I don’t know why New Year’s Eve gets such a bad rap. Of all the holidays it has always been my favorite. Maybe it’s the sense of rebirth. Maybe it’s the decided less religious and military/patriotism aspect of it. Maybe it’s the booze and drugs. But judging from the interwebs, I may be among the few of my friends who really enjoy New Year’s Eve.
Madd and I were going back and forth the last couple of days trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t really care what we did, and she wanted to see fireworks. Unfortunately here in LA, the only thing we could find that had fireworks were some shitty ones at the Queen Mary and some stupid ones at Marina Del Rey that would start when New York City celebrated their New Year’s at 9 pm local time. What kind of bullshit is that?
We ended up going to Grand Park to celebrate with around 50,000 of our closest friends. Metro was free, the event was free and even though there were no fireworks there were 3-D projection onto City Hall. We had funnel cake which is always a win. Here are some snapshots:
Edit: Here is a 30-second video of the revelry in DTLA.
Silly silly me. This past Saturday was a SUPER HAPPY FAMILY FUN DAY EXTRAVAGANZA, or at least as much of the people we could assemble here in LA. It wasn’t a day at Golf ‘N Stuff in Ventura followed by a Del Taco pigout in Oxnard. We didn’t have Meesch and Nick and Raf and Jeff and Fatkid. But it was as close as we could come to have it feeling like the Santa Barbara days of yore. And by “yore” I really do mean it.
It’s weird that I hadn’t seen some of these assholes in a decade (!!!) But there we were eating lunch at Wildcraft in Culver City. We decided to go off to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, yet another place I had been dying to go to for quite some time.
Partly to avoid having to murder Dallas Aunt and mostly because of my deep burning desires, I went on an expedition across LA yesterday. Because I hate driving and hate looking for parking, Metro was my friend.
Museum of Death
When I lived in Los Feliz and would walk into the heart of Hollywood, I often walked past this place. Working at Hulu and writing about sports left almost no time for me to go to such places, and the next thing you know I was back in San Pedro caring for the Grandmother and unable to go anywhere.
Serial killers, infamous murders, war casualties, executions, Heaven’s Gate, autopsy photos, shrunken heads and GG Allin. It’s certainly gory and makes you appreciate life.
There was one odd thing about the place, however. It had an odd smell. It wasn’t the smell of death or anything like that, but it was very sweet and floral as if deliberately trying to distract us from what we were witnessing. Maybe it was the perfume from other guests? I don’t know.
It wasn’t horrible at all, but it did make it that much more surreal walking through the place.
Farmer’s Market
A Rapid Bus later, and here I was at Farmer’s Market. I wanted to go to The Gumbo Pot for their muffaletta. I wasn’t fast enough to take a picture of the whole meal I had with a side of gumbo and some hush puppies, but here is enough of it to hopefully make you salivate.
Of course since I was out here, I had to buy my favorite little marzipans.
LACMA
Of course the raison d’être for this trip was to go back to LACMA and go through the New Objectivity show. Of course since admission is free after 3 pm on weekdays for LA County residents and it being open late, there was a nearly hour-long line for tickets. But it was worth it to traipse through the exhibits.
I forget how overwhelming it all is to try and absorb everything. It really does require multiple trips.
I’ve been listening to the Wax Trax Black Box 3-CD set the last couple of days. These were songs released by Wax Trax Records from 1980 to 1993. Sure some of the songs sound dated, and some of these videos are just plain cheesy. Even though most of these were a little before my time, I always believe in knowing your history if you’re going to get into anything. Dance/stomp away.
Dallas Aunt is here which means I essentially have until Jan. 4 off. So this first day has been spent thinking about all the possibilities. I know there is a Super Happy Family Fun Santa Barbara get-together on Saturday. Then on Monday maybe Faith and I will be going museum hopping. Aside from some family things here and there, I’m pretty much open like a slut whose knees aren’t sewn together.
Maybe I will be like a slut whose knees aren’t sewn together. It’s been a while. How do I go about doing this again?
In an effort to avoid dealing with The Grandmother shit today, I will talk about this little weather system that passed through. Unofficially since yesterday afternoon, we here in the Pedro received around 0.35″ inches of rain. That’s pretty remarkable since it never really poured or anything awful like that. It just sprinkled for several hours, let up, sprinkled some more for several hours etc.
As gloomy as it’s been, news leaked this morning that after a couple of years of having to watch the World Series on mute I will be able to watch it with sound next season. Harold Reynolds has been defenestrated!!!! Well, he has been sacked I guess would be the proper way to put it. Unfortunately Tom Verducci is out of the booth also, but maybe they’ll put him on the field which would be great. John Smoltz will now join Joe Buck in the booth which will be a welcome relief to my ear drums.
Lord knows if this is real or not, but supposedly this is from a Guy Fieri rap album or something awful like that:
First We Feast leaked this, and I sure as hell hope this is real. It’s amazing to see how stuck in 1997 Mr. Fieri is. All he needs is to shave his head, dye it cheetah print and wear a wallet chain that drops down to just above his ankle.
