I'm the kind of person that needs a lot of sonic distraction.
I can't sleep out in the middle of the country unless there are wolves howling, trains chugging, or the wind whipping. Absolute silence keeps me awake at night.
In college, I didn't just listen to music while I wrote a paper or studied for a test. I listened to music while on the London Tube or sitting in the middle of a Burger King in Leicester Square.
Some might consider listening to the radio while driving a distraction. As for me, it's a good way to focus on the task at hand.
So, imagine my discomfort today when I attended a puppet show that had practically no soundtrack at all.
I might as well have been watching a show of mimes. Only the mimes were wearing costumes that looked like giant hands and carrying umbrellas to look like jellyfish.
The problem, however, wasn't that the auditorium was silent. It's that the lack of sound coming from the stage meant that all the other sounds in the house were amplified.
All the coughing children and their fluish parents.
The stuffy-nosed child behind me lying on her father's lap.
The tike who insisted on narrating the show with his observations, like "He's counting how many!" and "Pink!" and "There's two of them!"
Thanks, buddy. We know. We're watching the same show as you.
The woman sitting next to me was wrestling with a plastic bag and eating trail mix out of it. The smell of chewed peanuts intermingled with some personal care product she'd used that reminded me of industrial-strength public restroom air freshener.
The silence was making me nauseous. I was dying for some music or dialogue.
Mummenschanz had been haunting me for the greater part of 30 years—or even more—after watching the TV commercial for it on repeat as a child. I never knew exactly what it was.
And when I saw the troupe of dancers-slash-contortionists-slash-puppeteer-mimes were performing locally, I figured it was time I found out.
But in the end, I couldn't watch it.
At least, I couldn't just watch it.
I'm sure this falls under the category of "It's not you; it's me." I take the blame. Others seemed to be enjoying the show.
But I couldn't even concentrate on the show with all that hacking and sniffling and rattling and chatting and vibrating of a cell phone two seats down from me.
I got a brief reprieve when one of the skits was about a frog trying to catch a fly. Thank god for the buzzing of that fly.
But once it ended, I knew I had to leave. I couldn't take it anymore.
At least now I know.
Related Posts:
Dark Matters
The Sounds of Silence
Dulling the Senses
Making up for lost time and missed opportunities, one adventure at a time.
February 11, 2018
A Specter of Light and Glory in Days of Darkness
"Bottle houses" were a thing back in the Old West, during the Gold Rush and in the heyday of mine camps. The men there drank enough booze to make enough raw material available, and they mortared those green, cobalt blue, and clear bottles together into structurally sound shacks that, thanks to the translucence of the glass, let in plenty of natural light.
But nobody in California needs to use bottles for building anymore. Our glass recyclables are collected regularly, and our building materials are cheap and mass marketed far and wide. We have electricity and solar panels. And when all else fails, we repurpose shipping containers.
So, those glass bottles that remain—the ones that haven't been replaced by plastic—may have lost their architectural utility, but that just means they've been reclassified.
Now, they're art.
Bottle art is usually more associated with folk artists like Grandma Prisbrey of Bottle Village or Elmer of Bottle Tree Ranch...
...but those are examples of traditionally untrained commoners (hence, the "folk" in "folk art").
And although they—as well as others, like Simon Rodia of Watts Towers—serve as a major inspiration for Randlett Lawrence...
...the "Randy" of "Randyland" in LA's Echo Park (near Dodger Stadium) was already an incredibly talented builder when he began erecting the glorious and monumental bottle art sculpture in front of his house.
But when he's not building sets for Hollywood productions, he's been paying tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe—in colored glass bottles, rebar, and wire (including her wings, which are cobalt blue).
And, like much of his folk art predecessors and contemporaries, Randy is constantly changing it.
The basic approach is simple and consistent throughout the sculpture's iterations: Take a teardrop-shaped bottle, fill it with water, harness it in a wire cage (akin to, say, the wire cage that protects the cork on a bottle of champagne) and string it up with a bunch of others.
You can see the so-called "Phantasma Gloria" sculpture from the street, of course (that's part of the point)—and at certain angles at certain times of day, the sunlight shining through it is certainly brilliant. But it's a really rare and special experience to climb up the stairs and find yourself behind it.
