I was in New York City last week, I’m leaving for Austin tomorrow for 5 days, and I’ve been sick all week.
Sorry, for the lack of posts, but new stuff is on the horizon!
Another day, Another Hollah!
February 4, 2010
Excuses
February 2, 2010
Shop Class
Shop Class as Soulcraft is the name of new-ish book by Matthew Crawford. I had heard of this book long before it’s release, but somewhere along the line I lost track of it’s release, and now it’s been out for quite a while! So at this time, I can’t offer you my review of the book, but I can point you to a great review by the Englewood Review of Books – [HERE] – Also, an excerpt [HERE], and below, an interview with the author on Colbert, [HERE]
I can’t wait to get my hands on this book! Perfect timing, as I’m preparing to take on my own studio/shop space – more on that in the weeks to come!
January 27, 2010
Automatic Beer Dispenser
I was just going through my youtube channel and found this video that I never posted. This is from a year ago when I was traveling to China on business, and had a layover in Tokyo.
A perfect pour of Kirin.
January 27, 2010
Nuclear Obelisk
Photos via LIFE.
Also, just learned a new term, Atomic Tourism: A relatively new style of tourism in which the tourists travel to significant sites in atomic history.
January 22, 2010
Simplify. Cubes by Daniel Wenger
If I could reduce my artistic inclinations to their simplest forms and ideas, and give it one word, it would be – geometry.
So, when I stumbled upon Daniel Wenger’s cubes from the 70’s I got really excited! It’s a truncated hexahedron! “The result is a building with the structural strength of a triangle, the stability of a three legged stool, and none of the complex angles of a geodesic dome.” Having built a geodesic dome myself, the idea of making something less complex that retains it’s aesthetic beauty is a very exciting possibility.
I especially like it as a house/cabin form, because it employs a more traditional look with the roof line as opposed to the dome structure; makes it a lot easier to apply shingles!. This might also be a workable design for life in the desert, the open sides of the cube create a breeze way.
Hammock? Yes, please.
found via South Willard
January 21, 2010
MACHOTAILDROP!
This popped up on quite a few blogs today:
Gentleman Broncos meets Eagle vs. Shark meets extra awesomeness meets skateboarding meets even more awesomeness
January 21, 2010
New Friends, Old Friends, More Blogs!
Updating the “Friends” List on the sidebar:
1. Blinking Against the Brightness – Laurel is a new friend of mine, but I’ve secretly been stalking her blog for over a year now. She’s a photographer, taxidermy and furs enthusiast, cocktail creator, Wii boxing champion, and one of the best damn storytellers I’ve ever met. Topics range from jewelry, fashion, shoes, photography, the central coast, Long Beach life, dive bars, whiskey, culinary arts, and shoes. Sharped witted good times.
2. Mauster – This blog simply features the work of artist/musician Matt Maust. I love the way he titles his work - “Frank Lloyd Righteous and a bigtime horse” and “Seriously who wouldn’t dig a good pair of jeggings”. He was recently interviewed by RevampLA and said this about his work “It’s funny because most of this art is created digitally but the fight to make it look analogue is what I really enjoy. Like as if it existed before the digital age, that is kind of my biggest challenge is to make this stuff look like it is not digital.”
3. Hamster Mountain Casino – The subtitle clearly states – “It’s super chills”. I can’t really add more than that. This blog is the brainchild of Carlos Moran, literally – his brain had a child and it’s walking around collecting sweet oddities from around the interweb, like the video above.
4. Rosemarried – It’s a food blog! Lindsay and her husband Nich love food! You’ll find an account of their gastronomic adventures as they navigate the local, seasonal delights of Portland, Oregon. From curried carrot soup to sea scallops to tomato sauce, you can feel like a guest in Lindsay’s kitchen even if you’re sitting in a dreary office 1000 miles south.
5. Olive Ike King – I love hiking! Keeping with the theme of adventures, we turn to a blog penned by Noel Russel who shares the tales of hiking with her wise sherpa and husband Jonnie. Not only do you get to read about their run-ins with various wildlife, but there is some solid information on hiking specific trails. It almost reads like a guidebook, with friendly anecdotes sprinkled here and there. In the last month they took a hiking/road trip covering California, Arizona, Utah, and Oregon.
