S2000 CONVERTIBLE DAY TRIP up the COAST

My better half Mr. Twister, depicted pleased as punch above, borrowed a friend's Honda S2000 convertible for our top down adventure yesterday, a day trip up the coast to visit my brother and his wife who were holidaying in Oxnard (halfway betwixt L.A. and Santa Barbara, Calif.) My snapshots however represent our homeward return south, as you'll note in the orientation of the Pacific Ocean.

Below are the Sycamore Cove dunes north of Malibu, wherein it is amusing to contemplate whether or not the enormous Babylonian set (with with its bigger than life-sized plaster elephants) of D.W. Griffith's epic silent film Intolerance is buried beneath same as rumored. Legends like this are based on other verified instances: Cecil B. DeMille's 10 Commandments' set indeed remains buried beneath the Nipomo Dunes near Pismo Beach farther north up the California coastline.

Above right, the brother in question Randall, on a glorious beach day in Oxnard. Note fashionable "Rock Action, Stooges" t-shirt, part of my Xmas GiftPak to him last year. Perfect summer weather: cool enough for me, warm enough for Mr. Twister

MARIJKE KOGER-DUNHAM art career retrospective with music bonus Booker T. Jones

Top photograph: fine artist/muralist/graphic designer/clothing designer/musician Marijke Koger-Dunham, who painted the most iconic images of the 1960s and continues to make art to this day attending, believe it or not, her first career retrospective 6.29.12 at Sonos Gallery, Hollywood Calif. Seen above at right, her hand-painted custom guitars for Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce in the band Cream who also sport her custom fashions.

Below are assorted images of pop culture characters or spiritual inspirational figures amidst her polychrome fantasias at the exhibition. She was the first to do this in fine art and graphic art.* Peter Max et al. in the '60s copied her, and have admitted same.

Left, "Poseidon" (god of
horsesas well as the sea.)
Fastfilmblog likes horses.

Below, a glimpse of The Fool, her fine art, clothing design and musician collective (Marijke top left) and their murals for the Beatles' Apple building, London U.K. late 1960s.

Below, the original schematic design for Marijke and The Fool's murals for the Aquarius Theatre, for its premiere of the counter-cultural musical "Hair."

Left, a very appropriately
costumed individual; right,
music and art power couple
(he's an attorney as well as musican,
she fashioned the polychrome visuals for the 1960s) Don Dunham and MarijkeKoger-Dunham.

Bonus to the iconic art, music legend Booker T. Jones...

Above, soul music icon
Booker T. Jones at the keyboard. Left, guest photo (C) 2012 Kurt Ingham, plus set list.

Above and below, Booker T. Jones performs for the audience of entranced art and music enthusiasts, inclusive of Evita Corby and Mike Hudson below right. Booker T. and the M.G.s were celebrated for their classic instrumental hit "Green Onions," however Mr. Jones garnered prodigious acclaim playing and producing for Stax Records while collaborating with Otis Redding, Albert King ("Born Under A Bad Sign" was co-written by Jones) and countless others.

Above, our Swiss houseguest Noe Vuille nephew of our chum Oliver Vuille (bassist of Euro-tour Chainsaw,) my better half Mr. Twister (former lead lead singer of Chainsaw,) and the artist herself, Marijke Koger-Dunham, beaming and beautiful in front of a photo of her erstwhile clients The Beatles, seen accoutred in her clothing designs for Magical Mystery Tour.

Above, Mr. Twister calibrates his camera as all enjoy exhibit.

Shiny, happy people:
rock couturier Evita Corby with
Shiny Diamond right, and Rodney Bingenheimer below.

Above, rock couturier Evita Corby's stark black and white beauty presents a graphic contrast to Marijke Koger-Dunham's colorful LP covers for (clockwise from upper left) Traffic, Marijke's own group The Fool, perennial personal household favorite The Move and The Incredible String Band.

Above L-R: author Mike Hudson ("Diary of a Punk" et al,) rock couturier Evita Corby, Paraphilia Editor Dire McCain, my better half Mr. Twister, and our Swiss houseguest Noe Vuille.

