Larryosan's blog

So we were supposed to go upstate New York to visit friends and stay with them at their house for the holidays. The culmination was to be a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. But the fates had other plans for us, our lovely Sadie

Sadie the Burmese Lady

had pancreatitis and was in the vet hospital overnight, but then she was better and came home. But in the last couple of days she started thowing up and not eating, well long story shot, another trip to the vets and now for the next 5 days she is getting subcutaneous fluids, something I have lots of experience doing, as I did this for my old cat Sam who passed away, everyday for two years. So now one of us is going away, and I am staying home being larryosan the cat vet tech.

I am still happy for this season and this is minor stuff compared to what people are facing at this time of the year and in fact for all the time of the year in places plagued by war, ground down for profits and just miserable state due to history and circumstances. Sometimes living in the US we tend to forget the reality of others even those living right next to us if in very different circumstances except when reminded by the professional misery mongers who may or may not have good intent but avoid the primary issue of causation of misery in the world. And the preachers who tell us we are lazy and arrogant and unworthy of God's blessings etc etc.

So still I say thanks that my life is relatively prosperous at this moment and that I have a job and am in decent health. And I feel anger for the rest.

A couple of lines from a poem by Ginsberg sums it up.

" Poet is Priest
Money has reckoned the soul of America
Congress broken thru to the precipice of Eternity
the President built a War machine which will vomit and rear up
Russia out of Kansas
The American Century betrayed by a mad Senate which no longers sleeps with its wife."

The date may have changed but circumstances have not changed much.

ta ta for now

The world or should I say the small piece that I inhabit goes to hell in a handbasket I am at a loss for words. I standby watching the economy sink into a morass while banks and wallstreet is being bailed out with the explanation that this is really to ensure confidence in the economy. The auto companies which made crap for years are begging hat in hand, oh but while our retirement packages dissapate into vapor, executives are sneaking off to high priced resorts so political wannabes on the make can sound off in manufactured outraged. As if their lives are also on the line while so many retirees lives are sinking into another type of morass. One wonders in NYC if we will see a resurgence in bag ladies and bag men begging and decaying on streets that perhaps will also decay and lay strewn with old garbage. Subways dangerous and tagged to the point of being surreal spray painted mockerys of old times. I suspect this will be a great time for confidence tricksters, scammers, phishers, penis pills, online gambling, thieves, parasites and the magazines that tout the life style of other types of parasites who will draped themselves in jewels and pelts while drowning in rivers of high priced hooch. This will be the primary export from the US beyond cow hides and soybeans.

ta ta for now

This is from one of my contacts back on flickr who I think is extremely talented and I want to share his work as he doesn't make it over here and deserves a viewing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hastings/2954259484

ta ta for now

I asked this question on flickr but I will also ask it here. The issue is the same the websites used may differ. I am not looking for advice to make money more a survey on it is working out for other people. And I just like to ask questions.

I have a question for anyone looking at this. One of my contacts has raised the issue of using flickr to promote themselves and their art in a productive manner versus other outlets for their art. So my question is this, has flickr paid off for you in any way as far as making money or marketing your art that led in a knowable way to work or contracts or sales? Also perhaps like me you have a zazzle or cafe press of one of the many other one off printing sales sites. Have you made any money off of those sites, how has it worked for you, do you spend a lot of time marketing, is flickr part of your marketing, or do you do it on that site or do you use your own site? I am not looking for money making advice, I am really wondering how all this web 2.0 social site, showing off your work, working out for you, or are you like me more interested in the exposure of your work. Or like me, are you torn about moving up a level on the seriousness of creating art to do it for some part of your livelihood and actually believing enough in your work to see if you can actually produce in this manner. I see lots of very talented people here and wonder how they fit in on this stuff. Some of you I know are professionals, some are not, so I figured I would put this out there and see how people respond.

