Nudesicle

I've recently gotten into riding a bike around everywhere. Over the past few weeks, I've ridden more than I have since I was a teenager and it's been a blast and a great workout. I feel healthier and stronger - despite a few extra aches and bruises I've picked up (after a foolish ride on Santa Monica Blvd. before I had my sea legs back, I considered making myself a shirt saying "I survived rush hour on SMB and all I got was this bloody shirt...") In theory it should take me longer to get around than it would by car or by bus, but in Los Angeles traffic, I think it's a safe bet I beat other people going the same distance during rush hour gridlock from time to time.

Anyway, I'm not in shape to feel comfortable doing this yet, but I read through BBC News about a naked bike ride in Sussex England over the weekend where a mass of riders stripped down to ride to promote the use of pedal power. As I know more and more people getting their bikes out of storage due to gas prices, it's a great time and I would love to do something like that here. I mean, if World Naked Bike Ride can pull it off in supposedly sexually repressed England (and there is another event planned for London as well) it's a shame we aren't doing this in Hell A. It's not unprecedented either, according to their Wiki, there was one in LA in 2004. And San Francisco of course is in on it as well.

Who's down? Let's get this started. This would outdo a kamikaze run on the Santa Monica Freeway any day. I just need a new seat on my bike first - it kills my ass with my pants still on...

Material incentives

On the heels of Benicio Del Toro's best actor win at Cannes for his portrayal of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, two of Che's children have begun to speak out over the commercialization of their father's likeness according to the Guardian. Rather than protest the film - in fact the son, Camilo, said he welcomed the film as long as it was faithful to his father's memory - they took issue with the idea of the image of "a man who fought and died trying to overthrow capitalism and material excess should [being] used to sell British vodka, French fizzy drinks and Swiss mobile phones, among other travesties."

This has been a long time coming as Guevara's image has been popular as a symbol of counterculture and on college campuses for decades, even while the companies that produce the t-shirts, hats, posters, etc. specifically from the photo taken by Alberto Korda in Havana in 1960 are using the image for capitalist gains.

But, that's to be expected. Corporations are concerned with bottom lines and profitability, and - just like Nike co-opting Saul Williams' List of Demands (an anti-corporate screed by any account) for a shoe commercial - it's not uncommon for words and images to be used to promote the exact opposite of what they were meant to stand for.

Hopefully, even if a kid hasn't read or seen The Motorcycle Diaries, or could care less about Steven Soderbergh's new 2-part film, with Che's own children speaking out they'll begin to see the irony in flaunting the image on their chest as it's juxtaposed against their Chuck Taylors (since Converse is now owned by Nike), while sitting in Starbucks working on their MacBook.

The Definition of Alt

Nadya Lev at Coilhouse asked a really great question today, "What does Alt Model even mean?" Brought on by a discussion about the latest Bizarre Magazine cover girl, Veronika, (who had her left leg amputated below the knee due to disfigurement) and just what makes her alt, Lev runs through several definitions of alt - from transgender to heavyset models, to the tattooed and pierced models typically associated with the scene, and what she then calls the self-made persona - and shows how amorphous and incomplete the definition is in application to each.

Other than the fact even in porn their tends to be a backlash against any "next big thing" once it's become overexposed, this is probably part of the reason alt gets derided - gently here by Susannah Breslin, a little more harshly here by Lux Nightmare for Fleshbot - by those familiar with the porn industry. It's also drawn hackles from friends of mine who have worked on the fringes of it - in one case as a freelance photographer - when others have tried to suggest that the different visions of outward beauty embraced by websites like Suicide Girls or Gods Girls are somehow empowering to women.

This idea forgets that the women still mostly have very similar body types and conform to some standard stylistic sensibilities - such as Apnea (pictured above) and Stoya - only with a certain edge about them. In Apnea's case, over time she's gone down a more fetish route in her work, embracing goth and bdsm while taking almost a performance artist approach, but Stoya has had a quick and easy transition into more traditional hardcore porn over the past year. I'm not knocking either, just acknowledging their origins and career trajectories.

Even on the business side, with contractual exclusivity/non-compete agreements, low pay and various lawsuits the rise of the alt model scene hasn't been any more empowering for the women working in it than traditional pornography ever was. It's just as much a business, and models have to be savvy to become successful at exploiting it, rather than be exploited themselves.

Take porn out of it though and I would agree with Lev that those in the "self-made persona" category best exemplify the idea of alt - or maybe what alt should be. It seems more artistic and about expressing one's individuality as opposed to fitting easily into a category or scene. Becoming fashion and style grinders, looking high and low for inspiration and ideas in developing an outward look, and hopefully finding something that matches the wonderful weirdness inside as well. Which of course means a lot from a guy who wears tennis shoes, jeans and a button-down shirt to work...

