ValleyDaze

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2006-09-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

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technical difficulties

2006-09-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

A few posts have flown the coop! I'll repost in the next day or two. Some new photos, too!

The Yard Sale That's 792,000 Yards Long

2006-09-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

ON the road into Gadsden, Ala., hand-scrawled signs reading "Yard Sale Bound or Bust" decorated oversize vehicles with space for antique dinette sets. In town, parking lots of elementary schools, baseball fields and white-steepled churches swarmed with cars circling for parking spaces, while shoppers rummaged through boxes and bins, tables and booths for everything you'd expect (old books, LP's, typewriters, butter churns) and even more you wouldn't (vintage condom dispensers with slogans like "Naughty Nellie Prophylactics," four-week-old Jack Russell puppies and a hand-carved clock by the folk artist Howard Finster).

It was all part of the scene at last year's Highway 127 Corridor Sale, billed as the world's longest yard sale and stretching for 450 miles of backcountry beauty, starting (or ending, depending on whom you ask) in Gadsden, traveling through Georgia and Tennessee, all the way to Covington, Ky. Dreamed up in 1987 to encourage travel through the rural South, the sale now spans four days and lures more than 60,000 people - avid antique collectors and curious junkyard anthropologists, hunters of bargains and seekers of retired china patterns - from every corner of the country, out of the air-conditioning into the Southern August heat.

"This sale is the granddaddy," Gail Griffin said. She was one of three middle-age women from North Carolina at last year's sale who called themselves the Flaming Funky Flamingo Girls. Dressed in splashes of bright pink and feather boas, they had come prepared to buy in Ms. Griffin's beige Suburban, and they'd organized their loot, from Raggedy Ann dolls to ceramic chickens, with bungee cords, plastic containers, bubble wrap, carrier tops and a tray that hooked to the trailer hitch. "Last year," she said, nodding to her truck, "You couldn't have poured a glass of water in here."

In 2004, to alleviate traffic congestion, the sale was extended to nine days. Vendors sold out, travelers tired out, and after complaints about waning interest by midweek, the sale was returned to a more reasonable four days for 2005 - Aug. 4 to 7.

Commonly chalked up to part of the sale experience, the bumper-to-bumper traffic - at its slowest a three-mile-an-hour crawl - seems to foster an unexpected onslaught of courteous drivers and congenial Southern hospitality. No honking, no road rage. In a parking lot in Gadsden last year, a woman and her two children doled out free chilled bottles of water to thirsty drivers.

For every parking lot crammed with out-of-town vendors renting space to sell their wares, there was a residential enclave, where locals advertised their sales with competing homemade signs -"Big Yard Sale," "Huge Yard Sale," "Good Junk Cheap," "Best Sale of the Sale." Ms. Griffin swore by the local sales. "They aren't dealers, so they don't always know the value of what they're selling," she said. Along the route the never-ending line of idling cars snaked around trinket-strewn front lawns, and shoppers strolled from yard to yard.

Down the street from "Bobby's Famous Junk Sale," outside Gadsden, where Bobby Pieuman and his wife, Linda, served hand-turned Polish sausages and boiled peanuts, Joel Robertson of Birmingham, Ala., paid $5 a day for a small roadside patch to display his collection of vintage bicycles. "This one's a beauty," he said of a bike, for which he was asking $550. "It's in really good condition." He adjusted the toolbox tank hanging from the red 1920's Hawthorne Flyer that had a Delta teacup headlight.

After just a few miles (and a lot of vintage Coca-Cola memorabilia) through the northwest corner of Georgia, traffic started to break up and the rolling Tennessee landscape replaced the kudzu. The road meandered through dense forest punctuated by immaculate mobile homes, cow pastures and rundown shanties. In this part of Tennessee, front yards had trampolines, above-ground swimming pools and Confederate flags more often than tables of bric-a-brac.

The sales were more spread out, but the panoramas were hard to beat, especially along the vertiginous ridge of the Lookout Mountain Parkway before Chattanooga. Past Chattanooga, you couldn't drive many miles without running into you-pick blueberry farms or roadside stalls selling watermelons and fresh-cooked pork rinds.

Ruth Goldston runs her front-yard sale from the top of Signal Mountain, in Tennesee, like a curator of a museum. Oddities are her specialty. "This coal miner's lunchbox dates back to when my grandfather worked the mines," she said. "And, this thing," she added, holding up a strange apparatus with a plastic tube attached, "is an antique phlegm-sucking machine given to me by a physician down in town who retired a good many years ago."

