toadberry

January 14, 2012

2012-01-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

Say what you will, I love LA.

Reflections

2011-12-31T14:16:00.001-08:00

I could spin a spiel about reflection and their relevance at the end of the calendar year, but I just can't be arsed. The truth is, I have a handful of nifty photos I want to post.

I took this one while getting a pedicure. There are mirrors on both walls, facing each other, resulting in an interesting layering of visual information. At least I thought so.

This is the shiny floor of Arclight Hollywood's lobby in the daytime.

This is the same lobby at night, and shot from the opposite direction. Those gold squigglies atop are the movie showing times.

I took this photo last night. Stopping by the neighborhood grocery store, I notice the reflections on a black SUV and couldn't resist.

This image is from a while ago. It's the entrance of the Flamingo hotel in Vegas, and its reflection on the trunk of a cop car.

Have a good new year, peeps.

Whatever, Really

2011-12-23T22:28:00.001-08:00

Flea Market

2011-12-14T07:52:00.001-08:00

The first Sunday of December was a beautiful day: bright, sunny, with a seasonally appropriate nip in the air. Complete opposite of the one in November.

No surprise then that the Pasadena Flea Market was busier than a beehive on spring cleaning day.

I bagged yet another typewriter, but will post picture of that later. I have three now.

The flea market is also a great place of holiday shopping for the budget conscious. And honestly, who wouldn't want an eighties style red leather jacket for Christmas? Look how many zippers it has!

If you think twelve bucks is too much for this old toy, you can always haggle. Although, some take it to extreme. I came across a new vendor, a Chinese couple who wouldn't take no for an answer. I thought I might have to chew off a limb if I wanted to escape without purchasing something.

Ain't these great? Just think about filling them up with hot cocoa and then topping it off with giant marshmallows. It would be like drinking Santa's brain!

These should be sold by the pound.

Tired from all the walking? Put your feet up!

Well that's it for now, I'm packing it in.

Happy Krampus Day!

2011-12-06T08:36:00.001-08:00

In parts of Europe St. Nicholas' Day is celebrated on December 6th. On the night of the 5th St. Nicholas - Mikulás in Hungary - comes around and leaves small gifts - mostly fruits, nuts, candy where I came from - to those who'd been nice. The interesting part is that he has a demonic sidekick, Krampus (Krampusz in Hungary). This guy is generally portrayed as an ugly, furry creature with horns, sometimes with one human foot and one cloven one, sometimes with two of the latter. His job is to take the naughty children away, not sure where.

Denmark has something similar, Sinterklaas, but there St. Nick arrives on a steamboat and his sidekick is Zwarte Piet, a politically incorrect black guy, who takes the bad children to...Spain! If that's not enough reason to be naughty in the middle of the Danish winter, I don't know what is.

Gallivanting in the Garden

2011-11-26T15:24:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday was a day rotten to the core – rainy, gloomy, good for nothing but staying inside and hibernating. But then Monday did a complete hundred-and-eighty with sunny skies and balmy temperatures.

So I went to The Huntington. It’s a shame, I know, but I’d never been before. The Japanese Garden is closed for sprucing up, but the place is still plenty big to kill several hours.

In one corner I found piles and piles of wonderfully prickly cacti. They made me think of Dive.

For most part you’re allowed to walk on the grass too - that’s how I found these delightfully slimy shrooms. I think they are Velvet Foot Mushrooms, but won’t swear to it.

I found some stone children frolicking around – my favorite kind, they’re very quiet.

Stone people need stone chairs to sit on.

One of these days I need to go back to check out the library and the museum too.

Turkey

2011-11-20T09:02:00.000-08:00

I know it's not Turkey Day yet, but I was in the mood. I got a nice half turkey breast and stuffed herbed butter under the skin. I also boiled some potatoes, sliced them up and put them in the bottom of the roasting pan. On top I placed the turkey breast, and into the oven they went. During roasting some of the butter escaped, nicely juicing up the potatoes. Delish!

I didn't make cranberry sauce because I had some from COSTCO - yummy and all natural.

Flea Market

2011-11-06T07:57:00.001-08:00

It's cold, wet, and miserable today, and there's no way I'm going anywhere, even the flea market. However, I've never posted last month's pictures. So here they are!

Ferret circus. Why not? I bet Hamlet is much more fun with ferrets.

I kinda wish I bought this bunny-shaped tea pot. I don't know what I'd do with it, but it's fantastic.

Once a hustler, always a hustler.

Only you can prevent forest fires! Oh wait, wrong bear.

Dummies freak me out.

Spooky

2011-10-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

Spooky, spooky, oh whoa, all right
Spooky, oh yeah yeah
I said Spooky yeah yeah...

It's the season for the scary, freaky and bizarre.

Haunted cake.

I hope it's gooey inside.

And I thought Hollywood was freakish enough already.

Lord Voldemort would disagree.

No comment.

Look Ma, there is a face in my pelvis!

...

Chestnut Cheesecake

2011-10-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

I was rooting through my cupboard and found a can of chestnut spread I probably bought as an impulse once. It was a billion years old, but being in a tin it could have added another billion and it still would be good. I opened it and found it sweet. Wondering what the heck to do with it, I figured cheese cake could work. I just had to adjust a recipe I had already. Here it is:

Chestnut Cheesecake

Crust
2 cups of finely ground cinnamon graham crackers
1 stick (4 oz) melted butter

Filling
8 0z cream cheese softened at room temperature
8 oz sour cream
8 oz chestnut spread (technically it was slightly more, but who's counting?)
4 eggs
1/2 cup sugar

Preaheat the oven to 325º F

In a mixing bowl combine the crust ingredients with a wooden spatula until it's all even. Coat the bottoms and sides of your baking pan with the mix. Use your hand; don't be a wuss. If you want to be all proper, use a springform pan, but only if you have extra wide aluminum foil at hand. If you don't, use a solid baking pan.

In a bowl slowly beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer till it's smooth - ca. one minute. Add the eggs one by one, continuing to beat slowly. Add sugar and beat till creamy. Add chestnut spread and sour cream. Mix well. Don't forget to scrape down the sides of the bowl time to time. Pour the filling into the crust-lined pan.

If you used springform, set it on a sheet of oversized aluminum foil and fold up the sides around it. Place the pan in a large roasting pan. Pour boiling water into the pan till it comes hallway up to the pie pan.

Bake for 45 minutes. It will still jiggle in the middle, but it will firm up. Cool for 30 minutes, then chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Okay, so it doesn't have the prettiest color, but it tastes good.

iGallery Augury

2011-10-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve realized that these days almost all my posts are about the flea market – meaning that I post once a month. So just to break the pattern, I will post something else, even though I went to the flea market yesterday. Instead, here it is a random selection of iPhotos with a nonsensical commentary. Enjoy. Or not. It’s all the same to me.

The world will end in 2411. Don’t you believe me? You fool.

I have irrefutable evidence – I divined it myself from this double egg yolk. It’s so obvious.

The Heavens will split open,

and the Earth shall rupture.

From the depths of the Sea,

the beasts will rise.

Humankind will be split into two, to be sent to Heaven

and Hell.

Or did I mix the two up?

Papoo's Hot Dog Show

2011-09-04T17:18:00.000-07:00

Is no more. And that makes me sad.

Papoo's still stand on the corner of Riverside and Rose at the edge of Toluca Lake and Burbank.

There used to be a cool sign up front, but it's gone already.

I had breakfast at Papoo's a few times after friends of mine moved to the neighborhood. It was nice cozy place, and the food was way better than at Bob's Big Boy across the street.

I don't know what happened, but I'm guessing it might have something to do with the economy. What doesn't.

If you want to know more you can join "Save Papoo's Hot Dog Show" on Facebook.

Summer Time

2011-08-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

And the living is easy. Supposedly.

There's a heat wave here in L.A. The temperature hit 106º F yesterday here in the Valley. Meanwhile, Hurricane Irene is threatening to wipe New Jersey off the map. I jest.

My brain has turned to mush from the heat; no clue what to write.

So enjoy some more flea market photos.

Three

2011-07-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've gotten inconveniently busy as of late. It shall pass. Till then I have random flea market weirdness.

I found these two singing trios at two different stalls, far apart from each other. They're completely different, yet similar.

Makes you think that there should have been a third somewhere, but there wasn't. Or maybe there was, I just didn't find it. Have I failed a mystical quest of utmost importance I didn't know I had?

I frequently have the feeling that reality is swooshing over my head, while I stand like a half-blind wretch in the grocery store, surrounded by blur.

I was listening to Spider Robinson's The Callahan Chronicles, and an expression jumped out at me: "flurry of triplets." I thought "What a great utterance!" and was jealous that I didn't come up with it, like Chanlder's "The streets were dark with something more than night." Then I Googled it, and apparently "flurry of triplets" is a musical term? And I was picturing three identical ankle biters turning a house upside-down.

Scandalous!

2011-05-22T09:24:00.001-07:00

So the world didn't end. Again. I'm trying to be magnanimous about it but it's hard not to feel smug when a bunch of bigots and homophobes end up with eggs on their faces.

So instead, here are a few shocking images.

I have to admit I haven't worn pantyhose in a decade. I don't like them; wearing them makes me feel like a sausage stuffed into a plastic casing.

It makes me wonder how a thin, sheer layer nylon (or silk) could ever been the dividing line between decent and indecent.

Downtown

2011-04-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

Nobody likes to be called in for jury duty, but it's like the flu: sooner or later you gonna get it. I had my on-call thing this week. I called in night after night and got the automated message saying that I didn't have to go in the next morning. I forgot to call in in on Thursday night, so I did in Friday morning. I found out I needed to report to the downtown courthouse 7:30 am that morning. It was 7:15. So I went to downtown instead of work. I got to the courthouse by 8:30. The clerks were just getting around rounding up the potential jurors.

So there we were in the courtroom going through the jury selection, people getting called into "the box," lawyers asking questions. There were a few colorful characters, like the skinny white boy in his very early twenties talking fluent jive 'bout homies an' stuff. The really funny part came when the plaintiff's lawyer, a black man in his forties asked the kid if he'd seen Airplane. The lawyer even quoted "I can speak Jive." If you're old like me you probably have seen the movie and remember the scene with the little old white lady translating jive to the stewardess. (If you don't, hang your head in shame.) The kid in the courtroom just said he didn't watch much television. Sadly, the hilarity of the moment zipped straight over his head.

At lunchtime I walked past the L.A. Times building. In the floor-to-ceiling window of a ground floor office sat an old front page declaring that the "ALLIES LAND IN ROME." For a second I read it as "ALIENS LAND IN ROME."

In the end I dodged the bullet and I'm no safe for a year. Good thing because all I did all day is sit on my ass and I'm exhausted.

Flea Market Fun

2011-04-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

Flea market is like a treasure hunt: best undertook in comfortable shoes.

I struck gold again: this beautiful Underwood 4-band portable from circa the 1920's. She's a beaut, ain't she?

There was a whole lot of stuff I didn't buy, like a pile of mismatched cutlery.

Or this... teapot?

Fashionable hat.

I was tempted by the monkey, but held strong.

Yeah...

Okay, I have absolutely no idea what this is about, but I have the vague feeling that somehow it's racist.

iGallery

2011-03-06T07:51:00.001-08:00

I took a trip to the army surplus store.

