Speaking of trees -- dead ones, that is -- I went to the Sam Maloof/Claremont artists show at the Huntington this past weekend. The designer was central in a community of wood workers, painters, sculptors, and ceramicists in Claremont, and he sure had a way with walnut.

There is astonishing beauty and joinery in some of Maloof's pieces on exhibit. Nothing "wooden" about Maloof. One chair (this one made of a variety of bird's-eye maple) was set in the middle of one of the galleries, and visitors were allowed to sit in it. The problem was the chair was so comfortable people sat and then just stayed there, smiling ridiculously. Seriously. So I would wait, but then wander a couple of feet away, and someone else would jump in and then sit there for another while, smiling. Finally, I got a turn (after my friend Nicole Panter saved the chair for me), and, yes, it was insanely comfy. I am still smiling.

Another particularly beautiful work, Maloof's Hornback Chair (1960), made of walnut, left, reminded me of Max Ernst's Capricorn sculpture (1948), below.

Chair photo courtesy of the Huntington; sculpture photo via actingoutpolitics.com.

At least one reader objected to my post about the pony at Magic Gas.

Reader emailed: "There is nothing funny about that photo you posted or the article. It's called animal abuse to have a grown man on a small pony."

The rider did, in fact, look big on the pony. So this morning I called the production company, Smith and Jones Films, and the production manager, Gus Koufoulas, said a Humane Society monitor named Irene was present during the pony rides, as required by law, and did not object to the pony's rider.

Any film production that uses animals is required to have a special permit and be monitored by the Humane Society -- even for fish. That's when a camera is present. But I have been told that non-filmers don't need a permit to ride a horse, or pony, at Magic Gas, as it's still legal to ride horses/ponies on all of the streets around here.

*Edited post: reader's name removed at her request.

"There are cowboys and horses at Chicken Corner!" my husband said early this afternoon, so I hightailed it down to Magic Gas, where I found a horse and pony, a herd of white trucks, a man in a cowboy hat, a reporter from the Eastsider, and the usual-looking crew. A commercial for vitamin water. But did I mention the pony had green spots? Blobs of paint (or something) spotted its torso and back legs.* Reference points perhaps for when the CGI folk morph the pony into a mythical creature. Eastsider and I were ordered off the sidewalk, the P.A. explaining that they didn't want to have to pay a special effects worker to erase our images, which apparently didn't say "vitamin water!"

So we stood in the doorway of El Batey grocery and watched several takes in which a pony wrangler trotted the pony and its rider down a cone alley and then across Echo Park Avenue. At one point the pony balked and our rider fell off. But he got right back in the saddle (so to speak -- as there was no saddle), and when he successfully rode that pony to the curb he yelled "Hell, yeah!"

Hell, yeah, indeed. A green-spotted pony at Magic Gas.

*Eastsider captured the spots, here.

This tree, an exceedingly rare specimen -- ornamental Japanese maple ornamentus or maybe a purple leaf plum -- grows in Silver Lake, near the Casbah Cafe. Seen on Monday.

May your holidays be full of wonder -- and treats! xoxoxo, Chicken Corner

Here at Chicken Corner, we're running around lighting Hanukkah candles, overdecorating the tree -- a droopy but aromatic douglas fir -- and we're cooking, cooking, cooking and, yes, shopping, shopping, shopping (there is simply no way around it) -- and yet we're trying to keep it simple. Latkes and lemon madeleines. Oh, and decorating the dog, who just barely escaped being dressed as a reindeer with antlers. The season is so upon us!

Card by Madeleine Burman-Smith.

My friend Rhett Beavers, the landscape architect, had a copy of the elusive Trees of Santa Monica and generously gifted his copy to the Chicken Corner library. And what a labor of love this paperback by George Hastings (1888-1964), edited by Grace L. Heintz, is. Hastings, a science teacher and naturalist, walked and biked dozens of Santa Monica streets, identifying each tree and including its address and whether it was on the street or in a yard. There are special sections for landmarks like City Hall or the Santa Monica College. First published in 1944, the book features a phone-directory-like front section and then a descriptive section that includes addresses. Consulted almost 70 years after its first edition, it's a historical document as well, though I am sure many of the trees listed in '44 are still in place. A glance at Tenth Street shows 33 different types of trees -- from Water Wattle to Beefwood to a live oak that Hastings noted "may be the oldest tree in the city."

A puzzler: the copy Rhett gave me was published in 1981, a 2nd edition. A note by its editor, Heintz, mentions both that some of the trees listed may be gone and that she had retraced Hasting's steps. But she does not explain to what extent she edited the list of trees -- to wit, did she delete the Hasting trees that were not standing in the 1970s when she was revising? Looks like Chicken Corner will have to see a 1944 edition to have those questions answered. Cluck!

A special thanks, also, to the writer John Shannon, who alerted Chicken Corner to this wonderful directory.

Speaking of books about trees, a reader named John Shannon offers this recommendation featuring some local arboreal heroes:

Should anyone want a glorious book on So Cal trees, it is hard to beat the old Trees of Santa Monica, though you'll have to buy it used. It's a super learning tool. You look up specific trees and it will tell you what block they're on, or you can look up a block and it will tell you (albeit sometimes dated) what you're looking at. You can't ask for better than that. The book is glowingly mentioned in Jim Harrison's wonderful novel Dalva. That's how I found it.

I discovered the hard way that L.A. is a terrible place to start your arboreal self-education. Since EVERYTHING grows here, there's just too much at once.

A Google search is coming up with Trees of Santa Monica and Trees of Santa Monica Bay, both out of print, but both for sale. Los Angeles Public Library doesn't seem to have it, so that leaves special collections. What Los Angeles needs is a library superhero. Super Librarian, please swoop down in your cape and find this book for me!

Looks like Chicken Corner misplanted the words "no one" yesterday -- as in we're living with all those fan palms that no one likes very much. It turns out someone does like them, enough to speak up in their favor. Fair enough. So, let's try: "We're living with all those fan palms that at least one person likes very much." Better? Hmmm.

To wit: I received the following this morning from one of Chicken Corner's longtime readers, Benjamin Cole:

Call me a dreamer. Give me trees.

Chicken Corner is amused that today's Los Angeles Times column titled "Lessons of 'Arbogeddon'" was written by someone named Gale, as in Gale Holland, whose concept of the urban forest in Los Angeles was whipped to bits in the recent 'Big Blow' -- or gale force winds -- we're all busy forgetting. Before I start picking at Gale's argument, I should disclaim: I have known Gale Holland for several years and like her quite a bit; she is middle old-guard Echo Park. But I think her call to completely rethink our commitment to trees in Los Angeles needs to settle and then reassemble.

This photo comes from Reuters via Boing Boing. An abandoned Wonderland, a "Disney clone," outside of Beijing that was abandoned in the late '90s for zoning or property-rights issues. But not before the castle was built. Nowadays, it's farmland. One thing that strikes me in looking at this Reuters slideshow is the lack of ruin. Thirteen years after construction stopped in its tracks, the grounds are still maintained and the fake buildings appear stable. At the same time, they do look abandoned, occupying a strange zone in between abandonment and decay, if not a magic kingdom.

Photo: David Gray/Reuters