Los Angeles

After some difficulties with our blogging moral, here we go again. So here is what happened the past 21 days.

We left New Orleans (sniff) and went to Los Angeles, the city of cars. If you don't have a car you are either homeless or half past selber schuld. At first we did not like LA, but finally there was a happy end!
Here is some of what we saw and who we met in LA:

Winnie the Pooh

The Museum of Jurassic Technology
This is like a parody on museums. Nerdy, strange objects, untrue stories mixed with true lies. You could hear things through speakers or watch objects through different types of binoculars. That was a really strange and fun experience. Recommendable. No photos are allowed inside, so here is the outside.

museum of jurassic technology

Eli Zachary Socoloff Presser
We met this great puppeteer (building and playing) for some drinks, he gave us many tips and we gave him the flu. Luckily he is in good health again and could forgive us.
We want to do a project together in the future. Who knows, we might run a post-apocalyptic theatre truck together, and if the apocalypse will be delayed, it might be something else.
Here is a demo reel of his 4 headed puppet-company VEM. Watch it! It's great stuff in it!
Eli was one of the main reasons, we were sad to leave LA in the end.

Eli Presser with puppet. Guess who is who.

Marsian De Lellis
Marsian is a super-cool person you love immediately, and he is also a puppeteer, who is able to do a big show completly on his own. And he does it great! We missed his show "Object of Her Affection", but we were lucky enough to watch a recording of it. Marsian suffered while showing it to us, but there was no reason for that. It's a great one-man-show about a woman, who falls in love with objects, like a building or the Golden Gate Bridge. Nice story, inspired by the documentary "I married the Eiffel tower", funny and melancholic, written, built, played and spoken by Marsian. This play should be showed at European puppet festivals! So if you are a festival boss: go ahead, invite him!

Marsian De Lellis plays the Golden Gate Bridge and two more characters.

Griffith Park / Griffith Observatory
We walked with Marsian a long, sunny and dusty road up on a hill. On the top of it there is a great view of LA and the observatory. It´s a space, full of knowledge and information, well packed in entertaining objects, films, ... and lots of cult objects as a Foucault pendulum and a Tesla Coil.
If you ever go there, take some time with you (and water)

the moon

Tesla Coil - bzzzzz

Wacko / Gallery Jesus de la Luz
Wacko is a store that you´ll leave poor. You want to buy everything.
In the back there is an all-time-gallery with a lot of main comic artists. Really breathtaking pictures on the way to the toilet.
When we went there, there was also an exhibition of the "Laluzapalooza Jury Winners": 5 comic artists, two of them great: Frank Forte and Sean Stepanoff.

Sean Stepanoff in front of his paintings

painting of Frank Forte

The Museum of Death
nice little museum about war, serial killers, suicide, coffins, authopsy, etc., with documentary films and wicked objects like a mummified severed head of a french serial killer (Henri Désiré Landru) or a quilt with swastikas made by the Manson family (brrr). You go out there, you like life a little bit more again! Recommended!

museum of death: "those who can stomach it can stay as long as they like"

Venice Beach - where crime meets art
Skater's paradise, best wheather, sandy beach, crazy people around (the more the night comes, the more crazy the people seem to be). Interesting place and a good spot to get some sunlight.

skater

Björk
We went to a Burger Restaurant in Venice Beach ("Larry's") and thought about which celebrities could need our visualisation in their videos. We thought about Lady Gaga and Björk. Then Björk came in. (sic!) We tried to convince her, that she needs half past selber schuld for next video projects, but she ignored us in a very professional way and enjoyed her family. Too bad we saw her on a family day!!!

Palm Springs
Between the stress of LA we were invited to Palm Springs and had some days of nice luxury of the 50s. More than 100 °F (around 40°C), palms, pool. Aaah.

Palm Springs

San Diego
We did a one-day-trip to San Diego to meet relatives and to speak to some puppet artists, who were recommended to us.
We went also to a nice art gallery, the Chuck Jones Gallery. Nice pictures made by the famous inventor of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote and many others.

Wile E. Coyote takes care of the gallery

Iain Gunn / Bridget Rountree
These puppeteers of San Diego built giant puppets, do shadow theatre, use mixed media and were quite nice, but very busy on the day we met them, so we could just start this relationship.
Here is a vimeo link to their latest play "the collector"

So, what's next? NYC again! See you all soon!

