Darren Romanelli aka the Dr. has been piecing together vintage garments with his fresh ideas about sport and function for years. His treasure trove of never ending vintage inspiration combine with his de-constructive wizardry, making old feel new again. Being a huge fan of the puffy vest, I was tickled to see his sweet take on this winter fashion staple. Thanks Doc.

The Details..

DRx and Fruition continue their collaboration with Season 3's "Recycled Pop
Bubble Vest" collection. This innovative drop consists of cola inspired
premium vintage gear hand picked by Fruition Las Vegas medically engineered
into Bubble vests by the good doctor. Available exclusively at Fruition.
Stay tuned for additional flavors coming soon.

In New York yesterday the editorial press was kept out of Palin's meeting with Afghanistan's President Karzai. Looks like the McCain camp is attempting to contain any unscripted meetings regarding Palin and one can easily see why. Palin's meetings with world leaders is just one big photo opportunity choreographed to try and convince uniformed voters that Palin has a lick of experience regarding foreign affairs.

McCain's political theater was really wearing on my spirits yesterday, so today I was so elated to get this email regarding an Alaskan anti-Palin Rally organized by a small group of women in Alaska. The rally turned out to be the biggest in Alaska's history and although the event went mostly uncovered by major media (surprise, surprise) it has gained unbelievable visibility on the internet.

Please let this event lift your spirits but not weaken your fight.

I just love when design, green-ness, community interaction and the notion of giving back can actually all converge without the result being some watered down, half baked, bureaucratic marginal design nightmare. The Good Envelope Party represents all that is down right positive about collaboration and the power of a creative community. The brain child of Jenny Rask a graphic designer come green no-it-all, (I am not kidding, she also has a green info website called www.askwoollym.com) who decided to host a series of Tuesday night fetes at her home where the lovely ladies of Silverlake and beyond come together and make one-of-a kind beautiful handmade stationery. The envelopes are all hand-made with recycled books and magazines, each includes a 100% recycled fiber content note card and label. Proceeds from all this handy work go to non-profits, local Los Angeles schools and families in need. So grab a stack from her online store and keep the good vibe alive. If you are like me, you will struggle to figure out which ones to keep and which ones you are willing to part with.

http://www.thegoodenvelopeparty.com/









 

Tim Wise is an accomplished, and I might point out, white author who has something to say about this political race...


THIS IS YOUR NATION ON WHITE PRIVILEGE

By Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who
are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it,
perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol
Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your
family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you
or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black
and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified
as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck,"
like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone
messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how
you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a
responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather
than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like
Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned
to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no
one questions your intelligence or commitment to  achievement, whereas a
person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably
someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town
smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state
with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island
of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people
don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S.
Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means
you're "untested."?

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under
God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for
the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately
disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was
written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until
the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and
terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you
used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous
and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.?

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make
people immediately scared of you.?

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an
extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the
Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your
patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your
spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with
her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's
being disrespectful.?

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and
the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of
women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end
to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if
you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month
governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in
college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.?

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even
agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running
mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has
inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your
party a "second look."?

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your
political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being
a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and
merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in
Chicago means you must be corrupt.?

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose
pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize
George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly
Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian
theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who
say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for
rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good
church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black
pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of
Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign
policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on
black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.?

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by
a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you
such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give
one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging
the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.?

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has
anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being
black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a
"light" burden.?

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly
allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W.
Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing,
people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is
increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters
aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too
vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which
is very concrete and certain?

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Here's a very good thought from Deepak Chopra

Obama and the Palin Effect
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin's message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:
Small town values - a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
Ignorance of world affairs - a repudiation of the need to repairAmerica's image abroad.
Family values -  code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
Rigid stands on guns and abortion - a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
Patriotism - the usual fallback in a failed war.
Reform - an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.

Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.

Deepak Chopra

NY Based artist Amanda Church has been in the art biz a second and her culled love of abstract biomorphic shapes have a playful sureness to them that one can't help enjoy. Go check out some of the new pieces she brought to town for The Jancar Gallery's inaugural exhibition, in their new digs in Chinatown. When I see her work, I am always surprised she has been living in NY for as long as she has, the humor and vibrance in her pieces speak more like a native Californian.

J A N C A R   G A L L E R  Y
961 CHUNG KING ROAD - NEW  LOCATION                        
LOS ANGELES, CA 90012
TEL  213  625-2522 - NEW PHONE  NUMBER
Hours:  Wednesday - Saturday 12 - 5 PM (and by  appointment) - NEW  HOURS
www.jancargallery.com

JANCAR GALLERY is pleased to announce that the  new gallery location, in Chinatown, will be inagurated by a solo exhibition of new work by:

AMANDA CHURCH  "If Six Were  Mine"
September 13, 2008 - October 4,  2008

Opening reception  for the artist: Saturday, September 13th, from 6 - 9   PM

 

Cream Point 2008




Getaway 2008

Obama settles in...

Starting at the ripe traffic infested hour of 6pm, Southern California for Obama Headquarters' opened its doors at 3619 Motor Avenue on the 2nd Floor, they must have known this is a blue state, right?? People and cars were piled up all along Motor and the crowds quickly overflowed the space into the alleyways and streets. After a week of learning more then I cared to about the simple minded republican VP pick Sarah Palin, I was starved for some good vibes and there was no shortage here. My motivation was in high gear as I asserted my burning need to do anything in my power to insure Obama gets elected into office on November 4th. If you live in LA and want to make a difference please consider this.

One of the best ways you can help build this movement is by making weekend trips to Nevada through the Drive for Change program. You'll work with staff and volunteers to contact voters there and spread Barack's message of change and help the state to swing in our favor.

Learn more and sign up for the first Drive for Change in Nevada 
next weekend, September 12th - 14th.

For more info:
Obama's LA Headquarters
3619 Motor Avenue, 2nd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90034
http://ca.barackobama.com/CAlosangeles

Get motivated!!!!