Urban Artfitters?

I live next to an Urban Outfitters. That large clothing/lifestyle chain store that mass produces clothes and trinkets to make them look un-mass produced. Hey, I'm not criticizing it, just pointed that out. I have purchased books there and bottle openers and record cover frames from time to time. I don't buy clothes there because I don't want to look like I buy clothes from Urban Outfitters. You know the type: worn flannel shirts, 80's nostalgia t-shirt underneath with slim black jeans. Maybe they're rockin' a fedora or a scarf around their neck in the middle of August. Sorry, this is not the point of this post. Urban Outfitters (UO) uses lots of wood and textiles to display their clothes and they put it right next to my garage. Lately, I've been carrying the wood into my garage and repainting them and adding my own elements to them. Here are 2 pieces of blank wood that I painted and stained. One red and one black. I can't decide if I want to show them separately or as one piece. What do you think? I've got some great pre-cut boards and old UO displays that I just can't wait to work on and display. When I have enough, I'm going to open my garage on a busy weekend and hang them up there so people can see them. I'm calling it my Garage Gallery. Also, the paint and brushes were left in my garage from the last tenant so I didn't even have to spend a dime on making all this art. Really looking forward to posting some and seeing the response.

Gung ho fat choy!

I missed posting yesterday because I was in the Chinatown district of downtown Los Angeles eating at the New Dragon Restaurant and looking at art on Chung King Road with my friends. After that we went to Hank's, the first bar in Los Angeles and then to the Blue Whale, a jazz club in Little Tokyo. So, I'm due a post from Saturday but today is Valentine's Day so I thought I'd opine on that. I say 'boo' to Feb. 14th. I'm not some shut-in hermit who despises love and thinks it's some cruel joke. To the contrary, I believe in it. I just don't believe in it for me. Well, not anymore anyways. I've been to my fair share of friends weddings these last few years and I've noticed that many occurred out of necessity or cause. I believe love was there, but there was also a real impetus to convince these people that it would be in their best interests to combine assets, belongings, etc to form a 'partnership'. I'm not salty on the day or the feeling or the specialness of it all. I just think it has seen better days. So, what I propose is that there be no new marriages. You can live together, share finances, have the same friends, but there needs to be a disconncet to bring oneself back into oneself. Does that make sense? I see many friends who are married or in relationships, just lose their identity and sense of self. It's swallowed them into the other person and becomes this blob of actions and impulses. Often times, people stop becoming the person that made the other person fall in love with them. They get lazy, complacent, and they cease to challenge themselves to become a better person because they've already achieved what they've set out to accomplish: the attainment of a person to go thru life with. In a sense, it becomes a shared misery when both cease to challenge themselves in a relationship. Patterns set in and a break from a routine is cause for alarm. Man, I must sound like some half-wit. I'll stop now and make up for my lack of Feb. 13 post another time.

New Recession Artist

I painted my coffee table today. I have to add more to this but I can't find the right words. I did however come up with a term for someone in my state. Someone who is not working full-time but has turned to art as a result of being unemployed. Less a direct product of the recession, however all of my art is made from discarded materials or things that I have found in my neighborhood. Needless to say, I would not have found the time to do this art had I been employed in a full-time job. Pictures to be posted later. The term I had for artists like me is New Recession Artist. Not too keen on the New part but think it's necessary to separate from the old recession from the 30's. So, New Recession Artist. There's many more like me. Many, many more.

Art-Tea

I spent the better part of the day cleaning out my garage. Among the things I found: rollerskates, plywood, AVID editing software and lemon scented pillowcases. I gave some of those things to my repair man and I kept the rest. What I kept was the plywood that I found behind the Urban Outfitters near where I live. The wood was already nailed and fashioned into rectangles and shapes suitable for hanging. I was about to stain the wood with a clear coat but had the odd thought to staple tea bags to the top of the wood and pour hot water on them and have the tea run down the wood, thereby 'staining' it in a natural way. Now, this is just a thought, what I need to do is find the right kind of tea to use to get a great finish. I'm thinking of a dark tea as well as a rooibos tea to add some earthy reds. Give me a few days to find the right tea, stain the wood, take a picture and post it back. It could either look pretty cool or pretty embarrassing.

