Professional artists/Institutions should include the following materials in their application
* contact information for applicant, including phone, fax, mailing and e-mail addresses
* current curriculum vitae or organizational history
* brief written description of the project, outlining:
* its conceptual content
* its physical details (artifact list, presentation media including hands-on components, technical specifics, square footage of gallery space required for exhibition, and number of exhibition cases included in the exhibition or required from the Provincial Museum)
* set-up and take-down staffing support and requirements
* security and environmental requirements
* the preferred time for exhibition and the proposed booking period
* list of curatorial and exhibit design team and brief resumes of previous experience
* supporting images, if available
* relevant support materials (if applicable) including exhibition catalogues, reviews, critical texts, etc.
* Anticipated loan fee, shipping costs, travel expenses of preparator (if required) and insurance value of exhibition and collections
* Any other relevant material

For the Floors, Banff.

Oprah 1 Hannah Arendt 0

(question for discussion, who is going to have a more ironic example of the banality of evil and the death of tragedy, the pope going to auschwitz or oprah)

i bought two dozen or so c90 tapes from a thrift store today, and i think im going to make a collage or monoprint or something else, cutting and pasting all of the handwritten legends, into one sheet.

(ideas of memory, dead technology, digital and social memory, etc)

im not sure how to do it though, or whether it would be a decenet idea

a story of almost being shot, by a gun happy neighbour. With fantastic pix, including this:


(The guns, the gold flecked lino counter and the ammo in the same colour, the bright pink soap, the shattered glass bullet hole, right at crotch level, the motel discount faucets, maybe its too fucking obv. but the ubquity and banality of violence in american life always almost amuses me, this one is a vernacular larry clarke.)


From Chelsea, NY

some first ppghs
THE Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Reverend John Gladwin, and 20 curates have been abandoned in Africa by the Anglican Church of Kenya after its Archbishop discovered his liberal views on gays.
the rest of the story here

Tony Blair today insisted no offence was intended over the auction of a copy of the Hutton report on the death of Dr David Kelly reportedly signed by his wife Cherie Booth QC. According to a Commons motion put down by a Tory MP the report, signed also by Alastair Campbell, raised £400 at a fundraising event at the Arts Club in Mayfair last week, although the Labour party has denied it was a party occasion. full story here

Pop star-turned-doll maker MARIE OSMOND has launched a personal crusade to clean up the Internet after learning her two teenage daughters have been posting sexually explicit correspondence on their MySpace.com websites. The PAPER ROSES singer felt compelled to give a statement to US tabloid National Enquirer after the publication uncovered outrageous content on her daughters JESSICA and RACHAEL's blogs. On her site, 18-year-old Jessica, who was adopted by Osmond as an infant, claims she is a bi-sexual who craves sex "as many times as possible," while her 16-year-old sister describes herself as a "slut" and a "whore" in correspondence and opened up about her dreams of having sex with DAVID BOWIE. In her statement, shocked Marie, a devout Mormon, says, "I am saddened by some of the choices that two of our children have made. "The insidious potential for harm from adolescent Internet sites like MySpace.com only exacerbates these kinds of problems. full story here

Random Facts:
North Korea is finacning its stalinist reigme with peasent theme resturants in Vladivastok. here

There are 30 offical religions that have ebelems on file at the Veterans Affairs dept. If not paart of those 30 religions (including atheism), there can be no offical marker in miltary graveyards. wicca isnt on the list. (I emailed VA for a list, with images, they havente gotten back to me)


Random Links:
hundreds of examples of american aborginal languages.

a great article on Audens tricky realtionship with jesus

a vietnam pastor is on the road to be cannonized. I dont think that Vietnam corresponds to the offical just war doctorine of the catholic church, and i wonder if being active in the conflict would be enough of a sin to get one of the holy list. i know where I stand, but im too far on the edge, and dont know enough about the case, to offically give notice.

Pictures from the first Moscow Gay Rights Rally, where police, the church, and orthodox nationlist facists arrested and beat the shit out of activists) are to be ound here here. Story here

James Tiptree, one of the best of the 70s new wave sfers, and perhaps the most under rated (still taking votes for Phillip Jose Farmer) hd a very strange life here is some of it

Lord Black bought his title no one is suprised

one of the most beautiful peices of animaiton ive seen, with monkeys, squids, snails, and a giant magical tyger, but better.

sublimated homoeroticism and hazing (the liminal space b/w homosocial and homosexual is one of the great themes of the 20th century, and left really unexpolred, this is a minor varation of that)

According to John Doyle, the Globe TV Critic, 34.2m people voted for the winner of American Idol, amd just over 32m voted Bush for president. This inst apathy, this is smart people realizing that the only thing they can control is the media.

Sometimes Hal Foster is a delightful bitch, and thats why we love him. Here he is on Putin's Potemkin Village, this years russian art show at the guggenheim here

Cornell is a lot like Darger, in questions of innocence, sexuality, bricorlage, etc but I think that Cornell knew more, was more self concious, less self contained and maybe sadder. Saefer Joher, the novelist, wrote this long peice on him in the gaurdian, and i was literally crying at the end of it. here It continues to shock me, how little his work is held for most people, it seems to be a cult. Speaking of the cult, I found this story first on Metafilter, nad there were several stories about Cornell told, these are my two favourites:
I have deeply mixed feelings about Joseph Cornell as a person. I do love his art. I was introduced to Cornell when I was 11. The person who introduced me had been told by a renowned art collector that "Joseph likes quiche lorraine and little girls". I walked through an unkempt, dimly lit, dismal front room into his kitchen in back. It was well lit and there was another girl washing dishes. She was about 15 or 16 I think. Joseph said she was from the neighborhood and came to help him with housework. I was relieved not to be the only girl there.

I asked to use the bathroom to get away while the quiche was reheated and the grown-ups talked. the bathroom was upstairs and I explored his house quietly then and didn't see anything weird, no dead bodies, lol. That was a relief. Later that day Joseph took us all on a tour of his house with his basement below, an interesting, creative mess that was well organised in its way, full of box-making gear, hardware, paper, trinkets and all sorts of stuff that he put in his boxes. It felt full of energy in that room compared to the sense of depressing neglect in the rest of the house. He also had a large storage place under the eves. It was packed with his work, hundreds of works, a lot of flat images too.

Anyway, over the years I was used to procure Joseph's art, as was my 6 year old sister and another little girl I knew. The adults using us in this way groomed Joseph to some extent in his 'interests' in little girls, fanning the flames by sending him photographs of us and our classmates, enticing him into the city to see us, getting us to speak on the phone with him. Joseph wrote me love letters in which he couched his sexual interest in metaphors. I was told he used the image of a bird for penis and nest for vagina. His letters were full of birds and nests. He gave me a book by Novalis. "HYMNEN AN DIE NACHT (1800), was dedicated to his first great love Sophie von Kühn, who died in 1797. Novalis had met her in Weissenfels when she was barely 13". Joseph said he felt a kindred spirit with Novalis.

He never touched me once. His interest was only in this artistic expression. But I felt violated as a child, not only by the person who used me but also by Joseph. Strange to feel violated by letters and collages, not the sort of thing most people could understand or that I could tell anyone.

I truly hated being used in this way and even though I felt his interest in me was pedophilic/ephebophilic I grew attached to him over the years, felt sad he was being used as well. I accompanied him to his first exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum walked with him in Central Park, made collages for him and made a small box for a Christmas present for him the year he died, which I asked be put on his grave.

When Deborah Soloman came out with her book in 1997 I phoned her and said that Joseph wasn't such an innocent child fetishist as he seemed and she said she knew that. I asked her why she hadn't written about his pedophilia more explicitly in her book and she said had tried and came as close as possible to detailing what she knew. She said there was an uproar by the art critics and her editors when she tried to be more complete about it. She said the art world wanted to perceive Joseph as an innocent because his images appear that way and bring up that kind of child-like wonder in people. I think it's possible to experience that wonder in Joseph's art and also know his dark side. A more informed wonder.

Anyway, all the art that Joseph made for me was taken away and sold, except one birthday collage of an owl, which I sold in 1976 for $6000. That's the money I used to leave America and go to live in India for a decade. I've always been grateful to Joseph for that.
Nyky Shye

Back in the middle '90s, I did some computer work, some word processing and accounting, for an extremely rich woman. The ex-wife of a major American publishing magnate, she lived in a vast apartment on York Avenue on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

She was also a bit of a nut case, a bit Collyer Brothers. Despite living in a 17 room apartment, there was random junk and newspapers and cosmetics and God knows what else scattered all over the joint. Complete disorganization.

So she set me up in a little unused room with a card table covered by a table cloth, and the computer, and a chair, and gave me the stuff she wanted me to do.

She left the room, and I sat down at my desk to start working. Suddenly, my foot bumped against something on the floor under the table. I reached down, and pulled up what I thought was a small carboard box, around 10" square.

But it wasn't a cardboard box. It was an original Joseph Cornell diorama, signed and dated on the back and everything. It was beautiful, it had a little glass window on the front, and a collage of birds, clouds and clock faces inside.

An original Joseph Cornell. On the floor with some other junk. Under a table.

I was dumbfounded, and fascinated. Of course for a moment I thought about how completely easy it would be to just take it home; she seemed to have no awareness or interest in it at all. But seeing it was worth about $30K, I realized it might be a better idea just to leave it alone (an understatement). So I set it up on my table, and looked at it with pleasure all the way through my assignment there.
Nicholas West

Four Favourite Cornell Works:

Anthony,

These are all fine proposals but upon looking at your sample writing the
editorial board agreed that we would like to see you develop your voice,
strengthen your interpretation of the work a bit more before we can publish
a review.

