Entries Tagged 'Art' ↓

Eight. Two groups of four.
A pair and another twice.
All across the board.

With fellow six-word memoirist and NYC social networking butterfly extraordinaire Jeff Newelt after checking out Eclectic Method’s most ultra-mashy hellabadassiestness. Echo Park; August 3, 2008.

“Supported the sublime with uncurbed enthusiasm.”
– Jeff Newelt

With my cousin Sarah during her short visit out west from Washington, D.C. Shot at her friend’s haunted 1920s hotel-turned-apartment building, the Villa Carlotta, on Franklin in Hollywood in the wee hours of the morning on August 2nd, 2008. Our moms are sisters. And we have the same feet.

Is that Charlie Chaplin peeking out from behind the curtains?

Fatal Shipwreck at a Dam of Gold
60″ x 48″
Oil on canvas
2008

Letter from a Friend
by Jace D. Albao (b. 1969)

You were always such an asshole. I could tell from the moment you pulled me from my family by the skin of my neck, dangling me from your outstretched arm. Within months, my puppy hair fell out, replaced by my wiry adult coat, and you lost interest in its touch. My soft velveteen ears became stiff and strong, and you stopped rubbing them. I became too big for you to hold in your hands, and you put me down forever. You left me outside in the hot sun, with no source of shade. When I tried to tell you I was uncomfortable, you tied me to a fence with a collar pulled too tight, a muzzle clamped around my face, making it hard to breathe, denying me the ability to cool myself. You never cleaned my bowl. You never noticed the ants. The maggots. You rarely noticed when the bowl was empty, yet you always complained about my begging. You never cared when the birds took a bath in my water, leaving their worms. When the water went dry, you wouldn’t notice for days. You never took me out to see the world, to discover its mysteries, to meet others like me. You never cleaned up my shit. I ran out of places to go. You never said anything when your loud friends intentionally spilled beer on me and laughed. You never did anything when the fat guy kicked me in the ribs. You never bathed me, but you complained about my smell. You never noticed the lump that grew in my chest for months, which became two, then three, eating me inside, the pain slowly draining every ounce of life from my shell. You never did anything to take it away. To make it stop. You never cared.

And you never noticed I was gone until a week later, when the gas man found me in the back of the driveway curled up under the barbecue. You never even gave me a chance to say goodbye.

But I love you anyway.

It seems Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” has come to a screeching halt.

The script got good early reviews. But for months the Web has been pulsing with rumors and in-depth accounts that when Jonze had a research screening last December, kids in the audience were crying and fleeing the theater–not exactly the reaction the studio had hoped for.

Mmmm. Cult classic. Now I really wanna see it. Before it’s “fixed”. YouTube leaks, anyone?

The Lonely Vine
by Jace D. Albao (b. 1969)

The night seemed as good as any. Brainstorming ways to get it done before morning, it occurred to him that the faded green fifty-foot garden hose would save him a special trip to Home Depot for the length of cheap rope he didn’t have. He unscrewed the hose counter-clockwise from the backyard faucet in the night’s quiet darkness, the surplus water purging over his closed fist, still warm from the day, dripping down his knuckles.

He dimmed the the garage’s moody track lighting to its lowest visible setting. Electronic candlelight. Wrapping the end of the thick hose around the base leg of the work bench a few times, he rigged a makeshift knot, pulling it tight, the rubber hose collapsing beneath the tension, gripping itself to the old two-by-four lumber base of the work bench as it regurgitated the week’s water from both ends.

The garden hose was heavier than rope, but light enough. With a disregard for neatness, he climbed to the top of the workbench with the sloppily coiled length of hose, running it over the rafter closest to the wall. Standing atop the workbench and reaching with his arms, he heaved the rest of the hose towards the center of the garage and over the center rafter, letting the hose fall to an uncoiled pile on the cleared floor. Too long. Jumping back down to the floor, he pulled the slack, a dozen feet or so, and rewrapped his work at the base leg of the workbench, letting the other end dangle from the center of the room. The hose hung from the garage ceiling like a lonely vine, seven feet from the floor, water dribbling from its end into a small puddle on the floor that would be dry in a couple days.

He stood in the puddle with his arms to the sky. While he’d never even tied a noose with conventional rope, he instinctively remembered enough from his vague memories of a childhood sailing expedition to rig a workable four-inch loop at the end of the thick rubber hose, the metal threaded end of the hose limply dangling from a few inches of slack, still dribbling with stale rubber-smelling tap water. He pulled a couple feet of the hose through the eyehole, forming a second loop large enough to fit a basketball through, and let his masterpiece dangle from the ceiling.

The office chair was on wheels. Rolling it to the center of the garage, he stood upon it, his feet set apart at shoulder width, keeping his balance in an oddly contradictory attempt to keep from falling and injuring himself. He braced his feet on the chair in a surfer’s stance, standing still, keeping the chair from moving on its wheels as he reached to grab the dangling noose of hose and place it around his neck. Reaching behind his cranium with both hands, he gently yanked the slack on the hose, letting the rubber cling beneath his jaw, just above the Adam’s apple. Reflecting on an old party conversation he had a with a doctor friend on the effectiveness of lynching as a form of execution, he rotated the noose around to the side of his head, the hose extending to the rafter from just below his right ear. If the doctor’s theory was correct, this would be the most painless, quickest way, as the neck would immediately snap sideways, achieving immediate unconsciousness, asphyxiation being merely an after-effect.

He decided to count down from five, feeling the wheeled office chair delicately jiggling on its wheels beneath him, as if to be granting him one last sensation of complete control, ready to fly across the room on his command with a simple shift of weight.

Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.

A good buddy of mine has been reluctant to get on Facebook since Day One. He finally did. I’ve gotta laugh at the first three things in his Facebook history (letters have been loosely rearranged and joined by an extra vowel to protect the shrewd opposers of having one’s existence acknowledged on the Internet):

Barney joined Facebook 2:31pm

Barney and Jace Daniel Albao are now friends. 2:46pm

Barney joined the group Petition for Led Zeppelin United States Tour –
1,000,000,000 strong. 5:03pm

Staring into Beamer headlights in the parking lot of the Greek Theater in Los Angeles with my man Kenny Cole. (The renowned bass player, not the New York shoe designer.)

Two ladies following their muse today at nearby Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. The cove below is one of our favorite hangs in the rotation.