Stan’s Obligatory Blog

We went over to West Hollywood today to DiRT Gallery to pick up the two collages we bought. They are part of the “Art Hysterical” series by Jeff Gillete. The two we got are “Brice Marden and embryo” and “Odd Nerdrum and Little Mermaid”.

We went to the latest opening party at The Underground Arts Society in Altadena this evening. The featured artist this month is Susanna Eggli, and she works with bones, shells, and other such odd items. She had pieces with crab claws and fish heads, and a whole series with what looked like rat skulls. It was interesting and amusing.

Today we went to the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. In the American history hall, they had a small exhibit about transportation, including a license badge for cars produced under the Selden automobile patent. This patent was taken out in 1895 by George Selden, and it covered the automobile. He never built a working model, and he had no intention of going into the automobile manufacturing business, but he knew other people would be in years to come. So he got this patent and then proceeded to shake down the car makers for license fees. For some years, they paid, until Henry Ford challenged it in court. In the end, the patent was ruled invalid, since it was basically just a form of legal extortion. But it’s a lot like the current SCO case against Linux.

Later on, we were in a different part of the museum, and I saw a display of a stuffed hawk that, sadly, didn’t look very lifelike. The cobwebs sort of gave it away.




Still, it was a fun day, and Lucinda had fun. Pictures in her photo album.

We went to see “Stacked: Homage to Pamela Anderson” at DiRT Gallery in West Hollywood today. This was a fun little art show with a wide range of works by different artists. One room was devoted to Ms. Anderson. Another room was filled with acrylic hatchets with various objects embedded in them. Also, there was a whole series of hand-painted porcelain guns and hand grenades.

On the way back, we went to Griffith Park to look for the Old Zoo trail. We managed to locate it, but by then Lucinda was tired and cranky, so we went home.

Today I went for a bike ride to see the sanitarium where Curly Howard died, as well as the cemetary where he is buried. Both are relatively close to our house. The sanitarium is an old building set back off the road, and it’s kind of hard to see. The cemetary seems a bit out of place, as it’s in the middle of the East L.A. barrio. Not the place one expects to find a Jewish cemetary. Still, it was an interesting little adventure, and it’s worth pausing for a moment to salute Curly, since he can still make us laugh over 50 years later. The bike ride was pretty nice, too. I did it early in the morning, so there wasn’t too much traffic. 29 miles.

 

We went over the the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills to see their current gallery show about set decoration. They had pieces of sets from lots of recent movies. It was a fun little adventure.

 


After this we went to the Japanese Museum in Little Tokyo to see “September 11: Bearing Witness to History”, which is a traveling Smithsonian exhibit of artifacts recovered from the sites of the September 11th attacks.

We had dinner at “Renaissance” tonight. This is the restaurant at the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood.

They don’t have a sign outside, so we just sort of wandered in and asked. There were lots of very friendly people in their faux-naval uniforms wandering about. One of them showed us the way to the restaurant. Inside, the place was nearly empty. I guess they don’t get a lot of people coming in off the street. The service was very pleasant and attentive. They didn’t try to get us to take a personality test or anything like that.

Outside the restaurant in the hotel hallway they had lots of displays about how wonderful Scientology is. And they had L.Ron Hubbard’s study preserved there, with a little velvet rope across the doorway.

The food was all right. Not bad, but not great. We’ve had better, but it was still a unique experience.

After this, we went to the Renberg Theater at the Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood to see Varla Jean Merman‘s new show, “Under a Big Top”. As always, La Merm was hilariously great. We also bought her DVD video collection, and she signed it for us. We’ve seen her three times now, and she’s always great.

There was a movie crew filming near our house today. This happens a lot down near Caltech, but not not that often near our house.

We went to see “Mayor of the Sunset Strip” today. It was really good. Got to see Rodney everywhere in Hollywood. Lots of fun.

Today we went to see “Maestro”, which is a documentary about early underground dance clubs in New York, and how they spawned a whole genre of music. It was interesting, but the visual look of the film was kind of hard to watch.