If you know the Disney movie Fantasia you know the music. It’s the one with the scary dinosaurs. This music may well be imprinted into my lizard brain. As kids we’d dance to it in our little rented stucco home in Evanston, Illinios. For us it was a story of the chase—of calm and chaos.

If you like percussive, crazy and aggressive music you might want to give it a try. It was one of Frank Zappa’s favorites. Beware, it’s not a crooner. It’s the musical and dance performance that created a riot in Paris in 1913 on May 29.  And your kids may love it.

One year ago today I celebrated it’s 100th anniversary with a series on my Facebook page. The music sounds challenging 100 years later and I wondered, “How crazy would it have sounded in 1913? What was it like in Paris back then?” The city was growing into a metropolis, automobiles and aeroplanes were brand new, and movies were still silent. In one year Europe would be engaged in the most terrible war the world had ever seen.

Here’s what my Facebook looked like a year ago. Don’t miss the 1910 French post cards of the future. Sorry, some links may no longer be available as happens on the internets.

“There is nothing in this involved, compact, and concentrated film but explosive genius.”
Update: As of March 2015, the 1913 silent film Fantômas is streaming on Netfllix.
It’s a nice print and score, though so naive that few of us would find the plot surprising.

My Epilogue:
“I have paris live streaming on Arte right now!” I posted.
I had found as an exact a recreation as possible streaming live on ARTE, France, of the musical performance, the costumes and Nijinski’s choreography—at the exact same hour, on the exact same stage, exactly 100 years later (you can see a clip of it here)—Le Centenaire du Sacre du Printemps at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, performed by the Mariinsky Russian ballet, and conducted by Russian director Valery Gergiev.

Here are a couple of movies that recreate the event.
Riot at Rite 2005, by the BBC, now streaming free on youtube.
Igor Stravinsky and Coco Chanel 2010, with Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal) as Igor Stravinsky and Anna Mouglalis as Coco Chanel

Paul Rand’s essay on “The Politics of Design”.

Graphic designer Paul Rand created classic logos and striking book covers during his career. Steve Jobs talked about working with Paul Rand in 1993.

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One of the more common problems which tends to create doubt and confusion is caused by the inexperienced and anxious executive who innocently expects, or even demands, to see not one but many solutions to a problem. These may include a number of visual and/or verbal concepts, an assortment of layouts, a variety of pictures and color schemes, as well as a choice of type styles. He needs the reassurance of numbers and the opportunity to exercise his personal preferences. He is also most likely to be the one to insist on endless revisions with unrealistic deadlines, adding to an already wasteful and time-consuming ritual. Theoretically, a great number of ideas assures a great number of choices, but such choices are essentially quantitative. This practice is as bewildering as it is wasteful. It discourages spontaneity, encourages indifference, and more often than not produces results which are neither distinguished, interesting, nor effective. In short, good ideas rarely come in bunches.

The designer who voluntarily presents his client with a batch of layouts does so not out prolificacy, but out of uncertainty or fear. He thus encourages the client to assume the role of referee. In the event of genuine need, however, the skillful designer is able to produce a reasonable number of good ideas. But quantity by demand is quite different than quantity by choice. Design is a time-consuming occupation. Whatever his working habits, the designer fills many a wastebasket in order to produce one good idea. Advertising agencies can be especially guilty in this numbers game. Bent on impressing the client with their ardor, they present a welter of layouts, many of which are superficial interpretations of potentially good ideas, or slick renderings of trite ones…

Expertise in business administration, journalism, accounting, or selling, though necessary in its place, is not expertise in problems dealing with visual appearance. The salesman who can sell you the most sophisticated computer typesetting equipment is rarely one who appreciates fine typography or elegant proportions. Actually, the plethora of bad design that we see all around us can probably be attributed as much to good salesmanship as to bad taste.

Excerpt from A Designer’s Art, Paul Rand, Yale University Press (1985)

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The more design variations you show seems to be in direct correlation with the vagueness of the project brief/goals/objectives.

It’s usually a sign that things moved into the visual exploration stage too early in the process. Proper design requires properly defined objectives to design against. Once those are properly defined, the range of potential successful design solutions is narrowed significantly.

Clifford Clinton created his forest oasis during the Great Depression in 1935. Inspired by the family’s tradition of service, he created a world “… of imagination, dreams and whimsy—away from the troubles that we hope can be left at the door for just a short while.”

Ray Bradbury, Jack Kerouac, Robert A. Heinlein, Jerry Leiber and Walt Disney have all been loyal patrons. (This fantasy forest was completed twenty years before Disneyland.)

Check before you go—Clifton’s is under restoration. This year the Clinton family sold Clifton’s to luxury night club creator Andrew Meieran. His plans for preservation offer some hope—he transformed the old downtown powerhouse into the very nice
Edison nightclub.

