The Occasional Occasion

eMusic cRaps Out

2009-06-04T21:55:00.001-07:00

365:20 .. Lost in Music
Originally uploaded by fwumpbungle

I subscribe to eMusic. Its cheap and has a fairly decent catalog. But when I logged into my eMusic account the other day I got the following message:

"We are excited to announce that in early July eMusic will begin rolling out a major addition to our music catalog. "

They went on to tell me that because of the new additions to the catalog, major label artists such as the Dixie Chicks, Michael Jackson, Simon & Garfunkel and Yo Yo Ma, I would still pay the same exact price for my membership, but would be receiving 120 fewer downloads per year.

Nothing against Michael Jackson, but eMusic is tripping. I belong to eMusic because I love that I can find lots of drm-free indie, electronica and experimental stuff on eMusic. And at such a low price it makes risk taking easy.

But the recent addition of the Sony music catalog has forced them to charge more (or charge the same for less.) 120 songs less for the same price? 12 albums less per year? An album a month less so I can download Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits?

Let's say I was annoyed.

But they knew I would be, so to compensate for the loss of said 120 tracks per year, they had this little temptation to dangle before my ears:

"To celebrate the addition of all this great music we're giving you a 10-track booster pack (good for 30 days), free! The booster pack will automatically be added to your account in early August."

So to celebrate the loss of 120 tracks, they were going to compensate by giving me 10 tracks. (free!)

I did the math:

+10 free tracks - 120 tracks = -110 tracks.

For my money, the eMusic eQuation doesn't add up.

Update: Here is a letter about the changes from eMusic CEO and Chairman Danny Stein and subscriber comments: http://17dots.com/2009/05/31/more-of-the-good-stuff/

Wow - very cool slow motion wave action from BBC Two

2009-05-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

Bike Art Show in San Luis Obispo: May 1 - May 31

2009-04-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

What: The Tall Bike Posse presents the bike art show Bike Momentum - A Chain Reaction of Art and Advocacy, a great collection of cool bike art that benefits the both the artists and the San Luis Obispo County Bicycle Coalition.

When: The Gallery Reception on Friday, May 1st runs from 6-9pm. Come and meet the artists, graze on appetizers, have a beer and buy some bike art. The show runs through May 31st in celebration of Bike Month.

Where: 1060 Osos St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. San Luis Obispo is located around the midpoint between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the 101 Freeway, so it makes a great day-trip or weekend destination.

This video is from the 2007 show:

Mark Beck: Contemporary American Realist Painter

2009-04-08T22:50:00.000-07:00

I just uploaded a shot of this Mark Beck painting, as well as some background info on the artist over at http://beckpainting.blogspot.com/.

Deadwood Head Shots on Flickr

2009-01-07T13:28:00.001-08:00

Deadwood Head Shot: Snoozy Green
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7

This just in - I just started the Deadwood Head Shots group on Flickr:

Deadwood - the HBO show that ran for three seasons and wasn't renewed for a fourth - and so now of course it can never end.

This group is a hypothetical casting couch - a place for head shots of the fourth season characters that might have been.

Requirements: Submit a Deadwoodian head shot, and come up with a name for your character.

If you want to supply additional info about your character, such as age, origins, bathing habits, criminal record, dietary concerns, etc., feel free.

Ideally photos will be submitted as Polaroids, or using Poladroid software, but all shots are welcome regardless of format.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/deadwoodheadshot/

Jack-a-Roid

2009-01-05T08:36:00.001-08:00

Jack-a-Roid
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7

This shot combines two great things: Jackalopes and Polaroids.

Free Obama Hope Santa Stickers Template

2008-12-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week someone sent out an e-mail to Obama volunteers regarding our local Christmas Parade, and in that e-mail was a little jpeg image of Santa Claus, but Santa appearing in the context of the blue and red color scheme used for the "Hope" and "Progress" posters of the Obama campaign. I searched the web for this image and was unable to a copy anywhere, so I don't know who the name of the artist responsible. But I liked it so much I made a Photoshop pdf template for printing it out in sticker form.

You can download the template here:

Santa Claus Hope Stickers

To make sure that the stickers print correctly, open the file with Photoshop, hit "Print with Preview" (in the "file" dropdown menu) and then make sure to check the "Scale To Fit Media" box.

Now put some sticker paper (available from most office supply stores) in your printer and there you are, free stickers to spread a holiday message of Hope. The template prints out 10 large stickers and 4 small stickers per page. The bigger ones stick great just about anywhere (store windows, newspaper boxes, fire hydrants, public transportation) and the small ones are great for letters or to stick on presents. Either size is also great for just giving away to family and friends.

