The Most Beautiful Cat in Palermo

Italian Heritage

Laboratory Saccardi and Aleksandra took me on a field trip to Cefalu to see an important site full of wall paintings that are in sad disrepair.
The paintings were made by Aleister Crowley between 1920 and 1923 at the so-called "Abbey of Theleme" which was his small house overlooking the Sea in the lovely Sicily town of Cefalu.As the story goes, Crowley was banished from Italy by Mussolini in 1923 after rumors went wild and someone who had visited his Cefalu home had died. Supposedly the visitor drank some bad water. It's always unclear in these scenarios what might have actually happened. Crowley has been called "the most evil man in the world" but it's tough to compete with people like George W Bush on that front. Seems there was some yoga and maybe some candle lighting and possibly some group sex happening in that little house. Whatevs.
I don't know much about Crowley and am curious to know more. The paintings were pretty incredible and I would love to see rest of them, as it seems that most of the wall is falling apart and much of the paint is missing. Photos of them must exist somewhere- anyone have ideas about this?
The house is really a mess. Only the front room has murals and much of the roof has fallen in. It appears that one room was once painted with red walls and ceilings, but it really quite a disaster now. Visitors enter the site via an open window that someone has thoughtfully scrolled "666" below. There is much graffiti within the home and the original paintings are cracked, painted over, and chipped off. This is the bathroom of Aleister Crowley. Not much left.
And this mad otter on the wall reminded me of a garbage can I saw later that afternoon in town.

Naples!

Is it better to see something in person or to experience it later on television or in pictures? There were a lot of people at the museum using digital technology in the galleries. Everyone has their own way of looking at art, and I'm not sure if the mediated viewing of antiquities is any better or worse than focusing ones eyes on an object. Maybe if they see it later on TV, it seems better or more important?The garbage in Naples is just as exciting in person as it is in the newspaper. Piles everywhere! And weirdly segregated. The gentiles seems to really be making a lot of trash these days.
And what's this? A mystery of antiquity, those graceful athletic thighs... and what else?

The Tract House opening soon!

The Tract House is opening in Baltimore on May 31 and this is the banner that will be on the wall. In this photo, it's still drying in my backyard on a bunch of towels, but come the end of May, it wil be all sewn together and ready for the world. The text on this banner is the titles of the tracts that we are publishing to be distributed from The Tract House. There are 62 total and they are all AMAZING! Subjects range from menstrual blood solutions to saving an obscure type of pole bean and from gardening to revolution. I am really so excited about this project and can't wait to see all the tracts actually printed. The exhibition Cottage Industry opens at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore on May 31.

Eating Out

A new vegan restaurant opened up downtown so of course I dragged Louis out to try it.
It's called Shojin and it's on the third floor of that mall in Little Tokyo at the corner of 3rd and Alameda. There are a lot of restaurants up there, and I really like that mall. It has a very distinctive smell and I've been going there for almost twenty years, since I moved to Los Angeles in 1991. I lived a few blocks away. Things have certainly changed in the area since then, and now every time I visit Little Tokyo I feel like an eighty year old, talking about the way things used to be...
Anyhow, Shojin is a Japanese vegan, organic restaurant that's kind of swank looking and the food is pretty good. I thought it was weird that a vegan restaurant had leather chairs but Louis said it's not that kind of vegan restaurant. I'm not sure what that means exactly; I just thought it seemed odd. We ordered an appetizer of eggplant, which wasn't cooked long enough, so it was kind of bitter, which was a disappointment.
For dinner, Louis had the seitan, which was yummy and very kind of gluten-y. I don't think I've ever had seitan like that, very chewy like gum, kind of. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. I had a bento box with four dishes. Tofu with kale, two different seaweed salads, and a dish made with the stuff left over from the soybeans when the milk is squeezed out to make tofu. The soy fiber I guess. I liked it all.
Dessert was a walnut chocolate cake which was super delicious.
Shojin has only been open seven weeks so far so hopefully they will get the eggplant down soon.
After dinner, we went downstairs and played video games for awhile. That arcade is confusing, since most of the directions for the games are in Japanese, but we managed to find some games that weren't too impossible to figure out. In one I was a samurai and swung a plastic sword around that killed people onscreen. Another I played a big Japanese drum while little flowers exploded whenever I'd hit it right, and really loud music played. That was pretty awesome. I was best at the stunt driver one, where you sit in a car and drive around really fast and try to avoid pedestrians. Someday I want to try Dance, Dance Revolution, but I know I'd really suck at it so I really need to test it out in a nurturing environment.

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why hide under the shroud of anonymity?
Be loud, be a dick, be challenging, be yourself.

What's UP

Not updating the blog lately is what's up, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy! Working on The Tract House project- tons of great tracts have come in so far about all sorts of things.
Making some new banners. Procrastinating by making a shopping bag for Lou to take to the farmer's market. It's red canvas and I made it using Tony's old sewing machine. Very long straps.

Seen in San Francisco...