Jim Collins has been a vendor since the sale's first year. The last 10 years, he has been coming to Signal Mountain, where he rents four spaces (along with 14 other vendors) in someone's large yard for $75 each for the run of the sale. His wooden peach cases, motor oil cans, rare tins and soda pop signs look like displays in a boutique. It takes Mr. Collins - who has "held some of the biggest auctions Chattanooga has ever seen" - three days to set up. "I like everything just right," he said.

Mr. Collins bemoaned the people not interested in the antique experience, searching instead for the sites selling bins of junk. At these stops - roadside fields worn by foot traffic, temporary gravel parking lots - merchandise shared the spotlight with funnel cakes, chili cheese dogs and castle-shaped blow-up playhouse.

Not far into Kentucky, as the cornfields gave way to leafy, vibrant yellow tobacco fields, the sale started to pick up again. In the heart of Bluegrass Country, miles of seamless selling broke for quintessential small town life. Jamestown, Ky., is the kind of old-fashioned downtown where you can still grab a soda at the fountain. Covington, Ky., the last official stop on the map, is urban sprawl by comparison.

By the end of the weekend, minivans carrying upside-down tables, S.U.V.'s pulling trailers, station wagons wielding carrier tops, and piled-high pick-up trucks made their way across the sun-bleached pavement - leaving the road less traveled in the rearview mirror until next year.

A 4-Day, 4-State Spree

DATE Aug. 4 to Aug. 7.

WEB SITE: www.127sale.com.

ONE ROUTE, MANY HIGHWAYS During daylight, when you can see a trail of cars ahead, it's hard to lose your way, and the sale's organizers say signs clearly mark the route. The southern end is at Noccalula Falls Park in Gadsden, Ala., and follows Lookout Mountain Parkway and a trail of local roads and state highways out of Alabama and through a chip of northwest Georgia into Tennessee. Just north of downtown Chattanooga the highway bingo ends at Route 127, which continues to the sale's northern end at Covington, Ky., just shy of Ohio.

She knows more than she's saying

2006-09-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

The Incredible Motorized Couch

2006-09-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Cycle of Blah

2006-09-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

For chart, graph, humor lovers, visit: http://indexed.blogspot.com/

Closed for repairs

2006-09-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

The ValleyDaze printing press is closed for a tune-up this week. The chain-wheel turbines need to be realigned and the heavy press is out of sorts. Hope to be back at the front desk next week.

By the way, a belated neon nod of thanks to Steve Lee for the crazy clown sign photo!

Lovely vintage postcards

2006-08-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

On May 10th, 1948, a woman named Pearl wrote the following on the back of a postcard:

"Dear Hazel, well I am in Calif. but have had a cold ever since I came and am not so taken up with it but may later on. We have a nice home, the weather is not too warm, yet and we have rain now and then. How is Everett, well I will write you later and give you all the news. I may come back in July not sure yet. Well bye bye as ever, Pearl.

PS. I don't eat any more."

See more . . .

Early Photography

2006-08-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

Nice summary posting of early photography over at Neatorama.

Toes

2006-08-29T20:35:00.001-07:00

Why not?

A brief history of celebrity

2006-08-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

Modern-day celebrities are hard to avoid these days, and the stars of today are a far cry from their ancient counterparts. Read on . . .

I just love this movie

2006-08-27T12:53:00.001-07:00

The opening lines from Annie Hall:

ALVY
There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such ... small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The-the other important joke for me is one that's, uh, usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freud's wit and its relation to the unconscious. And it goes like this-I'm paraphrasing: Uh ... "I would never wanna belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with women.

Tsch, you know, lately the strangest things have been going through my mind, 'cause I turned forty, tsch, and I guess I'm going through a life crisis or something, I don't know. I, uh ... and I'm not worried about aging. I'm not one o' those characters, you know. Although I'm balding slightly on top, that's about the worst you can say about me. I, uh, I think I'm gonna get better as I get older, you know? I think I'm gonna be the- the balding virile type, you know, as opposed to say the, uh, distinguished gray, for instance, you know? 'Less I'm neither o' those two. Unless I'm one o' those guys with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism. Sigh . . .

A chewy yet flabby vintage

2006-08-26T16:59:00.000-07:00

The language of wine.

