I just had to share this fantastic photograph that appeared in Sunday's Travel section of the L.A. Times. The most recent editor's choice from the "Your Scene" page (which features reader's 'amateur' photographs) this visual jolt of orange sunshine should see me through my two months back in West Virginia... where I should be by the time this gets posted. Hope I am as lucky as Sam Chien of Tustin and happen upon six meditating monks on the red-eye flight back east! If not I'll just imagine I'm in a field of California poppies! Viva L'Orange!

From the L.A. Times: "At the peak of bloom season, Sam Chien of Tustin decided he'd better get up to Lancaster to see the poppies. So he and a friend, Tom Wang, drove north. "That day was wonderful," Chien says. While there, they happened upon six monks, also absorbing the riot of blooms. One 'started to meditate, and I thought it was a lovely subject.' Chien used a Nikon D70S."

Most folks know by now that the wonderful film director (and equally wonderful actor) Sydney Pollack passed away on Monday. The Academy Award winning director of A-list fare like Tootsie, Out of Africa and The Way We Were, Pollack also directed one of my favorite movies They Shoot Horses, Don't They? They sure don't make movies like that anymore! They don't even make trailers like that anymore!

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Or nab a genuine Andrea Zittel smock! Or a real Vito Acconci lithograph! Or an original John Baldessari! Or an honest-to-God Paul McCarthy! Or a tried-and-true Sister Corita, Sherry Levine, George Stoll, or Jim Isserman! Or any one of over 100 original artworks by a galaxy of art stars from yesterday, today and tomorrow! Your big chance is tonight -- this Thursday, May 22 -- when all this art is up for auction at Re:PRESENT, LACE's 30th anniversary benefit/art auction that yours truly has been asked to emcee and perform at! (Details here.)

So pick up a pair of trashy, patent-leather, thigh-high platform boots on Hollywood Boulevard (where LACE currently resides) and climb aboard the Way Back Machine with my new character, The Time Traveling Hooker, as she takes you backwards, forwards and sideways through a brief history of time and LACE! (Find out why young girls were comin' to the canyon and gettin' the hell out of NYC long before it went to the Sex and the City clones!) Musical accompaniment will be provided by Kristian Hoffman, harpist Alexander Rannie and special appearance by Phranc! (With a performance earlier in the gallery by the ever adorable Will Power!)

Doors open to the public at 7 p.m. Will Power goes on at 7:30 and our show starts at 8 PM followed by a live auction!

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Greetings to the Readers of Ann Magnuson's PAPERMAG Blog! My pal Ann invited me to share something special with you about a movie called The Fall, directed by Tarsem Singh.

Before we go any further, you should watch the trailer for this film, which can be seen above or at the movie's official website. (No rush on watching that -- I'll wait for you...)

Okay (assuming you watched it -- but even if you didn't, that's fine)... So, how cool does that look? Extremely, right? I mean, it's got a freaking elephant floating in the water! I saw this movie last week, and, y'know what? It's EXACTLY like that trailer times 10.

Which is to say: It's jaw-droppingly gorgeous and emotionally engaging in its vision of the redemptive power of primal "once upon a time"-kinda storytelling.

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After getting a nice compliment on my Dan Attoe blog from one MySpace pal named Jesse I decided to check out his art as well. I enjoyed what I saw (see some below and more of it here) but it was his snapshot in front of Silver Lake's infamous Olive Motel that really caught my eye.

I've never stayed there nor have I known anyone who has but I've passed by this relic for years wondering when Andre Balazs was gonna snatch it up and turn it into a rich-hipster's paradise. Fortunately Jesse agreed to send me his account of staying at The Olive. I do hope it remains untouched by gentrification and stands as a reminder of a Los Angeles that is disappearing all too fast!

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Finally someone has posted Jobriath's ultra-rare videos on YouTube!! (Thank you Richard Metzger for leading us to them!) I actually bought Jobriath albums when they came out (anything that smacked of Bowie was catnip to this ziggystardusted teen) and loved them! But I was in a small but special (Hello Morrissey!) minority. Somehow I missed his rare TV appearances but here they are posted below in all their openly gay glam-rock glory. (Is this but one reason Bowie became a cokey R&B revivalist?)

But it's this Mother/Son video that I believe Jobriath's brother posted about the once maligned, now deceased and legendary glam rocker from the early 70s that broke my heart. Sadly, embedding of the video is disabled by request (which is why I've posted instead the clip above from a VH1 doc that explains who Jobriath was). But you can see the Jobriath Mother/Son tribute by clicking here. This one is for all of us who no longer have our mothers (and brothers) with us.

