Shepard Fairey at the Warhol Museum

The top floor of the Warhol is gorgeously hung with Search & Destroy, the Shepard Fairey retrospective. Walls glow with the red, black and yellowed white of his strongest work-- from screen-printed posters to mixed media collages, stencils and combinations of all three, creating a swirl of ironic emotions (mocking and sincere, logical and incongruous) as one glides through the galleries.

His jabs at culture, politics and iconography, all assembled in the same place for the first time by this traveling exhibit (originating at Boston's ICA; next stop, Cincinnati; cities after that TBD,) pack a visceral punch that I wasn't expecting and there's a power in numbers here that I never realized before.

The lower floor of the exhibit, however, centered around the now over-exposed Obama Hope poster, didn't continue the momentum for me and I walked through it at a steady clip searching for the sustained jolt of the top floor. The super-sized mural was overkill. Badly lit, sagging and shiny (unlike the matte of the screen prints), it was the last piece I looked at and by then the party was over and I was hungry for art again.

The guy in the gift shop tried to sell me one of the limited edition Search & Destroy prints for $45 ("They're selling on Ebay for $170") but for me the appropriate memento was a small metal button, for $1.40, with an image of Andy on it. Around the edge in small white lettering it read, "Your fifteen minutes are up."

(Air)Ship of Fools

All aboard for Hell! First stop: Texas

As I read through this list of people who yesterday accompanied W. back at long last to Texas, my mind reeled at almost every name, conjuring a vertiginous trail of sharp, unpleasant and, at times, sickening memories of the past eight years, similar to the exhaust fumes spewing from the luxury jet's engines.

Jenna and Barbara, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Dan Bartlett, Josh Bolten, Joel Kaplan, Jared Weinstein, Mike Meece, Andy Card, Don and Susie Evans, Blake Gottesman, Clay and Ann Johnson, Ed Gillespie, Barry Jackson, Joe Hagin, Israel Hernandez, Jeanne Johnson Phillips, Margaret Spellings, Alberto Gonzales, Brad Freeman, Jim and Debbie Francis, and Roland and Lois Betts.

Good riddance.

Angeleno dispatches from the inauguration

While LA Metblogs’ Sean Bonner is in DC blogging about the inauguration, I’m feeling a bit stranded here in Los Angeles as the pomp, ceremony and parties unfold, so I’ve been taking solace in my friend Kristin’s Facebook journal about her adventures in the nations capitol, as well as exchanging a slew of emails with her about what I’m missing.

Kristin is Kristin Bedford, the woman behind Kristin’s List, the LA cultural listing site. An Angeleno who worked on the Obama campaign at the Pasadena Democratic field office, she returned to Washington to spend the year end holidays with her family (she’s a DC native.)

When Obama won in November, she decided to stick around for the inauguration. And so, for the past few weeks, she has been tearing through the nation’s capitol in preparation.

As the LA Times had an article on Sunday about what certain notable Angelenos would be wearing to the inauguration, as well as the balls and parties to follow, I asked Kristin the same questions and how she would be getting around town.

She was concerned about staying warm in the early part of the day.

Obama is sworn in at 12 noon; we need to be there at 7:30 AM to get through security. The 4½ hour wait is stressing me out. Even if I layer every single American Apparel T-shirt I own, my L.A. wardrobe is not making the cut. I need to find a space suit or a bear costume to keep going.

I will be wearing two pairs of gloves with mittens over them. I have figured out that if I stuff the mittens with a half dozen hand warmers (those little packets) my fingers don’t freeze; 2 pairs of long johns under jeans; 4 sweaters; 4 pairs of socks (with more hand warmers in shoes;) and of course my new Obama scarf/hat set (priceless.)

And for the evening festivities:

I will be wearing a fitted, dark purple, up-the-knee knit dress designed by Carol Young (from her shop on Hillhurst in Los Feliz) — it is the sexy, classic, minimalist, architectural, “I’m too cool to wear a ‘gown’ to a Ball” look; a vintage camel hair Calvin Klein winter coat; a floor-length black wrap; black heels by Arche; nail color: “We will always have Paris” by OPI; hair: down; lipstick: a dark chianti.

