Of course now that I made the giant proclamation that I will not be blogging here for a while, I have something I desperately need to get off my chest…

In my constant quest to fine-tune my SEO skills, I have been taking a course in the subject on Lynda.com. At one point in the video course the instructor talks about the value of the auto-fill option in many search engines (namely Google) for generating additional keyword ideas, which are of course based on popularity of search terms.

So I thought it would be interesting to use the Auto-Fill as a sort of seer/oracle–to look into the feeling of the times through whatever automatic text appears after a given word or pair of words. I got some interesting data as a result.

“No jobs in” yields: “No jobs in Michigan,” “No jobs in California,” “No jobs in Portland,” “No jobs in San Diego” and “No jobs in Arizona,” and “No jobs in Florida.”

“Hard to meet people” yields: “Hard to meet people in Los Angeles”

“Best city for singles” yields: “Best city for singles Austin”

“Obama is” yields: “Obama is the Antichrist,” “Obama is a socialist,” “Obama is Irish” and “Obama is not black” among other things.

“America is” yields: “America is the heart,” “America is doomed,” “America is dying,” “America is a melting pot,” “America is not the world,” and “America is fat.”

“The solution is” yields: “The solution is offline” and “The solution is simple”

“Invest in” yields: “Invest in gold,” “Invest in America,” “Invest in bonds,” “Invest in silver,” among others (like the stupid, “Invest in oil”)

“Your destiny” yields: “Your destiny is to merge with infinity,” and “Your destiny is coming.”

I will leave you with that last chilling one.

I’m happy to report that I am fully diving into online writing/editing and SEO. About.com has hired me to head up their Los Angeles site–an online hub for natives and those wishing to move to LA. I will be covering my usual art, film, restaurants, bars, clubs, political issues (local), spas, health and some extras for a wider audience (including content for families, people moving to LA, etc.). I am excited to be part of a high caliber network like About, which is owned by the New York Times Company. Ranking in the Top 50 web sites globally and boasting over 60 million monthly users, they’re giving me a great head start.

I will be blogging on there too. So, at the moment, between that, my occasional blogging for The Huffington Post, my continued daily posts for Hindi Hollywood (the blogosphere nexus of the Hollywood and Mumbai film worlds), and launching a new 360 European travel sector company, Route Three-Sixty with my former LA Times.com colleague Bettie Rinehart, my plate is full. I’ve decided to indefinitely hold off on blogging here. Once I get a handle on things, in a few months I may still post every so often. But for now, enjoy your summer!

I almost forgot to include this little excursion in my roundup of the weekend. I attended a rooftop party at Formosa Cafe for Kevin Roderick and his LA Observed media blog. Lots of LA journos, bloggers, mag people including the friend I went with, Jod Kaftan, an editor at the LA Times magazine. Here is a video that Kevin posted on his site. Our conversation seems to be prominent in it. That’s me: little black dress and black hairband talking animatedly to Jod, Laurie Pike (Style Director of Los Angeles magazine) and her assistant.

I went to an art opening–which, let’s face it, was more like a big star-studded Hollywood party– at the Otero Plassart gallery, featuring the work of photographer Scott Caan (son o’ James) and presented by none other than Brett Ratner. I briefly cruised the photos (it was a hot madhouse in there) which were kind of nice but forgettable, apart from one in particular of Amsterdam which brought back personal memories.

Art gallery openings just don’t draw massive crowds like this one–with the exception of Gagosian of course. So it was a social zoo, which my date and I enjoyed quietly commenting on. “Oh look, there’s a Rock of Love reject,” and “Check out that leopard print suit,” that sort of thing. Anyway, art goes very well with wine…and well, wine goes swell with a cigarette (even if you’re a non-smoker like myself).

So we searched around the exterior space for puffs of smoke…and saw hardly any. Healthy crowd? Perhaps. Perhaps not. There, standing in front of us was an attractive exotic couple puffing away at what looked like toy cigarettes. “Electric cigarettes,” they boasted to us. Electric cigarette sounds like a band that would have a soundtrack in an Oliva Newton John movie from the late ’70s to me. But apparently it’s all the rage, according to “Turtle” from Entourage and his date (who we managed to bum a real smoke from).

