Salvation, Imperial Valley Style

This past weekend, we heeded the strange siren call of the Salton Sea and drove once again into Imperial Valley.  As an amateur photographer and a collector of stories, Imperial Valley has become an obsession.  There are incredible images at every turn and generous storytellers -- real characters with a weathered but reliable charisma.  You meet them in the strangest places.  This is the story of meeting one in the middle of the desert. 

I've spent a fair bit of time around the Salton Sea (though it never seems like enough) and some surreal story always emerges from my visits to the Valley.  Last July, we went to Bombay Beach and I had a terrifying encounter with thousands (millions!) of flies trapped in a car... OUR CAR! And I'm not talking regular ole flies; I'm talking flies that had just been hobnobbing on rotting fish.  Apparently bored with miles of fish carcasses, swarms of flies decided to bum rush our car (more advice:  even if you are in the 110 degree heat of Bombay Beach, don't leave your car window cracked.  The flies will find you).  And you know what?  There's only one way to get rid of those suckers... you just have to get in the car and drive.  Imagine it right now, sitting at your desk, what it would be like to get in a sauna-like car with thousands of flies and the stench of dead fish -- now imagine having to sit there with them all over you while driving as fast as you can with the windows down so they would fly out.  I'm telling you, it tested my mettle and, well... I personally think I'm special forces material now.      

Anyway, for this trip, I wanted to see Salvation Mountain and Slab City, sans flies.  Both places were featured in two recent films:  a documentary called Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (narrated by John Waters!) and Into the Wild, last year's feature film directed by Sean Penn.  

Slab City and Salvation Mountain are in the middle of the Mojave desert, about three miles east of Niland, California, at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains.  Driving through Brawley and Niland, we were a little worried about getting lost.   Having left the GPS at home (another genius move), we figured we'd rely on the old school method of a paper map.

Words of advice: If you can't GPS,  then you best not forget to laminate. 

It turns out Salvation Mountain isn't hard to find. Once you get to Niland, just go to Main Street (not that many streets to begin with) and head east.  Before the road bends, you catch a glimpse of the colorful, candy-like mountain in the distance.  I can't imagine what it would be like to just stumble upon Salvation Mountain.  Driving in the desert involves observations like:  "wow, look at that cactus," and,  "boy, is it hot out here," and "I wonder if there are rattlesnakes," not "hey, check out the brightly-colored mountian spouting Bible verse."  And that's why you have to see Salvation Mountain;  it's so wonderfully strange and alien.

Salvation Mountain is the work of one man with lots of paint and a simple message:  God is Love.  Originally, Leonard Knight thought he'd spread the word of God through a hot air balloon, because...you know... why not? 

He spent 10 years trying to raise the money for the balloon and then decided he would try and sew it together himself.   He began sewing in Nebraska, but the fabric rotted one winter, and when Leonard moved to Slab City he discovered his project wasn't salvageable.  It was time to give up the hot air balloon dream and figure out what to do next.  It occurred to him that he could paint a mountain into the landscape.  To that I just say: it's the desert.  Trippy ideas bounce off the land left and right.  One could attribute Leonard's dream to the desert heat or his pure evangelism, but either way I'm sure glad he stuck to it. 

Leonard estimates it's taken over 100,000 gallons of paint to make the mountain, which is constructed out of adobe and straw.  Leonard has worked on it year round for almost 30 years.  In the summer months, he works early in the morning and naps during the extreme heat.  If you visit, he'll be there giving tours, telling you about his mission, and posing for pictures. 

Leonard lives right at the base of Salvation Mountain, in a vintage truck with a makeshift cabin built on the back.  The truck is also painted in bold colors with Bible verses. Leonard has no electricity, water, or a bathroom.  He's off the grid, but has an entire mountain to show for it.

Tourists and residents of Slab City and Niland bring him food and paint.  Some even stick around to work with him for a couple of hours. 

I read that some years back, a dust up ensued over whether Salvation Mountain was an environmental hazard.  There's probably tons of lead on that thing.  Nothing much came of the controversy and in 2002, Senator Barbara Boxer placed Salvation Mountain on the Congressional Record as a national treasure.  Leonard must have told us this four or five times.  He's so proud that someone thinks it's a treasure.  

