WeHo Field Guide: Black Mustard

The last time I had a lazy Saturday afternoon, I decided to take a leisurely stroll through Runyon Canyon Park to enjoy some time in the great outdoors.

That's what I had planned, at least. Unfortunately for me, it was 94 degrees and high noon on a sunny day. Further complicating my endeavor was dehydration from an inadequate amount of water on my person (and a bout of heavy drinking the night before), and lack of sunscreen. Within 20 minutes I was wheezing, sweating, sunburnt, and deafened by the sound of blood pounding through my temples. As I climbed to the peak of the park, I had to avert my attention from all of the dizzying city views, gloriously bronzed beefcake, and unleashed dogs and redirect all energy toward the most pressing task at hand: survival.

Now that the temperatures have cooled and I've been a few more times and my heart is more accustomed to inclined terrain, I've been indulging in some of the natural wonders of the park. One plant in particular caught my eye: a tall, shrubby weed with yellow flowers. Upon closer inspection, I realized that this darling little plant is black mustard, the same thing that keeps growing defiantly in my front yard, despite constant weeding by my neighbors.

I don't believe in weeding. I figure, if the sucker can triumph over all of the elements working against its survival and access enough nutrients to grow, then let it grow. Who am I to get in its way? (Of course, I realize that this same attitude will someday lead to a reputation among youth as the crazy-old-lady who lives in the creepy house with the overgrown yard.)

So I let it grow. It looked kind of odd among the other plants, but I was into that. It was a renegade; a Bickle, a Bjork, a Bourdain.

And then one day I came home, and it was gone.

I know my neighbor ripped it out. I do not begrudge him for it. He's only home once a week, on Saturdays, and he spends the entire day tending to his own lawn, so if my black mustard is ruining his ambience, I'll let him have it.

But aside from looking a little peculiar, is it really all that bad?

Consider:

• Black mustard seeds are commonly used in Indian cuisine, particularly curry
• In Eastern Europe, ground black mustard seeds are mixed with honey to create a cough suppressant

FYI:

• Black mustard is native to the southern Mediterranean region of Europe
• The plant is rumored to have been introduced to Southern California by the Franciscan Padres "who scattered the seed along the Camino Real to mark its route."

Via

You are in for a Terrible Experience. Sorry.

Los Angeles is a lot more tolerable now that I have a backyard. I love the great outdoors, and now I've got them. The only downside to all of this is the yardwork, which occasionally leads to a startling encounter with wildlife. Like the squirrel who lives under the bamboo leaves. Or the moth that flew out of the bougainvillea and onto my face. Or the bird that died on my porch steps.

Oh yes -- today, I found an ant-covered dead bird on my back porch steps.

Several questions immediately came to mind: How did it die? Where did it come from? What does this mean for me? Is this an omen, portending terrible things to come?

I asked Google. And I found someone faced with more or less the same situation, who had posted his concerns to Yahoo! answers and gotten the following response:

"You are in for a terrible experience. Sorry."

Thanks, T-Luv. You fucking asshole.

Dan Deacon @ the Echoplex

I never finished my post about my first Dan Deacon show in 2007 because I could not competently articulate how the performance affected me. There were certainly plenty of lush details to work with -- the "cheap-sounding, rainbow-hued, breakcore-tempo electronic noise," the Dayglo green skull, the zealous crowd obeying Deacon's orders to run around in circles high-fiving each other and then dash through a human tunnel of joined hands -- but I couldn't draw all of these delicious ingredients together into a Meal. As I began writing about it, I kept defaulting to Carrie's observation that "this is what people from the 80s thought 2007 would be like," and while this is a profound and valid assessment, I felt cheap citing another's interpretation while my own eluded me. So I didn't post.

But now that I've seen him again for the second time, I think I've got it.

It came to me while I was tying my shoe. His set had begun and I was dancing; dancing like I hadn't danced since 2001, and the onslaught of footwork had undone the bow on my ballet flat. I bent down to tie it and the gentleman behind me asked, "are you okay?" To which I replied, "yeah, man, I'm just tying my shoe." His question surprised me -- why wouldn't I be okay? Then, it occured to me: this was a raver asking another raver, presumably under the influence of and overwhelmed by substances, if she was going to be okay; a kind and prevalent gesture I had witnessed during my days in the rave community, a gesture I now implicitly (though not immediately) understood on account of our shared identity and communal knowledge. Though he was barely-legal scruffster in striped neon and I was a 25 yr old admin. assistant in my work clothes, I was On the Same Page with this person because there were shared experiences among us.

