This Saturday, I spent the whole day (if you consider from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. the whole day) at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Since it was my first time going, I made sure to bring along someone who could give me a competent artistic tour through all the beautiful works. I don’t know any art history majors, so I invited my personal friend Carrie Graber, who is a working professional artist, to indulge me with her vast wisdom of all things fine art.

For whatever reason, I had always pictured the Getty as being smack dab in the middle of downtown LA. You know, like one of those Gothic looking anachronisms carved up in reliefs of gargoyles and graffiti. It’s actually located in a more rural area. You can even see someone’s small vineyard growing up the side of the opposite-facing hill as you take the tram up from the parking structure. Speaking of which, I’m impressed at how many people were at the museum that day. With all of our modern conveniences and entertainment, it’s nice to see that the arts are still alive and well enough to draw a crowd.

Apparently, the entire museum grounds is constructed out of Travertine Marble. You can even buy your very own chunk at the gift store. Since I’m on the topic, let me just say that the men working behind the counter deliver some of the best customer service I’ve ever experienced. Of course I was with Carrie and I’m sure that she’s accustomed to men falling over themselves to help her.

Anyway, we started our walk exploring the garden area. The landscaping is finely manicured and the grass is as well maintained as the best greens on the top golf courses of the world. Families and nature lovers sprawled out on the greenery, reading books, talking or running around playfully. It’s almost like an elitist park. Since there’s an $8 parking fee at the Getty, the chaff are filtered out and decent people can enjoy the nature in peace.

From there, we walked around, checking out the exhibits. You know, it’s funny. I’d like to consider myself to be an artist. If not an artist, then at least “artistic.” Yet, I have very little art appreciation. We walked through the Nude exhibit and I couldn’t really see what all the hubbub was about. Carrie explained to me the rudiments of form, shape, light, contrast and composition. Now I won’t say that I had a miracle breakthrough and art appreciation flowed through me, but I will say I had an idea of what to look for.

After some time, we made our way back down to the restaurant on site. As an experienced restaurant reviewer, it’s a shame that I wasn’t on point yesterday or I would have had the mind to really review the place. Alas. Let me just sum up my experience and say that I wasn’t too impressed. Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice enough. It has a breathtaking view and the ambience is a nice mix of minimalist decor and fine dining sensibilities. Service did its job without being sloppy or overbearing. I don’t know. I guess what puts me off is the price. $29 for a piece of bass over white beans seems a little excessive. Not that I’m a penny pincher, mind you, it’s just that my senses were not as delighted as I would expect them to be for a $140 bill for two people.

After dinner, we stepped out onto the balcony to burn a couple of cloves. We found that a fog had rolled in, making the outside oppressively cold. So we went back into the museum to look at more paintings. Carrie has a newfound love for a particular painting by Van Gogh that’s on display and she wanted to look at it while she was drunk. We sat on the couch in front of the masterwork and just stared. Carrie would occasionally murmur some tidbit about Van Gogh, like,”He only made forty bucks on any of his work.” or “He cut off his ear to spite a woman.” or “He used cheap paint.” The work in question is called Irises. At first glance, it looks like an unfinished painting, where the grades of shadow have yet to be added. By and large, that’s how I continued to view it, but for brief moments, I’d like to think that I saw it as Van Gogh saw it, hopped up on Foxglove and everything suddenly lit simultaneously perfectly.

The most poignant thing I saw last night, however, was during this last viewing of Van Gogh. A kid, maybe sixteen years old, walked the perimeter of the room at a moderate pace, glancing at the paintings on the wall. He came within a foot of the Van Gogh–a work that would survive even the very thought of this kid–and passed by, his expression lengthened by boredom, without so much as slowing down. That was a movie moment if I ever saw one.

Before we left, I contributed to the art with a performance piece. I call it, “The Plight of René.” It depicts a man, pleading with a woman for her love and she reacting in the all too familiar manner. I have included it below for your viewing pleasure.

That’s some crazy fog, am I right?

Typically, I’m a curmudgeon on Halloween and don’t give out candy. I’m that guy, lurking in the darkness to dissuade the kiddies from knocking on my door. This year, since I live in a nice area now, I’ve shed my loner ways and am actually quite neighborly. So, to stay in the spirit of things and as a great way to get to know the people in my apartment complex, I splurged on candy for when they come a-knockin’. Not only did I buy candy, but I bought “name” candy. You know, the working class candy: Snickers, Baby Ruth, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. That’s the kind of candy I sought after when I was a child, so why not give it out as an adult? None of that candy fit for the ghetto in the clear plastic wrapping. Brach’s = no good.

