played in this space would fill the human body prolonging that human's life by 50 years.

I will now live until I am 130 years old.

To Be Continued......

Photos of this place I love

At first I was using google + as a place to store my memories a photo diary of sorts, an experiment a la Super Sad True Love Story, but what good is sharing if no one is there to see. So I have moved that part to a spin off blog called This Ugly Beautiful City. Which probably also takes care of my coffee table book, but also puts my photos up for me to see them better and pick from them.

Just indulge me while I fancy myself a visual historian of this place I love.

Somewhere between ornament and monument

Sometimes in life you need a reset. When a mood pervades that you don't want to be in and can't shake, life going in circles and circles, circling off to no where... I find it is best to do something just a bit ridiculous/campy/silly.

So I thought that I would find something to restart me, make me giggle for no reason and put me in touch with my fellow man and that something passed right through my neighborhood.

At first I scoffed at the LACMA Boulder, found it to be a monument to bureaucracy, a silly thing. That is what I love about LA its tendancy to make even the littlest things, major productions. A 340 ton rock and it's journey twittered away inch by inch, people proposing next to it, rock block parties, people following it like it were the Dead or Phish. Rock heads? Boulder heads?

But when its path was bringing it right through my neighborhood, I thought maybe this silly thing was what I needed to get out of my funk. So after a steak dinner, a quick stop at the Bounty, I picked up a neighbor on foot and we walked the few blocks to Western & 8th. We passed Rosens and joked about renting a room afterwards and sing Rock related songs..

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
I love Rock and Roll
I am a Rock, I am an Island
(please comment about the ones I forgot)

We were expecting to have to wait until 2:am, a whole hour, which was its target time to hit Wilshire and Western, but very un-LAlike it was ahead of schedule. We barely had time to make friends with nurse and her best friend who was a third grade teacher. Their class had been following the rocks path and she was very excited to share her photos with them.

As it approached people were cheering and clapping, it was rather infectious. The construction workers in their neon yellow, puffed out chest, proud of their work, posing for photos with the crowd. We followed it, snapping pictures, excited to see how it would survive the turn onto Wilshire. Hundreds of people were there waiting as it slowly turned. Someone jumped out of the crowd unfurled an American flag and did laps around it, the whole corner sharing a chuckle and a collective cheer.

A man came up behind us and asked what was going on and he misunderstood and excitedly called a friend and said:

"I am in my neighborhood and they are bringing a UFO rock through it. I am watching a UFO rock and it looks like everyone knows about it"

I thought about correcting him, but I didn't want to shatter his once in a lifetime opportunity to see a UFO rock.

We decided to follow it to Wilton, but after its successful turn it all of a sudden stopped. We waited while someone pumped "We Will Rock You" from a boombox attached to a bike and someone marched around with a sign that one one side stated, God Hates Rock, God Loves Scissors. I never found out about how God feels about paper. We waited 20 minutes and found out via twitter that the reason that the Rock stopped was because cars had to be towed out of the way. I would hate to be the person who found out their car was towed because of a 340 ton rock.

The Rock will finally be on view on June 24th. Mark it on your calendars.

Thank you LA for being silly, I really needed it.

Yucca Bloom Forest

Today I went to Redbox, no, not the kiosk to rent dvds, but the trail high up in the mountains of the Los Angeles National Forest. (insert bad joke sound here. wah wah or ba dum pump)

We were yearning for nature, not the nature that puts you in a car on the pch during a beach holiday in which your one arm gets sunburnt as you inch slowly towards your goal. We wanted the nature on the other side of LA the one that was the anti-thesis of the carlocked beaches, we wanted the mountains, we wanted the desert. So we drove 20 minutes to the forest, and we hardly passed another car on the way. The Angeles Crest Highway winds its way straight up into the sky, through rock formations and atmosphere. You pass people on bikes with strong calf muscles inching their way through mountain passes. Those people hardly enjoyed the view, they were determined to keep going and hopefully not look down because it was a long way down, my white knuckling the passenger side handle going unnoticed.  I always have these thoughts of speeding through windy mountain roads and the brakes failing, those are the things I think about as I am griping something hard and stationary. Morbid thoughts of my mortality that sometimes prevent me from enjoying the view. I tried concentrating on the Yucca Booms covering the mountain sides, many the sizes of pine trees and I had never been that close to one.

