baseball starting to catch on in usa...

giant baseball at "construction site"
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

this giant baseball is part of the "construction site" public art installation which will be around until May 1st in Echo Park (on Sunset @ Alvarado - across the street from the Library). hexod.us does such a good job at blogging this that i'm going to be lazy and say see his blog and makster's great story photo to learn more.





these arrows
direct passers-by into the site from Sunset Boulevard

Not Enough Surfers in Florida...

Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

Saw this bumper sticker the other day out in Pomona. In Texas there were lots of the Bush Is A Punk Ass Bitch stickers which i love so much, but somehow he still carried the state. Florida has surfers too, but, somehow, Florida went for Bush despite the surfer vote. But here in Cali, we all know who our electoral votes went to. Just think, if they had good waves in Ohio or Colorado we probably wouldn't be all effed up in Iraq right now. Oh well...my sources in the surf community tell me that in the next election cycle the surf demographic (the new soccer moms/nascar dads) is expected to blitz the country (at least the coastline) with their "Steal My Wave - Not My Vote" stickers. We'll see.

Speaking of the middle of the country, i couldn't resist the link to the Linguistic Profiler jjlook added earlier (my results are right below here, her results are farther/further down the page):

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

25% Dixie

15% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

some tough questions (kitty corner vs katty corner ?) and worth the 2 minutes it takes to trace your verbal ancestry (okay it doesn't do that at all but try it anyway...)

and finally - hopefully the last story you'll see here about the recently departed much discussed pope...with info that most media outlets have refused to cover...

Neither Here Nor There, but Over There

You might as well hear it now. I am Canadian. I took a silly quiz today:

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

30% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

...and it got me thinking about my identity. And I'm not trying to justify that quiz's inclusion, because come on, you know you will find it fun.
To continue: I was born in Canada, but my family moved around a bit when I was a child. My parents always referred to us as Canadian, and never let us become American. As a matter of course, when someone finds out this quirky bit of information from me, and expresses surprise, I generally reply with something not nearly cute enough like, "We walk amongst you unnoticed."
I have never felt American. I loathe the whole power team here. But so do most of my friends. I am emotionally detached from all matters of patriotism and national sport. But so are many of you, I might guess. We could go on in this game, but see I'm picking up and going back to my motherland and wondering if I will be a stranger there, or if I am one here? There's more to this discussion.
I'm also attempting to catalogue everything I love about here.
There's this corner here, that I've always loved almost irrationally. Before I even moved into the neighborhood. It's alien and comforting.

And here's some other ones from there: favorite corner

Valley of The Dolls revisited...

Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

More dolls than you can shake a stick at today at the Pomona Raceway...for a little more dolliciousness see the whole set here...

where was i...

Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

i know it's been awhile....went through a bit of a "do i really have anything worthwhile to add to the sea of useless information floating around out there" debate with myself and realized that no, i don't. That said...

A number of local car clubs were down in Elysian Park on Sunday, showing off their bad rides. There's more in the low rider group on flickr.

Nice op-ed on FDR ( i know you stay awake nights wondering where all the the contemporary FDR pieces are...) in the NY Times today.



Also, photos from my san francisco/sacramento trip are here.


oh, and it seems that the "War on Terror" is going about as well as the "War on Drugs", which started with the criminalization of marijuana in the 1930s. Let's see, since the drug threat was successfully eradicated last year, terrorism should be done for by 2080 (give or take a few centuries...)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?

I live next door to Frederick's of Austin. There's a constant fountain that makes visitors to my house want to pee. And he's often a bad neighbor of the type to fight in the street with his boyfriend or show up at the tail end of a party with a plastic tumbler of rum. And inside his house is a collection of Sambo dolls who's irony is very much in question. And outside there are wonders:

and more:

This is my first post. I will add some more magic soon.

on the road

the 5 through a fence
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

In about an hour I'm going to climb into my friend Ela's car and we're heading north to San Francisco to see the Radar Brothers show there tonight. The Brothers have a great new album, The Fallen Leaf Pages, which you can listen to at the Merge Records site. Just look for the green and yellow box about half-way down the page...or just try clicking this.

I'm going to eat sooooo much Rice-A-Roni tonight...

No Child Left Behind, Indeed...

me_devin
Originally uploaded by jrduncans.

According to Opt Out , part of the education president's No Child Left Behind act "requires school districts to release student names, addresses, and phone numbers to military recruiters upon their request." But there is also a requirement for school districts to let students know they can opt out by requesting that the school not make their records available to the military.

The Opt Out website furnishes a printable form for students to fill out and turn in at school, as well as helpful info on finding money for college without giving up giving up years of your life (or all your life, for that matter.) Tell your little sister, tell your little brother, don't go to Iraq to die for Bush and his pals....Opt Out...

(photo by jrduncans on flickr

Strange Bedfellows found to be patriotic...

Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

According to a NY Times article, our new Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, infamous for his 2-thumbs-up approval of torture has been testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee as to the importance of renewing all provisions of the Patriot Act in December. Unless renewed, a number of provisions in the act will expire at that time. While I hope they won't be renewed, my guess is that they will.

The ACLU has a formed an interesting alliance with conservative groups (that would normally run screaming from the ACLU) to national national support for reform of the Patriot Act.

new me

overhead Steve
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

Everything you've heard about L.A. IS TRUE. Take, for example, the body enhancement industry. A major portion of California's economy (93%!) is derived from boob jobs, face lifts, tummy tucks and the eradication of those spider veins i once had on my legs. I always said that I'd never succumb to the temptation, but, as you can see from my latest photo, I've recently had some work done. I know, it's subtle, but if you look closely, you can just notice that I've had a few lines added to my face, and that I had it widened a bit. I had my doubts before the surgery, but now I'm living proof that they can do ANYTHING out here. They're that good...