Hail, Hail, Freedonia

2008-06-12T12:47:00.001-07:00

they hate freedom
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7

Okay - paradox time. Rep Dennis Kucinich of Ohio this week introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George Bush. Bush's approval rating is at an all time low and many people are tired of the costly, unjustified war against Iraq - but somehow this doesn't translate into people wanting the President and his cronies to be held accountable for their actions.

Another paradox - there has been little to no coverage in the mainstream media of Kucinich's efforts. Most of the coverage that I have read is coverage about how little coverage there has been.

I don't believe that it is fair to simply let President Bush and his crew walk away unpunished for the grave economic, political and social damage that they have caused this country (and others) to suffer as a result of their unjustified war against Iraq. We can stand with Representative Kucinich to see that President Bush at very least is made to answer the charges presented against him.

You can call Rep John Conyers (D - MI), head of the House Judiciary Committee, to urge that the committee begin a review of the 35 Articles. Rep Conyers' office can be reached at (202) 225-5126.

You can also contact your own state Rep to urge that they support Representative Kucinich in his effort. Contact info for your House Rep can be found on this map and list.

New Giclee Bike Print

2008-05-23T08:09:00.001-07:00

We drive with Hitler ?
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7

Cool new bike print now available over on Etsy.

May is Bike Month here in San Luis Obispo, and for the Tall Bike Posse's month long Bike Art show I contributed this reworking of a great old Weimer Pursell WWII poster that originally promoted car-pooling.

As soon as I saw the original I knew I had to use it - first, because back then it was a huge deal to compare someone to Hitler. It still is a big deal to compare someone to Hitler, but every politician who wants to invade another country (see Panama, Iraq, etc) pulls out the Hitler tag and everyone rolls over and in we go.

I'm also interested in the contrast between WWII and the current Iraq War II, in that previously people were asked to make sacrifices for the war effort, to grow their own food, recycle, save gas, etc - and nowadays we are urged to go out and shop, spend more money, buy as much $4.00 a gallon gas as we can afford.

The print is a 10.6" x 13.6" unframed museum quality Giclee print, on a sheet of 13"x20" 100% cotton, acid free watercolor paper, perfect for display in a 16"x20" frame.

Happy Bike Month !

Hmmm,These Magnets are Strangely Attractive

2007-12-04T18:09:00.001-08:00

Calavera Christmas Magnet
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7

A quick announcement !

I've opened a little shop, The House of Sevens, on Etsy, that online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade.

Most of what I'm making and selling are cool, unique magnets that you won't find anywhere else: magnets like the bottlecap magnet in the photo, a sort of Day of the Dead / Christmas mash-up magnet: magnets made from old wooden Scrabble pieces: magnets made from old Japanese kanji game pieces: magnets made from vintage Shiner Bock beer bottlecaps: An Asian Map magnet set: Magnets made from old money, like the Greek Drachma magnet: Mexican comics magnets, Chinese Joss Paper magnets, Christmas magnets, and more. I add something new every few days.

I sell some individual magnets, but most of what I sell are magnet sets. My magnets sets make great gifts and stocking stuffers. I also do custom orders, so if you look at my stuff and see something you want, but maybe a little different, let me know and I see what I can do.

So when you're looking for the perfect, unique gift for the person who has it all, or for you, come check out my magnets in The House of Sevens.

Best. Movie. Advisory. Ever.

2007-09-15T12:39:00.001-07:00

Corn Palace Motel
Originally uploaded by agilitynut

Some years ago I worked on a film called "Mr. Woodcock" starring Billy Bob Thornton and Susan Sarandon. It never saw the light of day. I had heard that they had to re-shoot lots of the film (like the parts that were supposed to be funny) but it was finally released this week to mediocre reviews.

I laughed pretty hard after seeing in the September 14th, 2007 online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle that Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic Steven Winn had concluded his review of the film "Mr. Woodcock" with the following:

Advisory: This film contains coarse language, a corn-eating contest and footage of Susan Sarandon as a small-town Nebraska beauty queen.

I wish Dennis Kucinich was a cartoon

2007-08-06T16:48:00.001-07:00

Dennis Kucinich
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman

I was over on Boing Boing this afternoon and followed this link to a page called "Pick Your Candidate".

They have a list of issues (Iraq War, Stem-Cell Research, Guantanamo, Torture, Immigration, Education etc...) you fill in the questions with your opinion - the page does the math and figures out which candidates take positions most similar to yours, as well as most opposite to yours. It's a great way to find out about candidates who may or may not deserve your vote in the upcoming presidential election.

In my case, Dennis "Long Shot" Kucinich was my best match. My second best was Mike "who?" Gravel, followed not-too-closely in third place by Barack Obama.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the candidate with positions the furthest away from mine was Duncan Hunter (He's anti-abortion / pro-death penalty / anti-stem cell research / pro-torture / pro-bomb Iran / anti-Universal Health Care / anti-minimum wage increase etc etc etc...) He scares me, but I'm not too worried about him actually getting anywhere near the nomination, much less the election.

