Los Angeles – Page 2 – thosecoolkims

Gary Baseman exhibit at The Skirball!

Our minds got blown this weekend at the Gary Baseman exhibit on view now at the Skirball Center in LA. It was such a cool exhibition! It’s called The Door is Always Open and couldn’t be more fitting, as part of it is an entire facade of a house, all done up in his signature style. Our pics don’t do it as much justice — you should just go see it! It’s on view until August 18.

Outside the “house”

Ed, Me and Andreas standing on the Welcome Mat outside the “house”

The Dining Room

Dining Room chandelier and Fireplace sculpture

The Living Room

Awesome Library wallpaper and sculpture on the Living Room mantle

I can’t remember the name of this room! (Borrowed this photo from the internet)

The Bedroom

Seriously creepy Bedroom dresser and closet

It’s even pretty darn kid-friendly. Aside from the “house” on view, there is a small room dedicated to Baseman’s sketches, and tiny tables and sketchbooks for kids to draw whatever they liked! Ruby was enamored with the fact she had a place to “do art”.

So. Much. Awesomeness.

More pics here.

Six years

We spent the better part of the day on October 7th up in L.A. doing some of our favorite things to celebrate SIX years as Mr. + Mrs.

//Our Itinerary//
Hammer Museum: Graphic Design: Now In Production
Architecture+Design Museum: Eero Saarinen
Canter’s Deli (matzo ball soup + bagel chips are a MUST!)
LACMA: Stark Bar
Sundance Cinemas, West Hollywood: Detropia

Perfect day. e+c=<3

Art appreciation and a taste of Detroit

We often consider our membership to LACMA similar to an Annual Passport at Disneyland. We go so often, it’s paid for in a few visits, and it’s nice to know that we can pop up to L.A. to take a quick peek at a new exhibition and leave for lunch, or spend the majority of the day walking around, spending time outside and visiting our “friends” up on the walls.

One of our faves is Ed Ruscha, and there is a new exhibition on view now called Standard. It was “Carmegeddon” weekend in L.A. and we arrived quicker than ever, and the museum was practically empty! No pics were allowed inside, but I snapped these two before the guard yelled at me. (Oops.)

It’s getting harder and harder to snap pics of this kiddo — she is always on the move!

After seeing Ed, we headed downstairs to the awesome Metropolis II, which is a favorite of all three of us. (We posted a few pics and video of another visit here.)I love the sheer design of it, Ed loves anything having to do with miniatures, and Miss Ruby is fascinated by all the commotion and moving cars!

A few more shots from our visit, including “The Rock” in the Levitated Mass exhibition.

The grand finale for the day was heading up to West Hollywood to try out Coney Dog L.A.! Ever since my cousins exposed us to the famous Detroit style hot dogs, we’ve been slightly obsessed. (Read all about our Coney face-off in Detroit here!) While Coney L.A. didn’t hold a candle to Lafayette in Detroit, it was a great homage to a Coney Island Hot Dog Shop and they really did keep things authentic. They had the Michigan vs. Ohio State game on … and they even had Faygo Red Pop!

Art + Hot Dogs = a great family day in L.A.!

Goodbye, Endeavor!

The end of the shuttle program is a very sentimental event for me, and one that has affected me even more than I thought it would. I worked from home today due to deliveries coming to the house, and I used the occasion to take an extended lunch break to see Endeavor on its last flight with Ruby. Going to LAX today to see Endeavor touch down for the very, very last time was something I expected to be an emotional event for me. After all, as a kid, the shuttle program was the single biggest thing that inspired me to learn, explore, and discover. I knew practically everything there was to know about the shuttles as I pored over books and articles about the shuttle and by extension, the space program, astronomy, and science in general. It inspired me to dream of the unknown.

And so, decades later, this chapter of American space exploration is over. Watching it perform its low pass over LAX and later land for the last time brought up so many emotions: exhilaration, a little sadness that this chapter of space exploration is over, and uncertainty over what the end of the program means for the future.