Anyway, since this is my first Halloween at this complex, I’ve yet to find out what kind of foot traffic to expect. It’s 7 p.m. at this moment and not one knock. I’m starting to think that no one trick-or-treats around here. Come to think of it, it’s a lot of work for too little gain since I live in a three story complex with no elevators. Furthermore, the apartments on a given floor aren’t necessarily “connected.” Meaning, going up one flight of stairs only gets you access to four apartments before you have to go back down and then up the next flight for the next four apartments. That’s a decent workout for in-shape adults. Imagine what that’ll do for tiny legs.

So, I’m going to start making my dinner and we’ll see if anyone comes. I won’t expect them, though, leaving $30 worth of candy all for me!

My dentist is going to have his work cut out for himself.

Alright, so I lied about getting another post out yesterday. I think I was a little too ambitious about the one-a-day posting idea. At least this early in the life of this blog. I’m way too busy promoting and building right now. In fact, this post isn’t going to be anything special, either. I was crawling someone’s site today and saw that she displayed what kind of tarot card she was.

You know, I don’t typically like these little “fill this out and find out what you are” survey thingys, but I hadn’t seen this one before and I thought I’d give it a shot. I’ve always been interested in fortune telling. A) It’s amazing how accurate the fortune seems, if only because it’s so general. B) It’s also amazing how many people believe this stuff.

Anyway, this is me as a tarot card:

You are the Hanged Man

Self-sacrifice, Sacrifice, Devotion, Bound.

With the Hanged man there is often a sense of fatalism, waiting for something to happen. Or a fear of loss from a situation, rather than gain.

The Hanged Man is perhaps the most fascinating card in the deck. It reflects the story of Odin who offered himself as a sacrifice in order to gain knowledge. Hanging from the world tree, wounded by a spear, given no bread or mead, he hung for nine days. On the last day, he saw on the ground runes that had fallen from the tree, understood their meaning, and, coming down, scooped them up for his own. All knowledge is to be found in these runes.

The Hanged Man, in similar fashion, is a card about suspension, not life or death. It signifies selflessness, sacrifice and prophecy. You make yourself vulnerable and in doing so, gain illumination. You see the world differently, with almost mystical insights.

See? Accurate.

Take the test for yourself.

Just a quick thought before I crash.

You know, I never really saw myself in advertising. I’ve always figured that if I had to do it or if I just found myself in that profession that I’d be able to handle it, but it wasn’t anything that I “looked forward to.” Today, my view has changed.

In the past few months at my current job, I’ve pretty much just stuck to what I’m told to do. By and large, I still do that, but today the owner of the company proposed a spur-of-the-moment project and gave us an end-of-day deadline. As the Web site search engine optimization (SEO) copywriter, it’s sometimes difficult for me to see the end product for my project since it’s so huge. What amazed me about today’s project was being able to see all of the facets of our marketing department coming together to create something greater than its parts. Graphics chopped up pictures. My boss branded everything. And I provided the words. Then we gave our Web developer the goods to make it live Online. Along the way, we ran into snags and snafus and we were pressed to creatively find workarounds while still staying within the vision of the company owner.

I’m pretty beat after today’s craziness.

But I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

Well, here we are again, folks! René Garcia has another brand-spanking-new Web site! Yeah, I know. You’re all probably tired of following me from site to site, so luckily, this will more than likely be my final “professional” site. My last site, www.writinginthedark.net, was a little off putting, I found. I’d tell people my domain name and they immediately thought I was some arm-cutting-emo-kid or something. Besides, this is a .com to boot. No more pride-swallowing .net for me!

Anyway, for all the new visitors, this site is meant to do several things: It should showcase my writing and artwork for prospective employers. It should share the writing lifestyle with would-be writers and those who are just curious. Lastly, I hope this site also gives everyone a chance to get to know me. At least a little bit.

I’ll try to keep it upbeat around here and post relevant news items I come across that I feel like bloviating about. Just keep in mind that if we ever meet, I probably won’t be anywhere near the ray of sunshine I’ll most likely come across as here.

With that said, thanks for stopping by and I hope you come by again. For now, forgive the dead links. I’m getting to them.