Chowderhead Bazoo

Go Flux Yourself

Hey, Generation Flux - please bite me. I've been fluxing my ass off for nearly 25 years. Practically everyone I know has been doing exactly what you're talking about, albeit with less palaver about Chaos Theory, less cyber-jargon, and with less phony baloney consulting gigs. It's called surviving and adapting and trying new things, mixing whatever it fucking takes with some semblance of personal expression and growth. You may not dig nostalgia, but congratulations nevertheless - you've invented the Lost Generation, the Beats, and Generation X. I guess we're supposed to be knocked out that this is happening in the "business world" judging from all the lame-ass business-speak, but any way you slice it, Genflux, you've invented the wild, mavericky concept of eschewing a safe, steady gig and doing your own thing. And making money at it? Frontiersville, baby.

I just wish that, like you, I'd found the time and energy in there along with all the cartooning, illustrating, film-making, writing, graphic and production design, books, and art shows to get all smug and self-aggrandizing about it, maybe even declare myself the mayor of some chunk of sidewalk. And you wanna' talk about chaos? I got your goddamn chaos right here.

Living on the Urban Edge of Now

Somehow this must tie in with beards, taxidermy, neo-diners, wood paneling, pulled pork, designer cupcakes, branches, horn rimmed glasses, thin crust pizza, and burger bars - but I can't quite put my finger on it. Blue collar chic? It seems that reconfiguring vaguely familiar things, standards and classics  from simpler times into something contrived and complicated, that is to say - with a twist - is where it's at. Food Trucks!

The Modern World of Wrong

Am I the only one wondering if this whole "citizen journalist" thing is such a great idea after all? In asking this question on the internet, am I a citizen journalist now? Between fake journalistic sites like Breitbart and the celebrity pundit fest Huffington Post, not to mention the big cable news networks and their "let's go to the tweets" democratization/dumbing down of information-sharing, where did actual bona fide fact-finding, heavy-on-the-research journalism go? The mainstream largely exists as something else now - a tool, a device, a weapon that in the hands of its holders serves mainly to misinform, disinform, obfuscate reality, and perpetuate the big, noisy distracting cartoon show devised to keep us stupid and confused, or at the very least actively engaged in the this-vs.-that, us-vs.-them shuck and jive while they dazzle us with buzz-words and stabbing-edge graphics.

I know there's plenty to say in favour of citizen journalism/activism, and I want to believe that the internet and social media as it exists today are our strongest bulwarks against the stomping boot, but it seems that the downsides are quite pronounced as well. Increasingly I find that getting to the bottom of anything now requires a labyrinthian trek through the internet, sifting and sorting and cross-referencing like it's a job, where some guy's opinion or bias is sprayed everywhere along with the truth or all too often passed off as the truth.

If we've figured out that we're being lied to, that we've been lied to for some time - now what? The "new media" - yes, with facetious air quotes - often seems almost as bad as the old media, but what can one expect when anyone can play? It's like there's a new foot-in-mouth comedy of errors every other day involving some would be gonzo goof making like a journalist. And once again we're left wondering where the truth went. At times it feels like no matter what, the bullshit wins.

Anyway, I'm off to ambush Bono!

Back to Los Angeles

LACMA - The California Modern exhibit. Although a little light on mentioning the European influences that got them there, the exhibit was nevertheless a wonderland of all things mid-century and googie-shaped.

At LAX - Finally got inside of this famous landmark, speaking of all things googie. This very well may be the googie Mecca, in fact. Opened in 1961, the joint got a facelift in the late 90's with the help of Disney "imagineers," bringing it back to its former space-age glory and then some.

Encounter Lounge - Jetsons-a-go-go. There's Esquivel in the elevator, the bathrooms look like something out of Fantastic Voyage, and Miro-esque moon rock designs jut out from the hub, surrounded by curving stained glass evoking swirling galaxies and nebulas. I want to live here.

Back to Los Angeles

Buckaroo, aka Bucky - Bucky took great interest in our luggage, working himself up into a feline frenzy of sniffing and digging. Bucky also likes to dig under blankets and snooze. Here he is snoozing some more.