Dorodango

2006-08-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

"[A]n artifact of such utter simplicity and perfection that it seems it must be either the first object or the last..." -William Gibson

Stars on the ceiling

2006-08-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

матрёшка

2006-08-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

A Matryoshka doll (Russian:матрёшка IPA: [mʌˈtrʲoʂkə]) or a Russian nested doll is a set of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside another. The plural form Matreshki should be used when referring to more than one doll and they are also called stacking dolls in the United States. Read on . . .

Happy 50th, baseball caps

2006-08-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

It started as the official headwear of ball players and became a favourite with sports fans and aging tourists. Now at 50, the baseball cap is ubiquitous. More here.

San Fernando Valley Days

2006-08-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

"When I think of growing up in the Valley during the 1930s, I remember solitude: the lone sound of a train whistle disrupting the country stillness, the howl of a coyote, the solitary jackrabbit darting across my path and loping ahead as I biked to school over bumpy dirt roads."

Catherine Mulholland in California Childhood, 1988.

Rock On, Hello Kitty

2006-08-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

Choose your insect

2006-08-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

If you had to choose to have one of these three insects to infest your house, which would it be?

1. Black widows (venomous)
2. Giant roaches (aggressive. really.)
3. Earwigs (just plain gross)

We have all three! Yeehaw. It makes me long for the days when I thought we only had a few houseflies.

Color study

2006-08-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

The Talitha G.

2006-08-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

Named after J. Paul Getty's second wife, the 263 foot Talitha was built in 1929. It underwent a major overhaul in the 1990s that added modern technological conveniences such as broadband access, VoIP, and satellite TV, yet preserved its original interior, complete with fireplace, Lalique glass doors, and wood inlay. More here.

Gaze upon the green

2006-08-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

Color meditation

Swirling vortex of doom

2006-08-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

Early in the morning on November 21, 1980, twelve men decided to abandon their oil drilling rig on the suspicion that it was beginning to collapse beneath them. They had been probing for oil under the floor of Lake Peigneur in Louisiana when their drill suddenly seized up at about 1,230 feet below the muddy surface, and they were unable free it. In their attempts to work the drill loose, which is normally fairly easy at that shallow depth, the men heard a series of loud pops, just before the rig tilted precariously towards the water. Read on.

40 square feet of fun!

2006-08-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

This little trailer was inspired by the gypsy vardos of Europe and the shepherds’ wagons of the American West. Inside there is a mobile office with a stainless steel counter and sink, a retractable table, four small closets, six linear feet of shelving and a stainless steel boat heater to keep things toasty. A bed roll can be tucked away in one of the closets for overnight stays. The Vardo is available as a set of plans, as well as a ready-made house. More here.

modern couture

2006-08-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

PARIS, August 14, 2006 – It was Balenciaga at double force: Nicolas Ghesquière's young sassy model, in her amazing wardrobe of short, molded flimsy flowered-head wrap with stand-away collars, rounded leggings and mind-blowingly wrought salmon evening dress radiates a powerful modernity.

Elevating his model to a towering height with a vertiginous flower hat contrasted with a droopy toy parachute, Ghesquière's vision creates extraordinary volumes and new proportions using fabrics that are rarely seen outside haute couture.

San Fernando Valley Signage 2

2006-08-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

That doesn't look light a happy clown to me. More info. on the Circus Liquor sign here.

Thanks, SK.

1-2-3

2006-08-13T15:11:00.000-07:00

Peek

A

Boo

A Hillbilly Classic

2006-08-12T19:07:00.000-07:00


Mullets galore!

Live Chicken * Awesome Worship

2006-08-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

Signage in the San Fernando Valley

May I take your order?

2006-08-11T00:25:00.000-07:00

Thank you Cute Overload!

E-mail spam as a masterpiece in the making

2006-08-11T00:14:00.000-07:00

From the Christian Science Monitor:

A Romanian artist uses special algorithms to turn the text of unsolicited e-mail into digital images.

Don't let the spam get you down. With the right touch, an annoying message can become a masterpiece.

When Romanian artist Alex Dragulescu looks at junk e-mails, he sees patterns - bits and bytes that can be manipulated into colorful plantlike images or stark architectural forms.

As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, he and fellow student Tim Jaeger collected spam and used it to create live multimedia shows of sound, text, and animation - "like a VJ and DJ performance," Mr. Dragulescu says in a phone interview.

Computer languages and algorithms are ubiquitous in our lives, but they're hidden, Dragulescu says, so his projects are intended to "expose" them. "Spam was this material that was discarded and hated by everybody. It was good material for us ... and then I said, 'What else can I do with this?' "

He started feeding messages into a plant-generating algorithm. "I have certain key words controlling, for example, the size.... Like, how many times is 'Viagra' in the text, and maybe it will control the size of the petals."

