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Burning Man 2012 Recap #3.

Friday, September 7th, 2012

Art! Let’s look at some art. There was so, so very much of it. Art is incredibly subjective, so I will talk about it, but please remember it is only my point of view that I can see from. You may appreciate things differently. It’s okay. Please don’t yell at me.

My feelings on modern art have been shared on this blog before, and while I was talking to Snorth’s husband Speeb (who is so much more tolerant of modern art than I am) I said, all angry-like and crotchety and loud, “Art is fat nekkid ladies, landscapes, bowls of fruit or flowers, or Jesus. THAT’S IT.”* I think that pretty much sums up my feelings. If I cannot immediately tell it is art, then it’s not art. It’s a pile of crap with a name placard next to it. Moving on.

I made a concerted effort to see as much of the creative things one could see at Burning Man. It’s difficult because we were on foot the entire time and there are miles and miles and miles of roads to cover with a great deal of sculptural elements out on the open, but a lot of good stuff tucked away in the corners. The first morning I woke up (after sleeping in the car all crunched up like one of those Aztec mummies) stretched out, exited the vehicle and immediately started hissing at the sun. Conveniently, Cricket had brought an old bedsheet which I decided to wear the entire time I was at there. It was pathetic. I looked like I was rockin’ the lamest ghost costume ever, especially since the sheet had wee yellow flowers all over it. I take that back. I probably looked more like a homeless person who had lost her shopping cart filled with bags of cans and carpet scraps. It didn’t help that I was surrounded by thousands of pretty young things wearing no more than a g-string and a hat, and then there was me, The Moaning Potato in my sheet and my Chico’s pants and my orthopedic footwear. Whatever. Here’s a picture.

So Cricket and I headed down to Center Camp (look at map in previous post). Center Camp is BIG.

It’s a giant tent filled with all kinds of things. On one side is the coffee and ice sales, and then there are galleries scattered around, with old couches and pillows in between, and people are doing all kinds of stuff. Some are conducting little seminars on a small stage. Others are shmoozing. Some are napping. A bunch of girls were doing topless “airplanes” – you know, that thing you do with little kids, where you lie on your back with your feet straight up in the air and they pretend to fly. A man walked by playing “Careless Whisper” on a saxophone.

There was a great deal of art in there. Some of it was fantastic. Like Botticelli’s Venus made out of chicken wire.

The metal polygons were cool too.

And oh good, a painting of penises. I was worried I wouldn’t see phallus-related artwork on this trip. Thankfully there was no menses-related artwork that I could see.

Outside is something called The Gate. I thought it was a great structure and I was snapping photos from every angle. A guy came up to me and said, “Have you seen it at night? You should.” And sure enough, he was right. All I’m going to say for now is OMG RAINBOWS COLORS WHEEE.

Continuing on our art journey: after sharing a bag of Pirate Booty for breakfast (we only brought dry foods like chips and granola bars because there are no trashcans or sinks) Cricket and I headed out to the open area where the Man is.

There’s all this really cool artwork all over, and weaving in between all of them are artcars and people on bicycles. It’s utterly surreal. I tried to follow some semblance of a structure (“We’ll start over here and work our way around to here”) but we just ended up wandering around from interesting thing to interesting thing. We saw the giant Anubis:

And the geodesic onion domes:

And the egg:

And this tree:

And these two fantastic characters:

And the white spiral bone-lookin’ sculpture.

There was also the fish. Fish are a big thing at Burning Man. I saw a ton of fish represented. I think I might have actually seen four different anglerfish-themed artcars. A lot of sea creatures, a lot of reptiles/dragons, a lot of seafaring vessels.

But the piece I thought was the most striking was the lighthouse. The lighthouse was wooden, and spiral, and the driftwood at the bottom continued the spiral in the most beautiful manner. It also had Tiffany-style stained-glass windows. And it was sitting right in the middle of the desert. So stunning.

After investigating a hefty chunk of the art, we made our way to the Man himself.

