Sunday, March 6, 2011

Concrete jungle where wet dreams are made of...

Spending all my waking hours on the internets gives me unlimited golden nuggets of happiness like the Black and Yellow African Remix and inspires me in fantastic ways like the eternal sunshine of my blackened mind - the Selleck Waterfall Sandwich.  It never gets old. 

In this case it's Edward James.  Millionaire vintage hottie, surrealist art patron, bisexual, eccentric freak and general badass.  You can google it.  [MS sidebar: Awww... that was my first Twilight reference in awhile.  Do you miss them?  Sometimes, I do...]  So Mr. James decides to build a concrete sculpture garden on top of the Sierrra Madre Mountains in Mexico because DUH why wouldn't you want to do that?!  It's his own little freaky Eden called Las Pozas in Xilitla that he started building in 1945.


Las Pozas means "the pools" (HOLLLA!!  I speak foreign!) and here's our little toga-wearing freak hanging out by a kinda gross looking pool shaped like an eye.  I'm guessing chlorine was hard to come by up there.  You get an A for effort though Eddie.


Here's the carpenter's workshop where all the magic happens.  Construction went on for decades and consisted of houses, sculptures, animal sanctuaries, gardens and other building-y things.


Workin it next to the "Bamboo Palace."


Built for his hundreds of birds...


"Cornucopia forms on Gothic construction"


"House of Don Eduardo"


muy caliente
Here's where the fun freak part comes in.  Eddie liked for his workers to work naked because, um... he liked it.  I entertained this idea for my kitchen for all of about two seconds until I remembered what my electrician looks like and then thought about him trying to clean off the sheetrock-dust-mixed-with-duck-butter from his nether regions and then I threw up in my mouth a little bit.  But I guess when you're a millionaire you can afford to hire someone to continually hose off your workers to try and cut down on the sheetrock-induced ball paste.  I don't think my neighbors would understand.


Here is Mr. James showing you how the alter of love works, I guess.  Try not to be seduced by the jungle bedroom eyes.  This is what your wet dreams will probably be about tonight.



And here he is being carried around by his workers after an "accident."  Riiiight... *wink, wink*  My question is: why are they wearing clothes?  And when are MY contractors going to start carrying me around like the redneck Cleopatra/Edward James Madame that I am??





"Stairway to the Sky"
Just think of all the awesome shit I could build out in the middle of the jungle if I was richer and more eccentric and even remotely talented!!





I like that it all looks like some alien hippies landed in the middle of the jungle.  [Nerd tangent ahead - take cover!]  Or it's like the set of a Star Trek: TNG episode where the crew visits a foreign planet where everything looks exactly the same as Earth except their buildings are just slightly weirder and they wear more early 90's makeup.  And everyone speaks non-accented English too.

"Flying Buttresses, Las Pozas style"


alternate view of "Stairway to the Sky"


The door on the left is the entrance to Edward's personal living quarters which is where you go after you've been seduced by the jungle bedroom eyes.

"Columns and Bromeliad sculpture in 'House of Don Eduardo'"


"Cinema structure with double staircase"



"House of Plants"
See?  Early 90's makeup colors.



the awesome "Little yellow column at mouth of artificial cave"
Ok, well these colors are a lot closer to the citron and jewel tones I am liking lately.  Carry on then, Eduardo.


"Wall with plump pillars and corn motifs"
In cliched blogger terms: I swoon for those columns.


"House of Peristyles"

All of this kinda reminds me of the largest treehouse in the world I went to visit for my birfday last year!   I need to start some sort of yearly rogue architectural road trip of sorts.  All are welcome!  Especially millionaire freaks who will fund our adventures!  In the meantime go to Mondo Blogo for even more jungle fabulosity about Mr. James. 



Awww... he's so cute I almost forgot about that picture of him naked with only jungle leaves hiding his huevos.

23 comments:

  1. "huevos" Ha!
    ...and hidden Twilight references are always appreciated by the semi-closeted twihards out here in denialville

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  2. Chamois - I moved past denial last year. Now I'm in the nostalgic phase... ; )

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  4. (trying again)

    I'm guessing all of that concrete was hauled into the jungle on their own backs;

    ((jungle+concrete)-roads)/(1945(eccentric+wealthy+naked) = badAss

    badAss≠easyToBuild

    I've been scripting all weekend so I'm seeing everything as freakish algorithms right now. Besides, since you made a TNG reference I figured nerd tangents were game.

