marshallastor.com

Seen on the highway between Springfield and Branson in Missouri.

Technorati Tags: On the Road, billboard, religion, christianity, Assemblies of God, Missouri

Driving back from the more than excellent RJ’s Bob-B-Que, we rolled up on this, a tiny piece of a huge pair of murals decorating the Foxx Equipment building. Making it better is that Foxx is a beer and beverage equipment supplier. The mechanical backbone of modern Baccanalia, sponsoring lowbrow, psychedelic anthropomorphic, animal-based graffiti art! Nothing could be finer.

Front Mural - Desert Feud - It’s got anthropomorphic animal, old west action! And a giant hamster ball!

Rear Mural - Dinosaurs and Cavemen - It’s got tar pits, cavemen, dinosaurs, flying saucers and a Kilroy! (seen at top)

This search has all the images of the murals. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Foxx Equipment, Kansas City, street art, graffiti, mural, Kilroy Was Here, Kilroy, art

The Gao Brothers (Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang) - Miss Mao - painted fiberglass, 2006 (label)

Chinese, post-pop art is everywhere. If you’re Chinese and you can produce anything big, bright and with a reasonable symbolic relevance, it’s your turn at the art market ATM machine.

Technorati Tags: Gao Brothers, Kemper Museum, fiberglass, sculpture, Miss Mao, Mao, Chairman Mao, red

I’m on the road in Missouri, eating as much BBQ as is humanely possible, and a little bit stuffed and sick from it. I also just spent two days marveling at the joys of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Kemper Museum, the National WWI Museum and the Toy and Miniature Museum in glorious, smoky scented and fountain kissed Kansas City. What to do if you’re back in LA? Probably go to Comicon in San Diego, actually, if you can bear the crowds, and you’ve managed to get the stains out of your Pokemon fursuit, yet. Or hit Jay Bee’s House of Fine Bar-B-Que and get the best LA has to offer on the BBQ front. Join me in my smoke ringed paradise…

Back to art. I’d like to recommend one exhibition for my friends in LA, Looky See (.pdf press release here), at the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis. A group show featuring lots of excellent folks, featuring Emily de Araújo, Eric Beltz, Barbara Berk, Joe Biel, Sandow Birk, Ann Diener, Roy Dowell, Erin Dunn, Erica Eyres, Iva Gueorguieva, Penelope Gottlieb, Richard Keely and Anna O’Cain, Takehito Koganezawa, Tucker Neel, Claudia Nieto, Aaron Noble, Chris Oatey, Ruby Osorio, Ebony G. Patterson, Ron Santos, Mindy Shapero, Fran Siegel, Coleen Sterritt, Fred Stonehouse, Randal Thurston, Elizabeth Turk and Xawery Wolski. It opens tomorrow, Saturday July 26, and the reception is from 6-8 PM.

At Top: Sneak preview image of Fran Siegel’s installation for Looky See.

Technorati Tags: Emily de Araújo, Eric Beltz, Barbara Berk, Joe Biel, Sandow Birk, Ann Diener, Roy Dowell, Erin Dunn, Erica Eyres, Iva Gueorguieva, Penelope Gottlieb, Richard Keely and Anna O’Cain, Takehito Koganezawa, Tucker Neel, Claudia Nieto, Aaron Noble, Chris Oatey, Ruby Osorio, Ebony G. Patterson, Ron Santos, Mindy Shapero, Fran Siegel, Coleen Sterritt, Fred Stonehouse, Randal Thurston, Elizabeth Turk, Xawery Wolski, Otis, Ben Maltz Gallery, Looky See, LA Art, art, contemporary art

Note: I’m writing this offline, and some of my posts from Thailand will no doubt be wackily out of order as I screw around with the time zones on my computer. Oh, and Flickr is working but being slow, so no matter how fast I can process, there seems to be a bottleneck on the bandwidth end.

Part One: Written in Narita

As far as I know, Japan solely consists of Narita Airport, my stopover on my way to Thailand. Last time I was here I had to bolt to take a bus to the other terminal, an experience which disillusioned me of any sort of ideas about Japan as a perfection of mass transit and organization. In fact, the more I work with people who are from Japan or who live there now, I’ve come to the conclusion that Japan organized organically, much like a medieval city. So what seems frighteningly organized has grown from something chaotic and necessary. This time at Narita I traveled to my terminal by going below the ground on a series of escalators, traveling down a quarter mile-long, white, cylindrical hallway, intersperced with brief supergraphics of eaggeratedly pixelated clouds and then re-emerging from the cloud city bowels of the airport to Satellite Terminal 4. Where I am currently waiting for my flight.

