Thursday, May 10, 2007

A year ago. . . this week • Click Here

Went to the pool today

The other day Polly and I noticed an open house (for a house for sale), a block away from our house. We went in and looked around. Surprisingly, the floor plan looked a lot like the 3 bedroom house we rent. The nice thing about this house was the pool out back and the large 500 sq. ft. room freshly constructed above the garage. And for a mere $700,000.00 this North Hollywood mediocre home can be yours! I tell you , your housing dollars don’t go to far in this town. In Cincinnati, for 700K, you get a mansion.

Needless to say, I’m not in the market to buy this house. . . but since no one is living there; I don’t see any harm in using the pool at my leisure. So today, during the hottest part of the afternoon; I walked down to the pool. Smoking my cigar and looking like I supposed to be there, I let myself in the side gate, checked out the scene and dove in. For an hour I alternated swimming laps and laying out in the sun. It felt great!! Hell, I think I might have to make this a regular part of my pleasure filled day.

Afterwards I returned home to finish up with some nude sunbathing. It’s amazing, that in the middle of LA, some grass, plants, trees and a backyard privacy fence can create the illusion of seclusion.

Trivia Question: Who is the Hollywood Starlet in the pool?

Click her belly button to enlarge

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Griffith Park Fire


Griffith Park Fire, originally uploaded by losermike.

Griffith Park Brush Fire - last night

42 years ago tday

Life has come full circle. . . . I look like this again.

TPF

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Richard Ross - The Linking Rings

Before



After

Coin Magic Session at Venice Beach

I got a call this morning from Curtis Kam. He was in town but flying out tonight. He was staying in Venice Beach around the corner from where Chris Korn lives. Bingo blamo out of nowhere a magic session over lunch on the beach is planned. Traffic on the 405 on a monday at noon was a breeze, got there in 30 min. I met Chris at his swinging bachelors pad. You got to like a guy with a second floor deck large enough to accommodate a queen size outdoor bed next to the huge hot tub near the grill, couch and food preparation area. We could have walked to the hotel, but in true LA fashion, we drove the 4 blocks.

Curtis met us outside and we walked a block to the beach where we found a place for a bite and a session. We wasted no time getting into things. We started out with a hearty discussion about the multiple card selection comparing Doc Eason, Ricky Jay, Paul Cummins, Malini, Eddie Fechter & Brian Gillis. We all threw in our two cents as to what we like and don’t like about the various methods of controls and of course the revelations. It’s a routine in all of our working repertoires.

Curtis was recently at the FFFF and told us all about his adventures there. It wasn’t long before the coins came out. I was lucky enough to be sitting with two top notch coin workers. How a hack like me got there is still a mystery, but I was happy to be watching some very pretty magic. Both Curtis and Chris have such a soft touch and at different times had me completely fooled.

They were nice enough to let me video a bit in HD, it looked GREAT! Damn. . . I might have to get better. My mind is swimming. It was a beautiful afternoon at the beach with friends. Good food, good conversation and lots of boobs to stare at. What can I say. . . my life ROCKS!!!

Monday, May 07, 2007

End of a great visit

This picture was taken at 6:45AM on Saturday morning. Polly and I got up to see my father off. It was great seeing him and having plenty of time to talk to him, enjoy his company and smoke an endless chain of cigars. Life is good. We did some touristy things like the Getty Center and Villa. We had some recreational activities like drinking and swing dancing, as well as some good home cooked food. He went to work with me a couple of nights, shot some test HD footage of me working, and took in the whole City Walk experience.

I love my father. My favorite parts of his visit were the late evening cigar chats in the back yard. Polly continues to create a garden atmosphere in our back yard with a fresh selection of drought resistant plants, a place to put your feet, and now, new and improved ambient torches.

We talked about his childhood and teenage high school antics in Waterbury, Conn. It's a different world we live in today. We talked about our kids, our lives and where things go from here. He looked so happy driving off in to the morning on his way to Lake Tahoe, Chicago then back home to Atlanta. What a guy.

