Score of the Millennium (so far)

Except maybe for the Sons of Dolemite script. There's this store on the corner of our street and Sunset that used to be a low end furniture store, layaway plans on dinette suites type of thing, but has fallen on hard times and morphed partially into a thrift store. On poop walk Tuesday morning I caught sight of this thing set out by the front door, and had to check it out.

Ten bucks! What the hell is it? The inscription on the side of the top hat says "Wayne D. Martin Feb 4, 1935 June 20 1993" - is it a grave marker or something? The inscription on the top seems to rule that out. And check out those finely detailed choppers. Lee Lynch's gonna pee his pants when he sees this!

Happy Lupercalia!

"In Roman mythology, Lupercus is a god sometimes identified with the Roman god Faunus, who is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Pan. Lupercus is the god of shepherds. His festival, celebrated on the anniversary of the founding of his temple on February 15, was called the Lupercalia. His priests wore goatskins. The historian Justin mentions an image of "the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus," nude save for the girdle of goatskin, which stood in the Lupercal, the cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. There, on the Ides of February, a goat and a dog were sacrificed, and salt mealcakes prepared by the Vestal Virgins were burnt."

(from the Wikipedia entry)

Images: Above, Lupercus; below, a selection of fresh Lupercalia greetings)

F for Formica

A bootleg-quality document of our set at the Mike Kelley tribute at The Box Gallery, Feb 11 2012 is available via the F for Ache blog.

Image: Detail from Mike Kelley's final artwork, created for LAFMS show at The Box

It's Showtime!

‎'F for Ache' will be participating in the Mike Kelley tribute performance at The Box, 805 Traction Ave, L.A. 90013 Saturday Feb 11, 12 -7 PM. It looks like we'll be going on around 2 or 3. Strange that this'll be only our 2nd live performance for an audience.


‎'

Now in Past Tense!

I wasn't really planning to weigh in writing-wise on the passing of Mike Kelley, but Artinfo decided to post my already-completed upcoming Modern Painters cover story on Destroy All Monsters, so here's an excerpt and the link...


"Prior to 1994, if you mentioned the name Destroy All Monsters to punk aficionados, it conjured only a minor footnote: a band in Michigan rock music history known for the participation of the former Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and the MC5 bassist Michael Davis. But by the time its first single, “Bored,” was released in 1978, three of the band’s four original members had left; two of them, Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw, had headed west to attend graduate school at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles.

During the course of the next two decades, Kelley — who died on February 1 — and Shaw rose to the upper echelons of the international art world. Their work prompted considerable interest in the little-heard earlier incarnation of DAM, which also included the filmmaker Cary Loren and the chanteuse Niagara. In 1994, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and the music critic Byron Coley issued a lavish three-CD set of archival DAM recordings, which was a revelation to many. It garnered unexpected critical accolades and prompted a series of reunion projects, including performances, recordings, art exhibitions, and publications that brought together various ephemera, such as the collective’s eponymous post-psychedelic, pre-punk zine.

Although the intervening years have seen a steady stream of DAM-related activities and artifacts, 2011 saw a significant increase, culminating in a small retrospective at the Prism Gallery, in West Hollywood, accompanied by a lavish catalogue published by the co- curator Dan Nadel’s imprint, PictureBox. The title of the book (and the exhibition), “Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters 1973–1977,” provides a strong hint that the DAM reclamation was largely part of the co-curator Kelley’s ongoing exploration of the recovering, reconstruction, and archiving of lost personal and cultural histories, and as such, it manages to short-circuit or repurpose most of the problematic absurdities inherent in exercises in DIY subcultural nostalgia..."

Read the rest of Punks Out of the Past: Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, and Destroy All Monsters here

Triumph of the Sloth

OK, I've been kind of slothful myself since I failed to beat my last year's blog post count, but at least I didn't roll back to the previous year's meager 72. And we've been busy busy in spite of the unemployment round here, some of which I'll be catching up on shortly. First off though we have the big news of the weekend: our designated resident sloth Chloe AKA Winway Pleats Please earned her NW2 title on Sunday, the first among our whippet herd to get an advanced degree. For those who haven't been following the blog for long, NW2 is the second level of initiation in the Order of Fun Nose Work, a new canine sport based on bomb and drug detection training, which originated right here in Los Angeles (well, Long Beach and Pasadena if you want to get picky).

Chloe spaced out on her first run at the NW2 last year, but this time around she not only made the cut (one of seven to succeed out of thirty in the trial), but she had the 2nd fastest time on the exterior search (the event she screwed up on last time) and the fifth best time overall! Due to our "No whippet left behind" policy, she'll have to wait for Nigel and Portfolio to catch up before taking a stab at her terminal degree. But hot damn, then I'll finally be able to find out where I left that big bag of heroin! What I don't use for the pain, I can sell to schoolchildren so Chloe can finally get that brown contact. Life is good.

BAD Disney Girls from Behind

At the WeHO Book Fair, Sept 30. Who be these beguiling wenches? Disgruntled inbetweeners? They dispersed before I could lock in a fix. But not before I snapped a couple pix.