And that's when you get to meet Randy.
Randy calls the bottles "lenses" and, years after making his discovery in a "blue blaze of light," still marvels at the inverted images inside created by their convex shape.
That's why this bottle mosaic is more than a "suncatcher" or a "lightcatcher."
In fact, Randy calls it a "Sky Catcher"—because each "lens" becomes something of a crystal ball reflecting the world back at us.
And, if not our actual world, then some parallel, upside-down universe.
And he never gets sick of finding new ways to look at it—or look at the world around him through it.
Depending on the time of year and the angle of the sun, there are certain peak times to view it to get "maximum refraction"...
...but honestly, it's the kind of thing you could sit and watch all day, as the colored light beams shift position and different aspects of the mosaic get illuminated at different times.
It changes dramatically, even just over the course of an hour.
And as you watch it, you get the sense that it is watching you, too.
And everything looks better through the lens of beauty and art and color and light.
But for some of us, the natural inclination is to dim and darken, to enable our myopia rather than embrace the colossal.
Thank goodness for people like Randy who are here to set us straight on what's important.
Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Bottle Tree Ranch
Photo Essay: Bottle Village (Updated for 2016)
Capturing Particles of Light in Three Dimensions
Meditations on Chroma
But nobody in California needs to use bottles for building anymore. Our glass recyclables are collected regularly, and our building materials are cheap and mass marketed far and wide. We have electricity and solar panels. And when all else fails, we repurpose shipping containers.
So, those glass bottles that remain—the ones that haven't been replaced by plastic—may have lost their architectural utility, but that just means they've been reclassified.
Now, they're art.
circa 2014
circa 2014
circa 2014
circa 2014
But when he's not building sets for Hollywood productions, he's been paying tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe—in colored glass bottles, rebar, and wire (including her wings, which are cobalt blue).
And, like much of his folk art predecessors and contemporaries, Randy is constantly changing it.
The basic approach is simple and consistent throughout the sculpture's iterations: Take a teardrop-shaped bottle, fill it with water, harness it in a wire cage (akin to, say, the wire cage that protects the cork on a bottle of champagne) and string it up with a bunch of others.
You can see the so-called "Phantasma Gloria" sculpture from the street, of course (that's part of the point)—and at certain angles at certain times of day, the sunlight shining through it is certainly brilliant. But it's a really rare and special experience to climb up the stairs and find yourself behind it.
And that's when you get to meet Randy.
Randy calls the bottles "lenses" and, years after making his discovery in a "blue blaze of light," still marvels at the inverted images inside created by their convex shape.
That's why this bottle mosaic is more than a "suncatcher" or a "lightcatcher."
In fact, Randy calls it a "Sky Catcher"—because each "lens" becomes something of a crystal ball reflecting the world back at us.
And, if not our actual world, then some parallel, upside-down universe.
And he never gets sick of finding new ways to look at it—or look at the world around him through it.
Depending on the time of year and the angle of the sun, there are certain peak times to view it to get "maximum refraction"...
...but honestly, it's the kind of thing you could sit and watch all day, as the colored light beams shift position and different aspects of the mosaic get illuminated at different times.
It changes dramatically, even just over the course of an hour.
And as you watch it, you get the sense that it is watching you, too.
And everything looks better through the lens of beauty and art and color and light.
But for some of us, the natural inclination is to dim and darken, to enable our myopia rather than embrace the colossal.
Thank goodness for people like Randy who are here to set us straight on what's important.
Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Bottle Tree Ranch
Photo Essay: Bottle Village (Updated for 2016)
Capturing Particles of Light in Three Dimensions
Meditations on Chroma
Kidding Season [Updated for 2024]
[Last updated 11/16/24 3:27 PM PT—Angeles Crest Creamery is no longer engaged in any commercial enterprises, so you can no longer pay to visit for a ranch tour or a hike with the goats.]
That was my lament this weekend when I returned to Angeles Crest Creamery in the Antelope Valley to meet the new kids on the ranch.
But I didn't mean, "Why can't I have a baby goat as a pet?"
I was more bemoaning the fact that I couldn't be a mother to a baby goat. If I were to ever become a mother, thanks to my anatomy, genetics, and evolutionary legacy, I'd be stuck giving birth to a human.
