SHE PUSHES A MAD WHIP

NOW READING (7) :: WHAT LOVE COMES TO, by RUTH STONE

2012-02-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

NICKI MINAJ: SUPER BASS

2012-02-13T17:23:00.000-08:00

MINI NICKI MINAJ

2012-02-13T17:21:00.000-08:00

WHAT ?!?!?!?!?!?! OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2012-02-13T17:16:00.000-08:00

ARTISTS + THEIR PUPS

2012-02-13T09:59:00.000-08:00

GEORGIA O'KEEFE

FRIDA KAHLO

DAVID HOCKNEY

WILLIAM WEGMAN

I'VE GOT YOU, BABE

2012-02-13T06:21:00.000-08:00

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

DAILY DOG

2012-02-13T05:55:00.000-08:00

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU 2

2012-02-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-02-12T05:55:00.000-08:00

GRAVITY

2012-02-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

SONAR

2012-02-11T06:20:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-02-11T05:55:00.000-08:00

WHO IS JEREMY LIN?

2012-02-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

OMG. I love this kid's story!!! He KILLED it against the Lakers tonight, leaving Kobe's jaw on the court floor, with 38 points!

PRADA

2012-02-10T11:00:00.001-08:00

I love that there are NO MEN in this VROOOM VROOOM campaign for Prada's Spring 2012 Collection. Quite brilliant + funny to my eye.....

DAILY DOG

2012-02-10T05:55:00.000-08:00

ARTIST CRUSH:: SOPHIE BLACKALL

2012-02-09T09:01:00.001-08:00

Handmade Portraits: Sophie Blackall from Etsy on Vimeo.

2012-02-09T06:20:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-02-09T05:55:00.000-08:00

HAPPINESS

2012-02-09T00:49:00.000-08:00

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth.
We are happy when we are growing.

~William Butler Yeats

SOLOISTS

2012-02-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

I like the drawing, by Eric Klinenberg, and the article.

DAILY DOG

2012-02-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

MADONNA:: AS UNAPOLOGETIC AS EVER ;-))))))

2012-02-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

Madge can still push buttons! For an excellent article, by the ALWAYS brilliant Naomi Wolf, read this.

And for a straight up piece on why M.I.A. should NOT have apologized, read this, by Sasha Frere-Jones.

I'm still a HUGE fan, despite the Madonatella thing going on with her these days..... WHY?????

MADONNA

2012-02-07T22:39:00.001-08:00

VANESSA BRUNO ~ MOONLIGHT

2012-02-07T19:10:00.001-08:00

SOOOOOO B E A U T I F U L . . . .

DAILY DOG

2012-02-07T05:55:00.000-08:00

I HEART HANNELI

2012-02-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

InWear presents Hanneli for Spring/Summer 2012 from InWear on Vimeo.

DAILY DOG

2012-02-06T05:55:00.000-08:00

NOW READING (6) :: LITTLE BEE, by Chris Cleave

2012-02-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

C YA LATER, MADGE

2012-02-05T09:00:00.001-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-02-05T05:55:00.000-08:00

ONCE, by Meghan O'Rourke

2012-02-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

ONCE

A girl ate ices
in the red summer. Bees
buzzed among the hydrangea,

heavy as plums.
Summer widened
its lens.

You would not believe
how happy she was;
her mother pulled her

through the pool till her hair
went soft. Below,
cracks spread in the vinyl

where her mother’s long legs
scissored; above, wet faces
in the sun smiled.

At dusk, lamps were lit,
Vs of geese swept past,
fresh sheets shivered

on the laundry line,
and as the nights grew crisp
our souls unfolded.

Then winter arrived.
The parents bent over the daughter
tucked in her bed….

Creaking from the cold,
the black walnut’s roots
swelled beneath the snow.

When spring came, the home
had tilted into the tree’s
long, crooked shadow. Nothing

was the same again.

HART

The light of the heart is blue. It is a blue chamber,

that never ends, a summer night

stretched into dawn through which a deer bounds,

ghostly, calm, turning to regard you

as you stand on the road. And then

departs, having been held only lightly by the eye.

Everything natural to us must be felt

freely, like the clambering of a vine

through the asphalt toward the sky.

