From Museum of Jurassic Technology

Mount Wilson Road closed today at 6 a.m. after U.S. Forest Service authorities determined that the roaring fires could reach the mountain’s peak. Several radio towers for local broadcast outlets, as well as the historic Mt. Wilson Observatory, sit atop the 5,710-foot peak. The fate of the over-a-century-old facility is uncertain, but the importance of the observatory is undeniable. Designed by turn of the 19th century astronomer George Hale, who coined the term “astrophysics,” the Observatory realigned the way people viewed mankind as it related to the universe. Like the heliocentric model of Copernicus, which obliterated the concept of an Earth-centered universe, Hale’s experiments opened up the aperture on a more complex existence, where humans were perhaps as insignificant as tiny stars adrift in night sky. For some, astronomy struck at the heart of religion, while for others, gazing starward offered an ultimate advance in the search for God. The Museum of Jurassic Technology displays the epistemological questions, theories of God’s location, and Martian dreams sent on hotel stationery, postcards, and sloppily typed letters to Hale and the astronomers of the Observatory in the exhibit, No One May Ever Have The Same Knowledge Again: Letters to Mount Wilson Observatory.

As early as 1911, the astronomers at Mount Wilson began receiving letters from people all around the world, people from all walks of life, educated as well as uneducated. Many of the letters were simple expressions of appreciation and awe for the work that the astronomers were accomplishing. There was, however, another class of letter. These letters were communications to the astronomers by individuals who felt, often with a great degree of earnestness, that they were in possession of understandings or information that should be shared with the astronomers.

The information contained in this class of letter was typically of astronomical or cosmological concern. These individuals had gleaned the information they wished to communicate either by experimentation, observation or intuition and invariably felt a strong sense of urgency in their need to communicate their observations to the observers at Mount Wilson. (From The Museum of Jurassic Technology site)

To experience the wide breadth of opinions, suggestions, and serious quakery that the Observatory spawned, please visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology. But until then, take a look at these samples and click on the captions for full text of the letters:

Letter From W. Charles Lamb

Letter from Edward To The Scientific Community Thru The Mount Wilson Observatory

Letter from Alice May Williams To Dr. Edward Pettit and Dr. Seth B. Nicholson

Photo by Drew Tewksbury

Get well soon, little buddy.

Let the puns begin.

According to NPR via the AP, a Westchester dispensary lit up this morning.

A fire has damaged a Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary but no injuries are reported.

Fire Capt. Steve Ruda says the fire was reported at about 5:30 a.m. Monday at the Westchester Collective on the second floor of a two-story commercial building in the Westchester area. The building also houses several other businesses.

It took 69 firefighters an hour to extinguish the blaze.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

How many firefighters? This was obviously written by Beavis and/or Butthead.

Drew’s theory: Joint ember into pizza grease.

What do you think?

Don't worry Bubbles will be fine*

All hopes for a Captain EO sequel have been dashed. Harumph.

*Bubbles has had a history of emotional problems

At least once every 365 days, I take some time out of my life to visit Disneyland. This week, I journeyed back into Magic Kingdom to exploit the fruits of a free birthday pass (I turned 14), and titillate my insatiable addiction to churro smell (not taste). So, while wandering around the all-too-real reality of Disneyland’s stroller-pushing, teenaged mothers and churro-eating masses, I, of course, remembered the words of my, and undoubtedly your, favorite postmoderist, poststructuralist Frenchie philosopher, Jean Baudrillard:

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.

The late Baudrillard apparently had a complicated time at D-Land–he even calls the parking lot a concentration camp– but he penned this (perhaps pretentiously) hilarious treatise on the why Disneyland is, like, soooo PoMo. I’ve posted the short excerpt from Simulacra and Simulations after the jump. If only Baudrillard was able to experience fully the Russian doll, So-Cal microcosm of California Adventure…

Put this in your pipe and smoke it…

Hyperreal and imaginary

from Simulacra and Simulations, Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184.

Article Soundtrack: This is Not the World – The Futureheads

Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more the social microcosm, the miniaturized and religious revelling in real America, in its delights and drawbacks. You park outside, queue up inside, and are totally abandoned at the exit. In this imaginary world the only phantasmagoria is in the inherent warmth and affection of the crowd, and in that aufficiently excessive number of gadgets used there to specifically maintain the multitudinous affect. The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot – a veritable concentration camp – is total. Or rather: inside, a whole range of gadgets magnetize the crowd into direct flows; outside, solitude is directed onto a single gadget: the automobile. By an extraordinary coincidence (one that undoubtedly belongs to the peculiar enchantment of this universe), this deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized; Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade.

…this deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized; Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade.

The objective profile of the United States, then, may be traced throughout Disneyland, even down to the morphology of individuals and the crowd. All its values are exalted here, in miniature and comic-strip form. Embalmed and pactfied. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland (L. Marin does it well in Utopies, jeux d’espaces): digest of the American way of life, panegyric to American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. To be sure. But this conceals something else, and that “ideological” blanket exactly serves to cover over a third-order simulation: Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral).

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.

The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It’s meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the “real” world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusions of their real childishness.