Leonard is 77 years old.  Salvation Mountain is now protected, but it's all the more special when you can see it with him. Go visit.  Bring him some paint or make a donation. 

Leonard Knight is an outsider artist, a missionary, and a classic dreamer.  You gotta love dreamers in the desert.

It’s Friday—Goodbye Work, Hello Cupcakes!

Cupcakes have been all the confectionary craze for a couple of years now in New York and LA, with Amy Sedaris as the cupcake pied piper.   San Diego is now jumping into the batter with its own twist.  Square cupcakes!  Personally, I didn't need a square version to get me on board but if this is what it takes to get a pistachio cupcake with pomegranate frosting, so be it.  I'll worship the square.  Other unique flavors: Lilikoi--vanilla cupcake with lilikoi (passion fruit) buttercream frosting, Peanut Butter and Jelly--peanut butter cake and strawberry frosting, Vanilla Chai--tender Chai cake with vanilla/orange buttercream frosting, and the other siren in the bunch for me, a Lemon White Chocolate--white chocolate cake with a hint of lemon frosting with white chocolate ganache.  These sweets are only $2.75 each.  Grand opening is today!

This interactive feature from The New York Times is so, so fun.  You can look at a sampling of Al Jaffee's back cover fold-in's for Mad Magazine.   Jaffee still does the fold-in's for Mad, drawing them by his 87-year-old hand!  I went through the feature twice trying to find the elements of the resulting images in the original drawing.   A worthy time suck.

McSweeney's has a mini film school course in three lines.  Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and other greats are hilariously boiled down.  For example:

West Side Story

TONY: Cinema has a long literary tradition. This one's based on Shakespeare.

MARIA: Just like that Amanda Bynes movie!

TONY: (Sigh.) Let's just dance-fight.

Errol Morris seems to be everywhere right now, which is really a good thing.  He has a new documentary coming out about Abu Ghraib (the site for his film is really good - but be prepared to look at the unbelievably disturbing photographs again).  Can't seem to find an opening  date for San Diego... anyone? Tentative opening in San Diego is May 2nd.   Morris and Werner Herzog chat it up over at The Believer.  I regularly have the dinner party fantasy:  what's the most interesting mix of 8 people for dinner?  My fantasy guest lists change all the time, but Werner Herzog and Errol Morris together is a bang-up start.   Morris has also written two interesting opinion pieces in NYT about using re-enactments in documentaries.

KPBS Senior Editor Alan Ray on the new Scorsese-helmed Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light:  "All rock and wrinkles."  He doesn't recommend it. 

A lot of you probably know about Flickr, the online photo sharing site, but have you ever browsed the photographs in Flickr's San Diego group?  There are some great images of our fair city by visitors and local photogs.  Enjoy!

And finally, check out these Garfield comic strips without Garfield... way better.  Thanks for the tip, Edward!

KPBS Staff Write Memoirs In Six Words

Last week a book arrived on my desk called Not Quite What I Was Planning:  Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure.  It's a collection of six-word memoirs submitted to an online project launched by SMITH magazine.  They made a book out of it and I'll tip my hat and make a blog post out of it.   

Of course, the original hat tip goes to Ernest Hemingway.  Legend has it Hemingway was challenged to write a novel in six words. Lord knows how many bottles of booze it took for Papa to brilliantly write, "For sale:  baby shoes, never worn."  Inspired by the legend and aware of a national memoir craze, the editors over at SMITH launched sixwordmemoir. com and received thousands of entries.  It didn't take long for the likes of Stephen Colbert, Dave Eggers, and Joyce Carol Oates to submt their versions. 

I decided to write my own.  Unfortunately, nothing came right away.

Read more »

On The Dangers Of Dining In San Diego And Why Tuesday Is A Good Day For Reading

After having a three day weekend, I've been scouring the Internets to get my mind back in the swing of things.  By the way, was anyone at Bondi on Saturday night?  I was there, enjoying my dinner, wine and company when out of nowhere, I couldn't stop coughing! Face turning red, gasping for breath, arms in the air, the whole bit. I couldn't even stop long enough to have water.  Then I looked around to discover other patrons coughing.  Suddenly, a hostess started yelling for everyone to evacuate the restaurant.  We all went running outside (my dinner companion does not forget to grab his beer... always thinking, that one!) when fire trucks and the police soon descend on the joint.  Apparently, some knucklehead decided to see what pepper spray smells like.   Nice.  Chalk one up for the knuckleheads. 

