Tombstone Tuesday - The Cemetery Gates Pt. 3

The gates and fountain at Los Angeles' Hollywood Forever Cemetery in California.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

A gravestone marker in Los Angeles' Hollywood Forever cemetery. Once again, the name "Graves" in a place full of graves is spookily appropriate. The palm trees seem a bit out of place (cypress is the traditional tree of choice for cemeteries), but then, it is California.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

The Persistence Of Memory Bathroom

Last week, I shared pictures of what our Psycho bathroom decorations ended up looking like after we moved from Toronto to St. Catharines, and no, it did not look good. But it wasn't really the fault of the decor itself (well, maybe a little), but more to do with the fact that the bathroom was partially unfinished and painted a very dull, cold gray color.

So now it gives me great pleasure to share pictures of what I was able to do once I removed the Psycho influence and simply let the room tell me what it wanted to be.

After our wedding in Las Vegas, Niki and I travelled across the desert to honeymoon in Los Angeles for a full week. On our second day in L.A., we decided to visit the La Brea Tarpits, which was a lot of fun, but what we hadn't counted on was discovering that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) was located right next door.

Even better, they were featuring an exhibit of Salvador Dalí's most famous surrealist drawings and paintings as well as screening the animated Dalí/Disney collaboration Destino.

It really was just dumb luck that we happened to stumble across this treasure trove of highly-influential surrealist artwork, so obviously we jumped at the chance to see it all up close. Because it was so unexpected, it remains one of the best experiences (among quite a few) from our L.A. trip.

A few days after our anniversary this past year, I started looking around for possible Christmas presents and came across a few different Dalí-inspired "soft clocks." I grabbed one with the intention of simply giving it to Niki as a small reminder of our visit to the LACMA, but when I went around the house trying to figure out where such a clock would be most appropriate to place, I eventually discovered that the layout of our unfinished bathroom had the potential to be recreated as a Dalí-esque dreamscape.

The biggest challenge for me was to renovate the bathroom without giving away what the end result was going to look like.

Without all the accessories and decorative touches, I was able to keep Niki guessing while I redid the linoleum floor, added a chair rail and tub surround frame, as well as painting both the walls and ceiling.

I should also give a shout out to my father for helping me out with the plumbing. While removing the toilet to lay down the new linoleum, the shut down valve was damaged and without his help putting in the replacement, I never would have gotten it working again. Thanks Dad!

Niki had a few interesting theories about what I had planned. Her two top guesses were either a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas/Ralph Steadman-style decor (not a bad idea really, and if we ever tire of the Dalí decor in the future, I might switch it up to look like that) or a Super Mario Bros. inspired desert world (also a pretty good concept, especially how I'd colored the exposed brick, but I think that would be better suited for a kid's room). Amazingly, she never guessed what I truly had in mind . . .

. . . which was to try and recreate what could arguably be considered Dalí's most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory, as a three dimensional environment.

I'll admit that not everything turned out exactly as I'd hoped (the custom soft clock towel set is a little rough around the edges), but all in all I was still very pleased with the end result.

I replaced the robe hook with a proper towel ring and switched out the rusty air vent register with a nice chrome finished replacement.

With that chore done, all of the fixtures finally came together in a complete, unified style.

Although another of Dalí's paintings, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory wasn't featured at the LACMA exhibit . . .

. . . I chose to include it to really bring out the exposed brick from the old chimney. What had been an ugly oversight in the unfinished version of the bathroom now feels like a deliberate and well-thought out inclusion to the overall design.

In The Persistence of Memory, one clock sits face down on the shelf and is covered with ants, so I decided to recreate that part of the image on the chrome wall outlet covers.

I used enamel model paint so that, once cured, they could be wiped clean without any worry of the paint ever smudging.

The "fading creature" in the painting was a simple thing to recreate. I picked up a sheepskin rug at Ikea, cut one corner off the top, restitched it to the bottom and hand-embroidered the sleeping eyelash with a bit of black yarn.

One amazing thing about how this bathroom is laid out is what I call the Mystery Spot. Because of how the mirrors are positioned, someone standing in just the right place sees not just a reflection but a double reflection, resulting in a near perfect doubling of the room. I hung both art prints, one on the wall, the other on the back of the door, to maximize their visibility in the mirror's reflections.

I didn't want the room to come off as too serious or "artsy fartsy", so I also added the border sign to Wackyland, featured in the Warner Bros. cartoon short Dough For The Do-Do, which was greatly influenced by the works of Dalí.

I was also lucky enough to find a rare old McDonald's Happy Meal toy (for children three and under) that featured Go-Go Do-Do in a bathtub. The perfect tub toy for a bathroom inspired by the works of Salvador Dalí!