On the other hand, Kucinich thrills me and I'm worried that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. In what's the Kucinich campaign is calling a "blind taste test" of the American public - Kucinich is the first choice of 53% of the people who fill out the questionnaire at "Pick your Candidate". But according to a recent Newseek poll, Kucinich has the support of about 2% of the electorate.

Given the difference between these two sets of numbers, I can't help but feel that if Kucinich was an actor - or a cartoon character - more people would feel comfortable voting for him.

Pardon me...or, The Case of The Texas Weiners

2007-07-02T23:45:00.001-07:00

libby's
Originally uploaded by spychic

Okay - it's late - and I don't know the full story.

But I do know that Bush pardoned Scooter Libby tonight.

Yeah - i know - Bush said that it wasn't actually a full fledged pardon - just that Libby gets to skip the jail time that a jury of United States citizens and a judge had sentenced him to.

Is it genetic?

George Senior, George H.W. Bush, pardoned many of the Iran Contra crooks previously in his employ, including Caspar Weinberger for perjury, and Robert McFarlane for unlawfully withholding information.

I guess that's what we should expect when we continue to elect a bunch of Texas Weiners...

May Is Bike Month

2007-05-04T00:39:00.001-07:00

May Is Bike Month
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

San Luis Obispo's Tall Bike Posse is having BikeSHIFT - a bike-themed art show. Went down and saw some of the work that is already there tonight and there is some really great stuff.

The opening is Friday May 4th - 6-9 p.m.

848 Monterey St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401

More info at: www.tallbikeposse.com

Here is a little video of the exhibit being installed:

I am Stanislav Lem

2007-01-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

I am:

Stanislav Lem

This pessimistic Pole has spent a whole career telling ironic stories of futility and frustration. Yet he is also a master of wordplay so witty that it sparkles even when translated into English.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Or at least today...

Who's got time for popcorn and ukeleles?

2006-07-20T23:21:00.000-07:00

They are all different
Originally uploaded by Rune T.

Not a question that comes up too often, but lately I've found time for popcorn and ukeleles.

I was at emdot's last weekend during an electrical blackout and i was wondering what time it was. I would have just looked at my cell phone but couldn't find it just then.

-emdot said "Why don't you just call popcorn from the land line?"
-i said "ha. popcorn - what the hell are you talking about?"

That's when i first learned about "popcorn" time. emdot explained it to me, about how from anywhere in California one can pick up the phone and call 767-2676 (POP-CORN) and get a recording telling you "At the tone, the time will be ________ and _______ seconds........beep." For some reason I thought she was pulling my leg. But sure enough, I called and was soon listening to the robo-voice updating the time in ten second increments. Once convinced, em further revealed that one could call POP (767) followed by any four digits (POP-TART, POP-FART, POP-ARTT etc.) to reach this time service.

So, thus enthused, on my return from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles, I tried it out this a.m. But instead of the time I heard a different recording, something to the tune of "The number you have reached is not in service, please check..." I tried again to make sure and still no luck. hmmm.

Emdot had been pretty sure that "popcorn" worked for all of California. A quick google brought me over to a nice little history of the "speaking clock" over on wikipedia (link), that let me know, among other things, that while the 767 prefix works just fine for Northern California, Southern California has its own prefix, 853. I immediately looked to see what these numbers spelled out on my phone's keypad. ULFCORN didn't do much for me, nor did VJDCORN. I finally settled on UKELELE (853-5353). I know, the more popular spelling is ukUlele, but calling UKULELE will probably get unfortunate soul out of bed depending on when the call is made.

There is more info over on wikipedia about the "speaking clock" in general, such as how it has been operating in Sweden since October of 1936 (HEJ-SVEN?) and that in England comedian Lenny Henry's was the speaking clock's voice as part of a fundraising effort in 2003.

I'm trying to thing about whos voice i'd like to hear next time I call. Right now Danny Devito, Truman Capote, Darth Vadar and Charro all come to mind.

Syd Barrett - R.I.P.

2006-07-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

Drugs4
Originally uploaded by Bollops.

Was sad to read the news today that Syd Barrett had passed away a few days ago. If you don't know who he was, maybe you've heard of Pink Floyd, the band he co-founded in 1965. Most people know who Pink Floyd are, but not so many have ever listened to their debut album, that fantastic masterpiece of psychedelia, The Piper at The Gates of Dawn.

My friend John Dragonetti first turned me on to this record sometime back in the early 1980s, and it was amazingly fun to listen to back then. And it still is, even though I don't tend to partake of the psychedelic substances so much these days. There is an enduring sense of joyful anarchy in Barrett's lyrics and songs that has stood the test of time. Songs like "Apples and Oranges" and "Bike" will always be up there near the top of my list.

There are obits all over the web right now, but there is a lot of good info on Syd over here at Wikipedia.