It’s standing on top of a four-story building that you can go into. The building itself is neat to look at, but in the center was a really cool sculpture, I think it was called The Hive. It was built completely without nails or screws.

Here’s some video I took.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6FyD5KWbAU&

In addition to being a delicious break from the sun, you could walk up a level or two and see the playa from above. I got a great shot of a viking ship crossing the dust.

And then I looked down… at the group of naked men collecting together for the Critical Dicks March. Wow. You think you’re ready, but when you’re actually there and presented with thirty different guys, all different bodies, all different manpart-styles, it throws you a bit. I blurred out faces in case some of them are, like, lawyers back in the non-Playa world. Enjoy.

Go to Google and type in “Critical Dicks”, then hit “Images”. Visualize that coming towards you, all that jingly-jangly… It changes you.

Tomorrow we’ll delve into some of the night-time fabulosity. Many blurry pictures, but trust me, it’s worth it.

*That’s not really true. I like things other than that. But there’s a kernel of truth. I don’t go to MoMA or The Guggenheim or The Whitney, ever. I go to The Met and The Museum of Art and Design.

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Burning Man 2012 Recap #2.

Friday, September 7th, 2012

I don’t think a lot of people know what Burning Man actually is. I certainly didn’t until I got out there. I had a vague idea, but no real grasp. Someone told me it was a music festival. Another person told me it was a mega hippie commune. A lot of people just think it’s about the drugs and the sex and the fire. Those are all kind of true, a bit, but here’s the best description of what it is: a pop-up, counter-culture, leave-no-trace, full-scale, fully functional city based on the concept of gifting as opposed to the exchange of money for goods and services. I’ll break that down for you.

A pop-up, (it only lasts for a week)

counter-culture, (lots of artists, hippies, nudists)

leave-no-trace, (no trash cans anywhere – if you brought it in, you took it out and you attempt to leave the desert in as pristine a condition as you found it)

full-scale, (58,000 people attended)

fully functional city (there were clearly marked streets and streetlights, there were toilets, there was an ambulance and fire department, there were policemen, there was an airport, etc.)

based on the concept of gifting as opposed to the exchange of money for goods and services (except for the Center Camp, where you could purchase ice and coffee, no money is allowed to be used – only gifting, and mostly people would be charitable and just do things for nothing in return)

Here’s a map of Black Rock City, as it is called, with some landmarks pointed out for you. This shape, called The Playa, is based on a clock. The spoke-streets are named after times, and the concentric circle-streets are letters of the alphabet, making it quite easy to navigate this rather large city. I stayed at 5:15 and J, for example.

Cricket and I, being from the East Coast, did not bring bikes with us, nor did we purchase super-cheap ones at the local Wal-Mart like many of the backpacking foreigners. We walked everywhere. We walked a lot, like six miles a day, which doesn’t sound like that much except you forget that you are in the desert and a fiery ball in the sky spends its entire day trying to burn you without any respite. In lieu of roasting your flesh directly, the flamey ball makes the temperature close to 100 degrees, and then there’s the dust. Oh dear Lord, the dust. I was in the elevator at work yesterday and someone had tracked a bit of mud into the elevator. The mud had dried to a light color and puffed around a little, so when I got into the elevator and looked down, I shrieked, like, “Dust! Are you following me?! Be gone with you!” I have post-traumatic dust disorder. Here’s the deal: the dust is dry and extremely powdery and light… and caustic. So when the wind blows, and sometimes the wind blows hard, this powdery nightmare gets all up in your face and your camera/car/electronic thing and ruins everything. Cricket and I had to take Claritin the whole time to keep from having violent sneezing fits. Here is a picture of Cricket and me hangin’ out in the tent. He looks moderately okay, I look like I lost a loved one recently. What is wrong with my face – my nose is sunburned, my eyes are all jacked up from the dust and my expression conveys that it’s 96 degrees and there’s nowhere to hide from the heat. It’s a real evocative expression.