6. 52 Songs – Poem a day/Song a week/Film Reviews/etc. Chris Davidson teaches composition and poetry at Biola University and also leads the Society of Interested Persons Salon that I’ve participated in. (pssst, there is a salon this Saturday!). This blog is full of goodness, and I especially like his film reviews. He’s on sabbatical this semester, so the blog will be updated consistently with original poems, songs, reviews, etc.
January 20, 2010
Animals!
I recently stumbled onto a network of blogs that all have thousands and thousands and thousands of amazing radness! Here is a sampling along the theme of animals!
via peyotecoyote
January 18, 2010
Let Freedom Ring!
I have never been black.
I have never been poor.
I have never been a Jew, a Muslim, a homosexual, a disabled person either mentally, or physically.
I have never been persecuted for my race, gender, or belief systems.
It’s been 20 years since I’ve experienced the death of a loved one.
I feel very ill-equipped to even remotely relate to being on the underside of an oppressive cultural regime, much less any concrete experience of suffering or prolonged pain.
What I know of freedom, or the lack of, has only been through a series of choices I’ve made – binding or loosing the chains I’ve brought upon myself. Slavery for me, is not a man vs. man experience, it’s a man vs. self experience. In the words of Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club, “Our great war is a spiritual war.” I recently read a quote that said something to the effect of ”…the worst kind of slave owner is a nice slave owner, dulling the impact of oppression, making it a normative experience.”
Therefore, while my direct experience with oppression has been subtle, I need to be rigorously examining my lifestyle to see if I have become the “nice slave owner”. No doubt that, on either side of the power equation, we all drift towards normalizing injustice; both inwardly and outwardly.
“And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
January 15, 2010
I Got These Ideas Just Burnin’ Through My Skull!
I hope everyone has a really productive weekend! I’m looking forward to working on some great projects! And, LB Flea Market on Sunday!
January 14, 2010
The Wolf Will Romp With The Lamb
The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
Passage from the book of Isaiah
January 11, 2010
FREE DRINKS, LIVE MUSIC, DJ, art, FREE DRINKS!!!
This is more or less a little rant on my recent experiences in and out of the so called art world; more specifically the world of art galleries and opening nights.
It seems to me that on the email blasts, opening postcards and flyers of late, that there is a heavier emphasis on the entertainment aspect of the event. I’m talking specifically about the opening party – and, I understand it’s a PARTY, but how many of us actually venture back to the gallery to view the work when there isn’t a haze of Charles Shaw breath filling the air? It’s really hard to even look at the work when the gallery is filled to brim with people talking about anything BUT the art on the walls.
I went to a so-called opening this weekend and was there for 2 hours and could not even get in to the gallery! Capital W-T-F!? I stood outside in the parking lot with 600+ other people listening to live music, without a free drink in my hand! Kinda reminded me of being at a city-sponsored free concert in a park.
Some curators, not all, but some, have become party promoters for one night open bars. Honestly, what is a bar? A place where people hang out, have some adult beverages, surrounded by cool looking things.
This is where my rant hits a fork in the road. On one hand, I really enjoy these experiences and events. Lord knows, I’ve curated and promoted my fair share of art shows/one night parties/free beer extravaganzas/concerts/etc/bounce houses – which, I think I can justify because they are always one night events/parties and we never sell any art. On the other hand, it sincerely rubs me the wrong way that the major draw to an art show are the additions – free drinks, live music, dj, etc.
So, this leads me to a few requests:
1 – If you’re going to have an art show and send out an email, do not list FREE DRINKS as the first item in the subject line. The jig is up, we know you aren’t having an art show, you’re throwing a party and you just so happen to have some art on the on walls. You might as well tear out a few pages from juxtapoz magazine and frame them because we’ve all seen that shit a thousand times.
2 – If you’re going to have an art show, have an art show. Provide free drinks, and it would be good to have a dj playing music in the background – A dj who knows he’s playing at an art show and not some club in Vegas.
3 – If you’re going to have an art show, it would actually be ironic and funny to title the show “Free Drinks” or “Free Beer”. Actually, don’t do that, because that’s my idea (copyright Eric Trine 2010).
For the record, I made the mistake this past weekend of going to a large party art show thingy and missed an actually really good painting show.