The light of the heart is blue. It is a blue chamber,

with a painted wall; in its distance a deer bounds

through forest patched by sun.

VIOLET

2012-02-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

Mixed Media on Paper

by AMERICA MARTIN

Our final acquisition of hers . . . (at least for now!)

BLUEBIRD

2012-02-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on Canvas
59 x 66
by AMERICA MARTIN

DAILY DOG

2012-02-04T05:55:00.000-08:00

ELLEN + MICHELLE :: LOVE THEM BOTH!

2012-02-03T20:07:00.000-08:00

LAGUNA BEACH

2012-02-03T19:50:00.000-08:00

Our hotel was MAGNIFICENT. It was one of those spectacular Southern California days where I have to stop myself several times and thank the Universe that I LIVE HERE. OMG.

AMERICA IN LAGUNA

2012-02-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

Last night we went to the opening of America Martin's show of new work at JoAnne Artman's Gallery in Laguna Beach. Wonderful turnout. The artist and her husband spent time talking to Cedars and playing with Junior. Seems America recently bought a new studio space in Silverlake and has been slowly getting settled in again to work. We were lucky enough to score a GORGEOUS new painting, BLUEBIRD, the first of its kind and possibly a new direction for the artist. We love her work, but I think we have to stop ourselves now. Seven pieces by one artist is probably enough, don't you think?

THANK YOU, NIKE!

2012-02-03T19:03:00.002-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-02-03T05:55:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-02-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

WASSUP

2012-02-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-02-01T05:55:00.000-08:00

MAS MAS MAS

2012-02-01T04:44:00.000-08:00

Cuz I'm G R E E D Y . . . "-))))))

MAYA + LUCIA

2012-01-31T17:56:00.000-08:00

Soooooooo WONDERFUL to see you, Mama Maya! I love your Gorgeous Bundle of JOY!

THE AMICABLE DIVORCE

2012-01-31T17:55:00.000-08:00

Interesting article on Defriending Friends in REAL LIFE. "-)) )!

I like the term coined by a psychologist in the article:: socio-emotional selectivity theory. It's so true!

Have you ever lost a BELOVED friend to Betrayal, Abandonment, Misunderstanding, or Drastic Life Changes? I have. When it happened it was very painful. BEWILDERING. But then, just like all of life's more challenging lessons, I could see the wisdom in the fissure. There simply was no way of collapsing our opposing perceptions of reality into one way out at the time, so without much fanfare, without any harsh words, or ultimatums, we simply stopped calling. Our last conversation, tense + tiring, we agreed to take some time + space to clear our heads of the drama. And then my father fell ill. And I was suddenly immersed in a DRASTIC life change. And time went by and neither of us ever picked up the phone again.

I wonder if we knew that would be our last conversation? I know I felt relieved to be done with the round and round bouts of he said, she said. I often marvel how we simply slipped away from each other without a direct gut punch.

It wasn't the first time we divorced, but our first separation was relatively brief. This time around we are coming up on the ten year mark. Toddlers are teens. Parents have passed. How time flies when you're carrying on . . . .

There were things we shared at seminal points in our lives that often pierce my consciousness at exquisitely timed moments. We were entranced by Josephine Hart's DAMAGE, had crushes on Madonna + Dave Matthews, wore Reinstein + Ross rings, and danced in the headlights of a borrowed car to Wild Horses one memorable, balmy night in the Hamptons. Wild Horses did eventually drag us away from each other . . . Wild IRISH Horses! LOL.

While the pain is long gone, the Knowing remains, stored in the vaults of Unreliable Memory. The place in my heart that has her name on it is Tender + Grateful for the friendship we once shared, for the Tears + the Laughter. Like the article wonders. . . Is a friendship ever over? Once someone has shared deeply in my life, she or he is in the marrow of my bones. I may not be sharing the mundane directly + intimately with her anymore, but she is in my thoughts and, of course, I wish her well.

And the void has been filled . . . Truly, Madly, Deeply.

DAILY DOG

2012-01-31T05:55:00.000-08:00

ARTIST CRUSH:: ABBEY McCULLOCH

2012-01-30T23:12:00.000-08:00

WHO IS ABBEY McCULLOCH?