Before I left New York, I conveniently forgot how much I truly hate being in the outdoors. That does not mean I hate nature, far from it. I donate a big ole chunk of my income to various environmental organizations. I love nature, I just don’t want to be out there, with the stupid chafey elements, and gnats. Oh, and bees, don’t forget bees! You know what my four elements are? The beautifully alliterate group of Air Conditioning, Carbs, Cable and Klonopin. That’s what I need to survive. I do not need the extreme environment of the desert. Cricket and I had planned to stay for three nights and three days, but we busted out of there the morning of Day Three which was a-okay by me. Granted, we missed the Burning of The Man, but we saw the burning of thirty-four other pieces of art so I feel like I got the sense of it. Also, super-bonus, it took us between 10 and 15 minutes to get to the highway. After the Man burns, so many people leave at the same time that that same drive takes EIGHT HOURS. EIGHT. SOMETIMES TEN. We ended up going up to Lake Tahoe for a day which was lovely, but we’ll get to that in a later blog entry.

Back to Burning Man: The gifting thing takes some getting used to. We arrived just as the sun was setting, so we quickly set up camp and started ambling around trying to get a sense of the place. As we walked down one of the roads, someone came up to us and said, “I make chili-pepper-infused vodka. Would you like to try some?” My initial reaction was to yell, “Stranger danger!” and blow a rape whistle, but this is a different world, a friendlier world. So we wandered over to this makeshift bar where the nice man gave Cricket the aforementioned vodka and I tried his homemade chocolate liqueur. And after saying thank you, we continued on our journey. That’s how things work out there. People either have a skill or a food or something and the act of sharing it with others is all the payment they require. When you first arrive, you’re given a book of the various things or activities offered at various camps. Here’s a sample:

Tissue and a Plan
Lost? Confused? Runny nose? We are dedicated to making sure no burner wanders the playa without a clear plan and a clean tissue. Available all week. Tissue and a Plan – 7:30 and Columbine.

Miso Soup
Our goal for our Miso Soup Camp is to prevent electrolyte imbalance for Burners. We must eat salty food on the playa. Please bring your own cup. Miso Soup – Dandelion and 5:45

It’s Not Sleazy Being Green
Got nothing green going? Come ogle our Gray-B-Gon Evapotron! Learn to turn gray water into vapor and minimal waste. Get pumped to reproduce your own! Cartoon Commune – 7:30 Portal.

BRC Perimeter Run
Wanna run in the middle of nowhere? Meet on the north side of the Man at 7:00 a.m. for a group run along the BRC perimeter fence.

Recitation of the Lotus Sutra
Chanting of the Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and Lotus Sutra. Join us to learn about practicing Buddhism and reveal your enlightened nature. All welcomed. Buddhacamp@TheLotusDome – Foxglove and 4:15

BYOC Hydration Station
Is your bottle/cup empty? Come fill it and hydrate from our booze-free jugs of tasty and varied beverages and sit awhile. Until supplies last. WhoofARTed? – Begonia and 9:15

In addition, in the book I found all these other things:

a confessional, singing telegrams (staffed by thousands of volunteers), a mini-film festival, welding and repair services, a dojo, a radio station, a bowling alley, a library, knot-tying classes, a wedding chapel, a gym, dance classes, an open stage, a karaoke club, foot massages, a skateboard park, woodburning (like the boy scouts do, with the patterns and whatnot), a clothing boutique, a daycamp for kids, figure-drawing classes, an ear/nose/throat clinic, hat and costume decoration and repair, giant Jenga, giant Twister, speed-dating, circus-arts classes, LED repair, AA meetings, glass-blowing, solar battery-recharging station, a barber shop, a marching band march-off, body-painting, improv class, drum circles, a family portrait studio, roller derby, pickling classes, and bronze bell-casting.

And, of course, I found quite a few things that were what I would consider very bad gifts. These people would not be getting a thank-you card. No sir.

