Hollywood experiences, take 3

Last Saturday we thought we'd go big and drove to the sunset strip in a party of six with two cars. We accidentally left them in the most expensive garage at the place (we found out about the $48 per car the day after) and took 2 taxis back so we all could party. But the taxis cost over $70 each. Yak! Like the other night that Lena and me went to the "Standard" roof top, one of the fanciest places downtown, we were not able to get into every club we wanted (guest list, private party, too expensive...), so we settled to have a few tacos at a nice Mexican place and then bought some beer at the "liquor locker" (I love the name!). After the "Marmot", a rich people's hangout, looking for a place to dance at we walked all the way down to the Whiskey-a-go-go and the Roxy, both of which hosted a rock concert with a crowd in black and teased hair. So we went back to our Viper Room and were surprised by a nice Reggae-Rock concert by "New Kingdom". Good dance music, too. Like always, curfew at 2 and now alternative afterwards, so we went to the Villa and kept on partying in Lion's study.

The Sunday we had our own good bye fellows party in the garden of the Villa. The three artist fellows are leaving this weekend. We had invited some friends and acquaintances of the theirs. It was a big success, the home made burgers as well as Jan's art exhibition and most of all the interesting mixture of people. The discussions that came up were so exciting! We had a lot of film people once more. I was so happy my cousin from Santa Barbara and Julia could make it plus the newly weds! Even two office colleagues could come.

The "German Film Currents" festival started in Santa Monica and for the opening we saw "Im Winter ein Jahr" by Caroline Link, introduced by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck who has settled down well in Hollywood as he said. Christine and I will go there again today to watch "Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex", I am quite eager to see it and to see how many Oscar winners there are this time (Last time: three).

Hollywood experiences, take 2

I cannot keep up, so much is there that I have seen and done since Burning Man! Even more amazing considering I was sick for a whole week (probably first stage of a bronchitis, I let me talk into taking antibiotics and then got better).
+++ Burning man post has been continued +++

Last Friday we tried Annies tip of eating Hamburgers at "Father's Office (FO...)" in Culver City. Good indeed! On Saturday Jan and I cruised through Venice and went to explore the houses on the canals. That area is where the name comes from - somebody tried to rebuild the flair of Venice. Once a rundown quarter you don't want to know how expensive these houses are now. But they look soooo gorgeous, so individual. We had afternoon meal at our beloved Novel Cafe, THE hang out place for the Villa residents in South Santa Monica. Then we were late for some gallery visits in Culver City but met Paul and John, a local, to attend some gallery openings in Beverly Hills in the evening. The crowd was just as interesting to look at as the pictures were. (I mean the pictures were really good, some of them.) Beverly Hillians look so polished, almost photoshop-worked-over... Clearly a different kind of inhabitants as in Venice. There was the personal fitness trainer next to the pianist next to the bodyguard next to the movie actor. In fact, a lot of people you get to meet are in the film business. On the block party the weekend before last we met a stuntman who "does mainly car crashes", as he stated, in major studio productions. He did Transformers, Angels and Demons and now today Eagle Eye premiered in Hollywood, on which he worked lately (will certainly make its way to Germany, looks big). We saw Ben Stiller at the gallery opening. That guy is tiny! His girlfriend is really much taller.
On Sunday we spent 5 hours in the LACMA - the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We saw art from ancient Egypt through antique, middle ages, renaissance, baroque, romanticism, ex- and impressionism, cubism, surrealism and contemporary art as well as photography. That was why we took so long. Still, we have only seen half of the works in the museum! Lena and Nico were up in San Francisco for the weekend. I would have gone, but I was still sick when they left on Thursday. Too bad.
Monday I worked very hard on finding a solution for our rat problem (we have rats in the kitchen, they are so cute ( - just kidding)) and our mold problem in the basement. Pour Paul has to live there. I was proud to announce the prompt beginning of the work today and tomorrow. The first rat has been trapped and buried already today. Poor thing.