2012-01-30T11:11:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-01-30T05:55:00.000-08:00

4 FONT LOVERS

2012-01-29T16:57:00.000-08:00

NOW READING (5) :: ONCE, by MEGHAN O'ROURKE

2012-01-29T11:11:00.000-08:00

LOVE KAMIKAZE: The Lost Sex Singles ~ MICHAEL FRANTI

2012-01-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

SUNDAY MORNING Present!

Just got this CD in from the UK. Can't get it in America, can't get it on iTunes, but I can share it with YOU here . . . .

SAY HEY (I LOVE YOU) : MICHAEL FRANTI

2012-01-29T09:26:00.000-08:00

Good Morning, My Friends~

If this Franti video doesn't put you in the BEST Sunday Mood possible, nothing ever will!

ENJOY.

X
X
X

DAILY DOG

2012-01-29T05:55:00.000-08:00

BMW ~ BEAUTIFUL MOTORING WOMAN

2012-01-28T11:11:00.000-08:00

I CAN'T MAKE YOU LOVE ME

2012-01-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-01-28T05:55:00.000-08:00

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE TEENAGE MIND?

2012-01-27T21:13:00.000-08:00

Good article in the Wall Street Journal about our kids . . . .

GIRL LAND, by Caitlin Flanagan

2012-01-27T09:49:00.000-08:00

When I saw that Caitlin Flanagan had this book called GIRL LAND ( my specialty . . ."-) coming out, I thought I would throw it on the reading pile, but after reading this review by the always BRILLIANT Meghan O'Rourke I've got it!

At least I got to discover this photographer, Tereza Vickova.

THE OREGON COAST

2012-01-27T08:08:00.001-08:00

Here's another sweet little video by KINFOLK. They remind me so much of my Sosi + Yells . . . "-)))))

FOOD 52

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

I'm right on target with my 2012 ~ 50/52 projects. I'm on my 4th book, I'm on my 4th painting, and I'm on my 4th new dish! Last night, I made Ina Garten's Shrimp Scampi. It was a hit with the A Team! I thought Junior would balk at the intensity of the garlic (I did leave the red chili pepper flakes out of it), but instead she took offense that Cedars and I were indulging in all that yummy butter and she was eating boring roasted chicken again. So I loaded up her bowl with the pretty, little pink shrimp and she GOBBLED them all down.

I first tried this Ribboned Asparagus Salad from a Danny Meyer recipe this summer. I am pretty focused on the knives and fire when I'm in my apron so I never think to shoot what's going on in the kitchen, but this little video is so sweet + simple, I may have to give it a shot sometime.

This salad is SCRUMPTIOUS + EASY!

THE GLOW

2012-01-27T07:17:00.000-08:00

Have you seen this site? If you haven't, go check out The Glow . . . photographs of Beautiful Moms + their Adorable Tots inside their stylish homes (which is the candy I like....)

DAILY DOG

2012-01-27T05:55:00.000-08:00

BEWARE

2012-01-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

PATTI SMITH, THE BOWERY 1976

2012-01-26T16:44:00.000-08:00

Image by GODLIS

GIRL CRUSH :: GINA CARANO

2012-01-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

Saw Steven Soderbergh's film HAYWIRE last night without knowing a thing about it in advance. Awesome performance by newcomer, Gina Carano, awesome soundtrack and cool cinematography. Gina is a middle weight boxer, a natural in front of the camera with a deep voice and a very calm + centered demeanor. WOW. BIG crush.

DONALD HALL ON GROWING OLD

2012-01-26T06:20:00.000-08:00

This is an ABSTRACT of an essay the poet Donald Hall has written in this week's New Yorker. It's a first person narrative that is touching + authentic::

Today is January, midmonth, midday, and mid-New Hampshire, and the writer sits in his blue armchair looking out the window. He is eighty-three. He teeters when he walks, he no longer drives, he looks out the window and watches birds come to his feeder. Prettily they light, snap breaks into seed, and burst away: nuthatches, evening grosbeaks, American goldfinches, sparrows… The cow barn forty yards away was built in 1865, and he gazes at it every day of the year. His mother turned ninety in the Connecticut house where she had lived for almost sixty years, and she spent her last decade looking out the window. She died in a nursing home one month short of ninety-one. A year later, Jane, the writer’s wife, at forty-seven, was dying of leukemia.