Thoughts for Food

2011-02-27T18:27:00.000-08:00

The other week friends and I went to this Chinese restaurant in Arcadia that had dumplings with soup inside. It was delicious. I was so taken that I forgot to snap pictures.

The next day we had brunch at The Hungry Cat. This restaurant is in Hollywood, close to the Arclight Theatres there. It's damn convenient for a dinner and a movie. Or a Brunch and a movie. I'm so addicted to The Hungry Cat that if I don't go for a few months I get the shakes.

We shared oysters and octopus salad for starts. The octopus was tender and smoky.

I don't remember what this is, except that that's a duck egg.

I had Chicken and Waffles. Roscoe's is the restaurant known for this dish, but in all honesty, their chicken tends to be dry. This chicken was perfect: crispy on the outside and sinfully juicy on the inside. That thing on the top? That's butter.

There were more dishes, plus these babies. After three I was a very happy camper. We didn't have dessert. There were talks of Monkey Bread at the beginning of the meal, but by the end we were too stuffed.

However I can't end food porn without a gratuitous sweets shot. So have this from Porto's.

Btw, I'm having a strong craving for dumplings.

On The Rocks

2011-02-13T07:10:00.000-08:00

I have no idea where this photo was taken. I found it at the flea market.

Lost and Found: The Kiss

2011-01-03T16:40:00.000-08:00

I don't have many photos of public displays of affection. I wish I had more. This not quite like the famous Doisneau photo, but he had Paris for background. This one's looks more like the Hoover Dam. Not quite as romantic.

12/31/01 Little Tokyo

2010-12-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

Lost & Found: Odd One Out

2010-12-26T09:14:00.001-08:00

I adore this picture. It should be in the dictionary next to the definition of "contrast". It's a fairly large photo, so it comes to no surprise that it practically leaped out at me from the pile. All that sea of severe solemnity and in the middle of it the cherub-faced child. And that's not all; everyone of those ladies - and few gentlemen - have character, and hat to match! I just wish I knew what was the occasion.

Lost & Found: A Bird In A Hand

2010-12-25T08:37:00.001-08:00

This image is a minor vernacular masterpiece. When I fished it out of the pile of old photos at the flea market I went "now, that's interesting". It would've been easy to miss, since the actual print is quite small.

Lost & Found: Tall Man

2010-12-24T09:12:00.001-08:00

Whatever happened to Fred Green?

Square America: Christmas

2010-12-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

It's almost over! Just another week of stressing, wrapping, spending too much, crowned with a glorious weekend of stuffing yourself till you pass out, and then we can finally get back to normal.

Lamp!

Back in the days when second-hand smoking was good for you. It built character.

Lovely Do, lovely tree.

I have nothing.

Just the Pretty: Winter

2010-12-12T10:44:00.001-08:00

I'm not a big fan of winter in general. I gladly left the the cold, the slush, the scraping of windshields, and the frozen toes behind when I moved to California.

However, even a curmudgeon like me can appreciate certain aspects of winter; the thick blanket of freshly fallen snow, the way it seems to muffle the world, reality itself, slows down time. The way it hangs from the branches of trees, and crunches under your feet.

Certain things can never be perfectly described. To think about it, language is always frustratingly limited. You have to keep spinning it, piling on the modifiers to conjure the right atmosphere.

The right photo has the power to take a shortcut to those memories in the dusty recesses of your brain. Of course, you have to have the memories to begin with. Otherwise the best it can be is a bundle of pretty, maybe something intriguing.

The picture above is worth clicking on to enlarge. There are some beautiful details there. Apparently it is of the Moseley & Motley Milling Co. from Rochester, NY.

Unfortunately, the above photo was printed on textured paper. I hate that; it obscures too much.

The Future Abhors Sensible Shoes

2010-12-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

Obviously. I saw Tron Legacy a couple of days ago at an advance screening. Nice ambiance, standard plot. The costume, set, everything else designers did a fine job retaining the visual style of the original while making it fresh. I even liked the 3D - for once it wasn't gimmicky. The music went well with the whole thing too. Tell me though: Doesn't Daft Punk in Tron sound just a wee bit like Vangelis?

But this post is not about movies or music, it's about shoes. A plethora of Tron-themed merchandise is about to hit the stores, among them the shoes above. I actually like them. They look cool. Not that I would ever wear them, even if the price wasn't deterrent enough. I don't do heels. There are plenty of other, more creative ways to achieve pain and discomfort - if that's your thing. It doesn't have to be footwear. My shoes come from Sketchers.

That said, it's a little thing, but it bugs me to hell: Why do futuristic badass chicks keep running around in high heels? From Seven of Nine to Quorra. (And isn't that just a very L.A. way to spell Cora?) It makes no frakkin' sense! It's not practical!

That's another of many reasons why I love Serenity/Firefly so much: women kicking ass - in boots. Big ass-kicking boots. I can get behind that.

Flea Market Follies

2010-12-05T18:33:00.001-08:00

Last Flea Market of the year. The weather was pretty decent for December.

Not quite warm enough to warrant this. Maybe she's hitchhiking.

And finally, lunch:

Square America: Together

2010-11-25T09:39:00.001-08:00

Monday at work I was tasked with arranging a meeting with Italian business partners who'd be in town on the last week of November. I sent out an email, with a gentle reminder that there was a holiday over here this week. Their reply was "Silly goose, (not exact wording) we're coming the week after. So I had to explain, that if we didn't nail down the time of the meeting by Wednesday noon the latest, there would be nobody around to reply emails or meeting invitations till Monday. The Italians were somewhat surprised - I don't know why; they themselves took the entire month of August off for vacation. And by that I mean the whole country of Italy.

If you live in the US you know what's going on. If not, let me explain. Dive the amateur anthropologist at least should appreciate.

Thanksgiving is a practice run for Christmas; people - generally related by blood or marriage - come together, play out weird family dynamics, watch TV (football), eat way, way too much food, and drop off into a food coma.

There are some variations on the theme; consuming copious amounts of alcohol or playing football (the American kind) may be involved. In some cases both. There's nothing like drunk men ramming into each other on a cold afternoon. The pain will manifest itself the day after.

The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday is the day when crazed hordes of people swarm the shopping malls. It's a lot like a zombie movie, but the participants move faster, and there is more carnage.

iShoot Square

2010-11-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

I keep playing with my apps. For a long time Hipstamatic was a favorite. Give me John S lens and Ina's 69 film and I was set.

Occasionally I wandered into B&W territory with one of the Blackeys films.

It's funny how all this digital technology that slowly but surely making film, paper and darkrooms obsolete is the sexiest when imitating what it replaces.

Not that I'm bemoaning the lack of chemical fumes and aching feet of ours spent in darkrooms. Along with me across the world a billion bathrooms also sigh in relief.

My chosen Hipstamatic combo has a pronounced greenish tint. Sometimes it works brilliantly. Other times it doesn't.

These days I more often just take a regular photo, then if I like it run it through lo-Mob.

This app applies frames and visual effects after the fact, giving more control to the user.

Lo-Mob has a lot of options, but I'm unfailingly drawn to the "vintage instant - reframed" setting.

I have thing for square images.

Chocolate Loaf

2010-10-29T17:51:00.001-07:00

I'm a sucker for food porn. Oh, wipe that prudish scowl off your face. I know you've stood at the shadowy end of the cookbook isle many a time, perving over glossy spreads that sent lustful messages to your tummy and those traitorous salivary glands, and you thought, "I must have that!" Do not be ashamed of your desires, let your inner food-slut out.

One of my Pasadena blogger friends linked a chocolate cake recipe online. It was intriguing, and came with an absolutely smutty photo of the cake itself. Unfortunately, the recipe contained some gluten-free fussiness. I'm from the old country; I like my gluten, thankyouverymuch. However, the use of banana, molasses, and ground almonds in a chocolate cake tickled my fancy, so I ventured forth to create my own, simplified version.

Baking lies at the crossroads of art, alchemy and butter. It's all about the balance of flavors, wet and dry ingredients, temperature and timing. It gets more complicated when you take only certain components of an existing recipe, and decide to experiment. Add the element of metric conversions, and the outcome is unpredictable; you may discover gunpowder.

Chocolate Loaf

Ingredients

1 stick (4 oz) butter (softened at room temperature)
3 eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
4 oz dark chocolate (60% cacao or higher)
3/4 cup dark molasses*
3 tbs ground almonds (or hazelnut flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1 ripe banana (mashed)
pinch of salt
some brown sugar

Steps

Preheat over to 325º F

Butter a loaf pan and dust it with brown sugar.** Set Aside.

In a large mixing bowl mix together flour, ground almonds, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler. Set aside.

In a bowl mix butter and molasses till smooth and creamy. (Keep a scraper handy, so you can scrape down the sides of the bowl.)

Add the eggs one by one, fully incorporating them in-between.

Mix in the melted chocolate.

Mix in the banana.

Add the flour mix, and blend well.

Pour into the loaf pan and bake 30-40 minutes, until a toothpick or skewer inserted comes out dry. (Some use knives, but skewers leave smaller holes.) Let it cool.

It's my first time making this, and if there's anything to complain about is that it hasn't risen as much as I thought it would. Perhaps more baking powder is in order? Otherwise it's good - moist, chocolaty, and has just the right amount of sweetness. It goes well naked or with jam.

I'm thinking, one could add chopped walnuts or pecan to the cake.

*Molasses usually come in a thick liquid form, but I use Billington's Natural Dark Brown Molasses, and it comes in a sticky, but granulated mass - like brown sugar. I found this product on the shelves of the local supermarket, and it sent me on a molasses-themed self-discovery. I was surprised to learn that it's made by a UK company. They are organic and fair trade, so even better. In the US their products are available in some supermarkets, and on Amazon.

**It's a common practice to dust a greased pan with flour when baking, to help the baked goods separate from the pan. However, when it's something sweet, one can use sugar instead of flour. You'd think it would make the cake stick, but not so. The sugar caramelizes during baking, adding an extra dimension of flavor to your dessert. Regular brown sugar is too clumpy for this, so I use the crystallized kind - it's commonly available in the US these days. If you don't have it, regular sugar will do.

PS. I have none of the skill, equipment, and light to shoot professional food porn. You have to live with my amateur dirty pictures.

Gooey Pumpkin Cake

2010-10-27T07:56:00.001-07:00

It is, from now, till the end of December, and even beyond, the season of pumpkin. Time to try some new twists on the old favorites. This recipe is loosely based on Paula Deen's Gooey Pumpkin Butter Cake, that itself is a take on Gooey Butter Cake. Now, I've eaten Gooey Butter Cake before, and it's so sweet that it'll make your teeth fall out on the spot. A whole box (16 oz) of powdered sugar in the filling will do that. I've also seen Paula Deen and TV, and she's the kind of person who'd deep-fry a stick of butter and serve it with gravy. So I made some changes.

I used brown sugar, because it has nice flavor. To enhance it further I added some molasses. I believe that the dark, deep richness of molasses go exceptionally well with pumpkin. I also changed the crust (yellow cake mix, really?) to one made out of cinnamon graham crackers. It could, of course, be regular graham crackers with cinnamon added.