Conclusion New Orleans

Everyone is groovy, even the animals.
Everybody is sweating, even the glass tables.
No matter if it's day or night.
Daily rain does not scare nobody but us.

Everybody is drunk. Nobody throws up.
That's New Orleans.
We will come back!

What happened?

After some wifi difficulties, here we go again. So here is what happened the past 14 days.

1. Cultural shock!

We left NYC. (sniff)
Then we went to Connecticut, which is unbelievable green. We spent 3 days and nights over there visiting our good old friend Tommy at the "Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center"

This is Tommy’s backyard.

It was great seeing her again and it was a real nature adventure for city mice like us, especially because of the ticks living there:

 

spooky stories + dangerous signs like this = quite scary!

2. Museum of puppetry

We tried to explore the area and we were visiting the "Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry" at the University of Connecticut.
The museum of puppetry was somehow sweet, but not really recommendable, mainly because it is very small and they had only one main exhibition "Opera and Giant Puppets: Amy Trompetter’s Barber of Seville". Sadly they had no shows or workshops at the time we arrived there.

Anyway it was a nice visit. So if you are nearby the area - do it!
(If not, don't! The city of Mansfield, CT has not too much to offer, unless you are a student or a green-nature-freak.)

 

puppets in the museum

3. New Orleans – the big easy!

Now we are in the wonderful city of New Orleans! (yeah!!!)
We absolutely LOVE this city! It’s beautiful, friendly and there is music absolutly everywhere!

Yes. EVERYWHERE!

Totally recommendable for anybody in the world who loves music! And when we say music, we mean music played by fantastic musicians with real instruments. In the streets, in every bar, in random places - MUSIC!

You would not believe how good they play and sing.

4. The Swamps

Except of listening to about 1000 bands in the short time of 8 days, we were also going to the swamps which was very impressive and lots of fun.

Gators - the other white meat.

5. Art of New Orleans

We visited some very nice exhibitions, mainly of local artists. Some of them were fantastic!
For example Chris Roberts Antieau in the Antieau Gallery, a must see!
Unfortunately a print or a photo won't show the beauty of the details of the originals ...incomparable! You have to believe us.
More nice works are from Matt Rinard in the Gallery Rinard.
Another nice one is Danny DeLancey, who is for sure also part of the next point ...

picture of Danny DeLancey (stolen from his Facebook site)

Danny, if you don't want your pic here, tell us immediately!

6. very nice people

We met so many nice people. Everybody says hello. Everybody is interested and interesting. Everyone loves his city. Understandable.

(No photos. Too private. You have to imagine)

7. Mardi Gras World

Last but not least: we visited the Mardi Gras World. Yes, this was fun, too. Lots of very fine made figures. Really a lot. Countless number of "wow" was spoken.

working on it

work is done

No! We don't want to leave. But we will. (sniff again) On Monday. We are heading to LA.

Coney Islands

Today we visited Coney Islands.
Saturday, masses of people who wants to be entertained (like us).
Very, very colourful, paradise for children, sugar addicts and ocean freaks.
We went to see the sideshow (freakshow) which was quite entertaining and well hosted.

Coney Islands - cool! No wonder, it's Brooklyn!

Coney Islands

 

 

Sideshow

No Banksy in town

We were hunting for some Banksy´s in NYC, but it seems that every single one of them has been destroyed / removed / disappeared.
Coney Islands was our latest try.

We expected this:

We found that: They added a rolling door!!!

(We hope, they built the door, because the Banksy is now in their living room)

Worst event so far

Empire State Building.
Ufffffff, much to many people to enjoy the view or anything in this place. 

(Well, there was an unexpected "skyride", hosted by Kevin Bacon's voice.)
Yes, it is breathtaking, but only because of the massive sweat of all the people around there.
The view is great, but it´s not worth the very long way up there and all the waiting. 

The whole thing is kind of boooooring... and f***ing expensive btw. 

Our tip: if you have to see it, buy yourself a postcard.

Yes, it's true. We are bad tourists.

Wow, houses.

What we did NOT miss: The pigeoning

Yesterday we saw a great puppet play, called "the pigeoning", played by 7 players (all dressed in black) and one musician.

Up to 4 players were playing the puppet "Frank", who fought his own private war against the pigeons.
Very entertaining, very well played, lots of good ideas, quite funny and somehow melancholic.

And we met a lot of interesting puppet people.

Great play. We hope you will all get a chance to see it!

 the pigeoning