Your writing has a fresh light poppy feel bringing in relevant allusions, reference,
personal association. Though we have an interest in encyclopedic pop cultural
knowledge we are not interested in fast and loose resemblances to both high
and low in passing. This is a relatively unreflexive cultural studies approach for
us. For example with your review of Gum Blondes if a connection is made to
some cultural artifact then what does this resemblance or similarity mean and
why? We are interested in close contextual reading. We would like to see
deeper analysis into the work at various points. Stick to the most key moments
in the work. Diversify sentance structure some more, avoid "weirdly" and
"amazingly", You don't need to say the work "references" something else.
You can invoke the connection via your discussion of a related subject.There
is no discussion of pop or neo-pop as a more general tendency within contemporary
art and what this might mean. What is at stake in this work? Is there no deficiancy? Strengthen the argument. The article is strongest in the section on orality. We
would like to see some more of your writing in the future. However for this issue
we will have to pass. Thanks again for your interest.

Best,


Jordan

Examples of Il'la Zdanevich's Radical Typography from MoMA:NY

weird devolpment in the people abusing me from pick ups tendency, black pick up, jock, usual shit, but at noon, bright and sunny out, he stares at me, and then shines a flash light at me, one of those old school 9 volts one, obv meant to be threatining but unsure of the symbolism,

recent obsessions

closeted film stars from the 50s
hygenine films from the 50s
the religious work of william kurelek
the genre of suburban apocolyptica
the first season of project runway
porn

is blogger sad

BEHOLD THE SACRED WOMBAT, WORSHIP HIM

BEHOLD THE SACRED WOMBAT, WORSHIP HIM

BLDGBLOG: In an earlier, essay-length version of Planet of Slums, you write at some length about the rise of Pentecostalism as a social and organizational force in the slums – but that research is missing from the actual book, Planet of Slums. Are you distancing yourself from that research, or perhaps less interested now in its implications?

Davis: Actually, several hundred pages on Pentecostalism are now being decanted in the second volume, written with Forrest Hylton, where they properly belong. But the historical significance of Pentecostalism – evangelical Christianity – is that it’s the first modern religious movement, I believe – or religious sect – which emerged out of the urban poor. Although there are many gentrified Pentecostal churches in the United States today, and even in places like Brazil, the real crucible of Pentecostalism – the spiritual experience which propels it – the whole logic of Pentecostalism – remains within the urban poor.

Of course, Pentecostalism, in most places, is also, overwhelmingly, a religion of women – and in Latin America, at least, it has an actual material benefit. Women who join the church, and who can get their husbands to join with them, often see significant increases in their standard of living: the men are less likely to drink, or whore, or gamble all their money away.

For someone like myself, writing from the left, it’s essential to come to grips with Pentecostalism. This is the largest self-organized movement of poor urban people in the world – at least among movements that emerged in the twentieth century. It has shown an ability to take root, dynamically, not only in Latin America but in southern and western Africa, and – to a much smaller extent – in east Asia. I think many people on the left have made the mistake of assuming that Pentecostalism is a reactionary force – and it’s not. It’s actually a hugely important phenomenon of the postmodern city, and of the culture of the urban poor in Latin American and Africa.

BLDGBLOG: Outside of simply filling a void left behind by the retreat of the State, what's the actual appeal of Pentecostalism for this new generation of urban poor?

Davis: Frankly, one of the great sources of Pentecostalism’s appeal is that it’s a kind of para-medicine. One of the chief factors in the life of the poor today is a constant, chronic crisis of health and medicine. This is partially a result of the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programs in the 1980s, which devastated public health and access to medicine in so many countries. But Pentecostalism offers faith healing, which is a major attraction – and it’s not entirely bogus. When it comes to things like addictive behavior, Pentecostalism probably has as good a track record curing alcoholism, neuroses, and obsessions as anything else. That’s a huge part of its appeal. Pentecostalism is a kind of spiritual health delivery system.

From BLDGBLG, one of the points i was trying to make in the jesus book (esp w. american storefront churches, in urban centers, esp, detroit, la, houston, brooklyn, dc, and atlanta) which is kind of sort of still being written, though not really...Mike Davis is the writer of the book City of Slums, which I need to read.

What should a young male of 21 know, and what should he be able to do? There are no conclusive answers to those questions, but they are certainly worth asking. A young man should know how this country is run and how it got that way. He should know the Federalist Papers and de Tocqueville, and he should know recent world history. If he does not know what has been tried in the past, he cannot very well avoid those pitfalls as they come up in the future.

A young man should be computer literate and, moreover, should know Hemingway from James Joyce. He should know how to drive a car well--such as is not covered in Driver's Ed. He should know how to fly a light airplane. He should know how to shoot well. He should know elementary geography, both worldwide and local. He should have a cursory knowledge of both zoology and botany. He should know the fundamentals of agriculture and corporate economy. He should be well qualified in armed combat, boxing, wrestling and judo, or its equivalent. He should know how to manage a motorcycle. He should be comfortable in at least one foreign language, more if appropriate to his background. He should be familiar with remedial medicine. These things should be accomplished before a son leaves his father's household.
Cooper, from guns and ammo.



"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly, specialization is for insects."
Heinlein



Both lists are utter rot. A young man should know how to cook a shot of heroin, fist a man without wounding him unduly, read Latin, strip and reassemble a Ford Escort Mk I engine, calm a troubled wombat, cook al dente pasta to the satisfaction of an elderly Italian lady, recite the colourschemes used on each and every Prince album cover, rouse the proletariat to revolution, identify an Eames chair by year of production, speak fluent Welsh, humourously inflate a corpse using a foot-pump, rig an election, shuck an oyster and perform an impromptu promenade performance of the Scottish play single-handed. FACT.
posted by jack_mo at 6:58 PM PST on May 25

Posted on mefi.

Jack Mo is clearly a nevillest.


Here Neville Frolix in the Snow.

a conceptual hermaphrodite -- the product of what linguists who study the neutralization of oppositions call a ‘complex operation’ (that is not the simple neither this nor that but the more troubling this and that ).

Yves Allan Bois on Eva Hesse, qouted here here

Proposal for a Drawing Show: (I had to call gagosian today, scared the fuck out of me, its like talking to the pentagon)

A 1977 drawing by Ed Ruscha, entitled Will 100 Artists Please Draw A 1950 Ford From Memory, was the image that Gagosian used to advertise the most recent show on his material. The drawing consisted of that phrase, carefully plotted with industrial precision. The text and colour were the same elegant taupe colour, the text a slightly lighter tone. It is intended as a provocation, a mockery of the machine line, and a continuation of his idea of artists as assembly lines. He doesn't want us to take him seriously.

But I want to take him seriously. He asked nicely, using the word please, and well he seems earnest enough about it. The idea of memory has an immediacy and lack of forethought, it has a bit of the psychological test, like when psychiatrists ask children is asked to draw a picture of a tree, house, person or draw a picture of their family. It also has a sort of wry wink at the dozens of drawing shows lately, with many images, carefully pinned to walls, that come from memory, or seem to at least. Lastly, if I ask artists who were around from 1950, who remember their first car, or their parents first car, as something that ubiquitous, versus someone who's memory of a 1950 ford is industrial or cinematic, tells us about corporate power in regards to image making. (As a side note, there might be something about class here, a 1950 Cadillac is easy to remember, from Rock and Roll, from Elvis, from desire towards wealth…a 1950 Ford is hard to remember, it's the Clydesdale of working machines)

I think that I can get 100 artists to draw a 1950 Ford from their own memory, or from someone else's memory, as a performative act would be fascinating. It would have much to tell us about how text turns into imagery, also issues of gender, political memory, desire, and late capitalism.

Warhol:
My Lonesome Cowboy
Horse (Cowboy Strip Scene)


Same sex love does not preclude dynamics of difference from determening the gay male cinematic sensiblity. Far from it; we love the Other with a tenacity matched only with the protocols of heterosexuality... (Thomas Waugh, Cockteasers, Queer Warhol, 53)

some more on meritt:

i think one of the things that is making me struggle with this meritt essay is that at the core, i am trying to reconcile the sheer hard feelings that permeate the work, and meritts retreating into camp and artifice. or to put it another way, to dismiss and to feel at the same time, becomes like the push me pull me creature from dr doolittle...

his artistocratic lack of genroisty, to other musicians, to critics, to analysts and to fans, is so at odds with the genorousity, the dramatic over flowing of emotions that come in his work--and for him to say all of that work is a literary deconstruction, or lingusitic game playing, i find inscrutably blank, and i like blankness...

this is charles hughes on his blog, paraphrasing the emp stuff:

Beyond his comments about race, though, I must admit that I was far more taken aback by his repeated refusals to acknowledge that - like me and others - many of his fans actually appreciate his music unironically, finding a beauty and power in his best work that renders it a cut above. At one point, when moderator Ann Powers asked Merritt what she should say to her friends who put his song "The Book Of Love" on their "love tape" or wedding mix, Merritt drolly replied that she should "get some new friends." Later, he rather mockingly suggested that people who write him letters saying that they love his music and even that it helped them come out of the closet makes him want to vomit. I was stunned by this remark far more than any of his comments on race, and wondered how it is that such a talented pop songwriter could so dismiss those (like me) who hear something in his gentle, affecting melodies beyond the intellectual deconstruction that he seems far more comfortable discussing

now this camp refusal of emotions is a way of dealing with homophobia, pretending that you dont want the same things as the rest of the world, that you are better then the rest of the things that everybody wants, that you are in this tower picking apart, is a queer and academic thing, it is the patrician, hipster continutation of a drag queens mocking of hetero normative desire...but i dont think i have seen anyone whos corpus of work had all of the weight of feeling, and his public personae had all the weight of abstracted intellectualism...whats bothering me about the essay i think, is that i love the song, because i connect to the geography and isolation and its conflation with precise, clean, modernist emptiness (if you dont cry, you just dont feel it deep enough--if you dont cry)

(reading thomas waugh's essay on fassbinders realtionship to sirk, and thinking the same thoughts--fassbinder refused the gay world, and in works like the bitter tears of petra van kamp, he made fun of the domestic melodramas that he so dearly loved, he didnt want to reveal his hand. Waugh doesnt like Fassbinder, or his desire to like him is complicated by poltical landmines (ie my realtionship with montogromery gentry) but at the end, he writes For me his major libablitiy is his suceptiblity to misniterperation by his foreigh and nonspecailsit audiences. There is an undeniable tempetation to read his highly stylised exaggared use of melodramatic conventison as camp or parody, a sensiblity that Fassbinder ephatically disavows. I occasionaly find myself asking how a certain particullay outreagous gesture or detail of design is meant to be difested, it not with those distinctive squeals with which those of us who have a weakenss for Divine, say, sometimes greet her presence in our more vulenrable moments... (Fruit Machine 57)

Fassbinder is to Sirk as Waters is to ?