Gooey Pumpkin Cake

Cake:
16 oz cinnamon graham crackers, ground (it can actually be slightly less)
8 tbs (4 oz) butter, melted

Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
15 oz can of pumpkin
8 tbs butter
3 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 tbs cinnamon
1 tbs nutmeg

Preaheat oven to 350ºF

Combine the ground graham cracker and butter. Pat the mix into the bottom of a lightly buttered 13x9" baking pan.

In a large bowl beat the cream cheese and the pumpkin till smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter, and beat together. Add sugar, cinnamon, molasses, nutmeg, and mix well.

Spread the pumpkin mix over the cake and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. It should still be jiggly in the middle when you take it out of the oven.

Today's Theme: Fishy

2010-10-17T18:47:00.001-07:00

From there to here,
from here to there,
funny things
are everywhere.
(Dr. Seuss)

One Fish

Two Fish

Blue Fish

Red Fish

I Love L.A.

2010-09-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

I really do. For many reason I won't go into right now, but currently I'm in awe of the weather. After biding my formative years under the temperate climates of Europe, the fact that after having spent the previous week turning on the heater and wondering if it's time to pull out the big down comforter, I'm suddenly finding myself in a 100º+F heatwave - at the end of September! - is outright exotic. Even after the slushy winters and sticky summers of Missouri, or the half-the-year-is-winter weather of Northern Indiana it's utterly revolutionary. The 30º+ temperature change from daytime high to night time low is also impressive.

I also adore the fact that the Valleys and the coast have completely independent weather system. Yeah baby!

To you poor cousins living on the other side of the Great Puddle, wrapped in your overcoats and fuzzy shawls, I have only one thing to say: PFFFT!

Smiling Faces and Nudists

2010-09-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

Aka: A Flea Market Quickie

Venice, California

2010-08-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

I applaud the New World's audacity to appropriate the names of Old World places. New York, New York. Paris, Texas. Venice, California. Generally these impostors bear little resemblance to the originals. The two Venices at least have one thing in common: they are both overrun by tourists and sightseers.

There are many beaches along the coast of greater Los Angeles, and they all have their own unique identities. Venice Beach is the freaky one. The is where out of town tourists go to see LA-la Land as advertised. Most of L.A. is disappointingly normal, but not Venice Beach.

WTF Wednesday

2010-08-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

This photo is begging for a caption. The possibilities are endless. Knock yourself out.

Famous Movie Quotes #1

2010-08-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

This is one of my all time favorites.

It reminds me of family get-togethers.

Sonic Screwdriver

2010-08-08T18:00:00.001-07:00

I go to Whole Foods every once in a while. Not often, because who can afford that? Not me that's who. But every once in a while I go. There is a wealth of inspiration in there. For example, Whole Foods has a wide range of fruit juices you won't find in your local grocery store. Hence the inspiration.

This time I give you:

Sonic Screwdriver

Ingredients

A glass large enough to hold 2 cups (16 oz) of liquid
1 oz mint infused vodka*
1 oz ginger liquor
Sant Cruz Organic Mango Orange Juice
fresh mint leaves
ice

Place ice in glass. Add liquor. Pour in Mango Orange juice. Stir. Garnish with mint.

It won't even feel alcoholic, but resist the urge to up the alcohol, because it'll kick you in the face, and won't even apologize for it afterwards. Now, excuse me while I munch on my organic raw goat milk feta cheese.

*What do you mean, you don't have mint infused vodka? What's wrong with you?

Hot!

2010-07-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

We are having a heat wave here in LA. In The Valley the temperatures went up to 95ºF (35ºC). So I feel it appropriate to post some some summer themed vernacular photography.

Despite of hating to sleep with the AC on, I like summer. I like the hot sun bleaching out the landscape.

I like going on local road trips in summer time - taking the long way down to the coast. I take windy little roads that land me far north of the popular beaches of Santa Monica and Malibu.

I don't care a whole lot about the beach itself. The Ocean is an alien thing to me; it smells funny and it's frigging cold. Thanks to the giant clockwise current of the North Atlantic the waters along the West Coast are always frigid. I guess I should be thankful for that, because with warm currents LA would probably be hot and humid like Florida.

Temperatures are supposed to go back down to very manageable low 80's by midweek. At least that's what my phone is telling me, and my phone rarely lies, though occasionally has an alternative interpretation of reality. Existential stuff.

Vanda's Lemonade

2010-07-10T21:01:00.001-07:00

Ingredients:

1 very large glass
ice
2 oz dark rum
1 oz ginger liquor
1/2 oz Agave syrup (or simple syrup)
1 can of sparkling lemonade (San Pellegrino preferably)

Put ice in glass. Add rum, ginger liquor and syrup. Stir. Pour lemonade over it. Stir briefly. Drink.

Flea Market Fourth

2010-07-04T15:53:00.001-07:00

There is a flea market at the Pasadena City College at every first Sunday of the month. This July it falls on the fourth.

Thanks to my recently acquired, and perturbing habit of waking up early, even on weekends, I got out there at a reasonably early hour. There are a lot of things you can find at a flea market - like old cash registers.

Art,

and more art.

Assorted members...

...of the Animal...

...kingdom.

You can also procure kicking boots.

Also, tin boxes having to do with boots. I bought this box. I don't need it, but I liked it instantly, and I can put things into it. What things, I'm not sure yet.

I Also bought this old portable Remington typewriter. It's sexy, isn't it? For forty bucks it was a steal. I have a thing for old typewriters. My father used to have one - it was old even back then. It wasn't exactly like this, but in the same family.

Signs Of Other Times

2010-07-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

LA is a great place to find old signs, shop window decorations, and old things in general.

Not that hundreds of years of European kind of old, but makes you think of black and white television old.

The great thing about them is that they are not trying for a retro look, they just are what they are.

This place sits in the semi-industrial wasteland bordering Burbank/Glendale. As I was taking pictures a man came - I think he might have been the proprietor - and asked me why I was photographing the store. I told him because it had character. He got it.

I'm now officially collecting old signs. Pasadena and Altadena have a bunch of them, and I'll have to drive over just for that.

Kitch-O-Rama

2010-06-26T16:08:00.001-07:00

I give you two kinds of tacky. I found them both in LA. The first kind in front of a furniture store catering to whites and Hispanics with a taste for the gaudy. The second one in an Asian store.

The figure in the foreground might be some sort of pirate - with a black wig. The background is some religious painting, I wouldn't what. I love the juxtaposition.

Hurray for stereotypes!

There is no true kitch display without angels.

Asians do it with fish. Check out those piggies too!

Dude!

Golden cauliflower? It doesn't get better than that.

Malice in Wonderland

2010-06-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a diatribe about how Tim Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland is like a Wet Fart, but I'm too tired, and not bitchy enough to go there right now. So I'm just going to say that if you were considering watching it: don't. Rent the 1951 Disney version instead. It's one of Disney's best. Get yourself a pie too, while you're at it.

Sam Woo

2010-05-15T20:40:00.001-07:00

I love BBQ Duck.

More iGoodies

2010-04-12T20:31:00.001-07:00

Today's theme is food and the great outdoors, because after all that dim sum, you need a little workout. Or the other way around.

Doesn't this picture just scream 50's?

I got two new iPhone apps. One is called Hipstamatic - a cross between hipster and Instamatic.

"The Hipstamatic brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras of the past!" It so does!

There are several "lenses" and "film" you can mix and match. The results are messy, flawed, thrilling.

The other app is called SwankoLab. It's a fake darkroom with timer and a tray of developer, in which your photo slowly comes to life. It even floats realistically, when you move the phone. Funny, I can't resist moving the phone; the ingrained photo lab instincts are too strong.

There are various "chemicals" you can combine for unpredictable results. Fortunately, there's not authentic darkroom smell.

You can take any old picture on you phone, or your Hipstamatic photos and go hog wild with them.

Yeah, I like my toys.

iPan

2010-03-07T17:18:00.001-08:00

Have I mentioned how much I love my iPhone? It does nearly everything I need, and a whole lot I don't even. If only it washed the dishes I would marry it. Someone came out with an app called Pano. It stitches your photos together for a panoramic picture. The above photo was made of four vertical shots. Nifty, eh?

You Had Me at Butter

2010-03-03T07:37:00.001-08:00

To be honest, "butter" is the only part of this postcard I understand.

Polaroid Dreams

2010-02-08T00:04:00.000-08:00

They might be about the vastness...

...or claustrophobia of landscape.

Or perhaps the luxurious loneliness of five star hotels...

...which, unlike fleabag motels, look the same at any point in the world...

...from Paris to Bejing.

I used to cover up the flash, and point the camera at sources of light in a darkened room.

I liked the minimalist mystery the pictures proposed.

It may be a hard-boiled detective story...

...or flying saucers.

Super Bacon

2010-01-14T20:18:00.001-08:00

Hungarians have love affair with bacon. It's not a healthy relationship, but, like so many ruinous affairs, it's fueled by passion. I like to tell people that Hungarians have more types of bacon than Eskimos have word for snow. It might even be true. I heard once that the supposed snow-bound vocabulary of Eskimos is just just a fabrication. Also, Hungarians really produce, and consume, a plethora of different type of bacons. It's a question of what part of the pig it came from, and also whether it's cooked, smoked, covered in spices or not, and probably a number of other things I have no idea about.

It is also a question of what kind of pig it came from. Because there are pigs and there is managalica (also spelled mangalitsa or mangalitza). Mangalica is an old Hungarian breed of pigs, directly related to wild boars. They were once popular, but almost went extinct because of those rascally communists.

Piglets are stripy like wild boar piglets.

Mangalica are a hardy lard-type breed. That from the eating point of view that they are super tasty. From the breeding point of view, they grow slower than commercial breeds, but they are much more sturdy, resistant to disease; mangalicas can be kept outdoors almost all year around, with access to shelter. Oh yeah, they are furry too!

Isn't that a handsome face?

I've been following Wooly Pigs for a while. I've even did a few translations for Heath from Hungarian to English. Just before Christmas Heath sent me some mangalica bacon. Now, I like bacon, period, but this was bacon from heaven. The flavor was deep and rich, and it reminded me of the Old Country. It's not just bacon, it's super bacon.

By the way, the four cornerstones of Hungarian cuisine are: bacon, onion, paprika, sour cream.

PS. You can buy mangalica bacon (and lard!) online!

New Year and All

2009-12-31T11:08:00.000-08:00

This painting hangs on my wall. It was a Christmas present several years ago. The artist is my good friend Frank. He and his wife Michele are both very talented artists. I'd plug their web sites here, but the lazy slackers haven't updated them, like forever.

Apropos cats, my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world currently is Hungry Cat in Hollywood. They have such good food, and their cocktails are to die for. Yeah, I'm lush. Sue me. On both front they have staple fare and seasonal specials. Their eggnog was excellent, and I don't even like eggnog. Another good thing about Hungry Cat is that it's really close to Hollywood Arclight Cinemas and Amoeba Records - yeah a real record store at this day and age, I know!

Anyway, I'm just rambling. Happy New Year, and all that.

Square America: Winter - Part 2

2009-12-27T13:17:00.001-08:00

I really haven't got much to comment here. Enjoy the pictures.

