HOBOXIA

THE END ... (of ACT 1)

2009-07-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

Here is the route of the Hoboxia Expedition to date:

A list of stops where something I remember happened:

Write with your vote of where you think, of the places listed, if any, Hobox should call home. If you guess correctly, you win a prize!

As the journey ends, or let's say, enters a new phase, I look back wistfully. I am grateful to all the people who extended kindnesses to my boy and me, and we're happy to have made fascinating new friends.

THE BOOK

The book underwent many important mutations, it's about halfway there, and better than ever I think. The story has been with me for a long time, in one form or another, since Trigonometry class, which I failed as a consequence of doodling and scribbling the characters and plot instead of doing whatever the hell trigonometry was. The project has tried to break out in several forms since then, but never really found itself a medium it liked until now.

THE PICTURES

At last count, I've taken 14,441 photos on the trip. Most of those out-of-focus attempts to get it right, coming mostly from shooting in dark art museums. I went a little art museum crazy.

To see my first creative project, something I call Sgulpture, born out of my orgy of museum activity, check out :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hoboxia/sets/72157621363964440/show/

THE PEOPLE

I want to thank those of you who followed the adventure, whether faithfully or sporadically, and those visitors who just poked in for a moment. The blog definitely helped me be creative and go for some photos and visits that I may not have otherwise.

Many projects have spun out of the Hoboxia experience, including of course a book about the trip itself, though those will all take a while to develop. Publishers, get in touch.

And I would absolutely love to keep rolling with Hobox, ideally taking the tour to Europe, so if anyone knows of any sponsors out there, I was thinking of doing a critical thinking through art teaching tour so if you're a non-profit organization with some money you need to spend, get in touch!

Love to all of you and may your own adventures reward you with less stuff and more happiness.

Sincerely,
The King of Hoboxia, Solomon,
and his trusted servant, Fink

And now, we bring you the conclusion of AmericaNerd™ (cue historical documentary music) ...

August 13, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the day when the Apollo 11 astronauts, in compliance with the Extra-Terrestrial Exposure Law (created for them and repealed in 1991), were released from quarantine after their incredible return from walking on our moon.

The following month the public rained down excitement and ticker tape on them like Christmas fallout in a New York City parade while the world watched, wondering what the United States could pull off next.

JFK challenged us to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and two Presidents and a cultural divide later, it was achieved. The country went on to do big things and its cultural imperialism continues to grow to this day stronger than any empire in history, but the moon hangs there, unvisited since 1972. And who cares? Why the future of course! (*cue bouncy transition music)

My journey through America's past has me thinking a great deal about whether or not the form of government cobbled together by the Founding upstarts is in fact anything special for the future of the way humans organize, whether the system is something that transcends its own provincial purposes, whether the United States is just another Empire, or if something has really happened here ...

(preceding photos from various D.C. museums, the Bush one from the Cryptology Museum run by the NSA)

An auspicious event I attended. This guy is a big hero of mine. I got to be there, after meeting the Director of the American Philosophical Society who told me about this event at Drexel University, the day the city of Philadelphia declared June 8th to be Thomas Paine day. Paine was a loosely credited supporting character to the Founding Father pantheon, but whose words, published and distributed widely throughout the colonies in the pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis literally stirred the passions of the colonists to see and feel the necessity of Revolution.

Paine has a small alley named after him and an urban plaza downtown and that's it (though there is a great Lipchitz sculpture in the plaza). No Monument here, or in D.C. No state or city. One of the reasons is that when he moved back to Europe, he wrote a document called The Age of Reason that was not entirely pious. Something he wrote along those lines before he got famous he sent to Ben Franklin, Mr. America. Franklin replied that it was a bad idea to make a convincing atheist argument because ...

"...think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security."

I'm pretty sure Franklin knew this could see print, and he certainly knew his work was immortal, so there it is, the purpose of religion by Founding Father #1. But let's not go there now ... moving along ...

This docent introduced us to the chamber where the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then later in 1787, presided over by Washington, who sat at that desk in the back, the new government ratified the Constitution of the United States of America. This was the moment where my AmericaNerd™ core was activated. The palpable joy and pride this National Park employee expressed for the underlying principles of the document actually brought tears to my eyes. Most everyone in this room in 1787 were slaveholders. I was already optimistic.

A view from outside. This was the most ambitious building of the colonial era, it took 21 years to complete, construction overseen by Madison.

These days it's visually flanked by insurers and one of the smaller buildings in town.

I spent a long time in Philadelphia, both on the AmericaNerd trail and just because I liked it. It definitely has the feel of big-stuff-happened-here history, at least in this neighborhood.

This is a working replica of the plate used to print the first broadsheets of the Constitution which was sent around to spread the word that US was born.

I visited the City Tavern where all the big boys would hang and talk about Revolution and Law and Women over ale. They didn't have a Thomas Paine flavor, but I tried the Thomas Jefferson. Not terrible at all. I asked what of the building was original and they said ...

So after Charlottesville, Richmond, Jamestown, D.C. and Philadelphia, I headed out of the country to watch the amazing Zidane (the head-butt guy from the world cup) play in Toronto with his friends against a Canadian All-Star team. This obviously put aside the AmericaNerd project temporarily, EXCEPT, by the time I left Canada, I couldn't help thinking ... WHY did we let England keep Canada?!

They aren't really doing anything with it, so if anyone is up for an invasion, count me in. That land will be highly valuable in a few generations when the ice caps are completely gone. And they have no guns.

I had originally planned to go all the way to Halifax, if not Newfoundland, but the 30% additional gas cost AND the fact that I couldn't use my phone-based GPS made it impossible, so I parachuted back into the states after Montreal, and headed down the great state of New York, where I quickly found my way back into the AmericaNerd fabric.

The boy above was one of many dozens re-enactors living out the Encampment at Fort Ticonderoga during the French & Indian War, specifically a 1755 battle. Here are some more shots from that incredible visit ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/hoboxia/sets/72157621235580085/

This smart young fellow is on the original Common where four colonists died in the first battle of the Revolutionary War at Concord after some mysterious shooter opened fire, now known as The Shot Heard Round the World. Later, up the street in Lexington, we killed 8 of theirs, then on their retreat back to Boston, we sort of tore them apart, and the war was on ...

or as this burial monument, situated about a hundred feet behind where our man is resting, more eloquently and emphatically puts it ...

There was a lot of great drama in this acre of land. This plaque was a surprising and great touch. It reads, "House of Jonathan Harrington who, wounded on the Common April 19, 1775, dragged himself to the door and died at his wife's feet."

With that, I have to back up before I jump ahead to Lincoln's America.

I made a stop before I got to Canada. I had a place I had planned on visiting before I ever got on the road in the first place.

If being a Thomas Paine enthusiast is rare, the next guy I was on the trail of as a big fan is outright dangerous. On my way to Canada from D.C. I took a turn into a National Park entrance, winding through a beautiful mountain pass, trees throwing breathing shadows across the road. After a mile or so, I assumed I had made the wrong turn since I was looking for a town, or a city, I had no idea really how big the place was, perhaps it was a tree fort now. I was looking for Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. And then it appeared, a nineteenth century town stretching from the hills to the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, where the nation's primary arsenal used to stand. Thomas Jefferson visited in 1783 with his daughter a few years before Washington came up with the idea of making the site the U.S. Armory and Arsenal and called it "perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature." There's no connection between my love of Arsenal, the football team, and this visit (well now there is) but I was there because of someone else's interest in the actual arsenal.

On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a party of 21 men into the night across railroad tracks that stretched over the rivers and ran alongside the arsenal. He had no trouble taking the lightly guarded facility, but ended up being captured trying to hold it. He was hanged December 2. Before he was executed, Victor Hugo write an open letter trying to get a pardon for John Brown, which included this line:

Let America know and ponder on this: there is something more frightening than Cain killing Abel, and that is Washington killing Spartacus.

Henry David Thoreau spoke publicly in his defense in October and the speech was repeated many times until Brown's execution:

Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light. I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the country should be hung.

Abraham Lincoln called John Brown a misguided fanatic but he was running for President.

So who was John Brown?

He was a superhero. He took up arms to stop the spread of slavery into the frontier in Kansas, and at Harper's Ferry, he planned to arm the slaves in Virginia to cut the economic heart out of the South, which if he had succeeded would have been the beginning and end of what became the Civil War. Now am I supporting armed insurrection? No. Am I supporting armed resistance to slavery? Fuck yes. It's exactly what this country was built on and that was 'only' economic slavery. A year and a half later, it became federal law to shed blood for the Union.

Frederick Douglass, (the only male on the wall in the museum of the National Women's Party btw) who knew John Brown well and who tried to convince Brown to give up on the Harper's Ferry plan, wrote after the Civil War:

"Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him."

Ok, so Harper's Ferry was a big day. Then Canada. Now we're back in upstate New York, where I visited the John Brown farm, the place where his wife and daughters lived and where he's buried.

So then the Civil War ends and yay no more slavery and everyone is happy and free in America at last!

The nineteenth century was not that kind alas, to science and the humanities, though it seemed like it was.

(picture from the Natural History Museum in New York)

The Gilded Age was about Progress. Towards what we still don't know. (John D. Rockfeller and PT Barnum pictured here from the National Portrait Gallery)

Wealth and development and commerce and dealmaking and growth and resources and wealth and wealth and wealth.

And power. But this time, unlike the power of the monarch as the head of a state, it was power to create a new world. That's a big difference, and almost one worth getting behind, except for one thing. "All men are created equal." Ignoring the sexist grammar for a moment, and that's hard to do I'll admit, it's one hell of a statement for a political organization to be based on. Regardless of what it doesn't say about ability or the variability of individual biological abilities, when a Man of Progress builds a new world, that concept is usually not foremost in his mind. And what ends up happening inevitably is a replay of the beginning of civilization, powerful, accumulating city planners who turn back into heads of state.

So what happened to Jefferson's agrarian paradise?

The same thing that enabled this.

Technology.

Which is to say, nothing, just the continuation of tool-making, which we've been doing for some time now.

But what we call technology (and second wave feminism) has turned the middle class of the country into a population of kickballers.

