April 20, 2009
At some point last month, my mother-in-law gave my daughter (age 7) a little keyring with a big fob that spelled out “Love” in lurid gold-chromed script. It was schwag from some utterly-too-grownup movie, find as evidenced by the little stamped-metal tag proclaiming the brand. Here’s what ensued the moment I laid eyes on it: […]
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April 10, 2009
Found this in the gutter down the street. Somewhere, a VW (a new one, by the make of the silkscreened aluminum) is driving around without an identity. Is the badge the seat of a car’s soul?
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March 28, 2009
My oldest great friend, Vinny is in town with his lovely wife, Robin, and we’re doing the tourist thing. Some 71 years ago, Eleanor Powell left behind these words: “To Sid – You’re “taps” with me Eleanor Powell Dec. 23 – 37 And then they helped her sink a pair of bright steel taps into […]
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March 25, 2009
Some mysteries we humans hold to be self-evident and unanswerable – except by synthetic, nonscientific means: Consciousness. Identity. Creativity. Beauty. Spirituality. Meaning. Diversity. Freedom. So we make up religions and start cults and set things on fire and paint and write and bloviate and fight and kill and destroy because it’s easier than trying to […]
Filed under: Art, Objet, symbol, Toy | Comments (1)
March 22, 2009
This one has been hanging around the handrail on our front steps for a few weeks, always skittering away when I want to photograph and then attempt to kill it. I failed miserably at both, until this past weekend. I don’t feel good about having ended such a magnificent creature, but I decided I’d feel […]
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March 17, 2009
These pile up like autumn leaves in any die-hard Mac household. White on white, stuffed into a drawer, swiftly becomes white on blotchy grey because, well, you don’t want to over-use the things. I have one of the larger ones on my car, but I decided that putting a line of smaller ones after it […]
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March 15, 2009
In all my years on this blog, I’ve never unpacked the symbology of a key. It’s almost so perfect a metaphor on its own, that trying to explain a key pretty much dooms you to being accused of mental masturbation. But a car key is profound. It represents a heavy, expensive and rather large member […]
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March 14, 2009
Twenty-two years after Watchmen changed my psychotopography and appreciation for the nuances of fiction forever, they finally got it completely right. We saw it again this afternoon, and fell even deeper into it than we had at the midnight premiere at the Dome a week earlier. The movie is an extraordinarily accomplished telling of the […]
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March 11, 2009
She regards it with suspicion. “Amethyst?” The Chinese shopkeeper nods firmly. “Finest, from Xian province. Xian province. Terra cotta warrior. Xian.” He keeps nodding. She drums her French-tipped nails against its too-glossy sides. She pricks at her fingertips with its perfectly asymmetrical point. She hefts it. Rolls it over in her perfumed hand. Then she […]
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March 10, 2009
Where is he going? What is he carrying? Why is he important? Chinese factory workers so beautifully aped the luster of carved coral with cast, burnished and “age”-dusted red plastic resin that I’m left wishing I had the answers to these questions. In lesser hands, he would have been a child’s plaything, a little knicknack […]
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March 9, 2009
Thanks to my dear longtime friend, former college classmate and co-conspirator John, I am now in possession of ten of the coolest, most perfect HLOs known to the art of manufacturing. Back in college, John and I poured an absurd amount of time (and hard-earned library wages) into pinball machines. There may have been other […]
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March 8, 2009
So, I got to ride bikes last night with Lance Armstrong, who was doing a commemorative group ride down Sunset to launch a big, fund-raising touring art exhibit. They gave out chalk to the 100 t-shirted riders and the other several hundred of us tagalongs, who promptly took to graffiti’ing up the street in a […]
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March 5, 2009
Oh, the wonder and menace of an unopened package from a foreign land. I know exactly what’s inside (I’ll blog it tomorrow) but it’s the promise of what it might contain that always spins me up. It bears all the markers of a Macguffin from a Hitchcock film – the lurid green packing paper, the […]
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March 2, 2009
I should be smarter. I should be able to classify and categorize based on Google findings if nothing else. But this one eludes me. Dad sent it along, and it seems to be machine-turned brass from India – maybe even with spiritual or religious symbolic significance. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out […]
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March 1, 2009
The Aku-Aku Restaurant opened in 1960 inside the much-fabled Stardust Casino in Las Vegas. When the Stardust was imploded in 2007, mob-culture journalist Nick Pileggi called it “the Bellagio of its day, the most dazzling casino out there.” The Aku Aku ran for 20 years – a veritable temple of tiki culture (Here’s its appetizer […]
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February 23, 2009
Two thumbsplats for eyes, slick back his ears, give him an immense tail, and now he’s some sort of steroidal racing bunny-ghost. My daughter’s latest class project calls for a creature endowed with camouflage. She made this – and several others like it – out of Super Sculpey. It’s so pure, I can almost envision […]
Filed under: Art, Miniature, Model, symbol | Comments (0)
February 19, 2009
Once upon a time, his paint was perfect. You can see it on his good side – the bright and chipper eye facing the lucky shamrock dangling from his left jowls – that look that says fortune will smile on us both if you keep me close. Flip to the other side – the stem of […]
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February 16, 2009
This is almost the holy grail of heavy little objects: a thing with history, patina, functionality, exciting manufacture and moving parts. Jesus, it made me one happy tool-using ape to find this: a chunk of the original copper electrical transmission line installed during construction of the mighty Hoover Dam. For five bucks you get a gorgeous […]
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February 15, 2009
It’s fitting that I mark the end of my second full year of daily obsession on this blog with such an archetypal handful of heavy little objects: I found these samples of a truly lovely display font in an antique shop in rural Arizona earlier this week – artifacts of a dead technology going for […]
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February 14, 2009
I work in this office, in my home. It’s a nice office, in a very nice home, but when you’re in a building 24/7, you develop a deep need to get the hell out before your urge to claw your hair out turns too real. Cabin fever and a three-day weekend conspired to send us […]
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February 2, 2009
The origins of this piece are dim and inscrutable, but what really matters is this: My father just shipped me two small boxes full of HLOs gathered from around the house, and among them are some real beauties like this: He found this in London a long time ago and gave it to my mother […]
Filed under: Adornment, Ephemera, Found Object, symbol | Comments (1)
January 28, 2009
We lay these arbitrary lattices of meaning over earth and sky, ambulance trying to explain the wonder of existence. When industry and science began to catch up to the human need to explain who was where exactly when and how far is here from there, we came up with the notion of time, the 24 […]
Filed under: Edible, Ephemera, symbol | Comments (0)
January 21, 2009
I never repeat heavy little objects. I mean, never. My little daily obsession can be a cruel taskmistress, sometimes commanding me to find something cool to post even when nothing cool has come through my life. But like an idiot samurai, I live and die by a code set in motion long ago and over […]
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January 15, 2009
According to the Nailhunter, who has a dizzyingly exhaustive collection of these online, workers pounded date nails into railroad ties, bridges and telephone poles to identify and date the structure, sequence and ownership of the structures. You can pick them up at swap meets for a buck or two. This one really appealed to my […]
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January 14, 2009
Vintage viral marketing, for what may or may not be Captain Black tobacco. Blow through the stem and you get a sweet bosun’s-pipe peep. By the look of the printing, this dates back at least 50 or 60 years, but Googling bears no clear clues to its origins. You gotta love the mascot’s pissed-off expression and […]
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