This is apparently coming on the heels of the marijuana vaporizor trend of recent years. Vaporizors were initially billed as a way for cancer patients smoking weed to still stay healthy (the machines don’t burn the herb, but rather they vaporize it making it much much healthier). In the context of our evening, this technology had apparently given birth to the smokeless cigarette, so to speak (not be confused with those cheesey smokeless ash trays from the ’80s and ’90s).

The electronic cigarette smoking couple highly endorsed the product saying it was way healthier and that they loved it. You just load up your tobacco into the little faux cigarette cartridge and puff away to your heart’s desire, guilt-free, inhaling only nicotine and none of that other bad stuff. Hmmm, not so sure. But one thing is for sure, electric cigarettes are the death knell for the favorite activity of the occasional social smoker: bumming a ciggy. Too bad.

With all this talk about the latest Terminator movie wafting through the air, it’s impossible not to strike up a conversation with someone about those pesky robots taking over. Whether you’re at the gym, a cocktail party or an art opening, the apocalypse is always a great ice-breaker, but the robot apocalypse is a real crowd-pleaser.

It’s impossible to embark on such conversations (at least for me) without thinking of the prescient lyrics and song titles of German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. In this case, both “We are the Robots,” or “Computer Love” are appropos.

Everyone is monumentally fearful of robots taking over and using their superior intelligence to kill us humans. Whether it’s Terminator, The Matrix, Lawnermower Man (to some degree) or numerous other films that prey on this archetypal phobia.. But what I wonder is how humans can be so deaf, dumb and blind to the fact that this “takeover” has already happened!

Humans are so seduced and enchanted by the “big” terrifying picture that they are missing the insidiousness of the tiny takeover–the one where we willingly allow our minds to be usurped. If you’ve ever walked down the street and seen a half a dozen humans with their heads facing down staring at- and tapping into their PDA’s you get the picture. Whether intentional or not, the machines have us right where they want us…on our electronic leashes (our iPhones, Blackberries and computers).

I will be the first to admit that I can barely go ten minutes without checking my email or Twitter, FB, Small World and numerous other digital hubs. We’re all walking around in states of quasi-conscious hypnosis, totally mono-focused on the meaningless minutiae of data…and more data. We have so much data we don’t know what to do with it so we blow a circuit and have anxiety attacks and go to therapy and take Xanax.

So, while, a global armada of angry robots aiming ray guns at us seems like the worst case scenario (or the most dramatic, filmworthy and exciting), I would like to posit that we’re already knee deep in an even worse case scenario–a slow, quotidien, insidious draw…one that’s so sneaky no one realizes they’ve been under its control for years. Not only is digital life addictive but it’s reshaping the way we perceive physical space through Google street view and iPhone 3G GPS tracking, etc. I wonder if we could even ‘find our way home’ so to speak without the use of such paradigms.

The only solution seems to be to “unplug,” a common theme in sci-fi movies. However, if you’re anything like me, you would find it damn near impossible to ween yourself off the daily bread of blogs, social networks, PDAs and email. Ultimately, the only do-able solution may be to take it all in moderation and keep honing our organic real life skills so we don’t lose touch with one of the few things that makes us human and gifted: our intuition.

You may have overheard the buzz in line at the grocery store, the coffee place or on Facebook, about “mercury retrograde.” For astrology novices, this is an approximately three week period when the planet of communication, social networks and electronics appears to go in reverse in the sky. Western astrologist have long touted this as an extremely negative period when misunderstandings and miscommunications ensue, travel plans get cancelled or flubbed and electronics go awry. They warn not to set up any new projects or buy new electronics items until it is over.

Yet, just prior (or at the beginning of) each of these 3 to 4 mercury retrogrades that occur every year, for some reason all the above issues come up for review. You will end up having to buy a new computer, having to sign a contract, having major work to do on a web site…for instance. Many of us can attest to this seemingly bizarre phenomenon.