Yesterday night I went to the Topanga State Parc (the wilderness starts at the end of our road, so it's just a 7 min. walk) to see the sunset. It was just overwhelming. With the full moon so big and red and the view over LA and the ocean from up there... I will have to go there more often! Today we drove the Villa's van with a large party (felt like a field trip) to Santa Paula to see a photo exhibition of David Bacon about migrant farm workers in rural California. The Villa's writer in exile Xu Xing from China is planning a documentary that compares Chinese farm worker's living conditions to those here in California. (And I am his assistant in the project, yeaah!) Farm workers are all Mexican. So the speeches were all in Spanish as the majority of the people were Spanish speaking. It was very interesting to talk to the photographer and also the Mexican food was delicious and the music so nice.
I got so American! I start saying things like: "Oh, aaabsolllutely!!" or "Are you seeerious??".

! Practice random acts of silliness !

Burning, fucking burning. I was at the hottest, coolest, craziest, most border-crossing event in the world. And I was curious for years since Toby was crazy about it ever since he went for the first time. Sadly he and Jade couldn't go this year. I didn't find anybody to go with instead and then it turned out I would be working in LA at the time anyway.



So I burried the thought... Until I mentioned to Jan how I would love to experience it. That was on the weekend it started. He said he had been dying to go, too, but hadn't found anyone. He said: LET'S GO! and wrote a concept for an art installation overnight which would have to include me singing and dancing, in order to get me off work for the whole week! I believed that would never work. but it did. We had one day of preparation (usually one prepares for a year, you pimp your car to be an art car, get a tent and camp group together, food, gifts, booze, drugs, music, special crazy equipment and whatnot). We rented a car, bought a camera, borrowed a tent and bombed down (up) to Nevada in 14 hours. We didn't find the friends of-a-friend-camp we were supposed to but we made a ton of new friends which is the easiest thing there.

BURNING MAN is a huge art exhibition in the middle of nowhere and at the same time a freaky rave and at the same time a community based city in the desert. 50.000 people gather to celebrate freedom from every convention for one week and after that burn the art (the main event is the burning of the central "man" in the middle of the "playa"), then they pack tents and everything including their grey water to leave the place without a trace. It's an awesome idea and that is why people love it and it grows every year. Black Rock City is circular, so that the street names are the hours, you don't need to remember much that way. It is 7 miles across, lots of room for everybody.
You just leave your camp whenever you feel like it, day or night, and do whatever you want, basically: go dancing (good PsyTrance and wellknown DJs on three dance floors), have drinks at one of the numerous bars for free (since the living culture says: give away to others what you bring, share everything), get into crazy conversations with random people, marvel the spectacularly creative cars and domes and costumes (you will stand out if you go out in normal clothes! At least bikini required. you can also go naked or naked with a corset or a wig or you can paint your whole body, you can decorate your bike with lights for the night or just hang out in one of the lounges with nice music, reggae or Elvis songs or Shpongle or almost anything. Anything that you can imagine and that you cannot imagine is there.
One great thing for example was the "pimped potty": one of the portapotties (DixieKlo) was decorated with picture frames, made nice with candles, incenses, a fluffy toilet lid and a radio! (See picture above)...



The shooting worked out really well, too. The first day we developed more ideas and came up with a splitting of the project into three separate ones. So the second day we shot the first installation: I walked in the desert towards the camera in a ballroom dress, drawing a line in the ground with a long bamboo stick, a scarf blowing in the wind. You have some close-ups of the stick cutting the earth and then I walk away into the distance again with the mountain panorama in the background. The second installation is the "Station to Station" one. I walk, dance, climb, cartwheel and run into doors and huts and other art installations in the middle of the desert, just to come out of others, as if I would have traveled underground. This one will have a crazy soundtrack and will be postproducted and processed heavily. The third one involves me singing a song from the musical FAME ("They know how to do it in LA") about a drug addicted girl who broke down trying to live her dreams, while I walk through a sand storm at Burning Man. I can't wait what Jan will make out of this material!