O! Cean Seafood!

AKA Chinatown Nights! Oh wait, that's already taken. Been wanting to document this backlit sign for a while, and walking the whippets in Chinatown to beat the heat was the opportunity I needed! This is an album cover waiting to happen - Scotty Vera's Greatest Hits?

Glendale Nights!

Deflated Rubicon and The Circle of Life (depicted by ants, a dying cockroach, and an empty Dentyne Ice packet).

Coming soon - Derek Boshier, Modern Painter

My feature on LA-based English Pop artist Derek Boshier is out in the September issue of Modern Painters magazine - hard to find in LA, but worth searching out. I'll excerpt it here when it actually hits the stands...

"Our spacecraft is coming!"

I must have got the date wrong, or the space brothers gave me the wrong coordinates or something. It doesn't really matter, I guess it's back to school for another semester after all!

(photo by D. Hawkins)

Literal Metaphorical Collapse

I just updated my website with a series of Daniel Hawkins' photos from the closing deconstructive event for my solo show Never Paint Again at Jancar Gallery in the summer of 2011. After being laid flat with a combined attack of viral meningitis and the gout for the duration of the show, I reemerged briefly for a closing event that included a walkthrough/discussion, but was mainly centered around the disconnection of the supports and collapse of the moldy stretcher architecture. We disconnected the secondary supports and left the main one in place while further drinking and discussion occurred, but just as Don Suggs and Linda Stark were passing under the arch (Chapel Perilous!) it started to list
and creak. They got out of the way just as it came crashing down in a heap! I had a gout relapse, and Tom Jancar kindly broke the stretchers down and left them in the street, phoning them in as abandoned trash for the City of Los Angeles' official Collectors.

Beyond So Wrong They're Right Again

What with the discussion during last week's KCHUNG Radio episode of The People as regards "songpoems" and Rodd Keith (pictured above) - not to mention the forthcoming all-new collection edited by Don Bolles and previewed on his recent WFMU appearance with Irwin Chusid, I managed to dig out, OCR scan, and fix up the article I wrote about the topic back in early 2000. This eventually led to the New Now Sounds of Today! CD project, but that's a whole other story...

Sometime in the early nineteen nineties, followers of Dan Clowes's giddy noir-surrealist comic book Eightball may have noticed a small ad on page 16 for something titled Beat of the Traps. The ad was for a compilation of "songpoems," the recordings that result from those little notices in the back of pulpier magazines and comic books—offering to assess the "hit potential" of your lyrics for possible collaboration with professional composers, arrangers, and performers. Of course, virtually none of the songs submitted are ever found to be lacking "hit potential," and for a usually modest investment, the budding Johnny Mercer or Ira Gershwin may receive an actual vinyl pressing or cd of their song, ready for auditioning to Sinatra's people or storming the charts on its own.

Were the aforementioned Eightball reader to send in a few extra bucks, he or she would have received in due time one of the stranger artifacts circulating in the innumerable microcultural currents that defined the period: a compilation LP filled with ditties written by other starstruck songwriters and studded with gems such as Mrs. Louise Nelson's "Convertibles and Headbands," Louise I. Oliver's "Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush," and a truly amazing trio of presidential tributes— "John F. Kennedy Was Called Away," "Richard Nixon," and "Jimmy Carter Says 'Yes.'" The frothing title track to Beat of the Traps is a skronk-laced homage to the history and lore of the glorious drum kit, sung in a manner reminiscent of a crazy person at the bus station.

Compiled by Tom Ardolino of roots-rock band NRBQ (the group that ten years earlier had collectively masterminded the excavation of the Shaggs's Philosophy of the World LP, a masterpiece of earnest wrong-ness in its own right), the sixteen-song sampler proved to be only the tip of a massive and very strangely shaped iceberg...

Read the rest here, on my website...

Walk Like an Egypt-Chien

I got back one of my dead external hard drives (Thanks, Dave Shulman!) and thought I should post some of the gazillion unseen photos from the archives before it dies again. This is my niece Sarah walking like an Egyptian at Disneyland or Universal Citywalk or something. In 2005.

KCHUNG Radio Appearance This Sunday!

The People: Andrew Choate & Doug Harvey
Sunday, August 18 at 3 p.m.
KCHUNG 1630AM Listen Live

Join hosts Ben White and Mathew Timmons Sunday, August 18 at 3.pm. on KCHUNG 1630AM if you’re in or around Chinatown Los Angeles or listen live on the KCHUNG webstream. The People will be taken over this month by Andrew Choate & Doug Harvey: “a battle fer sure.”

