(Sneak peek of the Nike/UNDFTD billboard on La Brea and 1st St. Design by Keith Scharwath)
On Friday August 29th, Beautiful Losers makes it’s Los Angeles premiere at Landmark’s Nuart Theater. To date, the response to our little film has been overwhelmingly positive and audiences have eagerly embraced our message of inspiration and creativity with open arms. With no major film distribution company behind us, we’ve been fortunate enough to have gained the support and good will from audiences who have seen the film and have continued to spread the good word amongst friends, family, and something called the “internets”. Hopefully this grass roots approach can continue to bring our film to more and more cities as we have just added Boston to our tour which already includes San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago.
The 7:30 and 10pm shows on opening night will feature Q&A sessions with myself, Aaron Rose, and Money Mark. Tickets for the L.A. premiere and theatrical run are now on sale and can be purchased at Landmark’s website here(Make sure you’re purchasing tickets for the correct shows. Dates are listed in the pull down menu above the showtimes!)
During this quick trip out to New York I’ve been staying out in the hipster-mecca of the world, Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. So since I don’t have much time before I jump on a plane and head back to Los Angeles for tonight’s Beautiful Losers screening (after party w/ Money Mark rooftop performance!), I thought it would be ultra-appropriate to post this hilarious little cartoon by Devin Flynnbased on the fashion phenomenon known simply as “Lady Pants”. Loosen up your belt, or belts, and enjoy. I’ll be seeing you L.A. Style Chudz soon, “Westside!”
If you’re not going to be lining up to see one of the thousands of sold out Dark Knight showings this Saturday the 19th, you might want to check out the Santa Monica Pier anywhere from 7pm to 7am for the event known as Glow.After perusing the website and checking out the scheduled events (DJ’s, live bands, parades, and a possible Grunion run sighting!), this fairly huge and ambitious art offering may not be right for me. Maybe if I had gone to a Burning Man or two I would be all over it. But lucky for me I’ll be enjoying a glow of another kind, namely the glow of a 60 foot Joker’s smile on an IMAX screen.
“Glow will fill the hours between dusk to dawn with compelling, enchanting and effervescent sights and sounds situated in spaces and times that expand possibilities for where, how and when the public experiences contemporary art.
With the historic Santa Monica Pier and adjacent world-famous Santa Monica Beach as their space, artists were commissioned to create unique and inviting works of art that welcome the public to be both audience and actor for twelve celebratory hours. Inspired by the wildly successful Nuit Blanche in Paris, Glow takes its spirit from the fabled grunion that live in local waters and come ashore several times a year to spawn in the sand creating a momentary sensation of iridescence.”
This Friday night, July 11th, at the Hollywood Car Wash on Sunset come get clean. Squeak E. Clean that is. One of LA’s finest party starters brings us another evening of Sudsy fun with ass-shaking, skating by the Girl Skateboards team, live screenprinting, more ass-shaking, and art and video installations created by Aaron Rose and edited by yours truly.
Huzzah! The days of dumb dialing drivers has come to an end! Hopefully reckless near miss car accidents as cell phone folk fumble with their phones will soon be a thing of the past. Hopefully. Starting today, July 1st, the new “hands free” law goes into full effect in California much to the chagrin of chatty Kathy’s (and everyone else for that matter) driving around the streets of Los Angeles. Although the penalty for first time offenders is a mere $20 and $50 for subsequent convictions, motorists who ignore the law and cause an accident “could face huge civil judgments or even jail if fatalities result”. Duh!
I’ll admit I may not be the safest driver behind the wheel (I’ve totaled a car or two, but they were unrelated to cell phone use! And I am still the human equivalent to K.I.T.T.), but those drivers I see trying to answer that all too important call while swerving into the next lane sometimes just makes me want to run them off the road myself. Luckily, we have what are called “laws”. And for more from Johnny Law himself, check out the CHP’s cell phone driving FAQ sheet and see what he has to say about “text paging”.