After Endeavor performed its low pass, a little boy about five or six years old sitting on his dad’s shoulders excitedly exclaimed, “I’m going to be a scientist!!” That one comment was really pretty profound. This boy felt the same excitement that I did at his age, and it was inspiring him to strive to be an agent for the advancement of humankind. But with the shuttle program over, our nation has no firm plans to develop any more manned space vehicles. We may very well not see our country send humans to space again in our lifetime. We have let the Russians and the Chinese assume the role of taking humans into space. Sure, there are private entrepreneurs trying to accomplish manned quick joyrides for those with the means to pay for it, but the shuttle program was different: we as a nation decided to utilize a good chunk of our resources for the sake of science and exploration. The symbolism behind that was significant.

I know we are exploring Mars with Curiosity and the earlier rovers, but you have to admit there is just something awesome about humans leaving our planetary boundaries. As amazing as Curiosity’s arrival on Mars was, you can’t deny that it will be 100x more thrilling and awe inspiring when the first human steps foot on the red planet. After all, human exploration IS our heritage – always has been, and I think will always be.

Anyways, I guess I’m a little sad that today’s kids, Ruby included, will not have an American manned space program to inspire them in the way so many kids of my generation were. The priorities and thus budget just aren’t there, I suppose.

I’m just so happy I got to see it fly for the last time, and see it touch down for the last time – the latter event being the catalyst for all of these thoughts. As a parent, I’ll always work to instill that spirit of discovery and curiosity in Ruby that the shuttle program instilled in me as a child. As such, I’d like to think the shuttles’ legacy will live on in that manner.

Thank you to all the men and women of NASA who made the shuttles and their accomplishments a reality. You have inspired and continue to inspire, and you all RULE!

My Second Father’s Day!

Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m a dad. And it feels surreal that Father’s Day, a holiday that I’d observed all my life to honor my dad, is now MY holiday. So what did we do on MY holiday? We had fun. LOTS of it.

Everyone knows that I live and breathe cars, but a lesser known fact about me is that I love to use alternate forms of transportation whenever I get the chance. I also love to eat. So, what did we do as a family for Father’s Day? Well, we did both – and LOTS of it too!

We started off the day with an epic (for us) family bike ride (there’s our first alternate transportation for the day). We had recently gotten a bike seat for little Ruby, who now pines for any chance she can get to go on a bike ride. Carrie did some research to find the best breakfast burrito (my favorite breakfast food by far) within biking distance. A joint called Golden Eagle seemed to have some serious cred, so that was our destination.

As you can see, I loved it…but Ruby, a big fan of tortillas herself, wasn’t going to leave without getting a bite for herself.

No doubt, it was a tasty burrito. Big and tasty. And fortunately, all that biking took the guilt out of eating such a decadent burrito.

After riding home, it was time for the next leg of our epic Father’s Day. For a long time, we’ve wanted to get a ride on the Long Beach Aqualink, which is a fairly large catamaran that transports passengers along the city’s coastline. It’s actually part of Long Beach Transit and costs a paltry five bucks for a really great 35 minute ride from Alamitos Bay to Shoreline Village. Our second form of alternate transportation of the day, then!

Some awesome shots of the ride, including this awesome one of Carrie’s feet in a very Wes Anderson-like composition:

We had every intention of riding the boat back to Alamitos Bay, but a few minutes after getting off the boat and walking through Shoreline Village, it was quickly apparent Ruby wasn’t feeling well. Yep, Ruby had gotten seasick! So, we picked up our third form of alternate transportation in the form of the Passport bus. Ruby was into it. She insisted on getting her own seat.

We thought about calling it a day after this already epic journey. Most sane parents would have. But we decided to press on. After all, I also happened to be lucky enough to be testing a 2012 Chrysler 300C that weekend – one of my favorite cars at the moment and in my possession!

Thanks to a recent episode of No Reservations about the food scene in Penang, I’d been craving Mee Goreng, a spicy fried noodle dish popular in Malaysia and Indonesia. And one of the few places to get it around here is at Singapore’s Banana Leaf at the Farmer’s Market on Third and Fairfax in Los Angeles. So, after everything we had already done, we got in the 300C (our fourth and final – and face it, the most awesome – form of transportation that day) and headed up to LA for some deliciousness.

What a great day. I think I like this Father’s Day business a lot. Thanks Tiger and Ruby for making it such a great day!