A Flurry of Beacon Press

It's official! "Works by... Doug Harvey... complete the sizable presentation!!!" Chris Knight reviewed China Adams' The Loop Show in the LA Times, also noting that "Conceptual art in the 1960s partly proposed that enough objects already exist in the world, eliminating the need for artists to make more. Trash to the rescue. At the Beacon Arts Building, a wide-ranging exhibition titled The Loop Show seems to propose -- at least indirectly -- that the Conceptual dictum is now second nature to artists working with throwaways."

Kudos to the Institute for Figuring on the extensive praise Knight rightfully lavishes on their twin crocheted trash corral reef scultptures, which he declares "the tour de force that steals the show!" Watch for exciting new developments on the IFF front in the new year. Read the rest of Chris Knight's review here.


At the other end of the hygiene spectrum, Coagula demon Mat Gleason named Arataland! his Number 2 for 2011! We're Number 2! We're Number 2! Anyway, Mat kindly singled out the curatorial gesture of "bestowing the glory of a solo retrospective on an artist who was not of sufficient institutionally-approved status that would ordinarily warrant this career milestone" as worthy of note, which -- apart from grooving on Arata's oeuvre -- was the point for me.

Even though he missed the point on Chain Letter, I'd have to say Mat's own unbridled curatorial project in the BAB's Critics-as-Curators series Tel-Art-Phone was one of the most surprising and entertaining shows of the year. And I'm not just saying that because I was in it. Read the rest of Mat Gleason's Top 11 Art Shows of 2011 List here. Then use the money grandma sent you for Christmas to order a copy of the exquisite Arataland! catalog.

Images: Institute for Figuring, Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef 2011, DH Cryogenic Angel 2011 photo by Heather Stobo; BAB Director Renee Fox and Michael Arata at Arataland! photo by Mat Gleason (?)

More Proof of the Transmigration of Canine Souls

Behold! Here is Chloe, bedecked in a festive whippet-deconstructed reindeer oven mitt -- the very same in which greyhound Reyna posed a few years ago for her organization's holiday newsletter centerfold. Mere coincidence?

Melancholia Rising

Whoa! Except I would have left all those gorgeous spoilers for the end, and started it cold as another dysfunctional Scandinavian family get-together potboiler. Because there's always a chance of some one watching it cold, and how mind-blowing would that be?


As usual with Mr. Von Trier's oeuvre, M.A. and I were practically the only ones laughing in the movie theater. And sobbing. And I peed my pants. But I mean, c'mon people. "It tastes like ashes!"?! Classic! Lighten up, for God's sake!


PS: The DougH on the Go! Reader who can identify the most Tarkovsky references wins a special prize. Email your entry to dghrvy@gmail.com.

The Order of Things

This old cast iron stove makes a fine support for our new-to-us flatscreen TV as we enjoy Fireplace For Your Home's famous old-fashioned, wood-burning fireplace and natural crackling yule log fireplace videos.

Santa & The Doodle-Li-Boop

Click here to see a video of the 78 record playing.

An early childhood obsession and subject of much early turnatablist experimentation ("Why don't you look in the closet??tesolc eht ni kool uoy t'nod yhWWhy don't you look in the closet??tesolc eht ni kool uoy t'nod yhWWhy don't you look in the closet??tesolc eht ni kool uoy t'nod yhWWhy don't you look in the closet??tesolc eht ni kool uoy t'nod yhW...") turns out to have been written by the founder of The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), Alan Abel. There's a documentary on netflix/hulu about him, called "Abel Raises Cain" - you can also still get this and a few dozen other peculiar holiday recordings here:

Download Outsider XMAS Vol 1
Download Outsider XMAS Vol 2

Tracklists in Comments.

And Vice Versa

LA Night Driving Curbscapes Pt 4

LA Night Driving Curbscapes Pt 3

LA Night Driving Curbscapes Pt 2

LA Night Driving Curbscapes Pt 1

Conjuring the Purp

Don't look at the fat ass losers or freaks, look at my Street Art Portfolio! He's on for day 3 in Long Beach in 15 minutes, so I'm posting this sympathetic color magic talisman to bring the purple home.

The Cryogenic Angel, Chapter One

The first 1 1/4 chapters of my new improvised experimental graphic collage novel "The Cryogenic Angel" are currently on view as part of "The LOOP Show" curated by China Adams at the Beacon Arts Building in Inglewood. The novel will ultimately consist of 64 50 X 30 inch collages, 16 chapters made up from 4 individual eruptions of cultural detritus, shifting orientation through 4 directions in a counterclockwise rotation. The first chapter is entitled "History Lessens" -- sorry about the lo-res images, I'll post some better ones when I get them; but to read the fine print you really have to see them in person.

The LOOP Show
Dec 3, 2011 – Jan 15, 2012
Beacon Arts Building
808 N. La Brea Avenue
North Inglewood, CA
90302

GALLERY HOURS
Thurs - Sat 1 - 6 PM
Sun 1 - 4 PM

HOLIDAY HOURS:
Dec 24 - Jan 5
By Appointment Only
To make an appointment:
gallery@beaconartsbuilding.com

Why Aren't I Blogging?

I don't know, but if I'm going to reinforce my ObComp fear of slipping into a downward spiral of diminishing annual post numbers, I need to post at least 22 new important bulletins in the next two weeks! The self-gauntlet is thrown! Let the posting begin! Q: What do you call a dead pink incense elephant atop a Thomas Kinkade spice rack? A: A start.