One of the things about staged masculinity or femmninity, of performing gender, is that it becomes something in between, (does being aware of the performance means that another gender is created?) i keep thinking about brokeback, atching it again last night, noticing how cleverly it is made--its not a western, its not a cowboy movie, its sirk, the landscape passages are a mcguffin

the other weird thing about gender and brokeback, is the formal bifurcation. the story begins as a work of setting up domestic lives, and then obligatory heterosexaulkity splits it in two, and we get a 1/2 (not half, one two) pattern, first we see jakes life and then we see heaths, and together, they talk, apart its silence and lacunae. its like the split screens, b/w rock hudson and doris day in pillow book, where the screen fractures in order to handle the strangeness of the conversations, and thinking about pillow book, or camp, or gender, or that split b/w feeling and artifice, one is reminded of Warhols the film maker, there was a reason why Chelsea girls ended up on four seperate screens, it was a fractal of gendered readings

with meritt the obsession to move away from feeling, however authentic, means that it is to the role of the interperter to other people, refusing to believe that his songs mean anything translates to anyone finding meaning in them has to do it alone, and so listening to kelly hogan eek out a genuineness from it, is (odd/weird/belaboured/strangely casual/something else?) (is tht why claudia gronson is such an impt part of the band) (is this where we talk about limony snickett and his new grown up adverbs book)

the thing is, that there were fractures in the personae of other 20th century camp figures, they let their mask down, they let a private feeling escape from feelings (not only the men: ie oscar wilde and his fairy tales, robbie ross, and his children; the jewishness of barbara and the sandras; judy and the pills; liza and judy; warhol and the ersatz family, the poverty, the wrong side of the tracks; quientin crisp's filthy apartment; annie oakley's desire for children; the cacaphony of liz taylors marriages; the conversation that loretta had with tammy about standing by yr man; dusty singing wishing and hoping when all she was wishing and hoping for was pussy; the little pink suit of jackie o; maria callas and the failure of voice; no more wire hangers; i want to be alone; but you are, you are; etc etc etc)

the flaws, the pricks in public conciousness, the loss of control, the disasters that connect us to the stars, the fan club sadness that transgresses interior and exterior isoating landscapes are all absent from meritt, perhaps thats one of the reasons why even those savy with a queer semiotic are unable to read meritts, because there is only one half of it...

Zhang Zhenshi’s iconic portait of mao, the most reproduced image of all time, is being sold by the chinese communists at auction. the low estimate is 120k, remembering that the last warhol mao at auction went for 750k. I dont know what this means.

Links Time:

Mary Wohlford, who is 80, just had this tattooed on her collarbone. She hasa living will, and a DNR order, but "dont trust lawyers so much"

two
storiess about Marines killing children in Iraq, like My Lai, there have been stories suspected of this nature for a year or more, but this time Rep. Murtha, has confirmed both. Once again i repeat the image from Artists Collective Against Vietnam:
(I should just put this in my sidebar)
(im proud of murtha for doing this, deeply proud, it suggests that w. fingold there is a moral core to the democratic party, angry and ready to muck out the stalls, i suspect in 08, they will run together, and i also suspect they will fuck up. there is no center anymore in american politics)

four suicides, home made weapons, and an uprising, in Gitmo. The ee cummings poem about Olaf comes immediately to mind.






All Paintings by John Burlinghame, he doesnt mention sizes or material on his website, hes an excellent colourist, a good formal painter, and his decayed transtions are interesting, if mostly decorative (never an insult coming from these hands) i suspect i will have to see them live, to see if his paint handling and his like works, but there is something ambigious and touched about this work, i think i like them, im not sure i like them, but there is something here i think (im also in love with organic colours, greens, yellows esp, and he has them in spades)
(these by nacho labras, that look like water running down concrete walls might be better
(these by amy sillman might be worse (though the colour is much more adventorous)

The Squddies they attack

fascinating
article (along with january's desicion about copyright in favour of Koons) about the nature of copywright, approtion, craft, and fine art. This time, about how the glass artist Chiuly is intimadating assts who dare use the same "trademark" forms as he does. Chiuly is the worst thing, i think, that has happened to glass works, for a variety or reasons, mostly because he hasnt changed in 25 years, and he stagnates, and that stagnation constantly causes others to as well...look at the forms that he claims as his "monopoly on any and all glass art that is curved, nested or uses certain kinds of colors. [Chihuly] cannot use copyright registrations to protect an idea or process that is so elementary that it would preclude any other glass artist from working or creating any glass art at all." Its like Betty Woodman, the cermaicist, complaining that people are slabbing like she does, or Nancy Youngblood claiming that anyone who makes melon bowls should be stopped. (Woodman slabs in a really rough, physical way, against any of the elegance or delicacy required by many people who use clay, shes also brilliant, go read last weeks new yorker, withthe Schedjcal article about her; Youngblood is a really good example. The best paublo(sp) potter of her generation, her use of japanese forms, her extending of tradtional first nation forms, and her absorbing of recent workings in abstraction, make thousands of years of tradtions into something unqiuely hers. Her website talks of this: "while imitators may be a flattering sign of success, they provide Nancy with a determination to challenge her abilities even further". Thats how art should work, a marathon b/w master and student, heres my favourite youngblood:

Zizek on Freud (a sort of defense, or as much of a defense as a lacanian can muster)

A Plastic Surgery Editorial, from Italian Vogue (I think shot by Miesel), suprisingly self critical

several examples of why the new rules against obsecenity are hypocritical and censorous, nothing new, but decent ammunition

forty twosongs about president, literary, wise, and well constructed, sound esp good when they end up in a mix...(listening to all 42 in a row isnt recommend)


Edward Wessleman's photos of Vegas, Creepy and Banal here (i esp like the ones of hallways) (also the one above is qouting Arbus' photo of Cinderellas castle in Disneyland, almost to the level of plagarism)

here are several from his real estate seires from 1990
Im not sure they are good, but they sure as hell match my aesthetic (and qoute Baltzs' track home seires, also almost to the point of plagarism (or harry harrisons seires in the mid 70s, of edmonton houses that look quite the same)

Two stories on the poltiics of sex
A man who organized chinese male sex parties was arrested, and is spending a year in prision

one of the last new york porn theaters is being shut down, for reasons of money (Reminds me of the editorial i wrote for xtra)




Its Kind of Scary When DAvid Letterman does the job of CNN


A Brilliant, Must See Doc, on the battle for Sex Ed in the states, using albquerque as an example, includes many salient facts on the power of abstenice only ed.


A hysterically funny video, about Dildos

National Republics Top 50 Conserative Songs

1. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who.
The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off na?ve idealism once and for all. “There’s nothing in the streets / Looks any different to me / And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye. . . . Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.” The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend’s ringing guitar, Keith Moon’s pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey’s wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.

2. “Taxman,” by The Beatles.
A George Harrison masterpiece with a famous guitar riff (which was actually played by Paul McCartney): “If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street / If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat / If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.” The song closes with a humorous jab at death taxes: “Now my advice for those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes.”

3. “Sympathy for the Devil,” by The Rolling Stones.
Don’t be misled by the title; this song is The Screwtape Letters of rock. The devil is a tempter who leans hard on moral relativism — he will try to make you think that “every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints.” What’s more, he is the sinister inspiration for the cruelties of Bolshevism: “I stuck around St. Petersburg / When I saw it was a time for a change / Killed the czar and his ministers / Anastasia screamed in vain.”

4. “Sweet Home Alabama,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
A tribute to the region of America that liberals love to loathe, taking a shot at Neil Young’s Canadian arrogance along the way: “A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.”

5. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” by The Beach Boys.
Pro-abstinence and pro-marriage: “Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true / Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do / We could be married / And then we’d be happy.”

6. “Gloria,” by U2.
Just because a rock song is about faith doesn’t mean that it’s conservative. But what about a rock song that’s about faith and whose chorus is in Latin? That’s beautifully reactionary: “Gloria / In te domine / Gloria / Exultate.”

7. “Revolution,” by The Beatles.
“You say you want a revolution / Well you know / We all want to change the world . . . Don’t you know you can count me out?” What’s more, Communism isn’t even cool: “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.” (Someone tell the Che Guevara crowd.)