Syd eventually withdrew from the band due to mental problems, most likely brought about from his use of psychedelic drugs. I found it ironic that on the same day his death was announced, the Los Angeles Times is running this story on the potential for psilocybin (from hallucinogenic mushrooms) to be used to help addicts and people with terminal cancer attain feelings of spiritual transcendence. I have no doubts that this is possible, but as demonstrated by Syd, too much of a good thing might not be so good. The story mentions that subjects in the trial who took psilocybin were only given a one time dose, and many reported that the experience was "among the five most profound events in their lives, rivaling the birth of a child." I'd be interested to see studies on the different experiences of medicinal psilocybin users vs recreational psilocybin users.

The Times article concludes on a funny/scary note:

"David E. Nichols, a Purdue University chemist who synthesized psilocybin for use in the study, said the effects of psilocybin could vary greatly, depending on the mood of the user, and could be dangerous.

"If you take psilocybin and go watch 'Friday the 13th,' I can guarantee you won't have a mystical experience," he said."

Alhambra Drive-by Memories

2006-06-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

Alhambra Drive-by
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

A while back i made this shot for Ko Matsuo (zeebouz on flickr), a friend of mine who lives in Tokyo who I knew in high school when i lived in Athens, Greece. At some point I thought that he had mentioned that he had lived in Alhambra, CA as a kid. So I shot the shot when i went out to Alhambra to eat with John and sent Ko a link, and then I got this response:

"hey , Steve !!
Yah , I remember the name Alhambera !
Rings a huge Bell !!! I must have past by or hung out there
many , many times in the ancient past .......
I lived in San Gabriel , I guess it 's really near by (?)"

So then I wondered why I had thought Ko had lived in Alhambra. But I figured I was just confused/confusing.

Then, later the same day, I got another e-mail from Ko:

"hey , again !
I just had a really cool experience !
Every Sunday morning at 5:30 AM I go out
to a coffee shop near by and
get me a small pizza and a few cups of coffee .
Same thing every Sunday morning ....
Well this morning after I emailed you
I went to the coffee shop but
for some reason I ordered
a toasted english muffin for breakfast ..
and I took One bite of the muffin and all of a sudden
all these memories came flooding inside my tiny brain !!!!
Major Flash Back !!
Yes , Steve ! you were RIGHT !
I used to live in Alhambra from
kindergarten to 2nd grade ... back in the 1970 's ..
the cool thing is that I now clearly remember that
the First breakfast I ever had
arriving at the house in Alhambra was
a toasted english muffin !!
Really cool how the Subconscious works !
I guess I sent you an email some moons ago
that I lived there or something .... I haven't thought of the place since ..
Know wonder huge bells were ringing !!
I guess I am going senile or something !
getting OLD man !!

anyways , if you hadn't mentioned Alhambra
this experience wouldn't have been so intense"

I love the way this memory emerged from a bite of english muffin. makes me want one for breakfast tomorrow...

A Day Without Juice (and bread and produce and...)

2006-05-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

A Day Without Juice (and bread and produce and...)
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

On tuesday, on a trip to the Trader Joe's near my house, I kept seeing signs like this. This one was the first i noticed, because i was heading for the tangerine juice and found this instead.

Next stop - frozen aisle. Same story - most of the trader joe's frozen pizzas were out of stock - due to no deliveries making it through. probably a good thing, i get plenty of lipids as it is.

For me, seeing these signs in my local grocery really made the memory of monday's Day Without An Immigrant march that much better - because here it was, bits of lingering evidence that many of those people who were out there marching for change were also some of the people we all depend on, people who drive trucks full of our food to grocery stores every day, people who make our juice or package our bags of greens. It was the symbolism of the march made real - and transported across town from McArthur Park to my neighborhood store.

so - sign of the times, or no? i'm guessing that signs like this will probably become much more common in the next couple of years.

National Poetry Month: Final Installment...Rashomon Style...

2006-04-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

upstream downstream
Originally uploaded by placeinsun.

Wow - the month flew by - as months do - and as i write this there are maybe one hundred and ten (or less) minutes remaining in the month of April. So not a lot of time remains to get people pumped up for National Poetry Month.

and besides, May, which is just around the corner, is Date Your Mate Month, National Hamburger Month, and Fungal Infection Awareness Month. (really. try google and see.)

But despite the plethora of upcoming reasons to celebrate, we should probably just concentrate on the here and now, and appreciate the few fleeting moments that remain with us as part of National Poetry Month 2006.

and so rather than rounding out the month with just one poem, i thought it would make more sense if we rounded out the month with just one poem.

Meng Hao-jan was something of an old-school (689-740 C.E.) chinese poet.

here is a William Carlos Williams translation of his poem Night on the Great River:

Steering my little boat towards a misty islet,

I watch the sun descend while my sorrows grow:

In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops,

But in the blue lake the moon is coming close.

and here is the very same poem, in another translation by Kenneth Rexroth:

We anchor the boat alongside a hazy island.

