HyperCoSMic Painting Jam
Visionary artists Alex and Allyson Grey had a live painting performance at Club 740 in Los Angeles. Painting on stage with them were renowned tattoo artist Guy Aitchison and his wife, multimedia artist Michele Wortman; also performing were dark surrealist Chet Zar, tattoo portrait painter Shawn Barber and Corey Miller from the hit series LA Ink. DJ's performed all evening, including Satchi Om and Desert Dwellers.

This performance was a fundraiser for Alex and Allyson Grey's Chapel Of Sacred Mirrors, and brought in a large and lively crowd. This mini-documentary is a colorful, fast-paced summary of this groundbreaking event.

link

My daughter's new tattoo. I really like it. Marilyn Monroe's name, lips and mole. She's a major MM collector.

The Life Of Roderick Romero

Roderick Romero has a boyish face and a sideways grin. He wears his hair in reddish-brown braids that fall to his waist (it was last cut in 1990, when he took a Swiss army knife to it in the middle of a concert he was performing with his band, Sky Cries Mary.) His strong forearms are covered in tattoos of voodoo and Santeria symbols and illustrations from the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore's firefly poems. While he has been many thing -- rock star, yogi, premed student, aspiring tennis pro -- his current incarnation may be the most unlikely: His is a tree house designer, and his growing list of clients includes Sting, Donna Karan, Val Kilmer, and Julianne Moore.

This new career began in 1998, when a friend asked him to contribute an art piece to an outdoor exhibition she was curating in Bald Hills, Washington. "I told her I would build this big nest," Romero says, "and you could sleep in it." He had no idea he would tap into a national fascination with tree houses.

For the next nine months, Romero was firmly steeped in the world of his nest. Like a bird, ne gathered fallen twigs and reeds and vines from nearby trees and then had to figure out how to build something structurally sound, sustained at 30 feet off the ground. "It was coming straight out of the ether," he says. "I had no idea what I was doing. It was purely conceptual, but it had to be engineered well. It had to be safe." The result was a creation that looks sort of like a bearded bungalow perched among the branches of a giant leaf maple.

When his brother saw the nest, he requested one, so Romero built him the Eagle House, a pine and cedar trapezoid that straddles four trees in the Cascade Mountains. A few months later, Romero was visiting Sting and his wife, Trudy, at their home in Tuscany (Romero knows them through the yoga world). He told them about his first two tree houses, at which point Trudie asked, "Why don't you build us a tree house?" And so came tree house No.3.

For more information on the treehouses, Click Here.

[more...]

Hollywood Calls On Area's Weirdness

Director David Arquette is seeking 200 locals to be extras in a movie he’s going to film in Santa Cruz, California.

"The Tripper" is about a conservative man - a fan of Ronald Reagan - and his dislike for hippies. The man and his killer dog Nancy stalk a group of free-loving hippies while they’re attending an outdoor music and camping festival.

The movie crew is looking for people with tattoos, body piercings and beards – anything that represents the organic image of Santa Cruz. The movie is expected to be filmed here during the next few weeks.

Link

Art, Myth, and Spirit
Phoenix & Arabeth have been creating fantastic and mystical works since 1973. These striking images glow with a reverence for the earth, an awareness of the god/goddess within every individual, and the natural magic of the complete human: body, mind and soul.

Site features artwork, tattoos, henna, and body art from Iraq and the Middle East, a book on Tribal Bible, henna and tattoo galleries - all by Phoenix and Arabeth.
Link

INK, NOT MINK
"Be comfortable in your own skin and let animals keep theirs," says Lee in a new PETA ad, which features him wearing nothing but his trademark tattoos alongside the slogan, “Ink, Not Mink.”

The ad—shot by Mary McCartney Donald, daughter of Sir Paul McCartney and longtime PETA supporter—will be unveiled at New York’s new nightclub Home, which will mark the occasion by announcing a door policy banning fur coats.

I can't look at him without thinking of ..... anything but PETA, but still applaud anyone for taking a stand.

Link

* Television station WLOS asked man to smoke pot for story. Case referred to Buncombe County district attorney and man on probation goes directly to jail. [more »]

* shamelessly trolling for blogwhored hits
Since I was his first fan, I want to acknowledge that the always fresh and funny skippy the bush kangaroo is turning three years old in about a month and is about 80,000 hits short of a million visitors. Stop by and say hello. (the skippy mystique: He keeps his identity under wraps, but you've more than likely seen him on televsion and didn't realize it.)

* The new INKED blog from the Wooster Collective folks has launched. Tattoos and the people behind them.

saturday morning me//
fresh ground hazelnut coffee #2/a peach/water/
slept-in pigtails/long gauzy batik dress/flipflops/
nursing: daughter sick with the flu?/
listening to: Nowhere Fast by The Smiths/
3 items on my desk: opium incense/candles/phone/
so how about you?/

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. ~Emma Goldman

» In Amsterdam, Angelique Houtkamp has been making paintings and mixed media objects inspired by many images she also uses in her work as a tattoo artist.
Link via Sugar 'n' Spicy

» Bono is planning a massive concert to ease Third World debt on the 20th anniversary of LIVE AID, according to reports. more »
Bob Geldof is not participating this time around. more »

» Talk about your Super Ping - See Ping-O-Matic. link

» {On This Date}May 31, 1996 - Timothy Leary's Dead or is he just outside looking in? Theories, memorials and more »

» May 31, 2003 - Burma's pro-democracy activists are marking the one-year anniversary of the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. more »

The No Carb Diet
C - Cheney
A - Ashcroft
R - Rumsfeld
B - Bush