I spent an enormous amount of time exploring cities from the inside out and what I saw over and over was a massive urban poor black population radiating out to a kickball playing white middle class in bigger cities or donut eating white lower middle class in smaller cities ending in a factory farm or wasteland until another city popped up.

The exceptions were "college towns" or the highly dense metropolis. Then there was Toronto, the most diverse place I've ever even dreamed of .. I actually did a visual morphology count of people walking by in a couple different neighborhoods and I couldn't establish a dominant trend.

So I return to the all men are created equal, the desire to create a new world, and the promise of America and I'm left thinking let's finish this fucking thing. Let's stop living separately in our little impenetrable cultures, let's stop assuming there is such a thing as the Other, let's stop thinking of money as an end in itself (if not stop thinking of money at all), let's give up on race completely, regardless of whether certain populations can digest certain enzymes better, just sleep with those populations then you can too, and above all other things, even though they are the most fun thing in the world: STOP CARS.

ox

FINDING SPACE (not elbow room)

2009-06-29T13:41:00.000-07:00

Well, it's finally happened. A snap I took whose location is a total mystery to me. This image is typical of what's become my front yard in the morning, behind some Target, or like-minded commercial behemoth.

In related news, my cop alarm clock count is up to four now, all very different experiences, but all leading to an 'ok you're free to go'. Never a pleasant phrase to hear before coffee.

One of those experiences was totally my bad, meaning I should have known someone would descend on me because I pulled off an exit called Secret Naval Priority Clearance Nuclear Headquarters Washington DC, or something like that. I found a great dark lot (try finding darkness in a city, seriously it's an interesting challenge), went to sleep at midnight or so, and woke to blasting white lights in my face at 2. This one was scary (#2) because they were really angry and had an enormous amount of power considering where I was. I of course assumed I was about to be whisked off to an underground bunker in Tangiers and then beaten to death until I admitted I was smuggling Uranium 328357 from Mars. In a few minutes ... "Ok, start your engine. You're free to go. This ain't a good place to pull over."

Up the street a bit, I visited another Top Secret facility, but this time as a tourist. I went into the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center museum and it was essentially a kids romp through posters and gee gaws in a one small building. I asked if this was it and they told me, after 911, no one can go in to the real area. I said COME ON! They said LIKE, I KNOW! And then, while sizing up my sneaking-in options, I spotted a NASA employee looking fellow who was dragging a group of young folks out of an auditorium. I accosted him and said, hey man, how do I get into the better neighborhood, I'm a writer you know. And he said, cool man, they would totally let you in if you make an appointment, etc. Then I asked, what's up with all these kids.

And he said, this is a science club from an Albany High School (where I am now kind of) and they were about to take a tour of the facility. I said, heeeeey, and he said, I'll ask. So I joined the tour!

Here's one of the students trying to pick up a dime without sliding while wearing astronaut gloves. The kids were mostly disinterested, but I think it was due to the long bus ride and crap weather.

The building we went to was the world's largest clean room, where the Hubble Telescope was tested, part of exact copy pictured here for trial repairs or work.

The most interesting item for me on the tour was this satellite, created by Al Gore when he was Vice and expected to launch during his presidency. Funding was cut and it sits here still until next month when Obama's new funding finally puts it in orbit. It's function - climate observation.

GIVE ME FREEDOM, FFS

2009-06-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

One of many strange features I'm noticing about the American historical landscape - The city that was home to the turning point in the creation of the Union became this ...

JEFFERSON WORLD, EAT IT

2009-06-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

As a pre-Darwinian, Tom Jefferson was scientifically misguided when it came to ideas about Africans, he certainly thought slavery was an "abominable crime," a "moral depravity," a "hideous blot," and a "fatal stain," he was in fact an abolitionist, but he also thought that the African was less likely than the indigenous population to get with the American program, that they were an inferior species who though different, should nonetheless be free, then sent back to Africa.

Outside of that idiocy, he had some winning ideas that led to an inspirational governmental model and whose ambitions made sure, as Christopher Hitchens puts it, the United States didn't become a Chile-like sliver of land with the rest of the Americas being divvied up by the European giants. He is America's first nerd and I've always thought of him as my favorite official member of the FF.

My actual favorite was another Tom, whom this Tom was close buddies with till the end, but doesn't get into the pantheon. I'll do a blog about him in a few.

I was really looking forward to visiting Monticello, TJ's house that he designed and re-designed for 40+ years, to hang out there and write.

When I arrived, there were hundreds of philistines storming the place, it was about 92 degrees with 129% humidity, I couldn't find a good shady spot to park the boy in, and the coup de grace, TWENTY dollars to go inside. I immediately started devising the sneak-in plan, but my mood was shot, the Disneyfication sucking all the inspiration out of the place, and I went to UVA instead.

This is the rotunda at the center of the Thomas Jefferson designed University of Virginia.

Inside, I asked what was original, and they said, the floor.

This is a statue out front, with Jefferson standing on the heads of his great ideas (always in the form of hot, winged chicks obviously).

Here's the best one, the Hot Chick of Religious Freedom.

Next Up : RICHMOND, VA - GIVE ME FREEDOM, FFS !

BE COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG

2009-06-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

This place was utterly surreal. I loved it. The concept is that the buildings in this area of Williamsburg, Virginia, which was the original capital of the colonies, were in general disrepair up till the early 20th century and a resident, Dr. WAR Goodwin, wanted to restore his local church. He got JD Rockefeller JR interested and BOOM. ...

Re-creation and restoration started on November 27, 1926Arthur Shurcliff as the chief landscape architect and Perry, Shaw & Hepburn as architects. Concerned that prices might rise if their intentions were known, Rockefeller and Goodwin kept their plans a secret, quietly buying up properties. Of course, that much property suddenly changing hands was noticeable, and after eighteen months of increasingly nervous rumors, Goodwin and Rockefeller finally revealed their plans at two town meetings on June 11 and 12, 1928.

Most townspeople seem to have been contented to sell their property and expressed enthusiasm about the plan, but a few had qualms. Major S. D. Freeman said, "We will reap dollars, but will we own our town? Will you not be in the position of a butterfly pinned to a card in a glass cabinet, or like a mummy unearthed in the tomb of Tutankhamun?" wikipedia

So 88 of the 500 buildings are original, and the locations are original, and the area is entirely shut down to non-colonial era phenomenon, actors fill the streets, from British soldiers to Thomas Jefferson, who studied law here.

Like actually here.

I spoke to several of the actors and they were hilarious and friendly and full of information. My two favorite pieces being: There were no trees at all then because the town's designer said that "bears and indians" hid in them, imagining the place tree-less was a trip, AND that some of the actors actually live in these buildings but they have to keep their post-17th century devices (light, computer, etc) completely out of sight. Imagine that lifestyle.

Two of the younger actors (who were big fans of Always Sunny in Philadelphia and that episode about colonial Philly) told me that there were no adult themes explored.

Overall, the Disney facade didn't detract from the historical emanations and in fact made the experience feel like an profundity scavenger hunt. Recommended!
wikipedia link - COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG

FIND THE HIDDEN SOLOMON PIN-UP :

JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT

2009-06-22T13:43:00.001-07:00

In 1607, colonists landed here to found a new colony for England. When I got here, my first thought was, why? The area is a muddy pit with sweltering, humid heat, and insatiably curious bugs. Just get back on the boat and keep lookin.

Their reasoning was that the location, up the James river a bit, concealed them from other nations hunting for new lands to claim. Also, the weather and water were very pleasant at first. Then summer brought the salt water in and life got tough. A small percentage of the original landing party survived and for decades the mortality rate was shockingly high.

They built this fort (destroyed and covered with earth, and currently an active archaeological site - they have a few recreations on the site) to fend off the local indians, including America's first babe, Pocahontas. One of my favorite cinematic experiences ever, The New World, does a beautiful job of illustrating the story. The film is shot as if from the perspective of the landscape, and is the closest I've ever seen film come to portraying the Psilocybin mushroom experience. (warning - everone tells me they hate the film and that it's too sllllooooowwww)

This is how the world stacked up according to England at this point ...

And so it began ...

THE UNIQUE HUMOUR of a GREENBRIER JURY

2009-06-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

Still processing AmericaNerd photos. In the meantime, be afraid ...

AmericaNerd™

2009-06-10T17:31:00.000-07:00

I left Bloomington, Indiana on May 20th. My plan was:

BLOOMINGTON to
PITTSBURGH to
WASHINGTON D.C.

fun fun

But I ended up doing this :

BLOOMINGTON to
DETROIT to
CLEVELAND to
PITTSBURGH to
MORGANTOWN to
CHARLESTON to
CHARLOTTESVILLE to
RICHMOND to
COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG to
PHILADELPHIA to
BALTIMORE to
WASHINGTON D.C.

where I am now, in the nation's capitol.

I am no patriot. I in fact despise boundaries of any kind, which I understand is problematic. After all, what would a cell do without a cell wall?

"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."
T.P.

I understand pride in one's country, nation-state, group of any kind, I am after all a passionate supporter of an English football team and want teams wearing the other colors to fail, some of them miserably. But this is AMERICA. AAAMMMEEERRIIICCCAAA!!!!! and it's extremely difficult to be here without being on the 'inside' of that self-identification, even before the towers fell. Whether brainwashed or not, whenever colonists throw off the yoke of their oppressors, you have to get excited. So when I was young, I was an avid Revolution-era reader, the Federalist Papers were bedside reading. And above all, my hero was Thomas Paine, bleeding heart propagandist and war starter. That's his quote above.

Thinking about my boyhood idealism and my manhood boyism, I've come up with what it's called. I'm an AmericaNerd™

And though I am made ill by the use of slaves by almost all the Founders and the absurd position expected of women, among many other idiot-moves, I dig whenever hierarchy is flattened at all, and I do buy the magic of the Amendment process, the masterstroke of our government.

So the blogs over the next couple weeks will explore my wide-eyed excitement being in this area, where we slashed our way through swamps, indians, english, and our souls to build the pick-up truck, the McDonalds, the Michael Jackson, and the Space Shuttle.