It's always so interesting when there's a new herd of kids—and how, even at their tiny size, they're OK being away from their mothers, as long as they're together.
The mothers, however, are not.
The does are beside themselves if they can't see their babies in the herd, and they're relentless in calling out to them.
But all it takes is getting them within view ever so briefly, and all is calm again.
There's some Darwinian adaptation that certain animals (like humans) have that make them attracted to babies—to want to have them, take care of them, and ensure their survival.
I seem to only have that with kids of the cloven hoof—not kids of the sucking thumb variety.
I don't know why, really—because they're not all that different.
One of the baby goats at Angeles Crest this weekend took to sucking my thumb, since it didn't have one of its own.
It pressed my finger against the hard palate of the roof of its mouth and worked its tongue against the underside, while its lips puckered around it.
All goats—regardless of age—can be a bit nibbly (as evidenced by the chewed-up hem of one of my shirts), a behavior you don't want to necessarily encourage in them...
...but I was so happy to be a human pacifier for that kid.
Goats just naturally look like they're smiling...
...but I think at Angeles Crest Creamery, they truly are happy.
And that's more than I can say for most babies who eventually learn to stand upright and walk on two legs.
Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Hiking with Baby Goats
A Mother-Not-to-Be
February 09, 2018
Photo Essay: How to Drive Through LA Like Steve McQueen
One of the first things I noticed right after moving to LA was how many people drove Porsches here. I'd never seen so many Porsches. In fact, I'm not sure I'd ever seen any Porsche at all before coming to California.
And now, the (recently renovated) Petersen Automotive Museum has launched an entire exhibit devoted to "The Porsche Effect" and how a Czech engineer began to build a career for himself with German automakers in the 1930s...
...while the United States was still in the thick of the Great Depression...
...and just a few years before the U.S, would go to war with Germany, yet again, in the sequel to what was supposed to be "The War To End All Wars."
It's amazing that Porsche—the man and the car—ever achieved any stateside success at all.
But the exhibit at the Petersen argues that the war contributed to the success of Porsche, which embraced a certain "post-war modernity" that turned out to be the right thing at the right time in the right place. And that turned out to be in 1950, amidst "car-starved" Americans.
It also helps that Hollywood welcomed Porsche with open arms (and pocketbooks) and broadly supported the cars both on screen and off. Steve McQueen famously acquired and raced a 1958 Porsche Speedster and later drove a 1970 racer for his starring role in Le Mans.
In the decades that followed, Porsche had enough creativity, power, and influence to create a prototype of a "21st Century Supercar" (at the turn of the millennium)...
...an "Image-Maker" 911 Turbo model from 1970 that could go 160 mph...
...a 1966 Grand Prix de Paris winner...
...the maker's first winning entry in The 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France, hitting speeds of as much as 220 mph...
...and a desert racer that won the Pharaoh Rally in Egypt in 1985 and the Paris-Dakar Rally in 1986.
But it's always kind of a funny thing to see cars like this trapped inside a museum and watch them spinning on a dais. Don't we want to see what these puppies can do?
That's why I found it much more enlightening and engaging to head down to Carson and spend some time at the Porsche Experience Center, one of two such facilities in the country (the other being in Atlanta).
In addition to a showroom—which acts as kind of its own Porsche Museum—there's the "53-Acre Playground" out back, otherwise known as "The Track."
Yes, you can go there and drive a Porsche.
And you don't have to be a current Porsche owner. You don't have to have ever driven a Porsche before. You can still get behind the wheel—and you'll have your own personal "drive coach" guiding you through the experience.
Isn't it nuts that this exists right across the 405 Freeway from the Goodyear Blimp Base Airport and a stone's throw from the local community Walmart, IKEA, and go-kart racing track?
When you sign up for a "Driving Experience," you get to choose which Porsche model to pilot and which course to navigate your way through...
...whether it's the "Handling Circuit" (meant to mimic a challenging country road), an off-roading course, a racing-style straightaway...
...or one of the several low-friction courses meant to induce skids, spins, and oversteering.
My budget didn't allow me to get behind the wheel when I last visited. After all, the affordable experiences range from $235 to $385, and the Steve McQueen-style experiences run upwards of $1000.