With The Grandmother not doing so hot recently, I found myself cooped up in the apartment trying to attend to her needs. Also she hates it when I’m not home, so I try not to get too far away. For example when I went to Portuguese Bend last week, she yelled at me when I got home because I was gone for two hours.
The problem is I can feel my body going down the tubes as I try to make her feel as comfortable as I can. I can’t do that anymore. I need to go out and get some activity into my inert life whether she likes it or not. So yesterday I went out to White Point and climbed up to the Battery, and today I went over to Ocean Trails. Man, it’s been a while, and I felt every step of it throughout my body.
Whatever. I will do what needs to be done, and ain’t no one is going to make me feel guilty about it. It’s bad enough I’ve sacrificed time with my friends to do this. It’s bad enough I’ve asked for help to give me at least a day a month off only to be rebuffed.
Fuck. Now I feel worse.
Well I suppose it’s time to fix up some dinner only to see it left uneaten.
As anyone who listened to the last episode of the podcast or who know me personally, I cannot stand mediocrity in art. The role of artists is to push humanity into greater awareness about itself, into challenging itself and the status quo, and in so doing trying to make the world a better place.
People make excuses for Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Adele and the whole lot of pop musicians by saying that it is merely “pop music”, but that’s just a cop out. During the 80s, Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson used pop to help transform culture and take it to a new place. The pop stars now are merely derivative at best ready to wallow in the acceptance of the masses.
Madonna made the masses come to her. Taylor Swift is merely happy enough to join the masses.
Being an artist is tough, and below are some musicians who did their best to move the masses and move my ass.
Arca – Mutant. I’ll admit that I only caught this album a few days ago in someone’s best-of-2015 list, and it was the cover art that captured my attention rather than whatever words were written down below it. I have a haunting suspicion that most of the 5 people who will come upon this particular list will do the same thing. Irregardless, I was transfixed and hypnotized to the sounds that came from this record. Sure it sounds EDM, but gone is the pervasive bro-ness about the music. It’s more as if the Future Sounds of London fucked EDM and this is what came out.
Björk – Vulnicura. It turns out that Arca aided Björk in producing this album. She mourns the disintegration of her relationship with Matthew Barney (to which I say good riddance, he’s a dickhead cunt anyhow), but doesn’t do it in any way we have heard before.
FKA twigs – M3LL133X. Grimes was too afraid of going this far, but Ms. Twigs just don’t give a shit. She took it this far, the fragility, the horror, the vulnerability, the anger and it’s exhilarating.
Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly. Holy shit. What D’Angelo did with last year’s Black Messiah, Kendrick Lamar took one step further. Listening to this takes me back to the Native Tongues and Neo Soul of Tribe Called Quest and Black Sheep and Common while keeping Compton in the forefront. Pure motherfucking genius here.
Peaches – Rub. Tits, tranny dicks and Kim Gordon. I love sexual perversion, and this is the perfect soundtrack to an orgy while getting dirty, pissed on, fisted while spewing cum like a firehose all over the place. Anything and everything goes here, and it’s so much fucking fun.
Sleater-Kinney – No Cities to Love. It’s good to be wary music bands make when they reunite. Take the Pixies for example. But here Sleater-Kinney came and rather than make a nostalgia-laced rehash of Dig Me Out, they made an album that would have fit had they never taken a hiatus in the first place. Hell, they made one of the few rock records of note this year.
I don’t know whether I should put Coil’s Backwards here since it was recorded back in the 1990s and a remixed version of these tracks were released back in 2008 as The New Backwards. I’ll just make a note of it here and leave it at that.
What can I say? Growing up I never watched a certain movie franchise. Sure I’ve seen it parodied with Spaceballs and on Saturday morning cartoons like Muppet Babies. It was hard to escape the constant references to it, so I was pretty sure I knew about the story well enough despite never watching it.
Then earlier this year I finally decided to watch it, and boy was it a let down. The movie is fine. It is good, but it has its problems. It’s too referential, too self-conscious, too into itself. For how rabid the fans are of this movie, I would expect something better — something along the lines of Barbarella. Then again, there are a lot of people who loved The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I really couldn’t stand those movies.
So I’m probably never going to watch this seventh movie. And for those of my friends who are afraid I will judge them harshly for being wrapped up in this mediocre masturbation fest, never you worry your hearts: I will judge you harshly. In fact, I already have.
Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of re-reading The Brothers Karamazov. I just got through the “Grand Inquisitor” chapter. Holy shit. Dostoevsky is good.
If I do go down the road of being nekkid, I suppose I have to come up with a proper nom de guerre. I was always told the proper porn name is the name of your first pet and the name of the street you grew up on. That would make me Pepper Roberts. Funny. I don’t feel like a Pepper Roberts. A Pepper Roberts would be someone who wears a lot of vinyl and rubber and latex in cyberpunk bondage gear of sorts. I somehow picture a much sluttier version of Switchblade Symphony’s Tina Root:
I don’t feel that I fit that. Maybe more of a Pot Roast Murphy or a Baby Back. I’m open to suggestions which you can send me using my contact form.
With Dallas Aunt coming next week and leaving on Jan. 4, I’m starting to put together my social calendar for those two weeks. It’s pretty amazing and depressing just how slim that calendar is.
