Joaquin Blanco sells one-of-a-kind bicycle

The last time we heard from Tabloid Baby pal Joaquin Blanco, the Portuguese performance artist was claiming he'd been kidnaped-- or was he chasing down sightings of a real-life flying pig? Or maybe it was his curatorship of the Blow LA festival. In any case, the man behind the Christmas Garbage Cane is back, and selling off his latest work of art.

He writes us this evening:

"Tabloid Bebe:

"It has been too long, hasn't it? I am back. You remember my obsession with the Topanga Flying Pig? A picture to remind you -->

"For many generations my family in Portugal built bicycles under the Maiale Volante name. You may remember that an MV team member once placed 253rd in the Tour de Lisbon.

"While our family's bicycles may not have been swift on the ground, they flew in our stories every night at the local pub. I, too, apprenticed in the family shop. Before I left on my quest to find the Topanga Flying Pig, I created my own Maiale Volante.

"You as an artist of words can appreciate the tough times we creative folk are facing. So now, my beloved Maiale Volante has been listed on the international auction site, eBay, in time for the Halloween rush. I first approached Christie's, but while their curators deemed my work of mechanical art delightful, they had no room on their calendar. It seems that French bicycles of the 40s are more interesting to them than my flight of fancy..."


The one-of-a-kind fixed gear bicycle is up for auction now on eBay.

Click here to bid.

It's a classic-- and worth it!

BIZARRE VIDEO: JOAQUIN BLANCO IN PERIL?

Performance artist Joaquin Blanco has been "underground" since we posted the photos he claimed showed a flying pig over Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. Yes, a flying pig.

Now we've received a phone video from Blanco that is, in a word, disturbing.

If anyone can send us a translation, we'd appreciate it. In the time since we posted his story, he's sent us a couple of emails asking that we "be discreet," mentioned meetings with NASA-related "contacts" and expressed genuine fear about what he'd stepped into.

Dr. Ruehl on flying pig: "Perhaps... some fly!"

Los Angeles-based performance artist Joaquin Blanco says he saw a flying pig while motorcycling through LA's rustic Topanga Canyon. A flying pig? We asked Tabloid Baby pal, contributor, columnist and TV, movie and music video star Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D.to give us the lowdown on the possibility this is real. Here's his reply (which includes a sidetrip through Bigfoot country):

As with other serious cryptozoologists, I was most disgusted with the recent ploy by 2 buffoons down in Georgia to try to pass off a frozen ape suit as a Bigfoot cadaver! It gave skeptics an undeserved field day to scoff at legitimate efforts to prove such entities do indeed exist.

But undeterred, I still maintain that Bigfoot may well be a genuine entity. For instance, the coelacanth, a fossil fish that had been presumed extinct for millions of years, a fish that actually predated the dinos, was suddenly found flourishing in 1938 off of the coast of Madagascar, and other schools have been discovered off of Java in recent years. I stress that this is not a tiny guppy, but a rather sizable marine denizen that is 5 to 6 feet in length, weighing approximately 100 pounds, yet went unnoticed for an appreciable amount of time.

And the mountain gorilla, another hefty creature, was not discovered until the beginning of the 20th century.

So Bigfoot and its cousins around the globe, such as the Yeti in Tibet, the Almasty in Russia, and the Migoi in Bhutan, may indeed exist and have simply found ecological niches to hide and survive in.

On a personal note, when I flew up to northern Manitoba to the community of Norway House for the TV show," A Current Affair," in 2005 to hunt for Bigfoot based on a bargeman's videotape of a such an entity apparently emerging from hibernation, i was most impressed with the dense forestation on all sides, the left, the right, the north, east, south, and west...you could easily have had 100 such creatures concealed within.

While our team did not find Bigfoot, we did uncover a significant amount of secondary evidence. For instance, we found bird bones that had their feathers peeled off before being eaten, something a bear, for example, would not do, but perhaps an action an intelligent Bigfoot might take. And, the locals were bringing us sophisticated digital photos of possible Bigfoot footprints. Indeed, one contingent even delivered a large box of dirt with the footprint embedded within!

So, despite this recent fiasco, I think there is a substantial chance of ultimately proving this beast indeed exists.