Christmas and Stuff

2009-12-22T23:16:00.000-08:00

Yay! We are almost at the finishing line! A few more days, and the season of Peace on Earth will be over, and we can have some real peace. I can barely wait till the grocery stores go back to playing their usual crappy music. Meanwhile, let's mock other people's holiday miseries.

Nothing says Holiday Cheer like stuffing the youngins into uncomfortable miniature suits. Also, nice buzz-cut, dad.

These guys look miserable. I would too in front of that wood paneling. Auntie Marge looks happy enough, but I suspect that's booze smiling.

Square America: Winter - Part 1

2009-12-13T18:54:00.000-08:00

Time for some goofy old pictures!

Most of the photos I find are of white people, so the group of ski trip photos of this Asian family was a uncommon discovery. I think it's the same family. It would be a strange coincidence if the pictures of two different Asian families were mixed together. Although the one above seems out of sync with the others. Oh well.

Judging from the dates on the photos, there were several trips.
I'm rubbish with races; I have no clue where this young gentleman would be tracing his ancestry. No matter, he is in California now. We are all transplants here. (Rumors of people born here have been unconfirmed.)

I'm shamed to admit, I'm not into skiing. Or winter sports. Or snow. Ok, a fresh blanket of snow has an aesthetic appeal - for about five minutes. Then it's all snow shovels, salt, slush, frozen slush, bulky clothing, the car doing a 360˚ at 25 mph on a thankfully deserted Indiana road. I've been traumatized by winter, can you tell?

Movies You Haven't Seen

2009-12-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

December is my least favorite month of the year. Oh, what am I saying? I hate it to bits. It's the month when you can't even buy a pint of milk without getting your brain liquified by the most saccharine holiday music. The streets are filled with people madly scrambling from shop to shop, mall to mall. The Season of Stress.

This is also the season of cold and flu, and apparently swine-flu related e-mail phishing scams. (Yeah, like I'm really going to believe that the CDC is sending me an e-mail to "register" my vaccination status.) This is the month where I'd like to go to hibernate under a rock. Paint me green and call me a Grinch - I don't care.

What one needs at this time of year is distraction. Unfortunately it's also the time when television programming spirals down into new depths of hell. Dante's Inferno has a ring dedicated to Christmas Specials. Fortunately for you, My Dear Reader, there is a solution: Movie rentals! And I have a list of films that have escaped the attention of most viewers.

When I first saw Lone Star (1996 dir. John Sayles) it completely bowled me over with the way its story unfolds, unrolls. It takes place in a small Texas border town, where the discovery of a skeleton along with a sheriff's badge sets things in motion. There are multiple plot lines, some based in the present, others stretching back a generation, but they all end up connecting at one point or other. It's storytelling at its best. The lead character, Sam Deeds, the current sheriff of the town, is played by the talented Chris Cooper, who mostly known as a character actor from such movies as American Beauty or Adaptation. Also worth noting the interesting visual device dealing with the frequent flashbacks.

Brick (2005 dir. Rian Johnson) is a classic film noir of the best Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett tradition - played out in current day Southern California suburbia by high schoolers. It is not played for laughs however. There is death, drama, double cross, dangerous dames, dangerous games; the whole nine yard of the hard boiled detective genre. Brick is the quintessential indie movie, made on a small budget, by a bunch of talented young people who love the movies. It's also a brilliant update of a tried and true genre.

The Painted Veil (2006 dir. John Curran) was a love project of actor Edward Norton who also plays the lead along with Naomi Watts. It is based on a novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham, and in my opinion an improvement over the novel. It's the story of bacteriologist Walter Fane who takes a government job in 1920's China, and takes his wife Kitty with him. It is very much a character driven story played out in front of the background of the politics of the colonialist era and the beautiful Chinese landscape. The script is first rate and the acting matches. Aside from Norton and Watts, Liev Schriber and Toby Jones turn out masterly performances.

Liev Schriber was the director of Everything is Illuminated (2005). The film is about a young Jewish man, Johnathan Foer - played by Elijah Wood - who travels to Ukraine to find a woman who is said to have saved his grandfather's life during WWII. At this point the viewer along with Jonathan experiences a farcical culture shock. His tour guide is Alex who becomes the narrator, and whose textbook English is the cause for the movie's title. Their driver is Alex' grandfather who in an absurdist turn believes himself to be blind. They are accompanied with Sammy Davies Jr. Jr., the "seeing eye bitch". The four of them take off to the country in a trabant looking for a town that's not on the map any more. The film is fine balance of humor, dreaminess, and poignancy.

The Interpreter (2005) was the last film directed by the great Sidney Pollack, who also plays a small role in it. By genre, this is a political thriller, but more importantly it is a film that rests on smart, very well written script, strong characters and great acting. Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman give taut, edgy performances. There is the UN, a possible assassination plot, murder, plenty of suspense, but to me some of the most riveting parts are the dialog. Carefully chosen words make my spine tingly. This is the movie that probably fits the least with the others, since it had a pretty decent run in the theaters - yet I managed to miss it completely at the time.

I saw Mystery Train (1989 dir. Jim Jarmusch) during my first year in the US, and I felt like Jarmusch read my soul. At that time I was free-floating, lost, and slightly bewildered - not unlike the characters of this film. There isn't much plot I can recall, just a quirky mélange of characters, including two teenage japanese tourists and the ghost of Elvis, who all converge in a run-down Memphis motel. Watching the movie at the time made me realize the part of the culture shock I was not expecting: Not the skyscrapers and the fancy things, but the banality of a crumbling urban landscape.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead (2009 dir. Jordan Galland) is not to be confused with the Tom Stoppard play and film - although they get a mention within the film. It is an indipendent film of the tongue in cheek variety; a delicious romp about aimless youth, Hamlet, and vampires. This film actually not out on DVD yet, but it has not yet had a wide theatrical release. I got to see it during the Hollywood Film Festival. If it comes to your neighborhood, don't miss it.

I have plugged Moon (2009 dir. Duncan Jones) before, but I will again. It is a small, but finely crafted science fiction film. It starts maybe just a touch slow, but then maintains suspense without any fancy special effects. The DVD will be out in January.

Siesta (1987 dir. Mary Lambert) is a film nobody has ever seen despite of the fact it's chock full of stars like Elen Barkin, Jody Foster, Isabella Rosselini, Martin Sheen, Gabriel Byrne. At the beginning of the story, Claire, an American, wakes up in a field behind a runway, wearing just a red dress, covered in blood, and no memories of how she got there. It sounds like a mystery-thriller, but it is that as much as Antonioni's Blow Up is: not at all. It's a hard to describe film, slightly surreal, haunting like its Miles Davis - Marcus Miller score. When I first watched this movie at the end I realized that I was watching a completely different story then I originally thought.

I'm going to throw in few foreign films, and that's a bit of cheating, since they rarely ever get wide distribution in the US, but it's my blog, I do what I want.

Until the End of the World (1991 dir. Wim Wenders, German) is an international road movie with science fiction undertones. Claire (Solveig Dommartin) bumps into Sam (William Hurt) and spends the first part of the movie chasing him around the globe, till they all end up in the Australian outback - at which point practically a new movie starts. Oh never mind the plot, it's a good ride, hop on. There is a 5 hour "director's cut", but unfortunately it's not available in the US.

Knotroll (2003 dir. Nimród Antal, Hungarian) is a sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, always suspenseful tale of Hungarian subway ticket inspectors. Yeah, you've read that right. There is a killer haunting the subways, there is conflict with a rival group of ticket inspectors, various passengers trying to get away with not buying tickets. It's a thriller with a rough East European finish, with touch of fairy tales, Freud, and Greek Mythology.

Tell No One (2006 dir. Guillaume Canet, French) is a straight mystery-thriller. It's about a doctor, Alex (François Cluzet) whose wife was murdered years before. He is putting his life back together when something happens (I'm not telling you what), and well, shit hits the fan - to use the technical turn. There are chases, murders, secrets being uncovered, and all the good stuff you'd expect from a film of this genre. The pacing is just right, the characters are engaging, and the suspense is non-stop. If you like a good thriller - and don't mind reading subtitles - this is the movie for you.

Obligatory Poultry

2009-11-26T11:14:00.001-08:00

This is the day not to be a turkey. This is also the day when pre-Christmas crazies officially start. I'll spend the next month and a half avoiding the mall (even more than usual) and pretty much all stores in general. Yeah, I'm a grinch.

Vanilla Bean Pots de Créme (Minty)

2009-11-20T18:40:00.001-08:00

I collect cookbooks. Not on purpose. I'm just a sucker for food porn. I look at those beautiful photos and my head is filled with lofty visions of me cooking fine meals. Unfortunately, I'm also lazy, and the books end up collecting dust on the shelf. Not that I don't cook ever, just not that often.

I could call myself a Foodie, for my ability to appreciate (consume) fine food, but that would be pretentious. I'm more of an Eatie.

Costco is evil, in a good way. Or good in an evil way. Where else could you buy a dvd copy of The Young Frankenstein for 5 bucks? Recently they had two large, hardcover books for sale, Bouchon and The French Laundry Cookbook - for almost half price! Now, if you are 'in the know' (i.e. food snob) you know that those two are The Cookbooks to have. I could not resist.

Out of guilt I made one of the recipes: Vanilla Bean Pots de Créme. Bouchon, page 268. It's a custardi thing, consisting of milk, cream (lots), sugar, egg yolks, vanilla bean. It has downtime of cooling and chilling, but otherwise very easy to make. There are also for flavoring options offered: chocolate, cinnamon, almonds and mint. I did mint. It's very nice, rich, creamy, yum.

Intermission

2009-11-17T12:24:00.001-08:00

I started hiking in June. I'm not keen on most popular forms of workout, gyms bore me to death, but I always liked walking and the outdoors. I most often hike in Griffith Park, because I live close by, so it's incredibly convenient - especially at this time of year.

For those who are not from around LA: Griffith Park is five times as big as New York's Central Park, but also much more rugged, wild. It's also full of hiking trails of all sorts. The biggest elevation difference between the lowest and highest point must be around 12-1400 ft.

There is a considerable amount of wildlife around. Coyotes are a common sight, but deer, rabbit, lizards, bats, an wide variety of birds can be observed. At one point during the summer a large rattle snake was taking up residence in Amir's Garden, but I didn't actually see it.

Another common sight in the park is film crews. These pictures are caps from a music video parts of which were shot at the 'view point', aka heli spot. In the background is the Observatory. That spot provides a great view of half of LA. When you are up there it really looks like just the picture: The city bellow is laid out like a shimmering carpet.

Strange and Goofy

2009-11-06T20:39:00.001-08:00

I've been slacking off lately. I've been distracted, scattered even; feeling a strange sense of unreality at times. So perhaps digging up some of my wackier finds is in order.

I love this family; the gangly, goofball father, the different expressions of the older son and the mother have gazing at him. I most of all love the discombobulated look of the younger child - the severity of being born into this family of crazies must have just hit him. (I might be projecting.)

I understand the compulsion of taking a picture of Elsie the calf, but why in the living room?

This one is more of a disturbing one.

I saw Where the Wild Things Are recently - a movie about an angry, frustrated boy. It's not a children's movie. It doesn't really have a plot either. It's scary and disturbing at many spots, yet I found it compelling.

iGallery

2009-10-09T10:15:00.001-07:00

I like the way the camera of the iPhone 3Gs lets you chose the image area to take light reading from. It allows for some interesting visual effects.

