Beautiful, sensual, engaging, and titillating. That’s what Curtis Weaver’s painting and sculpture brings to life for the modern art connoisseur. GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY is proud to present Weaver’s work in ECO – LIBIDO, beginning January 19th and running through February in their Beverly Hills studio.

This is an interesting exhibition that mixes media for a more involving experience. Fantastical creatures present whimsy and sexuality in a provocative manner – not controversially provocative, but biologically provocative.

Head to the Beverly Wilshire triangle and find the GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY, the home of the best up-and-coming artists in Los Angeles. After the success of the recent John Seery and Miguel Osuna shows, Curtis Weaver is a pleasant change of pace that showcases excellent taste and a versatile pallet for art. Until February, you’ll see Curtis Weaver’s ECO – Libido there, in all its sumptuous glory.

Our congratulations goes to Scott Martin, aka “Scotty Clause” for all of his hard work beginning to show fruit. His dream of taking The Living Christmas Company national is one giant leap closer to reality after Scott’s appearance on Shark Tank and his success courting Mark Cuban as a business partner and investor.

We helped TLCCo get off the ground many years ago, bringing Scott’s vision to reality through our work in the logo and his first operational website. We’re proud of our work (there was a lot of it) and we’re glad to be a part of this magical Christmas success story.

GO SCOTTY GO!

Well folks, that’s that! If you want to play in the NBA, Summer Pro League gave you a chance – and a couple of players look like they’re headed for the Pros.

On Monday, July 30th, the 39th Annual Southern California Summer Pro League presented by AND1 wrapped with an epic game between presenting Sponsor’s AND1 Select team and LA Loop. Both teams had exceptional records in League play, each going into the Championship game undefeated in six games. One of those teams was destined to finish the season 7-0, while the other would go home 6-1.

Play throughout the league games was at an extremely high, NBA level. Rising above the rest, AND1 Select and LA Loop aimed to set themselves apart so that agents and scouts would take notice and sign the players for their chance at stardom.

In an epic double over-time knock-down drag-out thrash, AND1 Select managed the win over LA Loop. AND1’s Franklin Session was matched by LA Loop’s Vince Camper for 27 points on the night. AND1’s Tremayne Johnson picked up a double double with 23 points and 13 rebounds while LA Loop had three players in double-digits for the night: Camper backed his shooting with 12 assists, Mark Dawson lit up the hoop with 18 points and crashed the boards for a game leading 21 rebounds, and Keith Davis hitting for 11 points and 11 rebounds.

In the end, AND1 won with 91 points versus LA Loop’s 86. All of the players deserve a second look from the Big Leagues, but a few used $150 and Summer Pro League to make a statement, “PICK ME, COACH. I have what it takes to get it done!”

And they certainly proved it.

Congratulations to all the players and coaches on an excellent season, and to the SPL Support Staff for making opportunities happen for serious players.

Some people dream about racing a historic Formula One car flat out. A select, lucky few others do it. One such gent is American Chris Locke, a Lotusophile from Northern California.

Chris is a busy attorney trying to make the world right, but in his spare time he uses what his hard work affords him to enjoy his historic Lotus race cars. Most recently, Chris headed to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a motorhead mecca in England, and followed his blasts up the hill with a trip to Silverstone to exercise his ex-Andretti Lotus 77 in a support race for the FIA Formula One World Championship British Grand Prix.

Check out Chris’ cars and exploits at CheckeredPastRacing.com, a site he had made up so his family and anyone else can follow along with his adventures.

Good on ya and well done racing, Chris!

Keep an eye out for another article in the coming weeks about Locke’s experience helping in the filming of Rush.

Celebrated artist Max Presneill brings his third exhibition to GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY beginning Friday, June 29th, 2012. With painting that is as beautifully colorful as it is elegantly thought provoking, Presneill’s work sum all that is great modern art.

Come see this fantastic body of work at GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY in Beverly Hills throughout July 2012.

It’s a penny Penny Auction live on the Internet.

Right now, there’s a few ways for Coin Collectors (Numismatists) to buy coins. They can go to a coin show and meet their favorite dealers live, they can go to the ever-disappearing local coin shop and pick up what they’re craving, or they can buy coins on-line, through dealer web sites or through on-line numismatic auctions.

The margins are tight for dealers and the market is well-saturated for collectors, so the chances of getting a coin for less than “book” value is slim or none.

Rusty Scropper, proprietor of CoinSniper.com, had the idea to apply the “Penny Auction format” to numismatics to a) make it more fun for collectors and b) allow them to potentially buy coins for less than their normal value with a mix of skill and luck.