(taken just now at the Udvar-Hazy Museum, part of the Smithsonian - it's the Enterprise)

WV WW VW

2009-06-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

I was going to go straight to D.C. from Pittsburgh, but I had to "procure" something in West Virginia, so against my better judgment, I crossed the Mason-Dixon line into the South, destination - Charleston. My first experience was an accidental tour by assistant Minority Whip of the Senate, Patti Schoen, who I parked behind as she was returning to session.

WV had just approved their state budget. She gave me a quick, but rich with description, tour of the grounds and capitol building. The best part was being reminded of where WV came from in the first place. When the South seceded there was no West Virginia. There's a real geological divide between this part of the country and what is now Virgina,
so when the residents of the area wanted out because they received little to no support from Richmond, Lincoln had a dilemma allowing a state to split when he was desperate to maintain the Union. This sculpture, Lincoln Walks at Midnight, with the President hunched over, a robe over his clothes, captures the moment.

These were signs around town.

Sing it West Virginia!

I misinterpreted this as a volunteer opportunity.

On the way down to Charleston I stopped at what was ranked in 2007 as the #1 ! party school in America, University of WV, in Morgantown. I was struck by two things ... it looked to me like everyone in town was a really big Wonder Woman fan, since the WV logo is CLEARLY a knock off of the WW symbol from the 1970s.

The other was that this is the location of the world's first personal rapid transit (PRT) ala The Jetsons circa 1975 (not Wonder Woman escape pods).

BELATED SOLOMON PIN-UP : PREFERRED WAITING AREA

ROBOBURGH - PART THREE - INDUSTRY

2009-06-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

I forgot to include this disturbing triptych from the last blog (Part Two - Carnegie Art and Natural History Museums). The author (me) makes a rare appearance on the left, and that's Sophocles on the right. When I think of my work in the presence of his formidable likeness and take a calm moment to draw a comparison, what comes to mind is ... wow my nose is a lot bigger than his.

Pittsburgh earns Roboburgh as one of its many nicknames from the industry that took off after the oil, steel, and railroad-based industries collapsed. Many robotics companies grew up here including the fantastically named Applied Perception, founded by Carnegie grads in 2001. I left Pittsburgh last week to make a loop into the south but I'll be going back through for a show at the Carnegie Science Center called ROBOWORLD, opening June 13th, on my way to Toronto. Roboburgh - Part Four will come after WV, VA, DC, MD, DE, NJ, PA, and I think that's it, it's all going very fast.

Took a trip inside the Andy Warhol Museum to catch the flick, Viva!, a sexploitation homage which was a perfect thing to see in there (this is a still I grabbed during).

The one thing they don't have in there are the early fantastic drawings he did. He could really draw and did some great work for women's mags in the 50's.

Though I was born of it, I'm an enemy of Pop.

Caught an endearing, and very entertaining 30th anniversary for a local guitar shop who put on a dozen or so bands doing Beatles covers. This kid nervously sang Here Comes the Sun. (note the B on the bass drum. Each drummer had to come up and use Ringo's set-up. That and the sound guy having no idea what would happen from one act to the next made a very smooth show all the more impressive).

Carnegie built 2,811 free libraries around the world! And here is the very first one ...

And here is its graphic novel collection (including Zippy! of all things, and plenty of Alan Moore) ...

I did a great deal of exploring in Pittsburgh and I wish I could share it all.

For instance, 20 years ago I drove through there, it was the year the first Burton Batman movie was coming out, and I thought that the city is exactly what Gotham should be based on, a deteriorating industrial giant covered in trees with radically variegated topography.

On that note, I went out to explore the abandoned steel mills on town. It turned out there was only one left that hadn't been turned into a mall, and an active one still under the USS banner (U.S. Steel).

Across the river from that USS plant is a theme park called Kennywood, which according to a hip old local (my age), used to be a great, free hang-out, but it's north of $25 admission now.

On my journey around back, I discovered this old railroad building and I'll wrap up with images from my journey into its mysteries.

ROBOBURGH - PART TWO - ART

2009-06-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

Andrew Carnegie (pictured here) was rich.

"Carnegie argued that the life of a wealthy industrialist should comprise two parts. The first part was the gathering and the accumulation of wealth. The second part was for the subsequent distribution of this wealth to benevolent causes." Win Win!

I hung out in a couple of his museums while in Pittsburgh.

First, the Art Museum. The Carnegie Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Natural history are next to each other, art to the right, science to the left of this babe.

The courtyard was full of kids and they giggled and pointed while I took this front view, which I did to provoke them.

This was my favorite work in the place. A mural around the entire wall space of the Grand Staircase by John White Alexander. The Knight above on the left is supposedly from a likeness of Carnegie, smoke billowing from under him contains faces contorted in pain and evil, most likely business people he crushed.

Factory workers show up stuck in this corner with a clean steam mist washing over their workplace.

The rest of the images are all sexy angels / women as if Carnegie, the macho conquistador, inspired by hot muses, employed listless, medium-weight blokes to destroy the weak and create a Nation (which is somewhere behind the mist).

This is a still I grabbed from a 70mm short film called Migration showing in a little dark room which I got to enjoy alone. It features the cheap motel rooms of America with the Great Creatures of America as guests. Striking, effective, well shot, editing B-.

This is a re-creation of the Parthenon's interior. When I wandered into this part of the museum, I got very excited because

I'm still in the middle of the Greece portion of LaB and the stuff they have (mostly casts and reproductions) were extremely helpful and inspiring.

Then over to the Natural History part. The real reason I came to either of these buildings was in here.

I have a thing for horses. And they had this ad plastered all over the city. There were no photos allowed in there but it turned out to be a mundane exhibit, a compact tour of the horse over time. Best part was the tour guide who had a touch screen interface showcasing a series of anatomical function animations. She was cute. Oh, and the thing was well-designed.

The second reason I was there was to meet a Paleontologist who is based there. He happened to be giving a tour to some industrialists and I accosted him afterward. Buy his book! The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey. We had a great chat about monkeys and stuff.

Here are some other sights from the science side. I'm always creeped out by stuffed birds, but be sure to scroll down to the last image from that section. They were illustrating the use of birds in commercial products but about one in twenty of their specimens were displayed thusly. Wins Best in Show image for my visit.

ROBOBURGH - PART ONE - SPORT

2009-06-05T08:54:00.000-07:00

The name Roboburgh is not a creation of mine. Pittsburgh was given that moniker for reasons I'll reveal over the next few blogs.

I was very taken with Steel City and I don't even care about baseball, american football, or hockey, though the city was excitedly following their team, the Penguins, into the Stanley Cup, which as of this writing is tied 2 games to 2 against Detroit (the other city that should build robots to save its economy).

What I do care about is football (soccer), the beautiful game, and when I arrived in Pittsburgh, it was the final day of the season in England and I went to Piper's Pub to watch, though Arsenal wasn't one of the matches televised since there were three channels and three highly significant relegation matches happening (RIP Newcastle).

At the pub, I met a team who came over from Chicago to play a local team as a memorial for a mutual friend. They were missing a player, and I officially joined my third team while on the road. There was The Billionaire Bailouts (Tucson), Telecom (Bloomington), and Extra (Pittsburgh-Chicago). In the middle 40 minutes of the game it poured rain. It was a blast. We lost.

Arsenal won their match against Stoke City 4-1 so a happy ending to a forgettable season. That night I slept in Arsenal Park in Arsenal/Laurenceville neighborhood, one of many inspiring Pittsburgh hoods.

CLEVELEND BOOP BLEEP AAAHHNNKK

2009-05-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

I can still remember smiling nervously when I first learned why girls seemed to love the video game Centipede (back in the late 70s and very early 80s - (trackball photo from net)).

What I didn't remember was all the AWESOME games there were back then until I wandered into this nest of geeks, the CCAG ( the Classic Console and Arcade Gaming show) near the NASA's Glenn Research Center, which I really wanted to see, outside Cleveland.

Remember these? Ever heard of them? Atari 2600 anyone?

Stunt Cycle, one of the six stand-ups brought to the show (no quarters necessary), is the earliest game I can remember playing - Don Carter's Bowling Alley, Miami, FLA, circa 1976, desperately trying to avoid the family bowling team.

The show was at this American Legion outpost.

The area still looked pretty much like this.

And this other photo on the wall made all the avoidance and escapist behavior of the celebrants feel tragic in a new way.

Back across Cleveland, in a neighborhood called Collinwood, I came across some great music ( Uncle Scratch's Gospel Revival pictured here playing outside Beachland).

I highly recommend the stores Music Saves and Black Arrow (pictured here). Say hello from Hoboxia.

And so I left Cleveland, many amazing neighborhoods, people, and sights.

NEXT UP : ROBOBURGH

Guernican Kryptonite

2009-05-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

I heard a smart guy, Medieval scholar guy, amazing professor guy, who lived on a converted turkey farm, once say that Picasso's painting, Guernica, symbolized the end of the Modern era. Whatever the merits of that, my young mind was inspired to think up what a good symbol for the start of the purported "postmodern" era would be. I looked around that time, (1930s) and something lined up quite nicely, time and meaning-wise: the publication of a saddle-stitched newsprint magazine called Action Comics #1, the cover featuring a guy in a red, blue, and yellow costume lifting a car and smashing it against a boulder with two guys in suits running away in terror and another regular-clothed guy on all fours looking on timidly. From context, the car must have belonged to bad guys, maybe the guy on the ground was dumped out of the car as he tried to get away from a crime scene. Maybe the other two guys were in on it and will be grabbed after Sups takes the car out of action. Or was this primary colored male (of which ALL colors are created) smashing the car against the Prometheus stone? The creation of the Superman in print as a protector of the innocent just as America was laying the foundation of its global power while Hitler was creating a literal blond Germanic Superman from ideological madness doomed to fail, summed it up for me as a perfect Now Open sign for Post-Modernism.

This is what he looked like back then - doing his thing against what he eventually became. (recent homage - art by Kevin Nowlan)

When I left Bloomington, my destination was originally Pittsburgh (where I am now) but I had to go check out Henry Ford's ghost factory in Detroit, and then hit Cleveland on the way to Steel City to visit what is essentially a shrine for cartoonist nerds such as myself ...