I'm less crazy about the incredibly wide angle lens, though that's pretty much a feature with all point-and-shoots. It also can create interesting effects, especially if the warped horizon lines are your thing, but not very good for portraiture.

It's also pretty grainy in low-light situations, but that is to be expected.

I hope the next version will have an option for setting white balance.

Square America: Hunter and Hunted

2009-09-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

I couldn't meet Dive's 500 Word Challenge two weeks ago, but oddly I have some found photos that relate.

The Quote was about Dall Sheep Hunting. Is this a Dall Sheep? I couldn't say. It's a sheep of some kind.

Maybe this one?

Well, at least I'm sure this is not a sheep.

By the way, Dive has a new challenge up. I started a new blogger page for my fiction, since my newest one didn't quite seem to fit here. It's awfully presumptuous of me of course, since it implies that there will be more. We shall see. Meanwhile I had guilty satisfaction of turning an Edith people-not-having-sex Wharton quote into a bawdy little fluff. Go me!

Unknown California

2009-09-22T12:01:00.001-07:00

I've been to the End of the World and it is called Slab City, California.

Slab City is a former marine base, current RV squatter frontier land, 60 miles from Palm Springs, 30 miles from the Mexican border, within view of the beautiful, but toxic Salton Sea, just a fence an irrigation channel across from an active bombing range.

There is no electricity, water, or any municipal services whatsoever, but there is a golf course (no greens, only browns), pet cemetery, a library that is always open and operates on the honor system. There is also a stage that hosts a talent show every Saturday.

The locals also call the place "Check Republic" because most of the residents persist on government checks. The norm is extreme poverty. Yet in the winter months the "snow birds" arrive, from as far as Canada, often in hundred thousand dollar campers.

It would be easy to write this place off as a bizarre Mad Max style site, but like most things in life, it's more complicated. I barely got a glimpse under the surface, and I will not make any attempt to pontificate about it. It would not be my place.

Just outside of Slab City is Salvation Mountain . The creator of this artwork is Leonard Knight whose car broke down at this spot decades ago. He stayed and built/painted his message at the side of the mountain.

In 2001 it was declared as a National Folk Art Site by the The Folk Art Society of America, and in 2002 it was entered in the Congressional Record as a national treasure.

Leonard is 78 years old, but he still lives at the site and works on it every day. He welcomes visitors who drop by any time of the day, he loves showing them around. He often gives the visitors gifts; postcards, puzzles featuring his mountain.

500 Words

2009-09-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Blame it on Dive. The challenge was to write 500 words using the Jack Kerouac quote provided - it's the first paragraph. Also be forewarned, I'm not a writer. And sorry that the story came out to be so sappy, this is where the quote led me. It is what it is.

No Place

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.

It was strangely peaceful, and I felt light headed. I kept still and wished to stay like that a little longer, but at the sixteenth tick all that was gone flooded back. Still, I lay there motionless, and let it wash over me.

I remembered you like I saw you for the last time, standing in the doorway, shoulders slightly hunched, smiling. You smiled like that when you were flirting, when you told bawdy stories, when you poked fun of the things that terrified us all. It wasn’t really the last time, of course, but it was the last time you were you. I didn’t want to remember you lying broken in the hospital bed, but we don’t have choices in these matters. They stole your words – how cruel was that!

I remembered the time I didn’t see you; the empty bed with crisp white linen stretched taut over the mattress, toiletries neatly arranged on the nightstand, the strained expression on the nurse’s face. I felt sorry for her at that moment.

Whoever said time heals all wounds lied. Time heals nothing. It just numbs the pain, and does even that excruciatingly slow. Back then I kept picking at the scabs, trying to stop the itching, but only managed to dig up the pain. There is something dispassionately cruel about time. I remember that moment when the line between everything fine and everything horribly wrong was so razor thin that I felt that if I just wanted it hard enough I could step back over the line, go backwards in time, but obviously I couldn’t.

It was dark by the time I was ready to move. Then, as now, I liked the darkness – the distraction of too many details falls away, and you can think more clearly. I couldn’t forget then, and I don’t want now. I picked up a few more scars since, and I’m fond of them all.

I like this, being lost in this alien landscape, standing in the dark, on top this hill, looking at the lights shimmer above and bellow, listening to the coyotes cackle; at this moment as the warm breath of summer breeze envelops me, I know that I’m not far away from home any more, because there is no such place as home, except the one we make for ourselves, and that can be anywhere, except where we started from, and I don’t mind missing you. You would understand.

Moment of Zen

2009-09-06T19:04:00.001-07:00

This picture needs a caption.

Pyrocumulus Cloud...

2009-09-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

... is the term of our times.

This is a view from all the way in North Hollywood, from las Saturday. I thought it was smoke, but thanks to other bloggers I've learned that it is actually a cloud created by intense heat.

Last Thursday I was hiking with a group in Griffith Park. As we were getting higher the fire seemed to intensify, but that was because it was also getting darker. In the middle ground are the lights of Glendale.

I took this photo on the Sam Merrill Trail back in the June Gloom days. I meant to return, but never got around it. Of course it's out of the question right now.

This image is from another hike a couple weekends later, in Eaton Canyon.

And that's a little iVideo from yesterday, with its own soundtrack. That dirty gray stuff in the sky is the smoke. By the way, if you can tell where the music is from you are a true nerd.

Addendum: I drove around for a few hours today, went up to Lopez Canyon, down on Foothill Blvd, but couldn't find a really good vantage point. I realized something unexpected: The air and sky are so full of smoke and ash that sunlight acquire the same warm tone that is usually reserver for the "magic hour." Everything has a warm glow. Quite beautiful, actually.

Seasonal

2009-08-24T16:30:00.001-07:00

These type of postcard were most common in the US in the 30's, but their production survived well into the 50's, till they were completely replaced by the Photochrome cards. The interesting thing about these is that they are based on black and white photographs. A master copy was hand colored then mass produced. By default the coloring artists took some liberties. I'm pretty sure that in case of this one the sky is entirely the colorist's creation. And that's what attracts me most to these cards: They tether on the edge of fact and fiction.

The cards are printed on soft, textured linen paper. They are specific to the US - the previously flourishing European printing business took a long time to recover from WWII.

Mad For It

2009-08-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! (Claude Rains, Casablanca)

Hi, my name is Vanda and I have an addiction: I love stories. Fiction, narrative, yarn, fable, spiel, tale - they suck me in, I can't let go. Sometimes I mug the author and steal their creation; I spin the story on, invent back stories, insert new characters, and so on - all in my head.

Another bad habit I have is reading online forums. I know they are bad, and I will just end up irritable. Yet, it's a sure fire way to learn what people outside of your safe, more or less like-minded circle of friends think.

So somehow I ended up on AMC's Mad Men forum. Mad Men is a phenomenal show about Madison Avenue ad men in the early 60's. It's a character driven drama, with many richly developed characters, but another amazing thing about it is how it gets the era down. It shows the idiosyncrasies of the time slyly, neither glossing over or shining a torch light on them. I absolutely love how this show keeps going on it own path, and not falling into the predictable tv conventions.

So of course, I was surprised by the narrow mindedness of some forum comments after the first episode of season 3. Some people found it "shocking" and "sensationalist" what Betty said, Don did, and that scene with Sal... mon dieu! I wonder how these people got this far with the show. I get shocked by the show all the time, but it is not the "OMG, I can't believe what the producers just did" kind of shock, but the "I can't believe what passed for norm mere fifty years ago." I mean, everyone is smoking all the time, pregnant women are drinking, the men at work are drinking, sexism, racism, bigotry of all kind. Even small things, like one scene where Don and family go to a picnic in the park, and when it's time to leave, he just shakes all the trash off the blanket and leaves it behind. Makes me wonder what thing we do and say these days that considered "normal" will be shocking five decades from now.

Woof

2009-08-15T11:04:00.001-07:00

I got nothing. Brain is dry as yesterday's toast.

So let's look at some doggie pictures. Why not?

When you look at photos of strangers it's often "whatever..." But sometimes you get the feeling that you know the person. Like this guy - I'm convinced he was funny, friendly, kind. He is certainly good looking. 1948... probably too young to be drafted into the war. Good for him.

Pictures of people with their heads cropped off are fascinating.

Sometimes it's not the subject matter, but the environment that's most interesting. Gotta love 60's interior decoration.

Snogging in Space

2009-08-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

Time for another Brain Leak™. Let's see if I can nerd up sex.

I like science fiction, I have since I was a teenager. I have not shared this with others at the time, as I was afraid it would make me look nerdy and not fit in, and I was already nerdy and not fitting in. I also had a severe case of Bibliophilia at the time. Bibliophilia, the love of books for their content is not considered a clinical psychological disorder, unlike the obsessive compulsive collecting of books, Bibliomania. Well, nobody told that to my mother bursting into my bedroom at 3 am on a school night, catching me reading. She was very angry - something about my severely sagging grades, I think. I could not help myself. It's hard enough to be a teenager as it is, but being painfully shy, introverted, socially inept, but at the same time incredibly stubborn, and unable to show the obligatory respect to authority does not make things easier. So what do you do? You escape into the world of fiction.

Back then I read anything, good or bad. Fortunately both my parents had a quality collection of books and never tried to restrict what I read. I devoured A Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez at around age fourteen, which in my opinion is the perfect age for it. I would pick up a book from the shelf, open it in the middle, just to get a taste of it, and would be unable to put it down. I read books from middle to end, and immediately from beginning to end again, rushing through it as fast as I could. Then a couple of days, a week later I would read it again, this time slowly, savoring every nuance. Then probably read it again a few months later. I had favorite books I read at least once a year. For several years it was intensely obsessive. I bought a flash light and read under the covers. My grades were still pitiful, though I'm not convinced there is a connection.

If reading is escaping, science fiction is escaping even further. Back in those days the genre was even more disregarded as a literary form as it is now. I bought obscure SF anthologies and didn't talk about them to anyone. Years passed, many things happened, I was living on the other side of The Pond, going to college, and my grades were great, Dean's List and all. Probably because unlike high school, I loved college. I always crammed in as many classes into a semester as I possibly could, tried to sign up for all the interesting ones. It was like an all you can eat buffet. Aside from art, film and English Lit. classes were my favorites. One semester I took a class titled "Race, Class, and Gender in Science Fiction," and got introduced to a few interesting contemporary SF novels.

One of the biases against SF is that because of its speculative nature it lacks restriction, "anything can happen." The truth is however that plot devices are plot devices, and if a story has no internal logic it won't work, speculative or not. On the other hand, the abstractions of this type of fiction allows the examination of subjects too close to our lives, without the distractions of the concrete. For example, the New Caprica episodes of (the new) Battlestar Galactica were a study of the blurring lines between heroism and terrorism, the shifting lines of morality. Should it be a surprise that BSG crew discussed human rights at the United Nations?

There are a few preconceptions surrounding SF, one of them would associate the entire genre with its pulp roots. Another, closely related, is the assumption that it appeals mostly to teenage boys, and that women are not interest in SF. In reality SF literature as a whole is not only made up of an incredibly wide variety of subgenres, but some of the more inventive and thoughtful works have been written by women. Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang follows several characters in fictional future, one of whom is gay. The novel centers around character development, relationships, society, all on a very human level. Octavia E. Butler - born and raised in Pasadena - was an African-American SF writer whose works explore aspects of race and gender. Ursula K. Le Guin's works are concerned with matters of sociology, anthropology, sexual identity - set in fictional worlds.