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One of today's lead stories on CNN.com is on handsome particle physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed and Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider . According to the story, if the multi-billion dollar collider is successful, it "may change ideas of spacetime for the first time since Einstein." Of course, some people also think that the particle collision that is slated to occur this fall (in an experiment that National Geographic calls "the hunt for the God particle") could also create a black hole and swallow the earth and our own galaxy up in the process. Fascinating, as Mr. Spock would say. All the more so since it was just yesterday I was watching a slew of YouTube videos on string theory and M-theory. This Ten Dimensions video posted below was one of my faves.

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Many thanks to my MySpace pal Marcoshark for sending me this tribute to the legendary Klaus Nomi. It definitely is helping make this Monday a happy one. (Can Glamourama finally bring peace to the Middle East? We can only hope!)

One of my favorite young artists, Dan Attoe, has two shows opening this month. First up is the American painter's second Berlin solo show at Peres Projects BERLIN which opened over the weekend. The exhibition, called "Simple Thoughts and Complicated Animals," features new works in painting and mixed media sculpture and runs from May 2 until June 21.

Attoe's second show this month, "American Dreams" opens at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, MUSAC in Leon, Spain and will be on view from May 17 – July 6, 2008.

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The infamous Phoenix Lights are back and they aren't just doing their wacky orb formations over Arizona they are in Florida as well! Are these UFOs or secret military maneuvers? The F-117 Stealth bomber has just been stealthily retired. Perhaps to make way for new technology currently being tested? Or are the Chinese implementing Phase 2 of the Takeover now that all the everyday goods needed for a successful invasion have been stocked in Wal-Marts and Targets across the country? Many of us hope for the first explanation, if for no other reason than to get something on the news other than the Obama/Clinton feud. At least former Republican Arizona governor Fife Symington finally admitted to seeing The Phoenix Lights in 1997 and that it was, most likely, something 'otherworldly'. (See video below. Every press conference should include someone in an alien costume!)

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L.A. Weekly columnist Seven McDonald wrote a wonderful eulogy to everyone's favorite dachshund, the recently deceased Bingo. Anyone who had spent any quality time in Silver Lake's Sunset Junction area -- or even just a fleeting moment -- fell in love with the bacon-loving Bingo. (Bingo was given one of L.A. Woman' s Choice People Awards in 2007 as he brightened our days as much as any two-legged, life-loving Angeleno!)

Officially the charge of Sarah Dale, proprietor of the hipster boutique Pull My Daisy, Bingo soon became everyone's beloved pet (especially if you fed him bacon from the once packed, now-closed EAT WELL restaurant next door!) Sadly, Bingo was getting older and his judgment must have been impaired the day he darted into the street. His death was quick but his memory will last as long as those of us who adopted Bingo are still eating bacon (now the tempeh variety down the steet at the popular new vegan hang-out Flore).

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English Russia has been one of my favorite websites ever since POPBITCH introduced me to it via their snark-a-thon newsletter. (They lured me in with the link to the exotic pet owners who kept a Siberian tiger in their tiny Soviet block apartment. I particularly liked when they fed the kitty live chickens in the living room and huge live catfish in the bathtub!) When you've had it up to your democratic jackass with the primary or feel a little wobbly about the increasingly wobbly state of our U.S. economy then check out what is happening in Mother Russia! You'll get a few laughs and just maybe a much-need shot of gratitude. I LOVE these conceptual images by Russian artists who envision The Motherland post-U.S. preemptive strike. Hey, looks like a Chuck Heston flick!

I very much enjoyed Carina (The New Pauline Kael!) Chocano's article on recently deceased movie legend Charlton Heston that appeared today's L.A. Times. A grand assessment of Heston's heroic old-school grandiosity, the piece also painted an evocative picture of what movie-going used to be -- grand events in even grander movie palaces. In other words, it was the multiplexes that got small (no doubt shrunk to fit the caliber of movie stars). But I have to say, I was disappointed that the L.A. Times obit of Heston did not mention one of my favorite childhood movies, The Omega Man. (Clips above and below -- good stuff.)

