Something Entirely Different Weekend Post

Well, different from the earlier posts of the week.

What are you doing to keep cool????

It's been really hot in L.A. this week.  The good news and the bad news is that most shopping areas and museums have a lot of outdoor areas.  What we really want today is somewhere very cool and completely inside to chill in. 

Like this.  My idea is for eating sorbets and consuming cool drinks.   And you've guessed it right, we don't have a pool......... 

Have a great rest of the weekend wherever you are!

(Sorry, no photo credit, but I found it at Vosges Paris here.)

Jimtown Grocery, Alexander Valley

Somewhere between Sonoma and Napa Valleys

on a lonely stretch of curving road....open to much of nothing but the sky, to vines marching away as far as the eye can see,  and a deep separation of mountains........

I had a dream of life.  A somewhat lonely but not sinister "Postman Always Rings Twice" kind of life.

Of relentless sun and solitude, and occasional - and only occasionally - friendly - strangers stopping in to relieve the stillness of the hour.

I, or someone, would have made something delicious in the back - and there would be somewhere cool

for those weary workers or traveler-type strangers to rest their feet.

It would be a place of the unsuspected, of curiosities.....with little expectation that anyone would want to carry something of any of it away with them. 

I would be well satisfied to keep said curiosities for myself.

Especially these.  I would let my visitors take tasty little snacks, and cheap clever gadgets away with them.  Instead.

I would not be very happy, when, by the 21st century, I had acquired (my first, ever)  neighbors.  Even if they did have very groovy chairs.

(Jimtown Grocery:  Find out more here.  Photo below, Jimtown Store website)   

 

Hog Island Oysters

On the shores of beautiful, beautiful Tomales Bay.  Find out more here.

This Weekend

Here's what we made and ate.

Schiaccata all'uva.  You can't have late summer and champagne grapes without it.

Inspired by Jim Lahey of Sullivan St. Bakery in NYC.  We used to go there nearly every weekend for bread and pizzas year after year and the schiaccata was an annual must-have.  (Available only in late July and August.)  They have just finally opened a space on 9th Ave. in Chelsea. Here's the menu.  The recipe comes from this book:  My Bread.  

And here's a video of Jim Lahey (and another NY pizza maker) showing you how to get your pie into the oven properly. 

When you don't live in NYC and aren't able to get a good slice on every street corner, you start to obsess about pizza. So far L.A. is not measuring up except for Mozza.  That's coming from Mr. Paradis.  

WHAT DID YOU EAT?

(And p.s.:  what did I tell you about "Mootz-a-rell?!")

All I Want For Friday

When I lived in New York, about this time of year I would get a little crazy

and desperately need a little something just like this.

Now that I live in L.A. where we have lovely summers, I'm not so crazy.  But I still want one of these.  In FRANCE of course!

Is it asking soooooooooo much?

HAPPY WEEKEND!

(Pics via All The Mountains)

LACMA Looks

I'm probably infringing all kinds of copyrights here.  But.  I do it for you.  Wanna see what's up in the art world in L.A.?   Contemporary art has been much in the news over here lately.  A big deal has been made about this:  THE BIG ROCK.  

Otherwise known as.....Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass.  What do you think?  I'll tell you what I think at the bottom of the post.

You will find old friends at LACMA.  (Picasso.)

Some might be a BIG and very pleasant surprise: Matisse (!)

And then you will find the very unexpected.  As, for example, this quilt made of cigarette silks from the "Common Places: Printing, Embroidery and the Art of Global Mapping" show.  (You know what cigarette silks are?  Or you can guess, can't you?)

Go to the museum website here to see a better picture of Chris Burden's Metropolis II.

I know, I know, you could have done this when you were 10, with your erector set and Scale-X-trics.    And five of your favorite uncles and thirteen kids from school that you could actually stand. But you didn't.  And now it's too late. It's pointless to try to best this effort.  Just come and see it and be mesmerized.  Is it art???????  

Do you care, really?  It's just so cool to watch those little cars go round and round and round.

Barbara Krugers "Untitled (Shafted)" installed in an elevator shaft in the Broad building

Robert Therrien: it's not even "Untitled".  It has no title.  Accordingly, Mr. Paradis thinks Mr. Therrien is a very lazy artist.

("How hard is it to think up a title?!")

Richard Serra.  One of the most hated artists in NYC in the 1980's.  Now in the 21st century, it is hard not to be reverent once you've walked around one of these eternally awe-inspiring tilted arcs.  Maybe they actually really need to be experienced INSIDE a giant interior space.  vs. a windy public plaza where federal  employees are trying to eat their lunches.

Here's a  handy way to keep track of what's going on at LACMA.  I'm adding it to my blogroll.

Oh yeah and p.s., the big rock??????  Meh!

Too bad.  It was very expensive.  The installation:  looks like it was designed by someone who's usually building shopping malls.  Besides we have much bigger rocks than that all over L.A.  They're called the Sierras.  Go ahead, tell me what you really think!

For more on LACMA, start with this post from last month.

Food. Not Food.

It's a little what you might think.....

and a lot not.

Do you already know what this is?

Yup.  Paper.

From the Hiromi paper shop at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica  I haven't tried any yet.  Anybody out there?  How did you use it?