10.21 Getty

Some notes to myself:

• Karl Benjamin
• Vija Celmins
• Walter Hopps Hopps Hopps
• Cloud Box
• Untitled (Venice)
• Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas (duh)
• North Wall
• Red Concave Circle (way cooler than Gray Column)
  

Samuel M. Buddha

Samuel M. Buddha a photo by neonspecs on Flickr.

Seattle Art Museum

DSC05018a a photo by neonspecs on Flickr.

I went to see the Maira Kalman exhibition at the Skirball yesterday. I liked it way more than I expected; I liked it a lot. But, after leaving, I wanted to learn more about her husband, Tibor. Check out this interesting biography.

Zombie!

Me and Sahr from Fela dancing from Terry Richardson on Vimeo.

Duck tape or duct tape? Is there a difference?

Y'all know how much I love the L.A. River. WSJ discusses the Pasadena Museum of Art's current exhibit (Lillian, we still have to go!)

Can freeways have character? Do they deserve to be preserved?

Pretender, contender, or defender? I don't like any of them.

In other news, I encountered one of the kids from that newish Parenthood show at Royce last week, and she was not cool. As I guess I sorta expected. The show was alright but now I'll just think about her ridiculous eye rolling and expectation of preferential treatment.

I saw Warren Christopher at the mall on Thursday and he was super adorable, although I feel like that may be an inappropriate way to describe a man who was not so long ago the United States Secretary of State. Anyways, he is super adorable and immaculately dressed. A man with much panache.

In other celebrity news (Warren Christopher is a celebrity, right?), Leonard Nimoy went to see Patti Smith at the Hammer and I got really excited about this. Eric McCormack (Will, really, he won't ever be able to be anything else) went to hear Neil Gaiman at Royce, and so did Eric J. Lawrence, your Local Public Radio Music Librarian (KCRW, at which I volunteered this morn, takin' your moneyyyyy) [If you happen to read this and it weirds you out that I am reporting this and increasing your celebrity to my four, maybe five loyal readers, EJL, let me know and I will delete it].

Finally, as also a member of KCET (yeah, look at me, your unemployed friend so liberally donating her time and money [I want to use the word "largesse" but can't figure out how]), I attended a "gala" at the California Science Center and California African American Museum with Tavis Smiley (whom Greg hates for reasons unbeknownst to me). I actually like Smiley a little less after I heard him speak this evening. He just seemed so not happy to be there, plus he complained about a lack of appreciation for culture in Los Angeles, which was just annoying. Eh, but the food was great (Creole, Jamaican, Ethiopian, and something else), and a few of the exhibits were nice. I especially recommend "Harlem of the West: Jazz, Bebop, and Beatnik" at CAAM and the awesome paintings/carvings of musicians that are from the walls of an old jazz club in Texas, of all places (Jake Morrow, you don't read my blog, but you should go check out this exhibition to see the section of Harry Smith. Hurry, it closes soon!). Smiley's America I Am at the Science Center was whatever. It's probably great if it's been a while since you were in high school or if your school was racist. It's never bad to be reminded of the things covered in the exhibition but it wasn't mind-blowing or anything like that.

As a result of this post, I looked up the origin of "panache." Wikipedia says it was once a marker of character worthy of suspect, until Cyrano de Bergerac. Literally, it means plume. FYI.

Interesting articles I read today.

Anthony Bourdain reflects on 2007.
Jonathan Gold was only freelancing? Crazy.
I'm sad I never went to the Southwest Museum.
Although it took me way more than 25 minutes to get through to my gate last week, this article makes a convincing argument for the "Israelification" of American airports.
The Offline American.

After returning the portrait, the art thieves reclined

Did you know the Los Angeles Police Department has an Art Theft Detail? Did you know it is the only only full-time municipal art investigative unit in the United States? It's a good thing, too, considering how, as Greg Allen says, "Seriously, there is some great art in LA. Or at least there was, until it got JACKED."

One of the stolen pieces is one of Andy Warhol's portraits of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. According to the aforementioned Allen, eight were commissioned by the man who had one set of athletes' portraits stolen. I have my own picture somewhere of one that hangs in the UCLA Chancellor's Residence, on loan from the Hammer Museum (perhaps they got one of the 4/8 given away), but this one will have to do because I can't find it. I have no real opinion on Chancellor Block's wife other than that I really enjoy her statement to the Daily Bruin: "'I met Kareem at a UCLA event recently and I said, ‘Oh, I see you every day.'"

