The Americana at Brand is a just-opened $400 million outdoor mall in Glendale from the creators of the theme park-esque The Grove in Hollywood. They both feature trolleys designed by George McGinnis, a regular designer of vehicles for the Disney parks. You can rent apartments that overlook the park and pond for $3000+ but you’ll hear the fountain show all day long. I know because they were vacant and unlocked when I was there opening day, that’s how I got the photo from the balcony.

Join myself and others as we read our awful teenage journal entries to a crowd of strangers. I’ve done two different pieces before, (one is in the new book, Mortified: Love is a Battlefield). I have hundreds of pages of journal entries to choose from and this show will have new stuff - on the evils of drugs and drinking, and the art world about going to a new school and how to be gay.  Get tickets early, Mortified sells out fast.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 14, 2008
TIME: 8:00 PM
VENUE: King King
ADDRESS: 6555 Hollywood Blvd., 90028
COST: $10 adv; $15 door

TICKETS:
By Web: GetMortified.com By Phone: 877-238-5596

It’s a 20 minute film involving high fashion and low production values. Or as is creators, my friends, call it: A new adventure saga set in a post nuclear multiverse. Three heroes from different time periods are picked up by a holographic spaceship and sent on a mission to rescue Falco Quasar, a colony pilot, when they are attacked by a mega-corporation and its mutant empire. Friday May 2 at 6175 Beverly Blvd 90036

The LA County Museum of Art’s just-opened BCAM and courtyard addition features lots of little things made big. A balloon bouquet of tulips MADE BIG, a toy firetruck MADE BIG. Inside there’s a table and chairs MADE BIG – us museum goers feel like kids walking under it. But I thought it was the real kids next door making the best art in the Boone Children’s Gallery (inside the old May Company building.)

Inside there’s a bunch of work stations for anyone to make cardboard models and add them to the large floor model of a city of the future. Also, a building-block area with a wall of Polaroids of kids standing next to their creations. And of course, a whole 2-D visual art area with much collaging and painting happening.

Outside during the opening three-day weekend you could grab handfulls of red construction flags and mark off a footprint for your imagined soon-to-be-built structure. You had to move fast though – I hadn’t finished my large circles on a hillside before two toddlers uprooted my work.

She’s showing at Honor Fraser here in LA thru March 28. 

The iconic facade and sets of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World attraction were designed in the late 1960’s and bear the unmistakable markings of that time (and the couple proceeding decades). But I wanted specifics. What had Mary Blair, the attraction’s main designer, been exposed to that may have inspired the famous styling of that ride? Here’s a sampling of what I found:

Top image below: Mary Blair, Small World concept art, 1965. And below, two pieces by Auguste Herbin, 1951 and 1950, that are undeniably similar to Blair’s work.Below is a collage by Ray Eames in 1949. Besides a similar styling to Blair, the collage technique and use of transparent layers was something Blair would later use in many of her Small World collages.Below is another Blair illustration, and below that, a Paul Klee painting, Burg und Sonne, 1928I saw many similarities between Klee and Blair, like the three images below. The first image, Klee’s Landscape with Yellow Birds, 1932, uses leaf shapes seen in the Blair piece below it. The third piece is also a Klee and has some subtle similarities to the work above it.The Small World attraction debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair with a an enormous kinetic sculpture at the entrance called the Tower of the Four Winds (second image below). Designed by Rolly Crump but I see inspiration in an unproduced Do Nothing solar-powered kinetic toy designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957 (first image below).And lastly it seems It’s a Small World continues to inspire others, like perhaps Rex Ray (second image below) whose work possesses the same sense of retro-whimsy seen in Blair’s art for the finale scene in the attraction (below).SEE ALSO MY: Patty Wickman Paints Women Wrestling and I’m All Hey that’s from Epcot

For some reason when I agreed to let Dave publish my old journal entries in his new Mortified book I didn’t accept that people would read the book. People I know. People I work with. People who will be surprised I wrote about them. And people upset that I didn’t write about them.

Oh well, too late now. At least my friend GJ’s piece is raunchier. (I never describe a partner’s ass as “an inverted heart that my dick will make into a spade.”)

If you want to see me recite my section live, I’ll be doing it at the Doomed Valentines Mortified show in LA next month, Feb 14, 8 PM. Get tickets here, it always sells out.  

Saw this Patty Wickman painting last night at the super crowded opening for LA Weekly’s “Some Paintings” show. My friend and I immediately recognized the setting as a photograph of a model for a scene in the (now gone) Imagination ride at Epcot, sans Figment the dragon.

I’d probably get pissy about her using the work of vintage Disney Imagineering designers but I sort of blew my wad on Dan Colen earlier. What I can muster makes me say, “So Patty, why didn’t you just sculpt your own little set and use that as your source material? Because I highly doubt you meant to reference a Kodak-sponsored creativity pavilion when you painted ‘Struggle Garden’ in 1998.” 

Meh, who cares but me anyway. Everyone else will think it’s from a Tord Boontje installation. His whole oeuvre seems inspired by that scene. Maybe that’s what both Patty and Tord are really saying  - “Hey Disney, we liked the old Imagination ride, could you bring that back please.”  

We don’t have snow here so people have to cover the yard with something, or, EVERYTHING.

This Sunday, celebrate my birthday in sasquatch style at the Bigfoot Lodge starting at 8 p.m..
Join the gang anytime after 8, I’ll be there ’till at least midnight - It’s all very casual - come introduce yourself!
Try the famous flaming “Toasted Marshmallow” - it’s a bonfire, dessert, and drink all in one!
The lodge doesn’t have food, but I’ll make sure we have some lovely nibbles. Hope to see you!

The Bigfoot Lodge a block east of the 5 (the Glendale side), on south side of Los Feliz Blvd.

If you insist on gift giving and need ideas, here’s my Amazon wish list.
But really, your crooked, inebriated smile is all I need for a good birthday.

It’s fiberglass, and around $4,500. I found it at T. L. Gurley Antiques in Pasadena. I have no idea what films it appeared in.

Living across the street from a major motion picture studio like I do, means you frequently get little notes in your mailbox explaining why tonight you might hear “simulated gunfire,” a “simulated helicopter crash,” or see smoke from a “simulated fire.” Rarely do these notes elaborate on what will burn or who’s getting shot. Which brings me to “Cloverfield” a.k.a. The Super Secret Untitled J.J. Abrams Project, the (totally awesome) teaser for which ran before Transformers and has resulted in much speculation about what’ll be attacking New York on 1-18-08 and how it will play out. Well, last week I got this note in my mailbox:

“…on Thursday July 12 and Friday, July 13 Paramount Pictures will be filming night scenes for their feature film, “Cloverfield,” on the Hennessy Street set on the Main Lot. The filming will simulate an army firefight – including gunfire (blanks) and explosions (powder flash). Any sound-related effects will be completed before 10:00 p.m.”

So there you go. “Cloverfield” will feature an “army firefight.” But those usually ensue after monsters attack New York. Sadly I was in Fargo so I have no report of how how it went down or if the locals heard the mysterious roar.