I tried!!! 15min off!!

I guess I broke my own test. Submit an idea everyday for a year and I missed today the 10th by 15min. Let this be a lesson, never try to start a 5 year old deal with hard drive problems and expect it to boot up like a macbook pro. I was sooo close to posting under the deadline too. I had the idea as I was running back from El Carmen on 3rd St. I had just went to a fashion show/bachelor auction at Em and Co also on 3rd St. and I met the organizers and some bachelors and some all around good people. I tell you, I was not dressed for fashion in my old jeans, gray hat and gray sweater, carrying a backpack full of avocados from a friends yard. But, they took me in and with the vodka/cranberry drinks flowing like fast moving lava, I was in my element. So, met some great people and tried to run home and just got here too late so Feb 11 get two submissions. Here's my first one. A reality competition show for amateur and professional photographers. If it's not being worked on it should because everything else has a damn reality show. Hairstylists, fashion, cakes, drinks, security guards. Hell, why not have a great reality show a la Top Chef that pits the worlds greatest photographers together and challenges them in ways they never thought possible. No photoshop, b/w, only one roll, no lighting, only reflective surfaces. Must make inanimate objects look lifelike. Think how fun and crazy this show would be. We would get an inside view into the minds of the worlds best photogs. They'd have to be papparazzi's and run around, have to shoot weddings, kids parties, high school prom photos. Heck, the list is endless. But, who could be the judges? Liebowitz? Jim Marshall, Arbus, Avedon, Mapplethorpe, Newton. I know a lot of them are dead, but we could find some great ones to judge the challengers. Oooh, it'd be good. I just know it.

iphone App Idea: Microphone

I don't have an iphone. Heck, I barely have a regular cellphone and need a new one but I have the hardest time making a decision. I have been waffling back and forth with the iphone because I found it hard to type on and well, I have a mild addiction to the internet, and having it right in my pocket may make me even less productive. Plus, and maybe this is just living in Los Angeles, but all I notice when I go out is people typing and looking at their phone in public. Even at a table full of people, 90% of the time, they stare at their screens instead of talking to the person right in front of them. I find that disheartening and I refuse to be one of those people. I understand how useful the iphone is but I think it can be a distraction to those who abuse it. With that said, I had an idea for a fun and handy iphone app. I'd create an attachment that connects to the base of the iphone and turns the iphone into a microphone that can project through a nearby speaker that is set to the frequency of the attachment. The uses for this kind of invention are near endless. Imagine giving lectures or speeches with your iphone. Participating in Q and A forums where microphones are bandied about, wasting time and slowing down the discussion. Great for street musicians who don't need a whole mic set up. Great for karaoke or house parties. Can you think of any other places a mobile microphone would come in handy? I did a quick search and found only microphone iphone attachments that record audio to the iphone. This would turn the iphone inot a projection device. Who knows, maybe at the next Super Bowl, the singer will be using their iphone to belt out the Star-Spangled Banner!

Video Games: Reverse Scoring

I'm not one for video games save the occasional round of Rock Band or Guitar Hero at a party. I used to play all the time, in arcades and at home when I was a teenager, but over the years I grew out of them. There are some great games and some really bad ones but one thing that they all share is that the scoring usually starts at zero and you have to earn points and the person with the most amount of points wins. I thought about reversing that and the game was to see how many points you can lose. The least amount lost wins. One would ask, well, is it possible to 'earn' so many points to the point where you go all the way down to zero? I say no, because you reduce points by doing good but you can just as easily add points by doing bad things. Now, what is this game you ask? I was thinking of a role-playing game, say, you start off as a billionaire and through trades, marriages, divorces, natural disasters, you start to lose the things you had in the first place. The trick is to minimize the damage and test your problem solving skills. Say in the game, you get a divorce and your spouse wants half your earnings, you can 'hire' a lawyer to help reduce alimony, thereby only having to give up a smaller portion and thus, not losing as many points. Make sense? Sound silly? I think it'd be much more interesting to play a game as someone who has it all and has to fight tooth and nail keep it, rather than someone who has nothing and has to struggle for it.