And this, I would say, is the best thing about a Deacon show: in a post-PLUR world, it provides a space for all ravers-at-heart to come together and share the liberating experience of dance. Regardless of who each individual audience member is/was/is going to be, the frantic beats and childlike play of the Deacon experience induces a communal Fun capable of fusing each distinct member of the audience together into one blissful organism for the duration of the set. This was rave at its best in the 90's; this is rave at its best now. And I will conclude with another astute observation from Gillogs:

"I was trying to think of the difference between raves in the late 90s and last night. I decided: shirt size."

And to that I would add, pant-leg width.

When Galaxies Collide, Part 2

Images of colliding galaxies, courtesy of Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes.

Gorgeous.

Scents and the Sixth Sense

WARNING: Nose jobs may interfere with your ability to see dead people.

During last Wednesday's Norman Lear Center panel on the "Economics of Attention," David Merkoski dropped a knowledge bomb by bringing up the Vomeronasal Organ and its association with the fabled Sixth Sense.

The Vomeronasal Organ is a olfactory sense organ located in the cartilage of the nose. It's a chemoreceptor organ that detects pheromones, chemicals that elicit behavorial responses in others. For many animals, pheromones trigger explicit behavior such as aggression, mating and/or territorial pissing. But for humans, pheromones are attributed to the more implicit "Sixth Sense;" the feeling that the guy across the room is The One. Or a total creep. Or dead.

The presence of VNO in animals is widely accepted among researchers, but its existence in adult humans is controversial. D. Troiter's paper in the Oxford Journal of Chemical Senses concludes that there is a VNO pit in approximately 92% of adult humans, but there is no concrete evidence of its functionality as a sensory organ. Now, we know that humans can perceive pheromones, and the effects of pheromones on human behavior are well-documented: you may have heard about Claus Wedekind's T-shirt study, or the menstrual synchrony of females living in close quarters. But researchers think these pheromones are perceived by other tissues in the olfactory system, rather than the VNO.

Code Green

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you tried to board a flight without a government-issued photo ID?

Well.

1. The TSA officer picks up a radio and calls in a Code Green.

2. Another TSA officer walks up and helps the first one fill out some paperwork.

3. You walk through the Puffer, a machine designed to search your body for explosives and narcotics by shooting short blasts of air all over your body (Think the glaucoma test at the optometrist, but everywhere.)


via

(Yes. It tickles.)

4. Yet another TSA officer searches your bags and dusts your electronic devices and shoes.

5. You get a pretty blue stamp on your boarding pass and proceed to your departure gate.

New England State of Mind

There's a row of white rocking chairs in the hallway connecting Terminal C to Terminal B in Boston Logan International Airport.

WeHo Field Guide: Bougainvillea

It's alive!



That jumble of thorny brown twigs in my backyard is alive!

And it's produced hundreds of bright red flowers!

Some fun facts about Bougainvillea:

• Bougainvillea is native to South America (particularly, Brazil, Peru and Argentina).
• Bougainvillea growers unite under the Bougainvillea Growers International
• It was named after French admiral Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who "discovered" the plant in Brazil in 1768.... according to Wikipedia. According to BGI, it was discovered by French naturalist Dr. Philibert Commerson, who named the plant after Bougainville, who commanded the ship on which Dr. Commerson was sailing (ohhhh.. controversy!)
• The plant is a thorny vine that grows rapidly in warm climates and requires little water to flower
• It's perfect for bonsai or topiary purposes, and can easily be shaped into many forms

Human. Animal. HumanAnimal.

You might want to be sitting down for this.

Researchers at Newcastle University in England claim to have created human-animal hybrid embryos.

The embryos were created by injecting DNA from human skin cells into cow eggs.

Yup.

Rest assured, they only lasted three days. And Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority mandates that all surviving embryos be destroyed after 14 days.

What if these embryos matured? Would they be hunted, caged, kept as pets? Would they be endowed certain inalienable rights? Would we declare a human-animal hybrid history month, honoring history's most prolific human-animal hybrids? Possible candidates:

The Centaur

The Cowardly Lion

Bush/Chimpanzee

24 hrs in NYC

3:00 am
2 hour train/subway ride from JFK ends in emergence in Central Park/knee-buckling awe of NYC/Maker's Mark consumption in Hudson Hotel. Hotel Motif? Mountain Lodge in SPACE.