We intended to go to Switzer Falls, but it seemed like everyone else wanted to go there too so after a 10 to 15 minute wait for a parking spot that would probably never come we headed on to Redbox, where surprisingly there wasn't a lot of people. Redbox is a  great hike, a lot of straight down, but not steep, winding trails that go a little up a little down, eventually leading to a stream. We passed tons of Yucca in full bloom within feet and inches from me and I feel now that I can finally check this off my list.  They are that beautiful in person.

There were giant thistles, corpses of burnt out trees from fires, bearded tongue, birds singing, the smell of leaves and flowers. We hardly passed a single person, but when we did they were extremely friendly.

It was exactly what we were looking for and the anti-thesis of what we knew would be waiting for us up the pch.

But what goes down must come up and the hike retracing our steps was a bit hard on the legs and lungs. .

We heard many lizards racing through the woods, loudly, I got a picture of this one, who was probably frightened from T scaring it my way so one of us could get a photo.

All in all the hike was two hours, slightly stretched out for breath and a reluctance to go back to the land of sound and bustle.

I would like to say that we all made it out alive, but we actually lost a TGT buddy on our way home. After a gallant effort and safe distance from the mountain passes, we did indeed lose our breaks, at a slow speed a SUV slowing our trajectory finally putting the nail in the coffin of Ts car.

Everyone is ok.

I miss the ocean when I go to sleep-Broad/Lechuza

It had been a really long time since I had gone tide pooling, very close to a year and a half when I had visitors from Minneapolis visiting.  I have been tidepooling a handful of times, as you have seen on this blog, often visiting Malibu Lagoon. I like Malibu, but I was feeling a little been there done that and thought it would be nice to try some place different. I asked a friend who is a geologist/surfer for recommendations because who would know more about the ocean than that person. He recommended Broad Beach, a little further up the Malibu coast's 27 miles of coastline. 

Broad Beach is a little harder to find and a bit daunting, because although there are public access points to the beach they are hidden between rich people's houses and even though those access points are in fact public, the residents may try to dissuade you, but you have a right to be there, so they really can't do anything about it. We tried going through a few people's yards first before finding beach access, but where we found access was actually Lechuza Beach.

We made it there just as lowtide was happening. When the tide receeded, it didn't reveal pools like the other places we had been, but rather revealed tide boulders. Hidden in and around those black jaggedy rocks were all kinds of things I wasn't expecting. Attached to the lower parts of these boulders were dozens of sea stars having a sea star orgy (pictured above) I found something new (pictured right) which looked like some sort of alien armor in a sci-fy movie. It has a fancy Latin name I am sure, but it is more commonly called "Pork Sponge" I wanted to touch it, but didn't. I do want to re-name it though, something a lot cooler than Pork Sponge.

 

There are a few small caves and arches carved out of the rocks not a lot of room to walk around in. T spotted a few fossils and pre-historic tide creatures because she is good at stuff like that.

As we walked around the boulders we heard clicking clicking clicking and when we looked closer in the small canyons in the rocks we saw 10s of little crabs hiding clicking their claws, most likely hiding from the birds that hang out during low tide to see what they can come up with for an after lunch snack. The crabs would squinch up a bit more as our shadows passed them. I wish my camera could have caught the amazing reddish pink of its claws.

I paparazzied the heck out of them, but very few pictures turned out. This one is my favorite.

This was a great recommendation and I hope to find more new places, in hopes of finally seeing an octopus.

Bus Blog-When there isn't mace you can always use exclamation

I am spending more time east, taking the train up to Sunset and Vermont or to Pershing station. If I remember correctly I was on my way to see the Ukulele Orchestra of the Western Hemisphere (UOWH) play at El Cid.

Cast of characters:
You may remember a bus blog a year or so back on how LA welcomed me back into her crazy arms by a woman who speaks in tongues, but sometimes in Nahau, and told me to “never give up”  I want to let you know that she was there this evening that I can’t remember when I took place, but think it was to see some ukulele music. She will hence to be called Woman 1

Woman 2: Someone I hadn't seen before, a worse for wear lady of the night, with painted on red shiny jeans a tank top both on her frame and in her hair.

Scene:
I go down the down escalator, walk across the platform and land myself in the middle of a bum fight. I recognize speaking in tongues lady by the way she says devil. A long drawn out way like a Coupe DeVille.

"DeVille, you are the DeVille" She screams at the second woman.

I walked into the middle of it, I am sure it went on for a while, and Woman 2 was at her limited of being name called. Woman 1 moves to another bench where she can continue her rant at a cowardly distance. The distance isn't far enough because Woman 2 waltzes over as fast as her constrained legs will take her and releases an onslaught of cheap perfume at Woman 1almost completely missing her and landing square in the eye of a man innocently reading a book. He is calm, says nothing, but begins to pace, tears stream down his red and freckled face. Instead of Woman 1 apologizing to him for getting him in the middle of this altercation she follows his pacing going on and on about how the other woman was a DeVille and how he should now be on her side.