Andrew Choate is planning to ask Doug about his Las Vegas novel / multi-media collage from the group show General Projects: A Show for You

they will talk

Doug might ask Andrew about his computer pieces or his book or about performance

they will talk

Andrew will play some recordings of his work and others and ask Doug what he thinks about it

Andrew will probably play an audio collage he made about ten years ago that Doug's work reminded him of and maybe another audio collage Andrew made and possibly a performance track

Andrew may also just play some Pablo Cruise and be happy

While Doug’s head may be stuck in Rio, he will play some stuff and ask Andrew about it

Doug will probably play excerpts of recent radio improvisations by Mannlicher Carcano, recordings of Doug’s band with Marnie Weber and Daniel Hawkins (and sometimes Dani Tull) "F" (formerly Fauxmish and formerly F for Ache), selections from Doug’s web label Redacted Records, the LAFMS new Blorp Cassette that Doug contributed to, and maybe some stuff pertaining to the 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Vol 3 book, and possibly the Firesign Theatre, who are the subject of Doug Harvey’s soon to-be-completed Rabble pamphlet.

They will talk back and forth…

ta da!

Written by Mathew Timmons, svengali of Insert Blanc Press

PS: Listen/download the program here.

The One That Got Away

Dear Ms. Simonson

We know you're very busy at your professional activities and it's sometimes easy to overlook the small responsibilities. That's why we're sending you this friendly reminder that your payment of $2.50 is now in arrears. To forestall legal action that could affect your credit rating, please send your payment today!

Thank you for your cooperation
The Mgt

In Your Eyes, Acrylic on pre-rotted canvas, with train, 2013

Still Here

Here is a tiny praying mantis on our front porch. More soon - 8 AM summer art history class, dead external hard drives, and other factors have muffled my e-voice. But not much longer!

Pork Chop on a Stick!

Happy Bastille Day!

A Partial Pre-Rotted Alphabet

A for the Aeroplane that flies far away

B for Ball for children at play

D for Dolly in ribbons and silk

Not that I don't agree with the sentiments, but...

Some righteous young street artists saw fit to grace our front retaining wall with this incendiary proclamation last night. Why they would feel it's appropriate to deploy this provocation to law-enforcement officials on the obvious slacker artist household on a street of overweening industry yuppies instead of, oh, I don't know, the closed-down Rampart Police Station about 4 blocks south of here is anyone's guess. It must be part and parcel with the strategy of spraying it in a location -- behind a parked car, a pile of bulky items (one perfectly good headboard, one not-so-healthy couch), two yard waste containers, and a giant poison shrub --that no cop would ever see unless he or she were actually physically walking down the street. I guess if they ran out of gas and were trying to make it to PK's Donuts... I painted it out anyway.

Those Red Blotches Just Won't Go Away!

CACI International Inc is a multinational professional services and information technology company headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. I think this is a still from Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure, but I'm not sure.

Solstice Yard Waste in Search of a Match

After a decade of neglect, the fabricated legalese of our psychotic neighbor - a midwestern cross-dresser whose drag persona is based on Mary Tyler Moore - persuaded the Landlord to send his house trombonist to trim the overgrown Bougainvillea spilling over from Ms. Moore's yard (s/he suffers from Boundary Confusion Disorder). We were left with several temporary (I hope!) environmental sculptural forms, two of which I present for your consideration. I'm tempted to spark one up and commence to leaping, but the whole goddam shithouse would probably take. No great loss, but there's books and records in there!

Some TVs (Part 1)

Downey? I don't even remember.

Nigel bundled in the minivan. It was that Rally-Obedience Annual Thing. What was it? Look at that foot! Paw I mean. Heading home after dark I think. Hence the flash and the faux-Chloe eye.

Abstract Men's Room Mural

BRUUUUUUCE!

Exclusive preview of Bruce Lee bronze statue about to be unveiled in Chinatown. Here, Bruce seems to be saying "It's been a bad day; please don't take your picture!" in his charming patois. Visitors to LA's historic tourist destination will now have an opportunity to commemorate their adventure with a souvenir photo. But be sure to stay behind the  little white fence and "Please Keep Off the Statue"! This has been a DougH on the Go! Exclusive!

This Is Your Last Chance, Baby!

If you want to catch this 5 X 18 ft sucker in the flesh, you'll probably want to get down to AndrewShire Gallery (3850 Wilshire Blvd. #107, Los Angeles, CA, 90010 - 1 block west of the Wiltern Theater) today - although now that I check, the gallery says it's open until Friday, which is the 31st - OK by me. In any case, I don't have a wall that fits it, so go get your BSBBHB,E on! You know what I'm talkin' about.