As the sun sets I am overwhelmed with nostalgia.

The plain stretches away without limit.

The sky is just above the tree tops.

The river flows quietly by.

The moon comes down amongst men.

and finally here is a third translation by Gary Snyder:

The boat rocks at anchor by the misty island

Sunset, my loneliness comes again.

In these vast wilds the sky arches down to the trees.

In the clear river water, the moon draws near.

I love how each interpretation of the original poem is so wildly different (and similar), in the same way that the four versions of the same story in Rashomon reflect, well - who can say exactly what they reflect - other than our own way of seeing/saying what we perceive or need to preceive as "the truth".

And i love that we can all examine the same exact poem/incident/newspaper story, and the variety and randomness of our individual lives insures that as much as we are all, in some way, looking at the same page, we are simultaneously looking through a set of eyes that is never quite in focus for anyone but ourself.

Happy National Poetry Month !

(poems from The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry)

Is that "You Tube" in your pocket or...

2006-04-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

Went to a cook-out yesterday and at some point a few of us started taliking about all the cool/funny/strange stuff we'd been seeing over on You Tube lately. So today i poked around some more and was thrilled to find this clip of the band 999 singing "obsessed". I think i had seen this video all of twice after it came out in the early 1980s and some corner of my brain always wanted to see it again. So when I found it today i was really excited.

Then I watched it.

the song sounds Ennio Morricone-ish, and they were kind of going for a "spaghetti western" look. kind of. ( western looking clothes do not a sphaghetti western make. would british video makers make "fish and chips westerns"?)

Anyway - the "cinematography" was atrocious - though no worse than most of the other music videos shot in that really horrible early 1980s style. in fact the whole thing is just rediculous.

I love it.

National Poetry Month, Part Three

2006-04-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

found puzzle
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

Since we are still in the midst of National Poetry month, here is another, this time from Denise Levertov:

The Secret

Two girls discover

the secret of life

in a sudden line of

poetry.

I who don't know the

secret wrote

the line. They

told me

(through a third person)

they had found it

but not what it was

not even

what line it was. No doubt

by now, more than a week

later, they have forgotten

the secret,

the line, the name of

the poem. I love them

for finding what

I can't find,

and for loving me

for the line I wrote,

and for forgetting it

so that

a thousand times, till death

finds them, they may

discover it again, in other

lines

in other

happenings. And for

wanting to know it,

for

assuming there is

such a secret, yes,

for that

most of all.

National Poetry Month: Part Two

2006-04-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

The Launch
Originally uploaded by Cheezit Addict.

Robert Francis' Catch, a poem about poetry (and more), is one of the very first poems (maybe the first, if we leave out "Casey at the Bat") that I encountered before high school that I looked at as anything more than something I had to read for school.

It was (in retrospect) exciting to me that this guy Francis, instead of sitting down and cranking out some dry monograph like "Poetry: Form, Function and Comprehension of the Creative Tendency in the 20th Century", had instead written a poem about poems, about writing poems, about understanding poems.

And that opened a door for me, because before that I kind of remember thinking "Why don't all these poets just say what they mean? Haven't they ever heard of prose?" And then i went "ooohhh! just like i can play baseball, i can play with words as well. Ergo, there's more than one way through the woods on a skinned horse." (okay maybe that wasn't my exact reaction, but you get the picture.)

Nowadays a poem about poetry may not be such a big deal, given that there are now countless songs about music and movies about film and even a show about nothing. And while those self-referential types of expression have probably been around as long as people have been expressing themselves, this was the eye-opener for me.

Catch

Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together,
Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand,
Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,
High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,
Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,
Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,
Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant,
Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy,
Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down,
Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning,
And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands.

Robert Francis

portrait of the bubbleblower as a young man

2006-04-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

portrait of the bubbleblower as a young man
Originally uploaded by emdot.

Who knew ?

Who ever imagined ?

An alley where the brick walls are plastered with the masticated then discarded remains of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of wads of bubble gum ?

Over on flickr emdot posted this shot of a self-portrait that someone created using wads and wads of yicky sticky gum.

Which would have been plenty enough excitement for me for one day, but she also included a link that explained that this portrait is located in San Luis Obispo's Bubble Gum Alley, (more shots here) where people have been smushing their gum onto the alley walls since the early 1960s.

Wow. I love that this place exists. Why doesn't every town have one of these? It seems that after the smoking ban was implemented here in L.A., the city council would have at least set aside some space for "Nicotine Gum Alley" or the "NicoDerm CQ Patch Park", right?