Just as a painter adds layers, Dragulescu tries different ways of "mapping" messages until he's satisfied with the resulting images.

One that looks like a crop of blue-topped glowing parsnips, came from a message that included strings of words - "Valor, Xray, Vitality, Supa, Amor, Philosophy, moo!!" - and even more random-seeming texts like "ThreadIndex:AcTvBtvuTKhRDcWvRGOd7oYCKcKsmg...."

Even if a spam message is short, it contains a "header" with hidden information - the server that sent the message and the time of day it was generated, for instance.

Dragulescu's program uses the numbers that identify the server to determine the color scheme of the plant images. The time the message was sent sets the age of the plant and therefore how long the petals, twigs, or leaves will grow.

Dragulescu earned his master of fine arts degree last year, and now he's manager of the Experimental Game Lab at UCSD's Center for Research in Computing and the Arts.

Recently he generated digital images from Mozart's music as part of a commemoration of the composer's 250th birthday. "People are very surprised to see data translated like that.... As technology progresses, the way we make art changes," he says.

Dragulescu's father is a nuclear physicist, but he also nurtured a love of culture and the arts in his children.

"I've always been at home either in the sciences or the arts," Dragulescu says.

Indeed, the current problem he's working on is how "to have a more thorough, scientific approach" to his digital art. He wants to create a program that's intelligent enough to discern emotions expressed in a text. "For example, anger or sadness - can you have a program that detects that and makes an artistic gesture based on that?" he wonders.

That famous film director

2006-08-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

Milos Furman

Let's head for the trees!

2006-08-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Uses for these durable Spheres are limited only by ones imagination. Healing, meditation, photography, canopy research, leisure and game watching are just some of the things you could do.

But you've never heard Gershwin with Bongos!

2006-08-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

Imagine the moment of ephiphany: Gershwin? Bongos? Yes, I can hear it!

Spiegel Catalog 1969, Part 2

2006-08-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

I was partial to Sears Toughskin bellbottoms, myself.

Graphics & illustration exhibitions

2006-08-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

Some really wonderful exhibitions at the LA Public Library:

Building Books: The Art of David Macaulay
This exhibit is on view from June 3, 2006 through August 28, 2006 at Central Library's Getty Gallery, Second Floor.

Artistry of the Orange: California Vintage Fruit Crate Labels
This exhibit is on view from May 6, 2006 through January 7, 2007 at Central Library's First Floor Galleries.

Treasures of Los Angeles
Central Library, The Annenberg Gallery, Ongoing.

Cat + Box = Contentment

2006-08-05T19:21:00.000-07:00

$4300? But it's beautiful. Isn't it?

2006-08-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

Following his training as a naval architect at Newcastle University, David Trubridge has worked as a furniture designer/maker for 22 years. More here.

Infinite Ursa

2006-08-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

Simply tiny

2006-08-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

Lawn Chair. Literally.

2006-08-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

How much oxygen did your furniture produce today? In our version of the future, the things we loaf about on indoors will be as beneficial as the stuff that grows out back. In the meantime, sculpt lawn furniture from the lawn itself. Unlike your standard-issue sofa, this lush greenery is totally organic, requires no synthetic finishes, and can be brought to life, Golem-style, from salvaged dirt. St. Augustine tiles create a seamless, living upholstery, or try wheatgrass for a durable alternative. Ask your nursery about planting tips unique to your sod. Note: Couch may require mowing.

Reddy the Woollyhoodwink

2006-08-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Woollyhoodwinks are cuddly woodland creatures made lovably real in select woolen fabrics. The 'Hoodwinks are handmade, so each one is completely unique. Woollyhoodwinks come packaged in their own 'tree' with special surprises! All Woollyhoodwinks, by their nature, are pranksters of one sort or another. The capricious Reddy is infamous as the wild one amongst the 'Hoodwinks. Made in the USA.
Not recommended for little people who like to chew on plastic eyes. Polyfill stuffing.

Custom colors are available

2006-08-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

The first cat house made entirely of hand blown glass. The shape of the house offers cats the comfort of private space. The transparency of the glass allows the cat to feel secure and always be aware of its surroundings. A sheepskin throw at the bottom of the house provides warmth and comfort year-round. Solo is $2,400 and is available in transparent red and transparent smoke. Custom colors are available.