But, I did end up back in Long Beach that evening at a bar, literally getting my mind blown with carney-like folks who ended up being at that place. Literally, it was people watching heaven!
January 8, 2010
Karate Kid 2010
Looks pretty good. Definitely a spin on the original, but it seems they stayed true to form
January 7, 2010
The Miracle of Human Flight!
Looking at my twitter feed, it seems that I have a lot of friends who are flying today. There are a lot of tweets regarding the horrendously long wait times as security screens have nearly doubled in time. I even heard on NPR yesterday that the increased security adds a significant amount of money to the air travel financial system; something to the tune of $9 Billion a year with the increased labor and screening times. My friend John so eloquently stated this morning “If one more person @ LAX makes me strip. I’m going to start askin for $1s. I’ve been raped by every TSA employee.”
It’s true.
It’s a headache.
It’s frustrating, especially to those folks whose profession require them to travel often.
But at times like these the comedian Louis CK brings an excellent corrective to our increasingly entitled lifestyles during his interview on the Conan O’Brien show. Many of you have probably seen this, but it’s probably a good practice to watch every month or so, and definitely before air travel.
January 7, 2010
It’s Called A Turken!
Last night I was hanging out with some friends visiting from Florida, drinking beers, eating snacks, telling stories, etc, when I learned of this marvelous little animal called a Turken! Supposedly it’s a cross between a turkey and chicken, but after some research this morning I found out that it’s all chicken; just an ugly chicken.
The story they were telling was about their nieces and nephews – they all went to the feed store to get some new chicks. The parents bought 3 chicken chicks and 1 turken chick, and no one wanted the turken chick because it was so ugly. Ironically, by the end of the day the 3 chicken chicks were either dead or seriously maimed by a series of unfortunate events involving: a dog, a quickly closing screen door, and one little child named Henry who was just holding his little chick too tightly = chick now walks with an awkward limp. I guess survival of the fittest goes to the ugliest animal that no child wants to play with!
Traditionally, they’ve been called Naked Necks, but the nomenclature Turken is also acceptable. Turken is a far better name than the alternative combination of chicken+turkey= chirkey. I like the name Turken, it’s more fierce – makes me think of a pteradactyl or something.
Almost looks like a mini ostrich. Or a feathery giraffe with two legs and a beak.
Hybrid Animals:
January 6, 2010
Marjoe Gortner – The 4 Year old Preacher from Long Beach!
I was doing an image search on the LIFE Archive a couple of months back, looking for images of old time Long Beach, when I came across these photos of a little boy, with a blond afro, standing in front of mini pulpit, bible in hand! Sufficiently intrigued, I decided to find out more about this little holy troubadour known as Marjoe Gortner.
Born in 1944 in Long Beach, CA, his parents noticed early on that Marjoe had an uncanny talent for mimicry, and a certain level of fearlessness when interacting with adults. (Similar to the story of most child stars, like Macaulay Culkin).
Short story – His parents trained him to memorize scriptures and sermons, along with certain performance skills akin to revivalist preachers of the time. They took him around the country and he held big tent revivals, hellfire and brimstone style, healing and anointing people – and of course, collecting money.
(seriously, what’s up those little white boots he’s wearing?)
Here’s where it takes a turn though – “By the time Marjoe was sixteen, he later estimated, his family had amassed maybe three million dollars; shortly after his sixteenth birthday, Marjoe’s father absconded with the money, and a disillusioned Marjoe left his mother for San Francisco, where he was taken in by and became the lover of an older woman. Marjoe spent the remainder of his teenage years as an itinerant hippie until his early twenties, when, hard pressed for money, he decided to put his old skills to work and re-emerged on the circuit with a charismatic stage-show modeled after those of contemporary rockers, most notably Mick Jagger.”
And this is where it turns again, and gets awesome – “In the late 1960s, Marjoe suffered a crisis of conscience — in particular about the threats of damnation he felt compelled to weave into his sermons — and resolved to make one final tour, this time on film. Under the pretense of making a documentary detailing a viable ministry, Marjoe assembled a documentary film crew to follow him around revival meetings in California, Texas, and Michigan during 1971. Unbeknownst to everyone else involved — including, at one point, his father — Marjoe gave “backstage” interviews to the filmmakers in between sermons and revivals, explaining intimate details of how he and other ministers operated. After sermons, the filmmakers were invited back to Marjoe’s hotel room to tape him counting the money he collected during the day. The resulting film, Marjoe, won the 1972 Academy Award for best documentary.”
