Cat show five ^ ^ ^ - Del Mar Faire Grounds  

Cat show six? – February Glendale 2012

Previous shows: Pasadena – Arcadia – Palm Springs – Santa Barbara

Two “at home” kitten visits, animal shelter drop ins, on-line siamese rescue site, Face Book cat sites and placement on a waiting list. Again, I did not find my true love

but I came close

I want a princess – not a prince. This seal point prince is “pet” material. He is between types. The traditional round head and the modern wedge head. I call it “classic triangle” Some hidden forbearers gene showed up in him. The other two are modern flame points and his litter mates. Lovely contrast between his seal points and mink body color. Straight eyes/hydranga blue. Affectionate, attentive and loud. He’s swoon lovely.

Day 298 without a princess

The Editor (waits) with Jennifer Jones

2/25/12 Glendale Civic Auditorium.1401 N Verdugo rd

Take advantage of it.

“Beatles and Benzedrine” Second prize – alternative media category; laundry lint, pubes and dead grammy’s bag of tresses.

“Smoke on the Water” Air guitar assignment. Al Pine’s woodworking class. Westridge School for Girls.

“Dead guys – Guys who Should be Dead – Guys who Look Like They’re Dead”  Cafeteria mural La Canada High School

Note the yellow 25 cent sticker on the pine guitar; collection of the editor. She took advantage of a sensitive time.

…

Evergreen Cemetery 1887 – Boyle Heights

In Los Angeles, the circus never leaves town. They can’t; they’re six feet under. Evergreen Cemetery is the final resting place for members of the Pacific Coast Showmen’s Assn. An association started in Chicago by Buffalo Bill Cody back in 1913. It appears that carnies, like snowbirds, need a place to sit out the winter. And because the show must go on, members meet yearly during the winter interim, to recognize those that have passed during business hours.

Here at Showman’s rest, you can step upon greatness. Emily Bailey, a 300-pound “fat lady,” who lost her place in the spotlight, after having dropped the bulk; lived to be 99. Or Hugo Zacchini, the first human cannonball. The common freak show of yesteryear’s glory days, has been replaced by “spectaculars.” Those brightly lit beacons emanating from church parking lots across the “urbs.” The zipper, the tilt-a-wheel; an offramp short of a freeway.

To paraphrase Charles Manson “it used to be that if you were crazy , you were different, you were special, now everybody’s crazy.” Maybe he’s right. What it means to be different was questioned in Katherine Dunn’s 1989 landmark novel Geek Love, based on an albino dwarf’s experience of carnie life in her families traveling freak show. An influence that took root in the visual arts as well. Where more and more artist’s explore the validity of what it means to be judged grotesque.

The 400 graves that constitute Showman’s Rest are near First and Evergreen, next to a flagpole, north of the crematorium and reclaimed potter’s field. A “field” where mostly Chinese men were once buried. Evergreen was already a segregated cemetery, but due to anti Chinese immigrant legislation, the law denied these men their name, even in death – and they charged 10 bucks for the favor. The crematorium is the only part of the cemetery owned by LA county. It’s purchase, for the sole purpose of cremating it’s indigent dead. The MTA’s recent expansion of First street, to accommodate the Goldline, uncovered the remains of 174 men. DNA analysis revealed the majority to be Chinese. A shrine to those forgotten souls was recently dedicated – and their remains, ironically, reentered at Evergreen. 

btw: links are content

this post has been linked to Taphophile Tragics

An English philosopher was visiting India, and was introduced to a holy man. The philosopher asked the Holy Man the nature of the world, and the old man replied, “Oh the world is a great big ball that sits on the great flat back of the Great World Turtle.”

The Englishman asked “What does the turtle stand on?”

The seer replied “Why on the back of an even larger turtle of course!”

Then the Englishman asked “and what does THIS turtle stand on?”

The old man shook his head and smiled sweetly – “it’s no use my son, it’s turtles all the way down”

or…..

Before this editor went to graduate school, she accomplished two things. She signed a lease on a downtown studio and entered the real world totally unprepared. Humiliation was a frequent guest, as the editor tried pathetically to hold court against a backdrop of French Theorist -Cal Arts/UCLA/Art Center/Claremont- graduates, and “Baldesari is God” worshippers. They could recite Foucault like Ramona can recite bible verses (which she doesn’t do well – but often).

The editor knew how to draw and paint naked people from old guys who had learned it on the GI bill. Which taught this editor how to please said “old guys” AND be a lazy painter. She had mastered the art of how to respond with stick and mud. Now she needed to catch up with the big kids. So she headed to the nearest Freeway off-ramp university and got herself an advanced degree. The editor learned to recite feminist doctrine, Witgenstein, the french guys, etc. And they taught her how to sell herself. The Editor attended openings, volunteered and sent out packages. One Canadian gallery never said a word about the Editors art; but complemented her on the professionalism of her artist’ statement. She never did get her slides back.

btw: Don’t skip the video, you’ll miss the point. It’s brilliant. Baldessari would approve

…….