Each season, the writer’s balance gets worse, and sometimes he falls. He no longer cooks for himself but microwaves widower food, mostly Stouffer’s. If he flies to do a poetry reading, his dear companion Linda, who lives an hour away, must wheelchair him through airport and security. New poems no longer come to him. Generation after generation, his family’s old people sat at this window to watch the year. There are beds in this house where babies were born, where the same babies died eighty years later. After a life of loving the old, by natural law the writer turned old himself. Decades followed each other and then came his cancers, Jane’s death, and over the years he travelled to another universe.

However alert we are, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying, but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. People’s response to our separateness can be callous, can be good-hearted, and is always condescending. When a woman writes to the newspaper, approving of something the writer has done, she calls him “a nice old gentleman.” She intends to praise him. “Old” is true enough, but “nice” and “gentleman” put me in a box where she can rub my head and hear me purr.

Late March or April onward, depending on the year, the writer watches the flowers erupt and subside. Snowdrops crack the wintry earth, crocuses, and dazzling daffodils. One day, he looks out the window to see great machines at work. A farmer neighbor comes to harvest the grass in his fields. These are the fields where the writer and his grandfather, seventy years ago, cut hay with a horse-drawn mower. Flowers by turn rise and fall all summer. Out the window, the writer watches a white landscape that turns pale green, dark green, yellow and red, brown under bare branches, until snow falls again.

DAILY DOG

2012-01-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

A MAP of the OPEN COUNTRY of a WOMAN's HEART

2012-01-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

@ Jen Bekman's 20 x 200

WHO IS SAM TAYLOR-WOOD?

2012-01-25T09:58:00.000-08:00

@ Jen Bekman this morning.

DAILY DOG

2012-01-25T05:55:00.000-08:00

JUNIOR TURNS FIVE

2012-01-24T23:54:00.000-08:00

OJAI CACTUS

2012-01-24T23:44:00.000-08:00

IRA GLASS on the CREATIVE PROCESS

2012-01-24T20:16:00.000-08:00

WHO IS LYLE CARBAJAL?

2012-01-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

When he came over to drop off "El Argentino" we couldn't resist and bought another one, "The Alchemist". Lyle is VERY talented. In person, these pieces are deeply layered, mixed media on wood. They are mysterious, complex and naive, which is not an easy thing to do.

From his bio on his website::

There's nothing quite as beautiful as the unintentional. For this reason I've attempted through the use of color, reference, placement, and most importantly, line, to capture, if just a fraction, of the naiveté I see in my daily surroundings. My bright colors and dark, brisk lines reflect moods of small children, brush-in-hand, being told to concentrate and stay within the lines, by those well intentioned grade school teachers who encouraged us all to produce masterpieces. Tucked into my own pictures are images associated with childhood: comics, monsters, machines, animals and faces. My interest in the face is evident in each painting, where the primary visages are wild-eyed and gripped with anger, terror, confusion or pain. Either way, the depictions of extreme emotive states delineate my paintings from those of a child. Both the innocent associations of youth and the horror of maturation are bluntly juxtaposed, and seek not so much to find unity in the passage of life, but to expose its division. Childhood memories and my Latin American background helped me search for a primitive expression of the world. Just like Debuffet, Twombly and Appel before me, my pursuit of “Brut” has lead me in both tangible and psychological directions, which I presume will continue indefinitely.

Although I lack a formal education in painting, a degree in design taught me to see shapes, colors, typography and distinct references. Life’s landscape, on the other hand, taught me about Mexican masks and muralism, functional graphics, vandalism, Haitian flags, folk signage, randomness and urbanism, all which find their way into my work. It is through this extensive knowledge of both popular and primitive cultures that helps in the creation of my pictures.

DAILY DOG

2012-01-24T08:47:00.000-08:00

CUPPOW!

2012-01-23T11:11:00.000-08:00

CUPPOW! from Paper Fortress on Vimeo.

DAILY DOG

2012-01-23T05:55:00.000-08:00

WHO IS ROSIE HARDY?

