Where you find it

While walking at night I've noticed this bus stop advertisement twice.  Both times I saw it indistinctly from some distance.

Each time I thought to myself "that reminds me of a Mark Rothko painting."  Here's a real Rothko for comparison.

Alas, when I got close enough to distinguish the details I was disappointed to discover that I was not looking at excellent modern art.  Or even a knock-off modern art.  Instead I was looking at a picture of a newfangled tablet computer.  And not just any computer, but one sold by Microsoft, a company I've resolved never to patronize ever again.  (I'll spare you the rant.)

My point is that for a few moments, before I learned the truth, I enjoyed thoughts about the art of Mark Rothko.  Walking down the street I took pleasure in the memory of Rothko's works.  I've found his work meaningful since I first encountered it in the 70s.  I offer thanks to the advertising executives of the Microsoft Corporation for triggering these positive experiences in my mind right there on a Pasadena street.  I'm sure that's what they had in mind all along.

My point here is that the experience of art is where you find it.   It could happen any old place.

---

One thing I saw online recently was Seat Assignment, a series of pictures by artist Nina Katchadourian.  Apparently she was bored on a long airplane flight and began excusing herself to the toilet to take selfies with her cellphone in the style of old Flemish portraits using items from the plane as costume materials.  For example:

Here's an actual 15th-century painting for comparison:

Katchadourian has taken my Rothko experience up a step.  She imitated an ancient artistic portrait style using materials that existed where she happened to be at that moment, in a bathroom 5 miles high.

---

Occasionally I pick up random pieces of paper on my walks. Often it turns out to be just trash (which, in a small gesture of civic-mindedness, I carry to a proper receptacle.)  Being near a high school I find a lot of discarded school work this way.

One day I noticed a folded piece of paper which I assumed was going to be more high school homework.  I was surprised to find a printed poem on it.

   Gloves Off

Today I will have salsa
      and wear loud socks.
My tie will clash, a bit,
      with my shirt,
and the watch I choose
      will be seven minutes slow.

One of my pencils
      will be shorter than the others.
I will say "Hello"
      in a louder tone of voice,
read the second section
      of the newspaper first,

and, tonight, approach you
      from the other side,
do that
      before this,

for today
      I have finally discovered
how the mime
      gets out
                  of that box.

Pretty obviously not high school level work.  A surprisingly good poem for a piece of trash.  It seems to be in the voice of a young man making his first very very tentative forays into non-conformity.  Maybe not so young, since the third paragraph reveals him speaking to a significant other and suggests that their lovemaking has been very repetitive.  There was no author mentioned or copyright asserted.  No Google hits.

Later I figured out the source of this poem.

I remembered that several blocks away, on a fence in front of a house, is a small box offering free poetry.  I checked the current offering.  I found the identical page, albeit uncrumpled, with the identical poem.

POETRY
Is Good For You

Fresh Every Friday.

I'm not too happy with being told that poetry is good for me.  That's a bit too preachy for my tastes.  (I'll spare you the rant.)  What I do like is living in a neighborhood where any little piece of paper I find on the ground might turn out to be a thought-provoking work of art.

---

Noticing "art" in unexpected places happens to me quite a lot.  I'll often stop to take a picture of whatever catches my eye, often because it reminds me of painting.  I post these shots on my photo blog Mixed Messages.

Rothko paintings have come up in this Mixed Meters post: Cool and Warm, Dylan and Waldo at SFMOMA  (the Rothko is in an animated GIF)

An imitation Rothko came up in this post: The New Yorker and the Hero Composer in Los Angeles (there's also an imitation Jackson Pollock)

MM post: The Plastic Bag as Hat - another modern take on medieval portraiture.

Found objects come up a lot on Mixed Meters - you will see many glove pictures.

Here are some posts which feature found pieces of paper:
Found Cartoon - It Looks at the Atom
Found Cartoon - Fink
Found Cartoon - She's Not a Christian
Old Medical Catalog Scrap
30 Second Spots - A Newspaper in Traffic

Click any picture in this post for an enlargement.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blue Glove

When I encounter a lost glove while on my walks I usually stop to photograph it.  Here's a collection of snaps of lonely, abandoned gloves.  Ah, the stories they could tell.

These are 'found objects'.  I am showing them exactly as I encountered them.  I have no idea why there are so many blue ones.

You can click any picture for an enlargement.

Check out a similar Mixed Meters post from over 4 years ago entitled Gloves in the Wild.  In it I mention that gloves are more photogenic than hats.  Socks, which I see periodically, are not very interesting to photograph either.  Someday I would like to start shooting pictures of abandoned shoes, which - unlike gloves - sometimes appear in the wild in pairs.