Meieran will be adding a speakeasy, a cocktail bar and more, but also promises to restore Clifton’s original facade and old time charm, including re-creating the Water Wheel,
Old Tree Wishing Well, Limeade Springs, Sherbet Mine, and the long-employed greeter—a stuffed raccoon.   “All existing historic fabric will be thoughtfully and carefully retained—including the Chapel, the Waterfall and Brook, … the Redwood trees and Terraces—the elements that have made Clifton’s an institution for so many decades.”

Magically kitchy, Clifton’s Cafeteria is worth a special visit.
Clifton’s Cafeteria, 648 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90014, telephone: 213.627.1673.

Check out the panarama the L.A. Times created for Clifton’s Cafeteria.

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UPDATE:
#thejellostays
After a four year restoration, Clifton’s Cafeteria  will conduct it’s preview celebration on September 17, 2015 and reopens October 1st. Let’s cross our fingers. The Los Angeles Conservancy has already praised Andrew Meieran’s preservation of Clifton’s ground floor and mezzanine and there’s been a lot of good press in the LA area.
And the jello? Yes, #thejellostays.

Thousands of Green Bay Packer fans became a part of something they believe in today.

In their first stock offering in 14 years, the Packers sold 1,600 shares of stock at $250 per share in the first 11 minutes of the sale.

As espn.go.com reports, “The stock isn’t an investment in the traditional sense: Its value doesn’t increase, there are no dividends, it has virtually no re-sale value and it won’t give buyers a leg up on the 93,000 people on the waiting list for season tickets.”

The Packers have been a publicly owned nonprofit since 1923. More than 112,000 Packers stockholders own a total of 4.75 million shares. No other NFL team is owned by its’ fans.

These lucky Packer fans bought shares to become a part of something they believe in.

Your prospective customers want to know how you fit into their life. They want to know how your brand’s meaning intersects their life and what it stands for. If your brand measures up, they’ll want to become a partner with you as well.

When you’re building your brand nation, test it against the Packer’s fans loyalty.  Offer compelling reasons to believe in your brand. Offer values to live by, ethics, a movement, and a reason to be that your customers will want to become a part of.

These are the brand evangelists who will spread the good news about you and your brand.
These are the people who will become your brand nation.

Kurt Schwitters’ evocative collages are composed of the discarded stuff of life—arcane retail bags and paper, tickets, and newspaper classifieds combined into jewel-like miniatures not much bigger than your iphone, though some are more than double that size.

This exhibit is  gathered from a wide array of sources—some from the private collections of artists Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns, and the Schwitters family itself.

Schwitters talked about his work in mostly formal terms—his collage materials were extensions of color and paint—but its’ strong recalled memories cannot be resisted. It’s as if you’re looking down to what’s beneath your feet, long discarded by those before you.

Along with famous artists Hanna Hoch, Hans Arp and El Lissitsky, Schwitters created the Dada-like revolutionary Merz Magazine.

Also on display is a recreation of one room of his Merzbau environment, a multi-room composition without boundaries—like walking through Arp sculpture punctuated with bits of Max Earnst imagery. You’ll leave wanting to wander through twenty times the wonder we’re allowed here.

Kurt Schwitters Color and Collage, at the Berkeley Museum of Art—BAM / PFA.
Ends Sunday November 27, 2011.

(No photographs of the exhibit are permitted, so here are some images of the cantilevered M. C. Esher, Labyrinth aesthetics of The Berkeley Museum of Art, BAM.)

On a recent trip to L.A., I took the exit off Interstate 5 to Bakersfield. For most folks it’s not exactly a destination, but for me it was a pilgrimage. I was going to Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace.

In the 1930s, Bakersfield was the land of the Dustbowl Okies. It was Woody Guthrie’s this-land-is-your-land America. The Okies descended on Bakersfield, desperate to find jobs in the oil and lettuce fields. With them they brought their tradition of old-timey country music.

This is where the twang of the hard-drinking Bakersfield Sound evolved. While Nashville was recording lush string arrangements with crooners like Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline, the Bakersfield Sound was cutting through the bar-din of local honky tonks with a plaintif steel guitar and the twang of the Telecaster.

Buck Owens moved from Texas in 1951 to play the Bakersfield honky tonk circuit. He soon landed a guitar gig at the hardscrabble Blackboard Cafe with Bill Woods, the father of the Bakersfield Sound.

Buck made a name for himself and stepped forward to form his own band, The Buckaroos, featuring Telecaster genius, Don Rich. The 1960s was Buck’s decade, with Ringo Starr covering Act Naturally and Ray Charles covering Cryin’ Time, and a concert at Carnegie Hall.

Buck bought the local radio station, KUZZ, produced records and hosted TV’s HeeHaw with Roy Clark. In 1996 he created his personal country music hall, The Crystal Palace.