Now, in contrast to my furor over the Bigfoot deception, I am delighted with the recent photos of the Flying Pig! Here, we have clear-cut photographic evidence that can readily be studied rather than something hidden away in a freezer!

The term, “When pigs fly,” refers to a supposedly impossible event actually occurring. The origin of the phrase apparently derives from pigs being delivered to an abattoir on barges in the river in Cincinnati, Ohio. As they were stacked one atop another, low-lying fog enshrouded the lower portion, so the barge was rendered invisible, with the pigs apparently floating, or flying, in the air.

While I am not yet prepared to commit myself on the status of the flying pig's authenticity, I do try to keep an open mind on the seemingly impossible… perhaps, despite their girth, some have managed to actually fly.

However, I submit that the existence of Bigfoot is more probable.

May the Power of the Cosmos be with You!

Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D.

Flying pig story flies across the world

We reported last week that noted Los Angeles-based performance artist Joaquin Blanco was claiming he'd spotted a flying pig while motorcycling through LA's rustic Topanga Canyon.

Although the accalimed artist provided what he called photographic "evidence," we'll admit we were wary.

Our skepticism was allayed somewhat by the real fears that Senor Blanco expressed after we ran the first story. He'd asked us to be "discreet"-- odd, since he knew we'd post this photos, yet in light of further correspondence, we've kept the pig on a back burner.

But now the story's been picked up internationally by the much-read UK website Anorak.

So all bets are off.

FLYING PIG PHOTO REVEALS WING ACTION!

Newly-released image from Joaquin Blanco's photo series.

Blanco notes reported flying pig sightings

Joaquin Blanco writes:

"Tabloid Bebê:

"I do not wish to trouble you, but your reprint of my iPhotos on the local de Bebê has caused me to get flood of e-mensagemes from many such as I who have seen the Topanga Flying Pig. Of great interest to me is this "shotscreen" of the traffic systems at LAX sent to me by a vizinho here in Westchester. The tela shows air traffic at 6:20 pm yesterday, precisely the time I was traversing os Garganta Topanga!

"Note the "UNKN" item with the curly trilha.

"Could this be? I to put BLOW LA plans aside for a few days to study this further. I am meeting tonight to discuss this with contacts made available to me during my time fencing with NASA over my Garbage Cane. Obviously, I cannot tell you whom or where.

"I will keep you apprised.

"Be discreet.

"Joaquin Blanco"

Screw Bigfoot! Pigs fly!

We last heard from Portuguese exile and performance artist Joaquin Blanco after his nuclear blast of the Santa Monica California's artsy GLOW festival, and his hasty assembly of a rival BLOW fest ("an equally lame but even more over-hyped extravanganza of so-called ‘art'..." details of this actual festival soon to be announced).

Now the Los Angeles-based genius is going on about the recent media hoopla over an obviously phony capture of a "Bigfoot":

"It pains me when I see obviously fake photographs of a man dressed in a gorilla suit in a freezer being passed off as Bigfoot.

"I am appalled at the lack of respect in the media for the ideals of true cryptozoology, good journalism and sharp pictures.

"I will set straight that now.

"You no doubt have heard of the Topanga Canyon Flying Pig in the hippiedippie Topanga Canyon section of Los Angeles. In some circles, the elusive creature is as famous as the Bigfoot.

"Only yesterday, I was riding my motorcycle across the canyon when I saw him zooming above. Actually, it was my muse, Peggy Hippdom, who pointed to him from the sidecar. And after adjusting my goggles, I pulled from my leather coat my new iPhone camera.


"I snapped these before he nicked me on my helmet and flew off.

"This is evidence."

GLOW inspires artist Blanco to launch BLOW Fest!

My dear amigos at Tabloid Bebê:

Words cannot express the gratitude I must convey for the what I feel in my Lisbon heart. No one has been as supportive as you of my efforts both large and small. What was a drunken rage fueled by aguardente de medronho at the beach on Saturday night has now become my raison d'être. Larger than Cane del Garbagio. Westchester is my canvas, hot air my paint. BlowLA is coming. Tell, no, shout, to your readers! Blow!

Joaquin Blanco

GLOW has begat BLOW.