Moreover, Disneyland is not the only one. Enchanted Village, Magic Mountain, Marine World: Los Angeles is encircled by these “imaginary stations” which feed reality, reality-energy, to a town whose mystery is precisely that it is nothing more than a network of endless, unreal circulation: a town of fabulous proportions, but without space or dimensions. As much as electrical and nuclear power stations, as much as film studios, this town, which is nothing more than an immense script and a perpetual motion picture, needs this old imaginary made up of childhood signals and faked phantasms for its sympathetic nervous system.

Remember electroclash? It was that musical burp that crept onto the scene at the turn of the millennium, then went the way of the buffalo. Or did it? Like spotting a sasquatch in a heavily wooded area, Fischerspooner appeared at the Avalon and revealed that electroclash still exists, just in a slightly older, more rotund manner.

Just when you thought you could retire your sequined banana hammock, Fischerspooner returns to Los Angeles to awkwardly perform “dance” numbers in a bout of “performance art” meets “music”. I’m Still trying to figure out what happened. When music is composed electronically, and performed “live” doesn’t the DJ guy just have to press play? I’m fairly certain that’s what Warren Fischer did during Saturday’s performance at the Avalon. Press play. Wait. Count your money. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if singer/lead freak Casey Spooner sang live, then at least some sort of musicianship would be frothing from the stage. But apparently Mr. Spooner wasn’t really singing into the Janet Jackson styled mic thing affixed to his face. So, if neither of them were playing live, isn’t it just like listening to the album, just louder? Why have we become complacent to lip-synching? We expect it from “live” television performances ranging from the Super Bowl to Saturday Night Live. But in person? Really? Thanks Fischerspooner.

For more photos of Fischerspooner, angle your eyes toward here.

Photos by Drew Tewksbury.

Fire in Culver City / Drew Tewksbury

At about 7:15pm a fire broke out in the dried out brush adjacent to the concrete corridor of the Ballona Creek near La Cienega in Culver City. Witnesses say that the fire was started by a young man who they described as Latino. Two young girls reported that the man left his bike behind and walked up the side of the brush. “We thought that he was just going to start tagging,” one young person said, “but then he started the fire and threw his backpack into it.”

Police and firefighters responded to the scene, cutting through a fence with an electric saw and dousing the flames after the fire had consumed a palm tree and an area of about 50 feet. By 8:15pm the firefighters contained the fire.

Photograph by Michelle Lanz

Cinco de Mayo has never looked better than on the stage of Lucha Va Voom, the mindblowing spectacle that squeezes masked Mexican wrestling (Lucha Libre) and sultry burlesque dancing onto one stage at the historic Mayan theater. There is no sensation quite like the swell of pride that happens when full-grown men (and a mini-man) dressed as chickens attack skeleton-suited hombres (and a mini-hombre) as the announcer proudly proclaims: Welcome to Los Angeles…

Article Sound Track: AC/DC – Kicked in the Teeth

Lucha Libre is the hidden crown jewel of Los Angeles. Sure, Los Angeles has some pretty nice stuff: the beautiful weather, the beaches, and nomadic taco trucks that wander like clouds (shout out to Wordsworth, whaaat!) and shower your face with burritos. But what’s better than masked Mexican wrestlers? Nothing! Wait. One thing’s better: Off duty strippers. Off duty strippers and masked Mexican wrestling, together at last for the best thing L.A. has to offer since early nineties Raiders jackets. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Ladies and gents, birds and blokes, prepare to feast your orbs.

For more photos of Lucha Va Voom’s Cinco de Mayo extravaganza, gorge your glassies here.

Photos by Drew Tewksbury except where noted.

Delightful.

Sandwiches flew, cheese slung and fromage fiends chomped away. The wreckage of another Grilled Cheese Invitational has melted upon us all, leaving behind only crusts and memories of whimsical cheeses snuggled cozily between two sheets of bread…

Article Soundtrack: Detroit Grand Pubahs – Sandwiches

More than 5,000 people showed up Saturday to the Los Angeles State Historic Park on a toasty day for what was essentially the Coachella of Cheesewiches. Countless samples of the competitors’ snacksperiments met the faces of the ravenous judges. Nearly 14,700 sandwiches were devoured from the free sammich booth sponsored by Kraft Singles. Fancy spreads including some cave-aged something or other, a Wisconsin cultured thingie, and even a type of olive junk spread over a exquisite bread stuff. The Grilled Cheese Invitational brought forth another extravaganza of ineffable deliciousness.

For more photos of the the 2009 Grilled Cheese Invitational, cheese them up here.

All Photos by Drew Tewksbury

In booths and against the walls, chic-looking fashionistas and Hollywood types leaned and looked around the Bar Marmont. Like a lion/ess gazing across the Serengeti, each leaner surveyed the room, searching for any sign of stylistic weakness in other Gucci-shoed peeps in the pack. After all, this was, allegedly, a “cool event:” the private listening party for Diplo (aka MIA’s ex-boyfriend) and Switch’s (an English DJ) project Major Lazer (an aural ode to Jamaica). But when the music started and the leaning stopped, the dance floor filled with (sorta) writhing bodies each afflicted with the same syndrome: Dance Face…

Article Soundtrack: Yelle – Dans Ta Vrai Vie

Here at the Marmont, cool is the rule. But on the dance floor anything goes. Especially in the face-u-lar area. So in honor of the loss of facial rigidity, I give you the first in a series I like to call: Dance Face 2009.

For more photos of the Diplo + Switch party at Bar Marmont, peep them here.

All Photos by Drew Tewksbury