Beverly Blvd and N Poinsettia Place.
The Monster rears its head again…
Banksy’s work can be seen in the Blick Art Materials parking garage. Fitting.
K47
20 OctUp Laurel Canyon, right off the slim two-way street that snakes up the hills onto Mulholland Drive and towards the Hollywood sign you’ll notice a certain patch of crumbling concrete wall. You’ll notice the wall because of what is usually displayed there: most often its a graffiti artists masterpiece, but at other times, the wall decries societies ills or the philosophy of the local subversive culture. The graffiti lasts only a couple of weeks before it is painted over in black, and as the city’s budget tightens, I think it more likely that the artist paints over the old to create a new canvas, rather than the city using resources to clean up local scribbling. Currently on display from tagger K47 is a back-lit ballerina, and from the looks of it, she’s in mid pose from Swan Lake.
The Sisters
19 OctThe AIDS walk. Though a fantastic cause on a beautiful Saturday morning, L.A. has a habit of using the most mainstream streets for its protests, fundraisers, marathons and any other event that needs several miles to make its point. However, not all was lost after my Sister and I sat through an hour of 90 degree heat waves in a car with no air-conditioning; we parked and went to the Melrose Trading Post. Just $2 to get in, the flea market is a veritable cornucopia of wares: the expected $5 sunglasses, to worn in Cowboy boots, gilded mirrors, vintage furs, contemporary art, corn dogs and nachos and eclectic furniture. Though my husband deems it “another garbage dump,” this place let us escape the sizeable clusterfuck for hours and I came away with $20 Doc Martens’ and black Wayfarers. Los Anjealous describes it’s melodrama here.
Photo by LosAnjealous.com
Our drive home yielded the following:
The race is finished, all are headed home.
These lovely ladies (so-to-speak) are part of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (aka Sisters Mischif) organization that run/walk in AIDS walks across the nation. There are several factions, each with a blog. Besides the fantastically detailed and obviously engrossing costuming, the group has channeled their efforts into a national movement to seek out support for multiple issues, one of them (as seen above) being AIDS walk participation.
Boo
16 OctCelebrating Halloween is an art form. Last year, a local man caused a stir when he lit up a decked out display of Obama with a cash blockage up his backside while Palin hung off the chimney in full red suit and heels. I don’t doubt that this year will be any different in terms of making statements for Halloween. After all, it’s a great excuse to honor a centuries old pagan tradition, or if you’re feeling sexy, another reason to put your T and A on display. That’s where Santa Monica Boulevard comes in, or clubzone. Around California, there’s plenty to choose from for a frightful night: Universal Studios, Knottsberry Farm, Disneyland and of course, there’s always miles of pumpkin patches, like Mr. Bones’ Pumpkin Patch; A popular destination for celebrities.
Slowly but surely, the ghosts have moved in, the skeletons crept up out of their crypts and placed their bones about, the pumpkins are smiling and the mangled spiders have grown in size. My neighbors have a case of “Maman”:
I know the pictures have bad exposure, but all I had was a camera phone in 6am light, which is to say no light at all.
Holiday Haze
15 OctThe Pumpkins are out, the lights have been wrapped around Palm trees…can you feel it?! The Holidays are approaching.
It’s Fall, Didn’t You Know
14 OctThe rain followed me to L.A. Boulder traded theirs for snow.
A flood of drizzle blankets the city in a never-ending pelt, cleansing the town of its dry dust; now swiftly moving into the sewers and out to sea.
Other than the traffic, which ebbs even slower when water abounds, there isn’t much that can’t be found in other metropolitans under a downpour – the people running, newspapers above heads, colorful umbrellas, crowds shivering under stoops and covered bus stop benches. However, there is one despotic change – the smell. Some sort of scented emanation has erupted; wherever I am – chugging up along Fairfax, gunning it on the 110 Highway – I am hit with a redolence of rosemary, jasmine and dense earthy dirt. As it happens, everything has turned darker – with the sun no longer shining, the bark of trees soaked to black – and the contrast sets the greenery on fire; the greens greener, the yellow leaves yellower.
This sort of approximate weather change occurs each year; the sudden transition from summertime heatstroke to chilly torrential downpour strikes the line between Summer and Fall, and suddenly we’re swathed in wool coats and cashmere sweaters when a week prior, weekends meant neon bikinis and surfing at the beach. Though the weather is expected to be temporal and therefore hardly marks the Fall season inasmuch as the yellowing and falling leaves in the Midwest. Likewise, it is the beginning of a season that goes mostly unrecognized in Los Angeles – that is, unless a mudslide or fire threatens to drown us in a different sort of downpour.