8. “Bodies,” by The Sex Pistols.
Violent and vulgar, but also a searing anti-abortion anthem by the quintessential punk band: “It’s not an animal / It’s an abortion.”

9. “Don’t Tread on Me,” by Metallica.
A head-banging tribute to the doctrine of peace through strength, written in response to the first Gulf War: “So be it / Threaten no more / To secure peace is to prepare for war.”

10. “20th Century Man,” by The Kinks.
“You keep all your smart modern writers / Give me William Shakespeare / You keep all your smart modern painters / I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, da Vinci, and Gainsborough. . . . I was born in a welfare state / Ruled by bureaucracy / Controlled by civil servants / And people dressed in grey / Got no privacy got no liberty / ’Cause the 20th-century people / Took it all away from me.”

11. “The Trees,” by Rush.
Before there was Rush Limbaugh, there was Rush, a Canadian band whose lyrics are often libertarian. What happens in a forest when equal rights become equal outcomes? “The trees are all kept equal / By hatchet, axe, and saw.”

12. “Neighborhood Bully,” by Bob Dylan.
A pro-Israel song released in 1983, two years after the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, this ironic number could be a theme song for the Bush Doctrine: “He destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad / The bombs were meant for him / He was supposed to feel bad / He’s the neighborhood bully.”

13. “My City Was Gone,” by The Pretenders.
Virtually every conservative knows the bass line, which supplies the theme music for Limbaugh’s radio show. But the lyrics also display a Jane Jacobs sensibility against central planning and a conservative’s dissatisfaction with rapid change: “I went back to Ohio / But my pretty countryside / Had been paved down the middle / By a government that had no pride.”

14. “Right Here, Right Now,” by Jesus Jones.
The words are vague, but they’re also about the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War: “I was alive and I waited for this. . . . Watching the world wake up from history.”

15. “I Fought the Law,” by The Crickets.
The original law-and-order classic, made famous in 1965 by The Bobby Fuller Four and covered by just about everyone since then.

16. “Get Over It,” by The Eagles.
Against the culture of grievance: “The big, bad world doesn’t owe you a thing.” There’s also this nice line: “I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.”

17. “Stay Together for the Kids,” by Blink 182.
A eulogy for family values by an alt-rock band whose members were raised in a generation without enough of them: “So here’s your holiday / Hope you enjoy it this time / You gave it all away. . . . It’s not right.”

18. “Cult of Personality,” by Living Colour.
A hard-rocking critique of state power, whacking Mussolini, Stalin, and even JFK: “I exploit you, still you love me / I tell you one and one makes three / I’m the cult of personality.”

19. “Kicks,” by Paul Revere and the Raiders.
An anti-drug song that is also anti-utopian: “Well, you think you’re gonna find yourself a little piece of paradise / But it ain’t happened yet, so girl you better think twice.”

20. “Rock the Casbah,” by The Clash.
After 9/11, American radio stations were urged not to play this 1982 song, one of the biggest hits by a seminal punk band, because it was seen as too provocative. Meanwhile, British Forces Broadcasting Service (the radio station for British troops serving in Iraq) has said that this is one of its most requested tunes.

21. “Heroes,” by David Bowie.
A Cold War love song about a man and a woman divided by the Berlin Wall. No moral equivalence here: “I can remember / Standing / By the wall / And the guns / Shot above our heads / And we kissed / As though nothing could fall / And the shame / Was on the other side / Oh we can beat them / For ever and ever.”

22. “Red Barchetta,” by Rush.
In a time of “the Motor Law,” presumably legislated by green extremists, the singer describes family reunion and the thrill of driving a fast car — an act that is his “weekly crime.”

23. “Brick,” by Ben Folds Five.
Written from the perspective of a man who takes his young girlfriend to an abortion clinic, this song describes the emotional scars of “reproductive freedom”: “Now she’s feeling more alone / Than she ever has before. . . . As weeks went by / It showed that she was not fine.”

24. “Der Kommissar,” by After the Fire.
On the misery of East German life: “Don’t turn around, uh-oh / Der Kommissar’s in town, uh-oh / He’s got the power / And you’re so weak / And your frustration / Will not let you speak.” Also a hit song for Falco, who wrote it.

25. “The Battle of Evermore,” by Led Zeppelin.
The lyrics are straight out of Robert Plant’s Middle Earth period — there are lines about “ring wraiths” and “magic runes” — but for a song released in 1971, it’s hard to miss the Cold War metaphor: “The tyrant’s face is red.”

26. “Capitalism,” by Oingo Boingo.
“There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism / There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise. . . . You’re just a middle class, socialist brat / From a suburban family and you never really had to work.”

27. “Obvious Song,” by Joe Jackson.
For property rights and economic development, and against liberal hypocrisy: “There was a man in the jungle / Trying to make ends meet / Found himself one day with an axe in his hand / When a voice said ‘Buddy can you spare that tree / We gotta save the world — starting with your land’ / It was a rock ’n’ roll millionaire from the USA / Doing three to the gallon in a big white car / And he sang and he sang ’til he polluted the air / And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar.”

28. “Janie’s Got a Gun,” by Aerosmith.
How the right to bear arms can protect women from sexual predators: “What did her daddy do? / It’s Janie’s last I.O.U. / She had to take him down easy / And put a bullet in his brain / She said ’cause nobody believes me / The man was such a sleaze / He ain’t never gonna be the same.”

29. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Iron Maiden.
A heavy-metal classic inspired by a literary classic. How many other rock songs quote directly from Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

30. “You Can’t Be Too Strong,” by Graham Parker.
Although it’s not explicitly pro-life, this tune describes the horror of abortion with bracing honesty: “Did they tear it out with talons of steel, and give you a shot so that you wouldn’t feel?”

31. “Small Town,” by John Mellencamp.
A Burkean rocker: “No, I cannot forget where it is that I come from / I cannot forget the people who love me.”

32. “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” by The Georgia Satellites.
An outstanding vocal performance, with lyrics that affirm old-time sexual mores: “She said no huggy, no kissy until I get a wedding vow.”

33. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by The Rolling Stones.
You can “[go] down to the demonstration” and vent your frustration, but you must understand that there’s no such thing as a perfect society — there are merely decent and free ones.

34. “Godzilla,” by Blue ?yster Cult.
A 1977 classic about a big green monster — and more: “History shows again and again / How nature points up the folly of men.”

35. “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Written as an anti–Vietnam War song, this tune nevertheless is pessimistic about activism and takes a dim view of both Communism and liberalism: “Five-year plans and new deals, wrapped in golden chains . . .”

36. “Government Cheese,” by The Rainmakers.
A protest song against the welfare state by a Kansas City band that deserved more success than it got. The first line: “Give a man a free house and he’ll bust out the windows.”

37. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” by The Band.
Despite its sins, the American South always has been about more than racism — this song captures its pride and tradition.

38. “I Can’t Drive 55,” by Sammy Hagar.
A rocker’s objection to the nanny state. (See also Hagar’s pro-America song “VOA.”)

39. “Property Line,” by The Marshall Tucker Band.
The secret to happiness, according to these southern-rock heavyweights, is life, liberty, and property: “Well my idea of a good time / Is walkin’ my property line / And knowin’ the mud on my boots is mine.”

40. “Wake Up Little Susie,” by The Everly Brothers.
A smash hit in 1957, back when high-school social pressures were rather different from what they have become: “We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot.”

41. “The Icicle Melts,” by The Cranberries.
A pro-life tune sung by Irish warbler Dolores O’Riordan: “I don’t know what’s happening to people today / When a child, he was taken away . . . ’Cause nine months is too long.”

42. “Everybody’s a Victim,” by The Proclaimers.
Best known for their smash hit “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” this Scottish band also recorded a catchy song about the problem of suspending moral judgment: “It doesn’t matter what I do / You have to say it’s all right . . . Everybody’s a victim / We’re becoming like the USA.”

43. “Wonderful,” by Everclear.
A child’s take on divorce: “I don’t wanna hear you say / That I will understand someday / No, no, no, no / I don’t wanna hear you say / You both have grown in a different way / No, no, no, no / I don’t wanna meet your friends / And I don’t wanna start over again / I just want my life to be the same / Just like it used to be.”

44. “Two Sisters,” by The Kinks.
Why the “drudgery of being wed” is more rewarding than bohemian life.

45. “Taxman, Mr. Thief,” by Cheap Trick.
An anti-tax protest song: “You work hard, you went hungry / Now the taxman is out to get you. . . . He hates you, he loves money.”

46. “Wind of Change,” by The Scorpions.
A German hard-rock group’s optimistic power ballad about the end of the Cold War and national reunification: “The world is closing in / Did you ever think / That we could be so close, like brothers / The future’s in the air / I can feel it everywhere / Blowing with the wind of change.”

47. “One,” by Creed. Against racial preferences: “Society blind by color / Why hold down one to raise another / Discrimination now on both sides / Seeds of hate blossom further.”

48. “Why Don’t You Get a Job,” by The Offspring.
The lyrics aren’t exactly Shakespearean, but they’re refreshingly blunt and they capture a motive force behind welfare reform.

49. “Abortion,” by Kid Rock.
A plaintive song sung by a man who confronts his unborn child’s abortion: “I know your brothers and your sister and your mother too / Man I wish you could see them too.”

