ray explained these two stories of finical meltdown thusly:

Basically, to wit:

-People trading in subprime-anything aren't buying. Either players are
holding on, waiting to see if there's any value left in them at the end
of the rollercoaster, or they desperately want to sell but nobody wants
to touch them with a 3,000-mile-pole. Or both. Which means that
portfolios have no trade price to value themselves by, which means that
anybody trying to withdraw their money can't be sure how much they're
supposed to get.

-Someone's prognosticating doom, either because it's going to happen,
or some computer model said it'll happen, or by saying it's going to
happen, it won't. Someone's trying to make a shitpile or make sure
they don't lose a shitpile. Either way, it's brilliant and stupid at
the same time. Which means a hedge fund, for sure. With deep pockets
and leverage that would make Archimedes weep.

so some things about gays and republicans.

we all know that the idaho republican larry charles was found to solicit sex in the washroom of a minnepolis airport. i think that some context is in order.

1) he claims not to be gay, and i think i believe him. he has been rumoured to have msm sex since 1982, and his tastes for the high life have been well known inside the beltway for a long time, and he does like the cock, pretty inarguably. but to be gay requires a self knowledge, which he doesnt have.
2) i think why he doesnt have the knowledge is that the history of boise. this is little known (i didn't know it was published on metafilter today) sex scandal in idaho in 1955. 3 men were arrested, hundreds were suspected, of having sex in public, a moral panic that resulted in at least one man going to prison for seven years. (documentary about it. reissue of a book written about the scandal in 1966. original time story about the scandal. Apparently the moral panic was made to disappear when a mysterious figure high in the state government named the queen quashed it all.
3) which leads me to think, that not only did Charles expect to be saved from this scandal by someone in power (and he has been protected by the powerful for at least 20 years), he must have been terrified. growing up in Boise, frightened about being kidnapped and raped by predatory homosexuals, then wondering what happened when you turned out to be one of those. the full power of the state collapsing in on you. with so much to lose, and being so afraid, adn they grew up with situations like the boys from boise. its not being hypocrites but self loathing and terror, and maybe that requires more pity then anger from us.

that said---

this triple murder suicide from closeted republican operatives in flordia, looks much much jucier esp. since one of the operatives knew both ralph reed and jack abramhoff.

Underworld," he has written, "proves, once and for all, or so I must hope, the incompatibility of the political paranoid vision with great fiction."
Wood

20 "great" novels that are also politically paranoid:

1) The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon
2) The Stigmata of Palmer Edritch, Dick
3) The Castle, Kafka
4) The Tin Drum, Grass (though oskar had a reason to be paranoid, so it might not count)
5) Mumbo Jumbo, Reed
6) The Piano Teacher, Jelinek (the politics might be a little unclear here)
7) Mao II, DeLillo
8) The Cold Six Thousand, Ellroy
9) Catch 22, Heller
10) The White Album, Didion (is this a novel or something else)
11) Anil's Ghost, Ondaatje
12) The Handmaids Tale, Atwood
13) 1984, Orwell
14) The Abbess of Crewe, Spark
15) The Quiet American, Greene
16) The Master and Magerita, Bugalov
17) Hunger, Hamsun
18) War Of the Newts, Capek
19) Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetezee
20) V For Vendetta, Moore
Wood might accept one of these

pac man orgy

pac man orgy
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

does anyone know who made this epic peice of modernism in high park?

I think that the reason why the drive by truckers are so effective in their critique of current american policy is a deep geographic respect for where they are from. This is a ive performance of Dress Blues, a memorial ode to a friend who died at 18, as a marine. from the beginning, with the intoning of he was 18, to the clarion calls towards mother and family, w/o the rhetoric of the state, makes it one of the more profound anti war anthems in recent memory (esp the line american boys hate to lose/but you never planned in the bombs adn the sand/or sleeping in yr dress blues)
(also, i think its how exhaustion and confusion become foregrounded, over anger and righteousness)

the freakanomics dude discusses the tactics of terror.



those stupid baby einstein videos do nothing for yr children

uk's pulling out of iraq, and the americans are angry about it.

a semi long peice of verbal virtuosity by anselem berrigan. 15 pairs of columns, possible to be read across the two columns, down one column and then the other, down the whole page, and then down the next, or in other ways. some of the word choices, and the construction of paired ideas/themes are confusing, but in that fecund noisy poet kind of way.



linux cannot support software being used to monitor someone who was convicted and sentenced for downloading the new stairwars movie.

mitt romney's sons, who i frequently fantasize about, in an incestous orgy kind of way

boris kobe daucha prisoner, architect, and political prisoner, created these tarot cards when he was in the camps.

society of pius X's members forbidden from praying in two denver area churches.

the bst thing about this 19 photo slide show of Phillip Johnson's estate in new cannan, is that it totally upends the idea that he stopped being an impt architect in the 50s, or that he was more impt as an idea man then he was as actual builder. the work here, from the early 50s to the late 80s, is a natural and logical progression, of ideas, concepts, and technology, with a careful consideration of site placement and historical importance. Look at the gallery, with the moving walls, the library, and the brick house i wrote about earlier. It's as impt as his work for the crystal catherdral or the at and t building.