And it seems like this might be a good solution for Singapore as well. If they would just de-outlawify bubble gum again and designate a specific area of the city for its disposal, they would simultaneously crush the seemingly uncrushable blackmarket in bubble gum AND create new revenue streams with the resulting rise in tourism/bubble gum tax receipts.

keep your fingers crossed...

National Poetry Month

2006-04-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

Someone (thanks emdot) recently alerted me to the fact that April is National Poetry Month. Now I tend to be one of those people that appreciates poetry if someone takes the time to send me something or recommend something that they think i'd like, but these days i rarely (never say never) seek out a book of poetry on my own. Generally when looking for something stimulating to read i'll almost always choose some non-fiction/biography or highly-entertaining crappy science-fiction pulp-dripping drivel.

But don't get me wrong. i'm not a completely uncultured ignoramus. More like a half-wit. And even half-wits like poetry. Poetry is great! On the occasions when i do take the time to sit down with some good poetry and chew over the words - i'm always forced to remember that some of my favorite poets can express complex thoughts and create powerful images and subtle impressions with just a few carefully choosen words that would take me a completely awkward run-on-sentance about the power of pithyness to even begin to express and i think you can see why i won't even begin to try.

Over time I've gone through stages, read some of the beats, like me some Rumi, read me some Levertov now and then. And of course haiku, since it seems so simple when it really isn't.

So throughout National Poetry Month i'm going to be posting the occasional poem here, and will be choosing a photo from flickr (maybe mine, maybe someone else's) to go along with it. Today a short senryu from Elizabeth St Jacques:

billboard:
the black hole
in her Colgate smile

Plane Clash

2006-04-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

Plane Clash
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

Okay – when I logged into my e-mail this a.m., I saw this headline on the bbc: Terror fear over Clash fan's song. (For some reason that link isn't working like that, so see the link at the end of this entry.

My first thought was that this story was going to be similar to those “Bible Belt Teen Suicides Possibly Probably Maybe Caused By Devilicious Heavy Metal Muzak”.

So I read the story expecting to learn that the house of some alleged terrorist had been searched and that his iTunes showed that he had listened to “The Guns of Brixton” 666 times before committing some horrific subway bombing and that the authorities were attempting to make a connection between the music of a rebellious/progressive youth culture and terrorism.

Instead what I read was that Harraj Mann, an English mobile-phone salesman of Indian descent, had been arrested and pulled off of an airplane because the taxi driver who had driven him to the airport had thought his behavior was somewhat suspicious. Among the allegedly suspicious behaviors exhibited by “Mr. Mann”, the red flag seems to been raised because he listened to and sang along with the Clash song “London Calling” on his way to the airport.

Okay – now I understand that terrorism is a real possibility and that the police, in order “to protect and to serve”, have to check things out when someone makes the allegation that someone suspicious has just boarded an airplane.

What gets to me is the climate of fear that has been created post-9/11. It’s gotten to the point where if a 23-year-old Englishman of Indian descent listens to and sings along with a 27-year-old Clash song on the way to the airport, he is reported to the police as suspicious. I wonder, what if an Englishman of Swedish descent had sung along to the same song? (The CNN version of the story mentions that he also listened to “Procol Harum, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles” en route to Durham Tees Valley Airport. I have to admit that if I were the driver I might have asked the authorities not to make an arrest but to at least delete the Procol Harum songs from Mr. Mann’s iPod.)

As to a climate of fear on this side of the pond, in the U.S. there have been numerous stories regarding unwarranted surveillance by the FBI and Homeland Security. Remember the case of Homeland Security monitoring Vegans who were protesting in front of a Honeybaked Ham store? Or the FBI photographing anti-war activists in Pittsburgh who were opposed to our invasion of Iraq and were guilty of advocating pacifism? or the outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame by the Bush Administration as political retribution for her husband publicly contradicting the administrations false claims about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium in Africa?

Okay so maybe all of this isn’t really connected. But in a way it is. In England people are being detained for singing ancient punk rock chestnuts. In the U.S. Homeland Security is watching people for picketing a store that sells hams. The “War on Terrorism” seems less focused on tracking down the likes of Osama Bin Laden and more focused about spying on citizens who don’t quite fit the popular perception of what is “mainstream”, including vegans, environmentalists, pacifists and those who oppose the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. Which tends to make some people, like me, a little bit nervous, as it evokes the days of the COINTELPRO.

But enough for now. Go out with friends tonight and bravely sing Clash songs at every karaoke bar in town. Just make sure that one of your friends sings only Dave Matthews Band tunes in case you need someone to bail you out of the big house.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4879918.stm.

more art than i could possibly eat

2006-04-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

detail: Lab 101 mural
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

This Saturday, April 1st, Lab 101 gallery down in Culver City plays host to the opening of "What's New", featuring some pretty great work by the likes of:

Mike Aho
Todd Bratrud
Rik Catlow
Mel Kadel
Travis Millard
Brett Millard
Josh Rios
Matthew Rodriguez
Dennis Hodges
Michael Sieben
Tim Brown

and some guest artists thrown in for good measure.