I forgot to pull my camera out before I sat down, and missed the opportunity to photograph two ANA airline meals, one a rather large array consisting of soba, a katsu don with an astoundingly microwaved piece of broccoli (which was kind of good in a junky way) and an antipasto salad who’s saving grace was the presence of a suprisingly good gherkin pickle. Note to self: slurping noodles on a plane is a sure fired way to make a mess of your shirt. The second meal consisted of a sort of instant take on eggplant parmagana, which I had to pick apart due to the evil presence of my enemy, cheese. This was paired with a bean salad (something rather questionable to serve to 300 people trapped in a tiny space, IMHO) and a fruit salad containing almost disturbingly fresh pineapple.

One thing I like about being on a Japanese airline, is that no one seems to bat an eyelash if you want to down beers halfway across the world. The flight attendants are almost too eager to keep them coming. And it helps, when you decide to subject yourself to watching 10,000 B.C. at 30,000 feet. Possibly the worst caveman movie ever made, and I slept through half of it. If I had watched the whole thing, I probably would thing that it’s worse than that. That’s coming from someone who’s watched the whole of the re-make of Teenage Caveman. But it was made up for being able to watch All The President’s Men on demand, a sure-fire filmic bad taste remover.

Oh, and the ground crews bow to the planes here before they take off. If Japan is anything, it’s classy.

On to Bangkok…

Technorati Tags: flying, travel, ANA, airline food, food, Narita, 10000 B.C., bad movies

After removing the top two cars, the whole sculpture was torn apart. Dustin Shuler’s Spindle is dead. This is the saddest day in public art ever. I can’t think of anything else to say.

Technorati Tags: Spindle, Dustin Shuler, Route 66, American art, Americana, cars, art cars, sculpture, public sculpture, Berywn, art, shame, destruction, demolition, art crime

I’m at the Tallahasse airport (which has free power and free WiFi!), and I’m one happy Californian, topping off a too short trip with a much deserved and lusted after meal at the roadside shrine of my pagan faith, a Waffle House.

Technorati Tags: Waffle House, Marshall Astor, After I’ve Eaten, On The Road, Travel, Food Pornography

I spent my day hopping by air to Tallahassee. I ate plane and airport food. I ate three sandwiches today, and a pickle. I took pictures. Now I share.

Above - Airplane food! This breaded chicken sandwich actually managed to, kind of, sort of remind me of all that decent airplane tonkatsu I had going to and from Thailand last year. Also, as it was served with mayo as its sole condiment, it was aesthetically pleasing in a monochromatic, white food on white food kind of way. I thought the multiple cooking processes gave it a novel flavour and texture. So now I’m in Tallahassee with a craving for tonkatsu, which isn’t going to get fixed until I get back to LA.

Above - That sandwich was basically my breakfast, and arriving in Houston to change planes, I needed to search out barbecue. Just getting off the plane in the Houston airport, my sensitive nose could detect the faint scent of Texas barbecue. I had a fantasy that “best ribs I’ve ever eaten” Goode Company Barbeque (I mean really, the best short ribs in the country - they need no sauce whatsoever. The most perfect unsauced meat I’ve ever ingested. Go to Houston just to eat there. Order everything on the menu. You won’t regret it!) had an outlet at the airport, but no, I discovered something called a Harlon’s BBQ. The above brisket was surprisingly good, probably the best thing I’ve ever eaten at an airport, but I don’t really eat at airports, so that means nothing.

Above - the “Billy Club” from the Jimmy John’s across from my hotel in Tallahasse. It’s basically a roast beef and ham club on a French roll. The roll was much better than I expected. My only dinner choice, and surprisingly passable. I got a giant pickle with this that was pretty good, and I’m a Jew, so that’s not bad for a goyisher pickle. This meal really made me homesick for Busy Bee, though.

Technorati Tags: food, food porn, sandwich, Jimmy John’s, Harlon’s BBQ, Houston Airport, airport food, airplane food, chicken sandwich, club sandwich, billy club, Tallahasse, travel

Last night, a snowstorm closed the I-5, forcing us to take the 58 to detour through Bakersfield and over to the 14 to get home on time.  The detour was great, because we got to drive through a snowstorm near Tehachapi, the first snow I’ve been in contact with since I was about 5 years old.  According to the news, they later closed the 58 due to snow, which I can totally believe.  Great drive, though.

I digress…  In Bakersfield, sitting at a stop light, I became 100% convinced that we are living in the End Times (not necessarily the Christian End Times, but somebody’s).  The evidence, the sign above, for the Gas War gas station in Bakersfield.  i’ve been waiting for the end of the world to begin for some time now, so I’m pretty eager and biased to see signs of it’s coming.  Stockpile your food, ammo and guns, because you won’t have an opportunity to arm yourself after the raging mobs of gasoline deprived commuters take to the streets looking for anything to keep their combustion going.

Technorati Tags: On the Road, gas station, Gas War, war, Bakersfield, signs of the end times