Happy Easter 2013!

HAPPY EASTER from the shelves of Rancho Cocoa! Hope it's a rockin' one filled with love and candy!

Nilla Turns Nine

My beautiful kitty, Nilla, celebrated her adoption day yesterday (March 23). She turned nine! Nine! Can you imagine? I kept thinking she turned eight, but then I did the math and it was nine. Nilla, you will always be eight in my heart.


In celebration, we decided to get Nilla some nice wheat grass. She really enjoys wheat grass, and the bunnies do, too. Here she is enjoying her birthday treat.






Nilla also got some turkey dinner, and Raoul and I sung "Happy Birthday" to her. It was really amazing!




Cheers, Nilla! I love you so much! You are a good friend.

Slingshot

We are about to hit up a couple of art openings in town tonight, but before we do, I thought that I should finally post my photos from the big SLINGSHOT art, music, and tech festival from a couple of weekends ago. On our way to the inaugural Slingshot show, we stopped at the grand opening of a new print studio in town - SMOKEY ROAD PRESS...







When we finally arrived downtown, the first art installations we ran into were behind the old SNOW TIRES garage. There was a row of small SPEAKERS, suspended upside down by a bar over a row of MICROPHONES. The bar would dip and then rise in cycles - as the speakers dipped closer to the microphones, a wall of FEEDBACK would come tumbling out of seemingly nowhere. There was also a TELEVISION SCREEN suspended screen-side-down over a silver mat. In order to view the screen, you had to lay on the mat. Inside the garage, there were still other installations being put together...I guess we got there a little early. We decided to kill some time getting a bite to eat at nearby CLOCKED and then doing a bit of record shopping at LOW YO YO...















Many of the art installations and pieces involved screens and projections in dark spaces, so it was hard for me to capture them on my camera (it doesn't take the best photos in the dark). Around the corner from Clocked and Low Yo Yo, in the recently vacated 42 Degrees head shop, were more pieces...one was a huge screen with many different layers of projections on it. On one wall, there was a row of iPads with different interactive videos that the viewer had to activate and interact with...





After the sun went down, we ventured back to Snow Tires. Missy got a turn under the suspended television screen (she saw video images of a "family"). In a dark corner, there were these little white cubes. Inside the cubes were these ROBOTIC ARMS holding pieces of RAW MEAT. These robotic arms were rhythmically pounding these raw steaks against the walls of the cubes. Later in the evening, we passed a group of kids and we overheard a girl ask, "Is this where the meat is?" Inside the garage were huge screens with weird indescribable projections on them accompanied by an eerie soundtrack...















From Snow Tires, we walked down to LITTLE KINGS to see what was happening there. Inside, there was a band making experimental noise/music...they were even using an old honest-to-goodness PHONOGRAPH. Outside, we ran into what was probably our favorite installation of the night. There was a projection of the classic STREET FIGHTER video game on the wall of Little Kings. Across from it was a YAMAHA KEYBOARD. In lieu of video game controllers, the action was controlled by certain keys on the keyboard. As you played the game, you also ended up making a cacophony of noise along with the original video game soundtrack - a perfect intersection of art, music, and tech!





















In an ALLEYWAY, we came across another art installation. There was a couch in front of a screen...laying on the couch was a girl. As she slept, GLITTER showered over her on the screen, as if all this wonderful magic was happening in her dreams:



We caught a DANCE PERFORMANCE at NEW EARTH MUSIC HALL...as these dancers moved across this carpet of light, these projections would follow their footsteps. They each also wore these sensors around their necks and arms that controlled the intensity and pitch of the music/noise that accompanied them:







We closed the night out with some band performances at the 40 WATT CLUB. I only managed to get a few half-way decent photos of the incredible NYC-based Japanese band THE SUZAN and local powerhouse duo, GRAPE SODA. We spent the last couple of hours of Slingshot dancing and getting sweaty, which was really the perfect way to end a great day filled with inspiring art...

Weekend Wind-Down #160

This past Saturday, Missy and I stopped at this ANTIQUE/JUNK SHOP in Statham. The shop was in an old TRAIN STATION and we had never been there before...on a whim, we decided to check it out. We were greatly rewarded for our curiosity! We came across this bizarre ARCHIE BUNKER'S GRANDSON DOLL...WTF??? If that wasn't weird enough already, the box says that the doll is a PHYSICALLY CORRECT MALE. According to my research (Wikipedia), the doll, which came out in the 70s, was one of the first anatomically-correct dolls to come out in the U.S...at the time, the Catholic Church raised such holy hell about the doll, that it was soon pulled off the shelves. The "Joey Stivic"doll was either a terrible terrible idea or a cunning publicity stunt for the already controversial "All In The Family" television show...





The other 70's gem we found was this LANCE LINK SECRET CHIMP LUNCHBOX...apparently, Lancelot Link was a huge hit at the Kulik household way back in the day. Missy couldn't wait to share photos of the find with her brothers:













FAVORITE MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Meeting and hanging out with Nadia Marie this Saturday!
RAOUL - The Slingshot Festival the Saturday before last was pretty cool.

WORST MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Jumble's surgery and him being sick :(
RAOUL - Finding out that Jumble's had to start taking medication for the parasite again.

FUNNIEST MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - It's still that girl who asked, "Is this where the meat is?"
RAOUL - Archie Bunker's Grandson!

WORD OR PHRASE OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - "Binky"
RAOUL - "Physically Correct Male"

FAVORITE MEAL OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Sushi from Fresh Market.
RAOUL - Sushi from Fresh Market.

WORST MEAL OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Sushi from Ru-San's.
RAOUL - That garlic tofu dish from Ru-San's...it was like, 90% onions.

PERSONAL RESOLUTION FOR THIS WEEK?
MISSY - Get more rest.
RAOUL - Get back on the workout wagon.

PERSONAL SOUNDTRACK FOR THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Kishi Bashi, Alessi's Ark, The Sundays, Morrissey, Tiger Trap, Henry's Dress, Bratmobile, Lilys, Sebadoh, The Suzan, Grass Widow.
RAOUL - Bratmobile, Tiger Trap, Henry's Dress, Lilys, Sebadoh, Boyracer, My Favorite, Maceo and All The King's Men, Strawberry Switchblade, The Suzan, Morrissey, Times New Viking, The Beets, Those Pre-phylloxera Years comp.