One should be able to ride the bus, without getting a shot of exclamation in the eye.

Co+nun+drum

I think the hardest part about not writing is knowing where to start.

I have been a lot of places, seen a lot of things, experienced a lot, but where do I start after an almost 2 month absence? Do I start with the sea and move my way to the desert and dip south for a weekend? Do I start with my check off list and let you know that it has, disappointingly gone nowhere, chronologically forwards or backwards, with vague notions of what I remember? How about with last night? 

No, where I am starting is bus blog.

But before I start there, to sum up my time in short, when I haven't been doing all the things that I am going to write about next, I have been dancing around my little tree house in k-town, in my f-it I don't have a roommate attire, to this song by a band I saw last night. 

Next up.... my re-encounter with the woman who told me never to give up

Swimsuit study 1

Anti-Valentines day party, in a hot tub in the Valley, I try not to memorize the full body Ukiyo tattoos covering the man across from me, the heat or the Japanese demon masks on his knees frighten me off to the pool where I float, steam rising off my body making the cloudless 50 degree night, cloudy.

It is not about the pieces, but how the pieces work together

(or a blog post in which I try to sound smart)

A couple friends and I set out on a Sunday afternoon to find the Eames House or Case Study #8.  I say find because one of the things that are annoying about this city is that on one side of the street the street has one name and on the other a totally different name. (In this case Vance vs Corona Del Mar.) And once you run into the PCH you are completely screwed for a quick turnaround. So be alert if you want to find this hidden place.

The Eames house was part of the Case Study House program sponsored by Art and Architecture Magazine. The Case Study program houses were designed by major architects in the 40s-60s as experiments in residential architecture that used inexpensive and efficient materials. (See more information on wikipedia) There were quite a few of these in Southern California, the Eames House is neighbored by two or three. Very few are open to the public and even fewer are being lived in.

The Eameses were purveyors of the guest/host relationship. What you notice about #8 is that the house, separated between studio working space and living space, is that it has a flow and takes you from kitchen to dining to this spectacular view of the meadow and the Pacific. Perfect for dinner parties, cooking-dinner-after dinner drinks and sunset. This place really showcases nature, as is true with most glass houses.. the meadow outside, the ocean and tall eucalyptus trees. The Sunday I went the meadow was full of Monarch butterflies.

Currently the living room is on display at LACMA so we were only able to peer in on an empty room.  I need to make a point to come back after June to see the house in it's completed state. I think they are doing some conservation work on the house in the meantime.

In addition to being architects of this house, this husband and wife team designed furniture and other interior pieces. Their pieces are asthetic and functional. (Not sure if the exhibit at A +D conveyed that very well, or maybe just a bit to cerebral for a daft head like me)

For some reason you cannot take photos of the inside, which is very difficult when it is basically a glass house.  This holds true of the living room set up at LACMA as well.

I think actually I am not supposed to have these pictures up, but I guess when they ask me to delete this post I will.  My main reason though for this post, as is true with all of my art related posts is that I think you should go and support places like this.  Los Angeles is so keen on erasing its history. (I live by the Brown Derby and you can barely make out the hat, because it is surrounded by strip mall. mmmmm...boiling crab )

The cost to see the Eames House is only $10 and viewings are by appointment. Go to the Eames House Foundation for more information.

As a bonus, the one friend we were with happens to live in case study 18A designed by Rodney Walker. Which was also amazing and very true to its original state. The 1994 earthquake made some changes to the house and sent about 30 feet of meadow down the side of the hill, but still the view of the ocean is spectacular. This was great once in a lifetime opportunity because this house is not on view to the public.

There are several Case Study houses still for public viewing. Stahl house being next on my list, if I can find a willing participant.

hipster podcast 2012

All hispters must seek out places in L.A. proper that have Intellegentsia coffee and yelp the following:

"Um.... they have Intellegentsia need I say more"


Side note:(I have nothing against Intellegentsia btw, they make damned good coffee. I just don't like coffee as status)

6 yr L.A.nniversary

Six years ago in January I boarded a plane with everything I could carry and moved here to Los Angeles. Before take off my plane had to be de-iced, it was that cold and also a very scary thought.  The sun hadn't shined for weeks.  Landing here in the land of sunshine, 40 degree winters, smelling sweet like flowers was Minnesota's bizarro world for sure. (Never mind the evil reference) Moving here was the second most daring thing I have done in my life. I like to celebrate that fact. On this day six years ago I was daring. 


