nevermind the bricolage

Gold Bug

Gold Bug is a store in Pasadena named after Edgar Allen Poe's novel. It is like a contemporary version of a Victorian curiosity shop, filled with strange and wonderful sculptures, artifacts--bronzed-heads, wooden skulls riddled with coins, hand statues--all of it decidedly left of centre. An upcoming exhibition features the work of Lisa Wood entitled, The Swallowing Plates: objects swallowed and recovered from the human body. It is one of the most thoughtful and carefully crafted stores that I have entered in a while--talk about a complete vision, every last detail serves the overall gestalt of the place--even if you didn't like the focus, it would be impossible not to appreciate the obvious and pain-staking attention to detail.

On The Radio

I was driving home on the freeway this afternoon listening to public radio when the news came on. It was the usual stuff, stories about Congress and the Budget impasse, Blackwater testimony from Capitol Hill, the daily dose of madness--but my ears perked up at one of stories that makes you wonder. Apparently a 10 year-old kid in some part of LA was in critical condition with doctors trying to save his leg after he was accidentally shot by his father who was cleaning his shotgun at 1:30 a.m. Now, I have a few questions

Coming Along

The office is coming along--have been putting up some 'stuff'--just to challenge the boring sterility of the room, it will probably morph into something else, we'll see. Bumped in Alan Hirsch on campus yesterday--I need to pay more attention to who's around, missed Steve Taylor last week apparently, but hey, I've been busy. Alan is teaching a Dmin course and then hoping to be back here permanently for a while in a month or so.

'It' Building

We finally caught up with a friend of ours last night after months of trying to pin down a time. She travels a lot and lives as she says, a "big life." We had dinner at the Little Door, our favourite haunt and then went home with her to check out her new apartment. I should say up front that our friend Loree has great taste, really great taste--she does interior design, makes some gorgeous jewelry and used to have a house in the Hollywood hills that was the epitome of gothic chic--more like a Bishop's private chapel--all dark velvet, angels, skulls, and a wild collection of church paraphernalia--loads of crosses of all kinds--