Again, I am not looking for advice, just what are you doing and how is it working out for you.

thanks for those who participate in this discussion.

ta ta for now

I am so damn lucky as the result of putting out my art to various online friends that I have met through flickr and ipernity. Not only have I had the pleasure of knowing my art is in the hands of other people who I find interesting, as they are my contacts but I have also gotten art from them. My latest acquisition has been from http://www.ipernity.com/home/dreasan who was very kind to send me some prints of her work. If you don't know her work, well you should. A tremendous minimallist abstract photographer who never ceases to amaze me with her work. So I have to say WOW WOW WOW to the pieces she sent me. They arrived earlier but I was too distracted to tell everyone what I wanted to say about getting her art and how much I appreciated the pieces.

Not to dilute this piece but let me say I have also gotten some very interesting pieces from the following fellow explorers in the waters of artistic expression.

http://www.ipernity.com/home/tomswift46 A very smart and funny guy.

http://www.ipernity.com/home/amiko A jewel of an artist hidden away in a small buccolic town.

ta ta for now.

You may have noticed my latest pictures called Thingasaurus Walkers,

Thingasaurus Walker #1

I took my old sculpture from school and put a leash on it and started off a series of pictures that began as if taking thingasaurus on a walk or hanging out with the cats. I then took it outside to the North Cove of Battery Park City which is a harbor filled with sailboats and yachts. I just sat there and waited to see if I could find any brave souls to hold thingasaurus or walk it so I could take a picture. For an hour I managed to troll three brave souls. Funny some people were interested and even came over to ask questions, most people threw me a glance but then kept on walking, one guy stopped to ask me about thingy but balked when I asked to take his picture. As you can see the one young man I took his picture from the back so as not to intrude too much.

Shy Guy

This was an interesting experiment not only for the other people involved but for me to see how much I was willing to put myself out there looking kind of goofy hanging out with my thingy with camera in hand seeing if anyone would catch my eye. I did not go and ask people I felt that this should be a self selection.

Well this was one experiment and I think it was interesting to me enough to provoke some more and to turn some of my picture taking away from me to others around me. Who knows where this will lead for me, I don't.

ta ta for now.

Went to the Playwrights Horizons Theater to see Three Changes, we won tickets for 5 dollars each. And boy am I glad that was all I paid. This play had Dylan McDermot who used to be on Boston Legal or something like that on TV and was really good and had one of the actors from ER who played the female lead. Act one almost led us to leave at intermission. The writing just didn't make sense, the logic was stilted and the acting was really stiff, wooden and the actors didn't speak to each other instead launched lines into the ether with polish on each delivery, it totally destroyed my suspension of disbelief which is essential for the audience to bridge the gap between them and the actors on stage. I was completely aware that I was watching a play and had no feeling of being drawn into the action whether it be physical or emotional. Not that the play had no good points, one actor a young man who played a young wealthy now street homeless hustler was actually the best of the lot. He had more to work with and his delivery had the level of glee and snarkiness that fit the character. And he did seem to be straining to fill his part as the rest of them did. After act one, at least the level of the intensity grew to raise some greater interest in me, but the story was just too creepy and sad for me to enjoy. What the review called a dark sardonic comedy I guess to me was a creepy twilight zone rip off done on stage. Nothing new was learned about the characters, to me it was hollow upper west side people meet two sociopaths. And the ending was just plain stupid and even creepier. So although we were glad to go out to see something, this something was a real let down. By the way, this theater company has a much better track record than this and my expectations were truly dashed by this production. For better next time.

I am loving the deep reds of the sunsets we are having at the end of this summer, they are wonderful and everyday I just love feeling and appreciating the light, cause it is all about the light.

ta ta for now

Went to a play, animal from paper, a play with origami in the center with three characters two adults and a teen with interesting emotional entanglements and cross purposes all going on with origami as the connective tissue. The dialogue was very well written but the story arc was a bit rough at the ending. I enjoyed the play a lot and it was a fun night out. One of the interesting elements is the teen bringing in rap rhyming, the actor was a VJ on MTV and a member of a music comedy troupe. All the actors were a pleasure to watch.