I took that picture of snow heavy hydrangea outside of my apartment in South Minneapolis 2 days before I left

So to celebrate the one of three times I have actually been daring I planned to ride the rails with friends stopping at places I love in this city. Taking a page out of the MetroRiders meet up group (I went on their (500) days of summer tour read here)

Stop 1: Square One- (which is always the best place to start)

I never liked breakfast until I was in my mid-twenties, I have a theory on why that is, mainly summed up in one word, beer. I don't think I needed grease in the mornings before I started drinking.  There are a lot of breakfast places in L.A., but Square One is my favorite. And as the hipsters would say:

"Um... they have Intelligentsia need I say more"

I like them because they will put my Benedict on a hash brown cake and I get to stare at the Scientology center and make up stories about the lives of scientologists. (musical perhaps?) Hollandaise sauce and imagination how much more do you need from breakfast? Other than the GF L.A.nniversary cupcakes a friend made for me for post breakfast dessert.

Stop 2: Angel's flight
Well, there is one thing you will learn being an Angeleno is that Angel's Flight is closed for repairs more than it is open for a 25 cent ride. I even checked their twitter and it lied. It said that it was open. When we got there, there was a lone guy painting the car orange and black. He said that we wouldn't be riding that day.  So we walked the stairs to the park and stumbled upon a boy band posing for a photo shoot. So we decided to do our own, centered around the bench used in (500) days of summer. We looked amazing, but perhaps a little Emo.

We passed through Grand Central Market took a gander at the chicken feet for sale on our way to the Bradbury Building. Amazing architecture, but really hard to photograph.

Stop 3: Naked in Los Angeles
Where I had the sweetest lemonade I have ever had, it made my face change shape. So I probably looked more like the Weegee photographs than I wanted to.

Stop 4: Not saying
Because it is my favorite bar in L.A. It is a hidden bar and I am often one of the few people there and I like it that way. I like that when I go there I can actually hear what people are saying and that I can have conversations and $5 sake and $7 Korean short ribs for dinner.  I love that they have a patio nestled between two old buildings, the sky strung with fairylights and that on my way to the bathroom I am greeted by a man's head on a plate.

There I have given you enough hints, if you figure it out, it is not like I told you.

A lot of friends joined and left during the day.  It was nice to spend my day celebrating my daringness with people I love.

I have learned that L.A.nniversary celebrations are pretty common. I guess a testament that being here, staying here, is quite a feat.  And to the person who told me that L.A. would chew me up and spit me out I would like to say that still after 6 years, I guess I am not all that tasty.

Ooops

I realized today as I was walking around downtown Los Angeles, belly full of Pho, that there is a lot I need to write about.  I have been a lot of places, seen a lot of things and I promise that I will get them out of my head and onto here, but for now take an LA journey in photos with my friend K at 365 Oranges.

Click here

Half a love never appealed to me

Valentine's isn't my favorite.

When I had someone I always spent the 13th, or mistress day as it is known in the restaurant world, with my significant other. I thought it was funny, but maybe that says more about how my significant others thought of me, something temporary with no future. Men never marry their mistresses, except maybe that Carla Bruni situation and my uncle.

Valentine's was a day I spent with the ladies, always.  Sometimes out of spite, but mainly because there was no pressure for a day to mean more than it needed to.

Last year around this time I posted on another blog my favorite love songs and anti-love songs. Here they are as they stand this year.

The love song is still the same, but I still love it this year. Because maybe I want someone to find me that awesome and not just temporarily.
I notice that there so many more anti-love songs out there in the world. I love the chorus of Adele's "Someone like you", but I chose instead this song by the Kills because it just kind of fits: Well this blog post took a dramatic turn. Happy Valentine's to all you people who love and have hearts so big that are waiting to love.

xoxo-k

Bus blog-Caught in the act

I honestly wish that I made some of this stuff up....

I was on the 720 in the very last row of seats against the driver side window reading a book about Hemmingway's first wife. And after reading paragraphs of them having conversations throwing around pet names at each other

Tatie, Hems, Earnesto, tiny, momma cat, baby cat, baby, panda, Hads

I needed to rest my eyes from the sappiness.  I looked down into a car, which I sometimes do, and what I saw in that burgundy stationwagonesque vehicle with black leather interior driving through Beverly Hills was a man giving himself a handy in morning traffic.