Here's a bonus shot - but it's the same as one of the gloves shown above.  I have many more glove pictures.  I'll save those for another glove post.  These are all the blue ones I could find.

Other "blue" Mixed Meters posts:
Blue Doodles 
Branches Before Blue
A New Rhapsody in Blue

30 Second Spots - A Newspaper In Traffic

You're probably wondering what sorts of things do I do at Mixed Meters when I'm not worried about foolish opera festivals and frightening neo-Nazis.  One thing is that I take pictures of trash, things other people have thrown away and no one else, except me, ever looks at.

If I find trash which is moving I make a video of it. Sometimes I write some music to go with the video. I never know what sort of music to expect and neither should you.

To that end, here's a little video drama, complete with my musical soundtrack, entitled "(Sometimes I Feel Like) A Newspaper in Traffic".

Our hero is a sheet of newsprint, a flyer advertising loss leaders for a large grocery chain.  The paper is separated from his friends and far from the safety of his metal rack.  I found the paper on a busy Pasadena street directly across from a store in that large grocery chain.  Crossing a street is quite an accomplishment for something with no motor abilities at all.

As the scene opens, our hero is being attacked by a series of terrible mechanized war machines from the present against which he has no defense.  He must roll with every punch.  But during a lull in the attacks he is able to regain some lost ground by gliding on a gust of wind.  Eventually the enemy regroups and the sheet of paper is driven off.  Apparently things end badly for our protagonist.



(Sometimes I Feel Like) A Newspaper In Traffic © 2010 by David Ocker    99 seconds.  You can find the video directly on YouTube here.  Please consider watching in hi-def.  Please consider leaving a comment.

Other recent videos of mine:
Flashing (for Kraig Grady)
Water With Ducks
Flap
Squawk! (in which a peacock sings a short phrase from the Joe Liggins tune "The Honeydripper")
Rain Random

Traffic Tags: David Ocker. . . Newspaper. . . Traffic

Old Medical Catalog Scrap

One reason for the dearth of recent Mixed Meters posts is the computer failure I recently endured - caused not by a hard drive crash but by a hard drive power supply crash. Everything seems back to normal now.

To test out the health of my system I scanned a small scrap of paper which I picked up while walking. It's very old. Could be a reprint. It's a medical catalog.

Click on this picture for a readable enlargement. The scan shows both front and back.


Here are some of the items offered for sale and their asking prices:

• Rubber Male Urinal Bag -- $3.25
• Rubber Female Urinal Bag -- $3.25
• "Omega" Bulb Syringe -- 89¢
• Special "Alpha" Syringe -- $1.49
• Syringe Attachments -- 5¢ to $1.25
• Oil and Water Metal Atomizer -- 77¢
• Plant Sprinkler -- 65¢
• Clinical Thermometer -- 50¢
• Rectal Rubber Tubes -- 55¢
• Stomach Pump -- $1.75
• Stethoscope -- 95¢
• Urinometers -- 35¢
• Anti-Snoring Apparatus and Projecting Ear Device -- 40¢
• Rubber Dust Protectors -- $1.00
• Metal Dust Protector -- 75¢
• Sounds and Catheters -- 20¢ to 75¢

Left Behind After The Rose Parade 2009

Through bad planning I arrived at the Rose Parade, a short walk from our home, in time to see the last few entries. I snapped some shots.
.

At the end of the parade I videotaped two units that many people don't know about. The Tow Truck Brigade Horn Band and the God Squad Camp Followers Precision Drill Team. If you watch them, I suggest turning up the volume.



Then I walked backwards along the route looking, in the Mixed Meters tradition, for trash to photograph. (Trash pics from 2007 are here.)






Pre-parade pictures from 2008 are here.

Found Cartoon - She's Not A Christian

We live in the vicinity of a high school. The local litter has a certain sophomoric cast. I've learned to pick up odd bits of paper in hopes of finding some mind-blowingly perplexing works of ... uh, art.

Previous Mixed Meters found cartoons include Fink and It Looks At The Atom. I also recommend Graffiti Animals of California although those drawing come from a much wider geographic area.

Today's offering is "She's Not A Christian." The title text appears three times. A fourth line reads (possibly) "I'm not a Christian". Speaking as a non-Christian I'm so glad to see religious tolerance is alive in our public schools. Figure drawing, however, may not be part of the curriculum. (Click either picture for an enlargement.)



Media: unlined notebook paper 7.5" x 10" with unidentified brown and pink stains, black marker and blue ball point pen. There's a lot of bleed through from front to back.

