brilliant mistake

Berlin Wall in Los Angeles. Original Graffiti.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:07:51 -0800

Berlin Wall in Los Angeles. Original Graffiti.

Berlin Wall in Los Angeles. Detail, original graffiti.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:05:37 -0800

Berlin Wall in Los Angeles. Detail, original graffiti.

“Kent Twitchell, whose larger-than-life paintings cover...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:55:00 -0800

“Kent Twitchell, whose larger-than-life paintings cover entire walls and sides of freeways, said he planned to “bookend” two sections of the wall with portraits of President John F. Kennedy, who denounced the barrier in a Berlin speech in 1961, and President Ronald Reagan, who famously demanded, “Tear down this wall!” shortly before it came down in 1989.

But as he rushed to finish the portraits, Twitchell said he was told by organizers that he could leave one of the paintings in his studio: There was no room for both.

“They said there would only be room for one and they just assumed it would be Kennedy,” the disappointed artist said this week as he continued to work at putting the final touches on the Reagan one.”

They eventually found room for both, obvs, just in time for the ceremony tonight (I took the picture around 4:00). That’s Twitchell talking to the lady with the dog.

Update: Looking at the Wende Musem gallery, it looks like they made room by cutting out half of JFK & RR’s faces.

Berlin Wall in Los Angeles (Apologies for crappy cell phone pic)

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:58:00 -0800

Berlin Wall in Los Angeles

(Apologies for crappy cell phone pic)

Martian landscapes

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:59:04 -0800

Martian landscapes

"Because, as someone who’s worked as an editor, writer and critic for almost two decades in the..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:03:36 -0800

“Because, as someone who’s worked as an editor, writer and critic for almost two decades in the literary world, I’ve concluded, like most of my half-sentient colleagues, that the publishing industry is no better at ignoring gender than your average obstetrician.”

- Lizzie Skurnick - Same Old Story: Best-Books Lists Snub Women Writers — Politics Daily

Afro-Peruvian

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:45:06 -0800

One learns many random things when writing trenchant thoughts on America’s Next Top Model. Not from the actual show, of course, there one only learns how to smize and practice casual racism. However, one can learn much in the following googling to check facts no one really cares about and never wind up in the actual recap. Ah, procrastinating. This week I learned about Afro-Peruvians, the descendants of African and Malagasy slaves brought to the Americas by Spanish Conquistadors. No word on when they get a photo shoot.

"Women are absolutely indifferent to their genitals; they hardly know each other. Women do not talk..."

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:49:15 -0800

“Women are absolutely indifferent to their genitals; they hardly know each other. Women do not talk to them, they do not give funny nicknames to them and they never get angry with them.”

- Thirteen terribly weird facts about women - Pravda.Ru

(via)

"A “typographical error” resulted in the recall of student T-shirts at Linda Vista..."

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:17:51 -0700

“

A “typographical error” resulted in the recall of student T-shirts at Linda Vista Elementary School’s recent jog-a-thon, after a parent called the phone number printed on the back of the shirts and was connected to an adult chat line

[…]

The number was written as a cute slogan for the jog-a-thon, but turned out to be an actual number, said Rosemary Gladden, public information officer for Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District.
Linda Vista PTA is not the first group to make a mistake with that exact spoof number. The two word 800 number shows up online as part of a popular running slogan sold on T-shirts and merchandise.
But a Google search for the 1-800 number on its own returns news articles and blogs about schools in Ohio and Iowa that made the same mistake.
The 1-800 number goes to a she-male sex phone line.

”

- Now I am very curious about what the number actually was. It’s like a new millenium logic puzzle: “For ten points, what is a 7 seven number sequence that when matched with the letters on a standard phone keypad spells out both a play on a popular running slogan (at the humor level of a surburban elementary school t-shirt) and reference to she-male sex. Show your work.”

Porn phone accidentally printed on school shirts OCRegister.com

Jackie Robinson, age 10, batboy for the 1929 Pasadena...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:35:31 -0700

Jackie Robinson, age 10, batboy for the 1929 Pasadena Buicks.

(via-pdf)

Real PSA for LAPD’s new iWatch program. It’s like a...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:05:00 -0700

Real PSA for LAPD’s new iWatch program. It’s like a neighborhood watch, but creepier.