    By the way, rogueArchitecturalRoadTrip = sweet idea!

    Anyway...

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  5. Izzy - I'm guessing the hippie aliens helped transport the concrete otherwise it's no wonder it took 50 years to build! Nerd tangents are always welcome here at the Sauce - I'm super impressed with your ability to do fake math this early on a Monday morning.

    Find me an eccentric patron and the rogueArchitecturalRoadTrip is ON!!

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  6. On a side note...

    It's no wonder my post broke, my algorithm's missing a closing ")" just before "= badAss".

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  7. Izzy - ha! well I didn't want to say anything... ; )

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  8. No need to build "The Hobbitt" sets in damp cold New Zealand. I think you just saved Peter Jackson $5 million.

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  9. Raina - I'm sure Mr. Jackson and I can work out a finder's fee for the set location. And by finder's fee I mean a small percentage of the gross sales of the movie of course.

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  10. New to your blog, MS. I had to actually STOP reading you at work because I was laughing so hard. People were looking at me strangely for trying to repress (unsuccessfully) my laughter. How was I supposed to explain Mr. James' freak flag? Or your possessed kitchen? The other gay designers around me were "The Bored and The Haughty". Would not have gotten it.

    Keep up the amazing work, and I look forward to seeing the renovations continue. Mine are painfully slow as well.

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  11. Welcome to the Sauce dwr!!! Always a pleasure to see a new face around here. I squeed with delight to see that you are enjoying the posts. And by posts I mean my own little diary of disasters. Are you doing a kitchen as well? I hope yours is not possessed. Or at least possessed by awesome goblins...

    As a general FYI, the gays do love me and they are like 87.6% of my readers I think. Another 20% are friends that I pay to read it and another 10% are bots. But "The Bored and The Haughty" probably ain't the type of gays that are down with this kind of Sauce...

    Y'all come back now, ya hear!

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  12. Sadly, MS the kitchen was done once since I bought the place with plans on flipping it. My dad who was helping, found a mummified pheasant behind the oven.I wasn't there at the time. He later told me he would never eat in my house if the kitchen wasn't gutted. Which is why I have white particle board "Shaker" cabinets and beige formica. It was what I could afford back then.

    I've been here going on 10 years and revising all the mistakes from the first go round. You know, it's your common "Boy meets house, whips house into somewhat better shape, house teaches boy that house can't be tamed as expected" story. Or as I like to call it, the indie version of "The Money Pit".

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  13. I wonder how much it'd cost to visit this place. It'd be like the treehouse trip, but waaay crazier! How did you find out about Las Pozas de Xilitla?

    Thoughts: The stairway to heaven reminds me of something from LOST. Actually, everything there reminds me of something from LOST.

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  14. dwr - mummified pheasant beats anything we found! I'm kinda in same boat - "girl meets house, house spanks overconfident girl, girl slowly makes shithole house her bitch." Kinda like the redneck version of the Money Pit. ; )

    Zrzuce - well it's in Mexico so it'd probably be pretty cheap (it's a protected historical place now) but there have been a lot of beheadings in Mexico lately and that seems rather costly. And see??!! Lost = hippie alien weirdness!!

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  15. When you said "little ass" on twitter, you meant the parrot, right? Seriously, though -- this collection of photos is tres cool!

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  16. Hmmmm... I'm not gay, and I'm not a 'bot, so.... where's my pay, friend! :-D ;-)

    You do find the most strange things... love it!

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  17. John - glad you enjoyed! You can call that parrot Culo if you want... ; )

    tnrkitect - your check's in the mail!

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  18. Just toss it in a bottle in the TN river. I'll pick it up as it floats past Huntsville. ;-)

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  19. tnrkitect - ha! I never did trust the Big Brother/postal service anyhow... ; )

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  20. How bad is it if I admit that I don't know which reference was to Twilight? Maybe it's because to me, twilight is a time of day and doesn't require capitalization. Are you going to ban me from reading?

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  21. David - Um, I think I might lose a bit of respect for you if you DID know which part was a Twilight reference. I think I'm the only one here allowed to have such shameful guilty pleasures.

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  22. this is my new favourite blog. both this post and all the other posts I've read so far. I love you.

    (too much?)

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  23. Jacquie - Welcome to the Sauce! Thanks so much for the sweet words - undying love from strangers is never too much. Unless you're crazy and I just don't know it yet... ; )

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