P.S. Apparently the phrase "She's not a christian" originates with the TV Show, Wife Swap. See an excerpt here.

She's Not A Tagger Tags: cartoon. . . She's Not A Christian

Gloves in the Wild

Gloves are more photogenic than hats. These pictures were all taken in the natural habitat of the Pasadena wild glove.











Click any glove for an enlargement.

Glove Tags: gloves. . . found objects

Fallen Avocados 5

Fallen Avocados, an ancient Mixed Meters regular feature, is back from its long hiatus. Sort of like Indiana Jones.

See all the Fallen Avocados episodes by clicking on this sentence.

For those of you who don't remember what Fallen Avocados was, the format is to combine a picture of an avocado which has fallen from a tree (and is often half-eaten and which I photograph just as I find it) with some video or other link, the sort that you might get in an email from an annoying friend.

Fallen avocados are a common sight in Pasadena. And in other places as well, I'm sure. The avocados have often been a meal for wild animals such as squirrels or raccoons or possums or our dog Chowderhead, who isn't actually wild. Our neighbor's avocado tree drops avocados into our back yard and I say "the backyard feeds our dog automatically".


This video link is to a compendium of all the Simpson's television show couch gags. The "couch gag" is that little bit of the Simpsons introduction just after Homer is chased through the garage by Marge's bad driving and the whole family tries to sit down on the couch in front of the television. Generally each episode has a different couch gag. The compilation goes on for a while. It's like the funniest episode ever.

Be sure to listen to the sound track as you watch - the constant repetition of the same bit of music from Danny Elfman's brilliant theme is interrupted occasionally by bits of pop culture music. What a wonderfully unpretentious minimalist score. Too bad minimalist pieces in concerts don't have a similarly free spirit.

Here and here and here are some MM posts which reference the Simpsons.

Fallen Couch Gag Tags: fallen avocados. . . Simpsons. . . couch gags. . . video

The Curious Symbology of the Sick Old Clock

I'm not used to being ill. Right now I've got some untreatable viral crud that

• makes me cough uncontrollably like a sailor,
• makes my throat feel like the cats are using it as a scratching box
• makes snot run unaided out of my nostrils, over my lip and into my mouth.

"Drink lots of fluids and get plenty of rest" was the doctor's mantra.


Here are pictures of a clock in my office - it's a Micronta Timer, sold by Radio Shack - an electronic on and off box that I've had, oh, since the eighties.


I used it to turn on tape recorders and radio receivers automatically at precise times to record radio broadcasts I couldn't otherwise listen to. This was well before the Internet, back when local radio still had the occasional interesting bit.


Some time ago Mr. Micronta Timer started displaying time in new, creative ways. These pictures demonstrate the curious symbology if offers me.


There's no way to predict the display pattern It still seems to work because the time changes every minute just like a real clock, but it offers no meaning. It has become an abstract artist of temporal display, creating a little visual decoration in its old age with the limited means available to it.


This week, the clock also reminds me that, while I will recover from my illness, it won't. Maybe this will prompt me to finally throw it away. Assuming I ever get my normal level of energy back.


Notice several other unused relics of '80s office automation in the last picture: a Panasonic electric pencil sharpener and a Technics cassette dubbing deck, both of which still work if I ever care to use them - which, judging by the dust levels, is almost never.




Sick Old Tags: clock. . . electronic timer. . . Micronta. . . Radio Shack. . . electric pencil sharpener. . . illness. . . symbology

Found Cartoon - Fink

The poor condition of this 5 miles-per-hour sign, at our local high school, has always intrigued me. But today a little piece of paper was attached to it. Turned out to be an inexplicable cartoon, possibly of a small bee or insect possibly named "Fink". Fink has big eyes and wings and is outlined in yellow highlighter. You can decide what you think it is.



Click the pics to make them larger. Here's another recent found cartoon "It looks at the atom".

Fink Tags: cartoon. . . traffic sign. . . fink

Found Cartoon - It Looks At The Atom

A paper, probably dropped by a student from the nearby high school, turned out to be this hand-drawn cartoon.

In the upper right corner a masked figure says "Give me ur money" while pointing a gun at the back of a spikey haired scientist looking through a huge microscope towards a small dot on a pedestal in the lower left. In the lower right is the caption - "It looks at the atom".



I'm sorry to discover that Pasadena scientists are afraid of being robbed while using an SEM. Click the picture to get more details.

Media: Ink on Paper 8.5 x 11", detail

Mugged Scientist Tags: cartoon. . . microscope. . . holdup