[First, a quick anecdote about leaving Detroit: I-75 was under construction and my GPS sent me on a road that forced me toward a bridge. I usually love accidentally discovering new things to explore, but this bridge was headed for another country, our neighbors to the north, though this bridge was going south out of Detroit (strange map around here). I had to plead to turn around and then went through three checkpoints to "re-enter" America. One guy gave me the fifth degree because I look like the perfect fake-American Arab, with my ballcap, kitty, and story about traveling here and there. "Where you headed?" "Cleveland." "Where you coming from?" "Bloomington." "Then WHY are you in Detroit, sir?" "Uh ..." That's when things got awkward. "Do you have a gun, sir?" "I ... no .. I don't." "It's okay if you do, you're allowed, you just ought to tell me. I'd be angry if I find out later." (this is verbatim) "No gun." "Do you have over $10,000 in cash on you?" "I wish." "Ok, take a left at those cones." "Did I actually leave the country?" "No, sir. You did not." Then I drove on.]

Back to 1938! Actually 1933, when jewish teenager Jerry Siegel re-invented a badguy Superman he created as the goodguy boyscout we know today, with art by his high school buddy, Joe Shuster, who lived nine blocks away, in the Cleveland suburb of Glenville. They pitched their bulletproof man for over five years until it was chosen to adorn the cover of a new comic release from the company that would become D.C. Comics. Jerry's father died from heart failure after his downtown store was robbed by gun-wielding thugs. Superman fought regular criminals in the early days, and extraordinary criminals like the Nazis, but didn't fight Super-villains until later, because Siegel created him not as an imaginary pulp hero, but as a Golem to protect the innocent.

And here is the house where it happened!

This is the backyard of the house (most likely never seen by Jerry and Joe, nerds.)

and here is a house just down the block.

Unfortunately, this neighborhood is one of the most severe foreclosure areas in the country. I talked to the guy painting the Superman house (pictured above), which has had a family living there for 20 years with no affiliation to Sups or DC or anything related. He mentioned that the house was being restored by the community development agency and that there will be a big unveiling in July with everyone invited (COME ON OUT).

So far, this is the only evidence in the area that Superman was born here, but plans are in the works to change that.

I went into the development office looking for more info on that event and was delightfully surprised to find a super hot, highly professional, locally loved, and enthusiastic supporter of her neighborhood and the role of this historic house in it. This is from her office.

As well as this, a brick from the original chimney which was torn down, available for sale with proceeds going to the restoration project (click here to make tax-deductible donation and get a piece of history).

And here's the last photo that will ever be taken of the Superman color scheme that's been on the house for the last few decades (unless another nerd drove up after I left that day). The house will be painted in original colors. Check out this video of the man who's leading the charge for the restoration, Brad Meltzer.

Yes, Superman had a cat (named Streaky) when he was Superboy (NOT a Jerry Siegel idea). This is what Solomon was clearly thinking about while checking Superman's house for cobwebs to eat.

THE ROBOT GOD

2009-05-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

A simpler time. When horses were 32 x 32 pixels. I was blasting by this on the freeway and didn't get a great shot but the early Atari graphics image against the archetypal rural scene was beautiful.

This is us on the way to Detroit - first time in new state - Michigan! Not sure if the King has been here before during his days as a young show beast. He slept through it anyway.

A million years ago, I started some oil painting portraits of my favorite bad guys, a series I called Notable Villains. It included infamous nutjobs like Hegel, BF Skinner, Herbert Spencer, Ayn Rand, I had a long list and the guy at the pinnacle of this ensemble of world-changing rapscallions was the guy who I guarantee will be the Zeus in the pantheon of robot gods, if not The Man, if they go monotheist (terrible idea), the inimitable Henry Ford.

There were two reasons I wanted to visit Detroit (three if it were the 1960s), the supposed regeneration of nature in place of urbanity and the factory where Henry Ford first #*&%ed the world (and Motown Records if it were the 1960s). Yes, I hate cars (and love them)(BMW 507 please *stephen colbert grabby hands), but that wasn't really what Ford created. Europeans did that. What He did was create the assembly line. He did so in this factory where the first Model Ts rolled off the line. Other curiosities about the guy - the only non-German to get the highest award from the Nazis. He was Hitler's hero. Seriously. Adolf had a giant poster of him in his office. The guy was just a serious worker and hated things that got in the way of efficiency, like unions, nature, and jews.

Detroit was CRAZY, I liked it, it was like driving in Rio, but I quickly moved on after spending the night here in Greektown (highly efficient place for camping, casino parking garages).

NEXT UP - UP & AWAY

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

2009-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Solomon and I had a wonderful stay in Bloomington

there on Cobble Creek Circle above the pond down from the forest glen.

Many incredible things happened:

The wonderful and amazing friends of Prof.B. got pregnant. (congratulations again - consider Fink for her name)

I met a really awesome person who happens to be the spitting image of Brink's mom and has her constitution too.

Prof.B. met his female doppelganger who may or may not be an evil robot I created to help him destroy and/or save the world.

Solomon got a taste of a harsh Matriarchy and wasn't pleased. (the girls never took to him)

I'll miss the random deer in everyone's yards.

The soccer group was a perfect mix of old and young, somewhat skilled and ready for the glue factory ( - the group I'm heading towards)

Bloomington's verdant glow came in strong while I was here.

And the forest life took a ride home with ProfB and me ( five actually - this a photo I took of one I pulled off my neck! ).

Solomon was excited to get back on his throne, unable to annex the girl cat's home into the Kingdom of Hoboxia, or recruit them into Hobox.

Here's the professor trying to convince all the citizens of Bloomington to convince me to stay.

But it was back to business for the King and his driver...
(that's the steering wheel and my lap)

Next : DETROIT AND THE GOD OF THE ROBOTS

COLUMBUS ... INDIANA?

2009-05-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

According to the city, Columbus, Indiana ranks as #6 (that's FIVE, SIX, SEVEN) in Architectural innovation of all U.S. cities, including Chicago, New York, D.C. et al.

Prof.B., K, me, A, and her two friends, S and M, drove the hour out east to take a tour and see for ourselves what this was all about. Turns out the city is lousy with master modern work by the likes of IM PEI, EERO SAARINEN, RICHARD MEIER, and many more.

I was most taken with the schools, the POD system pictured above (my blue grass), and went especially crazy for this one though I'm still not sure why. On the front door of every classroom is a porthole window at the height level of the corresponding grade.

This was the first stop on the tour, a few steps from the Visitors Center, a Henry Moore arch in front of an IM PEI um... Library? I've already forgotten there were so many buildings on the tour. Across the street is the building that started it all in this town, in the 40s, Eero Saarinen's dad's Modernist Christian Church. Have a look at the full set of photos at ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/hoboxia/sets/72157618599210875/detail/ ) including this scrumptious morsel ...

OUROBOROS CAT

2009-05-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

A BARN

2009-05-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

This is the barn I see on the way to soccer.

KITTIES !

2009-05-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

These are just some of the photos I took at the endlessly fascinating Exotic Feline Rescue Center, which is about an hour out of Bloomington in Center Point, Indiana. It started in 1991 with a few cats and a few acres and they now provide comfortable sanctuary for 195 large cats. I dawdled as much as possible on the tour to get these snaps. If you're an animal rights person or even a cat person, I highly recommend tax-deductible charitable donations to the EFRC. There are many more photos on my flickr site:

Here's a link to the set on flickr.

and a link to the slideslide version.

Portrait(s) of An Artist As a Cat Lover
by Prof.B.

PRE-FLAB HOMES

2009-05-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Nap time for inappropriately dressed worker, deranged drifter, or misplaced mannequin for highly elaborate nuclear test site?

KIDS!
DON'T MISS TOMORROW'S INSTALLMENT
with photos from the FRIENDS of HOBOX visit to the EFRC !

CINCINNATI LEPIDOPTERA

2009-05-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Cincinnati Art Museum gift shop girl mentioned a show worth checking out at the Krohn Conservatory, and it was a people watching bonanza. There were butterflies too...

random orchid in another part of conservatory
and the piece de resistance :

CINCINNATI - STREETS

2009-05-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

One of the things P.B. and I wanted to do in Cincinnati was break into the abandoned subway tunnels, naturally. Construction stopped in 1925 after 7 miles had been completed. We didn't have much time, so the hunt was called off early, but the story and pictures from those who have braved the do not enter signs is fascinating. Here's a link about it.

This guy was our lookout while we hunted for the entrance tunnels.

Here is a pair of robots stuck into the ground, pretending to be a building.

This building was along a street full of innovative architecture, but this one was especially stare worthy. It's the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies, part of the University of Cincinnati. There's not a single 90-degree angle on or in the whole place. Turns out it's by Frank Gehry, naturally.

Next on the fascinating design tour, we found this Popeye's chicken with off-model coloration. P.B. said, "Is it just me or does that Popeye's sign look like a Snickers Bar?" To which I replied, "Chocolate Chicken!" To which he immediately got to work on a top secret Chocolate Fried Chicken recipe.

Staying on the food theme, we began noticing that there's a number of chili restaurants in town, including some chains. We found a place called Skyline near this statue and tried the local fare. Not bad, but you have to use the hot sauce.

And no tour of Cincinnati by a couple of artnerds™ can be complete without stopping by the Hall of Justice. It turns out that Hanna Barbera did a lot of business in Cincinnati and one of their artists in charge of backgrounds was told to create a headquarters for the Superfriends that radiated power and he lifted the design almost exactly from Cincinnati's Union Terminal.

As we approached the building, P.B. couldn't remember the building's name and called it this :

CINCINNATI, OHIO - MUSEUMS

2009-05-05T13:51:00.001-07:00

Took a day trip with my Bloomington pal, Professor B (pictured below), to the mysterious city, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Part One of Three: Museums

Here's the Rembrandt from the haughty Taft Museum, filled with Dutch Masters and other distressing tidbits ...

... like this 18th century porn ...

... a George Washington with no pants on ...

... and this perplexing symbol (on the left) in the UNISEX bathroom that apparently means - 25 cents for a woman in a small square box. Alas, I had no change.

Then over to the CINCINNATI MUSEUM OF ART ...

... where P.B. communed with a large Miro ...

... I was flirted with by a John Singer Sargent Venetian woman ...

... P.B. got embedded in an Egyptian statue ...

... I in neolithic art.