Happy driving and happy shopping for that shiny new Blue Tooth earpiece you’ve always wanted!
The inside walls were lined with images of pop icons ranging from Hendrix to Run DMC to the Dalai Lama to of course, Elvis. Lots and lots of Elvis. The styles of Warhol, Banksy, and Shepard Fairey run rampant through MBW’s work, as is the case with many pop artists working today, but in addition to his emulation he has created an entire installation space that lives, breathes, and breeds pop culture and shaped it into his own thing. Even though that “thing” is derivative of what others have done before him, it’s still something to behold. The sheer volume of work is impressive, especially in putting together a 2 story art show, my only gripe is that it looks all too familiar and a tad redundant. Apparently, I’m still not sure what else Mr. Brainwash has done.
Exhibit hours and location:
June 27th-29th
1pm to 9pm
The show will be open Friday through Sunday for the months of June and July.
Show reopens mid-September with new art and installations.
If you’ve been in the Hollywood area, specifically around the now defunct CBS building on Sunset and Gower, you may have seen some new billboards up where the likes of Jim Hill and the rest of the channel 2 news team have been resting for years. Consisting of Warhol’s iconic Campbell Soup image but on a can of spray paint, an interwoven black and white Miles Davis, and Pacino’s Scarface holding a machine gun pointing down at the street, these are no ordinary billboards. These are strategically placed ads for France’s Mr. Brainwash and his first solo art show entitled Life is Beautiful. Mr. Brainwash’s pastings and stencil work have been seen on the streets of LA for a while now as he oftentimes gets up with the likes of Banksy and Shepard Fairey. Here’s more info on Brainwash and his show which already had it’s opening night on Wednesday but will be up through the rest of the weekend:
I’ve never been a fanatic of crazy-ass Korean artist and LA native David Choe’s art as much as I’ve been a fan of his process. The way he creates on the spot, throwing intoxicated caution to the wind and his fearless adventures across the globe (see: The Vice Guide to Travel-Congo), is what I’ve mostly been drawn to. This weekend, the documentary on his exploits over the past 7 years titled Dirty Hands: The Art & Crimes of David Choe makes it’s premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The film follows Choe on his on-going escapades in art making around the world, his rise in the art community, his descent in his own personal life, and even his stint in solitary confinement in a Japanese jail on charges of vandalization (the guy was still able to create art in his tiny cell using soy sauce and at times his own urine). More about the film and his bad-assery here:
“Los Angeles artist David Choe is not as crazy as his violent, phantasmagoric, and sexual work across several media would suggest, he is considerably more so, embodying William Blake’s adage that “you never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”
Captivated by Choe’s mania for adventure and excess, close friend Harry Kim filmed the artist’s “life and crimes” from 2000 to 2007, a period coinciding with Choe’s rise to fame and fortune in the art world as he matured from a street artist bombing underpasses and illustrating porn magazines to a respected muralist, painter, and graphic novelist. The ride, however, was a bumpy one. From jail sentences and an addiction to shoplifting and graffiti to dinosaur hunting and wrestling pygmies in the heart of the Congo, Choe’s irrepressible spirit is as much a model of unrestrained living as it is a cautionary example of excess.”
For lovers of cool shoes, small companies who make cool shoes, and cool shoes on sale made by small cool companies, check out Keep’s sample sale this weekend in LA’s Chinatown. Music, drinks, and deals on shoes on a warm LA day, sounds like good times to be had.
And not only do the good peeps at Keep create fine shoes and clothing, they also keep good company as they are tight with an artistic community who support and share their same ideals. Among the Keep family contributors are photographers Tobin Yelland (who shoots most of Keep’s catalogs as well as being the director of photography of our film Beautiful Losers), Deanna Templeton (the lovely wife of Ed), and the brothers Ray and David Potes of the omni-present Hamburger Eyes (I actually just randomly met Dave in NY a few days ago through our mutual friend Ito!).