What Do Artists Know?

A word of advice from Captain Prescription...

Bun Boy Motel, Baker CA.

        

    

Rotterdam Jam Phase 01

Book launch of Ewoud Van Rijn and Dani Tull's publication in conjunction with the upcoming Rotterdam iteration of The Archaic Revival exhibit curated by Dani. Contains Abstract Moldy Slide overlays and a 'patacritical interrogation of Terence McKenna's thoughts on the legendary Voynich Manuscript.

Hap Mo Da

Mother's Day window painting, Phoenix Bakery, Chinatown.

Ultra Shag!

Ultra Shag: A Unique Statement of You. I have nothing to add. Punctuation aside.

A Likely Story

BUS STAGE INWARD

Finally got around to watching Lindsay Anderson's 1967 short The White Bus, which - informed by his background in industrial PR documentaries - is kind of like Magical Mystery Tour if it had been made by Throbbing Gristle. It's just one of 80+ films on my streaming queue that are suddenly scheduled to disappear on Mayday - including Kubrick's sumptuous noir Killer's Kiss, Altman's early JD B-flick The Delinquents (starring Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin), Ken Loach's Kes, Richard Lester and Spike Milligan's The Bed-Sitting Room, Billy Wilder's One, Two Three, and Peter Brook's Marat/Sade -- as well as such less widely celebrated celluloid artifacts as Alan Johnson's Solarbabies (one of the finest post-apocalyptic rollerblade movies in the canon), William Dear's Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, Denis Sanders' Invasion of the Bee Girls, and Philip Kaufman's debut Fearless Frank - a high-camp 1967 Jon Voight superhero vehicle narrated by Ken Nordine! I'll have to burn the midnight crackpipe to plow through all this material by Wednesday, but luckily the whippets are all tuckered out from their triumphant visit to Eugene. More on that later...

Happy Stump

Street art the way I like it best, Sunset Blvd above Glendale, April 2011.

Pitta in the 'pITA

The highlight of the San Francisco launch event for 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3 at ATA/Other Cinema (Craig Baldwin's 28-year-old underground microcinema) was undoubtedly Pitta of the Mind (Maw Win & Amar Chaudhary) translating found email spam poetry from the turn of the Millennium into swinging intergalactic electro-transmissions. I made a video, so hopefully that will find its way online soon, but in the emantime, here's a couple of action shots, and a sampling of the spoems:

  

bodhisattva cohomology

Any dahlia can brainwash short order cook of, but it takes a real lover to for lover.Any trombone can approach fundraiser toward, but it takes a real guardian angel to traffic light of cleavage.piroshki remain sprightly.

lower adult drum electrophoresis

              - Essie Russell

earring 6 alchemists

Sometimes tornado about flies into a rage, but inside grizzly bear always learn a hard lesson from cream puff defined by!Most swamps believe that from fruit cake graduate from around scythe.And derive perverse satisfaction from the dark side of her scythe.

giuliano liable spine pullman devious symbolic groom atkins

            -     Colleen Hunter

cab driver 666 cream puffs

Indeed, toothache about require assistance from polar bear of reactor.Most cigars believe that grizzly bear from pour freezing cold water on bottle of beer defined by skyscraper.globule defined by toothache is frozen.

propagate inholding dactylic ballast riotous deuce bad

             -     Simone Boudreaux

decor briar drawl

Unlike so many boys who have made their niggardly roller coaster to us.Unlike so many cups who have made their cosmopolitan reactor to us.bottle of beer around is ghastly.Where we can ostensibly mourn our nation.For example, living with chestnut indicates that class action suit living with organize recliner around dilettante.

sheridan factual folklore mammalian moorish halfhearted carte

               -     Tommie Esposito

Rain/boots

Art Art of the City, Art Art Oh yeah!

I'm lookin' lookin' lookin'! The April 2013 issue of Los Angeles Magazine includes a brief and by any measure incomplete overview of the LA Art Scene (check the lower right hand corner of the cover above), but I got to write about a few people I haven't written about often enough, like Nancy Evans, Juan Capistran, Brenna Youngblood, Jennifer Bolande, and Devin McNulty (!), plus a few - Jim Shaw, Jeffrey Vallance, Marnie Weber, etc. - about whom I've written plenty (and will continue to do so). Anyway, it's on the stands now at the low, low cover price of $4.95 and there doesn't seem to be any of the content online except this calendar of coming activities (It's Time to Canvas the City!) which I apparently blogged a few days ago! There's a few other recent writings I need to post about here, hang on...

OOF canopy edge at magic hour