What I'm Not Doing Tonight

(What up what up LACMA !)

playlist for LACMA

• Leonard Cohen - A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes
• Beach Boys - Heroes and Villains
• Antony and the Johnsons - Shake the Devil
• Esthero - Superheroes
• Old 97's - Up the Devil's Pay
• Llibertines - Time for Heroes
• Starlight Mints - Seventeen Devils
• Danielson - Propaganda for a Comic Strip
• The Kinks - Superman
• Roxy Music - India
• Tommy Dorsey - Song of India
• Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Little Demon
• Steve Earle - Angle is the Devil
• Blitzen Trapper - Devil's A-go-go
• The Anniversary - Devil on My Side
• Marty Robbins - Devil Woman
• Rufus Wainwright - Evil Angel
• Willie Bobo - Evil Ways
• The Smiths - Handsome Devil
• The Germs - Lexicon Devil
• Helen Shapiro - Little Devil
• Robert Johnson - Me and the Devil Blues
  

hello.

I've been wasting a lot of time on the internet today, which is fitting because I took a four day hiatus from the interweb and it was fabulous. Anyways, following is a variety of things 1) I want, 2) I want to read at a later point (but I'm not on my computer so I can't just bookmark them), 3) that are interesting, 4) or whatever.

Items of clothing/stuff I can't afford to purchase: purple sweater blazer, tank top (by the way, why are these called tank tops?), bow tie necklace ('guess this means I will miss being an usher), clogs, bag (in orange).

Listen: Turkish Psych Funk!

Read: Gas station architecture, sea&space

Look: Wu Tang meets Blue Note, Museum of Online Museums

Go?: Fiesta Shalom (name = eeek), MOTA day(although the name would possibly be worse than Fiesta Shalom, I would totally buy 'Arroyo Fro-yo')

Congressional Checkerboard Bludgeon

Oh, how those spam subject lines get more interesting everyday!

To start off this post how I ended the previous post, following are a few eBay items that I highly recommend. While last time they were not my size, this time they are just above my I-have-no-money-but-I-buy-things-anyways limit of 25 dollars. These Miu Miu pumps are kinda crazy, exactly how I like them. I have had a pair of these in my "My eBay" for a least a year, but every pair I put in there gets too expensive. Perhaps not for you. The Marni ones fail in the size category as well as the price category (although just by one dollar, I am a stickler to my rule or I would be broke). They are really quite fab, however, with that trusty black, gray, and white combination.

Yesterday, I attended the last Indie 103.1-presented "Also I Like to Rock" events at the Hammer Museum featuring Sea Wolf and Midnight Movies. While I've been to MOCA's Nightvision and LACMA's night events (with a title I can't remember) and Getty's Fridays off the 405, even Hammer's own Hammer Bash!es, I had never been to one of these before. Not much difference, except that the overall hipster quota was more than met--to an obnoxious extent, actually. We had all ages represented here, too. The whore-y 13yr-olds in their leggings tucked into cowboy boots with American Apparel lamé (isn't it great how if you type that without the accent it's just lame; really quite a revealing fact, I say) leotards underneath some horrible empire-waisted tunic, the summer-before-college-just-graduated-high-school "I-am-so-awesome" boys with their skinny jeans, the mid20s-mid30s alcoholic folks with posses, and the old men sort-of-dancing and just looking creepy. Going to the events which I do, I have come to expect such ideas of cool. This just had so much of it that I was overwhelmed.

OK, now that I have finished ranting, y'all really should check out Sea Wolf. I started mentioning him to my friends around June of 2006 after I saw him open for Seu Jorge (weird pairing) at the El Rey. While most of the crowd was bored, and I was admittedly a little myself at first (although probably just not in the mood to have anything get in the way of Jorge's Brazilian excitement), I ended up really enjoying their set. Especially the songs "Middle Distance Runner" and "Black Dirt." But when I got home and looked them up, there was barely any info anywhere. Then suddenly a few months later, they were everywhere. Now they are signed to Dangerbird Records and being touted by indie tastemakers everywhere! crazy. And it seems that most of the people at the Hammer last night were there to see Sea Wolf and not the, at-this-point stalwarts, Midnight Movies. Too bad they didn't perform either Middle Distance Runner or Black Dirt. (Correction, he did play Black Dirt.)

Check out the post I wrote about the Alex Church & co. at the UCLAradio.com blog back in August of last year to hear their single, "You're a Wolf." The EP Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low is out now, first full length out in September.

Download: The Garden That You Planted (mp3)