Fireworks, Jimmy Olsen, Don Rickles and graffiti: A tale in photos
A ridiculously awesome skull sticker near the old Children’s Hospital Building. The skull is by Reface Operations (thanks to John for identifying the artist).
I haven’t been writing much lately. It’s two parts mental burnout, one part lack of any significant time off in two years whisked with 1/2 cup of writer’s block. Season to taste.
I have been taking more photos since I got the beast, but I haven’t had the time, energy or reliable internet connection to post them. I’m taking a long and long-deserved vacation starting Friday, so I’ll be back in top-notch blogging form when I return.
So here’s a small roundup of photos I’ve taken in the last days, weeks and months. This is only about 1/1,000th of the total I’ve taken, but I know you don’t want to be bored with my photos of friendly squirrels and “interesting” cloud formations, etc.
See many more, including a sweet detail of the skull pictured above, after the jump. Click any photo to see a larger version.
North Carolina-based Reface Operations put a handful of these up around the city, according to his/its MySpace profile, and they are all super awesome. This is what guerilla public art is all about, not scribbling some initials on everything in sight like a jackass. *cough*L2K*cough*
I’ve been tempted to do a few loads of laundry at Smiley’s just for the experience, but even just biking by the signage day after day is an experience. This is my favorite paint-on-brick advertisement ever.
The electrical box right outside my apartment had this awesome sticker on it last week, but this morning I saw that it had been painted over. I can get behind the repurposing of boring office supplies as easy-to-apply art.
Despite my camera having a built-in preset for fireworks and the fact that I used a tripod, this is about the best shot I was able to get of the Coors Field July 4 fireworks. We were on the western bank of I-25, right by the Highland Bridge, so we had some distance between us and the ‘works, but I think I just wasn’t meant to take fireworks photos.
This is something that I find way more amusing and interesting than seemingly anyone else I’ve shown it to. I’ve been obsessively reading the awesome Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibus as fast as the library can hold them for me. Besides being flat-out incredible both artistically and literarily, they can be pretty hilarious and tongue-in-cheek. Por ejemplo, the fact that one of the main titles in this huge, deep and complex story arc is Superman’s Pal: Jimmy Olsen. To take the weirdness one step further, there is a ridiculous, yet totally fitting subplot in one issue of Jimmy Olsen involving not only Don Rickles, but a government-sponsored clone of Don named “Goody Rickels” (yes, Rickels). Anyway, before I checked the first volume back in, I snapped this photo, just so I could keep the best phrase ever splashed across a panel: WILL THE REAL DON RICKLES PANIC?!.
Well, that’s it for now. I probably won’t be posting much until I’m back from vacation, but I will return with one holy hell of a lot of photos from Vegas, LA and San Francisco.