The blog days of summer

I usually go on a trip or two during the summer, but this year I'm mostly hunkered down at home, thanks to a dearth of funds. I'm barely able to pay the rent these days, and I've been feeling pretty sorry for myself. But then I came upon the Global Rich List.

Just type in your annual income (make sure $ is selected if you live in the U.S.) and hit the "Show me the Money" button. I was pleasantly surprised to see that, when it comes to the richest people in the world, I'm in the top 1 percent. I sure don't feel like I'm rich these days, but the Global Rich List does put things into perspective. (For example, last week I took a friend out to dinner and spent what would be about two months' salary for some people, including many Iraqis. According to a recent study by Oxfam International, about 43 percent of the Iraqi population is living in "absolute poverty," which means they're earning less than $1 a day.) I went to the Oxfam America site and made a donation to Oxfam's Global Emergency Fund.

I vowed not to go into any rants in this blog, and I'll stick to that vow. But that doesn't mean I can't encourage my readers -- both of you -- to donate to a worthwhile organization.

"Whoa! I'm rich!"

In praise of crazy palaces

I've seen some palaces in my day, including Buckingham Palace. But the only ones that have stuck in my mind and captured my heart are the crazy constructions of eccentric visionaries, men who were driven to build fantastic edifices one pebble, scrap, or shard at a time.

Let's begin with Ferdinand Cheval's Palais Ideal. Cheval, a postman in rural France, tripped over a stone while walking his route one day in 1879. He was smitten by the stone's beauty, and began collecting similar ones and taking them home in a wheelbarrow. For 34 years he toiled at night, building the palace that had appeared in his dreams when he was a young man. The palace still stands, embellished with beasts, caryatids, spires, and inscribed poems, in the countryside near the little town of Hauterives. Here's a translation of one of his poems:

In searching I have found. Forty years I have carved to create this fairytale palace. For my idea, my body braved everything -- the weather, the criticism, the years. Life is a quick steed. My thoughts will live on with this rock.
-- Ferdinand Cheval

I journeyed to yet another bizarre palace near the tiny town of Xilitla, Mexico: the Surrealist Palace of Edward James. The drive alone would have made the trip worthwhile, even if there had been no palace at the end of the trip. (There almost wasn't -- my friend and I had a devil of a time finding the palace.) We drove from Monterrey, through valleys framed by the Sierra Madre Oriental, past mile afer mile of citrus orchards in bloom.

Edward James was a wealthy patron of the Arts -- the Surrealist Arts to be precise. In 1944, while visiting Cuernavaca, Mexico, he met a young man named Plutarco Gastelum. The young man took James to his favourite spot, a jungle waterfall called Las Posas, outside of Xilitla. When they emerged from a swim in the pool at the foot of the falls, their bodies were enshrouded by butterflies, and James -- perhaps motivated by such a surreal occurrence -- decided he would build his home there. And what a home! An homage to Surrealism, the palace includes structures with names like "The House with a Roof Like a Whale," "Homage to Max Ernst," and "Temple of the Ducks."

The U.S. has its share of baroque and beautiful structures as well. Although not a palace, the spires of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in L.A. are a sight to behold. Italian immigrant Simon Rodia constructed the towers in his spare time over a period of 33 years, out of rebar, wire mesh, mortar, adorned with a variety of scraps and objects, from seashells to bits of broken porcelain. The towers were finished in 1954 and still stand, thanks to several passionate preservationists, including my late friend Seymour Rosen. Bless you, Seymour!

I had in mind to do something big, and I did it.
-- Simon Rodia

Another immigrant, Sicilian Baldassare Forestiere, built downward, rather than upward, to create his palace. Tunneling beneath the ground in Fresno, California for about 40 years, Forestiere carved out an underground home with nearly 100 rooms. Because a thick layer of clay made it impossible to plant anything, Forestiere placed his citrus trees and grapevines in pots below the ground, and allowed them to poke up out of shafts to receive sunlight and air. The orchard is an odd sight, as only the tops of the trees are visible from aboveground. The Forestiere Underground Gardens are, as far as I know, still alive and well and open to the public.

The visions of my mind overwhelm me.
-- Baldassare Forestiere

Photography credits: Although I have visited all the sites mentioned here, I photographed them in the old days, before digital photography. Therefore I have relied on other people's photos to illustrate this post. The photos (top to bottom) are by S.D. Clark, Kristin Fiore, and Gordon Converse.