The Decapitator

London has another anonymous street artist, the Decapitator, who has been horrifically defacing corporate advertising campaigns with gruesome results. I have to thank Grinding.be for turning me onto the Decapitator, who posts his/her work at a Flickr account. Recently, the artist's work grabbed attention again for turning Carrie from Sex in the City (Sarah Jessica Parker) into a body carrying its own head as an accessory.

Unlike the Splasher, who defaced other street artists' works, the Decapitator's targeting of adverts is much easier to stomach for many. Violent, yes, but edgy and cheeky, it makes an obvious statement - even if it was not the artist's intent - that just because a corporation has the money to rent an ad space, it doesn't mean it's theirs. The fun, mocking attitude has struck a chord that led Environmental Graffiti's Alex Ingham to pronounce at the end of his profile of the artist's work, "ALL HAIL, THE DECAPITATOR!"

The Caligula of Orange County?

I am so excited about the latest developments in this story. I've wanted to blog about this guy forever as the Orange County billionaire co-founder of Broadcom, Henry T. Nicholas, gave me one of my favorite news stories of 2007. You'll see why in a moment.

The timing is all messed up, but part of me sees Henry T. Nicholas as the retroactive inspiration for Patrick Bateman. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before a room full of bodies appears in Nicholas's underground lair. Why? Okay, first of all because it was found out last year that Nicholas really does have an underground lair. Of course, that would only put him on the level of a James Bond villain as far as most people are concerned. But, then there are all the allegations of hookers and drugs. You see, that secret bunker of his wasn't for building a laser to carve his face in the moon. It was built with secret nooks and crannies for him to secretly take prostitutes to so he could apparently snort some blow off their asses. Or something.

According to Wired | Threat Level, the story got even juicier today. In an indictment filed Thursday (and I'm paraphrasing Wired blooger Ryan Singel's post here) it's been alleged he drugged two fellow executives, racked up a $30,000 bill for ecstasy for a party, ordered employees to maintain a stockpile of drugs including coke and meth at his warehouse. At another point he allegedly bought 225 tabs of ecstasy. The indictment continues that he and several others smoked enough pot on a flight that the pilot had to don an oxygen mask to avoid a high from hotboxing. Supposedly, he had an employee exchange an envelope with $5,000-to-$10,000 for drugs, and he also signed a settlement agreement with an employee, paying out $1 million for silence about illegal drug activities. Finally, Nicholas allegedly conspired with others to get prescription drugs illegally. No word on if he ever declared himself the new emperor of Rome during a fit of drug-fueled mania.

Truly, it's amazing human beings like this who almost make the violence of the French Revolution understandable.

Update: Today's New York Post has more.

Know Your Rights: Photography in Public Spaces

Umm... No.
In rethinking the direction of the blog recently, one thing I've become interested in is breaking out my camera again and providing original images I've taken and developed on my own. At the same time, from experience, I know it's become more difficult to even take photos in public places. Thankfully, BoingBoing.net has posted several times about this issue. Not just about people who have been stopped or antagonized for taking photos in public places, but also in providing information on just what is allowed.

Most recently, they linked to an article by Bruce Schneier for the Guardian - The War on Photography - that discusses just how improbable it is that someone being harassed by law officers for committing photography will end with the arrest of an actual terrorist. In addition, he links to several resources that explain your rights in the US, in addition to the UK and Australia.

As it turns out, taking photos of almost anything (with the exception of the odd secret military installation) is within bounds. Even if it's a privately owned location, if it's open to the public, it's within your rights to shoot photos. What's a little murkier is when you start taking photos of specific people. If you use a long lens and can see that a man across the street is holding a bottle of Valtrex, guess what? You're probably invading his privacy. Still, the next time mall security tells you to put your camera away or you and your friends have to leave (I'm raising my hand as this happened to me), you should know you can tell them where to shove their plastic rent-a-cop badge.

Half mastered ass style mad ruff task - WuChess

Chess has figured into Wu-Tang lyrics from the very beginning and I know the RZA is a renaissance businessman. But, WuChess was probably the last Wu-Tang social networking concept I would have ever imagined. Not that I'm not impressed by the sheer weirdness of it.

Users can sign up for an annual fee of $48 to take part in chess games and tournaments in real time and network with other players and Wu-Tang fans. The two groups may seem at first glance to be mutually exclusive, but the RZA has made a successful career of taking the least expected path. GZA may be the genius, but I have faith Mr. Bobby Digital can pull this off. Check out the site or the blog for more info.