2012-01-22T16:35:00.000-08:00

NOW READING (4):: BOTH WAYS IS THE ONLY WAY I WANT IT, by Maile Meloy

2012-01-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

ARTIST CRUSH:: AMERICA MARTIN

2012-01-22T09:03:00.001-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-01-22T05:55:00.000-08:00

THE LOS ANGELES ART FAIR

2012-01-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

Last night, Cedars + I went to the Los Angeles Art Fair in downtown LA right before the Clippers played Minnesota. We scored big time with these three pieces. While Lyle Carbajal was a new revelation, America Martin is already well represented in our collection. Carbajal's painting,"El Argentino" is a new work that the Argentine Mexican painter produced during his recent sabbatical n Buenos Aires. It's 48 x 48, mixed media on wood and the artist, who was there last night, claims it is his personal favourite because in this painting he was able to perfect the imperfection of his line.

America's piece, mixed media on paper, is called Juliette. We bought a few other pieces by her (she has a show coming up at the Joanne Artman Gallery in Laguna Beach next month) and as soon as I can get good images of those, I'll post them. LOVE this young woman's work. It reminds me of Fernand Leger + Francesco Clemente all at once.

WOOO HOOO! We are changing things up @ the Ojai Aman . . ."-)))))

MUST READ

2012-01-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

As we continue our spectacular revolutions around the sun . . . A Sharper Mind is worth a gander.

DAILY DOG

2012-01-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

WHO IS CHRISTINE MASON MILLER?

2012-01-20T07:17:00.000-08:00

Christine is a wonderful, talented, Los Angeles based Writer, Painter, Blogger, Wife + Stepmom! I am so enjoying her new book, Desire to Inspire, which is filled with vignettes about other artists, writers and entrepreneurs intent on inspiring others to creatively express themselves. There are lots of juicy exercises and lots of cool stories inside this little gem. I follow a lot of the artists she profiles here and it's great to get inside looks into their studios or quick interviews about their habits, their processes, their muses, etc.

DAILY DOG

2012-01-20T05:55:00.000-08:00

WHO IS MIA SARA?

2012-01-19T16:08:00.000-08:00

BOYS

Boys at thirteen are pathetic creatures,
It’s “Yo, Brah,” this, and “Cool yer balls,” that.
As if any mother could produce a thankless squirt
from pendulous orbs,

just uncap a nifty pen to scribble our own names,
splat, onto the timeline, no back breaking spinal code,
no torn and swollen fruits, no lost youth
weeping from our tits.

Still, they turn their fuzzy cheeks away,
ridiculous with new sinew that could
pull a cart of bricks, but will not bend
to pluck a moldering sock from off the floor.

“Why should I?” they suppose, who have
these spectral harpies who screech
but stoop to offer their necks, their arms,
their backs, to walk on?

Boys who don’t speak, so much as bray, so
full of sap they burble idiocies to the wind.
And the female of the species, sizes them up,
finds them lacking, gobbles and spits them out.

And my own scrofulous buffoon,
who strains to tell his own dick from a doorknob?
If I didn’t have the belly scars to prove it,
I’d swear he’d sprung from the business end of a mule.

And what of his mother,
his first, best, unshakeable, fool?
This treacherous boy has hung his mother’s moon,
So made of me a horse’s ass.

Mia Sara is a poet and actress living between Los Angeles and New York City with her husband, Brian Henson, and their children Dash and Millie.

This poem debuts in Cultural Weekly today. CONGRATULATIONS, Mama Mia! XXX

DAILY DOG

2012-01-19T05:55:00.000-08:00

NOT NOW READING . . . BUT THINKING ABOUT IT "-)

2012-01-18T11:11:00.001-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-01-18T05:55:00.000-08:00

GOOD 4 MADGE

2012-01-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-01-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

WHO IS DAVID REGELIN?

2012-01-16T15:11:00.001-08:00

The New York Yoga Wars....

DAILY DOG

2012-01-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

PRETTY IN PINK

2012-01-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-01-15T11:29:00.000-08:00

NOW READING (3) :: LOOKING AT LINCOLN, by MAIRA KALMAN

2012-01-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

JANE

2012-01-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

DAILY DOG

2012-01-14T11:11:00.000-08:00