You know, i think beauty pageants should just drop the q&a

the spdier ti defense band system when you cant choke that bitch with your barehands

the most interersting thin abotu this story taht features GErard Richters new window in Cologne, is how well or poorly the translation b/w digitial and analog material's worked:

The Cologne window is made of 11,500 four-inch " pixels" cut from original antique glass in a total of 72 colors. Why not 4,096? Turns out there are stained glass-smart colors, too. Some hues in Richter's initial design were either historically inaccurate or too pale — they would have outshone the squares around them. So the artist modified his palette to include only colors with a suitably archaic cast. Because it's fine for a church window to look like it's been designed by a computer, as long as it's a computer with a gothic sensibility.

the photo comes from der sepigel, hence the german caption.

these graph paper stamps, are really really pretty. three for 12 american, including the polar condiarate, which is all circular. great for the pomo grid show, i think.

dryers still lives are really commerical and slick, but some of the work featuring jewelry in the corner of brightly painted rooms is pure formal joy, esp the coral and diamond ring on a cerulean counter, and the emerald and conch pearl brooch with a bone background. he can also shoot cheap plastic dice well.


Resin Table with Orange Slice Graphic, Californian, ca 1970

47 dead in terrorist bombs in the indidan city of Hydererbad. 600 injured. The same city in may had a blast that killed 12.


Baroness Thatcher, Lord Snowdon, 2006.

These two photos of amy winehouse and her husband lead to some questions

1) what is the ethical realtionship an audience has to a producer when violence becomes less of an autobiographical construction? i would call this the nan goldin question, but i am unsure that winehouse has the same motives, or the same habits of narrative construction as goldin, and goldin is primally visual, while winehouse is something else (who's songs about co-dependence, drinking, addiction, pleasure, and destructive, seismic desires have been treated as pretty anthems for the summer) (like this from Just Friends "it is not safe for us, even in the evening,in the morning, it is dangerous--it is always dangerou....can we be alone, can we be alone") there is the assumption that nothing this universal could be so autobiographical, but it seems to be
2) thinking about the whole history of soul singers who were destroyed by their men, is this kind of viscousness part of a historicised process, a lifestyle accessory, like the beehive? (cf tina turner, ronnie spector) (and some of the violence does seem to be gendered, like the idea of the blood soaked ballet slippers)
3) in the previous example, both women were victims and left--winehouse speaks like one, he is the only one who loves me, he is the one who saves me, but having both of them in such a violent state suggests mutally assured destruction more than a man using a woman as a punching bag (which makes me wonder, how common is that sort of hurlyburly destruction, the sort of thing you saw in who's afraid of virginia woolf or more subversively in mr and mrs smith versus farah in burning bed, which one is she here)
4) when asked about the images/ the incident, she writes: "I was cutting myself after he found me in our room about to do drugs with a call girl and rightly said I wasn't good enough for him. I lost it and he saved my life" texted to perez hilton--one of the reasons why hilton is making millions, is his ability to construct morally heremetic, melodramatic narratives, and this one has the perils of pauline all over it), apparently winehouse texted perez first, b/c she is one of the heros, there is a gaurentee that perez will be kind to her---and as well, b/c the images are diseminated via the net first, that they might be too strange or shocking for us or people, and because the daily mail hates her, and because there is no huge english blog that is as kind as perez, etc--it suggests a presence of mind and media savvy to use him,
4) which leads me to the final question,why did she let herself be photographed like this? (doherty and moss apparently are fucking and drugging right now at claridges but no one has seen her there w. a camera, she leaves late at night, under the cover of darkness, she is public here, she is posing--like tina brown's only new peice of info in the diana bio, where she suggests that diana knew exactly what she was doing in the ritz in paris that night) (is this a question of class--i mean clardiges, the ritz, this didnt occur in any place so exciting, and can you avoid publciity, when the arguement moves from the room, to being dragged down hallways, to elevators, looking like this, with another couple present, a couple unknown to you?)

September Dawn, a stupid anti-Mormon propaganda movie (the inimitable Lindy West: “It’s narrated by a BABY (a literal infant!) who, admittedly, doesn’t remember much: ‘But I remember feelings!’

