On my drive to work this morning, a gap in the clouds left this amazing view of the San Gabriels covered in snow from the last week’s worth of storms, lit up by the rising sun. By the time I made it up to Los Angeles, clouds had blocked the view, and I didn’t see any mountains for the rest of the day.
While stopped at a traffic signal last night, I looked off toward the crescent Moon where it sat near the horizon, curve pointed downward and slightly to the right. An airplane flew past, on approach to land at a nearby airport.
The flight path, distance and viewing angle made it look like the airplane was the same size as the Moon, and it passed by just below the crescent.
If only I’d had a camera, preferably one with really fast film and a good zoom lens…
An incredible photo recreation of Georges Seurat’s painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette. The photo was staged back in 2006, but I hadn’t seen it until it popped up on Reddit a few days ago. I find it amusing that people have been posting lyric fragments from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George in notes on the photo!
There’s also a side-by-side comparison of the painting and the recreation.
Update: the photo is by Mark’s Postcards from Beloit, who has posted an album of more shots from the photoshoot featuring Friends of Riverfront in Beloit, Wisconsin. Used here under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (attribution, no commercial use or derivatives) licence.
On the last weekend of October, I made it out to the second annual Long Beach Comic Con. It’s shaping up to be a very artist–, writer– and dealer-focused convention.
A couple of years ago, Wizard World Los Angeles seemed to be all about people looking for deals on comics and collectibles (in which case, why not just go to Frank and Son or the Shrine?). When the show resurfaced in Anaheim this year, it seemed to be all about the celebrity autographs.
If you just want to see the photos, check out the photo set on Flickr. Otherwise, read on!
The first thing everyone noticed was the row of themed cars out in front of the convention center: A Camaro painted up as Bumblebee, a replica of KITT from Knight Rider, cars from less geeky shows like Starsky and Hutch and (IIRC) Magnum, P.I.…and a car that had been modified to look like a Rebel Alliance small fighter, complete with an R2 unit!
The main floor at Long Beach was bigger this year than last, though nowhere near as big as Anaheim. Unlike Anaheim, they used most of their space.
All the publishers were clustered near the entrance, with Aspen and BOOM! the most prominent, followed by Top Cow, Image and Avatar in the next row with other small press, along with the celebrity autograph area off to one side.
The rest of the floor was structured with a huge Artist’s Alley at its core, surrounded by retailers on either side. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was two Artist’s Alley areas with dealers wrapped around them in a sort of F shape.
If you went to Anaheim Comic-Con this year, remember how big the celebrity signing area was, and how small the artists’ area was? Flip it. My gut instinct says that there were more artists with tables here than there were in San Diego, but then it could just be that they’re a bigger percentage of the smaller space.
The view when I stepped out of the office last Thursday night. Not retouched at all except for cropping.
On Saturday we went the the Mark Taper Forum to see The Glass Menagerie. It seemed an appropriate night for a “little silver slipper of a moon” (next to the Bank of America tower).
It was a great production, and one that really made use of the idea of it being a “memory play.” Most of the productions I’ve seen (including the one I did in high school) tend to switch between past and present as if they were two distinct experiences. This one mixed them together freely.
(Interesting thought: I’ve probably been to the Ahmanson Theater a dozen times or more, and I’ve seen three shows at the Mark Taper Forum…but I’ve never been inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the Walt Disney Concert Hall.)
This afternoon I found myself entertaining the notion that Orange County, California had somehow switched places with Orange County, Florida. The weather was certainly more typical for Florida in July than California.
It was 90 degrees and sunny when I left the office a little after 6:00 pm, though the eastern half of the sky was dark with clouds. It started raining before I pulled out of the driveway. Just a little. I was halfway home before I decided enough of the raindrops were staying on the windshield that it would be worth turning on the wipers.
It was still spattering a little when I got home, but nowhere near enough to soak the ground. The drops were evaporating quickly. A far cry from the heavy rain and thunderstorms a few miles farther inland.
The rain’s stopped here, and the half-and-half cloud cover and sunset are giving the sky a dingy yellow color.