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This past Monday night, Moby left the taping of Conan O'Brien just in time to make a surprise appearance as the Mystery Guest on "What's My Line? - Live On Stage" (now appearing at the 199-seat Barrow Street Theatre). As Fiona Apple looked on from the audience, her boyfriend (author Jonathan Ames) led the panel in guessing Moby's identity. J. Keith van Straaten, host of the stage adaptation of the classic TV show, could barely get Moby to say a word about his new CD, Last Night, which dropped the next day. The shiny-headed musician preferred telling cautionary tales of mixing business with ex-girlfriends!

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If I were in NYC I'd be at Paul Kasmin Gallery tonight when the resurrection of the late, great photographer Tseng Kwong Chi begins! (If you have PAPER's March issue laying around read my L.A. Woman column for the inside scoop!) Kwong was a dear friend of mine during the glory days of Downtown NYC and we shared a lot of laughs (and tears) from 1979 until his untimely death from AIDS in 1990. According to the gallery's press release, the show will be "a comprehensive survey of Tseng’s pioneering series of self-portraits featuring 100 large-scale, black-and-white photographs, some of which will be on view for the first time."

Kwong Chi had a magnificent eye and an equally magnificent sense of humor. Dressed in a vintage Communist Mao suit he would insinuate himself into iconic American (and worldwide) landscapes creating arresting tableaux that are simultaneously ironic and beautiful. Check 'em out! (And try to make the opening which I'm told will be a scene reminiscent of the good ole daze. I'm so bummed I can't be there! But I'll just commune with Kwong's delightful spirit here on the left coast, somewhere under the Hollywood sign!) FYI to those of you across the pond: the show will also be in London from April 15-May 31 at Ben Brown Fine Arts!

More about the show (which runs until May 3) from the Paul Kasmin Gallery:

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During my morning internet surf I happily discovered that the New York Times' T Magazine has a new travel issue. Always curious to know what the next Patagonia is I took a looky-loo inside. Voila! A story devoted to the new "Trophy Trips" of the rich and restless. As much as I'd love to ride on the forthcoming Virgin Galactic space jet (gotta wait until I find an extra $200,000 lurking in my portfolio) or go on an Antarctic safari, I'm not sure I want to share the adventure with a bevy of jet-setting braggarts.

To quote T:

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Like this Slate.com editorialist says, I wonder "Why SHOULDN'T We Boycott the Olympics?" What the Chinese military is up to in TIbet is (and has been since 1951) frightening. And yet the beauty of these Greek Olympic vestal vigins (a bevy of Greek actresses who took place in the lighting of the torch ceremony in Olympia yesterday) reminds us there is something quite beautiful and politically transcendent about the ancient games. Still, we applaud the protest that disrupted the ritual. Not to mention Bjork! And the French! And Prince Charles!

There are many good reasons to attend but perhaps better ones in favor of not, especially this one made in the Slate piece:

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I acted opposite the wonderful Tom Lenk in the L.A. premiere of Amy and David Sedaris' play The Book of Liz. Tom played Duncan, the emotionally-fragile, recovering-alcoholic manager of the Pilgrim-themed restaurant that the wayward Amish-ish character of Liz -- moi -- finds employment. We never stopped laughing. (Except when we had to cry... during our emotional farewell scene. A three-hanky weeper!)

I'm happy to see Tom continues to elicit the yuks (and the tears); this time as "Huevo Hickock" in another YouTube extravaganza. I still haven't seen Juno but assume a lot of the pop-cultural poppycock jargon is part of the ex-stripper's Oscar-winning screenplay. Enjoy!

Now that Fashion Week is finally over PAPERMAG can get back to what's really important -- weird new drug crazes! Actually this craze ain't so new. Two Sundays ago the L.A. Times Magazine featured an in-depth article on the magic Amazonian potion Ayahuasca. Affluent Californians and various celebrities have been using the revered jungle hallucinogen as a heavy-duty psychic colonic. This might have been a ground-breaking story if L.A. Woman hadn't written about the same subject FOUR YEARS AGO (in the April 2004 issue, accompanied by the fabulous Norn Cutson illustration above).

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Roy Scheider has died. Long live Joe Gideon! Mr. Scheider fought killer sharks, French heroin dealers and the U.S. military intervention in Iraq. But it was his turn as Bob Fosse's alter-ego, speed freak choreographer Joe Gideon in the 1979 classic All That Jazz that I will remember him best. Hopefully this wonderful classically-trained actor will be met in Show Biz heaven by long-legged angels in vein-painted spandex unitards!