Above left, your humble

photojournalist enjoying the show immensely (guest photo (C) 2012

Kurt Ingham.) Right, this is happy for author ("Canyon of Dreams," "Rebel Music," "Hollywood Shack Job" et al) Harvey Kubernik, pleased to pose with Marijke Koger-Dunham. His unhappy would be not looking at the camera at all.

Left, again, Harvey Kubernik's perpetual poker face belies his actually having a great time (which I knew from fielding a later phone call beginning "Wow..." Right Paraphilia Editor Dire McCain holds up the keyboard (guest photo
(C) 2012Kurt Ingham.)

* There have been vivid colorists throughout art history like
the Fauves or Blue Rider movement, even those similarly transposing patterns and realistic figures like Gustav Klimt. However, none consistently incorporated rainbow colors deftly throughout their careers. Marijke's story in art and influences will be found soon in an upcoming issue of Paraphilia Magazine via a photo feature with an interview with Marijke Koger-Dunham by yours truly.

NOTE: link directly back to http://fastfilm1.blogspot.com if all elements such as photo layouts or videos aren't here.

SANTA MONICA CAROUSEL

The historic and beautiful carousel on the Santa Monica, Calif. pier: carved by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company in 1922, replacing the original (and presumably damaged) Looff merry-go-round dating from the pier's inception of 1917. There are 45 carved wooden horses and other animals, plus one fiberglass Triceratops. This premiere example of the German immigrants' wood-carving artistry has been seen many media, including the Paul Newman/Robert Redford period film "The Sting."

The occasion was fetching bicycle-touring houseguest Noe Vuille, left, nephew of our Swiss friend Olivier Vuille at a recognizable landmark. I chose the unmistakeable Santa Monica carousel, and of course had to go for a ride even though I was already dressed for our attendance at fine artist Marijke koger Dunham's career retrospective that same evening, seen on next blog at LINK.

TRIP TO KENYA 1997, SPIRITUAL or OTHERWISE

Below, a cheetah with blood on her mouth; Burchell zebras rolling about taking a dust bath, just as domesticated horses do; Cape Buffalo giving me the evil eye; King Leo; a female waterbuck; assortment of pachyderms; an oryx (or was that addax?); a secretary bird.

Tech specs: Sacrificing the luggage weight limit necessarily imposed for small plane safety on the African continent, both us photographers came packing few clothes for our 1997 animal viewing safari to Kenya (I knew I could buy T-shirts there.) We brought multiple cameras with insanely long telephoto lenses (I even bought a special new one the day before I left) and 50 rolls of film each. Fellow tour travelers were begging to buy rolls of film from us. No dice! (This was the pre-digital Pleistocene.)

Later, instead of boring friends at home interminably with the medium of the era, film transparencies shown in projected "slide shows," I just transcribed my best shots onto 8 1/2 x11" color Xeroxes such as all those pictured here and sent those to pals and travel companions. 

Above, pachyderms with babies; a pink pelican with a fish in its mouth; mother hippo with 3-day old infant hippo who suckled by diving underneath mum; gerenuk standing up to the world; white rhinos; Queen Leo; cadre of giraffes; a topi (they really are sort of mauve-ish brown in sunlight.)

Above, a rarer Grevy's zebra; lioness ready for her close up; a wildebeest calf born right in front of me standing up for the the first time in its life; a rare bongo; impala; a black rhinoceros which I actually petted because its 24-hours-a-day guardian armed with an UZI against poachers (what it takes to protect rhinos these days) knew his personality pretty well; giraffes; gnu.

Above, Ms. Cheetah still digesting (she has to eat as much of her kill as possible in one sitting lest bigger cats steal her hard work;) elephant herd with baby timbo; impala siesta; non-native baby chimp in a wildlife sanctuary; genuine zebra crossing; hyenas eat their kill; unnamed songbird; a dik dik.

Above, size differential of giraffes to zebra; jackyls consume leftovers; lioness squats; elephant snorts; firing up the hot air balloon; two overhead views of the Maasai Mara from hot air balloon (the operator boasted, "I have the best job in the world!" and he may have been right;) and Fastfilm herself and better half Mr. Twister at Sumburu, onetime home of the Born Free lions.