Guerrilla Gardening Takes Root in LA

Scott stands amidst his handiwork on a Long Beach traffic island
You can thank the LA Times for that pun in the title, as I simply took the headline from their article in Thursday's paper about the guerrilla gardening movement (?) reaching Los Angeles.

You can call it political or social action, but guerrilla gardening seems much simpler than that. It is a wonderful thing as people take back unused and unwanted land - mostly in urban spaces - and return it to life with plants and flowers, leaving the barren and wasted a little more beautiful than how they found it.

"Brimming with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered." - Joe Robinson, Special to The Times

According to the ever reliable Wikipedia, guerrilla gardening goes back as far as 1973. I first read about guerrilla gardening in Treehugger where they linked to a Toronto group who used the wonderful motto, "graffiti with nature."

Specifically, read the Treehugger article for more on the philosophy, and the LA Times piece if you've ever wanted to know how to make a seed bomb. If you're interested in giving this a try yourself, there are many sites around the web that could help, including Homegrown Evolution and GuerrillaGardening.org.

I'm sure there are some detractors, but much like Critical Mass is for bike enthusiasts, this is a great form of peaceful eco-activism.

Four

The Corey Helford Gallery beat out the Culver City art walk by one day with the group opening, Four, Friday night. Featuring - as the gallery puts it - four emerging Los Angeles-based artists, the show featured a dark, Gothic sensibility throughout, but with two standouts.

I've been familiar with Jason Shawn Alexander (who used to simply go by Jason or J. Alexander, but I imagine changed it up for obvious reasons) for several years as he has worked on comics for Oni Press and Dark Horse Comics including Queen & Country and Hellboy spinoff, Abe Sapien among others. As such, even though I don't follow comics anymore, I leapt at the chance to see him show his painted work. He instills each piece with drama, but it's his distorted - almost hyper real - anatomy that really makes his figures stand out. Where an artist whose work I consider somewhat similar in look, Jeremy Geddes, uses distortions to add a dark, twisted, but humorous sensibility, Alexander's work is less cynical and more emotionally complex. Whether the red smeared across a woman's face (Repeater - to the right) as if it's blood from her hands or a little boy with a crow standing over him, there's a dark, melancholy, and fearsome quality constantly at work.

Alexander's work in comics has been well received despite how unconventional it may appear alongside more typical artists. Going for splotchy, scratchy inks as opposed to clean lines and photorealism, the skill and talent he showed in that medium is expanded upon beautifully in the Helford exhibit.

His work might be tender and human despite its edginess, but Karen Hsiao goes for a much more transgressive approach. Breaking her work into three sections, she turns the first into a de facto peepshow, making good use of the adults only label by her photographic work. Employing imagery both horrific and erotic, this portion is rooted deeply in the fetish scene where I first encountered her work.

In the second portion, she creates a pantheon of gods and demons with her own takes on Ningyo, Kali and Nephilim (pictured left). Finally, in collaboration with Miso - who provides twisted fairytale images around Hsiao's photos - she presents several photos of women in states of latex undress as they bathe. Altogether, the three scenes may seem disjointed - and they are - but they also serve to showcase the versatility of Hsiao's talents.

Provocative and unflinching, as grotesque or disturbing as Hsiao's work may be, she finds the beauty in the unnerving and shows she has grown from the good, but more one note series Bloodletting featured on her website.

Along with painters Melissa Forman and Sarah Folkman, Alexander's and Hsiao's work will adorn the walls of the Corey Helford Gallery for another three weeks until June 21. Enjoy the presence of these young artists' works while it lasts.

$30,000 for hookers and Halo? For reals? (No...)

Greg Gutfeld gets owned by a juicy fake news story
Have you heard about this kid from Texas, Ralph Hardy? He stole his father's credit cards and ran up a $30,000 tab on a spending spree, hotel stay and - oh yeah - a couple hookers who he simply played Halo with for a couple hours. The story ran on the front page of Digg and was even covered on Fox News's Red Eye. And, it's completely made up.

A case of guerrilla marketing by way of an 8 ball (which is not to say that the writer of it had done an 8 ball, just that the story is that crazy), writer Lyndon Antcliff created the story for money.co.uk as linkbait - a story designed to go viral across social networks and drive up traffic to the site. According to Wired - Epicenter, Antcliff made the story as ludicrous as possible so that people would know it was a hoax. Besides, how would a British financial magazine scoop the American media over a story out of Texas?

The money.co.uk story now includes a disclaimer at the top. But the more interesting part is how quickly the media latched onto it, with Fox News running with the story, obviously without any factchecking. And, for Money and Antcliff, the gambit worked. According to Mediawatch, money.co.uk's online ranking went from 80,000 to under 6,000 in a matter of days.