Via The STranger

1. thank you emails to savi, richard, lorna, sally, david, peter, mark, seth, etc
2. reminder emails to the rest of the artists
3. list of work already gotten, emails sent out to thank artists, reminder emails all for the ruscha show , to be done by my meeting on the 28th
4. follow up on anything that needs to be done for the farm show (ie take down)
5. email/call debar about wether a show will pan out
6. call petro.
7. see which work needs to be done for exposure
8. send photo call to people who might be interested that you found on this trip.
9. contact type bookstore about possible photo show
10. write proposal for d's show, send it to her, then tofino
11. read the rachel cadbury thing.
12. pitch photos to the gallery with the bok peice in the front window.
13. pro/con list possiblities for move to TO.
14. Rhianna review (with baseball game added)
15. Pitch See
16. others?

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ten things i like about nickelback's rockstar
ten things that i like about it

1) Because its lack of jaded posing. i like that someone suggests that the real estate, the drinking, the pussy, the drugs, and the fame, esp. the fame are fun--not pointless, not useless, not vapid, but pleasurable.
2) Because it reminds me of Kenny Chesney or Tim Mcgraw, the presence of rich from big and rich in the video, plus Ted Nugent and Paul Stanley from kiss presently, add more evidence to the now ubiqitous notion that the middle section of a Venn diagram featuring rock cheese and pop country is becoming wider.
3) Because its like Ashlee or Avril, except w/o the per formative gender politics, because i actually have to like it for its own sake
4) Because its oddly democratic, in how he wants everyone to be a big rock star, and that he thinks that everyone actually might be able to pull it off, and i mean optimism isn't class war, but sometimes imagining playboy bunnies and enough jack to lift a ship is enough to keep going.
5) Because its charmingly retrograde
6) Because sometimes i done want to think about the politics: the whole idea of women as property is just sad, sometimes i want to watch a video with clever and self referential jokes, and a supremely hooky chorus, and not deconstruct it at all.
7) because the sopken half senteces by that dude from zz top, have a gravelled, long time on the road, energy that seems to have gone away. (esp when he says been there, done it) (some hip hop king should sample how he says quesadilla though)
8) because some of the lines, spit out really fantastic examples of rhyme (fashion/mansion, tassles/assholes) or connaissance (big black jet w. a bathroom innit, playboy bunny with bleach blonde hair) the song is really well written.
9) because the chorus is really fucking fun to sing at top volume, this years genuine bar anthem.
10) because the video consists of a series of cameo's that are truly weird (including:the elderly, small children, Hugh Hefner's gfs at the playboy mansion, two cops, paul Stanley, Paul wall, various blondes, some one on the trading floor of wal street, interpretive hippie dancers, rich from big and rich in the the studio, a half naked ufc fighter, a valet, someone who kind of looks like Peter O Toole, kid rock, Nelly Furtado on her tour bus, a nascar driver, Ted Nugent, two punks in Washington square park, one wearing a misfits t, TI (i think) in a case study house, someone smelting heavy metals, security guards, the naked cowboys, an nba player, Wayne Gretzky and others.

crazy dinner tonite, with joe matt, chester brown, seth, the publisher of drawn and 1/4ly, and a bunch of others. deeply pleasant

me on the front page of the cbc today

so, one of the photo books, the 100 fords in and around ft sask alberta photo books, was bought by the library of the naitonal gallery of canada.

the close show was one of the strongest i have seen at the ago, so strong that the dundas collection, the reniassance masters, and the new art from india paled, and so strong i didnt have the energy or time to really look at the bernini corpus.

the show consisted of three media of potraits, from the same collection of people he has worked thru before: jaquard loom made large tapestries, digital pigment prints combined with poems, and daguertypes. all of what you expected to see in the daugertypes, esp the oval slice of sharpness, against the bluriness of the rest of the canvas. its about reproducing work mechincally, takling the thistory of machine made imagery, and reworking it, de and re historicizing it, with the words and the other images riffing on what portraiture means (often literally, by using people like elizabeth peyton or kiki smith, they become meta portratiurtes, discourses about what it means to represent humans now, by using andres seranno and cindy sherman, they become meta-photogrpahics, what does it mean to photograph people who;s career's have been about hiding, or displacing pesonal meanings thru the mediatation of the camera lens.)