"Someone to whom I recently showed my glass beehive, with its movement like the main gear wheel of a..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:46:12 -0700

“Someone to whom I recently showed my glass beehive, with its movement like the main gear wheel of a clock - Someone who saw the constant agitation of the honeycomb, the mysterious maddened commotion of the nurse bees over the nest, the teeming bridges and stairways of wax, the invading spiral of the queen, the endlessly varied and repetitive labors of the swarm, the relentless and ineffectual toil, the fevered comings and goings, the call to sleep always ignored, undermining the next days work, the final repose of death, far from a place that tolerates neither sickness nor tombs - Someone who observed these things, after the initial astonishment had passed, quickly looked away with an expression of indescribable sadness and horror.”

- Víctor Erice, Ángel Fernández Santos, and Francisco J. Querejeta, The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena), 1973

"Let’s say someone says, out of the blue, ‘It’s 6 o’clock!’ You..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:22:00 -0700

“Let’s say someone says, out of the blue, ‘It’s 6 o’clock!’ You can say ‘Thank you, Big Ben!’ (‘Big Ben’ is a nickname for a giant clock in London.)”

- How to Have a Witty Conversation - wikiHow

“Marriage isn’t a used tissue you can just throw...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:59:00 -0700

“Marriage isn’t a used tissue you can just throw away; you have to sleep with that snotty kleenex for the rest of your life.”

Rescuemarriage.org uses the California electoral system for the only thing for which it is still useful: satire.

Now authorized by the California Secretary of State.

(Also check out the interview with at cockeyed.com. “I wish that I could force people that hate each other with the intensity of a thousand white suns back into a loveless marriage, but my attorneys tell me that getting that law passed would be unlikely in the current political climate.”)

"But to talk about burritos is to charge down a road lined with IEDs, every bump potentially the..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:19:00 -0700

“But to talk about burritos is to charge down a road lined with IEDs, every bump potentially the charge that is going to send you flying into a ditch, every screeching curve potentially your last. Tell me what kind of burrito you like and I will tell you who you are, but tell me what kind of burrito you really think I should like and I start looking for the next escape route out of town. The last time we casually described the moist, overstuffed monstrosity that San Francisco calls a burrito, it was almost enough to prod the weepy, black bean–craving citizens to ride their fixies down here to picket. Do we dare insult the oozing tubes of melted cheese that pass for burritos in San Diego, the deep-fried mail bombs in Arizona, or the suppurating man-purses you find in Colorado? Need we even address the fungus-munching, DF-bred snobs who claim the burrito is as un-Mexican as duck à l’orange?”

- Los Angeles Eat+Drink - What Is a Burrito? A Primer

"Do you really think Frank Sinatra lived to be 84 years old? In fact the “Chairman of the Board” had..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:46:00 -0700

“Do you really think Frank Sinatra lived to be 84 years old? In fact the “Chairman of the Board” had a new crowd to entertain in the late 80s/early 90s.
These people are clone hosts. Now, there is no thing as “black and white” with the Gods. This technology they invented is far, far too dynamic. Expect they require most to stay for a period of time, for I suspect actively (knowingly) engaging in this evil incurrs at an accelerated rate as compared to “carte blanche” given regarding successive clone hosts. They remain until they achieve a pre-determined level of disfavor, incurring evil in their misguided celebration of “earning”, at which time they are ultimately reincarnated, perhaps because they eventually learned this truth I am sharing with you and began to repair their relationship.”

- “i GOTTA FART” stops by to divulge the meaning of life in a 3540 word comment on a year-old recap of The Amazing Race. The Lord works in mysterious ways and has an awesome screen name.

One of the original croquet set models housed at the Royal...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:17:49 -0700

One of the original croquet set models housed at the Royal Institution of London.

August Hofmann plundered his croquet set to illustrate the...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:16:54 -0700

August Hofmann plundered his croquet set to illustrate the bonding properties of various elements for a lecture to the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Amazingly, Hofmann’s color scheme - arbitrarily chosen from the croquet set - has remained in use for 140 years: black for carbon, red for oxygen, green for chlorine, and white for hydrogen.

“Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton says the...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:42:00 -0700

“Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton says the sculpture looks like ‘some kind of cow splat.’ Bratton, who seems personally insulted by the installation, says he first drove past the work and later walked back to see whether ‘it’s as ugly up close as it is when you’re driving by.’ Sounding mad enough to have the artist arrested, he says the answer is yes.”

The new LAPD headquarters gets all artified by Peter Shelton. The artist says the sculptures represent two bisons, two bears, two hippos or any other fat animal you can think of. Bratton states he also doesn’t understand what the sculptures have to do with police administration.

“When you look down at the ground, it’s like looking...

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:23:00 -0700

“When you look down at the ground, it’s like looking up at the sky.”