La Casita Del Arroyo


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Here’s a milestone, the end of our first Tyer Felix story from 1962, “Beaux and Arrows”and the start of the next one: “You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby”.  Also the next exciting episode of Lane Allen’s Diary—an evil hunter has designs on Bouncer the deer.

Cathy and I joined our painting group last week to do studies of “La Casita del Arroyo” over along the lower Arroyo Seco, a tributary of the Los Angeles river that runs through Pasadena. The Arroyo is a beautiful canyon, and the little house (“casita”) where we set up our easels is right at the edge. The Casita was built as a public meeting spot in 1933 by the famous architect Myron Hunt, using all natural building materials from the Arroyo. We mainly painted the lovely arches and delicate structure of the Colorado Street Bridge, which we could see plainly from the house’s veranda. Sometimes known as “suicide bridge”, it was built in 1913 in the Beaux Arts style and was named “suicide” for the large number of jumpers in the early years of the twentieth century. After a barrier was placed along the top of the bridge, there were fewer jumpers, but the name stuck.  It has been painted hundreds of times, and we’ve done it a few times ourselves, but every time we come back, something new presents itself. This time it was the fall colors of the sycamore and oak trees that fill the canyon’s gulley, 1400 feet below the bridge. Most of the year the trees are relentlessly green; their fall foliage gave us an excuse to break out a bit of red and orange-yellow. The bridge has large arched spans that act as frames for the Freeway 134 bridge just behind it. Mount Wilson is in turn framed by the arches of the 134 bridge, so it is almost like painting an “infinity” comic book cover. Afterwards, we had our usual critique, our friend Walter McNall actually liked my painting, only criticizing my dark trees in the foreground as being too similar to each other. Inside La Casita all the time we were painting and being criticized, a Holiday luncheon was going on. A whole lot of revelers were inside eating lasanga, wearing cloth reindeer antlers on their heads. All the centerpieces had figures of moose, reindeer or elk; perhaps the meat in the lasanga was venison!

Movies I have seen recently include “Knocked Up” (grossed me out), “The Assassination Of Jessie James” (beautiful graphics and photography, but the story was confusing and the characters numerous and non-differentiated) and “No Country For Old Men” featuring Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh. “No Country” is the Coen brothers latest film, and has a lot of horror and blood, a little comedy and some surprisingly sensitive writing. Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Ed Bell, one of three generations of Texas lawmen. Anton Chigurh is really “the meanest villain in villainville” here, killing folks right and left with his little air gun. Chigurh knocks off Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), the film’s most sympathetic character, about three quarters of the way through. The rationale given for Chigurh’s killing spree is a drug deal gone bad, with millions in cash taken from the crime scene by Llewelyn Moss, who happens on the money by accident. Every time Chigurh turns up in the film, you feel a chill. Javier Bardem (“Before Night Falls”, Oscar nominee) is the outstanding player here, he is a psycho killer, exuding an almost ghostly presence in his uncanny ability to appear at odd times in the story. The Coen brothers work against the expectations of the audience, Chigurh does not get killed violently as payment for his crimes, but is badly injured in a car collision near the film’s end. Chigurh just walks away from the scene of the accident. Tommy Lee Jones as Ed Bell relates a dream he had about his father and fire to end the film. The story could be interpreted as a parable about the Iraq war, or the arbitrariness of corporate America: sometimes Chigurh just kills without warning, sometimes he gives his victims a chance with a coin toss, like some CEOs and Presidents we have known. New Mexico stands in for Texas through most of the action, although a few scenes were shot in the real Texas and Mexico. I could follow the story without difficulty, and I liked/hated the villain especially, see it!

I hope to post again just before Christmas, but if I don’t, have a great Holiday, whichever one you celebrate! See you soon.

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