Living In The Garden - Part 2 (The Mantis & The Rose - 09/30/2019)

Thanks for checkin' out the Bsombin' blog! Before we move on to the next lowrider event, I wanted to go back in the archive and pull out some more old images (aside from the museum tours). I had these pictures of a praying mantis that had been living in the back yard on the rose bush, in my archives. I realized, after finding the pictures, that I had actually started a segment on the little critter and forgot to continue adding to it. I looked up the old post and realized that these images should be the next post in the segment and decided to pick up were I left off with the segment. I think this is a new record for the most time between updates in a segment, though.

Sadly, the little mantis in gone. They only have a life expectancy of about a year. So, I'm sure she's long gone, by now. I started learning about mantises while she was living in the rose bush. I was able to determine that it was a female because of the number of sections her abdomen had. Females have fewer sections and the sections are wider. While males have thiner abdomens with more sections. Females have have 5 sections and males have 8, usually. If you look closely at some of the pictures in these posts, you can count the sections of her abdomen. She lived there for several months before disappearing one day. And during that time I was able to get a lot of pictures of my little green neighbor. I learned a lot about mantises during her stay in the rose bush. So I'll be sharing some of the stuff I learned as I post the images. ...Like how to tell male and female mantises apart, for example.

5/29/21 - First Annual Genocide Car Club Party At The Pink Motel - Part 4

 Thanks for stoppin' by to check out the Bsombin' blog! We've been looking at pictures from a party at the Pink Motel that was hosted by the Genocide Los Angeles car club. And this is the final post from that night. 

By this point in the night, most of the people who came to the party had left. The people who were still there were all cleaning up and getting ready to go home or to their motel rooms. It was pretty much just the Genocide club bothers and their friends and family who were left. So, I just took one more walk around the Genocide cars for some final shots, before packing up and heading back to the truck.

That's it for this years party at the Pink Motel. Hopefully I can go again next year. ...And for the more than just the last half hour! But, until then, we'll just keep looking out for the Genocide car club at the cruises.

Check back soon for some shots from the garden, some new poetry, some of my art, and some of Michelangelo's art!

5/29/21 - First Annual Genocide Car Club Party At The Pink Motel - Part 3

Thanks for checkin' out the blog! Not gonna say much on this post, just gonna get right back to the lowrider pictures...

We still have one more post from the Pink Motel left to go. Then we'll head over to a lowrider picnic at Brand park. After that, we'll go to the Crystal Cathedral to see Michelangelo! So make sure to check back soon for more art, photography, and more!

5/29/21 - First Annual Genocide Car Club Party At The Pink Motel - Part 2

 Thanks for stoppin' by and checkin' out the blog! This is the second part of my pictures from the Genocide Car Club's first annual party. I almost missed the party because I had a family gathering earlier that day. But I was able to get there for the last half hour of the party. Which gave me just enough time to get some shots of the lowlows shining in the neon lights. I won't carry on about thing anymore than this, for this post. Instead, I'll just let the flicks speak for themselves.

We're half way though the flicks from the Genocide Party. The best are still to come, too. So make sure to check back soon for more neon lowriders!

5/29/21 - First Annual Genocide Car Club Party At The Pink Motel - Part 1

 Thanks for stoppin' by and checkin' out the Bsombin' blog! Last weekend I jumped in my truck and drove out to Sun Valley to go check out the Genocide Car Club's first annual party at the Pink Motel. I was really interested to go check this event out because it brought together two things that I love... Lowriders and skateboarding! I had never heard of a lowrider/skateboarding event, until this. So my curiosity was peaking. Unfortunately, however, I had a family gathering that same day. I wasn't about to miss out on my families first gathering since the pandemic started. So I ended up missing the skateboarding part of the party. I almost missed the whole thing. But I was able to get there for the last half hour. By that time, a lot of the people had already cleared out. But I was still able to find some good photo opportunities. I actually got a lot more shots then I thought I would get in a half hour of shooting. And the fact that most of the people had left made it a lot easier to shoot, since the crowd was gone.