We went and saw SpeigelTent, one of the shows here in NYC. Speigel Tent is a special tent originating in Belgium and is the center of entertainment and only a few survive around the world. One is set up here in NYC at the South Street Seaport and has a couple of shows running. The one we went to is called Absinthe and consisted of a kind of MC ringmaster called Gazillionaire with his side kick called Penny who was a type of lewd Lucille Ball. The acts were cirque to Soliel acrobatics, contortionists and gymnasts. But with an erotic overtone. There was two guys both young good looking doing what I call gay acrobatics, in green monster underwear. Then there was a skinny bendy girl, two very attractive trapeze artists doing a very erotic heterosexual act. And a wild roller skate act. There was a very talented singer who also did a humorous act which I ended up involved in by having to help her down from one part of the audience, she ended up draped over my shoulder. Many people told me I should have started spanking her like a nasty boy but I was kind of stunned by the whole thing, and I was told I turned bright beet red. Fun was had by all. It was a very fun night. Best thing I have ever seen at what is usually a tourist trap slash mall.

So the summer has been good if a little hot and humid with lots of summer storms. I hope to go to more fun things before the end of the summer. We did make it to governors island which was lots of fun.

ta ta for now

School will be starting soon again, I am taking two classes this semester, I need statistics and I am taking a video technology class, the latter is not part of my degree program but it is interesting to me and I am working more and more with the video people in my work group. This week I was doing portraits, something I have no background in despite doing lots of picture taking. I am not really a photographer, nor formal training nor real background in the craft. But I am learning what I have been doing wrong. I am good at posing people and loosening them up for better shots, my biggest downfall is of course, light. And from I read lighting is the key to it all right up there with the human touch of poses and all that. So I use photoshop and still came out with better stuff than what was given to us by another department. I am also doing the narration, I am a self slight taught sound engineer. Sigh I wish I really knew what I was doing. Oh well my audience is happy.

Went out for a birthday dinner at a place called Vongs, it is a French Thai fusion and it was wonderful, I had warm asparagus salad and duck ala"orange, done in an Asian style, it was fabulous. Dinner was one of those chocolate cakes with a gooey center. Yummm! But I will say our other favorite dinner place Chanterelle is a bit classier and the service is a notch up from what we had last night.

Tonight off to the theater to see a play about making animal origami and lessons of life. Friends have seen it and have given the play high reviews. We belong to a discount theater ticket group so we try to get out on a semi regular basis and get in some culture.

I have a picture on flickr with the question, what is dangerous art? And does that even exist, can art really be dangerous, or is that wishful thinking on the part of the artist. I know that artists do reflect changes in the society that they live in, but are they in someway a catalyst? I am not sure so I put the question out there and have yet to hear back. Any takers here?

Teejaybee got my traveling man picture, much to my surprise and has been taking him around all over down under. This is mind boggling and so cool to me, plus I sent him some of my art work and he just blew me away with his stand up appreciation and coolness factor of him. So please take a look as he has all sorts of interesting stuff. Thank you teejaybee, you are the bees knees.

ta ta for now

So death has reared its finality in my life again, a manager that I have worked for off and on for a number of years who was about 5 years younger than me had a motorcycle accident due to a seizure and has passed away. I didn't really think that he was a very good manager for a number of reasons but not because I didn't like him, I and many others liked him allot. He was a very charming and nice guy. I am truly saddened by his passing. But I am not going to get all morose or go back to that place I was before, and part of what has inspired me today has been a lecture by a young professor at Carnegie Mellon who gave a series of what are called the "last lecture" and on you-tube is his actual last lecture of his life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo  This man has a number of interesting and useful points to make in his presentation and his personal balance in doing this is extremely inspiring and impressive. I would recommend it for watching by anyone who passes through this blog.

So while life and death hang in the balance throughout our lives and the universe so to speak, more mundane issues weigh heavy on my mind. Mostly it is the issues with a cat war zone that I currently have in my house. So now two of the cats the "girls" are getting a herbal kitty trank so they will not be so stressed. It has been hard and it looks like the end of the tunnel will be far down the road but I love all my cats so we persevere.

