Feb 25
Posted: under Art, Community, visual storytelling.
Tags: art, craftmatic adjustable beds, graffiti, guerilla art, Miracle Mile, mural, South of the Miracle, spraypaint, stairway to heaven
It may not be Banksy, but it’s still pretty cool to see local merchants reaching out to the community to pre-emptively cover their walls with something that connects with the local community. I was out for a walk, and stumbled across this guy at the corner of Venice & Thurman, with a cardboard box next [...] [...more]
It may not be Banksy, but it’s still pretty cool to see local merchants reaching out to the community to pre-emptively cover their walls with something that connects with the local community.
I was out for a walk, and stumbled across this guy at the corner of Venice & Thurman, with a cardboard box next to him full of battered spray cans all missing their nozzles.
Turns out the storeowner (who took over the space from a rather creepy pseudo-psychic), saw that other shops in the area were constantly fighting the battle against taggers, and wanted to try to stave off the constant whack-a-mole struggle against idiotic and barely readable slogans. The illustration here is the artist’s interpretation of the store’s contents – it’s a medical supply outlet, and one of their big products for the aging population in this area are the comfy mechanical beds for all the former manual laborers nursing their aching backs.
Thus the whole “Stairway to Heaven” motif here. The rather creepy-eyed girl in the center of this part of the installation is working the controls for the beds/chairs/scooters this place sells. Next to her is the stairway, and then floating off into the clouds are the people who’ve bought the goods in this store, and are now in lower-back heaven. Which is kinda cool & inventive, actually.
Just poking above the grass (weeds? I’ve never liked these damn things, but I guess they beat crabgrass/ragweed) on the right-hand side, you can see the head of his son Mario, who was, like, totally bored with his dad’s job. Sheesh. His dad’s a guerilla artist who just got a great commission and is out doing trippy work, and the kid is bagging on him nonstop. Pretty high bar to clear – what would be impressive? Watching dad play with numbers in an actuarial spreadsheet?
I guess whatever it is that you do, after a while, those closest to you grow accustomed to it & it becomes old hat.
Feb 03
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Petting the Cougar, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. This is one of a series of photos I’ve put up on Flickr showing the various exotic animals at The Nature of Wildworks, a rescue facility in Topanga Canyon. More & more of them keep accumulating, as people who had once had the means to collect & keep [...] [...more]
This is one of a series of photos I’ve put up on Flickr showing the various exotic animals at The Nature of Wildworks, a rescue facility in Topanga Canyon. More & more of them keep accumulating, as people who had once had the means to collect & keep exotic pets are falling victim to the Sub-prime Mortgage Meltdown here in Southern Cal.
Unfortunately, just as some hoodrats dump their pit bulls by the side of the freeway when they become inconvenient, a lot of these people are just bailing on these beautiful creatures. There are three mountain lions here, a half dozen other large cats (bobcat and civet – at least, I think the long-legged junior leopard is a civet cat), a silver wolf, a fennec fox, skunks (descented), hawks and coyotes.
These folks need help. Watch this space – we’re going to try to help them expand their web presence and try to get more donations to expand into a larger facility where the animals have a little more legroom & can have a better quality of life.
Feb 02
Posted: under Conspiracy Theories, iPhone - Hype and Reality, New Media Strategery, Web Tech, Webconomics.
Not to sound like a whiny ex-Apple fanboi here (check out the wrath Cory Doctorow has incurred over a BoingBoing by addressing this issue, if you dare) — but every time I tap to update my iPhone apps, I gotta swallow another amended EULA from Apple. This latest cramdown seems to center around the whole [...] [...more]
Not to sound like a whiny ex-Apple fanboi here (check out the wrath Cory Doctorow has incurred over a BoingBoing by addressing this issue, if you dare) — but every time I tap to update my iPhone apps, I gotta swallow another amended EULA from Apple.
This latest cramdown seems to center around the whole subscription issue – one that mag publishers have been screaming about for the last year.