I settled for dinner at the Restaurant 917, where I enjoyed butter molded in the shape of Porsche cars...
...and snacked on dessert chocolates molded in the shape of the Porsche insignia.
I promised myself I would go back and drive one day—but not because I want to "fit in" with all those other Angelenos who are rolling up in their Porsche Carrera GTs (the car, by the way, that took actor Paul Walker's life in a fiery crash).
I quite prefer having my day-to-day set of wheels be something unimpressive and unremarkable. Nobody will want to break into it or steal it. And cops won't target me for random traffic stops.
I just want to see what those puppies can do.
Related Posts:
Life Is a Highway
Unfinished Business
The Need for Speed
Off to the Races, Part One
Off to the Races, Part Two
Another Missed Calling
And now, the (recently renovated) Petersen Automotive Museum has launched an entire exhibit devoted to "The Porsche Effect" and how a Czech engineer began to build a career for himself with German automakers in the 1930s...
...while the United States was still in the thick of the Great Depression...
...and just a few years before the U.S, would go to war with Germany, yet again, in the sequel to what was supposed to be "The War To End All Wars."
It's amazing that Porsche—the man and the car—ever achieved any stateside success at all.
But the exhibit at the Petersen argues that the war contributed to the success of Porsche, which embraced a certain "post-war modernity" that turned out to be the right thing at the right time in the right place. And that turned out to be in 1950, amidst "car-starved" Americans.
It also helps that Hollywood welcomed Porsche with open arms (and pocketbooks) and broadly supported the cars both on screen and off. Steve McQueen famously acquired and raced a 1958 Porsche Speedster and later drove a 1970 racer for his starring role in Le Mans.
In the decades that followed, Porsche had enough creativity, power, and influence to create a prototype of a "21st Century Supercar" (at the turn of the millennium)...
...an "Image-Maker" 911 Turbo model from 1970 that could go 160 mph...
...a 1966 Grand Prix de Paris winner...
...the maker's first winning entry in The 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France, hitting speeds of as much as 220 mph...
...and a desert racer that won the Pharaoh Rally in Egypt in 1985 and the Paris-Dakar Rally in 1986.
But it's always kind of a funny thing to see cars like this trapped inside a museum and watch them spinning on a dais. Don't we want to see what these puppies can do?
That's why I found it much more enlightening and engaging to head down to Carson and spend some time at the Porsche Experience Center, one of two such facilities in the country (the other being in Atlanta).
In addition to a showroom—which acts as kind of its own Porsche Museum—there's the "53-Acre Playground" out back, otherwise known as "The Track."
Yes, you can go there and drive a Porsche.
And you don't have to be a current Porsche owner. You don't have to have ever driven a Porsche before. You can still get behind the wheel—and you'll have your own personal "drive coach" guiding you through the experience.
Isn't it nuts that this exists right across the 405 Freeway from the Goodyear Blimp Base Airport and a stone's throw from the local community Walmart, IKEA, and go-kart racing track?
When you sign up for a "Driving Experience," you get to choose which Porsche model to pilot and which course to navigate your way through...
...whether it's the "Handling Circuit" (meant to mimic a challenging country road), an off-roading course, a racing-style straightaway...
...or one of the several low-friction courses meant to induce skids, spins, and oversteering.
My budget didn't allow me to get behind the wheel when I last visited. After all, the affordable experiences range from $235 to $385, and the Steve McQueen-style experiences run upwards of $1000.
I settled for dinner at the Restaurant 917, where I enjoyed butter molded in the shape of Porsche cars...
...and snacked on dessert chocolates molded in the shape of the Porsche insignia.
I promised myself I would go back and drive one day—but not because I want to "fit in" with all those other Angelenos who are rolling up in their Porsche Carrera GTs (the car, by the way, that took actor Paul Walker's life in a fiery crash).
I quite prefer having my day-to-day set of wheels be something unimpressive and unremarkable. Nobody will want to break into it or steal it. And cops won't target me for random traffic stops.
I just want to see what those puppies can do.
Related Posts:
Life Is a Highway
Unfinished Business
The Need for Speed
Off to the Races, Part One
Off to the Races, Part Two
Another Missed Calling
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)