While literary works of SF have been on the forefront pushing issues of gender and sexuality, not much of it has filtered into television. In general, GLBT themes are thin on US television, outside of premium cable. While it's becoming somewhat "hip" to include gay and lesbian characters in tv shows, their portrayal has a lot to be desired. For most part they are still played for laughs, caricaturish, shown overly feminine (Sex in the City, Entourage, Will and Grace). Alternately, they are treated with so much political correctness that they end up totally bland and washed out. What is missing is the fully developed character with the same strength and faults as others who just happens to be gay/lesbian, and might even get a few satisfying romantic scenes. One notable exception being the ABC series Brothers & Sisters.

The Brits, on the other hand, have a head start on this field, and have managed to sex-up the field of science fiction too. Torchwood is a much more libidinous spin-off of the iconic Doctor Who series. The central character, Captain Jack Harkness is played by the irrepressible and openly gay John Barrowman. The basic premise of the show is that a time rift runs through Cardiff, Wales, being monitored by a small team of experts, led by the mysterious Cpt. Jack. The show has much of the same qualities as the one it originated from; a mix of action, humor, junk science, a bit of cheekiness - overall good entertainment, but not incredibly deep. What makes is different is its liberal attitude towards sexuality. There is a constant undercurrent of sexual innuendo, as if Jack's 51st century pheromones have permeate the set. It also ventures to portray same-sex pairings with the same matter-of-fact and earnest approach you'd expect if they were heterosexual ones. A time traveling episode from season 2 delivers romantic and sensuous with the best of them:

Jack is said to be "omnisexual" and in his Doctor Who appearances have flirted with male, female, alien. On Torchwood he has an ongoing relationship with another male character, Ianto Jones. The show enjoys quite a popularity, some viewers favor because they see it more adult than Doctor Who. Understandably it has a pull with the gay/lesbian audience. However an intriguing aspect of the show is that it has a sizeable heterosexual female following, who especially taken to the Jack/Ianto affair. This is not a new phenomenon either; Doctor Who and Torchwood creator Russel T. Davis' previous endeavor Queer as Folk, about a group of gay man, had the same viewer demographic oddity.

So why does a considerable section of the heterosexual female audience find the (male) same-sex romances so thrilling? Is it that the female audience is more open minded, and any romance will do as long as it's well written? Or is it just spill-over of the fag-hag phenomenon? Or maybe a flip side of the cliché male fantasy about lesbians? I have another theory. I might be completely off the rail here, but I think that it is - at least in part - a product of generations of conditioning. Let's face it, cinema, and the theater too, are extremely male centric. When we view a film we identify with the protagonist - or more precisely, we take up his point of view. (Which, by the way can get some intriguing results when the protagonist not an exactly likable character. See: Taxi Driver, American Psycho, etc.) The majority of movies center around male leads, with women in supporting roles or as eye-candy. If you are male and you watch a James Bond movie you have a studly Daniel Craig to identify with and a couple of curvaceous female supporting characters to ogle. If you are part of the female audience, it's unlikely that you'll switch your identification to the interchangeable bimbo, especially since the movie is not shot from her point of view anyway.

While women have gotten used to identifying with male figures onscreen, the opposite is not true. Movies centering around female characters, about women, appeal only to female, and maybe gay audience - and only of a fraction of that even. Even romantic movies, and romantic comedies, where the weight is evenly distributed, tend to fall into the "chick-flick" category, that straight men will see only to make their girlfriends happy. In the few films that center around a female protagonist, and enjoy a broad popularity among a heterosexual male audience, said woman display exaggerated male characteristics - Ripley from the Alien series, or Nikita, from the French film La Femme Nikita are prime examples.

Another key cinematic ingredient is the "object of desire" - which is generally the above mentioned curvaceous female character. Even movies about giant robots manage to find room for some T&A. However that will hardly do for the heterosexual female audience. So who do we get to lust after? The male lead of course. So we end up with a female viewing audience that have grown comfortable with the markedly peculiar situation of their object of identification and desire being one and the same. From this point it's only a hop and a skip to the effortless enjoyment of the view of two handsome men "snogging" onscreen - to use the popular British term. Of course there is a bit more to it, otherwise gay porn would be sexy too, which it isn't. The difference is in the writing and the production values - which makes all the difference. Let's be honest, the critically acclaimed Like Water for Chocolate is just a big budget soft porn. And there is nothing wrong with that.

"I object to all this sex on the television. I mean, I keep falling off." (Graham Chapman, Monty Python)

I personally would rather see more sex on television, provided there are also well written stories to go with it. It seems ABC is tinkering with all this sex and drama in space concept with their new series Defying Gravity. I missed the pilot, downloading it on iTunes. Shall see if it's any good.

Square America: The Beach

2009-07-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

LA has been hit with a heat wave, so let's go to the beach!

I like this photo a lot. I like the bluntness with which the pair of shoes draw attention to the absence of their owner - assumedly the photographer. We are rarely this aware that we are peering over the shoulder of someone when we look at a photo.

The collector of found photographs does not just pick up anything at random. It's a deliberate, meticulous search for the accidental art. What makes the collector salivate can be a number of things; an artlessly artful composition, odd subject matter, unintended social commentary, an innocently staged cliche.

These square format color - and sometime BW - photos were common in the 1960's, but disappeared in the early 1970's. Some have date stamps, some don't. They must have been connected to a certain type of process or equipment, but I have not been able to find out anything about it.

If anyone can enlighten me on the subject, it would be greatly appreciated.

Scenic Route

2009-07-11T09:38:00.001-07:00

I have a map and I know how to use it. Well... not entirely. I have a tendency to make wrong turns, map or no map. Fortunately iPhone GPS is there to save my directionally challenged arse. Though, good things might come out of bad turns. I would have never found this field across the llama farm if I didn't go down the wrong road. By the way, can you really make a living llama farming? Who buys llamas? For what purpose?

Living in The Valley the quickest way for me to get out of town is going North, to the San Gabriel Mountains, through Angeles National Forest. I usually just look at my Thomas Guide and pick a road. Yesterday it was Lake Hughes Road. There are several lakes up there, Castaic, Hughes and Elizabeth.

There are odd little settlements along the roads. Some, like Green Valley, are actual towns, others are just clusters of houses along two-lane highways. Same as when I drive along Old Topange Canyon Road to the coast, I wonder what do the people living there do? Do they commute two hours a day into the city? There don't seem to be a whole lot of job opportunities locally. There definitely seem to be a contingent of artist types.

This is the Bouquet Canyon Reservoir. No people allowed.

A few weeks ago I took a long meandering trip with a friend to Acton and thereabouts. We were driving down on Soledad Canyon Rd. when we spotted this crazy miniature western town. It is like a shabby Hollywood set for kids in the middle of nowhere.

There were also some horses, two teepees, gallows, and a gumball machine at the premises. This is what I like about Southern California: The most unusual is totally normal here.

Right next door there is Tippi Hedren's Shambala Preserve. It deserves a little explanation. You might remember Tippi Hedren from Hitchcock's Birds, or as the mother of Melanie Griffith. In the 70's Tippi and her husband at the time, Noel Marshall, produced, filmed a movie called Roar. The film took 11 years to finish, cost $17 million, and made only $2 million worldwide - it's been called "the most expensive home movie ever made." The movie is about a family living in Africa (?) with a couple of elephants and dozens of big cats - lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs. During filming several cast and crew members were attacked by the big cats, but miraculously nobody died. After filming Tippi Hedren set up the Roar Foundation which now cares for abandoned and rescued big cats.

By the way, next to the mini Deadwood, there is a camp ground. We chatted up the lady in the office and she told us that at night they can hear the lions roar.

PS. According to the L.A. Times Tippi had a hand in (nyuk-nyuk) the nail salon business being dominated by Vietnamese Americans.

Take a Hike

2009-07-08T10:40:00.001-07:00

I figured I should check out the Malibu Creek State Park before it gets shut down. The entrance is by the intersection of Mulholland Hwy and Las Virgenes Rd. Mulholland is one of my favorite drives whenever I start to feel too claustrophobic in the city.

It took me a while to get oriented. To be honest, I never did. I simply just picked a trail that looked promising and kept going. It ended up being a nice six-mile hike, or rather walk.

The park has a little bit of everything; grasslands, high peaks, streams, small lakes, forest. I saw a couple of large eagles of some sort, a few rabbits and a bunch of lizards.

According to wikipedia:

"Malibu Creek State Park is a California state park near Malibu, in Calabasas. It opened to the public in 1976, This majority of the park is made up of land donated by Bob Hope and Ronald Reagan. Other parts of the ranch added later were owned by paramount studios and fox studios. Most recently an area formerly used by Soka university was annexed to the park. It is known as gillete ranch because the buildings were build by the original owner Gillete the razor manufacturer."

I had no idea. I did find the place where they once shot MASH. Some rusty old vehicles are still there.

There was also a shed with a sign on it, saying that due to repeated break-ins, the shed is now unlocked, and please respect the display inside and close the door once you are done. So I did. There were a couple of display signs and the road marker with the distance to places from Seoul to Boston, but I doubt that it was the original one. (What the heck is that called anyway?)

I think that mountain in the background might be the one over which the helicopters fly in, during the opening credits of MASH.

By the way, Robert Altman's movies are hit and miss for me. He is universally hailed for Nashville, but I could never stand it. Maybe because it doesn't have a single likable character. MASH on the other hand is one of my favorites, despite of its intermittent undercurrent of misogyny. At the time I first arrived to the US I had no idea that MASH was also made into a tv show, and was very confused seeing it in the tv guide scheduled in half an hour increments Monday through Friday. When I tuned in just got more flummoxed; it kinda looked like the movie, but it was not. I would have felt like I was on an episode of the Twilight Zone - if only I wasn't completely ignorant of that show too. I had similar experience with Beauty and the Beast - which I knew only as an old French film, directed by Jean Cocteau.

PS. Did you know that the lyrics of theme song for MASH ("Suicide Is Painless") were written by Robert Altman's then 14-year old son Mike, who made more money on royalties than his father did for directing the movie?

(Photos taken with iPhone 3GS)

Fireworks

2009-07-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

The kids' reaction is the best part.

First Sheep, Then Dogs, Next Grandma

2009-07-01T14:28:00.000-07:00

So I read the news that 9/11 search-and-rescue hero dog Trakr was cloned 5 times. Couldn't have happened to a nicer dog. He is not the only dog cloned either. If you have the dough a South Korean bio company will be more than happy to deliver you another Sparky, or five.

You know that human cloning will happen eventually. Not because it should, but because we are human, and we can't stop ourselves. It was unfair to give Pandora the gift of curiosity and a closed box.

I feel vaguely apprehensive about all this. There are of course all the moral and ethical concerns, and the legal ramifications should be interesting. But my source of unease is more of ruminative kind.