Her plans are to hit the Bytes and Books Ball at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Google/Youtube Ball, which bills itself as “the alternative” ball experience, followed by two parties.

Washington is less reliant on cars than Los Angeles; and with the day’s events curtailing driving, she’ll be going with the flow.

Everything during the day will be by foot. For the balls, who knows? You can’t drive. Its going to be butt cold wearing these party dresses, so I think most ball people will be on the Metro (the great equalizer) — can’t wait to see women in gowns using their MetroCard.

Thats the rundown. The day is as big and as complicated as Election Day, when I worked for 21 hours and with about 500 people.

Photo: Kristin Bedford searches DC for inaugural festivities.

Barneys get bitchy about Michelle Obama

Fashion retailer Barneys New York is none too pleased about being scooped by anyone, even if it's First Lady Michelle Obama. After she appeared in an Isabel Toledo outfit for yesterday's inauguration, Simon Doonan, the store's creative director, got a phone call from a higher-up telling him to rush the designer's clothes into its NYC windows.

With what I'm sure was good natured bitchiness (Doonan is a friend of a friend and has seemed like a nice guy the few times I've been around him), he quipped, "I’m sort of annoyed that Michelle Obama has spring merchandise before us.”

The outfit will be available in March.

Just say NO to the bail out

Print Liberation in Philadelphia weighs in with my sentiment regarding bailing out banks and the overeager they lent money to so they could buy houses they couldn't actually afford in the first place.

Yes, Pecan!

Ben & Jerry's is honoring the inauguration of Barack Obama with their flavor, Yes, Pecan! Formerly (and boringly, but informatively) know as Butter Pecan, if you buy a scoop at a B & J shop, proceeds will go to Common Cause Education Fund.

America the Gift Shop

Phillip Toledano worked in advertising as a creative director for a decade before shifting gears to become a photographer. While doing some plum editorial jobs for the NY Times, Vanity Fair and New York Magazine, the Londoner also wracked up impressive work for his ad portfolio, culminating in an Absolut vodka shoot.

Now, he makes art meant to induce squirming as much as reflecting on truths we try to ignore-- or maybe a combination of both. One of his latest ventures in that mode is called America The Gift Shop, an installation project that transforms US foreign policy from the past eight years into ostensibly buyable objects. In an America on the brink of becoming a total consumer environment (if it hasn't reached that point already,) his pieces can be as unsettling as they are on target.

Abu Ghraib coffee table, Phillip Toledano
Molded resin, plexiglass, 6', 2008

What I'm listening to

1. My Roots Go Down - The Seedy Seeds/Count the Days
2. You Are My Wonderful... Flower - Day2K/The Rockets
3. Bad Man's World - Jenny Lewis/Acid Tongue
4. LIttle Bird - Angus & Julia Stone/Just A Boy
5. The Rip - Portishead/Third
6. The Windmills of Your Mind - Dusty Springfield/Dusty in Memphis
7. Keep on Walking - Jem/Down To Earth
8. Best For Last - Adele/19

Excuse me?

Watch how Cindy flinches at the forbidden word. Ah, memories.

Change your underwear

Obama boxer briefs, marked down from $29 to just $7.49 per pair. Change you can believe in, from Andrew Christian.

I Met The Walrus

Jerry Levitan was 14 years old in 1969, when he snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto with a tape recorder and persuaded him to answer a few questions about peace. Lennon was, with Yoko Ono, his wife, to perform at a huge anti-Viet Nam War concert which was subsequently released as an album called Live Peace in Toronto.

Lennon and Ono were into heavy heroin use at that point, as Lennon revealed later. He recalled vomiting violently right before he went on stage, but he electrified the audience made up of worshipful Beatles fans who were also fervent anti-war protestors.

He gave Levitan the time and thoughtful answers at a time when the world needed people to look up to-- much like today and the message that Barack Obama is carrying to newer generations of minds hungry for ideas of promise, change and hope.

From the video's Youtube site:

Thirty-eight years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.