50. “Stand By Your Man,” by Tammy Wynette.
Hillary trashed it — isn’t that enough? If you’re worried that Wynette’s original is too country, then check out the cover version by Mot?rhead.

my cousin delivered a girl, 28 weeks, babys okay for a 28 weeker, shes around 3 lbs, lyra rose

One:
The new big and rich single rhymes nineteen/green/m16 and they had all of these old marines, and images of battle on 20 foot screens behind them, it was this strange, amazing conflation of public spectacle and historical revisonism, almost but not quite about iraq

Two:
Starting with a 20 foot projection of himself, ending with formation dancing vegas show girls, worshipping trace adkins, Honky Tonk Badonkadonk continues to triumph

Three:
Jesus Take the Wheel, Carrie Underwood's new single, is intensely, powerfully, religious, desperate in its faith, and one of the best written songs this year. Her performance is overwhelming in its power. She cries at the end of the performance, and later, when winning, remembers to thank Simon Callow and 19 Records (cf Clarkson at the Grammies)

Four
Gretchen Wilson Politically Uncorrect, the second single to use the phrase low man on the totem pole (the other one is by Toby Keith), the most politically expolisive thing about the entire fucking song is the acknowledgement that america might actually have a working poor and talking about being for the working man, something that neither kerry nor bush were for the last election, its become somewhat of an anthem (THIS TIME WITH MERLE) who sings really well with Wilson, sort of a whiskey/honey kind of arrangement (the conflation of working class values with religion and the miltary has a kind of kinder kircher kuche vibe on the edges, esp. with the waving american flag motiff

Five
This is the first performance that convinced me that the pretty blonde from sugar land was as a good singer as the scary dyke--the dyke (who may be fired now, cause i didnt see her playing this time) is still one of the best guitar players ive heard on recent radio, this ones a rocker (and quite a good time)

Six
Jo Dee Messina looks like somewhere b/w one of Prince's back up dancers, and Raquel Welch in 1 000 000 years BC

Seven
Montgomery Gentry, continues to combine small town nostaliga, with a myriad of daddy issues. There is a different between the anger of working class rebellion in Gretchen Wilson, no matter how stage managed it is, and Gentry's who seems to think that if you are working at all, just shut up and quit yr bitching, for someone so loud they sure seem to like ideological compliance.

Eight
Vince Gill one of the genuinely kind men in the industry, gives his humanitarian award to a small child with cancer, and yeah its mawkish and kind of sentimental, but unscripted and i find myself welling up.

Nine
Little Big Town's Boondooks, useless for the first three minutes, the harmonic convergance of the last few lines, quick and free, are effortless, and so well constructed. It starts with this almost hip hop scat singing, and then goes into this round, almost a hipper barber shop, one of the best musical moments of the night.

Ten
we rock to live, we live to rock--rascall flatts (they dont)
b)
Kelly Clarkson doing Rascall Flatts ballads shows the strength of Clarksons' voice and the weakness of the the Flatts writings

Eleven
The Wright Brothers qoute the infamous Hunter Thompson line about the music industry being a plastic trench (they are doing it from memory, off teleprompter, because they paraphrase, the full qoute is: ""The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Quite bitter for a self conglaturatory wank fast.

Twelve:
I love Sara Evans, but she hasnt been with in a thousand miles of anything resembling a coal mine.

Thirteen:
Ever time I hear Brooks and Dunn, i hate them more and more, i am almost now becoming almost ill hearing them again, and i dont know why---i could use words like artifical nostaliga, or toxic sentiment but I like those things in other artists, and it could be the politics of the domestic, but thats one of the reasons why I listen to country. Its not even the music, church choirs withstanding, they are decent song writers and good instrumentalists...but i hate them, and this performance well constructed towards audience. IT confuses me.

Fourteen
Martina tries to do honky tonk or texas swing or something that requires singer less rigid and less safe. Shes horribly boring.

Fifteen
Dwight Yoakham, ZZ Tops Bill Gibbons, The Byrds Chris Hillman, Blink 182's Travis Barker (!?), Brad Paisley, and members of the original Buck Band, and it doesnt sound bad, but then as long as you keep the energy up, its impossible to make Buck sound bad, and they keep the energy up. (Paisleys realtionship to traditonal country is really interesting, and it contiunes to be here, he seems a natural for the mateiral, but isnt as comfortable as even Barker) Its also Ballad heavy, aside from Act Naturally, which was kind od disappointing...has someone ever written on outlaw country and married pairs, because Bonnie Owens (an amazing singer and song writer on her own right) is getting the same kind of attention as Buck) Also The Streets of Bakersfield is really fucking political in its use of geography/place, sort of the anti Okie from Muskokie

Sixteen
Kenny Chesney again.

AnthonySEaston (6:27:08 AM): 1) how geographic isolation mirrors emotional isolation
2) how our ideas of women and men, are often about how they deal with this isolation (esp w. ideas of spectacle, and the domestic)
3) how we create works about this isolaiton is a simulacra of real expereinces
AnthonySEaston (6:27:27 AM): and then how all of those things are intertextual
pattismithsmense (6:27:37 AM): are they what you offered them?
AnthonySEaston (6:28:03 AM): w/o the baggage i think
pattismithsmense (6:28:30 AM): ok - how do they relate specifically to the magnetic fields song?
pattismithsmense (6:30:17 AM): (check out the list of books the mum wants banned - freakonomics??? http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bookban22.html)
AnthonySEaston (6:34:07 AM): the song is about losing, rambling thru an imagined west, and there are large sections of the song, in the beginning and in the middle, where there is no music sung. the idea of rodeo, is one of the examples of spectacled masculinity (look how it fits in oppostion to domesticity in brokeback, or how it is handled in nick rays these lusty men), how it revolves itself into a heteronormative marriage, or love or something like that, is relfected in the taming of the cowboy, which is frequently connected to the taming of the cowboy (like in the last picture show), but its really arch, and his view of the west, does not seem real, like the cowboys in that gary winnogrand photo or how winnipeg and tulsa look the same when stephen shore shoots them
pattismithsmense (6:35:21 AM): well, there's yr essay
AnthonySEaston (6:36:09 AM): just need to pump it up
AnthonySEaston (6:36:17 AM): do you think it matches what i pitched

Countries for the Deer Show: Canada,USA, Japan, France, Ukraine, Spain, England, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Sweden, Burma (its eurocentric cause deer are eurocentric, fuckers)

Materials: Graphite, Watercolour, frottage, silkscreen, tatoo, photography (c prints, polaroids, coupler prints), fabric craft (Batik, Sewing, Knitting), street art, offset lithography, cermaics, installation, performance, taxidermy, alinmunum(sp), oil on canvas, oil on linen, Digital prints, offset printing, powder coated steel, etching, glicee prints, graphite, woodcarving (cedar, ash), wrought iron, parchment, needle craft (embrodiery, petit point), lithographs, silver, horn, pewter, rubber, fencing, commerical printing, glass, lucite, flash, java, other video games, resin, collae, fiberglass, leather, acrlyic.

William Jefferson, Democratic Rep from Louisanna, who previously was caught commandering a helicopter from katrina work to get luggage, a large box, and a lap top, has been found on camera, taking 100 000 in bribes for the Nigerian VP.

This is one of several times that he has been accused of this, though the nigerian stuff is new,

The Hat Makes It

(Chuck Renslow, fotog by John of Seattle, same show as below)

Bob Mizer, Order Sheet, 1951, from a collection of nudes, New York Musuem of Sex


Bob Mizer, all pix of Bob Stroeder, 1950, source above

(note font, the lo-fi, handwritten qaulity, and the mail order nature of the porn, also note the aesthetics of mechincal reporduction, the idea of image/icon, the sexuality of capitalism, and how tender all that chicken looks)

done today:
first draft of the 100 list, for the deer show, can trim and add of course, depending on a number of factors, 750 words for xtra, worked thru some roy g biv photo stuff, talked to rachel about the bubble show, edited 100 useless photos from iphoto, settled what i kind of wanted to say in the mag fields peice...

if the democrats had any balls this would be their campaign theme song

Font Shot! (The orange, and hte perfect santa fe blue--not my favourite train font, that would be the cattle cars from nebraska, or wheat cars from saskatchewan, but the sheer tightness, it bursts out of the frame)

Robert Cottingham mostly does boring photo realist prints of various american signage--real obvious ones, he is in the middle of an alphabet (but then so am i), and i dont know, he doesnt have the ennui of bechtel or the ocd strangeness of estes, and is basically forgotten for a reason--he isnt playing in the same way other people are--but the two of the rolling stock seires ive seen, both below, move me, maybe because i love trains, maybe because of the size, and spacing, reminds of earlier american masters like scheler (sp), but there is something tender and intimate here:











Linocuts, Woodcuts, Collographs, All handcoloured in places, with pencil or watercolour, all of them based on the thesis of placement of a central element, a purity of forms, and mechanics, they of course remind me of warhol (or ruscha, or any of the desperate working over and over again of one formal element, this masturbatory desire to understand what liz taylor or naked women or the standard gas station or found photography had to do with the price of tea in china, and while warhol is a god, and ruscha is a saint, and mel ramos has a sexy cult, and balderssessi is every conceptetual's prophet, cottingham is too precise and not difficult enough to be popular, not that i dont love these works as much as i like the strongest work of the above (except rushca, who never made a weak peice) the images above make me realise how on purpose the chaos/messiness of warhols peices were, for commerical and personal reasons. these are too clean for real trains, lack the grease, the muck, the dirt, and the human interaction (trains as moving canvas for graffitti, these are trains that work--and thats the power/problem of the photo realists, and the eugenic quaility of course is not popular right now, but these, they move me intesenly, i find myself excited seeing them, maybe because they are so butch w/o being camp, or maybe because of certain mythological prarie shit, or maybe because they remind me of when dave berhman of the silver jews sings "sin and gravity/drag me down to sleep/to dream of trains across the sea..."