Anyway, here's some Tuesday reading...

The new R.E.M. album Accelerate comes (officially) out today.  Here's an interview with Michael Stipe.

Stuff White People Like is now coming to a bookshelf near you... and the blog's author, white boy and unpublished author Christian Lander, is getting paid a reported $300,000 for his musings. 

This is almost unbelievable.  We are banning literary authors from entering our country for reasons of "moral turpitude"?  When will our nation and culture grow tired of our puritanical roots, especially when they are so misguided and hypocritical?  It was the outfit that gave the poor bloke away:  "he was dressed in top hat, long velvet coat and gloves – and detained while officials searched the Internet for information about him and his work."

Another disturbing trend, which we've felt acutely right here in San Diego, with the loss of David Elliott at the Union-Tribune.

David Simon, creator of The Wire, has a couple of different projects in the making.  I've heard rumblings of an HBO series set in New Orleans.  However, this HBO project might be a priority.  I have to admit, the characters in The Departed seem like perfect Simon material.

Here's a review of yet another book purporting a deep anti-intellectualism in the United States.   The book's author Susan Jacoby writes:  "America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism."

On that cheery note, Happy Tuesday!

A Naked Woman House… With Pictures!

I was in Mexico this weekend and you won't believe what I stumbled upon!

You think your eyes are playing tricks on you, but they're not.  You are actually looking at a large nude torso of a woman with giant boobs.  Believe it or not, she is the home of an artist named Armando Muñoz Garcia.  He watches TV in her tummy and sleeps in her ta ta's.

This is one of the many things to love about Tijuana and Baja, California:  the spontaneous, organic, mixed-media, resourcefully constructed, unregulated, individualized, half-built, mashed up architecture.  It's so topsy turvey from our American way of life - the idea that something so significant as a home, the emblem of the American dream, can be toyed with in such a way.   I'm reminded of a show we did recently on These Days about homeowners' associations and the ridiculous rules they enforce.  I imagine a house like the one above would send some of those association board members into cardiac arrest. 

So here's what happened...we were driving along toward Puerto Nuevo and stopped so one of our passengers could do some roadside shopping.  I looked up on a hillside and saw what looked like a large face.  We got out of the car for a better view and realized the face might be attached to an entire body!  Obviously, one doesn't pass up such things, so we asked our fellow travelers to sit tight while we checked it out.  We then proceeded to cross three highways, climb some relatively steep inclines (in flip-flops) and hike up a little hill to find ourselves in front of the house of Armando Muñoz Garcia.  

Armando is a sculptor and painter who is also known for a 56-foot sculpture in Tijuana called  La Mona.  La Mona is also a dwelling, and I believe it's half-built.  She stands among a dense residential mix of homes and shacks built into the city's hillside.  I've read reports that many of the residences surrounding La Mona are squatter shacks, but I don't know that for sure.  I've seen La Mona from a distance, across a canyon, and she's something to behold.  Kind of like a Lady Liberty for Tijuana. 

Since La Mona, Armando has been busy building this residence.   He's spent the last 12 years working on her. Here's an even closer look...

Armando met us outside and seemed thrilled with our snapping pictures.  Not a shocker.  One assumes if you build a naked woman house, you're counting on some looky-loos.  We had to decline his offer for a tour because our guests, including three children, were waiting in a hot car below.  But Armando was kind enough to invite us back - an invitation I plan to take him up on as soon as possible.  Apparently, the structure is four stories - the living room and kitchen are in the tummy, the bedroom's in the chesty parts, and the head and hair will be his studio.  He plans to work on a flowing mass of hair next.

Here are the best directions I could find online.  Be sure to stop by and say hello to Armando.  He's charming and gracious and the house is crazy fun. 

Finding Gay Talese In Imperial Valley

We've spent the week here at These Days immersed in all things Imperial Valley.  We did a live broadcast on Wednesday night from the California Mid-Winter Fair and Fiesta, which I've shortened in my brain to the Imperial Valley Fair.  As part of our coverage, KPBS Jacobs Fellow Nicole Lozare and I went out to the fair on Saturday to collect audio and take photographs. You can see a slideshow of our day here.