Golden Slumbers

2006-08-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome our new lantana and persimmons

2006-08-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

The landscaper and his niece

2006-08-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

ValleyDizzy

2006-07-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

ValleyDaze staff have been laid up with the flu. Hope to be back in a few days.

Colonial mansion . . .

2006-07-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

for your dog!

Heat Tsunami

2006-07-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

It's 111 degrees at our San Fernando Valley house today. How does that compare to the statistics? Here are the average temperatures from the Valley over the last 5 years (collected by Pierce College).

Bottom line, the best months to visit here are March through May and October through November. December through February is rainy and, AS IS NOW SO APPARENT, June through September is hot, hot, hot.

Nov. 13, 1913

2006-07-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

On Nov. 13, 1913, all eyes were on the first Sierra Nevada water to arrive in the Valley through William Mulholland's aqueduct. The original cascade remains in use beside Interstate 5 in Sylmar, below a newer channel.

More here . . .

Lawnchair at 3 miles up

2006-07-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

On July 2nd, 1982, Larry Walters tied 42 helium-filled balloons to a Sears lawn chair in the backyard of his girlfriend’s house in San Pedro, California. With the help of his ground crew, Larry then secured himself into the lawn chair which was anchored to the bumper of a friend’s car by two nylon tethers. He took with him many supplies, including a BB gun to shoot out the balloons when he was ready to descend. His goal was to sail across the desert and hopefully make it to the Rocky Mountains in a few days. But things didn’t quite work out for Larry. After his crew purposely cut the first tether, the second one also snapped which shot Larry into the LA sky at over 1,000 feet per minute. So fast was his ascent that he lost his glasses. He then climbed to over 16,000 feet. For several hours he drifted in the cold air near the LA and Long Beach airports. A TWA pilot first spotted Larry and radioed the tower that he was passing a guy in a lawn chair at 16,000! Larry started shooting out a few balloons to start his descent but had accidentally dropped it. He eventually landed in a Long Beach neighborhood. Although he was entangled in some power lines, he was uninjured.

What will look best with white trim?

2006-07-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

Yellow?

Green?

How to decide?

Freefall

2006-07-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

In August 2006 an extraordinary project will bind France, Canada and a single man for an historic supersonic free fall. Michel Fournier will drop out of the stratosphere from an altitude from about 130,000 feet (40 kilometers, nearly 25 miles) above the plains of Saskatchewan, Canada, and will contribute to the development of future technologies and the safety of stratospheric flight. READ ON . . .

con·cen·tra·tion (knsn-trshn)

2006-07-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

Valley Days

2006-07-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

"In the evenings our neighbors would come over—the Bill Holdens, Jack Oakies, Gordon MacRaes, Francis Lederers, Richard Carlsons and Charlie Ruggleses. We'd play poker or gin rummy, run home movies or just sit there, feet up, and talk—mostly ranch talk."
Lucille Ball on life with Desi at 19700 Devonshire Street.

"I think half of this belongs to a horse somewhere out in the Valley."
Lee Marvin, accepting the Best Actor Oscar for Cat Ballou in 1966.

"It seemed like a step down. Back then, the Valley was a big oven with nothing in it, a great sea of nothing, an ocean with no ships on it, and at night if you went out there were very few lights."
Robert Redford on moving to Van Nuys as a teenager, in a 1998 New Yorker interview.

Read on . . .

JuneDaze

2006-07-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

Spiegel Catalog 1969

2006-07-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

I was only 6 at the time so this stylish look passed me right by.

Thrift store art

2006-07-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

I take no responsibility for this treasure.

Shadowplay

2006-07-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

Where's the dignity? Part II

2006-07-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

Cute cat becomes gorgeous and wild leopard! A single shawl acts as a foppish muffler as well. The back of both the hat and the shawl are textures of tartan check, velcrod, and can be attached or detached easily.

Read on . . .

À la Jules Verne

2006-07-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

A spectacular platform has been designed to drift across the oceans of the world with the aid of the currents and the wind. Read on . . .

When toddlers go bad

2006-07-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

Tortoiseshell or Calico?

2006-07-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

You decide . . .

For the wake-up challenged

2006-07-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

. . . forcing you to rise and, perhaps, shine.

Steamboat Willie

2006-07-06T14:19:00.000-07:00

Steamboat Willie (released on November 18, 1928), is an animated cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse. Contrary to claims by some sources it was not the first cartoon produced to feature Mickey (previous Mickey films were Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho), but it was the one that made Mickey Mouse famous. Steamboat Willie was also the first sound cartoon to attract widespread notice and popularity. Read on . . .

