Adios, Los Angeles

Well, as of tomorrow morning, I'm out of here for a week. I will be vacationing con mi familia in Montana. Big Sky Country here I come. I'll fly out of LAX tomorrow at the painful hour of 6:AM, (which means i have to check in at 5AM which means i have to wake up at 4:30AM) and will land in Butte around 11:30AM. Mama and Papa will pick me up to go stay at the Schroeder Family cabin, and we'll be joined by Laurel + Family, and my aunt, uncle and niece. What a Schroeder time!

Thanks to the film, Join Us, as described in a previous post, I learned that one of the countries largest Apocalypse cults also resides in Montana. Maybe I'll join the Church Universal Triumphant while I'm there. Only if I get to wear my yellow cult scarf. See you in a week!

Paperdoll

My grandma Joy gave me a big basket of old fabric that she got from her mom. I've had it in my craft room for a while and I rummage through it a lot looking for project material. There is this little paper doll my Great-Grandma Mankins made that lives in there. She's like a little fabric gnome that lives in my basket. She's super old paper, and has held up really well, preserved in the layers of material. I want to make her into a christmas ornament for the tree....

Musica

Here's what I'm listening to lately, over and over. The Living Legends album has a great song called "Artsy" that cracks me up with such great lines as,
"You aint artsy-er than me,
'cause you got sideburns and wear a vintage tee,
just cause you speak real soft and you drink chai tea,
no you aint artysy-er than me
just cause you only read books don't watch TV,
cause you drive a hybrid and carpool with three,
cause you shop at Whole Foods in open toed shoes"
it's good hilariousness with a really great beat in the back. The whole albulm is good, and great for driving around in my bee car feeling bright and happy.

The new White stripes album is great too, I just got it from Kristen, but listening to it at work makes me want to leave work and go on a trip to the country or some music festival and dance and drink in the sunshine. So instead, I sit at my computer under the bad lights and pretend. My favorite track so far is Rag and Bone, I love it. I like to picture them walking into people's houses and sizing it up to see what they can do with all their stuff and remake it / resell it.

The new Feist album, I can't stop listening to, it's so smooth and lovely and refreshing, I especially love track 2, I Feel It All. These are my summer soundtrack albums, it's nice that the warm weather and bright colors are here at last.

Join Us

Last night, David took me to see Join Us, a documentary that's part of the LA Film Fest in Westwood, about cults in America. The film was shown in the Billy Wilder theater at the Hammer Museum. The theater is all pink inside and has these crazy lights like stars over you that made me feel a little crazy to begin with, but it was cool.

It's about brainwashing and mind-control in our country overall, but it follows families that are trying to recover leaving their church in South Carolina. It's this really intimate, insightful look into how so many small Christian Churches slowly evolve into cult status without realizing it - and I had no idea how many such tiny operations exist here - apparently America is the number 1 breeding ground of cults in the world, and it's really not shocking when, as the director put it in the after Q&A session, you consider the 2004 election.

She described her movie as picking up a rock in America to see what was crawling underneath. You mostly felt for the children in the movie, the particular church they were in practiced heavy child abuse, to drive out the inherent demons in all children. Beating 3 month old babies, making the kids run in circles until they vomited, and then beating them with PCV pipes to keep them running, it was heartbreaking. Also, they interview and spend a lot of time with the Pastor and his wife, and it allows you to also see their humanity and them trying to deal with loosing what they very much considered to be their family of diciples. Here's a link to the site where you can watch the trailer: http://www.joinusthemovie.com/mainflash.html

satellite of love

I had to repost this image I saw on BoingBoing today. I love them!
"A man watches from a balcony as satellite dishes are seen on buildings in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The project to 'pimp' the dishes is an initiative of a Dutch artist working with school children in an area of the city referred to as 'satellite city,' inhabited predominantly by first and second generation immigrants. The hooks on the roof are used all over the city to move furniture in and out of apartments using a rope and pulley, as the staircases are narrow."

Somebody's Getting Married...

This Saturday we attended Kriztianna and Joel's long awaited wedding ceremony at Lake Casitas, near Ojai. We arrived early to set up our tent, and it turned out we were a little too early. No other guests were there yet, so we entertained ourselves with the beer David brought, and a deck of Uno cards. I was on an antibiotic that makes me sensitive to sun rays, so I turned muslim for a while.

Soon enough, guests were arriving, the only people in the hoard of Hungarians and Mexicans that I knew were friends Meghan and Melissa. Meg took her beer to the seating area when the cremony began, with my support.
Kriztianna looks so beautiful and happy, and spent the whole day in a higher state of bliss than I've ever seen. I didn't think such happiness was possible in one tiny body, but now I've seen it with my own eyes. I tried my best to get shots around the Hungarian heads in front of me.


After the lovely ceremony, the bridal party went to take photos, and the crowd was entertained by bellydancing. David and I were entertained by this kid who could put his leg over his head.


We got to see the newlyweds as they made their rounds, and got a close up view of the bride's bedazzled sneakers.