Be prepared for zombies

With November 4th just two weeks away, you don’t want to be unprepared should zombies prevail. These fine forged steel blades were designed with one purpose in mind: Killing zombies. We here at CreepyLA suggest you don’t mess around and order one today.

Even with the economy in its current state, now is not the time to cut corners. Zombie Tools snottily explains their rationale:

It’s been estimate that around 600,000 people were killed with agricultural-grade machetes during the Rwandan genocidal war in the ’90s. We’ve seen the machetes used in Africa. They’re thin, cheap, Asian-made tools designed to chop vegetation. So we’re fairly confident that our blades, which are twice as thick, made from quality steel, much sharper and designed to cleave, will have no problem with a decomposing walking corpse.

I'm listening to dOP

More French electronica is washing up on my cyber shores in the form of dOP, a group whose members claim to be a former prison cook, an ex-pro soccer player and " a guy who sold stuff on the beach (cigarettes, condoms, drinks and chouchou). But now we only do music. And we're really happy about it."

Final question (from their recent RA interview:) Why do you sing in English?

To make more money.

Not to burst their bubble, but I scored Lighthouse, their EP released in March, as a download from Amie Street for 45 cents, but the price will undoubtedly rise as more people find them there. Their July release, I'm Just A Man, is only available on vinyl presently.

Make your own.

‘Vote NO on Prop 8′ fund-raiser this Sunday

Equality California and Love Honor Cherish are having a fund-raiser this Sunday October 12th aimed at defeating the anti-gay Proposition 8, a ballot measure this November that, if it were to pass, would deny same sex couples the right to marry in California by actually writing discrimination and bigotry into the California constitution.

The event will happen at the Mondrian Hotel’s Skybar in West Hollywood on Sunday from 6 PM to 9 PM. Tickets can be had for $100 and 100% of the ticket price goes to defeating Prop 8 on November 4th.

Money is urgently needed NOW. “Religious” conservative-backed Prop 8 supporters have far surpassed Equality California and other opponents of Prop 8 in fund-raising, pouring it into TV ads filled with outright lies and distortions aimed at appealing to ignorance and bigotry. ( Take a look at one of the ads.)

You can buy tickets here. And you can download a PDF of the invite here and see the long list of Angelenos, celebrated (you know, celebrities) and otherwise, who will be there.

If it’s at all within your means, it is a very worthwhile cause. I’m not saying everyone can afford it; but if you can afford $200 jeans and a $300 iPhone, then you can afford a donation to fight bigotry in California.

If a C-note is outside your budget, please give whatever you can at Equality California’s site or at No On Prop 8. We can’t allow victory to embolden backward zealots.

But whatever you do, VOTE NO on Prop 8 on November 4th.

Proposition 8 was placed on the ballot by the anti-gay “Protect Marriage” group, an affiliation of so called “religious” conservatives which claims to be seeking to “restore marriage” and “protect children,” according to the scant information on their web site explaining who they are. (There is no “about” link. Pretty telling, no?)

Their real intent is to deny basic rights to gay people. Marriage and children have nothing to do with the goal of these bigots.

Equality California is a civil rights organization that advocates for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in California.

Love, Honor and Cherish is an independent, grassroots organization whose purpose is to defeat Proposition 8.

Standing up to bigots isn’t always cheap or easy (like me.) I’ll be there with the boyfriend in tow. Look for us and say “hello.” (He’s the cute redhead; I’m the silver-haired Slavic fox.)

Vote NO on Prop 8 Gala; Sunday, October 12, 2008, 6 to 10 p.m.; Skybar, Mondrian Hotel, 8440 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Tickets $100.

Cellcam Journal - Paris

Early morning walk in the Marais...

Bike rental stations like this one are all over Paris. Pay at the kiosk, run your errands and return to any other station. The first hour and a half is free. Many major streets have dedicated bike lanes with raised barriers to keep cars out of them. It's an example of what $8.00-per-gallon gasoline can motivate in a city.

Getting ready for the breakfast crowd on Rue St-Antoine...

... and rotisserie chickens on the spits for the lunch crowd.