There was also a Surrealist Exhibit, including a 1960's redux by Duchamp of his "Fountain" - voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by a bunch of Brits - but no photos were allowed in there.

And some art (details) that inspired "The Project" :

Pan elevated.

Best color ever on earth for all time?

TOMORROW - PART TWO: CINCINNATI STREETS

MIDWEST RELIGIOUS STATEMENT ?

2009-05-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

Astounding Deconstructionist Vanity Plate discovered :

Parse God !

BLEEDING HEARTLAND ROLLER GIRLS

2009-05-01T16:01:00.001-07:00

I had the pleasure of meeting one of the local roller girls and now have two sports to fanatically follow. See you at the dance !

other sport update:
CL - Arsenal need two more goals then the opposition at home on Tuesday to book a trip to the final in Rome :(

RECIPE - FINK PASTA

2009-04-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

My current staple, and handy road food.

tri-color fusilli
pistachios
pine nuts
black olives
sun-dried tomatoes
artichoke hearts
turkey bacon
sauteed garlic w touch of coffee
coarse black pepper
rosemary
lemon

Raising Leopold

2009-04-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

I spent a little time today in Indiana University's Psychological and Brain Sciences building, one of the many departments I've bothered across the country on my quest to make Leopold & Brink less cumbersome with disbelief suspension.

Here's a cartoon from one of the office doors:

This One's For You™, Sanjay

2009-04-26T20:47:00.001-07:00

A block away from the Indianapolis Speedway, there's a mega coke shipping plant with a myriad Coke vehicles. It was night and couldn't get to them, but here's a taste.

THE AUSPICIOUS VISITATION

2009-04-25T20:38:00.001-07:00

The fellow I'm house/cat-sitting for is getting famous for making kids smarter way earlier than any of us want them to be. He does this by making them hang out with bees. They love it. Mostly because they aren't real bees, but a very intuitive piece of software that enables young kids to grasp complex systems by walking them through how bees notify the hive about the location of nectar. The software is called Beesign and looks like this:

And this is a kid working on it.

Great stuff, and this old professor buddy of mine is getting known as the bee guy. I had the privilege of working on the artwork and naming the thing, but he gets all the press and super models after him.

SO, the day he was returning home, as I was getting ready to pick him up from the airport, I let Solomon outside for a few minutes. When I came back in, closed the door, and went into the kitchen, where the front door and living area is still visible, there was a new guest in the house - The Goddess of all Bees, the biggest *#%ing bee ever. I spent a good amount of time trying to get her safely under glass for these shots, then we chatted about that software, and she gave me a few tips to pass on, before I let her outside and she vanished into thin air.

STUFF FOR KIDS IN BLOOMINGTON !

2009-04-24T14:34:00.001-07:00

So there is a huge drug problem here and the city has staged a zero tolerance operation.

All of the city parks, like this fun one pictured here, are in fact collection zones where kids are captured for interrogation.

This is the first place where questioning takes place and continues for several weeks.

Here is where the kids are held in the meantime. I took this from one of the trucks delivering new kids (why the gate is open).

This is another view of their barracks.

Those who do not properly satisfy the questioners go here.

And this is where the bodies often end up.

1. real shoes, but is this a symbol for anything anymore ?
2. real park, looked really fun!
3. Bloomington City Hall
4. real kids playing in some abandoned factory
5. another view of that factory
6. Carlisle - major industry and job provider in town
7. pretty

30th POST! FLASHBACK: PRE-HOBOX

2009-04-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

This was the vehicle I drove before the coming of Hobox, though I owned it in 2009, not 1969, when it rolled out of a Japanese factory. Can you recognize the pitchman in the video?
(click image for link to youtube video)

And here's a Hobox related item submitted by adorable Jeannie Fallbrook, age 9, from Mississauga, Missouri. She writes, "If you ever need to get out fast, here's an escape pod for Hobox. When they are chasing you."

SIGNS OF A HOOSIER COLLEGE TOWN

2009-04-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

CAT UPDATE

HINDUSTAN, INDIANA, USA

2009-04-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

About five minutes north of Bloomington. I have no idea.

WHERE IS SPRING?

2009-04-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a pleasant country road on the way into Bloomington.

It is late April, when does Bloomington do its thing?

There is a bit of evidence ...

... that we're not in winter throughout the trees.
It's beautiful but scant. I'll keep you up to date.

GENERAL INDIANA STATEMENT:
The weather here is unacceptable! It rains or shines or glooms whenever it feels like it.
When it's misty at night around here, it feels like Baskerville.

SOLOMON UPDATE:
You saw one of the ladies of the house last post. Here is the other, skulking back to her safe place.
And here's ANOTHER local cat, examining Solomon, who belongs to the girl next door.

THE BLOOM IS IN

2009-04-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

I have been writing my brains out (I have three tiny brains) and thereby slacking in my blog duties. I am currently in the Hoosier State (Indiana) which means I am in a place where no one knows what their state nickname means. Specifically, I'm in Bloomington, where I house-sit for a dear old friend, a Professor of Education at the local schoolhouse.

I'll be taking you on a tour of this college town in case you're thinking of attending but mainly because I'll be here for a little while. The closest thing to a city near here is Indianapolis, which was ranked the cheapest place to live in the country (they might have called it the most affordable) by CNN Money, and I'll give you some peeks at that place too. Maybe even Hindustan if you're lucky, which is quite near here.

I've joined a local soccer team, Telecom, and we play Thursday nights, so I'll update you on my health problems assuming I can move my limbs Friday.

And I will report the state of the King, who shares a two bedroom townhouse with two young girls. Look forward to a blog at least thrice a week or my fake Missouri daughter Aliesha will be very disappointed. And I can't have that.

Here is the trip so far in total. I'll be continuing east, and if you have any suggested routes, destinations, or couches you'd like me and Solomon to visit, get in touch or leave a comment.

SO FAR - PART TWO & UP THE GUNNERS

2009-04-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

"S" represents the starting point of the journey, Los Angeles, CA.
#1 represents Julian, CA, the location of the first blog post.

A note regarding the Midwest peoples: As there is no crime or cynicism, they are able to do things like this - practice the Beatles song Michelle in a grocery store.

In other news, Arsenal cruised into the semi-finals yesterday with a 3-0 second leg victory. Here are some highlights:

Le Professor celebrates Walcott's goal. Arsenal 1 Villareal 0

Adebayor about to slot one in. Arsenal 2 Villareal 0

Van Persie gets ready to take a penalty shot.

Adebayor and Eboue bring Van Persie into their traditional goal celebration dance after he makes it 3 Arsenal for the final score: 3-0.

SO FAR - PART ONE

2009-04-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

The journey so far ... details to follow.

COMPLETISTS ANONYMOUS

2009-04-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

Ever since my Igor threw the switch on Google Analytics so that I could see who was visiting hoboxia and from where on this beautiful earth map, I have been interested* in getting at least a hit from every country on the map (for design reasons of course). If any of you know anyone in one of the blank countries, I will give you 100 Hoboxia Dollars** per country for getting them to check out the blog. (bonus dollars for Greenland and Madagascar)

In the meantime, here are some beautiful TRACTORS !! yeee haw

*totally obsessed
**equivalent to 3 pesos or 1/10 a lock of Solomon's hair

LOUISVILLE, KY = GOTHAM ?

2009-04-07T17:57:00.000-07:00

Here is the main thoroughfare of downtown Louisville, KY. One of the city's claims to fame is the famous wooden object one chases away unwanted visitors with (also used in baseball) called the Louisville Slugger.

This one belonged to D.W. Griffith who used it to control his extras. Other notable Louisvillians include Tom Cruise, Sue Grafton, Grady Nutt, Hunter S. Thompson, Muhammed Ali, Gus Van Sant, Johnny Unitas, Zachary Taylor (who?), Diane Sawyer, Colonel Sanders, Edwin Hubble, Dian Fossey, Irene Dunne, Anne Braden, Tod Browning, Rosco P. Coltrane, Ned Beatty, John Audubon, Buck & Bubbles, and Louis Brandeis.

A few blocks up from that bat is this bat.

A few blocks back from the first bat is this bat. Seriously!

Which means ... if you carefully put the clues together ... one of the people listed above is the Batman.

This sign was on the wall outside a local fast food joint, in an exclusively African American neighborhood. I assume it means ... this area safe for white adults to kidnap black children. At least let's hope that's what it means, the other option is just too horrible to think about.

BUTCHERTOWN and the BOSS' DESK

2009-04-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

I randomly stumbled on this place while looking for gas.

Thomas Edison, inventor of the Walt Disney and other dangerous robots, lived in this house for one year from 1866-1867 working for Western Union at the age of 19. The neighborhood was called Butchertown because of Edison's horrible crimes.

This furniture is a best guess re-creation of his work space.

I asked the woman who worked there if it's true about Edison never really sleeping and instead taking 20 minute naps and also when in his life he got tons of people to help him and she said, yes it's true and very early because one of his youthful inventions made him a lot of dough. When I groaned, she inquired with a smirk, "Are you an inventor?" I said no, I just wish I could work that much. According to the Thomas Edison House website "One night in 1867, he was working with a battery when he spilled sulphuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss' desk below. The next morning he was fired." That event marked the end of his stay in Louisville. I know how he feels.

AMERICAN DREAM - R.I.P.

2009-04-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

I named an avatar Arrow Saarinen because I wanted to build a Philosophy Academy in Second Life (I am the life of parties too!). In Second Life you have to choose from a list of preset surnames, Saarinen being one of them. Eero, the most famous Saarinen, could not be selected - like if Einstein was one, you couldn't be Albert. I enjoy Eero's work so much that while standing here, under his Gateway Arch that he designed, I totally spaced that it was his. I think it's because I was distracted by the symbol of the thing.

Clearly it symbolizes a giant magnet that an alien is using to pull the Earth towards a better galaxy. That, or something about the spirit of westward expansion and the role St. Louis played in that. Going with the second notion, I get further distracted by this insane group of guys from mid-19th century St. Louis, who I think of as leaving behind a spectral arch that Eero just copied on top of, the American Hegelians, who thought that the World Spirit was moving west across the United States.