Never on a Sunday when the church is full of people
And the bells are ringing in the steeple, la la….

Oh, you can kiss me on a Monday
A Monday, a Monday is very very good
Or you can kiss me on a Tuesday
A Tuesday, a Tuesday in fact I wish you would
Or you can kiss me on a Wednesday
A Thursday, a Friday, and Saturday is best
But never never on a Sunday
A Sunday, a Sunday ’cause that’s my day of rest

The Rose Parade never takes place on a Sunday. Our 2012 New Years gift to you? Our desire to ditch the rules. Pasadena Adjacent & Co present the Rose Parade, on a Sunday, without commercial interruption, OR Bob and Stephanie. They’re at church – kiss me.

Below you’ll find Pasadena Adjacent’s Collection of Rose Parade’s Past. Mostly from the 40′s. Thank you for visiting Pasadena Adjacent on this – our 400th post. Happy New Year one and all. Here’s to a pony in 2012. Bottoms up!

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two “EMPTY” metal bullet containers 

Border Field State Park

The television set was paid for. We at Pasadena Adjacent keep it in the company break room. It sits on a rather short children’s school desk (Trash Tuesday #20). We needed something that would increase the height of our make-shift TV stand. The two ”EMPTY” bullet containers were selected for that purpose. It’s finding (via a dumpster dive) is the lucky result of our recent visit to San Diego’s Border Field State Park. We passed on the tires.

On a (kind of) related note: The editor recently visited Banjo 52. The discussion was based on Richard Wilbur’s poem titled ” A Hole in the Floor: for Rene Magritte” A poem about the underside of one’s domicile  

“The buried strangeness Which nourishes the known”

Pasadena Adjacent left a relatable  anecdote about Japan in the comments segment.

In Japan there is a strange kind of love/fear regarding cats. The love produces “Hello Kitty.” The fear relates to the fact that cats go under one’s home. That “buried strangeness” for the Japanese, has to do with the interface between the spirits of the dead (clinging to the underside of a home) coming into contact with living creatures that pursue those spaces (cats) Then join you afterwards. (Preferably your lap) meow

At Pasadena Adjacent, we love our cats. We let them enter and exit at will. They intimately know the crawl space under our abode. We also love the surrealist artist Rene Magritte

Still following? – go back to the bullet container photo and enlarge it. Look carefully at the TV’s reflection. It shows a man in an overcoat, with a beard, wearing a bowler.

Coincidence?

The Editor would like to think Rene Magritte’s spirit (or maybe Walt Whitman) is living under her kitchen floor.

We here at Pasadena Adjacent love the Christmas crazies – St. Albans, Hastings Ranch, Christmas Tree Lane.  We never expected to be on their list. But with the help of gale force winds, coupled with an eye towards irony, we have become the house people slow down to look at.

We had hoped to make the news

Larry Wilson (Editor of the Pasadena Star News)  - You disappoint me

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We at Pasadena Adjacent live on a hillside with a view. It’s not because we enjoy parking with our wheels turned out towards the curb; it’s the view.

Editors Ankle

And it’s not because we enjoy tumbling downhill to a 20,000 dollar medical expense; it’s the view.

Views are worth going to war over. We have, we’d do it again.

Because you do not want to lose….

to an Afghani War Lord whose wandered too far west…

and found an architect to design his narco McMansion. And a city department; whose function is to “preserve, reflect and enhance it’s neighborhood” – only to willing to sign off on it.

then there’s the bank loan to pay for it. And shifty contractors to build it

Turns out, after a year or two of rain, this small hillside lot can’t support the weight of this plopped down concrete behemoth.

Because of shoddy construction – that resulted in code violations – that caused the drug lord to bail on the loan – that caused the bank to foreclose on the property.

This view stopper (ironic implication intended) has been sitting empty for two years. A monument to a city whose desire for economic vitality (code for greed) surpassed it”s responsibility for sustainable development.

All this kitchy shame is in the neighborhood of “Roseville.” A subdivision of Point Loma San Diego.

A bad year for poppies?

Sound familiar?

Enlarge the editors “view” and you will notice a graded hillside ridge. No longer so. Allow fellow Garvanzian and Highland Park preservationists, Tina Gulotta-Miller to explain:

“On the border of Pasadena’s Arroyo View Estates there is a development that they named “Garvanza Villas” that has become a nightmare for us in Garvanza. It sits directly across from the charming Arroyo View Estates enclave on the same street but these are McMansions. Most of the homes are incomplete and they have essentially abandoned the project to date. Many many legal challenges inside this project for sure. This was before the HPOZ was established for Garvanza in October of 2010.”

Editors Note: The first attempt to develop this piece of land occurred with the previous 1980′s real-estate boom. The photo is from the bust period when developers walked away from the site and left the infrastructure to disintegrate. They’ve done so again.

We at Pasadena Adjacent have joined the HPOZ