Here’s how it works (and you can read about it on the CoinSniper.com site here or watch a video about it here):

Coin buyers buy packs of bids. The bids cost about $1.00 each. When they see a coin they want, they place a bid on it. This increases the cost of the coin $0.01 and adds 10 seconds to the clock to allow any other “CoinSnipers” an opportunity to out-bid. When time runs off the clock, the winner gets the coin shipped to their address for free.

Rusty explains how he came upon the idea: “When I got tired of waiting for the big show to come my way and found all the dealers I like closing up shop, I turned to the Internet, to eBay. I found I had a great time buying coins by ‘sniping’ the auction. I’d put a bid in at the last second and hope it was enough to get the coin I couldn’t live without. With the penny auction format, that whole experience is condensed and magnified.”

Unfortunately, there are some bad players in the penny auction business. “I have no interest in running anything but a completely legitimate, honest business.”

And if you read Scropper’s articles in the CoinSniper.com Numismatic Learning Center, you’ll see he has a lot of experience and great advice he’s willing to freely share with both the experienced and inexperienced numismatist alike.

“Theoretically, this whole thing should be cheap for buyers and over time, I should be able to eek out a small profit.”, says Scropper. “The trick for the buyers is to make sure they win once in a while using a bit of patience. If you watch your competition carefully, you can figure out when to put your bid in. The whole process is a lot more fun.”

The first auctions are set to end on July 4th, 2012, with four coins per day selling until demand requires more. On July 4th alone, there’s well over $100 up for grabs, and since all of the users are new, there’s a good chance that they could win the coins with their free first 25 bids.

We wish Rusty the best of luck with his new venture and the bidders the best of luck winning some great coins. Congrats on your new site, Rusty! It was a lot of work, but we’re all sure it’s going to pay off.

Farus, LLC (at FarusLLC.com) is a medical device innovation company that is focused on developing unique solutions to a variety of clinical problems.

Farus identifies new innovations through partnerships with small businesses and academic groups, and then uses non-dilutive funding to assess the innovations and to fund research & development.

Based in San Diego, Farus has developed a comprehensive and agile process to translate multiple innovations in parallel from the research stage through the development and clinical validation stages. Farus seeks partners for spin-off and commercialization of innovations once the technical, clinical, and commercial risk have been reduced. To learn more about Farus, LLC, check out their projects on FarusLLC.com.

Need a 200 Ton boat anchor? How about specs on crane blocks? Or chain links the size of a car?

If you work in the Marine industry, you know the behemoth nature of everything in the marine industry. Well, if you need it, Waterman has it or at the very least, they know where to get it.

Waterman Supply just re-vamped their website, www.WatermanSupply.com so that it is more agile, as they are. They can now make updates to data on the site on the fly, and all of that data is searchable and easier for their customers to use and print.

Waterman Supply is a worldwide company with contacts in every port. Next time you are having trouble finding the marine equipment you need, look to www.WatermanSupply.com.

Emily Counts’ Past Present Future: Connect is a display of recent and innovative modern sculpture that reflects on our relationship with technology in our daily lives while recalling our expectations of it from our past. It is the latest exhibition on display at GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY.

Each piece seems to be an exploration of our love-hate relationship giving us a sense of what our expectations have yielded in reality and comparing our reality to our past expectations of the term ‘modern’ with relation to technology.

Past Present Future: Connect is on display from May 12th to June 16th at GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY in Beverly Wilshire.

There is great news for Formula Car racers and enthusiasts in Southern California. Allen Berg, ex-Formula One pilot, has brought advanced formula car training straight to Los Angeles at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

Before, Los Angelenos had to go to Infineon Raceway or Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to take part in an advanced racing course. Now Allen Berg offers an even higher quality of training through Allen Berg Racing Schools right here in LA, plus some perks.

To start, Allen’s cars are purpose built race cars, just as any other school’s. But far better yet, they’re all outfitted with full data telemetry and cameras. This means instead of depending on a students limited understanding, every issue of time lost can be seen objectively in black and white for immediate feedback. There is no greater tool for improvement. Couple the best technical data available for your driving with expert instruction from an ex-F1 driver, and you’ll be shaving chunks off your time.

This kind if experience can and does translate to any and every kind of competitive tarmac driving, from racing historic and semi-historic Grand Prix, Indy, and F5000 and Formula Vee cars to non-formula FIA, GTP, Can-Am, and even race-prepped street cars for autocross and rally.

Even better, Allen allows graduates of his programs to inexpensively rent time in his cars at the track to continue improving. It makes for a fantastic pre-season refresher, and you get the same data and analysis as you do during school.

We welcome Allen and his racing school to Los Angeles! What a fantastic addition to the racing regimen for competitive drivers and those seeking more safety through competence.