(his paintings of signs still suck)

Rolling Stock 56 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Arymn, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Mark, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Jesse, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Trish, 1993, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock 27, 1992, colour woodcut
Rolling Stock 13, 1997, colour woodcut

(33 others in the seires)

i know thats eleven

Ten Pairs:

Jello Panther
High Park Ravine
Glass Wall Shimmer
Airplanes
Basil's Light
Orange Sqaush
Atheltic Viewing
Drive Thru Cokes
Scavanging Curtains
Mary Kent
Skylit Tunnel

Upcoming Photo Shows Confirmed:
Roy G Biv, Naked (no date yet)
10 Pairs, Bohemia (May 25th)
no openings

Waiting for Response:
Tu Gallery (Meeting on the 25th)
Bubble (64 Steps, Rachel is currating, but no pressure)
Banff
Alberta Bienalle


Waiting to Submit
Truck Gallery, Calgary

John Waters Space Ship Earth 9/11


The whole show at the marianne boesky gallery (chelsea) apparently is well worth seeing...on till friday


here is another

(knights tales and dr doolittle two were the two movies shown on the planes that went into the wtc)

bad taste as destructive and redemptive, the natural consquences of popular culture, desire and abjection--its all here -and of course they are all cheap jokes, but effective cheap jokes, ones that are so tasteless that they act as an alternative history, to the hagigography and monument building that occur in approved culture (cf the 1776 tower or the clean respect of united 93)

and here is an interview that explains it all
is the article

here

NEW INFO ON Ramin Jahanbegloo:

WRITE TO:
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic :
His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei,
The Office of the Supreme Leader
Shoahada Street, Qom, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email:
info@leader.ir
istiftaa@wilayah.org

Head of the Judiciary :
His Excellency
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Ministry of Justice, Park-e Shahr,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: via Judiciary website: Iranjudiciary.org/feedback_en.html
Salutation: Your Excellency

COPIES TO:
President:
His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Presidency,
Palestine Avenue,
Azerbaijan Intersection,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Fax: Via Foreign Ministry: +98 21 6 674 790
(mark: "Please forward to H.E. President Ahmadinejad")
Email: dr-ahmadinejad@president.ir
via website: www.president.ir/email

(from the Pen/Amensty site)

they are esp looking for academics, so please put yr uni affilation somewhere on the letter, and any degrees etc, as well...if anyone writes arabic or persian that would be even better

Maohair is a fotog from china, who takes photos of the immigrant migrations from rural regions into cities, this urbanazation is the single largest problem in the next 100 years, next to information control and the nation state--his ability to take photos of car crashes, industrial accidents, police brutality, etc, and then smuggle them out, combine these two, making him perhaps the most impt (and unheard of) journalist (esp since photojournalism seems to be more am then pro these days) working recently--the images are incredibly graphic, but well worth seeing (here is one of the least violent:

his caption for this image: Migrant workers climb up the construction towers at the site to demand their back wages
here>are more, but in mandrian

every playboy centerfold ever--the ones from the 50s are much sexier, then the ones later (though there is a string of well fed lovechildren from 68 to 72 or so that come close...
the pussy wars of the 80s, make everything so harsh, mechincal, parodic, and competitve, its less about decent photography, beautiful women, and general giddy fun and more about who can out hustle hustler...(read laura kipnis' bound and gagged for discussion about the history of mainstreaming porn, and class signifers in this sort of thing)

mass hysteria among catholic school girls in laos, memories of salem or loudon, sometimes i wonder if beatlemania and the like is a western manifesation of this

speaking of mass hysteria a brilliant interview with christian page, about abortion, and how its legalazation gave us all sorts of under rated gifts (including contraception, pleasure, queer rights, the autonomy of womens bodies, stronger laws against rape, the work against "surgical correction" of intersex folks, and the mainstreaming of blow jobs), once again the abortion wars are wars against non reproductive sex
three great qoutes:
The first line of attack is legal and safe abortion. The second line of attack is contraception. We have to understand that the pro-life goal isn't about reducing abortion or furnishing people with prevention. It's about forcing people to live in ways that the pro-life movement wants them to live.

The pro-choice movement is like a relief agency. In a war-torn country, these workers are the first to get attacked. The ones furnishing water, medical supplies, furnishing people with the things that enable them to live their lives safely — they're the first to go down.

The American Prospect recently analyzed coverage of the New York Times op-ed page and concluded that it's been increasingly airing inaccurate or terrifically critical views of the pro-choice movement. Even NPR has been slow. I don't see a lot of perspectives from people who are in the trenches on either side of this issue. What I do see are these diary-like entries as to what's been happening: "Alito nominated. Alito confirmed. Memo found." I don't see people asking questions that matter.
read the whole thing


French/Polish 19th Century, a great example of the flying penis motif, from the rare erotica blog

Dean fires his queer point man, goes in front of the cameras, and talks about how marriage is only for breeders, loses 5k of campaign money, and apolgizes, not getting the money back story here people assume that queer rights are a minority, and a small one, and fucking with them is alright--the problem is that we work as canaries in the coal mine, about sexuality, about how to treat complicated minorties, about behaviour vs idenity, about mutablity and choice in a (post) democratic society, etc etc and so noting games being played against us is a good indication of games being played elsewhere (though he was eloquent, on point, funny, and pointed today on the daily show--the guy is slippery as a trout


SHE has been arrested 22 times, tortured so badly that her front teeth were knocked into her nose and had an AK-47 thrust up her vagina until she bled. Thabitha Khumalo’s crime: to campaign against a critical shortage of tampons and sanitary towels in Zimbabwe, one of the least talked about and most severe side-effects for women of the country’s economic crisis. Full story here, including how to help, and attention being paid b/c of british celebs, here it reminds me of how womens shelters constantly beg for tampons, or how tampons are taxed in canada while condoms arent, or about how food banks never have enough pads or tampoons, or how expensive they are--the politics of blood...i dont have any cash, but if you do, try to send some along (and people should talk to oxfam about whether they do this too)

ill get ray to explain this one to you, sein fienn (ie the poltical part of the catholic ira) nomainted ian paisley (ie colonialist, homophobe, racist, batshit protestant) to be on their council here

The philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, who has taught at Harvard and the U of T, and has written about Ghandi, Isiah Berlin and Hegel, went back home to Tehran, and got arrested--he is in prison right now, though apparently phyisically safe (the prison he is in his notorious for a torture center--though i havent read Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, i have read several articles of his on pacificism, ethnic identity, king and ghandi--this isnt good news, and im really quite scared for me... Teh Chronichle of Higher Education reports here...the last qoute of the article is really impt---Rather than having embassies intervene and turning this into a political show, I think the best strategy would be for Ramin's academic colleagues -- college presidents, provosts, deans, faculty, students -- to write to Iran's leaders, to the president, to the head of the intelligence ministry, to the head of the Iranian foreign ministry. ... It's very important not to involve U.S. political officials, because that would immediately be used against him.

The address for his cultural research beurou(sp) in Tehran is:
No 10, Shahid Servati St.
Kamranieh- Shemiran
Tehran- Iran

Fiction:

37 Norman Spinard The Iron Dream: An Alt History novel, where hitler moves to ny after the putsch, and at first draws adn then writes for pulp sci fi magazines, eventually this was supposed to be his masterpeice, it is a reworking of historical documents and mein kamph, in the style of heinlien and other lesser writers. the book is brilliant, maintaining tone throughout, writing this badly on puspose is an incredible act of chutzpah and skill--it is also an impt book, metacritquing the fascism, and controlling of bodies that occur in large chunks of sci fi, and also the academic reclaiming of books that may or may not require it. i first heard of the book in China Meville's long canon of socialist sf in the fantastic metropolis, where he wrote t his about it:
A SF novel by Adolf Hitler… Spinrad’s funny, disturbing and savage indictment of the fascist aesthetics in much genre SF and fantasy. What if Hitler had become a pulp SF writer in New York? Not a book about that possibility but a book from it. “By the same author: Triumph of the Will and Lord of the Swastika.” Brave and nasty

Hes right, i also couldnt honestly recommend it, its too difficult to read.