In my "In Box" • Can anyone help?

Mr. Frank,

I saw an older post from you regarding Paul Swinford, which is how I located you. I am working on a manuscript about a Twisting the Aces effect using the Ascanio Spread in which one card at a time turns over and then their backs all change color.

Jon Racherbaumer provided me with an essay from his Book on the Ascanio, and offers up the development of his own effect, "The Upturned One."

Lee Asher led me to the Special No. 4 of Epilogue, in which a Roy Walton effect appears called "Ascanio Rainbow," in which all four backs are different colors, and the deck changes color.

In Walton's description of the effect he mentions that "The effect was developed through discussions on A/Spread tricks with Paul Swinford, and was indeed inspired by one of Paul's effects."

I am trying to track down Swinford's idea so that I can plac! e it into the story. I was wondering if you were familiar with the Swinford idea that Roy Walton mentions in Epilogue.

I appreciate your help,
Sincerely,
David London

Sunday, May 06, 2007

The Getty Villa

Thursday Polly, my Pops and I headed up the coast to Malibu to visit the Getty Villa. We enjoyed the Villa and lunch at a seafood joint on the beach.

Oil magnate J. Paul Getty used some of his vast wealth to amass an incredible art and antiquities collection, first displayed in his ranch house on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. In the early 70s, he had a Romanesque villa constructed next to his house to be a permanent museum for his collection. The Malibu Villa, modeled after the partially excavated Villa dei Papiri in Italy, became the home of the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1974. In 1997, the Getty Villa was closed and the collection was relocated to the new hill-top Getty Center in Brentwood (Los Angeles).

After a nine-year, $275 million renovation and expansion the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa has re-opened as home to the Museum’s Antiquities Collection. The Villa and gardens will be familiar to those who visited in the past. The original building was stripped down to the bare framework and re-built as an earthquake-resistant, enhanced version of itself. The rest of the canyon has been built up from bottom to top, covering the steep hillside with strata of wood-grained concrete and stone in a high-concept version of an archaeological dig.

J. Paul Getty modeled the Malibu Villa after the Villa dei Papiri in Herculenium near Pompeii. Only part of the villa was excavated, but from floor plans, architects were able to recreate the dimensions of the ancient Roman villa. Details of floor and wall designs come from several other Greek and Roman edifices.

The Museum interior consists of 29 galleries on two levels, a reading room and two interactive exhibits. Downstairs galleries open off an Atrium with an open skylight over a central pool. Beyond the Atrium, sculptured figures flank a long fountain amid Mediterranean plants in the Inner Peristyle, a courtyard surrounded by a columned porch. The doorway straight ahead under the yellow marble stairs leads to the East Garden.

The Getty Center and Getty Villa are as much about the architecture as the art collection. Like much art, they are better appreciated with an understanding of their creators’ intentions. Knowing the architects’ concept of re-imagining the site as an archaeological dig, puts otherwise incongruous details in context. Oddly placed walls in the Entry Pavilion overlooking the Villa to one side and a concrete courtyard below re-create the sense of looking down into the dig pit – if you know that’s what it’s supposed to represent.

Stairs from the garage through the Entry Pavilion and the Path to Museum bring you to the top of the Outdoor Theater, from where you can look down to the Villa Entrance. This, again, gives the impression of looking down into the site. But if you don’t feel like ascending all those stairs just to climb back down through the theater, the archway to the right as you come up the stairs will take you through the Herb Garden to the Museum entrance. There are also elevators.

Beyond the Villa and Outdoor Theater, between the Auditorium and the Museum Store, a flat, square pool of Chinese black marble collects water seeping from between layers of travertine, bronze, red porphyry stone and board-formed concrete to add to the archaeological concept. The different textures represent the strata of volcanic deposits that covered the Villa dei Papiri when Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.