St. Louis has a wildly rich history from dinosaurs to early settlers to the Spanish to the French to Thomas Jefferson's mega-discount-purchase and the arch today seems like a bizarre piece of modern art in front of a mega-corp, only all the big companies have left St. Louis and it's rotting from the inside out.

So we continued our retreat from the west by going postmodernly back through the arch towards who knows where.

More Un-American news: Three key Arsenal players were back from injury for Saturday's match against Manchester City and the team were once again a pleasure to behold, Adebayor scoring a brace in a 2-0 victory.

ST. LOUIS - the PLATONIC COMMINGLING OF THE WATERS

2009-04-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

I was really taken by this fountain in the heart of downtown - The Wedding of the Waters by Carl Milles at Aloe Plaza, symbolizing the joining of the Missouri and Mississipi Rivers. It was commissioned in 1936, unveiled in 1940, and caused an uproar because of the "playful, naked, and nearly cartoonish figures" with "sexual overtones" so local officials renamed the piece The Meeting of the Waters (sigh, America):

The work makes a lot more sense when the water is dancing ... see examples here from other photographers (at flickr) - http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=meeting+of+waters+st+louis.

Solomon wasn't interested (not big on fish .. maybe just fishpeople) :

ST. LOUIS - ON the WATERFRONT

2009-04-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

Having neither gambled in the Midwest, nor been on a Mississippi riverboat, I took the opportunity to do both as I came into mighty St. Louis.

The waterfront area is riddled with casinos, aquatic and terrestrial, I suppose the zoning laws have gone a bit lax.

Midwest Honesty Ex. 1 - A woman asked to see my driver's license and refused to believe it was me in the photo. I explained it was taken about 15 years ago, but she just kept smiling and shaking her head. I asked her which me she preferred and she said the one in the ID.

A couple blocks downriver, there was an industrial wasteland, exquisite, but as dirty and downtrodden as it gets for an old U.S. city yet there was an environmentally themed riverwalk. It was fantastic, but seemed more like a walk through a Manchester, England that had been abandoned by people and visited by Art Deco-loving Hobbits.

PHASE TWO : THE MIDWEST

2009-04-01T00:13:00.000-07:00

HOBOX TOUR - PART THREE - VANILLA NIGHT

2009-03-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

It may be my cookie disease but whenever I see the logo on my YAKIMA roof box, I see VANILLA. I don't like vanilla cookies, so perhaps it's one of my other diseases. The roofbox was a last minute addition to the adventure and an invaluable one. There's 16 cubic feet in there and it's full. All the stuff used to be inside Hobox - no fun at all.

I can't reveal all of the mysteries of the Vanilla Box, but here are some of the contents:

And then there's nighttime. When in urban settings, it takes a bit of planning to get into warm sleeping clothes, brushing teeth, and related activities. When away from nervous eyes, I can deploy the curtains, originally designed to keep Solomon cool inside the car when I'm off galavanting in the brutal sunlight.

Their better use has come as light reflectors for working in the car at night. A bit of velcro on the car and curtains, and instant bright room.

SOLOMON FINK PIN-UP #7

This is the hot neighbor's cat, cruelly named Tobias for a coloration that paints a permanent pair of cutoffs on his leg. He and Solomon had a stare off when they met.

HOBOX TOUR - PART TWO: the bed, OR Springtime in Colorado

2009-03-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

I've been skiing plenty of times, been in snow a lot, but having grown up in Miami and living the other half of my life in Los Angeles, I've never greeted the day in a quaint little town to a foot of snow. It was sunny yesterday, the weather report said it would be colder, but I had no idea. I woke early and was working for a while when Solomon bothered me to look out the window, so I open the blinds and POW! SNOWBOX! Clearly I was rooming next to Persephone (making the devil baby-faced).

Since this feature is about the Hobox bed, I imagined what it would have been like to wake up as usual inside there, total darkness, probably a nice warm igloo effect, and utter panic.

The bed is extremely simple, and can be taken out and put back in securely within a minute. Originally Dean (the co-designer) and I were going to run the base of the bed with leg support all the way to the middle of the passenger seat, but the seat is secure enough to act as it's own base and I still get a normal car if I want. So we got a 2' x 6' nice sheet of pine, stapled a yoga mat on it, then wrapped and stapled down this fabric. Then I put a bizarrely comfortable REI sleep pad over the whole thing and I get almost 8 FEET of sleeping space with room for Solomon's bed at the far end. The legs are 10" pipe with flanges bolted to the underside and free standing on the bottom. Element's aren't completely level from backdoor to the front seats, so I bought 6 rubber coasters and put them under the front legs. Then a short piece of 2' x 4' near the middle under the bed with an eye hook and a cinch between that and the metal support bar for the back seats (which are in a closet in Los Angeles) and the bed is as secure as anything. I can leap onto the bed from outside though I do not.

Next up - HOBOX TOUR Part 3 - the Vanilla Box and Nighttime

Here's a little tableau from my morning snow walk ...

and back to business, Solomon Fink Pin-Up #6 :

GREEK WOMEN

2009-03-25T19:27:00.001-07:00

Since there is an ancient Greece component to the novel, I've been doing a bit of thinking about Greek women, naturally. I had the pleasure of meeting one yesterday and had a lovely chat about nothing in particular.

Here is a helpful note for other middle-aged writers: There is nothing more distracting after being taken off the frigid Colorado streets into an idyllic one bedroom apartment than having a wildly attractive, pajama-wearing undergraduate Greek neighbor who looks like this: EXCEPT when she is prematurely taken away on a ski trip with her sweet, baby-faced boyfriend. Try to avoid this situation.

UP NEXT - HOBOX TOUR PART 2 !

No Solomon pin-up today! (I'm that distracted)

SIGNS OF A LIBERAL ENCLAVE

2009-03-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

Boulder, Colorado. This last one took three looks before I was convinced it was real. I kept seeing these great signs and finally started snapping, but I couldn't re-discover the first batch.

Full disclosure, I'm a fan of liberal enclaves, though I'm so far left that I've come back around the other side. I want everyone to have their own planet but also be wholly dependent and considerate of each other and be obliged to take care of kids who aren't theirs.

ADDITIONS:

Observation - in twenty years this kid will be deeply miserable to the bottom of his soul that he didn't ask her to marry him.

SOLOMON FINK PSYCHE UPDATE (w pinup)

There is but one sadness I've noticed in our King and I can't believe it took me so long. My vet tells me Solomon's proclivity which I will divulge in a moment is unique to him in all the cat kingdom. When I let him out of the car, several times daily, he ends his quests a little crestfallen, and he goes to places that seem out of character for the world's greatest killing machine (miniaturized). Finally, following him under a stairwell, I recognized the behavior from home - - He's looking for spider webs. He eats spider webs like they are cotton candy, and he misses them dearly. We have yet to find any up here!

ROCKY, NOT ROCKIES

2009-03-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

This is where we woke after the night of horrors. It was pitch black and I decided to just go straight over to a familiar city in New Mexico and Taos was the closest one. This was a rest area a few miles from town and when I woke, I was shocked to see we were a hundred feet from the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

When we left off last time, what I saw was a herd of Elk who were completely unimpressed with the ton of metal hurtling 50mph at them over the otherwise lonely mountain road. It would have been game over for Hobox and most likely Solomon. For the rest of the journey I was dodging deer, coyote, and gopher-esque creatures.

Next day, we blew through Taos, not terribly inspiring, and I decided to go into Colorado and have a little cheap motel rest, clean Hobox out, have a few showers. Cheap motels are also a favorite place of mine to work.

This was the view towards the Rockies on the way into Colorado City, small town south of small city Pueblo, CO.

A little background on the reason for this locale. I am of the video game generation, from the archaic Pong to the side-scrolling wonder, Mario Brothers, and though I enjoyed them and was fanatical about Asteroids at the local bowling alley, I never got into the consoles that followed. I make a better game voyeur. I wrote and designed them briefly in the 90s, and I think they are a powerful medium for any number of positive or negative ends. For the last couple decades there have only been two games I played with any real interest, and one of them, GTA, I play the way I'm currently driving around the country. The similarity is eerie in fact (I do not spend time stealing cars or killing prostitutes, I played GTA like an urban planner who occasionally likes to get the police on his tail). The other game is something called Galcon and is a game of inspired genius. I think of it as a dynamic modeling for studying the role of power in resource competition. I can't recommend it enough. I won't explain the gameplay except to mention that chat is built into it and as with any social game, you make new acquaintances, the game is global and I chat with Argentina, Kuala Lumpur, Poland, and Missouri every game. Colorado City is the home of the creator of Galcon and his wife, a bad ass player herself, who has horses, a cat called Cat, and a magical goat called Cuzco. Solomon had the pleasure of meeting him (photos on the way).

They took me to a local, crazy wonderful place built by one person who started in 1965, fighting the government the whole way, Bishop Castle. There are much better images if you do a google search. The topmost spire's platform was not built for those over 6' but still worth the death-defying feeling going up there. The Galcon folks were generous and sweet and fun. We watched Buster Keaton, ate waffles, and walked Cuzco around the lake. Oh, and Happy Birthday, ***.

Then it was time to get Solomon some supplies and for me to watch Arsenal, and I couldn't find any city in Colorado other than Denver who played live games, so north we went. I've been working a lot lately fortunately and though the beautiful Rockies beckoned, I had to fight off the sight-seeing for now. We slept here in front of Union Station and watched the game today at Fado's Irish pub where the Six Nations Rugby tournament was dominating the screens so they put us football people outside. We'll be in Denver and Boulder for a bit, working, but I'll try to share any exciting discoveries.

Until next time ...

Solomon Fink Pin-Up #4 (oil change)

WHAT THE NIGHT CAN DO

2009-03-18T14:57:00.001-07:00

Here's me trying to get into the Four Corners Monument at 9:30 pm. I would have leaped the fence but I had no idea how far from this gate it was. Oh well, screw your arbitrary yet compelling terrestrial intersection !

That was in the middle of a very surreal drive away from Page, Arizona yesterday. I have a meeting in Colorado City tomorrow, so I thought I'd see what was between the two points, expecting to rest in Farmington, NM. My evening was two hours across the Navajo Nation, and it was beautiful, but clearly moving away from the majesty of canyon country. There are only very small towns from Page to where I am now, and as night came, I got a strange feeling. I didn't know anything about this territory, I saw a sign saying I was leaving Navajo Nation, and then I was in I Have No Idea Netherworld Near Four States Simultaneously Land.