WMDs still missing...

The sun is already up, and so, it seems am i. Not for long, but just long enough to link this maureen dowd NYTimes op-ed thingy about the president's commission on intelligence (yeah yeah). Dowd say's, among other things:

"As the commission's co-chairman, Laurence Silberman, put it:"Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policy makers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

Huh? That's like an investigation into steroids in baseball that looks only at the drug companies, not the players who muscled up."

have a look...

flickrconundrum....

Favourites
Originally uploaded by gms.

i am both wary and jubilant to proselytize about the charms and dangers of flickr. Jubilant about photo collages like the one i have uploaded here from the photostream of gms. Where else but flickr can you randomly stumble across such wonderful collections of photos? Where, i ask ? (there is a comments section just for you and your ilk...)

And yet, i am wary as well. Bearing the addictive nature of flickr in mind, i can't help but recall the sickness experienced in the Wim Wenders 'flick' "Until The End Of The World" the sickness being a form of addiction to "images". i feel it. so beware...

but please keep reading...

golden boy

golden boy
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

Yesterday was Thai New Year - we have a pretty big Thai population here in L.A. They block off Hollywood Blvd from Western Ave at the east end to Kingsley at the far west. Today we ate weird satay sausages, listened to thai pop music and saw all kinds of people getting crazy thai massage. I even got a water blessing from a thai Buddhist monk...for some of the rest of the story, see my thai new year set.

Popery

Juan Cole has some interesting stuff on the late Pope today.

Don't forget to Spring ahead...

snowkleberry
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

An interesting phenomena to ponder on this first day of DST. It's hard to explain, or maybe unexplainable. I suppose it just "is". But, as evidenced by the photo, it involves thrill-seeking dare-devil dangerously and deceptively-cuddly plush toys gone bad - dangling from street lights and utility poles with reckless abandon. Reckless but perhaps not wreckless, as rubber-necking passers-by are often seen to take their eyes off the road to observe creatures such as the high-flying Huckelberry Hound. Fatality figures are not available as of yet, but with Huck and all the others out there hovering above our city streets, i can already see the incredulous police-reports and tabloid headlines.

It all seems to have started with a smelly old bear in a part of Los Angeles called Echo Park, and who knows where it will end. It quickly spread to Silverlake, stirrings have been felt in other parts of the country, and one of the latest sightings was in Germany.

If this all makes no sense, or if it makes perfect sense, there's more of it right over here.

recent rainiest rains

rainiest rains
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

So i move to California, and of course i am a sucker for all the stereotypes, rumors and lies. Like the stories about the weather:

"oh yeah," they all said, "it's always sunny and 70."

Like the rube that i am, i buy it.

So I get here in May of last year and right away we have a day where it gets to about 105 degrees. It doesn't stay that way, but still, what about sunny and 70?

And then we get into what is called "June Gloom", a cloudy, foggy overcast patch of weather that everyone but me seems to hate. I'll take it over Texas in June everytime, but again, where's the sun?

And then summer with a small s. Compared to Texas, nothing to worry about. Pleasant, as advertised. And the weather does stay nice for a pretty long stretch. Beach trips in November and December. Lots of sunny. Lots of 70. Lots of 80. Fine, I'll take it.

But then it starts. The rainy season. California, you may have heard, is sometimes referred to as the Golden State. It is actually quite green for some of the year, and then when the scrub and the brush start to wilt and dry out, it becomes the Golden State. But this is the year I chose to move here. So of course it ends up being either the rainiest or 2nd rainiest year on record since they've been keeping track of that sort of thing.

And of course, what would you expect in the rainiest year on record ? Sunny and 70? No. Instead the hillsides in my neighborhood turned to mud and many a mini-mountain of mud sludged its way down to the lower elevations (see the photo at the top, and this one. Lots of folks lost their homes, and some people even died. But finally, for now, it seems to have cleared up.

Sunny and 70 ? Sometimes...

But i still love it irregardless.

here goes nothing (literally)

on set with friends...
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

So yesterday i wake up with this thought in my head:

Everyone but me and my mom has a blog. I've become addicted to flickr lately and so am spending more time (way too much time) on-line and i can't help but notice that the 21st century started a few years ago when i wasn't looking.

Like i said, it seems that everyone but my mom and i now has an e-pod and a blog.

My mom called today to tell me about her new blog.

I'm not providing the url to her new blog, since she is starting out by going back to the days of my childhood, with lots of details about dirty diapers, chicken pox, pink eye, bed-wetting, nocturnal emissions, etc...

But she did give me the idea to start this, The Occasional Occasion, and to go back and make up for lost time. Or to lose time by going back, whichever. Since i'm on flickr so much, lots of what shows up here will be photos from there with additional gory details about my new life in L.A.

Like this shot of me out in Pacoima, on the set of "Herbie: Fully Loaded", awash in a sea of blow-up dolls. Blow-up dolls are used, among other things, as movie extras. Not in close-ups, but in those big crowd scenes, in football stadiums (Friday Night Lights), in boxing auditoriums (Million Dollar Baby). The blow-up dolls here don't actually have arms, (TV magic) much less anything below the waist. But many of them will soon have their 15 minutes (or 15 frames) of fame...

thanks for listening, doc...