Merle Haggard grew up in a trailer a mile away in Oildale, California. He was just one of the Okies’ kids of the 1940s who embraced the Bakersfield Sound. His first hit was Okie from Muskogee in 1969.

Today, Brad Paisley and Dwight Yokum carry the torch. Homer Joy’s The Streets of Bakersfield became a #1 Billboard smash hit for Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam in 1988 and Starr and Owens cut a new version of Act Naturally in 1989.

The study suggests that Millennials are much more likely to promote actions for the good of the larger group than the individual.

This will change the way America thinks.

Millennials are pragmatic about the way they plan to achieve their goals. They’ll work with one another to solve problems and generate change locally from the bottom up. They’ve rejected the idea that the most effective solutions have to come from top-down leadership. And the authors note that top-down solutions have rarely created real, innovative change.

Contradictors’ comments offer anecdotes complaining about the uninvolved, slacking, and unprepared in this age group. And no comments seem to be from Millennials themselves—after all, they’re really not watching television news like the News Hour any more.

In my experience, I’ve found the Millennials thoughtful and bright. I get smarter when I listen to them. And in fact, I’d sign on to be in “Club Millennial” if I could.

Many generations have promised to change the world. Maybe this time the Millennials’ pragmatic grassroots organization and experiences may actually create something new and more effective for all of us.

It brings to mind the 30 Rock episode when Jon Hamm—Liz Lemon’s (Tina Fey) boyfriend—doesn’t understand that the average looking aren’t treated the same as the abnormally beautiful.

However, in the fashion industry even the thin, young and beautiful are treated as commodities to be traded and bet upon.

Model agencies—or bookers as they’re known in the industry—toss hundreds of young faces at designers in hopes that one of them will catch on and become that singularly rare super model that provides glamor, prestige and substantial commissions for the booking agent.

In this interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, former model Ashley Mears talks about her new book Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model, and we discover that finding this years’ It Girl is driven by belief, capriciousness and the subjectivity of a high stakes and fickle fashion industry.

Catching on is what the fashion industry is all about, and the industry shamelessly creates their own symbols of the moment—those beautiful and celebrated models who adorn and enhance their product on runways and in all sorts of media.

The rest of the thin, young and beautiful work in what a sociologist calls a structurally bad job—a non-standard job in an informal economy without a sure paycheck, health care or retirement benefits, and with forced retirement virtually guaranteed by age 25.

Catching on in fashion is subjective and mercurial at best, and only a few win. No amount of words can convince the fashion industry that yours is the new look.

Unlike the fashion industry, if we’re able to think strategically about just what it is we mean to our customers, we can build convincing brands that develop their own following of brand nation loyalists and evangelists.

For us, catching on means creating a compelling message that helps your customers understand that you “get them” and that you two make a perfect fit.

There were a few urban pioneers back then. One bright spot on South Street was a shop whose walls were covered inside and out with fanciful mirrored mosaics and drawings on ceramic. The Eyes Gallery imported South American molas, masks and ceramics, and its’ mosaics created a lively spirit amidst the urban decay.

Much to my delight 0n a rare walk down South Street this past winter, everywhere I looked I found those same fanciful mosaics I’d remembered. Big mosaics on alley walls, building fronts and door stoops. Not only had South Street become an urban shopping and entertainment destination, the mosaic magic had grown way beyond the old gallery storefront and into the whole neighborhood.

It was on this walk I discovered the ultimate expression of this great extravagance—a complete multi-level garden full of sculpture and imagination. While Isaiah Zagar, the mosaic artist and husband of the Eyes Gallery owner, was decorating surfaces throughout his neighborhood, he’d also spent fourteen years excavating and decorating tunnels and grottos on a three thousand square foot vacant lot next to his studio on South Street.

In 2004 the owner of the lot was ready to sell.  Fearful of losing their treasure, the neighborhood bought the property and created the nonprofit Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, and dedicated themselves to preserving Isaiah’s garden and his other prolific mosaics on South Street. And now Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens is open to amaze every day of the year with tours, workshops and events.

John Ehn’s cement and paint pioneers are politically incorrect, sometimes violent, always full of wit and more than a little creepy.

Like S.P. Dinsmoor’s Garden Of Eden in Lucas, Kansas (I might get to those photos soon), John Ehn populated his story-filled setting with lively and foreboding pioneer spirits—complete with their own ominous Boot Hill epitaphs.

Three years after the self-taught artist’s death in 1981, they’d been designated a state cultural landmark, but that was no assurance that they would be protected from city development.  An airport expansion soon threatened them and they were miraculously moved out of harm’s way to a grotto 26 minutes away behind the stables at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, just a half hour west of Hollywood on Highway 101 and where they can be seen today.

There are easily more than 50 pieces, and some of the cement inhabitants are on fully decorated and very heavy bases. No one seems to know who undertook the arduous task of moving these heavy characters, or even who maintains them to this day.