Don’t look now

I was taking a walk the other day along the canals of Venice

admiring the chateaux

and whatnot

when I turned a corner and suddenly spied an unusual building.

Unusual and a bit… sinister?

Yes, definitely a bit sinister.

I decided I should probably turn around the way I came, but just then a flash appeared and something that looked an awful lot like an archangel – is that Uriel? Azrael? – alit on the roof, sword aloft.

I tried to run, but things got so dark and strange

that I have no idea how I eventually made my way back to safety. It’s possible that this guy saved me,

but he’s not talking.

Modernisme 90210

I had a little time between work meetings today, and because I’ve always found the fluid designs of Gaudi* to be quite invigorating, I decided to take my lunch break in Barcelona**.

Just amazing to me that he could take something like the exposed roots of a tree situated on a property

and echo it in the lines of the architecture.

With all of the organic elements

one nearly forgets that this is actually a dwelling of some sort.

Until Trash Day, that is.

*much better photos and actual helpful information about The O’Neill House can be found on iamnotastalker.com

**pronounced “bevərli ˈhɪlz”

I know the dream that you’re dreaming of

It’s been a weird one and certainly more subdued than most, but I hope that wherever you’ve been hunkering down,

you

had a

beautiful,

empowering

and inspiring

Pride Month. Love to you all.

Might be a Ministry fan

This front yard might not look unusual to you if you are reading an archived copy of this post in, say, October:

but bear in mind that I took these photos yesterday, April 16th.

Maybe it’s some “Christ rising from the dead” display in honor of Easter on Sunday. My bible knowledge seems to be a little rusty; what part had the giant smiling worm and Pokemon bellsprouts?

 

Curb appeal

Directly across the street from this

I noticed this:

Guys, if you lose a dog, you might want to check around here. It seems to be some sort of canine vortex or something. Be sure to watch your step.

Ship shape

Benny and I are going to try to make a boat this week, so now seems as good a time as any to share some additional information a friend found recently about the building shaped like a boat in our part of town. It’s not, as I previously thought, associated with anything Disney, but rather a former broadcasting center for a Christian musical show with a nautical theme – The Haven Of Rest. Maybe I could have gathered this from the fact that there was another building close by that was labelled “Haven Of Rest,” but I had always figured that place to be a mortuary.

Both buildings are currently being encroached upon by condo development, but the boat house seems safe from the wrecking ball as it’s on the list of Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Monuments. You can catch it starting at 13:44 in this video, but watch the whole thing if you like four-part harmony and folding machines. Anchors aweigh, my friends.

Across the universe

I was minding my own business this weekend when suddenly I found myself in someone’s garden

and I forgot where I was.

Was I in India?

Indonesia?

Grandma Prisbey’s Bottle Village?

Nope. I was at the Haunted Shack Gardens in Pasadena, made by the artist Shrine. And as I usually do in incredibly beautiful places, I got overwhelmed by everything and took terrible photos. I don’t have a single full image of Shrine’s house, which is covered in an elaborate geometric design. No. I got stuck on what the designs were fabricated with:

 
Sorry. That’s how things go with me. If you want to get a better idea of what this amazing place looks like, and what a real artist can do with a bunch of old garden hoses and rusty bottlecaps and old nitrous canisters,

go to Shrine’s Instagram page where he’s posted some good photos of his place and a lot of his other amazing art pieces too.

Home of the brave

This weekend I re-found a house that I first visited about 25 years ago but hadn’t been able to find since. At some point over the years I decided that the house had either been razed or had never actually existed outside of a dream, but it turns out it was only one block over from where I had been looking the whole time. Hooray!

At first I was thinking it looked like that house in the 1980 TV movie of Brave New World, the lighthouse where Keir Dullea hangs himself.

But then I started looking at stills of the movie and this house

didn’t seem like it was that house at all, and then all the stuff in the story about the Alphas and consumption and conformity (not to mention the people worshipping a businessman and a big gold “T”) really started bumming me out and I had to stop looking at images from that film. Dang it. What beautiful futuristic dystopia did this house look like it came from? Then it hit me: Sleeper.

And that made me a little happier. Sure, there’s still a totalitarian society ruled by a despot who drugs his subjects into complacency, but at least the food’s better.

Island Of Dr. Morose

From various posts on social media and whatnot, it seems that a great deal of my friends are taking tropical jungle island vacations. Even Benny is off someplace chasing/getting chased by monkeys. Well, there may not be any monkeys around me but it’s pretty humid and I just discovered these guys

a block away from where we go to vote, so I’m okay. Seriously, the telephone pole here

runs wires up to my street. And actually, if I had waited around long enough I probably would have run into some monkeys because I noticed that these monuments are a designated Pokemon Go pokestop. Monkeys or zombies.

I didn’t stick around though, because 1) that skull on a stick,

2) I already saw some zombies playing Pokemon at the old zoo the other night that were kind of scary even when I was with a group of friends, and this time I was alone, and 3) the occupant of the house was lurking about, using a leafblower in sort of a menacing manner when he spotted me eyeing the additional moai head in the driveway. I thought it best to scoot before this turned into a Most Dangerous Game or Spawn Of The Subhuman situation.

Ten little bungalows

There are actually eleven of these little bungalows on Hollywood Way, lined up on one side of the WB Ranch (formerly the Columbia Ranch).

The eleventh is pretty far down the block from the others, which makes me wonder if there were a whole bunch of other ones that have since been torn down. On the other hand, I think you would have to be an awfully evil witch to tear any of these down. Seriously. They have built-in shelves on the outside of the house. I mean, come on.

According to the Burbank Historical Society*, these were not constructed as backlot dressing rooms or offices but to be used as ordinary homes, for normal people. Here are some of them as they look today.

Pretty extraordinary, all of them, but I especially like this last one. The shy guy.

*Thank you Jeremy Ward and David Doherty for sleuthing this information out and sharing with Burbank In The ’60s!

Image of Paul E. Wolfe postcard (top image) via Burbankia