CycloMAYnia Ventucky starts today with a First Friday 50s ArtRide Dance Party on 2 Wheels: The Greaser Bicycle Ball!
ArtRides are Free * Light Your Bike * Bring Your Mug & Money * Ride at Your Own Risk
ArtRides are Family Friendly: please use trailer bikes & burley trailers for children * We always meet at 5:30pm on the Ventura Beach Promenade & Ride at 6pm
TONIGHT’s ArtRide Route:
* Meet 5:30, start at 6pm at the Artists Union for Mb Hanrahan & Patty Kennedy‘s show Figuratively Speaking
* Ride up California then up Main to Kalorama and Front Street to see Ian McFadyen‘s photos at Kevin Eckert-Smith‘s gallery.
* Ride back to Main to El Jardin Courtyard to Kama Sutra Closet to my paintings then on to other Main St & Ventura Ave stops like the Museum and the WAV.
* Ride up Ventura Avenue to 432 N Ventura Ave to Bell Arts Factory & 643 Project Space.
* We’ll end up at Art City, 197 Dubbers off Olive and Rex near Vons.
Gonna be fun! Join us on wheels or on foot!
CycloMAYnia 2011: Ventura & SB Events
May is the perfect time to get your bicycle in gear and rolling around for some fun times! There are lots of CycloMAYnia events scheduled for Santa Barbara starting with a Bike Prom tonight; Ventura has a few events planned too, kicking it off with the First Friday 50s ArtRide & Greasers Bicycle Ball at Art City and including Bike to Work Day and the Bicycle Rodeo (still needed: volunteers and donations of kids bikes).
Read on for more news about events and links to more details.
via Bikergo Gal
Guest Blogger Ron Wells writes today about seeing Dave Eggers and Patti Smith at the LA Times Book Festival last weekend. Read Ron’s review of Patti Smith’s National Book award winning autobiography Just Kids here.
A packed Bovard Hall on the University of Southern California campus waited in anxious anticipation for the appearance of two modern day artists who, for some at least, are also heroes.
Dave Uli
n introduced them as “role models,” and after a very short introduction, began asking questions that gave both writers the freedom to roam with their answers.Patti began by talking about how she began to concentrate on prose after “leaving public life in 1979.” She said “Coral Sea” was her personal letter to Robert Mapplethorpe which encapsulated her grief, but that Just Kids was fulfilling her promise to Robert to write their story.
Dave Eggers, extremely humble throughout, began by saying it was “surreal” to be on the same stage as Patti, and then said that A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was written 10 years after his parents death. Read more…
poetry: incense + prayer
There is only so much incense can do
once mustiness has set in. I lit it
anyway prayed that I could continue
in that partnership simply because it
was easier than not simply because
it was easier to light incense then
to get flames going where there had never
really been a fire easier until
I met my match flame struck fire leapt and I
burned elsewhere
I wrote the first draft of this poem in Danika Dinsmore’s Poetry BootCamp during Ojai WordFest. In this case, the speaker in the poem (the “I”) is not really me, the poet writer of the poem.
For more of my poetry and other news from my part of the world, please subscribe to this blog in the upper right hand corner! You can also check out my new collection 3:15 experiment poetry Middle of the Night Poems from Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (en theos press 2011). Read sample poems here. Read a review by Robert Peake here.
I will be reading poems from my new book on Wednesday May 4 in the 11am hour on KKZZ 1400AM; it will also air at the same time online so please listen and call in!
For more poetry by bloggers from all over the world, catch the Monday Poetry Train!
This weekend, The Promise: The Making of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” a documentary film by Thom Zimny, will be shown around LA with 50% of ticket sales going to bicycle education and advocacy. Just purchase your ticket at the door or online and 50% of all sales will benefit the only County-wide bicycle advocacy nonprofit that works to make LA County a more bike-able place: LACBC!
And you should go see it! And not just because it is a good cause, near and dear to this Art Predator’s heart!
You see, last November 2010, Bruce Springsteen released Darkness on the Edge of Town a 5 cd box set that includes 2 cds of extra material that were written back then and never released–or material given away like the Patti Smith success “Because The Night.”
In this Bruce Springsteen obsessed household (and blog!), it was a red letter day–marked on the calendar and with a daily countdown with as much fanfare as if it was opening day for the baseball season!
