Friday, May 29, 2009

OPen STudios At UcLa

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This is not a picture of a UCLA candidate, but instead some British one who made this car 'invisible' simply by painting it. Not digitally manipped. Look how proud she is.

Because having a blog seems to lend a .534% more authority to my opinions, I will just come out and say that these are the current UCLA MFA candidates to watch.
I have to admit that I didn't see everyone's studio, but these are the ones who made the biggest impression on me after 2 hours and one Pacifico beer:


Michael Dopp



Erica Love


Maegan Hill Carroll


Sanya Kantarovsky


David Snyder (he doesn't have a website, as far as I know).

All of them make interesting work and will make lots of money someday and it will happen because I said it here first.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

HUGGY BEAR

I saw a funny article today in NYTms that I am sure you saw too. It's about hugging, a standard two arm maneuver when both participants, or 'huggers', wrap their upper appendages around each other's upper torsoes for about 3 seconds. It's a very interesting subject because I think about it every time I have to greet someone who occupies the interpersonal status between friend and aquaintence, that awkward nether-zone between knowing them and not knowing them at all. They comprise most of my social landscape and in navigating it I am constantly having to process within a second of seeing a, for lack of a better term, a friend-in-becoming, whether it would be prudent to hug. More often than not, when I decide to physically greet someone, which I guesstimate to be around 35% of the time, I reserve the peck on the cheek cum one arm embrace for the females, and an awkward 'bro-style' handshake for males. I feel more comfortable in the greeting of the fairer sex, yet I still wonder if I overstepped the fuzzy boundary of propriety. With the men I usually feel like a grandfather trying to be down with the kids because even at the age of 32 this man-shake is hardly committed to muscle-memory.

A friend recently told me that I wasn't a "hugger". I cannot disagree what with all the wrangling that takes place about this subject in my mind. I usually abstain from the ritual of hugging altogether, even if I worry that I come off a bit cool to my friends-in-becoming. There are, of course, exceptions. I have no qualms about hugging and/or kissing some people. We both understand each other on a primal hugging level, like two dogs at the park sniffing each other's butt without incident. Moments with these people are always easy, which is in stark contrast to the slight whiff of guilt that comes over me when I abstain from hugging when the friend-in-becoming has departed. I guess I'd rather be damned if I don't...hug.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Sasha and Oscar

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"She knows how to motivate herself. What's the point of running, if you're not running towards something? Knowles keeps a painting of an Oscar at the gym, so she's literally running towards her next goal. "I look at it, and I'm like OK, I have to stay in shape," she admits."

I wish I could see this painting.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Friday, May 22, 2009

OK I ADMIT IT

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I saw the new Star Trek film today. I found the film to be kind of sweet, an unusual word for the science fiction CGI orgies that permeate every release these days.

I'm not a Trekky and never have been, but when I saw the old Spock (Leonard Nimoy) meet the new Spock (Zachary Quinto), my eyes welled up with tears*. There I said it. Does this mean I'm a repressed Trekky?


*The same thing happened when they killed King Kong in the recent remake.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Interesting art review on the W.B.

Read it here

Subject: dispassion, systems, objective vs. political, passionate, partisan

I still need a fucking job and it's hot today and this is still funny



"It doesn't fit in a rolodex because it does not belong in a rolodex."

I posted this on FB awhile back; its power remains undiminished.

Monday, May 18, 2009

MORE BELLS AND WHISTLES FOR MY ALMA MATER

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Olafur Eliasson's Parliament of Reality, a new, permanent outdoor installation created specifically for Bard College, will be completed Spring 2009. Conceived specifically with the life of the College in mind, The Parliament of Reality draws attention to our surroundings, both man-made and natural, while challenging the way we perceive and act in the world. The project is inspired by the Althingi, or Icelandic Parliament, the oldest national democratic institution in the world. The work is located on the North end of Bard's campus, near the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.


Man o' man have things changed since I graduated from Bard 10 years ago. The most impressive sculpture on campus back then was this gigantic spinning metal thing. One cold winter night I remember staring at it for 2 hours on acid.

Now they got this Eliasson thingy which cost over 1 million dollars to build. Maybe the students have gotten tamer since 'my day', but I bet they will make good use of this sculpture all year round as a receptacle for a wide array of bodily fluids.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Lotus Plaza

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I hate to give away entire albums of music, but Sunday always makes for exceptions.
If you like this I'd encourage you to buy it from iTunes. I think I will when I have money again. It made my blah Saturday a little less blech. It's derivative of many things you've heard, but it's so pretty that doesn't matter.

I had this on repeat 400x last night.

Lotus Plaza——The Floodlight Collective

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Eric Bagosian: Seen you twice, biatch.

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He looks A LOT like Elliot Gould, no?

I wandered into Skylight Books looking for yet another birthday gift. I was loitering in the philosophy section, thumbing through a Seneca book (I know, I'm SO cultured), when I identified Eric Bagosian's trademark cadence, urgent and dry, up by the cashier. It was the second time I've seen him. The last time was at a Polish diner in NYC where he was finishing off a plate of Perogis with (presumably) his young son
in 2003.
He was being interviewed by someone and was asked if he keeps a 9-5 schedule for his writing. He said he only writes in the morning after "chugging some coffee", and barely can get anything done after that. He said that any writer "who says keeps an 8 hour schedule is lying.". Well, writers? Are you gonna step to this?

If you don't know who is, he is perhaps best known as the lead in Oliver Stone's
Talk Radio (1988) and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry. Nowadays, he writes mostly——I think. Oh and he surprisingly (why this is surprising is anyone's guess) had on very fashionable sneakers colored black and lime green.

MY LIFE, LAST NIGHT, IN PICTURES

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Friday, May 8, 2009

BIRTHDAY SLAM

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What is up with the month of May? It seems everyone is having a birthday this month. Do people just love to interlock genitals on Labor Day weekend? For all those who are having birthdays, this is not to demean your special day. And it's not to say I don't enjoy the celebrating of you. It's just that I wish your breeder parents would have spaced it out a little.
Spring is a great time for fucking, yet I know few people with birthdays in the winter months (though Facebook might disprove me of this). How about procreation in December? Down a carafe of egg nog and get dirty. That makes you born around August. Every Scorpio I know is a barrel of monkeys. Yet, this overpopulation of birthdays in May seems to undercut my theory that I'm cosmically bound for relationships with Tauruses, simply because there's so many of them. My mother: a Taurus. My brother? He's a Taurus too. Many friends and ex-lovers are also Tauruses. I even DRIVE a Taurus! A wagon no less. So I can carry Taurus babies in it. And wood. Pants is an Aries which is almost like being a Taurus without all the bull. Just kidding. Wordplay!

So much for my stump speech. My generation: when you do sex with your partner and make babies try it out IN May, please. Or January. Because October, the month of my birth, is packed too.



Jungle Hotel——Public Servants

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

35 Years Ago

The exit on the 10 fwy to my apartment sometime in the
early 70s

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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

200th Post

To celebrate, I give you "Hairdresser"

R.I.P Dom DeLuise






1984: me, in my PJ's, watching his not-very-good movies over and over. The outtakes always stuck out the most. MTVs The State, in the ending credits of an episode, brilliantly restaged these outtakes line for line, which cemented my opinion that they were brilliant. Their DVD of the show is finally coming out in June