Fire Baseball
Baseball is so much more exciting with fire! We have mitts and leather gloves to share, but bring your own if you can, and wear fire-safe clothing! !Zoom! – Esplanade and 7:15

Dr. Scrote’s Circumcision Wagon and Calamari Hut
Dr. Scrote, certified medical technician, offers fun and fast service, along with fresh ‘n’ tasty calamari rings. Hither and Yon – See Playa for Directory*

Sriracha Spa
Invigorate your senses with Sriracha facials and massages while immersed in a kaleidoscope light show. Kaleidospice – Located within The Hive

Morning Coffee Enema
Enemas have been used for health and pleasure for thousands of years. Join us for our world-famous coffee & conversation Black Rock style. Since 2004. 9:00 and Iris – see Playa for Directory

Here’s the full list online if you wish to look at all of them.
http://playaevents.burningman.com/2012/playa_events/1/

Since Cricket and I are in a committed relationship we did not investigate any of the polyamory events, nor did I go to the women’s circle jerk (bring your own toy!) although, I won’t lie, I was tempted to saunter by and peek in because, hey, when are you going to see something like that again (“Do all those nice ladies have epilepsy?”) But I did not. Nor did Cricket or I partake in any fun substances of any kind because that really isn’t our bag. I came to see all the artwork and Cricket came to protect his investment (me). While it is near impossible to see every piece of art on display, I would say we did one hell of a job.

On the first night we headed down to the Man because it’s right in the center and I got to see a variety of the camps as I walked by.

As you can see, lights are incredibly important. There are lights on everything – you, your bike, your hat, your car, your tent, etc. It makes it look incredibly other-worldy, like a Bedouin Las Vegas. It’s really hard to take night-time photos because it’s extremely dim, so I apologize now for all the blurry shots forthcoming. It’s the best I can do.

If you watch the first 1:45 of this video, it gives you a much better sense of The Playa at night. Fascinating.

http://vimeo.com/33579217

Tomorrow we’ll delve into some of the creative night pieces I got to see.

*Please, please be a joke or an art piece. Please.

Posted in Burning Man, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Bokeh. It’s a real word that I did not make up.

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

Do you know what a bokeh is? It is not a I Can Haz Cheezburger-type animal (like a kitteh or puppeh or bunneh). Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image. Bokeh has been defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”. However, differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—”good” and “bad” bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. If you have photos you would like to edit, you may use AI Clothes Remover and other AI software to achieve the effects that you want.

The term comes from the Japanese word boke, which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, the “blur quality”. The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility. The term bokashi is related, meaning intentional blurring or gradation.

Here’s a great example of bokeh:

But what I didn’t realize is by putting a thingie with a shape cut out of it over your lens you can control the shapes of the bokeh circles.

You could have butterflies or hearts or snowflakes, any shape you could think of.

But today I saw the best thing using a bokeh ever. Check this out.

Isn’t that the greatest?!! You could make a movie where some kind of mystical creatures are flying and all you have to do is cut a bokeh out of cardboard (there are many tutorials online) and choreograph your friends to wave lights around. So awesome!

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | 1 Comment »

The Euro Cup… thing. You know, with the ball.

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

This past weekend I went to Astoria to watch the soccer match between England and Italy. England lost about thirty years after the game started during the penalty kick part. Of course, the entire time the game was being played I was going on and on about how lovely the logo this year is. “Ooh, lookit! It’s a tulip! Pretty colors!” Then I went to the website and the whole thing is pretty and flowery, which is unusual for a sporting event.

Can you imagine the Super Bowl (or Superb Owl, as I call it) with lilies and chrysanthemums incorporated into their motif? I’m impressed that the rest of the world isn’t as testosterone-driven with their design elements as we are in the U.S.A.. Good for them. Good for you, Rest of the World. If you want to bet on sports games or play different casino games, you may look into this dewi222 gaming platform.

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Art! Not mine! Let’s look at it!