To use a friend of mine's phrase, which so aptly fits, "I cannot unsee that"

I
cannot
unsee
it

even though it was for a brief moment, my first instinct was he wants you to look him and I need to look away and keep looking away until I get where I am going. My second was THIS IS GOING IN MY BLOG, I was on the bus after all.

NYR

Speaking of New Year's Resolutions, I don't really make them. Sure, there are a lot of things that I would like to start over, have a year be a blank slate, this is my year after all. I am a dragon.  My NYRs are similar to yours, so what ever you want to do I want to too. vitamins, exercise, organics, love, weight, money, read, learn. It all seems so micro-managy as humans we need to micro manage even the things that are potentially there to make us happy.

One year, my NYR was to have more fun.  I made it a point to have fun, and I really haven't stopped that one.  Since that one has turned out so very well, this year,  I chose some very non-serious ones to stick to.

1) Since I live so close to the ocean, I decided that I would be in a swimsuit more than last year. Last year was 3, I say 5 is a good number. With a trip to Mexico and the desert looming in the horizon, I think I will make it.

2) I wouldn't mind if my space made it to be a very cool small space on Apartment Therapy. I have a long way to go, and some plans in the work. I am so very full of ideas.

3) I want to work on my L.A. coffee table book. Publish it myself. I have so many photos of this beautiful/ugly place. Even if it was just for my eyes, it wouldn't matter. It would be nice that at the end of the year I could hold in my hand a very tangible accomplishment.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The most private thing I am willing to admit

I was thinking about myself and the way I act, how I listen, how people see me, all those things you think about as the year turns new.  I was reading my first Charles Bukowski, aptly called Hollywood. I thought this about myself on the plane on my way back here to L.A., but never could put it into words.  It is strange how the world works, how everything ties together at a certain time in your life. I read this and sat back:

"I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me to the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta" -Bukowski

The most private thing I am willing to admit, is that sometimes I am not really listening.

hike in 2 parts

I am not much of a Hollywood hiker. I think Runyon Canyon smells like dog piss and I always feel so under dressed and make-uped for everywhere else. So I strapped on my high heels, hoop earrings, booty shorts and went to Griffith to see if I could get close to the Hollywood Sign.

Griffith Park is a maze of trails and one of them in fact leads as close as you could get to the sign and try as we might to get to those big letters in the hills, we ended up almost in the Valley.  Which as any Angeleno knows is totally different.

So this was as close as I got this attempt.

Second attempt was also thwarted in a very different way.  We were going to take a specific road to get to the trail head, coming from a western themed lunch at the Autry. As we headed toward Mount Washington Road we encountered a coyote confusedly running down the street and saw that that road was closed. We headed out of that area onto crowded Los Feliz Blvd, after seeing a second coyote and up Commonwealth that was also closed off.

Since the fates were pressing their bodies against us, we decided to take the same trail I put on my best Tammy Faye and juicy tracksuit to hike, to see a garden that someone designed in the sky. I lost my way the first time tested my fear of heights and just as I thought I would give up because I thought I'd end up in the Valley again, I saw that oasis. And we sat there trying to enjoy the silence. Unfortunately for us a raven the size of a 3 year old boy was squawking away looking for another giant raven mate. (squawk away crow, love is beautiful if you can find it) So we couldn't enjoy the silence.

I found out later that the reason why the roads we encountered we closed due to the discovery of body parts in the park.

3xs

A quiet Friday afternoon I see Crosscurrents at the Getty for the third time, almost no one is there and I am free to see my reflection in all the polychrome/resin sculptures. Watch a triptych video of Southern California in its entirety


The Pompeii of tomorrow is the world

There isn't a bench there so I wonder if it is meant to be seen all the way through.

I remember at this point in visit number 2 there was this asshole who shushed a guard for asking him to get off his cell phone. He did a talk to the hand movement that was comical and infuriating at the same time. (People who talk on cell phones in galleries deserve to be hit, I think)

I rush through assemblage and stare at Blue Planet, lost there in a good way for a minute. I think about buying the postcard but the colors faded don't do the painting justice. So I sit there trying to imprint it on my brain, that is until an amazing sunset pushes it out of my head.

Crosscurrents closes on February 5th,

Bus blog- Somethin' fierce

I was waiting at the corner for the bus, sipping on some tea for my throat that I got at the Starbucks on Westwood, not to be confused with the Starbucks on Weyburn and mistakenly made eye contact with this guy in a black windbreaker with the hood pulled tight around his head making a very small oval face hole. He was very excitable and noticed me sipping on what he thought was coffee. He walks straight up to me and in a confrontational voice asks me if I like cappuccino.