Santa Monica California's all-night weekend festival drew a reported 200,000 people to its pier and beach for a festival of sound and lights that all involved agreed was best appreciated with, and created for, the use of drugs, and has gotten a kneejerkedly positive response from the LA Times and other arbiters of middlebrow culture. But at least one local artist said the attempt to copy Paris, France's tres cool Nuit Blanche was an insult to artists and mass events everywhere.

That would be performance, conceptual and installation artist Joaquin Blanco, who texted this site from the scene in the middle of the light show frenzy that “the overhyped, under-delivered... amazing disappointment... wouldn’t qualify as a neighborhood festival in Lisbon!"

His point of view was seconded by LiquidGeneration's Slippy Jenkins, who wrote "Glow Fest was an abortion... I’m betting that the only people who had a good time were either 1) really drunk or on drugs. 2) Giggly 16-year-olds or people who had the maturity level of a 16-year-old."

The man who caused international controversy and acclaim with his 2004 Garbage Cane installation in nearby Westchester promised to counter the GLOW fest with his own "Blow" festival, "an equally lame but even more over-hyped extravanganza of so-called ‘art'! One hundred electric fans blowing at hanging chimes, creating a symphony of ‘clung clung clung’! ...noisemakers... schoolchildren puffing on Coke bottles! Pan flute players from every open-air mall in the city!"

As you can see from the screengrab above, Senor Blanco has come through. The staff in his bunker-laundry-studio has created a website, is building its mailing list and is ready to unleash upon Los Angeles a mighty wind.

Check out BlowLA's website here.

And join the mailing list here.

Artist: LA's all-night GLOW fest was "Blow-fest"

“I will return with an equally lame but even more over-hyped extravanganza of so-called ‘art‘! One hundred electric fans blowing at hanging chimes, creating a symphony of ‘clung clung clung’! I will invite noisemakers from across the Southland One thousand inner city schoolchildren puffing on Coke bottles! Pan flute players from every open-air mall in the city! I will call it BLOW!”

--Joaquin Blanco

Right about now, the city of Santa Monica officials are coming off their Esctasy highs and cleaning up the beach after their twelve–hour, all-night, art and sound show that ended a half-hour ago on and around the world-famous Santa Monica Pier. GLOW was the first of its kind in this country, but a copy of Paris’ Nuit Blanche, with lots of glow sticks, flashing lights and trance music from artists of all stripes. The website Defamer put everything into perspective when in its item in the show, it urged readers to “Bring your one-hitter for maximum amplification” (a “one-hitter” being a type of marijuana smoking device or "bong," or any powerful strain of marijuana in which the onset of the high is accomplished in one hit (one dose).

GLOW is just the type of event that LA hipsters cream over. It gives the part-time beret-wearers validation, painting their town as, well, Paris, instead of the place where commerce is king as as the pretty lights blinked on the sand, a few blocks away at the Mann's Criterion, Hollywood was whipping the corpse of Heath Ledger to the biggest box office in history.

But not every prominent local artist is impressed by the extravaganza.

We wound up with ten messages on the office answering machine and a slew of emails from Joaquin Blanco, the émigré Portuguese performance, conceptual and installation artist who first shot to international controversy and acclaim with his 2004 Garbage Cane installation in nearby Westchester (“a giant candy came made up of 30 garbage cans and adorned by faux-crystal lamps…”). Señor Blanco was offended by what he saw!

“It is an overhyped, under-delivered, waste of $7 parking,” he texted us from the scene. “What an amazing disappointment. I cannot describe how lame this is. And what is worse, I will wager that nobody calls them on it! This self-important crap wouldn’t qualify as a neighborhood festival in Lisbon!

“I will return with an equally lame but even more over-hyped extravanganza of so-called ‘art‘! One hundred electric fans blowing at hanging chimes, creating a symphony of ‘clung clung clung’! I will invite noisemakers from across the Southland! One thousand inner city schoolchildren puffing on Coke bottles! Pan flute players from every open-air mall in the city!

"I will call it BLOW!

“Next year, it will be Blow! BLOW! Start learning the pan flute! And whistlers! I will invite people to whistle! Blow! Blow!”