Why? Because this is a box set like no other–especially for Springsteen fans! And a huge reason is the documentary film, The Promise: The Making of “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”
The Promise: The Making of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” offers a concert film, unreleased material, a documentary and more related to making of an album that was never released until now–the title comes from one of the songs from these sessions. People who heard it on bootleg or in concert wondered why it was never relesead. Most people never even heard it because he didn’t play it a lot.
The film shows his struggles in making Darkness on the Edge of Town Read more…
Tonight Dengue Fever will show up at Soho, a groovy intimate upstairs joint with an outdoor balcony just off State Street in Santa Barbara to play their wild psychedelic surf rock take on world music, particularly the Cambodian pop sounds of the 60s. As the LA Times put it, Dengue Fever offers “world music for the cool kids.” While I’m writing up this post, I’m listening to their brand new release Cannibal Courtship which they posted on youtube in early April:
Dengue Fever and this new album has everything I want in a band: lots of fat sax (ahh, memories of Morphine), great lyrics (ok, the ones in English, I can’t speak about the ones in Khmer, the language of Cambodia), and you ca
n even dance to much of it! Which you’d expect if you know the pedigree of the band: rumor has it many members are LA studio musicians and vocals are by Chhom Nimol (pictured on the album cover), well-known in Cambodia as a singer before she came to the US. The band was started in 2001 by brothers Zac Holtzman and Ethan Holtzman. They’re joined by Senon Williams, David Ralicke (who was also in one of my favorite LA bands, Brazzaville and gave that band and this one its distinctive horn sound) and Paul Smith.
At about 10 minutes into the video–or into the album, just when you least expect it, Read more…
The Dalai Lama is almost here! And Ventura Buddhist Study Center is doing a retreat this weekend too!
According to an article in Saturday’s LA Times, The InsightLA meditation center is bringing Robert Thurman to the Broad Stage in Santa Monica on April 30 for an evening of guided meditation, teaching and conversation.
Starting Sunday May 1, the Dalai Lama is scheduled to give a number of public talks in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Irvine over several days before he moves on to other states. Locally these include: Read more…
Poetry: Three Stories From a Stranger
Three Stories From a Stranger
At 17 fresh in California from Chicago
at the Pacific she walks the flat rocks along the low tide
with her former best friend, her former boyfriend.
It’s her first ocean and what she remembers most
is the big sky—it’s vast and blue, reflects her eyes
stretches out forever like her limbs.
She carries with her everywhere in her imagination
her baby seal with cat ears.
He’s piglike too: with his wings he can fly.
On her lap, he purrs his violin song.
When he’s hungry he sounds his horn
calling for peblets, for apples, for leftovers.
She wants to go to a cathedral in Ireland
to see something so precise and big
to stand in the doorway
to just be there on a gloomy day.
Grey skies blend in with her nubby wool sweater;
green hills roll a cotton scarf across her shoulders.
I wrote the first draft of this poem in Danika Dinsmore’s “Poetry BookCamp” writing workshop during Ojai’s WordFest. It came out of an exercise where we interviewed a partner. I wanted to add a final stanza but it kept sounding like I was “telling” about her and I thought the poem already “showed” what I was telling so I gave up and post it now as is.
Many thanks to Danika for a wonderful workshop, to my partner for sharing her stories with me and to Sequoia Hamilton for organizing the Master Classes during WordFest.
For more poetry by bloggers from all over the world, catch the Monday Poetry Train!
I took the accompanying photo above with my iPhone February 2011. For more of my poetry, please check out my new collection 3:15 experiment poetry Middle of the Night Poems from Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (en theos press 2011). Read sample poems here. Read a review by Robert Peake here.
Are you about to head somewhere to enjoy Easter dinner? Are you in a quandry about what wine to bring? Here are some ideas including reds, whites, roses, and sparkling!
Plus here’s a link to Kosher wines from Herzog for Passover.
via Wine Predator
Earth Day: 5 Tips for “green” wine & more
What can you do to “green” your red wine consumption–beyond recycling your empties? Read on and learn! Plus videos from a documentary on “natural” wine and photos from our recent trip to Zion!
Yes it all ties in together–Happy Earth Day!
Here’s 2010’s Earth Day post with more tips: How NOT to Celebrate Earth Day Today
And here’s 2008’s Earth Day Post with tips and actions.
PS The original full sized and full color body print currently hangs at Kama Sutra Closet in the El Jardin Courtyard, downtown Ventura. I’ll be there next First Friday May 6 around 7pm!
via Wine Predator
art predator 