having three images, often against each other, the small daugertype, the pigment print diptych with the poem, and the bigger then human sized tapestry, and have them all with the same effects, becomes a set of formalist excercises in tyhe reporducibilty of an image--what does it meant to artifically reproduce the flaw of an old form, what does it mean to use digital means to recreate the 19th century, what does it mean to dress these v. post-modern figures in black and shoot black and white--are these jaqard loom peices that different then the photo throws that cost 5o bucks at wal mart? does the jaqard looms beginning of a computer/binary peice at the same time as the daugertype is the bridge b/w the two kinds of imagery, a more effective bridge, because it connects all 20 ways of doing things, as opposed to the small connections, the web of interlacings, between the triptych of similar portraits (and that the curator refused to put the three images together, that the daugertypes are collected at a side table, and the pigment prints/tapestries of each artists are seperate, across the room or in other rooms, makes these interlacings more tennous)

the daugertypes in their black frames, with hoods, intended to be that way to perserve the images from hands and light, becauyse the glass plates decay too easily, become small, contained, dark and almost impossible to see, the poems beside the pigment prints are inscrutable collections of sounds and half images, impentrable except for impressions, but the images in the prints and the tapestries are large, concise, not monumental, but holy in their own ways, esp. the loom peices, are so much about surfaces--he has become smoother, tighter, more explicit, and it becomes difficult w/o a close looking to see the weft and weave of the actual work. the paintings that seem typical of close's work (so typical that they had to put them here) seem savage and dark next to the tenseness and vitusou skill of the work here.

this is esp true about a peice on the edge of the show, near the entrence, two daugertypes of his hands, and a tapestry self potrait, it had something iconographic about it, the hands like relics, like silver reminders in mexican churches, tailsmanic like hindu shrines, emblamtic of security, like in a spy movie, outside of time and place, difficult to resist putting your hands on top of them, measuring yr humanness next to his, the initimate urge matched to his face, inscrutable and almost glowering--seeing this image, one is reminded that lebowitz once chose him as the wizard of oz, and in his immediate knowing of people, he almost becomes the wizard here, but w/o the chicanery.

the national cbc show q wants to interview me about the ruscha show

There are so many dirty names for (a woman) that one rarely learns them all, even the ones in one;s native langauge. There are dirty names, for every female part of her body, and for every way of touching her. There are dirty words, dirty laughs, dirty noises, dirty jokes, dirty movies, and dirty things to do in her in the dark. Fucking is the dddirtiest though it may not be as dirty as her self is. Her genitals are dirty in the literal meaning: stink and blood and urine and mucus and slime. Her genitals are also dirty in the metaphoric sense: obscne. she is reviled as flithy...in religion pornogrpahy, philosophy, and in most literature an dart and pyschology. where she is not explicity maligned she is magnificently condescended to.

Dworkin, qouted by Kipnis, in a review in this months harpers, about the reissue of intercourse.

And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the arm-pits well besmeared.
-------------------------------------
he various combs for various uses,
Filled up with dirt so closely fixt,
No brush could force a way betwixt.
A paste of composition rare,
Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair;
A forehead cloth with oil upon't
--------------------------------------
And ointments good for scabby chops.
Hard by a filthy basin stands,
Fouled with the scouring of her hands;
The basin takes whatever comes,
The scrapings of her teeth and gums,
A nasty compound of all hues,

excerpts from her ladies dressing room, swift.

Lamps and Mirrors

Lamps and Mirrors
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

dinner with david was fantastic, italian, the usual conversation, the genriousity of spirit, im glad hes in my life

so i am in sheri's show, but im kind of peeved. she said sure to my request a week before the show was to go up, she wanted things framed, and that was the week i was going to go to ontario, i pitched her an idea, she said no, i asked about another, she said okay, the show was installed, and though my work is up, my name is nowhere on the wall, or list of artists. i emailed her about this, and her entire reponse was sorry, dude, no. one line, no explanation.

if she didnt want the work up then she should have said this doesnt work, if she put the work up, she should have my name with the rest of the artists, as far as im concerened.

(thinking about art, had lunch at the lakeview w. jennifer, it was nice, sort of meandering, bio/geo more than anything else, but did turn ever so slightly awkard when she sort of pushed me about school, somethinng i thot about but dismissed for fairly obv. reasons, she also asked about cash, which i think is standard artist question 101, but still makes me feel coy)

seeing a 1062 photo of sontag in the new york times magazine. she is smoking, in 1962, looking at the camera, smoking or at least holding a cigarette...and the way she holds her nands, the directness of her face, the folding of her body, the singularity of her glamour and the clumping of the crowd--she kind of looks like garbo, and like garbo, who's best work is her self, her clothing, the photographs, and the legend, as opposed to films like grand hotel (& the best garbo movies are that which intersect the persona w. the filmic rites, like queen chrstiina), sontag as ikon is the life work there, not sontag as writer.

the story republishes excerpts from her diary and t his is one from 58 in paris: "why is writing important? mainly out of egotisim, I suppose. Because I want to be that personae, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yey why not that too? whit a little ego buliding--such as the fait accompli this journal provides--i shall win...

for sontag maybe it wasnt about the ideas, but that the act of writing made her glamourous, her personae iconic, her self famous. like garbo saying i want to be alone, made her immortal; like andy saying i wanna be a machine made him human.