Now, I've been living in the woods, deep in the woods, in strange neighborhoods, in sketchy parks, in very black nights and very bright ones, I've been woken by alien police, and I've heard the cries of strange beasts, but I have yet to feel the least bit nervous or frightened until last night. There was absolutely no reason, but all of a sudden the car behind me was clearly Satan's charioteer ready to eat me, slowing and speeding exactly the way I was, refusing to pass, until he just disappeared and I was on the road for hours without another car in either direction. I ran through The Hills Have Eyes, The Mist, any number of twisted road stories, like when the nude woman covered in blood runs hysterically at your car in the lights a hundred feet ahead, who you of course HAVE to stop for but is obviously either bait set by the locals who will kidnap you, then grandma skins you and serves you to the family AFTER they've all raped you, or she's a horrible demon who stays totally silent until you've been trapped in a loop of driving forever and she turns into a derisive 95 year old naked woman, OR she's actually escaping from some form of monster which you must now be devoured by.

And speaking of family rape, as the night grew longer and Farmington approached, all these little mining towns started sprinkling the freeway's edges forcing you to slow down. By the time I reached Farmington, I was convinced this was the anal rape and/or serial killer capital of the west (just like northern Florida is in the east) and the night fears just worsened. The worst is the person in the backseat feeling. I didn't stop for six hours or so, so the only way a person could possibly have been inside the car behind me was from teleporting, which would have made it really cool. Then I thought about the logic of the person behind you fear, and in every scenario it's only the creep-out discovery phase that's troubling, I mean it's either some deranged person who will kill you by strangulation which will in turn kill him, or a robber, which is incredibly boring and not scary. It would have to be a deep breathing mental patient whose intentions are totally unpredictable that could sustain the creep factor. Well this took me right out of the fright mode, until I looked up and saw ... (to be continued)

THE GRAND STAIRCASE, or "ALL NAVAJO Girls-R-EZE"

2009-03-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Subtitle brought to you by the men's room wall of Page Library, Arizona. This is the view out one wall of windows (like all photos of this area, it just can't come close to the grandeur) :

I am so overwhelmed with data and inspiration for 1 of the 3 LaB projects that I have to leave here before I totally switch off The Protagoras Paradox onto the related book. Here are some of the things I've enjoyed while in the area of Lake Powell AZ/UT ...

After a day or so here, I decided to complete that visit to Zion and/or Bryce, but on the way I saw a sign reading $25 entrance fee per park, so I looked around and said screw it, there are endless wonders right off the road. This was some baffling abandoned playground?, I jumped the fence, said hi to the scrawny (abandoned?) horses, fed them my apples, and found nothing else but the really cool spiral staircase that leads up to a path to a rope across the pond. Down the road from here was a cave for tourists but they were closed and no one else in the area knows what I'm asking about when I mention this pull off.
This is where the King and I are. I jumped in Lake Powell though it is still winter and before my body lost all sensation, I jumped out. As soon as I drove in and saw the lake I of course planned to travel the length of it but there are no roads other than a small Wahweap Bay inlet. The entire southern border of the lake is Navajo Reservation and the northern is National Monument (created by Clinton in 1996).

And this is exactly where I jumped in, near Antelope Canyon, another incredible site that charged $26, so I shot it from the road ...

This is Powell Lake snaking away from the bay: in the distance is a cannon for shooting at alien ships in space, and also a Navajo owned and run mega coal plant.

Here's a view of Mahweap ('bitter water') bay. There was/is big controversy over the dam that created Lake Powell, the second largest man-made lake...

This is the view of both sides from the bridge over the dam. There are boats on the left side way below doing tours - THAT's the water I should swim in - though I'll constantly imagine the dam breaking.

Then we shot over to Tattoine, I had a meeting with some Jawas (they wouldn't let me photograph their ride). This is another shot from my adventure to come in a movie, but you are looking at what was a shoreline 70 million years ago. Not the bottom of the water, not a random shoreline along a lake or something ...

This is the only part of the world where the earth has worn away enough to expose coastline from the day of this funky dude on the right, NOT a triceratops. They are discovering 80% new species with every dig around here !

On this seashore, I found gazillions of fossilized sea shells, mind blowing experience walking across here.

I could go on and on about the geology and paleontology stuff after my invasive interviews with everyone I could grab in the area, but I'll wrap up. Here was a mini-adventure which started with me photographing bulls outside the fence, and then a very cool hand was zooming inside on a souped-up go-cart and asked if I'd like to take a ride while he fed them. It didn't occur to me until he yelled for me to get back into the cart that bulls running at you might be something bad.

This was our front yard until today. Several houseboats sit about ten pool laps in from the water's edge (I counted about 50 laps across, where I was desperate to get to - and is the subject of the coming movie).

Here's a contraption I planned from the start and finally found a great little campground to try it, but Solomon was not happy and we went back to supervised walks. This area was lousy with jackrabbits that were twenty percent taller than Solomon. He tried to chase them but they ran away laughing and painting eggs at the same time.

And here's a special triptych: SOLOMON FINK PIN-UP #3

PAGE

2009-03-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

Seems like many lifetimes have passed since my last post. I meant to get this up for the Ides of March with the first Hoboxia short film (which the above image is a still from) but my Final Cut Pro is missing. Coming soon.

Sedona, sedona, sedona. Absolutely spectacular, an endless visual feast. Alas, I had to leave there a bit sooner than anticipated. This is not just because I was woken at 2:00am by flashlight wielding police officers who, based on my guttural scream of "No!" after they hit the window and woke me up, either instantly poured emphathy over my obvious harmless and gentle nature or tried the best they could to hold back a deep laugh. While I crawled to the driver's seat to retrieve my license with an embarrassed smirk, the guy was extremely helpful trying to suggest a place just outside of town that is fine for sleeping in one's car, a city ordinance no-no in Sedona. No it was not that traumatization, nor the strange magnetic forces, or even the UFOs, but something far more mundane that I shant mention here! No, there were no crimes committed. No!!!!! (maybe I thought I was being abducted?) And inexplicably, Solomon slept through the entire event.

Really what happened was that I thought hey, Flagstaff is just right up there and since I can't park and sleep in Sedona, I'll explore the miles between there and Flag (as they call it where I am now). By the time I got to Flagstaff, I had the moving-on instinct and just kept going.

So I went to the Moon:

It was a bit of a circuitous route getting there, so let me back up. I looked at a map in Flagstaff and had to make a decision of middle or south US from there with an April destination of Indiana. I couldn't go too far north into Utah on account uh my feline, but I did notice that Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park were really close. So I headed thataway. While on highway 89, I had to make another decision, veer off west towards those parks or check out this massive body of water on the map, especially since my Sedona water experience was slight to none. Oh, by the way, I had reported sleeping near that stream I posted before but then found this easy spot behind a closed realty agency on a great hill in Sedona that seemed totally hidden. After the authorities reminded me there are no uncharted places, I did sleep near that stream with no problems. But it was yet another turn off which is no place to be for more than a day.

Northern Arizona is also amazing, in the distance you see the poor man's view of the Grand Canyon, which is called some other canyon at this point in the crevice. The scale out here is hard to grasp. This was around where I had to decide which way to go. I asked this flower (Sedona ritual). Water won and I made my way towards a town called Page, auspicious for a few reasons.

I will continue tomorrow with this area and my many discoveries ... until then ...

SOLOMON FINK - PIN-UP #2 (just before Flagstaff)

ENTER: THE VORTEX, or Why the Hell Did I Leave Tucson even though Sedona is breathtakingly gorgeous?

2009-03-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

(...a driver's window visitor, or ... guide to the vortex)
It is now Friday the 13th. If you don't hear from me again for more than a week, I have been sucked into the infamous vortex(ices)(es)(i) of Sedona, Arizona, though I may already have been, you be the judge ...

Rewind to Monday, March 9th. I have absolutely no idea what happened to it, or most of the following day, Tuesday, though I was of course still in Tucson, so I can't blame the vortex - (unless!)
Tuesday evening I spent at a wonderful final lecture of a science series hosted by the University of Arizona (according to the MC, a top school for science, and according to a billboard, #1). This was Paul Cohen on Really Intelligent Computers, more or less a very general introduction to Artificial Intelligence and the work he's doing trying to teach computers to behave more like children as a starting point for them to learn more complex things on their own the way we do. After the lecture I made a new friend, a science student with a very bright future.

I now remember what I did Sunday night through Wednesday morning - I was cramming for a meeting with Eleni Hasaki, Classics Professor at U of A, an Athenian beauty who warned my her voice breaks rocks. Daughter of a plumber, she passionately studies the stories told on ancient pottery. I'm not going to reveal any content for the Leopold & Brink series, but the first book is called The Protagoras Paradox (so far) which at least hints at the reason for consulting scholars on Ancient Greece. I even got put to work (Eleni asked me to finish a drawing for a presentation she's preparing).
After the rather inspiring meeting, I had a treat in store, the Champions League game to decide whether Arsenal makes the final 8. Here's an image of my football hero, Kolo Toure, on the tv at Bob Dobbs pub where I watched the game and heard any number of offhand racist observations. Arsenal vs Roma (second game): We won the first 1 - 0 but Roma scored 1 in this one after 90 minutes, so the aggregate score was 1-1. We played horribly HORRIBLY! It goes to extra time, I'm already on the verge of heart failure since our crappy season at home may cost us a trip to the Champion's League next year which is too dark to think about. Extra time elapses and it's penalty kicks. Total lottery. One man a few yards from one goalie. We miss, they make one, we make one, they miss ... it goes on and on and on - until we finally by shear luck, win 7-6. Exhausting, exhilarating!

After watching, I had a farewell game to play with a new friend I made at another pub, formerly Olive R. Twist's. After that crazy but fun pickup of 20 vs 20 affable nuts, I zipped over to the YMCA to clean up for a meeting with the parents of the Builder of the Bed of Hobox, Phidias aka Dean. His parents were the sweet and salt of the earth and I guiltily accepted a delicious chicken and red mashed potato dinner, was supplied with an indulgent care package, and offered indefinite shelter, though I went off into the night and left fair Tucson, where all the women are either adorable 19 year old students or rangy cougar beauties of indiscriminate age ...