I've been wrecking my brain - and the internet - for movies involving clones, that are at all worth mentioning, I found them to be a mixed bag, from the woefully bad to wickedly good. Multiplicity with Michael Keaton turned out to be a lukewarm romantic comedy. The Island is an unimaginative mess of chase scenes, special effects and soggy plot directed by the dependably dreadful Michael Bay. Alien Resurrection was probably the most regrettable installment of the Alien(s) franchise. A huge disappointment considering that it was directed Jean-Pierre Jeunet - half of the French director duo of such wacky fun movies as Amélie and Delicatessen. On the other hand, the two of them made the darkly comic City of Lost Children, featuring several misshapen copies of Dominique Pinon. Definitely one of the good ones. So is the recent Moon. The 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is by now regarded as Cold War era horror/scifi classic, and even its 1978 remake got a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Probably the most interesting treatment of the relationship of clones were in Moon, where the two did not get along right away. Who said that you are compatible with your own self? Could your internal struggles become external if there were two of you?

What all those movies, good and bad, share is that their clones are always the same age as their originals. That's all fine and well for fiction, but that would require biotechnology to be able to accelerate growth/aging then slow it to normal speed at will. I don't think we are anywhere close to achieving that. Dogs of course reach maturity in a couple of years, but with humans it takes a couple of decades. That opens a whole another can of worms.

What if you decided to raise your own clone as your child? Maybe you'd think that you could protect your younger self from all the mistakes and missteps you made in life, and impart all the wisdom you learned from them. Would it work? I'm somehow doubtful. I don't think there is any guarantee that you would even get along with your own younger self. Would it be poetic justice having to be mother to your own teenage self?

I could go on, but my head hurts.

Wear Green - For Our Parks

2009-06-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

While half a world away a nation is struggling to resolve whether it'll have its old conservative, autocratic government or a new(ish), slightly less conservative and autocratic one, we have some problems over here on our own shores.

Everyone knows California is in deep doo-doo. We ran out of money, in the hole for, oh, about $24 billion. There will be big budget cuts and they will all hurt, but there is at least one that doesn't make any sense at all: Legislators plant to shut down 220 out of 279 of California's state parks. Which would account for a whopping 0.62% of that budget gap. Even less if you count in that it would also cut the income that the state parks directly generate. Also hurt would be numerous local economies that would lose income from tourists attracted by and to state parks. Overall the loss to the California economy is likely to be bigger than the savings to the budget. It's nonsensical.

Additionally, the closure promised to be temporary (I would sure hope so), but reopening, restarting parks that have been without maintenance for some time could prove far more costly than maintaining them. There is another aspect to this that is hard to put a price tag on. Our parks are our treasures. The closure would mean that iconic places, like the big redwood forests, beaches, camp grounds, deserts and all sorts of wilderness areas we take for granted would become off-limits to all of us.

There have been one proposal to cover the cost of park maintenance: A once-a-year $15 charge added to license fees of non-commercial vehicles in California. To me that seems like a great deal.

If you care at all what happens to our park you might want to visit the California State Parks Foundation website or facebook page.

A few articles to read:

State Parks on Chopping Block - video - Wall Street Journal

Closing California State Parks: Is this the answer to the budget crisis?

Proposed California state parks closure list includes Calaveras Big Trees: Locals anxious

Proposed state parks closure list is not for the faint of heart - LA Times

State parks access pass might be key to preventing their closure - LA Times

Slice of Time

2009-06-22T10:39:00.001-07:00

"...photos have always been the Model T of the arts. The man who wants to be buried with his five hundred-dollar Ford because it has pulled him out of every hole so far also wants a five-dollar photo of his wife so that when she passes, he can pull her out of her hole and place her firmly on the dresser."
(Richard Powers, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance)

At the end of grad school we all had to write a lengthy thesis paper. I was quite happy with mine, I thought it came out quite well. I talked about the functions of photography, memory, history, narrative and fictional landscapes, quoted Baudrillar, John Berger, Richard Powers, Wim Wenders, Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag.

When I showed my first draft to my professor, he had hard time believing I wrote it. It's understandable, I was never very forthcoming or articulate at our regular critiques. Truth to be told, I never liked talking about my work. It made me feel like a giant phony. I'm also just not intellectual enough to get a handle on all the (post-)post-modernist art talk.

In grad school there were a few students who could talk the talk, and make the art. The majority though was just talking. However, it carried more weight with the faculty than their actual work.

I still don't know if going to grad school was a good thing or a big mistake. On one hand, not going would have been three years less of eating ramen soup and baked beens, and selling plasma to buy art supplies. On the other hand, I got to try my hand in print making, actually learned a number of things, and became more articulate, even if only in writing.

On the definitely positive side, it cured me from all my naive ideals of being an artist.

Ha!

2009-06-21T11:24:00.001-07:00

One of these days...

2009-06-14T21:10:00.001-07:00

There are days that are... well, just irregular. I went to the movies yesterday to see Moon. As I took my seat, some self-important type was extolling his own virtues in the row behind me, but thankfully turned quiet before the trailers were over. The Scarecrow to the left of me couldn't sit still. Fatty, two seats to my right walked out 5 minutes into the movie, then back and started talking to his companion. He made no effort to whisper, nor was he bothered by the shushing sounds from behind. He finally shut up, but then his phone rang. Not only that, but he answered it! At which point I audibly remarked: "For goodness sake!" He hang up. Twenty minutes into the movie Young Punk - apparently friend of Fatty - walked in and sat down in the one empty seat to my right. He proceeded to unwrap a sandwich of some sort, douse it with some stinky dressing from a plastic cup. He munched, slurped his soda and laughed at the movie at all the wrong places. I felt like an extra in a bad sitcom, minus the laugh track (not counting Young Punk).

Fortunately I was sitting in row 3, with the walkway in front of me and could just stand up, and pick an unoccupied seat at the far end of the row, and finally enjoy the movie. Moon is a small, but thoughtfully crafted movie directed by Duncan Jones - formerly Zowie Bowie, son of David Bowie. The main character(s) in the movie is played by Sam Rockwell, and the voice of the computer, Gerty, is Kevin Spacey. It is a science fiction of sorts. At the beginning there are flavors of Silent Running and Solaris, but it ends up being a more conventional story, and I don't mean that in a bad way. There is a touch of mystery, suspense, drama. It's a fine film, I'm glad I went to see it despite all the bedlam.

Visions of the Future

2009-06-05T18:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I need to let my inner nerd out for a romp. Recently I have been musing - in my head - about science fiction movie archetypes - visual and thematic. So I wrote it down. It's a little messy, but that's ok. Here it goes...

Cowboys and Indians, Starfleet and Romulans, Light and Dark, Logic and Emotion, Man and Nature

There are two distinct and contrasting visual styles of the future; one bright, technological, modern, optimistic, another dark, decaying, organic, ominous. Simply put: Bright and shiny vs dark and grimy. Blade Runner and Star Trek are probably the most iconic examples of each. Another, more crucial distinction between the two is where they take place: One in densely populated city, another in the vast frontiers of space. Frontier stories more likely to feature a group of heroes facing off with fearsome foes, while the in the city it is all about the lone hero searching for answers.

Ridley Scott's 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner stands as one of the cornerstones of modern science fiction movies. It has defined a visual and narrative style that has became a major part of the science fiction cinema language. However Blade Runner did not invent this language, but translated it directly from the Film Noir style of the the 40's and 50's. These films were shot in moody black and white, full of grit, grime, and moral ambiguity. These films themselves were influenced by the hardboiled detective novels of their time, works of Dashiell Hammet, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler. Not only the most iconic ones were directly based on their novels, like The Postman Always Rings Twice (Cain), The Big Sleep (Chandler), but Chandler also worked as scrip writer for many of these now classic movies (Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train).

One very intriguing aspect of these films is that while most of them take place in perpetually sunny California, their visual style is defined by their darkness - most of the action happens in dark alleys, dive bars, seedy motel rooms. As if they were nature documentaries of the ground level of a thick urban jungle where the sunlight doesn't penetrate any more, and the denizens mostly come out at night.

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness." (Raymond Chandler)

Double Indemnity and Blade Runner

The heroes of these stories are usually private eyes, who have problems with authority, they walk more or less on the right side of law, but have an antagonistic, distrustful relationship with the cops. Decard in Blade Runner is full embodiment of this character. He is as likely to be squaring off with a dubious dame as licking his wounds with a glass of scotch in hand as Philip Marlow is. He walks the streets of a Los Angeles that is wrapped in a perpetual night. Maybe the smog has gotten so bad that the sunlight can't penetrate it any more. It's also always raining, and even indoors there is water drizzling from above. This inexplicable wetness has come to represent danger in science fiction movies - a dark cave of our subconscious, with unimaginable horrors lurking in its moist recesses. A perfect example of it is the scene from Alien when we first encounter the fully grown creature: It's a large dark room, with chains hanging from the ceiling, and water dripping everywhere. What is all that excess moisture doing dripping inside a space ship is anyone's guess.

Wet interior from Blade Runner

The wet ship from the alien's point of view

The hero of the Noir style does not necessary have to be an actual detective, it's the element of mystery, a search for answers what's relevant. Dark City is a good example.

The private dick is close relation to the lone gunman of the westerns - another genre that scifi has heavily borrowed from. The most enduring theme that scifi appropriated from westerns is the idea of entering dangerous uncharted territories, "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Many scifi films and shows are westerns in space. Joss Whedon very consciously referenced this theme in his sadly short lived tv series Firefly, and the following movie Serenity. Beyond classic westerns, Whedon's creations have roots in the less idealized, more sweat and dust covered, morally ambiguous world of spaghetti westerns. A not so deliberate, and far more optimistically Utopian iteration of the space western was the original Star Trek and its many follow-ups. Its heroes are the law, their ship is clean, brightly lit, full of crisp uniforms. It's also uplifting, optimistic, a world where law and order prevails. Firefly and Star Trek not only have different visual styles, but represent contrary point of views of basically the same societal structures. Both worlds are tightly controlled alliance/federation of planets, outwardly represented by a strong military, but in one the heroes are the military, in the other they are the outlaws, barely getting by at the edge of known space.

Space Cowboys of Firefly and the original Star Trek tv series

If Captain Kirk and crew are John Wayne and the cavalry marching into the wild vastness of space, Captain Malcolm Reynolds and crew are the cowboys and misfits. The "Indians," i.e. the "other" that they both have to fight and beat are however very similar. In Serenity it is the "reavers," a band of humans driven to extreme madness by a chemical compound. In the immensely enjoyable 2009 Star Trek movie it is a rogue band of Romulans, driven mad by grief and anger. Both are propelled by raw emotion, can't be reasoned with, inaccessible to logic, and bent on destruction. Simply put they are pure manifestations of the Id. The creature from Alien and Aliens can be put in the same category. While we don't really know much of its "emotions," its single-minded drive to breed and kill make it the same type of primal force.

The primal foes and their environments share the same visual language. It's all dark, jagged, wet, sinisterly organic. Not surprisingly, the Romulan ship, the Narada and the reaver armada all resemble deep sea monsters. The dark deepness of space and the ocean are very similar; they both fascinate and frighten at the same time. "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." (Leonard 'Bones' McCoy).

Narada on the left, reaver ship on the right and an angler fish in the middle.

