lornamatic

The ingenuity of man has been excercised for years past to add to the beauty, convenience, and attractiveness of bird houses. One quite pretty cage brought out a few years ago has a fish globe on top of the cage with a hollowed center, thus allowing the bird to come up into the dome, so that by looking through the fish globe it looks as if he were standing on a perch in the center of the water. These cages are not popular, however, as they are quite expensive, and the glass being of such peculiar shape it is liable to crack from variations in temperature. See illustration, page 4.

- from Feathered Pets, Chas. N. Page, 1898

I’ve been meaning to post this gem for a while, and the release of Bernd Brunner’s new book, The Ocean at Home, an Illustrated History of the Aquarium, gives me the perfect opportunity.

I wonder how many unfortunate Victorian-era canaries met their demise from a wet crash caused by an errant sunbeam. Thankfully, our generation benefits from space age polymer fish containment technology, and the canaries of the future will assuredly be safe from this dreadful fate.

I wonder how much it would cost to have the nice people at CASCO build one of these.

I had the privilege of attending a screening of “Raiders: Adaptation” tonight at the Silent Movie Theater.

If you haven’t heard about this movie already, you will shortly start hearing about it everywhere. The back story goes like this: In the 1980′s, three kids in Mississippi decided to film their own take on Raiders of the Lost Ark, scene by scene, on home video (betamax!). That’s not the unusual part.

The unusual part is that they actually did it. The entire film. Including the car fight / chase scene, the bar on fire scene, the boulder scene, and even the melting Nazis. They didn’t have desktop computers. It took them seven years to complete.

The sound is horrible. The picture quality is horrible. In a few scenes, the kids age years right before your eyes. But the movie – the movie is fantastic. The creativity and the resourcefulness of these kids was really inspiring.

See, we grow up and we get old and we get told NO a lot. Eventually we just stop trying, learn to lower our expectations, stop trying so hard to reach a dream. We believe in No. After all, it’s a lot of work, and failure sucks, and hey, that desk job drains my soul but it pays the bills… and this is how the world works, anyway, people don’t follow their dreams- that’s why they’re called dreams, stupid.

Chasing your dreams costs money. It will cause you to lose sleep. It might wreck your credit, break your heart. You might fail. People might laugh at you. And along the way, there’s temptation: give in, give up – there are a thousand easier choices to make. Chasing a dream is hard work. But when you’re 10 years old, you don’t really know about that part, so you dive right in with all the optimism and innocence in the world. The thing is, sometimes, you succeed.

Go download the trailer.

Craig Clevenger is promoting his new book Dermaphoria at 7PM tonight at the WeHo Book Soup. Will Christopher Baer will also be promoting Phineas Poe.

You should be there, too. Really, you shouldn’t pass up a “wild night of amnesia, meth lab explosions, and the internal landscape of Hell’s Half Acre.”

update:
Great reading. I enjoyed watching the audience squirm during Will Baer’s reading of Penny Dreadful. Craig’s reading was so compelling I started wondering when we’ll be treated to some podcasts (hint, hint). He had the entire room pretty well mesmerized throughout the Infamous Chapter 10.

Go check out Mike’s awesome photos of the event.

I can’t wait, I can’t wait…

Her Imperial Highness Princess Sayako of Japan, scion of one of the world’s oldest monarchies, will marry her commoner fiance on November 15, becoming plain Mrs Sayako Kuroda.

Marriage to Yoshiki Kuroda, a Tokyo urban planner, means the only daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko must leave the sequestered environment of the Imperial family for a
new life as a housewife.

So I was talking with Mike today, and we agreed that one of the best things about living in Los Angeles is that folks like us just kind of fade into the landscape. In most places, a little bit of eccentricity can be a liability. In LA, it’s more like an entrance requirement. People here are fun, laid back, quirky, and mostly fearless. It’s home to a huge population who’d otherwise be considered a little odd (file under “artsy fartsy” or “creative type”).

And there are so many wonderful unique little pockets, all over. Think Mexicali in Studio City, where the beautiful undiscovered people go for the best fajitas and margaritas in LA, or for the screenwriter set, there’s Aroma, a cafe/bookstore hybrid with the side benefit of friendly, talented, and great-looking staff, any of whom might burst out with an aria or a pop song at any moment. These places have been a bit harder to find in West LA, but finding them is so worth it. (I’ll save you some time here, Ray makes the world’s best drip coffee and almond steamers over at Cafe Balcony).

For one reason or another, we’ve been spending a lot of time up and down the Wilshire corridor lately, around and about Rodeo Drive. It’s not like the Crate and Barrel on Beverly carries anything that’s different from any other Crate and Barrel, but when you’ve got the choice between lunch on Rodeo or battling the madding crowds of the Grove, well… I don’t really mind great shops with good service. Plus, the homeless in Beverly Hills are way more polite.

I’m not alone in this preference, either. Just so you know, two weeks ago, that was totally Paris Hilton driving her silver Bentley down Wilshire. Living in LA does things to your mind, causes you to recognize things people in other parts of the world simply don’t notice. In this case, the thought process went: OOoo, pretty silver Continental GT… two blonde chicks inside, the driver has a half dissolved red lollipop in one hand. HEY, that’s Paris Hilton! Paris Hilton likes RED LOLLIPOPS. There’s a world of rude commentary that could be made, but I’m going to take the high road, here. After all, I like red lollipops too.

Friday night, Mike and I found ourselves in Beverly Hills again. We couldn’t resist stopping in the Williams-Sonoma there. We wandered in to look at the apple peelers. See, at the end of the day, one apple peeler is a lot like the next apple peeler. You can buy one at any Williams-Sonoma. You can even order one online. They’ll be the same, the whole world over. But then, the difference is in the story surrounding that apple peeler, and that’s the thing you won’t get at the Williams-Sonoma in Skokie (sorry Tarpy).

After shutting down the store, we wandered out onto the sidewalk, and headed towards the garage. We found ourselves right behind a pretty typical sight in Beverly Hills. Two nearly identically dressed blondes, one taller, with simply jaw-dropping hair extensions, both walking arm-in-arm with a hunk of man candy. Walking’s perhaps not quite the right word, but they were in… a very good mood, and they were even able to stay mostly upright.

The trio found their way into the elevator with us. Lots of cooing and giggling. Another woman hopped on, in the middle of a cellphone conversation. I was laughing to myself at how very stereotypically LA the entire scene was, when suddenly the taller blonde broke away from her crew, and announced to the entire elevator:

“Ohhhhhh! I’vvvvvvvvvvve beeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaahhh… verrrrrrrrrrry! baaaaaaaaad…… girrrrrrrrrrrl!”

That was a moment.

The woman with the cellphone falls silent. Thinks me, “Wow, she sounds JUST like Anna Nicole. I’ve never heard anyone else in the world who talks like that. I really wonder what drugs someone who sounds like that must use. ”

The elevator stops, and the trio flounce away.

The woman is now holding her cellphone at her side. Time has stopped. She looks at us and says “Was that?? Was that Anna Nicole?”

Of course, that was Anna Nicole. No one else in the world DOES talk like that. So maybe she went a little overboard with the Trimspa; despite the fantastic hair, she was looking a lot more teenaged Muriel Hemingway than hot Guess Jeans girl, but let’s face it, she’s got enough star power to stop a cellphone conversation totally cold.

And in this city, that still means something.