The lighting at the Pink Motel was not camera friendly, though. I actually had a few people ask me if I would take their pictures for them because their iPhones and androids couldn't get a good picture. The motel is located on a section of San Fernando road that doesn't have many street lights on it. And the only lights on the motel were it's bright neon lights. This made the contrast between the dark and neon lights really hard to shoot in. Either the neon was legible and the rest of the picture was too dark. Or the pictures was lit but the neon signs were blown out and too bright to read. It took a minute. But I was able to work around the problem and adjust my setting to get some decent shots. I also decided to use the high contrast to try and get some more artistic images out of the neon lighting. I turned my focus from the cars to the lights for a while and got some neon shots I was really happy with. I ended up taking a lot of pictures. I'll be splitting up the flicks from the Pink Motel into a few posts, just to make all the content easier to digest. So, with out any further delay, let's get to the lowriders...

There's a lot more to come from the Pink Motel and last weekend's lowrider events. So check back soon for more art, photography, lowriders, and more here on Bsombin'!

The Broad Museum (09/26/2019) - Part 10 Glenn Ligon & Robert Longo

Thanks for checkin' out the Bsombin' blog! This is the last part of our pre-pandemic tour of the Broad museum. The museum reopened last week and has a whole bunch of new work on display. So this will be the last part of this tour. But, there will be another tour of the museum, soon, now that is is reopened.

This last part of this tour takes us through a small section where one of Glenn Ligon's pieces is found. It's a neon sign titled Double America 2. I took a few pictures of it, since it was flashing and changing as it flashed. I also included a shot of all the people that were surrounding the piece. It was a pretty popular section of the museum. 

The last section of the museum that we saw was the Robert Longo section. I was blown away by this man's drawings! His ability to draw hyper-realistic images is insane! My aunt was with me, when I went to the museum. And we were both unsure about what we were looking at. We thought were looking at photos, at first. Even then, we were impressed. But, when I check the name plaques to see what the titles were, I saw they were charcoal drawings.

The way Longo created the effect of light, the perfect proportions and contrast, the intricate details, the masterful shading, and scale of the images all left us speechless. My aunt and I just looked at each other in disbelief, once we realized these were all drawings. The pictures don't do these pieces an ounce of justice, though. And the glare from the glass takes a lot away from the images. These pieces really need to be see in person to be fully appreciated. The pieces Untitled (Black Pussy Hat at Woman's March) and Untitled (Ferguson Police, August 13, 2014) left me in awe. I loved everything about these piece. But the technical skill and mastery of charcoal and graphite was hard for me to get over. My aunt and I were trippin' on these pieces all the way home from the museum. It was a great way to end our tour and an afternoon in downtown.

That's it for this tour of the Broad. Next we'll be going to a few cruises that I went to over the past weekend, before we look at some of Michael Angelo's art at the Crystal Cathedral! I'm probably going to slip a few poems and a couple of other surprises in, between the lowriding and museum tours, too. So check back soon for more Bsombin'! 

The Broad Museum (09/26/2019) - Part 9 Takashi Murakami

 Thanks for stoppin' by and checkin' out the Bsombin' blog! We're nearing the end of our tour of the pre-pandemic Broad museum. There are just a few sections left to see, before we leave the museum and go out cruising. I have a ton of lowrider pictures to get to, among other things. But, first, we're going to check out my favorite section of the Broad...

The first time I went to the Broad, Takashi Murakami's work was being featured in the main section of the museum. That was one of my main reasons for going, then. I had just learned about Murakami's work and was really interested in seeing it in person. Seeing his work in person was breathtaking! The scale of his larger works and the amount of detail that every piece had left me confused. It was too much to process. There was so much to see in every piece. I could't understand how one person could do so much. I later found out that it was actually a whole team of people working under Murakami's direction that produced these pieces. His creative process is more like a production, because it's usually in such a large scale and involves so many elements and people. The products of these production are some of the most fun, colorful, and detailed pieces of art that I have ever seen.

When we got to the Murakami section, my aunt was speechless. I was pretty quite myself. I love this man's work for so many reasons. It makes me feel like a little kid watching Saturday morning cartoons, with all the colorfully animated characters. We stayed in this section for a while just quietly staring into the fantastic worlds that Murakami created in his works. I'm including some close ups to give you a better idea of just how insane the detail in his work is. In doing so, I got a little lost in those fantastic worlds and forgot to take pictures of two of the pieces' name plaques. So I'll just list them here in the order that I have them showing below.

1.) My arms and legs rot off though my blood rushes forth, the tranquility of my heart shall be prized above all. (Red blood, black blood, blood that is not blood)

2.) Tan Tan Bo a.k.a Gerotan: Scorched by the Blaze in the Purgatory of Knowledge

3.) Of Chinese Lions, Peonies, Skulls, And Fountains

4.) Hustle'n'Punch By Kaikai Kiki