iT'S STreeTarT THurSDay iN eaST HoLLyWooD! with Malibu morning pic of the day - April 21, 2016

Dear Street Art Lovers and assorted Gentle Readers,

Today's offering is a very stylized, monochromatic rendering. Here's a detail of the left side:

Artist unattributed, Combat Myth, paint on Chinese restaurant.

This poor fellow is being stabbed in the arm. This looks like a fairly small illustration, but it's big and long, occupying a wall of a single-storey retail building in Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd.

Here's the entire mural, or at least as much as I can bet in one shot:

I call it Combat Myth because the fellow being stabbed is not only poised to strike but since his knife is dripping, he evidently got in the first blow. So there are three in combat here, the two whose faces we see, and a third who has driven a knife into the guy on the left.

Here's some detail on the right-hand combatant. He/she has on a pinkie ring. These were taken at night. I've learned that if you can get the angle of light just right, you can photograph monochromatic murals in very little light. We've got some overshine from streetlights on the details, but otherwise it's fine for our purposes. I had just come out of the Chinese restaurant on which this is painted. To be fair to the restaurant's marketing, this is on the back side of the building, patrons may never know that this artwork event exists. There's nothing about it that says: "Try our sweet-sour chicken today!"

To tell you the truth, I miss the mural that was on here before. This is what used to be there before (I had posted this on Xmas Day in 2015) or at least part of it:

But you can't get too attached to street art of any kind. They are transient loves that come into our lives just briefly and then fall victim to white or neutral paintovers. Mythic combat is nicer to look at than just another beige wall.

AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED SEASCAPE

Light clouds, not too cool, not summery hot, but pretty hot if you stay directly in the sun. That's So Cal for ya.  Hey, last night I went to go see a foreign (French with subtitles) animated film before it wraps up its limited run in limited numbers of theatres here in L.A.  April and the Extraordinary World  is a steampunk alternative history story. The conceit here is that (spoiler alert, don't read further if you plan to see it) a scientist was commissioned by Napoleon III to invent an elixir of invincibility but instead wound up creating large sentient lizards. A lab explosion takes out the scientist and client Napoleon causing a young and stupid Napoleon IV to sue for peace instead of waging the Franco-Prussian War thereby extending the reign of the French Empire. But someone or something keeps kidnapping the scientists of the world and the technology remains unable to advance past the steam/coal age.

Fast forward to 1931 and the scientist's descendants are still working on his elixir, clandestinely since the Empire appropriates any scientist it can to wage war against North America for its wood-forest charcoal resources (Europe has been completed denuded of greenery, the only oak tree is in a museum) and then there's this mysterious force that seeks out and destroys scientist too.

The main character April is a child when her family is killed off and the story picks up with her as an ingenue working as a secret scientist on her family's project and how those same force then start to come after her. If this all sounds terribly complex, I'm sorry. I'm even surprised I remembered that level of plot detail and setup myself. But trust me, it's a beautiful piece of motion picture art to look at if you dig moving drawings like I do.

There's a talking, sentient cat. There's a male love interest. There a genius grandfather who comes up with all kinds of machina in which a likely deus can dwell. There are all kinds of clever and witty 19th century machines that you could imagine have been taken as far as imagination and ingenuity could have taken them without the discovery of electricity. And it's all as funny as hell. It'll probably be in a theatre nowhere near you, but do check it out in the future if it ever crosses your path.

If you're a real fanboy of the steampunk genre which celebrates scientists as superheroes, I would highly recommend the webcomic Girl Genius to you. It's been running for years and the story is quite rich, complex, and highly satirical. Totally free to read online.

Several years ago I took my daughters to Comicon and we ducked into a panel moderated by the creator Phil Foglio only because it was the only seminar nearby that had empty seats. I went home that night deciding to check out his work before going to bed. Despite being bushed from 2.5 hour drive from San Diego, I found myself clicking through page after page and then realizing it was 6 AM in the morning--so if you dig this kind of thing, watch out. It would probably take about 2 days to binge-read the series now. I have to say it took me down a path to a deep abyss of reading webcomics and manga and watching anime from which I have never resurfaced.

It's time to go people. So I leave you until next time.

Love,
Pops