Later in the day I was treated to a soaking of sparkling cider knocked off the table, and then showered with spray from some Dos Equis being opened next to me on the other side. Shortly after, my left arm took a turn for the worse with 2 large red rashes puffing up. We made a mad dash back into town around 8pm to get some medication to counteract my rash-i-ness and missed the bouquet toss. I did get some cake before David and I gave up and bedded down in the tent a little after 10 pm. I made 2 sleepy hikes up the road to the portipotties that got scary by this time in the dark with shiny wet spots and TP everywhere, only to discover in the morning, a port-a-pottie quite closer to our left side I could have been using. All in all, I had a great time, but in the morning was a sicky yucky mess, and ready to get home to my shower.



Oh, and here's a foggy morning shot of the bridal tee pee, where I belive the happy couple spent their first married night.
PS my arm rash has greatly improved :)

Tricks

I stole some pics from Mom's blog of kitty doing his stand up trick! Little fatty will do anything for food...

Father's Day Window

Check out the glory of my Father's Day window at the Citadel outlets. Yes, this is what I do - I make giant surfboards out of gator board with polos tacked to them and awesome surfer banners and splendidly striped interior signage!

The Mama and the Papa

Last night, my parents dropped in for dinner. They are on the beginning of a summer road trip that will eventually land them in Montana, where I'll join them and the rest of the fam for some July 4th fun at the cabin. Mom brought this great pin featuring a pre-school photo of yours truly, that David is pretty excited to wear on his jacket. And below photos are evidence of a night of double beans at JR's, and what they can do to a boy and his cat. Elwood is lanquishing on the after-smell of ribs alone.

Solstice Canyon

On Saturday morning, we hiked in Malibu a trail called Solstice Canyon. It was a very mild hike, non-strenuous at all, but this was perfect for me as I've been a little under the weather. It was a lovely morning, and we were the only people out for a hike, wich was nice and solitary. The trail ends at the abandoned remains of the Roberts house (built in 1952, burned down in 1982). It's really cool, fragments of the building left amid trees and plants that have taken over since, and stone steps leading to a waterfall. We could only imagine what swingin' good times were had out here during the 50's at some swanky Robert's family party. Another good find was a golden Jesus in an open garage door. I have tried to Hockney together some photos for a more complete view of nauture's glory.

I Delight in Mr. Lee

Mr. Lee is a cat with a tiny key-chain size digital camera strapped to his collar. His owner rigged it up with a special casing, and remote, so he could document Mr. Lee's outdoor adventures. I love that he is so interested, as he puts it, "in the secret life of cats." On the site you can see photos from Mr. Lee's day, as he traverses nature and has secret cat meetings under cars.

http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/index.htm

It Came From The Sea

Friday night we had a Drawing Night at Kristen's apartment. In attendance: John-Michael, Agata, Christine, Kristen (obviously), David and myself. Our theme was It Came From The Sea, and we covered her table with a big roll of paper, and attacked it with markers. Photos also feature Emma the cat, tail-less in all her glory.

Dorothea Doubtfire?

I forgot to mention, that last night during the perfomance, we learned a very astounding bit of trivia: Dorothea Lang's granddaughter wrote the screenplay for the movie Mrs. Doubtfire.

If you don't know who Dorothea Lang is, here's a rundown: influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography. The photos she took are heartbreaking and gorgeous. I won't comment on the merit of Mrs. Doubtfire.

How amazingly awful!

Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys

Last evening David and I had a date at the Steve Allen Theater, to see Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys, a truly original vaudeville type performance. I picked him up at work, David works in the Taft Building on Hollywood and Vine.Then we drove to the Steve Allen Theater, wich turns out to be just around the corner from the Dresden. (Moriah, if you come visit we'll go to the Lounge and have a good Swingers time...)We wandered the neighborhood a while, then went to see the show. We got in line, and were the youngest people there. All about me, old-timers, prooving David and I are prematurely old, that this is our idea of a good time. But it WAS a good time, this theater is some kind of old-people hangout, but it's really cool. First there was a show of "rare film shorts" by Jerry Beck, which were these great old black and white cartoons from the 20's and 30's. Then the musical performance. I found a great discription on her website to desbribe it: "Bearing an ever-expanding repertoire of, as she puts it, "obscure, lovely and naughty songs from the 1910's , 20's and 30's," Janet Klein is a musical archeologist hiding in the body of an F. Scott Fitzgerald heroine." The parlor boys played piano, accordian, upright bass, cornet, banjo, mandolin, and Janet herself croons with a ukulele. She had a special guest Vincent Cortese who was a Ukulele star, I'd never seen anyone play an instrument like it, or hands move so fast like humming bird wings.
We were having a great time, and then I detected a very certain odor in the air, and asked David to confirm. Yes, someone in the theater wet themself. One of these old-timers had to go and just did. The smell of urine is unmistable, though we tried to convince ourselves maybe it was some bad, sour popcorn, but no one was eating popcorn. I had been suffering the over-airconditioned room with monster goosebumps, but now became thankful for the powerful ventilation. Pee aside, we had a great old-timey time.