Somewhere - Having Sunday brunch with Billy and Shirley, I'm not sure what part of L.A. we were in, but her house was a real art deco era gem. The walls were riddled with earthquake cracks. Out back, the last tenant's abandoned bowling ball collection looked like weird sun-bleached eggs scattered throughout the overgrown garden.

Outside LACMA - A visit to the L.A. County Museum of Art. Late at night this installation thing, "Urban Light," apparently becomes a haven for hordes of wobbly old time cartoon drunks. 

Back to L.A.

Van Nuys - The car wash of the stars. Where else but L.A. can you get your car scrubbed down by the likes of Donny Most or Charo?

California Winter - Some much needed vitamin D after living in the drippy nostril we call Vancouver.

In Traffic - So what else is new? Always in a car, always going somewhere "pretty close" - which is a fluid concept in the land of insane urban sprawl and traffic jams at midnight.

Los Angeles

La Luz de Jesus - Bonni's painting mounted boldly in a place of honour next to a portrait of the legendary Billy Shire. Shire was not only instrumental in propelling lowbrow/pop surrealism into the limelight - some might say mainstream - but is also the very definition of an enigma wrapped in a mystery, albeit a hirsute mystery. He once talked to me.

Black and Whites at Night - The bakery at the fabulous Canter's Deli featuring the elusive black and white cookie - elusive in the decidedly goy Vancouver, at least. We hit this joint as often as possible - eggs and lox in the morning, a little chopped liver or beef brisket in the afternoon, and a little cookie action after a boozy night in the Kibbitz Room.

Off Melrose - One can only hope that this display is some sort of weird time-capsuled holdover from the 70's, but maybe it's operating on levels of manufactured irony that only an Andy Warhol drag queen can hear. Then again, I'm not sure that L.A. really does irony without the irony being a learned behaviour thing not unlike the facade erected by a functioning sociopath.

Los Angeles

Cloudburst - Mysteriously, all over town the mannequins were buck naked, even in the window displays that weren't barren and dusty. Tough times indeed. But they will never die.

Off Wilshire - At a store called This is Not Ikea I mulled over the possibility of trying to fit the giant plaster orangutan into my carry-on. But then with the Burt Reynolds pinball machine taking up so much room, it seemed highly unlikely. In the end, a stalemate - I am now both apeless and Burtless.

Fairfax - In the land of great old signs, a beauty from the heyday of great old signs, once a great new sign. Their businesses long kaput, they will still outlast the grim plastic lightboxes hanging crookedly and warped over the more recent victims of the big toilet suck.

West Hollywood - After the rain, the smoggy haze seems to disappear for a while, the city temporarily in crisp focus, the nicotine sepia drained away to the edges of the eyeball field, but already creeping back in to fill the alien void.

Los Angeles, the Fall

The American Dream - Payday advances, alimony, DUI's, budget dentistry, bail bonds and burgers. And amid the creeping dystopia, one last flickering promise of a future free from all the fuck-ups.

This Way - Inside the old George Pal Puppetoons building, now the swank studio digs of a photographer friend who treated us to pre-party drinks and stories of hauling a giant neon "S" down the street, like a Jesus who didn't know his alphabet, just one letter off.

La Luz de Jesus Gallery - Night of the Living Artists. Actually, three nights; an endurance-testing parade of ironic handlebar moustaches, fake truckers, goth girls in corsets, tats and tribal piercings - big names, medium and small names happily mixing and mingling against a backdrop of skulls, creepy waifs, and more skulls.

West Hollywood - L.A. seems a little worse for wear since my last visit three years ago, the recessionary statewide budget cutbacks taking their toll on the city's appearance. The shopping meccas seem to get the only upkeep anymore, while the rest of the city drowns in soot and gum and the millions of stickers plastered all over everything. The sidewalks heave with busted up cement above the clogged gutters and dead palm fronds, and even the ubiquitous "For Lease" signs are as sun-fried and despairing as the human-free streets permanently backed up with traffic.

Hovering Art Directors

This is a real photo in a real workplace. Hovering Art Directors is a collection of shots bound to chill the very bones of anyone in a creative field. In most shots, even when you can't see the expressions on the faces of the people working the computers, their body language telegraphs their misery just as clearly. Hilarity ensues.