36 Jesus Son---the new york times called it the third best american novel written in the last 30 years, and Blair loved it, i read it as short stories, though it could work as both. there are sections of beauty in hte prose, and i like its sort of heroin dream spaciness, raymond carver, with out families, and in the pacific northwest instead of the mid west. i didnt like it though, it seemed too self conciously art, too proud of its own decadence, and too directed towards its own ego, this might be because i like drinking writers better then i like smack writers

fifteen things i want to talk about in relation to the essay for geez

1) sodom and gommorah
2) the leviticus qoute about strangers in egypt
3) the idea of the mercy seat in kings
4) paul at pentecost, the galatians, etc, and identity sets
5) the early xian martyrs
6) Chrysolom
7) The rule of st benedict
8) anglo ideals (from monastics, to hank viii, etc)
10) gender, geography, and the lingustic similarties b/w covents and whorehouses (get the to a nunnery)
11) the undergnd railroad, and abolotion
12) anti veitnam in yale
13) immigration trends
14) islamic ideas of hospalitiy and the last two wars
15) the social gospel and food

The Last Sotheby Auctions, only three i want to buy it from, but those 3 are worth about 15 million (a rymans that look like straight from sears new fridge enamel, a landscape abstrated lonely and pretty agnes, and the urtext of commerically banal kitsch: koons vaccuums)

new records for Robert Ryman (an ugly, obvious, pockmarked disaster, for 8m, 4 times the previous record), Andreas Gursky (buying gursky is like buying falcon videos, strictly for size queens), Damien Hirst (shockingly not the rotting sheep), Lisa Yuskavage (can someone please explain this woman to me, i think she hates tits and thats why she makes them ugly), David Hockney (he should be getting lichenstein prices, he isnt), Neo Ranch (hes german), Brice Marden (post minimalism is fun), and Cecily Brown (i like my paintings about fucking to be a little less abstract.)

and Christies prices for Pierre Soulages (no i dont know him either)( Christo (more orange flags somewhere--i wonder if people buy christos as an oblique way to donate), Elmer Bischoff (fischl if he couldnt paint), Victor Vasarely (surpisingly little number, but out of fashion for so long, dont call it a comeback), Harry Bertoia (is this the guy who does those steel chairs that cause back aches after 10 minutes?) and Forrest Bess (mid 50s, texan, there must be a story here i dont get) Yoshitomo Nara (this is why you dont give hipsters money or musuem jobs, cheap sentiment) Sturtevant ( Robert Irwin (criminally undervalued, even at half a mill), Ross Bleckner (its insane that his record was 120,000, batshit) Karen Kilimnik (imagine if peyton couldnt paint) and 11 others

i lost a contest on the modern art blog, thinking a small sqaure mao in teals would be worth about mill, everyone else thought it would be worth 250-300,000, except the dude who tht it would be worth 550 000, it went for 750, 000...still a steal.

(also why are buying soupcans, again, for the longest time they were thot in the market to be horribly cliched)

most overpriced works:

that fucking picasso
a lichenstein sunrise
that yuskavage painting
and warhols soup can

most overrated artists
hirst
picasso (almost 60 lots of cermaics!)
judd (and i like judd)
warhol (and i like warhol)
phillip di circio (and i hate dicirrcio)

ones that are still a steal:
andre sculptures
mel ramos nudes
robert indiana prints
martha rosler
richard estes (though not as cheap as 5 yrs ago, i was right about the rise of the photorealists)
late 40s picabos (though not next year)
danny lyon
robert irwin
helen frankenthaller
craig elliot
african photography in general
bettina rheims
Nolde, Kircherner and company
Sandblack
Twombly Prints (esp since the drawings and paintings people are paying too much for them)
MArtin prints (see above)
Kenneth Noland (this will change, people will pay more for colourfield in the next 6 years or so, esp with recent kelly action, increased interest in louis, ironic reconstrctions of monochromy, and musuem work--and noland is too big to be ignored)

i dont know how i feel about them
ed ruscha (all prints/photographs, no drawings, and excellent 6/7 figure prices, after decades of being bargin basement, his role of LA patriach/grandfather to us all is being realised, im not sure its a bubble)
tom wessleman limited audience, too much shit work, i think he has reached his level
Rosenquist--his paintings because of size, limited taste, etc, are basically where they will always be--but when his prints, photos, collages and other ephermability starts coming into large scale market forces things might move around

havenet paid attention to old masters, as lm noted in the below comment

Willie Nelson has always deconstructed westerns, and maintained a
belief in telling the truth about places buried under their own
mythology. It is found on his album, the Red Headed Stranger and in
any number of singles over decades. It is found, in his low, lean and
hungry version of the traditional ballad "He was a Friend of Mine",
which could so easily have been dismissed, because of its lyrics, and
because of its placement on the soundtrack to that Heath and Jake
movie. After his soundtrack work, he released, on Howard Stern and
then i-tunes, a cover of the cult classic outlaw tune Cowboys are
Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other. The two songs entwine, and
emerge as one text, working out familiar themes: the decimation that
unexpected desire can cause, ideas of masculinity and honour, the
implications of dereliction of duty, and larger, more formal concerns
of isolation, landscape and comfort.

Cowboys…is the rare song that actually talks about what it means to
fuck the same gender on the prairies. Fuck in any number of ways, fuck
because they love each other, fuck because they are lonely, fuck
because they want to be kept literally warm or have a companion, or to
continue their lives outside the mainstream, as another kind of
outlaws. Like any number of us, it is about what happens when others
cannot handle the fluidity and dangerous nature of desire. The song is
a classic, because it catalogs the options for how bodies fit
together, and because it acknowledges that some of the options mean
that "there's always someone who says what the others just whisper/and
mostly that someone is the first one to be shot down dead"

The original is done in waltz time, and has a theatrical winking and
nodding. The music has the same kind of music hall extravagance that
caused Jobraith to lose his career, and 30 years later for Rufus
Wainwright to have one. (Think of it as a less secure, less ambiguous,
less haunting version of the Magnetic Field's Papa was a Rodeo.) The
slippages of gender, sexuality, and desire emphasized here are
bog-standard Freud, lines like "I believe to my soul/there is a
feminine/and inside every lady/there is a deep manly voice/ to be made
clear", maintain gay men really want to be women and vice versa line
that seems so old fashioned in the land of Brokeback and the
International Gay Rodeo Association.

The satisfaction in male companionship is a central theme in the both
songs, in the film, in westerns in general. The codes of masculinity
are Byzantine and violations of these codes are rewarded by violence.
One of the reasons why Matthew Sheppard was left to die in that field
in Wisconsin was the difference between city boys and country boys,
between those who went to college, and those who were working men.
Watching Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee is as aware of this; as is Ned
Sublette (the songwriter of Cowboys…) the hardness of the lovemaking,
and the wrestling/shoving/physicality of the foreplay in the movie
show this. He was also wise choosing the solidity of Willie Nelson to
sing over the credits, as a coda, a song that expressed issues of
masculinity, obliquely. He was a Friend of Mine, comes from the ground
of the west. It does not have an author, and the narrative is basic
narrative, with little detail, some in cliché. He sings it with great
tenderness, but little directness (as opposed to Dylan, who was never
really tender).

Like most ballads, the key to "He was a Friend of Mine", is the
repetition of the chorus. The lines "he never did wrong/a thousand
miles at home, and he never harmed no one" have an old fashioned,
permanence—a depth of hagiography that was never really existent in
either Clint Eastwood or in Roy Rogers. The two songs here are never
really about fucking, but about how to live integrously in a land that
rewards anything but what it says it does.

Both performances then are about what the Quakers would call speaking
truth to power, and farmers I know, would call handling your own shit.
The laconic taciturn outside of the cowboy hides a soft center. There
is an effort to keep secrets, to cause no trouble. There is something
of the private text, spoken softly amongst friends, in He was a Friend
of Mine, and Willie infuses all of the privacy, the sadness and the
shock, in the line "Stoles away and cries". There is tension between
being quietly silent and actually processing grief, a tension that
violates the code of the west, just as admitting that the desires that
one cowboy has for another, may not only be geographic convenience,
but about lust.

This might be Willie Nelson's American Recordings moment, a desire to
push himself away from old complacencies, and old audiences. It often
happens when someone's physical instrument is so ragged, and when the
desire is to communicate differently Nelson's voice is shot. But how
ragged he sounds here, and how broken he sounds, makes the two songs
even sadder, stronger, more tragic. They are a return to questions
that remain unsolved in the 70s, and their answers are of an old man:
be generous to people, mourn the dead, fight for the living, refuse to
apologize for love and desire. Together, they prove a testament to
Nelson's skills as an interpretive guide, and to someone who really
knows cowboys.

More Auction Results released, some big guns, so i might actually be able to spend the 94m (this is christies post war and contempary evening sale, ie the big guns...)

667 Dirk Losker's bright yellow train, made like a kiddie craft
668 A cosmic (literally, made with celestial maps), and holy joseph cornell box, shockingly cheap for such a master (when a bad warhol is worth 11m or a picasso is worth 94m, if i had my entire budget to waste, i would almost blow it on this peice)
669 One of the last remaining private combine, and though it lacks the rawness or strangeness of some, but with its use of solvent and tissue paper touches something intangible
670 Away from the flock, divided (Damien Hirst, Sheep, Vitrine, Formadelde, falling apart)
671 A huge, framed, hand coloured gilbert and george photo montage, filthy and poltical
672 A Calder Mobile
673 A large Morris Louis stain painting, with prominent use of a black transparent scrim
674 An excellent Chris Wool text peice, of atomic dog, by george clinton
675 Mazoni's Achrome, of Kaolin and unprimed canvas, like a textured ryman
676 an Eva Hesses test peice, looking like broken skin, out of latex and surgical bandages...
677 James Rosenquists Conveyor Belt, for its material:oil on canvas with motorized conveyor, painted canvas, conveyor belt, painted fabric and wood
678 A Brass, unpatinaed, ovoid, floating like a space egg pod, by Judd
679 A Galavinzed Steel and Aqua plexiglass single wall shelf, also by judd.
689 A pure and unblemished, Judd Box in raw pine, from the undervalued late 90s
690 1951 Graphite Study for De Koonings Woman Seires, lots of white space, but good formal use of space, etc

(my remaining 408 333 could not buy koons bronze model of an aqua lung 8m, wayne theibaud 7 candy apples 7m or a small, black and blue Cifford Still, of longing and meloncholy .2,8m )

New Auction Results, updating the Picasso list (Renfcos corpeate collection was sold in two parts, its not a v. good and deeply cannonical collection) but of it i would buy