I’m here to say that it’s no coincidence. You see, in Jyotish (Vedic astrology) retrograde planets are said to be even more powerful. So, perhaps what happens when a planet like Mercury goes retro is that it really ramps up its power (to unnatural levels) so its themes and energy are super-strong but they’re operating in out-of-control manic mode (not usually conducive for setting things right).

During this Mercury retrograde alone the following have come up for me:

-An online training period for a web-based gig
-A commissioned web design project
-The planning of a major trip abroad for the summer
-Setting up a new site for a new business I am embarking on

Alas, instead of putting all of this on hold–which Western astrology ‘experts’ advise, I am embracing the mad rush of Mercury energy and going ahead with these existing projects (key word, as you do not want to attempt anything new under this manic energy). I am keeping both eyes open and chanelling the electronic/technology Gods and so far so good. Sure there have been little glitches here and there as there always are. But now that I have reframed these glitches as part of the “bullet train” energy of Mercury (instead of the wacky, confused energy of Mercury), it’s working.

Speaking of which, this blog has sadly been a last priority for me during this busy time in my life so I apology if updates have been even more sporadic than usual.

Apologies for the dearth of posts (I try to at least get one up a week) but I’ve been overextended, covering the Indian Film Festival for Hindi Hollywood and attending the ColCoa (French) Film Fest as well…and let’s not forget the event thrown by the Dutch Consulate for Queen’s Day…it’s been an international week…and now, onto Mexico.

The above image of two lovebirds in Mexico City is from today’s New York Times. I think it deserves ‘photo of the week’ award, and I’m almost afraid that I may flip on the TV next month and see some rendition of it as the latest ad for a new fragrance by Gucci. I can’t help but footnote that last comment by including this amazing Chris Cunningham ad for Gucci (which I like to call the nexus of Pagan Fetishism and Couture):

Back to the photo…I posted it on Facebook and one of my friends called it “scary,” and then pointed out that her blouse is well color coordinated with the surgical mask. Call me a romantic, but when I look at it, all I see is
L-O-V-E (underneath it all). They say love conquers all, though perhaps not the dreaded Swine Flu. But both make you feel all tingly and flushed–and can damn near kill you if you’re not careful.

Image: Yours truly with John Waters and the Quinn Twin crew at his opening at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills

I took a quick two-stop gallery twirl through Gagosian and M+B for their openings on Saturday night. The first, John Waters‘ was most likely, as is usually the case at the gallery, star-studded (I never notice–which is probably why my reporting gig with People magazine didn’t last too long). The public opening (there was a private viewing the night before) was certainly packed with die-hard fans of the director/artist–dare I say ’auteur’s–work.

Upstairs, I ran into Steve Diet Goedde who does some beautiful sleek fetish photography. And then there was, of course, the above documented run-in with the man of the hour. A fun kitschy pop show in general–with an exclamation point on “pop” upstairs at the Jeff Koons mini-gallery. Actually, the latter isn’t my favorite Koons work–the kind of cartoony clowny stuff that reminds me of Keith Haring or an Adult Swim billboard. I’m a tactile traditionalist and loved his geeky bunny and other earlier work. Got the chance to interview him once when Terry Richardson and I were working on a feature on him way back when. Koons was talking to me like a child–in a sweet nurturing way, not rudely–or at least like I was a high school student (maybe it was the tartan skirt)..but I digress…

Meanwhile back at the Waters show, lots of people were ogling the above piece. It was pretty stand-out fabulous–an opinion/commentary on the relationship between Ike and Tina Turner. The best part, if you ask me, is the guard on the right who is clad in a suit of the same hue as “statue Ike’s.” You could have told everyone at the opening that this was intentional and part of the work, and they would have undoubtedly believed it.

The next opening at M+B featured work by Swiss/French photographer Erwan Frotin–sort of alien looking flowers in front of subtle multi-hued backdrops. The show was entitled “Strangers,” and clearly attempts to open our eyes to the oddities of nature’s design–a line of thought I wholeheartedly approve of. The works would go so well next to some underwater photography depicting some of the “deep’s” more offbeat dwellers as well. The pieces are great-looking and simple, but in my humble opinion, work best when viewed as a set (see above thumbnail montage). If I had the funds I would certainly by three or four and place them side-by-side on a big empty white wall.