I gave the art prints, accessories and decor finishes to Niki at Christmas so that she could discover what had been planned for the bathroom all at once. To top everything off, I dropped a couple bucks and got a Blu-ray/DVD player and found a copy of the now "vaulted" Walt Disney Fantasia/Fantasia 2000 2 Movie Collection on Blu-ray so we would be able to watch Destino whenever the mood strikes us.

As Go-Go Do-Do would say, "It's been surreal!"

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

This gravestone caught Niki's eye when we visited Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, but I never quite understood why.

Lately though, I've been thinking about how an anchor can be viewed in two very different ways. On the one hand, an anchor could be thought of as a dead weight holding something from moving in the direction desired (I think the story of Anchor Baby from Tim Burton's The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories illustrates this mentality perfectly).

From a different and far more positive perspective though, it's important to consider an anchor as the steadying force that keeps a sea-faring traveller from being lost during stormy weather.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

I think it's hard to look at this gravestone from Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California and not be reminded of the "optional weeping widow service" offered in the The Simpsons twelfth-season episode "Tennis the Menace." It was definitely what Niki and I were thinking when we took these photos.

I even managed to find an audio clip of the exact scene at the Last Exit to Springfield fansite.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Honeymoon Photos From The Planet Vulcan!

Four years ago, while Niki and I were honeymooning in Los Angeles, California, we had the chance to see a lot of different TV and movie locations, but nothing was so out-of-this-world as the day we drove 45 minutes north to Agua Dulce to visit Vasquez Rocks County Park. Used as a shoot location for dozens of movies, television shows and music videos, Vasquez Rock is easily one of the most recognizable backdrops in Hollywood history.

When we parked the car, it was clear to us that something was going on. There were quite a few cars around and we could hear construction taking place just a little way off from the parking area, but no one barred our way, so we headed down the path to the distinctive looking rock formation.

As we came around the side of the rock, we got a great view of the underside and I immediately recalled the scene from Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back as the titular characters negotiate their escape from the "Arena Diner," named after the famous Star Trek episode "Arena" where Captain Kirk fights for his survival against the reptilian Gorn captain.

A spectacular shot of the entire rock formation informally known as "Kirk's Rock."

Naturally, I couldn't resist the chance to recreate the iconic image of William Shatner as Captain Kirk running up the side of the rock.

From the bottom of the rock we could see several people about halfway up, but they left a few minutes later.

Once they'd cleared out, I decided to climb up to get a better look while Niki stayed on solid ground and marked my progress with the camera.

The view from even halfway up was breathtaking. The surrounding area is littered with smaller formations similar to the large one I was standing on and off to the side was the construction we had heard from the parking area. We discovered from a truck that drove by while we were leaving that it was Paramount Pictures that was shooting scenes. It was obvious then that we had accidentally crashed the set for the J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek movie!

It ended up being nearly two years before we were able to see exactly what scene it was we had crashed, but once I saw the shot there was no mistaking it!

It seems we had dropped in just as Spock (played by Zachary Quinto) was beaming down from the U.S.S. Enterprise to the surface of his home planet to rescue the Vulcan high council. The construction was the film set for the scenes where the planet Vulcan is completely destroyed!

We walked around for a little while longer, but after seeing a sign posted with a warning that mountain lions were known to be in the area we were quickly convinced that we'd better get going and besides, we had plenty more of L.A. to explore . . .

Live Long and Prosper!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

This gravestone in Los Angeles' Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a reproduction of Antonio Canova's sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss. The original was commissioned in 1787 and completed 6 years later in 1793. It was later acquired in 1800 by Joachim Murat and was donated by him to the Louvre Museum in Paris, France in 1824.


The Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale of the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche first appeared circa 150 A.D., in the middle of a series of stories told in Apuleius' The Golden Ass (originally titled Metamorphoses) and is essentially a reversal of the classic story of Orpheus and Eurydice: the lover having to descend into the Underworld in order to reclaim his beloved.

Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Here it is, our second Tombstone Tuesday and how UNearth can I follow up last week? After seeing a rock 'n roll guitar-god's memorial in the fabulous, far-off land of Hollywood, California what comes next? Well, once you've broached the subject of The Ramones and cemeteries, there's really only one answer, isn't there?

Here's a photo Niki took of a local "Pet Sematary" across the street from St. Joseph's Cemetery in Port Colborne, along the north coast of Lake Erie.


Stay Tombed! And remember "Sometimes dead is better . . ."

-DE

DE/VL Design's first Tombstone Tuesday!

In the spirit of the season, every Tuesday I'll be posting one or more pictures featuring a gravestone that Niki or I have photographed during our (many) crypt crawls. It could be a relative, celebrity, historical figure, or just an eye-catching marker worthy of note, who knows?
For our very first Tuesday Tombstone, I think we should go BIG, so here's one of our favourite finds: Johnny Ramone's marker at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.


Paying our respects to the legend . . .


Stay "Tombed" for more every Tuesday!

-DE