Thursday, May 31st, 2012

First of all, Tom Gauld (who I’ve talked about here before) just started a Tumblr of his Guardian newspaper cartoons and I am delighted. I think his work is charming. I especially like the Tom Waits one.

http://myjetpack.tumblr.com/

And, in keeping with the recent Alien theme, there is an artist I came across in my travels who I think is super-swell and who’s work is in that same Geiger-eque vein. There’s a bunch of artists who have started working in Photoshop almost exclusively and often their work looks like oil paintings, all rich and smooth and vibrant. Mark Facey is one of them. The second I saw his stuff I was entranced. He has an understanding of different textures that I can only dream of. His work is reminiscent of Brian Froud’s to me, and if you go to Mark’s Tumblr you can see he also names all his creatures and gives them a bit of a backstory. Here’s a few examples of his unbridled awesomeness.

It appears that he first makes a complicated and thorough pencil drawing, then scans that in and works from that. Here’s one of his pencil sketches.

And here’s where you can buy his prints: http://society6.com/mrfungi

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Jan Huling the Beadist, Shayna Lieb the Glassist, and two epic WTF movies.

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

I went to SOFA 2012 last weekend. SOFA stands for Sculptural Objects and Functional Art. It’s a terrific show of different galleries showing off their best stuff that isn’t paintings. A lot of glass, a lot of bronze, a lot of ceramic, jewelry, furniture and everything in between. Here are some images I found on the internet to give you an idea.

I love going every year because there’s all this art there, the kind of art you see in modern art museums all over the world, and if you have piles and piles of money you can own some. It feels more alive than a museum because the art isn’t just sitting there – it’s changing hands. You can meet the gallery owners, the artists, the buyers, everyone. It’s exciting. There were two artists that were of particular interest to me. One was Jan Huling. I saw her work at the first SOFA I went to, I think it was 2006. She finds bits of what some people consider trash and she covers them with intricate seed bead patterns. I’ve always loved that idea, the idea of taking a variety of items that have little or no worth in themselves and through your hard work and skill, convert them into things of beauty and value. I am still a little sad that I didn’t buy one of her pieces at that first SOFA. It was a bird sculpture (she was really into birds then) on top of an ostrich egg with a happy little cricket waving a little paper hat. I adored it but it was around $4,000 and I simply don’t have that kind of money. Probably the most expensive art I have in my house was around $600 and I struggled with that, so four grand wasn’t going to happen. Every time I see her work, though, I get a little pang for my bird-with-ostrich-egg piece. Sigh. I found some pieces that are similar so you get an idea.

She, as with all good artists, has expanded her horizon and now she’s moved on from birds and smaller pieces to larger pieces. Jan has also now incorporated medallions and leaves more negative space. I was super-excited to see that she had three pieces for sale at SOFA and two of them had red dots on their name plaques (meaning they were sold). The two sold pieces was this really big monkey:

And this awesome cobra that I totally would have loved to have in my house.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I love it when artists I love are successful. It warms the cockles of my heart. And I’ve been watching Jan’s work for a while now, so it’s wonderful to see her pieces getting appreciated more and more each year.

The other artist that really caught my eye was a woman called Shayna Leib. I’m a sucker for glass, so it’s no surprise I fell in love with her work. They look like swirly ocean grasses expanding out of boxes. Here’s one to give you an idea.

On her website she explains her process. Apparently she makes cane, usually opaque color inside, transparent color on the outside. She does it with an assistant because they stretch the glass over fifty feet. Thirty feet of it is usable, not to thick, not too thin. Shayna then cuts in into a variety of lengths, but the pieces are all stick-straight, so she warms them up (really warm, glass needs to be hot), so they bend over metal curved shapes, and when they’re cool, she very slowly assembles them from one corner to another inside the frames so they flow and wave. They really don’t work very well in photographs. In person, they take your breath away. I found some closeups to help illustrate the incredible-ness.

There was a piece like the one above that I would have loved to own but it was 1) sold, and 2) $53,000. FIFTY-THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. I do not have fifty-three thousand dollars, but if I owned an office building I would put one of her pieces in the entrance hall to greet everyone every day because they are magical. I would feel bad if it was in my house and only me and my familiars got to enjoy it. You see something new every time.