A cure for melancholia

I suffer from melancholia. (The word "melancholia" carries so much more weight than "depression," don't you think? I prefer most of the old-fashioned malady names to their newfangled counterparts. "I'm afraid I can't go to work today; I have the vapors." When I felt a bit poorly as a kid, my mom called it the Collywobbles. When it was more serious, it was the High Fantods.)

Most melancholiacs have an arsenal of weapons to fight the disease tooth and nail -- and I am no exception. A surefire way to feel better is to find someone who is even more miserable than one's self. I call it relativity therapy. And who could be more miserable than the Finns? If you doubt me, just listen to this lament by the Helsinki Complaints Choir.

If you want to take the high road out of the Valley of Depression, you can always watch one of the great silent comedians: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, or Bill Irwin. Here's a clip of Chaplin and Keaton performing together (as it's a Chaplin movie, Charlie steals the show). To give Buster his due, here's a Keaton montage. Here's Harpo and Groucho in a scene from Duck Soup. And here's the ending of Safety Last, starring Harold Lloyd. Be sure to watch the very last scene, where he walks off into the sunset -- across a puddle of tar. It's one of my favorite movie moments.

Strandbeests!

For ten years Theo Jansen has been creating huge, wind-powered strandbeests (beach animals) that lumber across the countryside near The Hague. "Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives." That would be a sight to see!

A movie about the strandbeests is coming soon; meanwhile, you can look at some video clips of strandbeests (click on "film" beneath the top photo on the site). Amazing!

For the darker side of self-propelled mechanical beasts, see Survival Research Labs. I hope nobody ever lets these creatures roam in herds on their own! I attended a Survival Research Labs performance once, and had to sign a waiver that said I would not hold SRL responsible if I were injured or killed during the performance. Now, that's the kind of art that holds an audience's attention!

Come to think of it, such waivers are not uncommon. I recently had to sign a waiver acknowledging that I ran the risk of being injured or killed while taking a flower-arranging class. If you're wondering how many U.S. residents are killed each year in grisly floral mishaps, I'll tell you: None (as of 2003, anyway), according to the National Safety Council's Odds of Death Due to Injury chart. According to NSC's data, your lifetime odds of dying from your pajamas catching on fire are 1,249,356 to 1. (Pretty long odds, but I plan to sleep in the buff from now on, just in case. Happily, you are very, very unlikely to die from being bitten or crushed by a reptile, so you can pretty much stop worrying about that. Flower arranging is not even listed as a potential cause of death.)

Howdy Cloud (and monkey)

A few nights ago I attended the Salinas Rodeo, and the high-scoring bull rider was named Howdy Cloud. I kid you not: Howdy Cloud.

I don't know about you, but it cheers me right up to live in a world that has someone in it named Howdy Cloud.

OK. That's not much of a post, I'll admit, even for a cabinet of curiosities. I can hear you starting to grumble and getting ready to ask for your money back.

So I'll throw in some bonus material.

The jugglers and the clowns...
Here's a video of one of my favorite performers: Nina Conti (and her monkey).

And here's juggler Chris Bliss.

Blogging on

Here's the deal. I've never been inclined to keep a blog, as I'm a rather private person by nature. But I'm obliged to study up on blogs for a project at work, so I figured I'd take a stab at creating one that I'd enjoy. Perhaps you, dear reader, will enjoy it as well.

Many of my friends know me as a nattering nabob of negativity. I won't argue with that -- I blame it on my proclivity for reading the news. It ain't pretty out there. However, one can't spend all one's time ranting and raving and raging, or one will grow sour. In my meanderings through the world I've come across quite a few people who are a credit to the species, and this blog will be a celebration of the many souls I've encountered (artists, musicians, eccentrics, rodeo cowboys...) who make me smile, or laugh, or gasp in awe. There will be no rants here, or political discussions, or dire diatribes. In fact, in this blog I promise to be a prattling poobah of positivity. Just you watch!

Some notes on nomenclature
I've called this blog a "cabinet of curiosities" because it will hold a jumble of cultural artifacts that can't be classified under one subject. Want to know more about the concept of a cabinet of curiosities? To Wikipedia!

I've had the pleasure of visiting a modern-day cabinet of curiosities: The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. (The place defies description, so I have once again left the dirty work to Wikipedia.)

As for the site name, it comes from an interview with Captain Beefheart, who once said "The artist is he who kids himself most gracefully." If you're not familiar with the Captain's music (which was spawned more than 40 years ago), I urge you to head to iTunes and purchase the song "Electricity."

Stay tuned for further curiosities in the days to come.