But the gravy on the cake is that also included is a huge site-specific mural, covering two walls, which was created in a collaborative effort between the artists. (see photo for detail of mural) The mural, which will be on display through April 28th, will be painted over and seen no more once the show comes down. So hurry.

Opening:

Lab 101 Gallery
8530-B Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90932

April 1st 7-10 p.m.
Show runs April 1st - April 28th

It's official ! My Blog Is Dead !

2006-03-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

found bear (or maybe monkey or ape or even chewbaca) )
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

This isn't even an entry, is it?

American Football - Hot Dogs - Apple Pie - Chevrolet

2005-10-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

patriots10020502514
Originally uploaded by pkeleher/Paul.

The poet, playwright, screenwriter etc Harold Pinter has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I first became interested in Pinter when my high-school staged his absurdist/existentialist play "The Dumb Waiter". I think of his work as more "interesting" than "enjoyable", but when you're in a mood to think rather than have everything spoon-fed to you pre-digested, try and catch one of his plays. They will surely be staged a little more frequently now that his name is back in the press.

In his poem "American Football: A Reflection Upon The Gulf War", Pinter comments on the circus-like atmosphere surrounding the original Gulf War (and all modern televised wars). For me it really hits home when i think about how frustrating and confusing it was to watch the sanitized/televised version of our "victory" in the the war, while at the same time being painfully aware of the death, destruction and disease we were spreading on the ground. According to Pinter, "It sprang from the triumphalism, the machismo, the victory parade, that were very much in evidence at the time."

American Football: A Reflection Upon The Gulf War

Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

for more on the poem

for more on Pinter.

day 6: a swim was swum

2005-08-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

day 6: a swim was swum

Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

this film doesn't quite work - but i learned a little from putting it together - the editing has to be tighter - the angle is wrong - but it was fun to make.

mark swimming through the frame at the beginning was a happy accident i decided to leave in - i was able to sync him up with the train whistle in a nice way.

i finished editing the picture and hadn't even really thought about the sound - and i had never noticed that there were built in sound effects in iMovie. so of course i had to over-use them.

here it is.

day 5: picture show

2005-08-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

day 5: picture show
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

some randomness.

some low-tech camera trick.

my screen-saver generated pictures at random every 5 seconds from i-Photo - i pixilated them and shot through a drinking glass (resulting in an almost subliminal ad for that blue and yellow swedish place where one can buy said glasses very inexpensively).

not much else to say - except i wondered what it would look like and i have almost filled my allowable bandwidth on vimeo this week and may have to move away from video as a documentable source for this project for a few days.

here it is...

360?

piece of cake (very large piece...)

day 4: the face

2005-08-24T23:35:00.000-07:00

day 4: the face
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

made a few short films today, nothing i ended up really liking much except the pixilation of this drawing. the film actually turned out a bit on the cruddy side once it was compressed for web viewing ( the colors got all blown out and disappeared) but since this is pretty much a sketch book it'll do...

this is a character i seem to use fairly often, though not always with the frown. but mostly with the frown, i like having a character who isn't so glad with the way things are going and who lets it be known. There is a sarcastic "Don't Worry" series featuring this guy which i'll have to try and dig up and scan. There are also variations on this guy in my "temp art" series.

day 3: belated spring cleaning

2005-08-23T22:07:00.000-07:00

belated spring cleaning
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

365 day 3:

i think i'm using little videos on vimeo as a crutch in my quest for daily creative productivity. i had planned on making some type of earthwork at the beach today, but we got out to malibu at high tide and somehow it just didn't work out. so i fell back on the video art option:

abbreviated shirt catalog nightmare dream video on vimeo

I don't know how many times in my life this has happened, but there are those days when you wake up and look in the closet and wonder, "who put all this stuff in here? i bought this? i wore this? no! i did? hmmm...no way!"

and the fact that there are a number of similar shirts, all ghastly, that for some reason you imagined you liked. and now ? time to donate...

day 2: get up, stand up

2005-08-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

day two
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

day one you start strong. day two it seems like it can only get better. this is a still from another very short video clip up on vimeo.

it doesn't mean anything in particular - i guess today i was just thinking about the sisyphusian nature of life - the repetition, but with variation, that we go through every day. and i also wanted to know what it would look like. it kind of fails because i'm lazy but i'm practicing letting things go and not having to perfect everything so it is what it is.

i guess it could also get much much worse.

day 1: film still

2005-08-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

film still
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

Ever have one of those days (or one of those weeks) where you get really really down on yourself and feel like you've never done anything - never created anything - never etc etc etc ?

for some reason - this weekend - i have been antsy and awkward and bursting at the seams all to no avail. feeling restless and creative but not sure where the energy should be going. so rather than hatching some big mega-project i've decided to start small with an sketch book kind of thing:

"365 works" (see the set here. though since today is day 1 you've pretty much seen it all)

It is a photo set on flickr, of what is supposedly going to be 365 images, containing a photo a day of something i have created. Will there be 365 images at the end of a year? hmmmm.....probably not. probably. but what else am i going to do?

the very short film that the still comes from is just a goof of a supposedly haunted bobble head dog:

dog film on vimeo.