Lately I’ve been digging into the treasure trove of Netflix streaming movies. I think Netflix thinks I’m an arty pervert, because it recommended two films that I have a lot of problems with: Sleeping Beauty and Dogtooth. Sleeping Beauty came out about a year ago and it is about an Australian young woman who needs money so she does some medical tests, and waitresses, and possibly prostitutes herself a little bit. Then she gets a job doing table service in her underpanties with other women, also in very exposing scanty garb. I found a picture and put modesty hearts over all the nipple-age. The lead’s the one in white.

They serve these old people dinner and then two of the women get naked and pretend to be andirons at the fireplace, it’s so very weird and S&M-y and not very sexy at all. Then she signs up to drink this tea that makes her fall asleep and old men can lay naked with her, no penetration, but they can snuggle and she won’t remember any of it. What the…? Seriously, that’s the film. A bunch of other stuff happens and it ends, but nothing is resolved and it doesn’t really matter. I cannot fathom how this film got made. It’s so art-house-y and pointless. You know a film is bleh when it’s got sex-n-nudity in it and you’re not even slightly titillated. Which leads me into my second film recommended by Netflix called Dogtooth. I’m not even going to try and explain it. Watch the preview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFtDzK64-pk

What a fat hairy pile of WTF that movie was. Oh, did I mention there’s a super-creepy and depressing sex scene in it? It’s a bonus! That’s probably how it got that “No one 18 and under admitted.” If it was me, I’d insist people 18 and under go see it. It would certainly cut down on teenage pregnancy. I hate you, Netflix. From now on, I’m only watching movies made by Michael Bay, with big shiny explosions.

Posted in Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | 3 Comments »

Cake cake cake cake, etc.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Today’s post will be about baked goods! I heard Rihanna’s latest song “Birthday Cake Remix” which she sings with Chris Brown and I originally hated it pretty violently, but not unlike a toenail fungus the song has crawled into my brain and has taken up residence there, and I suppose like a Stockholm Syndrome victim I have grown to like it. Here’s a link to it (warning, super-vulgar and sadly not really about cake):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2JTFyg2hcU

I was wandering around the internet and I saw The Most Amazing Cake Ever™. Seriously, look at this thing and tell me otherwise.

I did some research and found out it is from the Atlanta, GA shop Highland Bakery. I’m thinking of setting up a road trip because, damn. Check out their other cakes and you’ll see what I mean.

I bet those cakes are mad tasty too, but I’m just blown away by the artistic skill. They could taste like sand and ash and I would eat them solely to have some of that amazing art in mah belleh.

http://highlandbakery.com/

Addendum: OMG there are two new cakes posted on Highland Bakery’s Flickr stream. I… I have no words for the bunny cake. Gloriousness.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Costa Rica 2012, Part 1 (officially).

Friday, February 10th, 2012

My books arrived! Now my avian photos are labeled correctly, no longer things like “teeny-bird.jpg’ or “bird-that-makes-cool-noise.jpg”. Seriously, has anyone noticed how freakin’ weird bird names are? I looked through this book and now I realize I have to go back to Costa Rica to see the Marbled Godwit, or the Lesser Yellowlegs, or the Great Potoo. I did see the greatest bird ever, not for its appearance (it’s a nice-enough-looking fella), but for its name – The Violaceous Trogon. Seriously. Here’s a photo of a Violaceous Trogon:

And here’s what something called a Violaceous Trogon should look like:

(This picture is taken from a website called ZeroFriends, they have lots of great prints, go check ’em out.)

A Violaceous Trogon should be laying waste to the cities of man, not sitting benignly in a tree looking like it got hit the back of the head with a brick. But I’m not an ornithologist, so I can’t complain about the naming system.