Taken aback I said, no, not really.

Well he says, I happen to have a picture of the best cappuccino I have ever had.

(I am always puzzled that crazy people have smart phones, I don't know why)

And he shows it to me. It is a cappuccino with a leaf design in the foam.

I am not sure if that was in Rome or Verona. I think Verona, I can tell by the stuff on the table, but it could be Rome, but I think Verona.  Have you ever been?


I say no.


Well, if we were better friends and we liked each other I would take you.


I say, Thank you? 


Now, If I could only find a sane man to offer me the same thing I would be happy.

Those crazies, they love me something fierce.

Wolves

Being in Minnesota was harder and different for me this year. I think mainly because I have distanced myself so far from the life I had there. Lonely, inactive and cyclical. I thought about what I would write about how I feel about that place, the small town, the people, the happiness in being comfortable.

That the town that I come from has one of the biggest U.S. environmental offenders there, or did. I can see it from my house.
That when we were in middle school and high school if you were especially delinquent, they would send you to school on the Res.

But then I saw Young Adult while I was home and when it was over I turned to my one friend that I have left there and said "I was going to write about this place in my blog when I got back, about what it is like here, but you know what I am kind of a brat"

So I leave you with, and my time in Minnesota with, the song that makes me homesick for it.

beautiful women or pictures of the floating world

I couldn't have gone to the mini-apple (they don't call it that anymore) without spending some time at a museum. Usually it is the Walker, since I usually lean so very contemporary, but I decided after 10 years that I should stop being so m.i.a. toward the M.I.A. Plus they had a fantastic exhibit of Edo prints and I wanted to stare into their oceans because I was feeling so homesick.

Stop 1: Bon Jour Japon
The influences the Edo prints had on 19th century France. Which I had never really thought of before and was brilliant curatorialship if I do say so myself.
This piece Je t'aime

Stop 2: Edo-pop
I actually think that I went through this exhibit wrong. I should have gone clockwise instead of counter, but I was loured in by squeaking, music and a flashing screen, an example of how the Edo period is influencing Japanese artists today. A dreamlike cerebral anime short film of technology versus nature, beautiful womens faces superimposed on vegas like skyscrapers, flowers, trees and bug erasing them away, the buildings winning, then nature winning, but not until you learned that first nature won over the humans, beautiful severed woman heads hanging from trees like apples.

Kabuki gangsters cornrowing their hair wearing Los Angeles Ronin jerseys.

As I went more counter a whole wall dedicated to Hokusai and his Great Wave.

I am always amazed by this, the great wave and all the others, the tiny details, the skill of these artists who did these things all without technology. No laser cutters, mixing colors out of pigments and plants, the hours it must have taken. I was puzzled by the ability to make the materials so dense, one print had a kimono with a black, almost transparent overlay and I wondered how someone could make that possible.

How these little details, a look that lingers from eyes of beautiful women, who fully clothed, except that  one naked shoulder was so very erotic.

Unfortunately for you this show is now over and I don't think it travels. (someone correct me if I am wrong)

One thing that I forgot about the Minneapolis Institute Arts as that it's Asian art galleries are so very immense and impressive. I haven't seen anything like it in L.A.

technically a difficulty

sorry I haven't written, I needed to deal with that pesky four chambered thing.

L.A.nniversary

6 years ago today, I packed all of my portable belongings and carried them on a plane and moved here.

Journey through monochromia

In winter everything is a hue of greige. Gray skies, tan buildings, strip malls and Targets, gray intersecting highways, tan and white and gray houses that have beige interiors who have people in them who wear beige, gray or black. When the snow is on the ground it is a beautiful white, but if not the grass is a yellow-brown with weeds and cattails reaching up to the sky that are also yellow brown. The sun sits in a gray sky and the sun that shines is lighter gray. The food is beige, potatoes and meat and cream of fill in the blank soup. We cover our vegetables with zesty creams or creamy soups.Deep fried pickles, green beans, broccoli to turn color into beige. And the trees are black and climb their naked fingers to the sky and the leaves that might still be stuck to the branches are that same yellow brown. It makes you long for color.

while i am busy writing and adjusting

It feels like I have been gone forever. I have a lot of thoughts swimming in my little head and while I am sorting them out in a coherent way I thought maybe you might enjoy this. May have something to do with a new years resolution or it may just be something beautiful to look at today.