8:00 am
Awakening. Walk to nearby cafe, consume yogurt-bran muffin.

10:30 am - 2:00 pm
Academic conferencing/Enlightenment.

2:00 pm
Return to hotel/nearly faint from starvation.

5:00 pm
Walk down Broadway through Times Square to Rockefeller Center. Observation impeded by famine-induced concave posture.

5:30 pm
Hastily consume street dog. (Field note: not sure what was on it - there was sauerkraut and some brown stuff, it was tasty, satisfied hunger).

6:00 pm
Search frantically for street receptacle (sic) to deposit mustard-laden napkin; find none, nearly wipe out in search of said receptacle (sic) in 630 (?) Fifth Avenue, aka where that Atlas sculpture is. (NOTE: new shoes incompatible with freshly-waxed marble floor).

6:15 pm
Achieve Nirvana at New York Public Library maps division (Specifically, Oxford Economic Atlas of the World1965, charting world climate, birthrate, and beer production).

6:30 pm
Overwhelmed by beauty of NYPL architecture

6:45 pm
Get in line for Empire State Building observation deck (Objective: observe view at dusk, for daylight visibility plus nighttime light show).

7:00 pm
Depart line after being informed it's another 45 minutes long

7:30 pm
Take seat at Terra Blues bar on Bleecker street, after failure to find Petey Pete. Watch competent solo blues set.

8:00 pm
Retrieved by Pete; eat pizza at Two Boots

..... pm
Drink Gin Gimlets at small, chic bar

--- pm
Drink Magic Hat Apricot Ale at Blue and Gold. Talk about film archival/miscellaneous science matters.

12:30 am
"Return to Hotel" on D train

1:30 am
Return to Hotel for real, after being lost in Brooklyn for 1 hour

2:00 am
NYC firefighters put out flaming trash can on 58th and 8th ave

2:30 am
Girls in satin dresses close DJ set at Hudson Hotel bar with an enthusiastic interpretation of Beyonce's "Irreplaceable"

3:00 am
Retire to room with remainder of vodka soda; Honey-Maid oatmeal raisin cookies

WeHo Field Guide: Sirius, the Dog Star

Last week, I took the dog for a 10 pm walk and noticed an unusually bright, twinkling object just left of the constellation Orion. Was it a plane?, I wondered. A UFO? A top secret government WMD?

No!

It's Sirius, the Dog Star!

Sirius is the brightest object in the sky and is not one star but two; a binary star system consisting of a white main sequence star (Sirius A) and a faint white dwarf star (Sirius B). The Sirius star system is one of the closest to our own solar system.

Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Major, Orion's canine hunting companion (thus its nickname, the Dog Star).


Orion and Canis Major are about to beat down Taurus.

The heliacal rising of Sirius marked important events for early civilizations:

• the flooding of the Nile in Ancient Egypt (and the beginning of the Egyptian calendar year)
• the hottest and dryest days of summer (aka 'Dog Days') in Ancient Greece
• the beginning of winter in Polynesia, where it was an important tool for navigation (Sirius was known as Ka'ulua ("Queen of Heaven") in Hawaii, and was celebrated at the winter solstice.)

WeHo Field Guide: Lavender

Spring has sprung in West Hollywood, and as the flowering plants around the neighborhood bloom, so does my curiosity about the treasures to be found within a two mile radius of my new home. So, in honor of the vernal equinox (yes, it's today), I'm compiling a West Hollywood Field Guide showcasing the natural wonders of the 'hood.

First up? Lavender.

Lavender is apparently a very popular landscaping plant in the neighborhood; there's a bush at nearly every other residence, and the scent of all of them combined is enough to overwhelm pedestrians to the point of light-headedness.



Some fun facts about lavender:

• Lavender is a genus of flowering plants in the mint family
• Lavender is native to the south Mediterranean, tropical Africa, and southeast India
• Dried lavender can be used as potpourri -- or moth repellant!
• Lavender oil (located in the bud of the plant) has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties, and was used in hospitals during WWI to disinfect floors, walls and other surfaces. Lavender oil is also rumored to relieve headaches, if applied to the temples.
• Lavender oil can also heal acne (when diluted 1:10 with water) or soothe burns
• Lavender produces tons of nectar, and is therefore popular among bees
• It's also an allergen (which explains my perpetual state of stuffiness)
• Lavender can grow almost anywhere, but thrives in rocky soil and dry, sunny climates

Miss Janet of Spira

I just came across this truly remarkable Hype Williams video for Janet Jackson's "Call on Me," which was clearly influenced by Final Fantasy X and/or X-2.