Star Trek XI contains within it both the bright and the dark visual styles, but they are firmly devided between the two opposing forces of the narrative. In sharp contrast to the brightly lit, ordered corridors of the Enterprise, the Narada's interiors are dark, tangled. In one scene we can see pipes sneaking on the floor, in several baffling inches of water. The Enterprise is shiny plastic and chrome, with a crew in dressed in bright primary colors. The Narada is jaggy, corroding metal, subdued dark greenish grays and browns, it's tattooed crew dressed in worn leather. Similar tones, but even more organic are many interiors where the creatures of the Alien franchise dwell. By nature they take over spaces that are not their own, yet dark and cavernous, obscuring their angular shapes with their own creations. Water here is replaced with sticky goo.

The Narada

The Enterprise

Like Native Americans did in classic westerns, Romulans, acid-blooded aliens, even reavers, come to represent the primal force that you can fight or run from, but can't reason with. Ultimately, they are mother nature in many disguises. Our plucky heroes triumph over their much stronger foe, using cunning and bravado - brains and balls against brute force. And that's what conquering frontiers is all about. Despite of their ideological differences Serenity and Star Trek have this in common. Not Blade Runner however; Deckard hunts down and kills all the replicants, but there is no triumph. Perhaps because he is not on the frontier, but in the city jungle where there are no good guys and bad guys, just different rungs on the food chain.

The lines between the hunter and hunted blur

Minor Adventures

2009-05-30T17:16:00.001-07:00

The Salton Sea used to be a dry basin, turned into a lake by the flooding of the Colorado River in 1902. In the 1920's it started developing into a tourist attraction, and by the 50's it was a hopping place. That didn't last. The lake's main source of water inflow is agricultural runoff and the extremely polluted New River. Its salinity level is higher than sea water. Algal blooms, massive fish and bird die-offs spelled the end of the Salton Sea vacation paradise.

There is an excellent and fascinating documentary film, narrated by John Waters, Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea. Ever since I saw it I wanted to see the place for myself. So I did.

It was just a quick, 2-day trip. I took the long and dull Hwy 134-210-10 route to Indio where I got promptly lost. I have no sense of direction. Eventually I got on the right direction. On the first day I drove all around it, but took only a few pictures. On the second day I went back partially and took more pictures at Mecca.

At first look the beach seems idyllic, however the photo doesn't convey the smell that hit me as soon as I got near the shore - a mix of rotten eggs and manure. I discovered the source of manure: industrial scale cow farm on the East shore. Wherever I stopped there were mostly gutted and boarded up buildings. The fancifully named Bombay Beach looked like a third world trailer park. I didn't take pictures there, it felt wrong, vulturish.

I headed home, but instead of the freeway I opted to take the scenic route part of the way. It probably added another two hours to the trip but was well worth it. I took Hwy 74 to the 243 and from there up to the 10. It was a fun drive up and down of windy 2-lane roads through the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains.

I stopped at a view point to take a look at Coachella Valley bellow. It was interesting how the vegetation changed as I was driving along. At first there were sparse anemic grasses clinging to rocks, but then it turned into short brighter green conifers further in the mountains. In the valley there was a sparse forest of tall pine trees, and by the time 74 hit 243 it was a dense forest made up of a wide variety of trees and shrubs. As I got closer to Banning and the 10, it was sparse grasses again.

At the start of 243 I found Idyllwild, an intriguing little town nestled in the forest. Right along the road I saw the most unusual sculpture garden. Apparently it is the outdoor studio of the local artist who carves sculptures from tree trunks of all sizes. There were assorted pieces around at varying states of (in)completion.

New Medium

2009-05-21T19:38:00.001-07:00

The other day I had a brilliant idea: There should be a photo competition exclusively for iPhone photographs. I turns out it already exists. (Go me.) Then I started thinking about how this is the time of transition when one medium takes over from the other.

In 2008 Polaroid announced that they would stop producing their iconic instant cameras and films.

Polaroid has gone the way of Kinko's, type writer, and carbon paper - its primary cause for existence usurped by the advance of technology. Nowadays you don't even have to have a camera, just a phone to take "instant" photos, and then you can send them to your friends, upload them to the internet, unleash them in the digital alternate universe. The tactile is replaced by the ethereal.

My Polaroid cameras will make nice bookends. One they I'll tell little children that people used to use them to make photographs. They'll be rolling their eyes.

Meanwhile here is the first installment of my iPortfolio. Three categories are presented at this time.

Landscape / Nature

Documentary

Artsy-Fartsy

Fun with Photos

2009-05-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

I love these 60's color photos, but sometimes the color shift in them - usually towards magenta - bothers my photographic sensibilities.

I recall my college days, when it took a color photo around 12 minutes to wind its way through the developing machine. Many hours were spent in the photo lab inhaling chemical fumes. Fortunately it's all Photoshop now.

After adjusting the color I also punched up contrast, saturation and sharpened the image a little. It looks more realistic, but to be honest, I prefer the softer middle image.

Some images are so far beyond repair, that you might as well just go nuts with them.

The main feature of this photo the identical green dresses of the girls, so I made them extra saturated, while desaturating the flesh tones.

Here you have it. The leprechaun family got a new home.

The Lonely Childhood of Mr. Spock

2009-05-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

These are photos of the young Vulcan with his human adoptive parents, Dr. and Mrs. Spock. Dr. Spock later published a memoir of his experiences of raising a Vulcan child. Unfortunately many readers mistook it for a child care manual.

These photos were taken just days before a fateful trip to visit Grandma Spock at the Naples Land Yacht Harbor and Mobile Home Community in Florida. (More about this at a later date.)

Nanu-nanu... Err... Live long and Prosper.

Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus

2009-05-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

I picked up this beauty for a quarter at the flea market.

"Recipes prepared especially for
the General Electric Refrigerator

By

MISS ALICE BRADLEY
Principal of Miss Farmer's School of Cookery,
Cooking Editor of Woman's Home Companion,
Author of: Cooking for Profit, Candy Cook
Book, For Luncheon and Supper Guests"

PRICE TWO DOLLARS

Is she holding a jello? What is it, strawberry or pickled beets? I wonder.

I always thought that people who had afternoon bridge parties had hired help to take care of the sandwiches and other refreshment.

Happy May Day!

2009-04-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

This and a couple of other postcards were mixed in with family photos. I think my father brought them back from his one trip to Uzbekistan. Mementos from another time and place. Now I feel old.

Monday

2009-04-27T11:25:00.001-07:00

I'm a sucker for red poppies. As a child I learned how to make poppy people: You fold the petals down and tie them around the stem for body. Stick a stick through crosswise for arms. Done.

Be Merry

2009-04-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes letting loose and being a goof is the best thing you can do for your sanity. Go for it!

I Will Never Pay Money For Pickled Beets Again

2009-04-19T13:06:00.001-07:00

2 kg red beets
5 tbs vinegar (20%)
15 dkg sugar
1 tbs salt
2 tsp caraway seeds
7 dl water

Wash the beets, cook them in the water. Let it cool. Save cooking water. Peel beets, slice them, put them in clean jars.
Add the vinegar, salt, sugar and caraway seeds to cooking water and boil. Poor it over the beets. Put the lids on tight. Keep refrigerated.

I know, it's all in metric, but the truth is I wasn't measuring anything. You can't get 20% vinegar anywhere anyway. So I just threw in stuff as it seemed to make sense and it came out fine.

Once you ate all the beets, use the pickling liquid to pickle some hard boiled eggs.

You may say, dear reader, "yech, beets, who needs them?" Well, don't so be hasty, the beets are tasty. They are also said to have high levels of anti-carcinogens and some other healthy stuff.

While some people can't tell beets from kale, folks in the Old Country have a heightened awareness towards anything that can be pickled. Cukes are just the starting point. Small red cherry peppers (hot), yellow round peppers stuffed with sauerkraut, green tomatoes, baby watermelons (size of a tomato, unique flavor), and so on.

Spring

2009-04-16T14:05:00.001-07:00

It is the last chance to check out the poppies in the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. The peak of the blooming season is over, but it is said that the North Poppy Loop still has flowers to show. I went there a few years ago at the hight of the peek of the poppy bloom, and it was quite a sight. From a distance it looked like somebody dropped hundreds of tons of bright orange stuff on the hills. It's also a nice drive.

Back in the olden days all you had to do is drive to Hollywood to see some colorful flowers. It must have been a long time age when it was covered with poinsettias instead of tourists. Technically they are not spring flowers, but who's counting.

You could also head up to the hills and check out the dogwood, like young Babs did, back in 1941.

Babs' friend, Miss Joyce McGonigle lived in a bungalow in South Pasadena, built in 1924.

Bunny

2009-04-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

I'm late to the party, aren't I? I just realized I had an Easter themed photo in my collection. C'est la vie.

Road Trip

2009-04-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

Something I love about LA is that if you know what you are doing, you can drive for twenty minutes and find yourself somewhere where you feel million miles away from civilization. I was feeling stir crazy yesterday, so I headed for the mountains. I did a nice long ride up on Little Tujunga Canyon Rd to Bouqet Canyon Rd to Palmdale, and back down on Angeles Forest Hwy to the 2.

I drove past the reservoir. I like driving on little roads, at places I've never been before. There is always something interesting to find.

This weird piece of faux classical architecture sits on an otherwise deserted stretch of Vasquez Cny Rd that connects Little Tujunga Cny to Sierra Hwy. People build the weirdest things at the weirdest places.

Bouqet Cny Rd had a real nice stretch with hardly any traffic, a babbling brook right along the road, and occasionally odd little houses perched on or nestling against hills and rocks.

Palmdale failed to impress me. This is a spot on the edge of town where I wandered off.

In this is what happens when you use camera flash against highly reflective traffic signs.

From the whole trip this is probably my favorite image. It got a bit rainy and the hills in the back are wrapped in fog.

Memory Lane

2009-04-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

I was reading Dive's blog (thanks Petrea for letting me know about it), about the scary children's programs he grew up with. Which made me wonder how mines would hold up. Wouldn't you know, they are all on YouTube.

By the way, what did we do before the internet? Will the children who grow up without memories of a world before computers and the internet, facebooks, text messaging, etc... will they think of us as dinosaurs? For goodness sake, I remember the days of type writer ribbons and white-outs.

Aanyway... Here are a couple of shows from my childhood. Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking but they are really not bad, some quite enjoyable, actually. You, my dear reader, won't be able to fully enjoy it of course, because of the language, but some of the visuals and music might come through. It's a pity though, some of these have pretty funny songs and dialogues. It's a little know fact that The Flintstones are much funnier in the Hungarian dubbed version - that also happens to be entirely in rhyme.

This is Dr. Bubó, General practitioner of a strange forest. His assitant is nurse Ursula the bear, who has romantic aspirations towards the good doctor. The visuals are slightly Yellow Submarine-ish.

This episode tackles the subject of alcoholism and domestic violence, with a fair sprinkling of cursing. At the end Mr. Boar gets cured of his abusiveness via a concussion, but Mrs. Boar is not happy. Crazy Hungarians.

Mézga Család (The Mezgás) is a a little bit like the Simpsons. Less topical - unless there was some subtext I missed -, but a bit more scifi. It's about a disfunctional family who is in radio contact with a relative from the future.

Today's Color: Red

2009-03-30T16:00:00.001-07:00

You always find something interesting in Altadena.