Wednesday, September 26, 2007

got my ass back home

now I'm back, looking at buienradar, I'm wondering why I did not stay around for another week to attend the Folsom fair as well. But then, I've always enjoyed shorter trips, and having the option of doing a multitude of 'm a lot more, and having hardly any jetleg is also an argument to keep it short.
my bed with Falco's 'the torments of king Ludwig II of Bavaria', a 18 x 9 feet wallpaper print on the celing. For a close-up see link on last entry of this page
Also:
I enjoyed my excursion on blogspot, and will keep it up, but I will return to my base weblog. I'm not too happy about the way the images are reformatted here to fit into the template format. And although it is possible to adapt all that to personal preferences, I still find it tedious. Most important, I don't like the ideas here that people who don't like you can get your page flagged or even deleted. They say it is impossible for one person to do that, but I've seen plenty of examples of the opposite happening to exactly my favorite blogs to distrust it here.

If I want people warned about the content of my pages I still want to have control over that message, like the one on the homo erotic art site I run.

So see you on my home turf, in the flesh in queer Delft, or here, whenever I'm travelling without direct ftp access.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Palanca massaged my feet!

palanca at his boothNow this may not be a big thing for most of you, but for queer art afficionados like myself, who have recognized this man as the ultimate artist when it comes to feet, it is a world event indeed! He also made a photograph of my right foot:
oops, better be careful with the peanutbutter
Sadly I could not show 'm directly after writing these entries, as the machine I worked on at the resort did not have a cardreader. You had to wait until I got home.
Sean Platter at his booth
Have not taken a lot of pics, only a few of other artists and their work and of Drub, Axel, Sean Platter and Gorrilla,
forum discussion
who were in a forum and talked about the benifits and drawbacks of making art on computers. Today they should have talked further on the plusses and minusses of art promotion on the web. An item on which I also have to say a few words, and on which the ToF-foundation could do sooo much better, when they would, like: modernise their website and let the general public in to feed information and critique directly. For starters, also they could get rid of retarded stuff, like links that have been dead for over 5 years!
pre-aids orgy by Mel Wilken from 1978 on the wall at ToF foundation headquarters
I did not attend the banquet and opted for a lazy night at the resort and the cruising that remains quite vivid untill sunrise, especially around the steamroom. Indeed, the sun is out there again! Appearantly a third of the annual rain did fall down on LA in the last 2 days. Weird, looks not more then our daily dose in Delft. Well, I will keep it short and update some more tonight; I have to rush to the pool to finish my book and get some more tan before the fair restarts at noon.
3d cowboy in cardboardcutout by Jon Gatto
It's still before midnight here, so I'll continue this entry, instead of starting up a new one.
Hector champion of the Spanish speaking queer community in LA
The afternoon was pretty hot, both temp wise as well as erotically. Wore my transparent rubber to the fair, only covered up by the scottish skirt.
I know all too well how paranoid everybody is here about seeing male (and female) nudity. But inside the fair builing I could stuff the skirt into my bag again. The result was the same as last year: a lot of feeling and touching, which I still find highly pleasing.All American artcade art turned Queer too in the hands of Ross Johnston
Did not buy much art today: budget was reached yesterday. Just two prints of Axel.
Axel lapping it up
One, because it reminds me of a work by Martin of A guy in the gutter next to a fire hydrant, drinking piss of a passer by. The other one of a sweet bottom with cum dripping from his hole.
artists at work
Another thing that must be shown here was the modeldrawingclass:
Saturday model
Not one, not two but a multitude of volunteers stood in line to submit their bodies to canvas, paper or memorycards.
modelduo
And I must admit I could not keep my eyes off of them either.
more models
So I'm afraid I will just have to bother you with all these pictures too:
and more
Hope you can swallow all this; just 2 more to go:
more just one now,
more
Also went for a swim in the municipal pool, next to the exhibition hall. Wish swimming was as cheap back home: only 2$ , that's less than half of a single bath at Sportfondsenbad Delft (where it's 5 Euro's). Also I think that if you do have aids and no money, you are much better off here then in Holland:
West Hollywood park
I saw 2 mobile dental clinics specifically for aids patients in the last few days. Also there is free testing all over the place and to top it off free housing assistence, legal assistance, food services, medicine services, councelling. Surprises me I did not find any free parties, most likely they exist too, but will not easily be very popular if they are only visited by patients. Did not come across Poz and Proud over here, but my Dutch loggers on the subject assure me they have it here. Most likely more prominent in San Frasisco then in LA.
drub
Will get a flight back pretty early tomorrow morning, so I guess my next thing here will be to add some photographs. Thought my camera had run out of batteries, but it was only the battery compartment that came undone. Luckily not one actually fell out; I only stopped taking pix prematurely.Fortunately Larry Kephart, who I met last year and shared pix with, was around again and he promissed to send a his best images.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

morning after

All over the news here; a storm is heading for Los Angeles. So there I was heading for the Tom of Finland foundation reception with my motorbike raincoat in the back and even a cap, when all we got is like an hour of rain. Something we are quite used to on a daily basis in Delft or Amsterdam.
Anyway, the artists reception was great, just like yesteryear. Met Drub and a lot of guys I got to know last year. Also it was kind of fun to do some Delft promotion, wearing the Delft pride DWH t-shirt with the two pottery farmers, that are also on the delftboys logo. It did get me to talk to everyone who knew a few words of Dutch too, like the bargirl from Den Haag, who has lived here in LA for 7 years.