My hotel on Rue St-Paul had Hollywood-themed decor with movie posters from the '30s and '40s throughout.

Paris has a vibrant theater scene, comparable to NYC and London.

Product$

As a recent convert to Google's Reader for keeping up with favorite blogs, feeds and general time-wasting, I'm almost too happy to have new enabling software to keep me sitting and not exercising my heart and lungs.
Times is being offered in a full-featured free 14-day trial version (then $30) that makes a reader look like an Apple-style version of Huffington Post without all of the celebrity crap that pollutes that still vital site (C'mon Arianna, elitists like me and my elitist friends don't care a wit about elitist celebs.)

Of course you can customize it to be whatever you want, even a celeb news feeding frenzy. But please don't.

Speaking of time-wasting and elitists, Stuff White People Like, the blog, makes the leap from viral to mainstream marketing with the publication of SWPL, the book, by Random House, no less. Self-lacerating, self-mocking criticism of and by liberals that is cringingly spot on has convinced me that we latte-sippers do NOT deserve political power. Which has already begged the question, are elitists the New Outsiders?

(Alternate question: Is SWPL, The Musical inevitable?)

In LA: Freewayblogger keeps rolling

You can't tell there's a war going on in this country. But if you have one person in every city doing what I do, you wouldn't be able to drive anywhere without seeing protest against the war and the president. - Freewayblogger

A thought has been turning over and over in my mind lately about how invisible the Iraq War has become in this country, about how easy it has become to avoid and ignore it. It's still in the news and on blogs but major media has not made a sustained effort to keep it front and center, as always choosing instead to focus on non-issues like Obama's minister or Hillary's campaign style or the latest sex scandal involving politicians or, of course, celebrities.

Something struck me today in the print edition of the Post-Gazette that was quietly horrifying, a Dr. Strangelove-moment of an unsettling degree. On the weather page, I was reading through the temperature listings by city, a habit of mine, especially when I travel. What I noticed was the listing for Baghdad is in bold type, the only one that appears that way.

I thought of family members of those in the military and serving in Iraq and wondered how they felt each day as they looked at this information. I wondered what brought about the decision to do this at the paper. I didn't know whether to damn the Post-Gazette for reducing it to this or commend them for a quiet nod of empathy, as if they were saying, "We know you are worried" to the families.

The Bushies have succeeded in cowing the press and have made certain that the Iraq War remain their private affair. Media coverage of returning casualties is banned and what coverage there is of war protest is muted, if evident at all, as Jerome Sherman points out today in the Post-Gazette. But when I came across this Freewayblogger clip, it gave me hope that maybe the anti-war movement still has life in it, still has ways to carry their message to the public.

TOTH to Wooster Collective.

Cellcam Journal - Pittsburgh

I'm Dead by David Shrigley at Carnegie International, opening Sunday May 4th. Carnegie Museum, Oakland.

Kandors by Mike Kelley at Carnegie International. Carnegie Museum, Oakland.

Think pink for November. Semple St., Oakland.

Spookily empty Pittsburgh Airport upon my arrival 9:30PM Saturday night. Thanks a lot, US Airways!

Pittsburgh sootier than Los Angeles

The American Lung Association bestowed the title of nation's sootiest city upon Pittsburgh, pushing Los Angeles into the number two position. Today's Post-Gazette print edition has it as the main front page story with a suitably ominous photo of the pollution belching Clairton Coke Works, owned by US Steel.

The "State of the Air: 2008" report, which used U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air pollution data for 2004, 2005 and 2006, says aggressive emissions controls in the Los Angeles area have reduced year-round particle levels by about one-third over the last seven years, while Pittsburgh earned the top spot by making only marginal improvement.

County Health Dept. officials dispute the rating, saying it only pertains the Mon Valley due to the Clairton facility. The ALA says taking that out of the equation drops the Burgh's rating to 16th sootiest. Better, but no reason for celebrating.

The good news is that ground-level ozone levels continue to drop rapidly in Pittsburgh, from a ranking of 17 to 34 since 2005.

Clairton Coke Works, United States Steel Corporation; painting by Howard Fogg.