And here’s another video where someone is comparing Marjoe to the recent Revivalist/Healer Todd Bentley
Fascinating, on multiple levels. And for more on child preachers, a simple search on youtube will suffice. There’s a lot of this kind of stuff still going on. And where you can really learn a lot is by reading people’s comments on youtube. Here’s a good one to start with:
December 31, 2009
Happy New Year
Remember to add a little gospel flavor to your Auld Lang Syne. You can take a few pointers from this kid:
Or this kid:
December 30, 2009
That’ll Keep You Warm
Aleutian Bear Hunt – 1950’s. Shot by N.R. Farbman for LIFE.
I did my best to piece together the story:
December 28, 2009
Untitled
Cleaning out my garage/studio the past couple of days has left me hungry for making new things…
I was planning to apply to Grad school next month, but I’m thinking that it might be an interruption to my current trajectory. Interruptions are important in life, but a planned interruption may be a contrivance that undermines the very power of that interruption. There may be more revelation to be had through the reflection of unplanned happenings versus planned happenings.
But, how does one plan for an unplanned happening? Hehe.
Getting out of my head, and throwing myself into the act of making stuff always proves to be a better atmosphere for me. Try-it-and-find-out and leap-before-you-look mentalities are where I find the most peace.
Voids and Avoids.
Spontaneity.
Spontaneity is something I value.
Spontaneity is different than a surprise, though. I really don’t like surprises.
December 22, 2009
Hercules, Ca – A New Project
This past weekend, Thursday-Saturday, I made the trek up north to the city of Hercules to transform a construction trailer on the site of a new retail/mixed use project. It’s a really exciting project, and I can’t give too much away up front – but the basis of transforming this trailer is to give the city an idea of what the rest of this development is going to look like.
The Red Barn Co is leading a fantastic development up there that will take place over the next 10 years. For now, we are building a temporary space that will exist for 2 years, called the Market Hall. It’s basically a pop-up center corralled by shipping containers, food trucks, an open air barn, a playground, and a space for live music, etc…
So, we’re going to be transforming all these temporary structures, trailers and containers, and as Danny put it, we’re giving them the “Dwell” effect.
Thursday morning at 5am, Danny, Curtis and I, with our trucks full of tools and supplies, made the drive up to Hercules. If you’ve never driven up interstate 5 through the Central Valley, you’re not missing much – there’s really not much to see. That was especially true for us, as we dropped into the valley from the grapevine we were hit with an extremely dense fog; we couldn’t see more than 60 feet in front of us. Totally freaky. Now I have a context for those 200 car pile up stories that I’ve heard about.
We arrived in Hercules at noon and immediately went to work on this, newly painted green, construction trailer.
We worked from noon to 10pm the first day – bought materials and built the deck.
I welded up the steel planter boxes.
On Friday, We arrived at 8:30 in the morning and began work on the redwood screens. This task took much longer than we expected.
Getting everything straight and level, just takes forever! We stuck to the old adage of “measure twice, cut once” and it definitely paid off in the end, we didn’t have any left over redwood planks when we finished the job. (a good think when each plank costs about $20).
There was a lot of strategy and problem solving involved with every aspect of the construction. It’s funny how we think about manual labor and the trades, that it’s some kind of lesser occupation – we don’t usually think it’s a place where the best and the brightest should end up – But it’s actually where I find the greatest amount of tactile strategy/problem solving/creativity happening. It’s intensely satisfying. See the NY Times article The Case for Working With Your Hands for more on that…
We left the site that night at 10pm, tired but satisfied; which was due in no small part to our dinner break at Extreme Pizza. Flat out, all 3 agreed, the best pizza we’ve ever had. Also deserving a shout out, Torpedo IPA by Sierra Nevada – the 8th wonder of the world.
On Saturday, we slept in a little and made it to the site at 10am. We finished up a few details, staining the deck, finishing the stairs and the awning, and cleaning up. We finished at 2:45 in the afternoon, took some photos, and hit the road. Here is the finished project.
We sprayed the sign and planters with vinegar on Friday night, and this is what they looked like the next morning. Rust activated awesomeness.
The Crew.