Despite the decorous scenery and enchanting aroma, which seem to occur on the precipice of any sort of jeopardy (i.e. recent red dust storms in Australia), each weather change invites a new hazard. For those recently travailed with fires, they now face another endemic adversity – that of mudslides. California is indeed a concrete jungle – if the taxes don’t kill you (or the people, or the traffic), Mother Nature might.
Meeting Margaret Atwood
9 OctNothing could’ve stopped the butterflies, or arrested my anxiety. I bought two books for two people, myself and my Mother, and darted up the stairs to the event room. I was number 186, my Mother was 187.
Whenever I intend to read Margaret Atwood, a sudden queue happens – that of Enya. Enya is important to Margaret Atwood is important to me because both artists conjure up strong visions of escape. Enya is my go-to soundtrack for vast icy landscapes, Celtic islands, mysterious deserts and those who I imagine strongest to pass through those places: the medieval women in long robes with knives in their underwear, the Amazonian warrior with spear aloft in praise of a recent victory. Margaret Atwood is my go-to for the origins of those survivalist women. Though her literature does not always deal with a broken bird, her characters are survivors – of society, of themselves (destructive natures), of men, of children, of nature. Ms. Atwood talks a lot about Grimm’s Fairy Tales as an influence, most notably for their leading ladies and the intelligence assigned to them. I am happy to hear this; and reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales conjures a similar feeling and thought when I read Margaret Atwood; that in some distant, parallel or concurrent world, I am reading about someone whose world is magical, whose intelligence overcame adversity, whose strength of character set her free. By the age of twenty, I had read everything of Ms. Atwood’s (save a few collections of poems) and I’ve never gotten her out of my head (if that can be said without sounding like a stalker).
On Sunday, October 4th, Margaret Atwood made an appearance at The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado to promote her newest publication titled The Year of the Flood. An expectant and exhiliarated audience gathered in anticipation of her two o’clock arrival at the local independent bookstore; ready to hear and see the woman whose work has meant so much to multiple generations of readers. Ms. Atwood did not disappoint.
Her newest tome delves into the same world as Oryx and Crake but at a different location. Ms. Atwood is adept at taking an assumption, a belief, or an attitude and exploring its depths to the fullest conclusion and furthest implications. In The Year of the Flood she explores a world left without a superfluous human population, scientific explorations including gene-splicing and not-so-organic food and a world where religious sects, once ignored, prove far greater a risk than once assumed. The synopsis in full:
The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners – a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life – has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God’s Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.
Have others survived? Ren’s bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Pain-ballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Pain-ball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers.
Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo’hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can’t stay locked away.
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.
With her latest offering comes a thorough and interactive website through which to experience the books’ culture; best of all, a collection of hymns from God’s Gardeners. Set to these tunes, Ms. Atwood explained her story, questions about it and why her books aren’t prophetic, just current axioms taken to their foremost conclusion (take the time to notice what is happening around you.) For instance, regarding The Handmaid’s Tale, she said that she didn’t use anything that hadn’t already happened somewhere in the world (if you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale that is a frightening statement about our past and current circumstances.) Throughout the presentation, she was intelligent, gracious, witty, funny, and wonderfully magnanimous – even after two hours of signing books – allowing each person the chance to have several signed copies, often with personalizations.
On Friday, October 9th, she will appear at UCLA in Los Angeles.
I’d like to think Ms. Atwood was amused by me as evidenced by her expression (seen only partially above) as seen in the photo above. At this point, we have talked, she has noticed my Mother taking photos and heard her elicit the name of my blog whereby Margaret not only asks if I want to take a picture with her behind the desk (literally right next to her), but also, that she would like me to write down the name of my blog and twitter page. A winning moment. If the celebrated author takes only one glance at my pages, I will have lived a dream.
Nice View
9 Oct
Fourteen hours of road tripping has finally landed me back in L.A. From Boulder to Vegas, from Vegas to L.A., it was (luckily) an uneventful drive. Happy to be back.
Rain Dance
5 Oct
I prayed for rain. I prayed for rain when I came home to Colorado because the stale air in California was starting to make my skin peel. Upon my arrival, the rain came in a downpour. It makes navigating the city a cold, damp endeavor, but the chilly air conjures up lit fireplaces and steaming cocoa, and I’m snuggled in my favorite bookstore, the best whip cream in the world, surrounded by the earthy, flagstone (almost all buildings are made of it here), organically obsessed, city of Boulder. There is no traffic, there is no walk of fame, there are no tourists (well, you can’t tell anyway), there are only the makeup-free faces of incoming freshmen on campus and an abundance of independent coffee shops, bookstores and bicycle repair stores. A relaxing reprieve. I haven’t slept better in weeks.
NO SAINTS IN L.A. 