First of all, I would like to thank Susan for her photographs. Susan is this really cool dame from Kansas City who was with me on the trip and took about fifty of the photos you’re going to see here. A delightful and talented lady, she has a blog she updates periodically and it’s got some great pictures of her paintings and her glasswork and her fiber (or, if you’re pretentious, “fibre”) works. We bonded over our shared craftiness. And if you like paintings of dogs, she’s your lady. I love her dog paintings. Thank you, Susan. You da bomb. I am also using three photos from another co-traveller called Ami, so thank you to you as well, Ami.

The first thing I noticed when I got off the plane in Costa Rica was the plant life. As I said, everything is huge and insanely bright. And more often than not, the plants look vulgar, like the engorged sexy-time parts of mammals. I found myself periodically holding my purse in front of various flowers, attempting to cover them up. I might have hissed, “You’re just embarrassing yourself,” at some of them. Specifically, the bananas gave me the most problems. At the bottom of the hands is a flower-thing that just screams, “Hey, lady, you lost? Want a ride?”

Unrelated note: Has anyone noticed how popular sloths have become of late? There are whole websites devoted to the awesomeness of sloths. And then today on Buzzfeed, I saw this:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/animals/sloths-are-so-hot-right-now-5685

They say it’s because of the Kristen Bell sloth-freak-out video that’s making the rounds, but I’d like to believe the entire internet is in a tizzy over sloths because of my recent trip. And I will continue to believe that. Please do not inform me of the truth. Thanks.

Back to plants: Heliconia! These are all in the Bird of Paradise family. They are, of course, are bigger and weirder than the regular Bird of Paradise. And the last one is hairy. I wanted to pet it, but I was afraid it would growl and bite my hand.

Concerning my houseplant comment of the previous entry, I had never given any real thought to where those plants originally come from. Imagine my surprise when I saw a poinsettia in someone’s garden, just hanging out. It was like seeing Santa Claus in the driveway of his house picking up the newspaper in a bathrobe. “Oh, you…live here. This is your home. Okay.”

The houses in Costa Rica are very simple and basic. Almost all of them are small, boxy ranch-style houses built out of cement blocks with corrugated metal roofs. I suppose if you live in vegetal bliss surrounded by glittering hummingbirds zipping to and fro, your house need not be particularly fancy. I got jealous of these humble dwellings. I hope the locals appreciate walking outside every morning into gorgeous weather and seeing something awesome like a monkey or an iguana. If I go outside my apartment, most likely I will see clouds and neighbor with a dog on a leash relieving itself. (The dog is relieving itself, not the owner. Watching the other thing would not be awesome, but it certainly would be something.)

Speaking of the weather, there’s a lot of NASA stuff all over Costa Rica. I saw them with a big tent at the airport, and then various other places after that. The reason is that large chunks of Costa Rica have the most stable weather patterns in the world. Every day: sunny. Nice. Little bit of wind, nothing drastic. So NASA does a great deal of testing down there. I thought that was extremely neat.

Not all of the plants were unfamiliar to me. I’ve seen bougainvillea before, just never this lush and in such a variety of colors.

And I’ve seen hibiscus flowers before too, but not double-petalled pinwheel duo-toned ones.

Anyone ever see Little Shop of Horrors? Well, Audrey II is real, and I have seen her.

Another gigantor leafy thing with a simply unacceptable flowering bit. C’mon, there are kids here, man.

Some of the plants I wanted to shove a clipping of into my bag and take home with me. Like this Powderpuff.

Or this Queen’s Wreath.

Next entry: more plants and some birds and other cool stuff.

Addendum: I have been informed by one of my co-travelers that the bird in the photo is not a Violaceous Trogon, but a Black-Headed Trogon. They look very similar. I’m guessing none of you give a crap about Trogons, so I’m not changing the blog entry.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Travels - I Has Them | 1 Comment »

Unacceptable.