I myself turned the age of Indiana Jones yesterday (Ford's age in the first movie, though I feel more like his age in the latest) and for a gift I got myself a completely full moon night hike over the aforementioned Picacho Peaks the night the 11th turned to the 12th. Really really spooky and fantastic. Collapsed in Hobox and slept in on my birthday sunrise, then was visited by a drifter who hipped me to the whole geocaching phenomenon. I had to put it right out of my head since it sounded way too fun and time consuming, being the sucker I am for scavenger hunts of any kind.

I then drove swiftly past Phoenix and stopped at my non-football hero's place, Arcosanti, what I call the portal of the future of urban design. Paolo Soleri, the 90 year old dynamo Italian architect who worked briefly under Wright at Talesin, took the idea of 3-dimensionality in urban design to it's most logical and human conclusion. This place was to be the first working prototype, begun in the mid-sixties but never funded well enough to get it beyond that mask, or portal, a gesture really of what Paolo is about. I think I'll go back down there for a play this Saturday.

Next on the birthday tour, I visited the hometown of my dear friend Brink and dragged her to a local casino. I walked out $90 up after a rollercoaster ride. She's too young to gamble but she's not into it in any case, smart girl.

This was not the place, though it was near here - only thing creepier than an abandoned dog track is a working one.

Finally, Sedona. Holy hell.

This is the home of Krazy Kat of Coconino County, a platinum-age cartoon strip created by super-genius George Herriman. It's also the planet Mars on Earth and it's utterly impossible to capture without peripheral vision and color sense. Speaking of aesthetics, I ended my birthday by slipping into the (anti?)vortex where taste and soul are stripped of all meaning and sensation, a Resort. I stopped at a place called Krazy Koyote and assumed the owner if not the workers had some info on where Herriman's vacation home was. They didn't but after a comical chat, offered me a $20 suite at a resort for the night if I agreed to an 1.5 hour sales pitch the next day. I've somehow gone my many years without doing one of these, so I thought, what the hell $20 for a birthday bed and all it will cost me is a bit of time in the morning. That was this morning, the morning of Friday the 13th. The vortex enveloped me, I realize now I didn't even document the name or the look of the place (it was big and clean and fun and Solomon was in heaven) but we're out now and tonight here is the front and back view of our camp area. Finally, water!!

And for you cat people, the first in a series - PIN-UP #1

TRAVELOGUE TUCSON

2009-03-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

We're going to head out of Tucson on Wednesday, crawling up the state ending in Flagstaff when we're brave enough for 20 degree nights. This entry is mostly pure travel things I've found from referrals or meandering. A few days back we were resting and cleaning Hobox out in a wash (Western U.S. - the dry bed of an intermittent stream) and it happened to be the property of De Grazia Gallery in the Sun. The Executive Director, Lance, paid us a monitory visit. Then he saw Solomon and, being a cat person, very graciously gave us permission to park in his lot for the night. Solomon was thrilled by this because we heard and smelled javelinas. There was supposedly a bobcat who lived in the lot as well.

He referred us to see San Xavier del Bac Mission, built 1783-1797. Lance, not the bobcat. The area it inhabits, about 10 miles south of Tucson, still looks like this. Really stunning interior, and Jesus and Mary actually flank it's patron saint, who is centered on the back wall. I was told the 'Italians' have been working on it's restoration for some time.

This is the North Transept where Jesus hangs. On the architecture from the brochure: "It is a graceful blend of Moorish, Byzantine and late Mexican Renaissance architecture, yet the blending is so complete it is hard to tell where one type begins and another ends."

And here's a bizarre, relatively recent addition - a squaw wood carving clutching a crucifix near a Mary in a similar pose.

On the way to the Mission, I found this! Not the poster, but the place where it lives, the TITAN MISSILE MUSEUM.

Yay nukes! This drawing along with the mushroom cloud poster was in the working classroom section.

I have to admit, this place was bad ass, and the 75 year old female docent was still revved up and ready to let em fly on the Reds any day any time. I was so clueless, I didn't know that back in the 80s, Reagan had replaced all these Titan Missiles with Minutemen, far more deadly and fun! I didn't take the tour down into the lab, quarters, and missile silo (missile included) and I regret it now. There was a map full of similar sites around Arizona and I asked if someone could buy them and you can! (no missile though).

Real snake, fake terrain. Next up, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. I actually spent money for the first time here, though I suppose this was probably the easiest place to sneak in to. It's essentially an indigenous zoo, and I highly recommend a visit.

This is the most flirty hummingbird in the place but don't be fooled into loving her, she's just trying to make her stunningly attractive purple-headed man jealous.

Remember:

And here is ground zero where kids go off the rails, a simple, elegant graphic tour of the last 6 billion years in our little culdesac of our humble solar system. I hung out in this section for while and heard endless variations of on this theme: "What's the big bang? Oh they think the world was created by a big hitting of things together. So retarded." Of course there's nothing wrong with teens full of myth, but younger kids listen wholeheartedly and I watched a lot of natural awe extinguish. It was like watching one scientist abortion after another.

Those are the official visits we've made. Random driving has turned up a lot of great sights as well.

We've been sleeping new places every night just to experiment. My worry about this finding a safe place to park and sleep being difficult is so far unfounded. We even crashed in the parking lot of a soccer park, then I got up the next day, worked a bit, noticed a bunch of fellow old people gathering, and joined them for a game (lost 3-2 but no cleats, so).
When I say sleeping, I mean lying down for a series of naps - every night, around 4, Solomon notices all manner of creatures (like the one here) getting their shopping done and he races around Hobox for the best views.

In the day time, he's picked the worst possible favorite seat while we drive. I can see fine of course, but all we need is one cop to notice (cops are all dog people).

Thanks again for visiting. Comments encouraged.

HOBOX TOUR - PART ONE

2009-03-05T19:46:00.000-08:00

can't figure out how to make my image display wider - had to quickly shuffle this vertical. Part Two later. Still in Tucson just working, going to check out some sites tomorrow.

My Master Estate - Tucson

2009-03-03T17:24:00.000-08:00

Sunday night. This was a huge walmart but there were none of those RVs and 18 wheelers the brochures promised me I could hid amongst. Worked anyway, a little nervous from roving security but no worries. Still working out sleeping through the night. I'll share details later.

Monday. Worked outside Tohono Chul State Park (more fees but impenetrable).

Was touring a new neighborhood and saw a sign for Biosphere 2 so I of course had to check it out...
This was as close as I got - they wanted $20 for entrance and it was a forced tour only. I suppose my hopes of pressing my face against the glass to see naked terranauts for free was too much to hope for. Also, what the hell? --

And finally, we found a fantastic new home - in fact we're squatting WAY ahead of time - in a planned community that has yet to break ground. Stunning views and conveniently located :

Do not try to sneak up on me, we are heavily armed with guards posted behind several cacti. As with all new sleep spots, the first night (last night) is tentative, but with a bright moon and such an absurdly easy yet totally hidden spot, the only worry was someone from the construction company doing a tour or clever kids looking for a party spot -- that was until the sounds! Around midnight, we heard the most bizarre barking noises. I thought it was coyote or small dogs just baying, but they sounded like a sped up version of the four-headed Blue Meanie dog. the last thing you want when you're squatting prematurely is to be attacked by Blue Meanies. My second thought was that they were land piranha desperate to attack and devour us. In the morning, having survived, it occurred to me it was really strange bird sounds. But most likely dogs.

Tuesday. Worked all day various locations.
Tonight I'll use the cat cage to try and identify the noise!

UP NEXT - A TOUR OF HOBOX !

Tucson

2009-03-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

ok, first off, this blog will become less cat-centric as the days go by, do not worry. I'm still in awe of how Solomon has taken to this. That being said ...
It wasn't hot at all, why is he in the shade?

This has been our favorite spot by far for setting up home, a little peak called Pichacho about 30 miles west of Tucson. It's a State Park where they wanted to charge $6 just to drive in and take a photo so I drove around back and climbed the thing and got some snaps. Impossible to see in this photo, but the sight of Hobox (the car) that far away with Solomon in it and a cool green desert surrounding him was really something. The iphone camera is great but not that great. Wish I could have left him outside while I went up. I actually got about 30 minutes of work done up there.

We decided to continue to check out Tucson and it's Natl Forest, Coronado, assuming it would just be getting more and more stunning.

It was certainly beautiful, but no non-fee car camping anywhere, worse than the last two. Went all the way up (because it was there) also the town Summerhaven rested on top, which was the same size map font as Tucson, so I was very curious. Turned out to be about two dozen giant wood homes and seven civic buildings and shops.

This is Solomon gobsmacked by the sight of snow while on the dash trying to drive Hobox.

We're concocting a new plan, and currently write this from the middle of Tucson. I was able to catch the last ten minutes of an adult co-ed soccer game on my way back into town and asked about any old man games and everyone was very friendly. Tucson seems like one big Head Shop, great weird town. May try to stick around a bit, but Krazy Kat Forest is calling (extra points for whoever knows where I'm talking about).

WORK METER --

RAW PAGE COUNT : 0

OTHER: new characters, old characters revised.

Welcome to Hoboxia !

2009-02-28T15:14:00.000-08:00

Reporting from the library of lovely Julian, CA, quite a ways NE of San Diego just outside the Cleveland National Forest. First few days have been "unpacking" and getting used to the new lifestyle. We were in Angeles Forest one night, streets of LA one night, and last night was in Cleveland Forest, a rather Shire-like place where within 15 square miles there's a Boy Scout Camp, a crazy person prison, a Native American Casino, and a famous Pie restaurant.

Looks like most dispersed car camping in Angeles and Cleveland only offer small pull-offs.

We've had lovely spots but nowhere to really set up...

...so we're headed to Arizona. If it has to be scrubby, it may as well be warm. The King is having the time of his life.

Thanks for checking in on our adventure. Stay tuned.

2009-02-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

The adventure begins Wednesday, February 25th ...

Hoboxia

2009-02-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Hoboxia!