Enjoy.

GBD in NYC

Attention East Coast Readers:

I will be in your hood next week (and by your hood I mean New York City -- that's where y'all live, right?). So if you have any suggestions for what to see/eat/drink while I'm there, throw them my way.

Welcome to My Laboratory: Space Crystals, Pt. III

The space crystals finally grew, but they did not grow far, nor wide.

Rather, they grew a few millimeters in length and fused into a Kool-Aid orange biscuit.



Disappointing.

But what did I expect for $10? I mean, really? This?

*sigh*

Some facts about crystals:

-- Crystals are solids in which "the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions."

-- The word "crystal" came from the Greek word "krystallos," which means clear ice.

-- Some people believe crystals have healing powers. Like Amanda, from America's Next Top Model. But not Jesus.

-- The name "Crystal" peaked in popularity in the 1980s.

Welcome to my Laboratory: Space Crystals, Pt. II

My deepest apologies, dear readers, for the tardiness of this post. I must confess that tragedy has befallen my most beloved endeavour, and I have been too distraught to blog. I hope that when I explain what fate hath wrought, you will understand . . .


My space crystals have failed to grow! Sure, there are little crispy-looking things at the bottom of the solution, but nary a giant virile citrine crystal! *faint*


Do you see any space crystals? (No. Just a rock covered in orange dust.)


What's worse, the experiment's instruction booklet says that this plight may be the result of an imprecise measurement of boiling water on my part. (The horror!)

Is all for naught? Nein -- I have been assured that I if add more water to the growing solution, I still might be able to grow thick, luscious crystals. I will do as suggested. Until then -- carry on, dear readers. Carry on.

Welcome to my Laboratory: Space Crystals, part 1

Nothing like a three-day weekend to guilt you into starting all those projects you should have finished three months ago. Like getting your oil changed. Or pulling up weeds in the backyard. Or growing your own homemade SPACE CRYSTALS!

According to the box, this Space Age Crystal Growing Kit will produce glittering, symmetrical crystals in only one week! Natural crystals take thousands of years to grow. So yeah, that's a pretty good deal. 

All you have to do is pour (almost all of) the crystal powder into a plastic container, add 1 cup and 3 tablespoons of boiling water, and stir. Then, you pour the resulting solution over a rock in a second plastic container, and cover this container for one hour. Then, after one hour, you take the lid off and sprinkle the rest of the crystal powder onto the rock and . . . it turns out this is more complicated than I thought it would be. 

As instructed, I placed the crystals in the most temperature-consistent area of the house: in the bedroom, next the CD player. I then exposed it to Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher" -- er, I mean, Nirvana's With the Lights Out (Disc 3), which, it turns out, is a pretty pointless collection to have if you convinced your Mom to buy you every Nirvana recording in existence in 1995, like I did. 

No psychoreactive properties have been recorded (yet).

But the crystals should form soon. I'll keep you posted. 

Total Eclipse of the Moon!

Wednesday, February 20th will be your last chance to see a total lunar eclipse until 2010!

The eclipse begins at 8:43 pm EST and ends at 12:09 EST. (Which means the eclipse will begin before sunset on the West Coast. Bummer.)

The last total lunar eclipse occured August 28, 2007.

Lost Roses

Dear Jasmine B., 

I have your roses. 

I found them on my doorstep when I got home from work tonight. Bill sent them. He apparently cares very strongly for you because they're arranged in a classy glass vase and accented with mosses, orchids and other flowers I cannot identify without a field guide.  Oh - and they're from  Mark's Garden. This shit ain't cheap. 

So if you want 'em, come and get 'em. But if you and Bill are on the outs and you're just going to put them in rubbing alcohol or something, I will gladly keep them.

Yours truly, 

ML

Long Live the Chicago Dog

The search for the best Chicago-style hot dog in LA was on my "To Do" list for 2008, but it turns out that Losanjealous' Kid Danger has already done my work for me.

Check it out.



Now I can get to those guitar lessons.