Friday, January 20th, 2012

The Moomins likes African art, which is fine. She’s from Africa and she’s entitled to like whatever she wants. (I do not, by the way, tend towards African art in general. It’s not persnickety and perfection-oriented enough for me. I lean more towards Asian art, specifically Japanese. But I digress.) Normally I tolerate the fact that her house is filled with odd figurines that look at me funny in the night and weird bowls with jacked-up-looking animals painted on them. However, on her last trip she returned with a sculpture that is not okay. She can have whatever wacky art she wants but this is just gross and my father and I are perpetually creeped out by it. And OF COURSE she insists on it being displayed right above the television where it’s in your face and you cannot escape its horror. Let me clue you in. It’s a clay sculpture, about ten inches tall of a goat standing upright like a man. A goat whose front is covered with leopard-print boobs that birds are drinking from. The feet are pig snouts and birds are eating from them as well. You with me so far?

That’s all fine, sort of. Until you turn the sculpture around and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE OH MY GOD GET IT AWAY FROM ME.

Why? Why, Mom? At one point she attempted to explain how it represents the artist’s rage at his treatment, blah blah blah, but all I could think of was a bunch of birds chowing down on the poop coming out of a goat’s ass and I couldn’t hear anything else she said. I would simply break it “unintentionally” but it’s expensive and The Moomins would be so sad, I can’t bring myself to do it. Now my father and I are stuck watching TV with this atrocity grinning down on us. But The Moomins is happy, so I guess that’s all that matters. And I don’t live there. That helps.

10/17/2013 Addendum: She broke it! She was cleaning it and it broke! It’s an early Christmas miracle. I’m so happy.

Posted in Nature, Random Art Bloggery | No Comments »

Pumpkin Fest.

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Welcome to 2012! We’re all gonna die in either May or December, so that’s a fun thing to look forward to. Two things I want to cover. One, Snorth and I went to the local cat show and it was the same old same old of insanely beautiful cats and their super-odd owners. I didn’t take any pictures (you can go here and see previous cat show pics if you are so inclined) but I did have to take one specific shot. This one.

Okay. You don’t just put that sign in the water fountain, right? This implies that one, or possibly more than one, persons or peoples have attempted to cleanse their yewling felines in the water fountain. Right? I won’t lie, it made me want to wash a cat right then and there. Just grab any random one hanging around and SOAK IT ON UP, YEAH, SOGGY CAT TIME! Cats don’t like that though, so I didn’t. But I thought about it.

Two, I’ve been meaning to talk about this pumpkin festival I went to back in October. It was called the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze and there were a whole lotta pumpkins (not surprisingly). It covered the grounds of a fancy country home on the banks of the Hudson River. Seriously, illuminated pumpkins everywhere. My college classmate Jay Woods did the lighting design, so mad props to him – some of the pumpkins had candles in them, but many of the pumpkins had electrical lights because, hey, keeping 4,000+ candles lit is a hellish task meant for no man. It was indeed great, mainly because it felt like something one would go to in ye olden tymes. “Oh yes, Edward, let us venture into the countryside via carriage to look at the carved pumpkins strewn all over the estate. They have been lit with candles, it’s all very festive. We’ll drink mulled wine and then die of typhoid, etc.” Here’s the entrance.

I think there were professional carvers working for a month beforehand, but to create the full effect of OMGGOURDSALLOVER they had girl scouts and various other children’s groups carve other pumpkins that were on the lawn as you walked up. It was impressive to say the least.

There was an abstract snake shape over the entire left section that was guarded by ghosts.

The jack o’lanterns weren’t all on the ground. Whoever designed this came up with some really cool ways to use the pumpkins to their full potential. Like the corn and sunflower stalks.

And the beehive.

And the spiderweb.

And King Kong on top of a side building.

And these warrior-type figures. I don’t know if they symbolized anything, but they were neat nonetheless.

I had a couple favorite things. One was the sheep skeletons.

Another was the dinosaurs. Specifically the baby hatching out of the egg. I took a picture with flash and one without to show the full awesomeness of the egg idea. I suspect after seeing this you will make one for your front porch next year.

But my favorite thing was the intricately carved pumpkins, most likely using drills with different-sized drill bits as an integral part of the carving. They remind me of those Ukrainian painted eggs.