All i ever think about is Bush...

2005-05-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by irregulargirl.

It seems like the only thing i ever blog about these days is Bush, Bush and more bush. I know i should just get over it and go about my business but it really bugs me how He and the neo-cons (with the help of certain segments the american press) put one over on the american public. WMDs? Nope, none. Evidence of an Iraq/Saddam connection to Al-Queda and by extension to 9/11? Thus far, none whatsoever. And yet here we are, thousands of American troops and countless more Iraqi civilians have been killed, and the situation keeps getting worse.

And now the Downing Street Memo, which reveals that Bush was planning on invading Iraq, all the while knowing full well that there were no WMDs and that Saddam was a threat to no one (except the people of Iraq, which is a whole other story..), and continually lying to the world about his intentions...

And this brings me to, guess what, more about Bush. Paul Krugman in the NYTimes asks a few good questions in his op-ed today, Staying What Course?

And finally, as if this wasn't enough in one day, lots of good stuff over on Juan Cole today. Most interesting to me is his discussion of the Newsday story on the desecration of the Koran at our torture camp in Guantanamo Bay, especially the info from a former military officer who recounts his training sessions at a mock POW camp, or "SERE school--Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape" which included the following:

"He brought out the bible and started going off on it verbally--how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around."

It's not such a big stretch to get from there to US military interrogators flushing a Koran down the toilet, is it? And tell me again, why are these guys all being held in Cuba and not in the US?

And (finally finally) the outraged denials from the White House and the Pentagon would make me laugh if they weren't so absurd as to make me want to cry. Again in The NYTimes, the following quote:

"It's appalling, really, that an article that was unfounded to begin with has caused so much harm, including loss of life," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said at a briefing in Washington."

The nerve of these people! This same statement applies equally well to the cooking of the books, the falsification of intelligence, that got us into Iraq in the first place. These guys are outrageous and I can't believe we haven't booted them out of office already. (okay i'll go back to sleep now)

more great election results...

2005-05-14T01:59:00.000-07:00

direct
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

Juan Cole has a short mention today about whether the elections made the Iraq situation better or worse, and a link to an interesting Hannah Allam article on the same topic...

viva botero...

2005-05-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

botero096
Originally uploaded by Casual Chin.

Juan Forero in the Sunday New York Times has a story about the latest works by Colombian artist Fernando Botero. Botero, best known for his depictions of rubenesque nuns and policmen, has shifted his focus to the US torture of Iraqis that took place in Abu Ghraib prison. The Times article includes a few of the new paintings, and there is a link to an audio-visual slide show as well. I was never that interested in Botero's previous work and I was startled to see such a dramatic change of subject matter for this artist so late in life.

According to the article:

"He said he read about Abu Ghraib in The New Yorker, then followed European news accounts. Calling himself an admirer of the United States - one of his sons lives in Miami - Mr. Botero said he became incensed because he expected better of the American government."

If you get a message telling you to register to read the article, it is free to register and doesn't take long...

desert storm

2005-05-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

desert storm
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

this photo was taken yesterday in hollywood on sunset boulevard. this continues to be the rainiest year in LA on record since some time in the late 1800s.

and speaking of desert storms, juan cole has an interesting piece today about when the Bush administration actually decided to invade Iraq, and how the Brits helped in the false justification process...

more stormy weather:

and a good piece over at Daily K-Os by Ajai Raj, the student arrested for disrupting a Q&A session by Ann Coulter at the University of Texas in Austin.

a few bad apples putting the "high" in high school...

2005-05-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

angry soldier...
Originally uploaded by 7-how-7.

More news recently about the military's problems with recruiting soldiers for the ever sustaining quagmire in Iraq. Just read a great story about how David McSwane, a high school student (who is also the editor of his school newspaper) approached army recruiters telling them he was a high school drop-out with a drug problem. Rather than turn him away, the recruiters helped him buy a fake diploma and drove him to buy a substance designed to dupe drug testers. The lid was blown off of "recruitergate" in McSwane's school newspaper, The Westwind, and later picked up by a local CBS affiliate. Good to see young people taking action, especially since they are the ones dying over there...

baseball starting to catch on in usa...

2005-04-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-04-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

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....

2005-04-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

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

Don't forget to Spring ahead...

2005-04-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-02T19:17:00.000-08:00

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)

2005-04-02T00:55:00.000-08:00

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...