King Khan and Victoria Victrola

Very arty day today. I went out to do some shopping, and saw Victoria Victrola “performing” on Telegraph. She’s a living statue, so her performance consists of standing very very still… If you see her, tip her for photos please; this is how she makes a living! She tends to be in the Berkeley BART station, or in front of it, or occaisionally on Telegraph, as I saw her today.

Later ShaC and I went to see King Khan & BBQ, who were pretty great. They were playing at the Ghost Town Gallery Warehouse, which is such a craphole it is awesome; it’s this cement shell filled with random debris. But the funniest thing was the crowd, who were all terrible hipsters. Example: one girl was wearing a qipao and a beret. Some of these dudes insisted on smoking during the show, which always makes me psychotic.

While everyone around us wore trendy crap and tattoos, we showed up drinking Starbucks, wearing $300 acoustically-neutral earplugs, and texting our friends on our phones. See, we were ironically bourgeois. Later we drove home in our SUV with GPS display playing our iPods integrated into the dashboard. Nyeah hah.

Space plants

This has been blogged all over the place, but looking at Phil Ross‘s enclosed plants makes me want to build one. See his “Junior Return,” 2005.

The only problem: I am intensely aware of how much energy we use, and therefore how much carbon footprint everything takes. I don’t like frivolously wasting energy; I turn my car off at intersections and keep most of the house dark most of the time. But part of the message of this piece is the machine/plant interface… but how about make it solar, and just remove the LED part?

I like the look of the enclosed plants. How about have a bunch of them hovering at different points on the wall? Each in their own little globe. It would be like living on a spacecraft. Maybe Christina Ricci would buy some (she is afraid of houseplants).