Not pictured except the two pics directly below, our time at the Mt. Kenya Safari Lodge (the only 5-star hotel at which I ever have or ever will stay during my time on the planet) where we saw a tennis court on the equator allowing balls to be batted across hemisphere to hemisphere, and where we rode horses through the wild with a guide. You want an armed guide when there are lions about, born free or not. He claimed not to count on this factoid, but for the most part wild animals do not like the smell of humans and animals so intermingled when we ride horses as it's disturbing to their natural order, so they generally will try to avoid you.

Below: hyraxes (primitive elephant relatives) drawn to the animal magnetism of Mr. Twister

 Above, I feed a rare Bongo antelope

When you leave the luxury hotels near the game (animal) parks and your van guide unlocks your lodge's protective electric fence's gate, it's like throwing open the gates to Jurassic Park. There they all are! All the animals about which you've only read, roaming, mobbing, hungry, aggressive, fearful... nature in action for as far as eyes can see.

Below, giraffes await our feeding them from a balcony; ostriches--8 foot reptilian birds that want to kill you, as scary as dinosaurs would be in person; Mr. Twister feeds a bongo; Maasai madonna and child; our luxury tent next to the hippo and crocodile-inhabited Mara River, luckily with a steep escarpment.

 

 We went to Kenya for the animals, and came back impressed with the people, who uniformly were good-looking, resolute no matter what their walk of life, and good-natured even outside our service industry enclave of tourist-related employ. The panhandlers even displayed a sense of humor yelling "President Clinton!" at us which we knew signified their total lexicon of English words, a friendly gesture indeed, unlike the economically-deprived in other third world countries who consider every American a mark to be bilked or else a mortal enemy. Kenyans consider tourists their business partners who participate in helping them attain their goals.




I was very impressed with the Maasai, they all looked so amazing. History books said they were the only colonized tribe to hold their colonizers in amused disdain, knowing the tribe was superior. Their joke slang for colonists wearing trousers translated to "Those who contain their farts." Our tour guides said that 1/3 to 1/2 of the funds we paid to go on our expensive Kenya trip went directly to the tribes granting access to the tours, a good thing.
 
Our tour of multi-day game drives in several different parks across the country was well run, the nightly lectures fascinating, one by an actual Leakey, and the guides highly educated and truly knowledgeable (writes this amateur zoologist.) I think we tipped our guide more than our far more well-heeled fellow tourists because maybe we appreciated his expertise more fully than casual thrill-seekers. This was a unique trip for us as my parents had coughed up half our expenses, weary of not being able to brag to their friends about our non-existent vacation travels. When they queried where we wanted to go I immediately shot back "East Africa!"  I always aim high.

In the intervening years since the Nairobi terrorism bombings, I've read of native Kenyans protesting, "Why did they pick on us, we're the good guys of Africa?" to which I'd concur (it's been a half century since their Mau Maus.) A friend who undertook a similar tour in 2011 commented on the innate changes since our own visit, claiming that the presence and danger proffered by the new influx of predatory immigrants reminded her of our SoCal gangs: although their violence usually is directed at one another, they are omnipresent so one always has to be on the lookout for these unpredictable aggressors as a new but now permanently entrenched urban hazard. Just like home.

When cornered by New Agey types whose beliefs I eschew and queried about my "happy place," I go back to the Maasai Mara or Mt. Kenya in my mind, hearing the zebras barking, the hippos bellowing, cheetahs chirping, all sorts of unfamiliar birdcalls and a faint tinkle of cowbells through the light drizzle at night. Heaven.

Virtually all tourists fortunate enough to travel to East Africa babble something inarticulate about how different but how "normal" it felt to be in the wild there. Even though we're rich asshole Americans used to our creature comforts, there's something about creature life and death (there's bleached bones everywhere in the parks) with people and animals coping together as a matter of course that hits the limbic part of your brain. Life is beautiful and cruel, dustyhot and coolrefreshing, and the forces of nature suddenly spring in your face with attitude alongside someone (in this case Abercrombie & Kent) who knows the terrain and is there to help fellow homo sapiens. You and I and all humans evolved from this landscape of East Africa, warthogs and all. I now understand its sway firsthand. It sort of feels...right. Maybe I don't eschew spiritual philosophies as much as the skeptic in me thinks I do.

RED,WHITE & BLUE RAMONES

My T-shirt that I wore on July 4th, American Independence Day.