Nicole was on audio and I ran around with two cameras (and one heavy-a** lens).  We talked to the Jugless Jug Band, Washboard Willie, and spent a lot of time capturing the 4H competitions.  I loved every minute of it, all the while trying really hard to fit in and not seem so...city.  As I roamed the competition grounds, I acted unfazed and "whatever" when I stepped into pile after pile of pig and cow doodoo.  I was all "no biggie, just a little bull dung...seen it before....new to actually STEPPING in it, but...I'm cool."  A woman saw me look at the bottom of my sneakers then eye the wash area where animals are hosed down.  I asked her, "Can I wash off my shoes over there?"  She surpressed a giggle and said, "You really just want to just walk around. It will dry and fall off throughout the day." This was an entirely new concept and hard for me to wrap my head around. "Seriously? Walk around with it on my shoes all day long?" I probably should have listened to this veteran fairgoer.  Instead, I marched over to the wash area and spent 15 minutes hosing down my shoes which were then squishy and wet all day long.  Unpleasant, to be sure, but more unpleasant than a day of doodoo shoes?  I just don't know.  

Here's the other clue Nicole and I were fish out of water.   Our trusted guide was the fair's publicist Bill Gay.  He walked us towards the animals, proudly telling us we'd see lamb, steer, and heifers in the barns.  At which point, Nicole turned to me and said, "What's a heifer again?"  I replied, "Ummm, I think it's a pig." Bill was sweet enough not to roll his eyes.

Though we gathered a lot of good tape and images, the day had its challenges.  It's hot out there in the desert, people.  Like my friend Tay says... hot, like hot.  It was also windy.  Windy, sandy, and hot.  Seven hours of running around in those conditions, you've got something to show for it. You're sweaty.  You have a fine grain of sand all over you and you smell...different.  When you leave a place like that, you feel like you've actually been somewhere. There's something exhilarating about that.

Despite the many stories we got, there were some that we missed and to be honest, those haunt me.  Duke Adams (right) is one of them.  Retired Elvis impersonator turned donut maker. He goes by Deputy Hounddog because back in 2005 he helped the Vegas police nab a thief who stole $300,000 in jewelry from the Elvis-a-Rama Museum. The thief approached Adams in a drug store, asking if he wanted to purchase some authentic Elvis jewelry.  Adams remembered the museum robbery and proceeded to set up a sting operation with the police.  They caught the thief the next day.  CNN interviewed Adams and dubbed him Deputy Hounddog.  The name stuck and Adams named his touring donut-making stand Deputy Hounddog's Mini-Donuts.  We were so tired by the time we met Adams, we couldn't manage another interview.  Instead, I ate six of the little deep-fried, sugar-coated goodies on the drive home.  All I have to show from my run-in with Deputy Hounddog is this picture and some additional fat cells. No tape.  

The other story I missed is less quirky than Duke Adams, but more compelling.  During one of the 4H competitions in which girls were showing their lamb, I noticed a young girl in the center whose lamb was not cooperating.  All the other contending lamb were lined up, their owners firmly holding the lamb heads against their legs to keep them still while the judge walked by.  But this particular lamb was bucking and pulling away.  The girl was struggling and embarrassed, since the competition was held in a large arena with a good size audience in the bleachers.  This girl's lamb wasn't even in line when the judge walked by, it was trying to escape through the fence.  When the competition was over and the kids and lamb filed out of the arena, I caught a glimpse of the girl's face.  It was red, and she was crying.  

When Gay Talese was on These Days, he talked about always pursuing the stories of the loser, like the Chinese girl he wrote about who missed a penalty kick during the women's soccer finals.  Talese talked about the drama of losing and how you can learn a lot about a subject based on how they make sense of loss.  He said loss can either build character or foster bitterness. The moment I saw that girl's face, I knew she was the story.  Here she had worked with this lamb, raised it, cared for it, named it, and it betrayed her at a crucial moment.  How did she feel about that?  Was she angry at the lamb? Would she ignore it now?  Was she going to use the winning money for her college education?  What would she do now?  Would she still compete in 4H?  Would she abandon this lamb and raise another to compete?  How would her family treat her that night?  Would someone give her advice on winning and losing?

When I saw the girl's face as she walked out, all I had was my camera.  Nicole was in another barn doing interviews and she had the recording equipment.  By the time Nicole returned, the girl had left. I fired off only one shot from behind.