Oh and I am reading an interesting book on the neuropsychology of listening to music by a former rock musician turned scientist. I have always wondered how we perceive "beauty" and how does music reach us in such a primal way. As the author ponders, we use music to shape our perceptions in advertising, movies, and how we feel when shopping, ride elevators and pass through our lives. The question of music and art and our brains has always piqued my interest. What goes beyond the culturally shaped values and what is at bottom the firing of neurons.

ta ta for now

So far I have bought 3 baby gates for the apartment which Stretch still manages to get through and we have started to bring him into the same room with the girls. Right now Stretch and Sadie are the first to start working things out, which means Sadie hissing at him, Stretch chasing her and then more hissing then some judicious hiding by Sadie. But she is more dominant and I think will work things out a little faster. Stella on the other hand is being a total drama queen with much hissing so much that she starts to drool and now in the chase have broken at least one item. But we are going to make this work, by hook or by crook. It just takes more time, or at least that is what I keep telling myself. I joined the bulletin boards of the ASPCA which is the primary animal rescue/protection group here in the US and tried to get some help but their discussion boards are proving not to be much help. My friend has kept us on the same track and I guess again it is just patience and time. At least the girls are getting along better.

Today is my 55Th birthday so I am celebrating with some friends over to our place for dinner and possibly a movie if we can do that. We might go see Hellboy II which we saw the first one and enjoyed a lot. My brother saw Batman and said it was all that the hype made it out to be, so I do want to see that. Generally I am not a big blockbuster person except for certain movies, like the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and for some reason I really liked the old Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. There are a lot of movies I haven't seen due to laziness which some day I will get around to viewing. I like movies with a story, action is OK sometimes but I don't think special effects make a production they just add to it, so if the story sucks I don't care how much technology you put into it, it will still suck.

I find as I get older I seem to becoming a bit of a crank, as you can see by some of the things I say about where NYC is headed culturally and socially. Diversity is not just a "nice" idea it makes for such a more interesting and enjoyable place to be, the white-bread quality of New York is just boring. And yes, young well off couples with kids have their place, they just shouldn't be the totality of the milieu around us.

ta ta for now

So we adopted another cat "Stretch" and have been slowly introducing him to the household. Well the girls Stella our youngest and Sadie our first adoptee who is 8 are not happy. Sadie handles things a bit better, she whacks and hisses but Stella is beside herself and is reacting as if Stretch is killing her even when he is just approaching her. Now Stretch has been very good making approaches and then patiently backing off but it is wearing thin and Stella is just not adapting yet and is still acting as if he is the worst thing that has ever entered the house. So today he lost patience and whacked her and chased her around and poor Stella pooped on the floor and I had to put her in the bathroom to calm down. He isn't being mean or even trying to hurt her, I watched and his ears were not back and he didn't seem to have claws out, but I think he has had enough. And all this drama is not going over well with the alpha lady of the house who finds it very unerving. So I don't know what to do but I am going to ask our cat specialist lady what to try next.

I decided to visit friends in upstate New York in Ostego county which is near Coopers Town New York home of the baseball hall of fame and museum and all that good baseball stuff. But we don't go there much and we stay in our friends country home which is small farm house and a couple of barns. I will post some pictures later, my camera and my new asus eee don't seem to get along very well so I am working on my friends mac. I am trying out my new fuji finepix s700 which I  bought awhile ago but haven't used much and am trying to learn how to use it properly. I have gotten some shots I like and am feeling much more comfortable with it. We went out to view some fireworks and I got a couple of interesting shots out of that and out of an outdoor fire we had where we made smores. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a marshmallow cooked over the flame of the fire, squished between two graham crackers with a piece of chocolate with it. The hot marshmallow melts the chocolate and the crackers hold the whole thing together.

I am not really much of a country person, I like all the birds singing and the trees and the relative quiet from the city and everything is very pretty. I don't like the sulfur smelling water and all the bugs and flies that are all over the place inside and out. So roughing it is not my cup of tea. I think roughing it should be when you go down to a one or two star hotel. Not that I hang out at those places much either. But we missed our friends and they missed us so it was time to do some driving get out of the city and head into the wild upstate. Of course they also have such things as Walmart up here so there was a bit of shopping spree with much better prices and all that and I was able to find a nice sago palm for my desk at work. As I sit inside a converted storeroom with harsh fluorescent and lousy ventilation finding a nice plant was very important to me. I am on the lookout for a nice peace lily which is supposed to be very good for improving the air quality, and that is one of my goals. A nice plant to improve my emotional outlook inside the office and also one that helps my physical environment.