Where's the dignity?

2006-07-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

Cold popsicle on the hot roof of your mouth

2006-07-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

I have a little shadow

2006-06-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

My Shadow
(by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me.
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me while I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometime shoots up taller like an India rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way,
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepyhead,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Greetings

2006-06-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Fainting goats. Well, kind of.

2006-06-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

Read on . . .

Building blocks

2006-06-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

Today we hit 100

2006-06-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

The fruit still grows here

2006-06-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

In the early part of 20th Century Orange growers needed a way for markets to identify their particular fruit from the rest of the competition. Fruit growers and exporters commissioned famous artist to make beautiful labels to try and make their product stand out.

PoolDaze

2006-06-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

King of the Cowboys

2006-06-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

Automaton

2006-06-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

In November of 1928, a truck pulled up to The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and unloaded the pieces of an interesting, complex, but totally ruined brass machine. The family who donated it kept it for many years because they understood that it had once been able to write and draw pictures. The machine, however, had been in a fire and needed significant work. After careful study and restoration by staff, the Franklin Institute began to realize the treasure it had been given...

Read more

Cute Dog Day

2006-06-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

Which is cuter?

Ojos

2006-06-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

The fairy's wand

2006-06-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Mixed plastic media installation
12" x 5" x 4"
2006.1
Property of the artist
Part of the traveling exhibition, "A series of otherworld meanderings and the little fairy princess whose wish came true #3"
Dallas, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Venice, Sao Paolo. Related articles: New York Times, "Temper tantrum creativity: the little girl who made a big stinky mess." ARTimes, "Youngster's shocking installation broke our hearts!" Der Goat, Berlin, "Ich habe keine armbanduhr." Azteca Bonita Noticias, "Loca, loca, loca."

Johnny's Skytrails Restaurant

2006-06-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

Roman Garden Shed

2006-06-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

When just any old garden shed won't do.

Fibonacci Wall Sconce

2006-06-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Why not?

Disney Snow White Scary Adventure

2006-06-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Doesn't everyone need a Snow White adventure car in their own home?

When in doubt, apply lipstick on face

2006-06-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

Art makes you think

2006-05-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

Hummm

2006-05-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

Childhood is a blur

2006-05-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

Be aMazed

2006-05-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not afraaaaaaiiiiiid!

2006-05-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

Roman-era villa discovered

2006-05-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

From http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~mharrsch/romanarch.html:

"Italian archeologists have reportedly discovered the remains of a huge Roman villa near Florence -- the first ever in the popular tourist area.

'Villas like these were fully fledged factories for the production of wine, olive oil, meat, corn and other products,' said archaeologist Fausto Berti, who led the dig at Montelupo Fiorentino.

'We`ve found big animal pens, warehouses and even a workshop for making ceramic vases. The owners were self-sufficient,' he told the Italian news service ANSA.

The 500-meter-square villa has fully equipped baths with all the areas Romans used to produce various levels of heat, warm water and steam -- and a cooling area.

The Montelupo villa is open to the public during weekends but reservations are required."

Animal sounds

2006-05-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hair Clips

2006-05-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

Valley Pearls

2006-05-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

From an interview with Director P. T. Anderson:
"Any time I've seen films about Los Angeles or the Valley, they're made by directors who don't live there, or who shoot it as if they don't live there," Anderson explains. "There's the obligatory 'Venice Beach Montage,' which is supposed to be some sort of visual collage of what Los Angeles looks like. That means shots of freaks, weirdoes, neon-pink bikinis, bodybuilders and skateboarders. This is completely foreign to me. I have no idea where to find Venice Beach, and if it looks the way it looks in most movies, I don't ever want to go there."

Orange forever

2006-05-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Oldest orange grove, Northridge — There may be more hidden in a few pockets of private land, but at the corner of Lindley Avenue and Nordhoff Street on the campus of Cal State Northridge stands the oldest, most contiguous remnant of the Valley's agricultural past. Wander among these trees, stretching over 6 acres, and you fall back to a time before there was a Northridge, before there was a north Los Angeles. The town was Zelzah, the "watering place in the desert," and in the summer of '23, a Norwegian family visiting from Oklahoma purchased a 10-acre parcel and got to work. - From 'The Valley Observed.'

But it's only £800.00!

2006-05-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

San Fernando Valley views then and now

2006-05-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

Golden Age of Travel Posters

2006-05-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

Mint condition

2006-05-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

When looking at a llama

2006-05-06T08:39:00.000-07:00