Later, we talked to one of the winners of the heifer competition, a pretty young girl with straight white teeth and silky blond hair.  She was in the winner's circle so I snapped her picture.  She was so pretty and well-spoken, one got the sense the world would celebrate her wins for a long time to come. I couldn't help but consider how often stories like the girl and her losing lamb get drowned out by the winner's circle.  

A Mixed Bag Of Lunchtime Reading From Culture Lust

Focus Features has announced the next Coen brothers film will be released domestically on September 12th.  It's called Burn After Reading and described as a "dark spy-comedy" written by the Coens.  Actors include George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt.   Malkovich plays an ousted CIA official whose memoir accidently falls into the hands of two bumbling D.C. gym employees intent on exploiting their find.  I'm guessing Clooney and Pitt are the gym rats.  Back to comedy for the Coens... not sure that's a good thing after say, Intolerable Cruelty.  

Another account of memoir fabrication!  This time a white woman named Margaret Seltzer made up a foster family, gave herself mixed racial heritage (half-white, half-Native American, and a life on the gang-ridden streets of South Central LA.  She recounts all of this in a well-reviewed memoir called Love and Consequences published just last week  Seltzer's older sister was the first to squeal, calling Margaret's publisher to tell them the truth.  I'd like to know the story behind that sisterly bond - not that what sis did wasn't called for, it's just a bold move against one's own sister.  

This is the second frabicated memoir in the news this week... 

LA Times' web scout David Sarno writes a good piece about YouTube and the good and the bad of online videos.  Recent discussion on Culture Lust regarding parents videotaping their children gets some Sarno attention.   

Here's a list of the 30 fastest growing careers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Funny, they left off arts bloggers.  Clearly the list is bunk.  

The baby from Nirvana's Nevermind album is now 17 years old! 

And, finally, here's a list of the worst nude scenes of all time.  Apparently McDreamy wasn't always so dreamy.  

Some Reading To Launch Your Week

Are you a fan of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould(pictured right)?  Sony Classical recently issued "Glenn Gould: The Complete Original Jacket Collection," an 80-CD - yes, I said 80!!! -  limited edition boxed set of all the studio recordings the pianist made for Columbia and CBS Masterworks.  The price is $222, which is surprisingly cheap for all you get. 

Starbucks is defending its book choice despite evidence that the author fabricated parts of the story.  

This is funny.  The theater critic at St. Paul Pioneer Press doesn't like the latest play from the Guthrie Theater and publishes a negative review.  The Guthrie then takes out a full page ad for the play in the Pioneer Press.  The ad features a full review from the theater critic at the twin cities' alternative weekly, CityPages.  It was, no surprise, a positive review.  

Check out the photographs of artist Vee Spears.  Her collection of child portraits called The Birthday Party are mesmerizing.  She was inspired by watching children play at being adults.  She shoots on polaroid film and then does post-processing digitally. 

David Ulin of  the LA Times has an essay on rereading favorite books from one's youth - do they hold up?  When you reread as an adult, with more experience and a whole different life lens, certain once cherished books may still resonate, or they may lose their spark. 

And, finally, who knew the hugely influential economist John Maynard Keynes had such an adventurous sex life?  Evan Zimroth is currently working to decipher his sex diaries.  Yes, Keynes kept sex diaries - written with codes - and they are kept in the archives at King's College in Cambridge.  Isn't it just like those kinky economists to keep sex diaries about their conquests?  I mean, you've seen one economist sex diary, you've seen them all...  

Happy Monday

Julian Schnabel On Arts Coverage

Sunday morning.  I'm watching CBS Sunday Morning - one of the most civilized programs on television - and Serena Altschul is interviewing painter and award-winning filmmaker Julian Schnabel.  He's talking about the scene in his film Basquiat where Christopher Walken, as an art critic, is interviewing Jean-Michel Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright.  The scene is a pretty damning portrayal of art critcs.  In the Sunday Morning interview, Schnabel continues his criticism, going after The New York Times arts section and its title: Arts & Leisure.

Schnabel says, "What do arts and leisure have in common?  It's an oxymoron."  I agree the conflation of arts and leisure, as well as arts and entertainment, is frustrating.  I did think it was ironic, however, that Schnabel was making the point that arts and leisure don't mix, all the while dressed in his signature pajamas.