Writing about my cousin really helped clear my head and I am coming to some peace about my work situation so I think this trip was actually just what I needed, country life or not. And it was a good deed for me to agree and make this happen. It is hurting our vacation fund a bit more than I would have liked, especially with the gas pricing but hey you only live once.

ta ta for now

Well I am actually feeling much better about all the issues I have raised about the passing of my cousin. I think it was the trip home that spurred all this introspection and aroused some unfinished business for me. As I was told in an email, Danny lived a rich and full life and I think he left a wonderful legacy of both what he did and who he was. I am not necessarily done thinking about these things but for now I am taking a break. There is life to be lived, art to think about and things to do. Thank you teejaybee for your kind thoughts and I am glad I wrote what I wrote. I am not a big fan of confessional writing or over-sharing and I don't feel like I did something cathartic but put down my thoughts in writing helped me sort out a lot and just admit a lot of what was floating around in my head.

I do want to share about my friend Steve who should also be honored and celebrated. Both these guys were exceptional people who I am so glad were in my life.

ta ta for now

I looked over my last bit of writing and have been thinking on the subject on how much we can know people or how much we should know them. One of the things that bothered me at Danny's funeral was people who went to me and asked about stories from when Danny and I were younger. Now I know that I was under a great deal of stress but for the life of me I felt like I had no real memories of Danny even though our lives were so parallel and we spent a great deal of time together. My stories and memories goes back to being under 7 years old and times the family went off to the emergency room for those typical boy type things boys do that get us into trouble. Danny tried to be superman from a couch to a top of a step and missed enough to cut through his lower lip or the time I was pushing him on a tricycle and ended up pushing him through a giant glass pane that miraculously missed hurting him or anyone else. We were the flag boys who were at elementary school to raise the flag in the morning and to lower it at the end of the day. We had adventures together, lost our virginity around the same time and just lived lives that crossed and crossed again. Yet I felt that I barely knew him. I guess it bothered me most that other people had insight to him and his life that I never knew. Stories I didn't know and for some neurotic reason I felt left out. The truth of the matter there are limits to how much we know anyone, and I believe there are healthy reasons for this. But in the throes of grieving I felt left out and missing something important. And of course I couldn't help but compare him to me a dangerous path to depression. I am not really a petty person but my depression reduces me to a form of self indulgent pettiness that I don't think I would find very attractive in anyone else. So I have to take this by the horns and accept the reality of the situation. While this writing is about me, but in the real world this is about Danny and the end of his life and the effects of his passing on the world. I have been very close to his family, his wife and I also went to school together and we were friends as well. I was around for the birth and major passages of his kids and I care deeply about them all. But now there is very little I can do for any of them but be there in some nebulous form as support and this frustrates me to no end. But I think too it is a deep neurotic need to be too much in their lives, beyond the proper boundaries, as if my involvement gives some validation to me. And that just isn't right. And it isn't something I will do but still have the feelings. Still I wish I could do more.

I hope you look up Danny's obits and check out a bit of his art. He was an interesting guy with great taste in art and a great eye for things on the horizon. His collection of neon is amazing and probably one of the finest private collections in Los Angeles. Even how he accumulated some of the pieces are great stories in of themselves.