For this reception they obviously move the whole house and all the art content around: hardly a work was in view that I'd seen last year:

After the storm I made my way back in my Chevy (great music on the supersoundsystem from a local station) to have a last drink on Santa Monica. Not too communicative crowd though, so I was back at the resort in half an hour. Nice to have a steamroom waiting there for my exhausted body and soul. Even nicer to have a few hot cocks ready and waiting for me to sit down on . . .

Also heard a few words of Dutch on tv here: On BBC world news, shown here on West Hollywoods Public service channel, they talked about the Belgian national motto: "eendracht maakt macht", or "strenght through unity", something that is a bit far fetched these days over there: the Flemish and Wallons cannot agree on getting a national governement together, so the country, home of the European Governement too, might well fall apart in the coming year: great fun?
Public tv here is quite a lot more interesting then the national channels, that are just as bland as our RTL channels. They had a discussion this morning on democratic strategies for the next presidential elections and how to avoid the dramatic results of last time when G.W. most likely won because in many states a ballot was held simultaneously about banning gay marriage. Now that was an issue on which middle america could unite and forget about the war in Iraq. So if you think Hillary or Mr Obama are a bit bland on this issue, remember they are walking on eggshells in his country.

Hope to talk some more about the fair tomorrow.

Friday, September 21, 2007

morning all . . .

Had a very nice flight, thank you. Watched a lot of movies and a very nice music special about Pink Floyd. Did not do anything with my books yet, only had 20 pages fall out of the one by Theo Stokkink, because if got stuck between the safety belt. A lot of turbulation in the last part of the flight because of a thunderstorm heading for the LA area (my luck).
Last year I had a white Kia, this year I hired a little red Chevy. Very sweet ladies car: perfect. Almost bought a pink T-shirt with the print "poolgirl", only , it is a real ladies model, so pretty tight around the shoulders. Short too, leaves my biahazard tatoo visible, which is nice!

This morning I still have to get me a deccent map: I do not want to get lost like last year, when I stranded on my way to ToF-foundation headquartes with a map with such minute lettering that my reading glasses did not do; I needed a microscope. All street names where on it, but the scale: it went all the way from the Pacicic to Palm Springs, but was like only 75 cm wide!

Did not party last nite yet: just relaxed at the resort and caught some sun, now it's still here; the stormfront is not going to get here untill tonight, they say. Still quite hot around the pool here, I mean only litterally: melted to the deckchair.
The gay bookstore around the corner here seems to have survived the fire they had nextdoor 2 months ago. That club, fogot the name is still closed. Plenty of options remain within 5 minits walking distance.
Hope to be able to tell more enthousiastic stuff tomorrow.

Monday, September 3, 2007

let's just see

Some of you, who are familiar with my weblog, that has been online since 2000, may be surprised to find me here. I've always had my weblog on my own server, and felt very comfortable with it: at least nobody could flag it or cause it to get banned, or moved to restricted accessibility. One little pain with it, however, is that I need FTP to upload it and that can be a hassle when travelling. As I'm on my way to LA at the end of this month, it may not be a bad idea to launch a sideblog that can serve as a travel-diary. So here I am!

For those who've never read me before, the original weblog is at the Dutch queerart server, so if you want to read any previous entry, you will have to look there. Also if you want to know about my other activities, do visit my original homepage, which links to the online homo-erotic art museum as well.

Oh yeah, maybe I should ad an image here:
If you've read my profile here, you may have seen my fav music and movies. A person not mentioned there, because a section on favorite persons was not listed, is king Ludwig of Bavaria. A dear Californian friend of mine designed a ceiling fresco (10 x 20 feet) for my tubular bedroom ceiling, about his life and the struggle with his sexual identity and his intolerant environment, his governement, the clergy, but also about the adoration he got from his non judgmental subjects, the peasants, his servants, the army. I'm not sure which formats are supported by blogger, so I'll just try and see how it is displayed and whether or not you can click on to a higher resolution version, let's just see:

Falco's mega work Well, it looks like you can click on the image untill you drop, but nothing much happens. Maybe this link gets you further. It should open to a picasa page, where you can move around the enlarged image (lookingglass right side above image) by grabbing it and slide . . .