absolutely



i love documentaries. esp on artists - but only the good ones. it's so interesting seeing how other artists work. It's often an awesome thing seeing where they get their inspiration & the progression of how their skills develop. i watched another biography on andy warhol. i feel like i've seen 5 of them, and this managed to surprise me with some facts. anyways, so this one mentions how he often did work off of suggestions from friends. in a way, quite a bit of his art was an interpretation of someone else's suggestion. i feel like he did that because he wanted to make art that people liked & to be liked. it makes me wonder how many people are creating things based on those factors. i didn't realize how many artists didn't like his work either. that was weird. his work was highly criticized by a large audience that was still into abstract expressionism.

his life was so intense. and just watching it made me really uncomfortable. he just didn't seem very happy, but tried to be. i finished the film thinking i needed a break on biographies. so it's always good to move onto watching something lighthearted to get you out of bummertown. so i moved onto Jurassic Fight Club (which should be a remake of Fight Club with dinosaurs, i know. i was disappointed to discover it wasn't too). though still amazing because the History channel animates what they concluded happened at dinosaur fights based on their findings. what's funny is a lot of it is guessing. they're educated guesses, but guesses all the same. no one knows exactly how a fight would be. unless someone's holding out on us on being alive since the jurassic period. oh you know what, it was probably elvis. sorry to question your dino DNA findings. :D elvis...such a rascal

oh how i love bowie

the greatness that happens because of bowie blows my mind:

(exhibit A) - someone made a graph?!



(exhibit B) - stop motion amazes me always. maybe it's because i was brainwashed by cartoons from an early age.



(exhibit C - the "je ne sais quoi" factor) I don't know how he does it. i'm mesmerized. i've had a crush on him since i was a kid. can't explain it!

ode to the commute



just how amazing was the commute this week you ask?

1. Driving home from the gym in the morning. And there's a guy crossing the street, you know as nature intended, on the hugest unicycle i have EVER SEEEEN. i have never seen a unicycle that big. it was taller than all the cars it passed that were stopped at the street light. what was this guy thinking. "oh hooo, i'll just ride my trusty man-bike to work. i'm at the top of the world now. look out everyone, heeyarereeeraaar!"

2. nothing beats sitting in traffic in hollywood when you're stuck behind a reeeeally slow driver. definitely testing your patience. every once in a while there are some gems that make it worth your while. i was stuck behind an old man for about a 1/4 mile. i didn't mind though because he had an amazing cowlick hitting the headliner of his car. it hit a 45 degree angle off to the window like it was stretching for the sunlight. so for 1/4 mile, i wondered how long did he attempt to tame it? the rest of his hair was plastered to his head, and i imagined he had that haircut since the 40s when his mom did his hair.

3. totally caught a ladybug. amazing, right? what's with all this nature in the city? stopped at a light and a ladybug chills out on my windshield. oh and then i'm giving the dude a voice and he had some sort of attitude about the world. all i could think was, "oh maaaaan. i am soooo lucky!!!"

lights!

i've been listening to Lykke Li for a bit, but hadn't seen any music videos until really recently...the lighting is so amazing...

yaaay projects



so i went home this weekend to visit my parents & make a coffee table with my dad. it's so crazy to see my dad build things. he makes it look so easy. I came up with some idea based off of some mid-century modern bench-styled table i've seen around. it's far too expensive for me in the store, and thought it would be fun to make.

I don't really know much about carpentry, but my dad can pretty much do anything. he's a mechanical engineer - which is code for "everything do-er." i helped a little bit, but went inside for a few minutes. i return to the garage to find he's got some contraption set up to make these steel poles into a "V" shape for the legs of this table. so the project didn't take extremely long, but we ended up making something i'm sooo excited about. i put a varnish on it last night, and it's almost ready to be put back together. yaaaay projects! anyways, this is what it looked like before the varnish.

pretty much perfect

i realize this is a movie. but i think it's all i really want. i guess it doesn't have to be location specific...but geeeez. kind of the cutest ever.

michal rovner



so i'm totally inspired today. i just ran across this artist, and she's blowing my mind. this is just one example of one of her crowd pieces. i never really looked at a group of people as a shape...anyways her name michal rovner - very cool artwork.

leaving on a jetplane

best things about flying out to Virginia.

1. watching the food network, HGTV, AC/DC live in concert, and Planet Earth none. ok so on the Discovery channel i was watching that scene on Planet Earth where the huge great white shark jumps out of the water to eat a seal - omg).

thats all for now

this makes me happy :)



other things that make me happy...

1. i get home from the gym this morning, and the apartment is super dark. there are hints of furniture, but not much light - except for these little white feet tearing across the room. lindsay's cat goes to attack, but definitely does not make contact. just kind of jumps up in the air and shakes her yiddle paws at me. i just laughed at her. right in her fuzzy face.

2. ok, now i keep thinking about the cat running at me full speed. ha!

streets & streets



i've been thinking about city streets like mondrian paintings lately. i'm beginning to think this commute may be getting to my brain.

fish city, population you



i just walked by a window and looked down at the people at street level...and for a moment felt like i was in a fishbowl. it was a really weird feeling. people watching is such a strange thing. ever think about all the things you see and hear throughout the day...and everyone else is doing what you're doing. going to work, walking on the street, going home...i wonder if everyone sees things like i do. like colors...does everyone see the sky the same blue? yea, idk.

things are looking up




remember when we were kids and all we could think about was how rad it would be when we were older. i remember at one time, being so anxious to learn about how things worked. and thinking it was so amazing when i learned how to spell things for the first time. instead of saying sentences i thought it was hilarious to spell conversations outloud instead. my family probably wanted to kill me at various points, but secretly thought i was awesome.

maybe there was that excitement to grow up because we were told that we would understand things more when we were older. i remember asking my older brother about things i didn't quite understand. except he didn't really have the answers either. i think he told me what he was told...i'd understand when i was older. it kind of made me want to ask questions less because i figured everything would make sense one day...why waste time wondering when you could be designing obstacle courses in your front yard and still finding the time to fall off your bike?

well i feel like i'm getting older but instead of finding answers to life's questions...i feel like i'm constantly asking more questions. when's the understanding part supposed to kick in? maybe i didn't get the memo. i do have the tendency to get distracted at times. did i miss something?

i have a sneaky suspicion i'm going to figure everything out when i turn 30. i still have a few years to figure everything out. maybe 30's a magical year when everything will fall in place and make sense for once. sometimes self-deception can be a blessing. i have this renewed confidence in life and everything's going to be ok. what a relief (sigh)

books & books

I just ran across this quote i had written down at some point. i got a new bookcase, and am tracking down various books i've stacked in random places of my room. i didn't think i had this many. Anyways, a paper falls out of a book as i'm putting them all in place. this is what it said...i don't know who wrote it, but it was a really good run-on sentence.

"The Love of God is a delightful & affectionate sense of the divine perfections which makes the soul resign & sacrifice itself wholly unto him, desiring above all things to please him, & delighting in nothing so much as in fellowhip & communion w/ him, & being ready to do or suffer anything for his sake of his pleasure."

I cannot grasp the concept of God's love or grace. it seems too complicated and far too easy. But there's something about it that, when you get the smallest glimpse of His greatness, you can't do anything but love him back. Anything else wouldn't make sense. The more I think about it. It's the only thing that does make sense. Most of life is pretty nonsensical. I don't know that it'd be this exciting if it did make sense all the time.