As much as I have written there is so much more and should be as I can barely scratch the surface of someone as complex and complete as Danny was. And I am glad I am taking the time to do a little writing about him now.

ta ta for now

Lest you the reader think that I am simply doing a self absorbed spiel on my sorrows I want to share a small bit of the measure of my cousin Danny. http://blog-omotives.blogspot.com/2007/01/artistprankster-danny-finegood-loses.html

This article was one of dozens about him and the one of the marks he made on the world. I don't necessarily think it was the most important but it was the most visible. He changed the iconic Hollywood sign to spell Hollyweed and changed it on a few other occasions. Danny was an artist and person interested in the world about him, he combined the two to make his comment on current events in a way that was interesting and evocative. I loved Danny like a brother, I was the youngest of 4 sons and Danny was six months younger than me and we grew up together. Danny was something that I definitely did not see myself as, he was "cool" in so many ways. He also had the life that I felt was golden and I was quite envious of him, his relative prosperity, his ease with people, his travels and his seeming constant sense of success in his life. Marriage, home, family business these all seem to flow to him. But I was not jealous as he never had that "self entitlement" that you find with so many of the scummy yuppies in New York or elsewhere. He was always generous and kind in a modest way and was always very nice to me and made me feel good about me. I never understood his thinking that I was anything special but I treasured that about him. I know after people die there is a tendency to forget their faults and elevate all their positive attributes but with Danny, his faults were of the truly forgivable sort and his inner decency just overwhelmed the other stuff. So it was a tremendous shock to me to find out about his illness late in its progression and when I sped out to Los Angeles to see him, his physical condition left me stunned and in tears. The final big moment I had with him was to rush him with his wife to the same hospital where my father had passed away. I was not happy about that but we had no choice and I understand the place was much better than before, but the emotional reverberations were killing me. And the last time I saw him, he had remarked that he had trouble dealing with the random nature of events that were happening to him in that place. I did get to say goodbye but it seems that I am not healing as I would have thought.

Danny was special to me and I discovered to so many others and they knew him in ways and times I never had and got to see sides to him I will never get to. As I said before, family is important to me and Danny was very close family.

I don't really know why I am writing this, I am not saying it is to share, I guess in some ways it is about putting my thoughts down in way to confront them. I have said these things before to other people and the spiral of feelings is still spinning my core into some other place.

ta ta for now

After returning home from my trip to Los Angeles it has been suggested to me that I look for a grief counselor or group to deal with the death of my cousin and my friend about a year and half ago. Although I have been grieving both of them I have to admit that in fact I do find myself being very negative and feeling as if I am in a down portion of my long term depression cycle. Not something that I am unfamiliar with, as this is my lot in life. The cycles used to come faster and the bottom was deeper and seemed to last longer, I now have many more emotional tools to deal with this condition but right now or for awhile I have been somewhat unhinged or off balance. Part of it is the situation for me at work which was very positive for a moment and then the rug was pulled out and the situation went down quite rapidly and now we are being moved to new offices and I am going to be in an internal office with no windows in a room with a former friend who I can't stand now and the feeling is quite mutual. So I am not a happy camper, but that is beside the point, it is the fundamental issue of my loss that probably has been at the bottom of my current malaise. The feeling of lack of control which the death of my cousin and friend and the feeling of no power at work too is very frustrating and disturbing to me. I feel pushed along on the wheel of life with the passage of time and the approaching finality to life of others in my life and the positioning of me on that road trip to oblivion. I am of the school "do not go gently into the night", I hate the idea of my own demise and non being and the fear of no legacy scares me as I am frightened of being forgotten and unmourned. Having no kids with no continuity into the future bothers me a lot now as I get older. While I enjoy my art work it sets no mark in the world, it changes nothing and brings me no closer to some mythical greatness that would make some impression on the now and possibly into the future so someone will remember who I am or who I was as if this is monumental to the world, It is to me, and that my cousin who was six months younger than me and my friend who was my age are both gone scares the bejeesus out of me and disturbs me greatly and I feel at the same time the mournful loss of both of them. I missed out on my cousins life near the end, only to be shocked by the physical changes his illness wrought upon his body and the vulnerability of his condition. I got a little time before I took him to the emergency room to the hospital where his life ended. This was my previous real trip home, the next trip was to his funeral. My friend at least came to new york to visit the hospital so I could share his changes and share his life for that short time and his passing was also very difficult. The most painful part is as much as I could do for both of them, it all seemed so inadequate and I feel so pained and forlorn.

ta ta for now