640 Elgar Essars' work on bridges and seas
641 A perfect Rodney Graham's upended tree
642 Gaberiel Ozaco's green and black, Atomists, collage and couple print
643 John Balderssei replacing the heads with 60s icons with monochromatic dots.
644 A suite of 10 Ed Ruscha Gas Stations
645 Sigmar Polkes seires of 10 conceptual lithographs, mostly abstraction ideas about people
646 Bringing the War Home, by Martha Rosler, photo collages of veitnam war horrors placed in domestic scenes, including the white house, (15 images)
647 William Egglestons Memphis (First Imprint)
648 The Avedon shot of Warhol's boddy riddled with Solonias' damage
649 Arbus menacning, tattooed man, overwhelming a stomy sky and carnival fun
650 Matthew Barney Cremaster Cycle One, with Self Lubrciating Petroluem Jelly Frame
650-652 Two other Cremaster Couple Prints w/o the frame
653 Cattelans two praying hands emerging from a desert grave, called Mother
654 Gillian Wearings photos of common people holding signs (5 seires)
656 6 Belcher spherical gas holders (in one lot)
657 Gurskys 20 foot by 15 foot C Print of a Times Sqaure office tower (think modernist grid)
658 Another Gursky, German this time, of a van Der Rohe pavillion, in lovely grey and white tones
659 Friedman taking a picture of pink pepto bismal thrown against a blue sky
659-661 Two Eva Hesse uterine photograms
662 Adam Fuss Rabats connected by their own intestines
663 Eggleston working out racial implications of transportation in Sumner Missippi
664 Serrano's Black Christ

Which leaves me with 17 393 333

this is me with a neko case review

actually about papa now

Papa Was A Rodeo.’” “Papa Was A Rodeo” happens to be, probably, the most popular song on 69 Love Songs. It’s iconic and not filler–like. I expected, when making a three–hour set, that there would be people who wouldn’t like everything. Of course, that’s largely the point. But saying here’s a genre of music…I’m always interested inattacking the idea of genre in music. It’s horribly misleading. If I say that a love song is genre, and then there are 69 different genres on the album, what happens to the idea of genre? There are people who consider themselves to hate country music, so those people are going to have to hate “Papa Was A Rodeo.”
Discorder Interview Dec/Jan 2004

The Magnetic Fields didn't miss a beat, but some songs stood out in their live performances. "Papa Was a Rodeo" and "Yeah! Oh Yeah!" were duets highlighting the musical chemistry between Gonson and Merritt. "Papa Was a Rodeo" first teases as a gay love song until the person Merritt sings to, Mike, turns out to be a girl According to Merritt, the girl is actually modeled on a Nancy Sinatra film character and the song an homage to the weird Lee Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra duets. The song also was unique for the only "special effect" of the entire show, as disco ball-style lights were jokingly introduced onto the stage as Merritt crooned, "The light reflecting off the mirrorball / looks like a thousand swirling eyes / They make me think I shouldn't be here at all / You know, every minute someone dies."
Johns Hopkins News Letter Concert Review: http://www.jhu.edu/~newslett/04-19-01/Arts/5.html April 19 2001

"This other critic claimed I tainted the Magnetic Fields' Papa Was A Rodeo because I was too earnest or something. Whatever.""People just love that Papa Was A Rodeo song. It's the favourite song of both my mom and my Republican brother. I've never spoken to Stephin Merritt before, but I hope he likes it, too. I'm really a fan of the artists whose songs I do, and this is just my way of sending folks like Johnny Paycheck and Willie Nelson little love letters." Now Toronto May 11-20th, Cover Story on Kelly Hogan, who is speaking here (Tim Perlich)

Hipsters also have their cowboy fetishes; they've moved from Serge Gainsbourg's sub lime saddle frolics on to Lee Hazlewood reissues, most delectably 1970's Cowboy in Sweden. Over some jaunty easy listening, cornpone philosopher Hazlewood duets on "Hey Cow boy" with a Swedish blonde who taunts: "You're just a toy." As he defends himself—"You wind me up and watch what I do to you/I may be small but...no big cowboy can do the little things I do"—I start to wonder if he's actually her vibrator. Unable to resist an exploded trope, Stephin Merritt cuts in with "Papa Was a Rodeo," the 69 Love Songs song that got the biggest cheers the night I saw him. "Papa was a rodeo, Mama was a rock 'n' roll band," Merritt deadpans to his lover, Mike. "Never stuck around long enough for a one night stand." Turns out the exact same is true for Mike, so they settle down for 55 years. Why play the field when everyone else is a cowboy anyway? (From Eric Weisbands article on Sally Timms and the Mekons, Village Voice Nov 17-23 1999)

Merritt's writing talent is undeniable, which is probably why people are drawn to cover his tunes. What about Kelly Hogan's cover of Papa Was A Rodeo (Merritt's Nancy Sinatra-Lee Hazlewood tribute) on the Pine Valley Cosmonauts' Beneath The Country Underdog (Bloodshot) disc?

"I think it might've come out before my version did. Apparently, she saw us play it live, and somebody must've been taping the show. I should call her up and find out, shouldn't I? 'Hi, it's Stephin Merritt, and I'm just wondering how you managed to cover Papa Was A Rodeo before I did. '"Technically Hogan's cover came out a few months after 69 Love Songs, so Merritt's a bit off. But he should really call her up for a chat. I mean, the cover's fairly sincere, so I don't think she's pissing all over the song."Yeah, but she changed the genders in the tune. That's not something I would've done in that particular song. It takes away the central joke. Oh, well."

Interview With Merritt, Now Toronto, July 1-7 2004, Sarah Liss

Not all gay men are urban hairdressers who swoon at Judy Garland (not that there's anything wrong with that) as this Magnetic Fields' song from Stephin Merritt's epic gender-bashing exploration of varied forms of love, straight and gay, reminds us. "Papa Was a Rodeo" is an after-hours country saloon song about a gay man who "could rope a steer" and for whom "home was anywhere with diesel gas, love was a trucker's hand," who finds a kindred spirit without having to run away to the big city.
Al Weisel, Freelance writer, on personal blog here: http://home.nyc.rr.com/alweisel/cdnowgaymalesongs.html

Since Stephin Merritt remarks that he doesn’t “want to say which ones are ‘true’ songs,” there is no profit in going down that byway of pop criticism which insists on seeing songs as extracts from an autobiography. And yet I adhere to the delusion that there’s something heartbroken and truthful and even sincere about a lot of these songs. Sincere, a word that doesn’t come in for a lot of respect these days. I brought the point up with Claudia, by e-mail, and her response was, “There’s something about sincerity that nauseates me.” I had the same reaction from Stephin himself. I did an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer before opening for the Magnetic Fields, and when asked why I liked the band, I told the interviewer that I thought that Stephin’s songs were, notwithstanding his denials, heartfelt and moving. Then I made the mistake of repeating this to Stephin backstage. His put-down was swift and complete. I can’t recreate it exactly but it was close to words like: “What incredible bullshit.”But if there’s not something true and sincere about the complexity of human emotions on this record, why bother to keep listening to it? An album rewards attention over four years, or more, because it means something about how people live. That’s why no one really listens to the Electric Light Orchestra anymore. Theirs were impeccably crafted pop songs that meant nothing at all. They were adept, and they were as compelling as sheet rock. People listen to Burt Bacharach not for the tricky metrical changes and major seventh chords, although these are nice, but because of the conjunction of the music and the complicated pathos of the words.After all, it’s not called 69 Clever Songs or 69 Songs with Extremely Dextrous End Rhymes or 69 Songs in Which a Guy With a Lot of Talent Apes Other People’s Musical Styles. It does say Love Songs in the title, and I take the ambition to be as indicated. The word love is invoked in the title, and it turns up in ninety-nine one-hundredths of the songs—not as a mere signifier of the sort imagined by Ferdinand de Saussure, but because love, the word, the idea, speaks to an important, even exalted way that people interact. When this interaction has been effectively dealt with in the popular song (“All You Need Is Love,” “Shelter From the Storm,” “God Only Knows,” “My Funny Valentine”), it has reached a place that is indelible to millions. To incline toward this word, to incline toward this abstraction, with all the trouble and bliss that it causes, in sixty-nine different ways, is to be preoccupied—centrally, vitally—with what it means to be living here on earth. That we are still listening to the album is proof of its meaning, not proof of its inventiveness. Because inventiveness is not forever. Inventiveness lasts about fifteen minutes.

Rick Moody Believer May 2003

Papa Was a Rodeo," as should be explained in the box set book, is (in my mind) sung by a man, who resembles a Lee Hazelwood character, to a woman named Mike, as Nancy Sinatra's character was called in "Wild Angels." It is thus explicitly a Lee & Nancy tribute, with an actual lyric reference, however roundabout, which is more than I usually do. If Stereolab did story songs, that's what their references would look like too.The trucker's hand refers to truckstop sex of the most banal kind. The couple stays together for fifty-five years, and their vocation (by implication, the original vocation of the narrator) is that of itinerant alligator wrestlers. The song is heterosexual, with homosexual tease because until Shirley sings you don't know Mike is a woman.
ld beighton, from the stephin songs mailing list, archived here: http://stephinsongs.wiw.org/msg.html

Her take on the Magnetic Fields' "Papa Was a Rodeo" may be the year's most sublime five minutes of recorded sound. Hogan is nonetheless sensitive to critics who slight singing and exalt songwriting. "Everyone respects Loretta Lynn as a songwriter," she notes. "But [guitarist] Andy [Hopkins] was looking at a bunch of her old records and figured out that I do the same ratio of originals to covers-- about three of ten. That was like getting my Christmas present in July."
Allison Smith Lindell Minnepolis City Pages Oct 11 2000

Before I spoke with Magnetic Fields ringleader Stephin Merritt, who is also the froggy voice behind the synth-pop of Future Bible Heroes and the Gothic Archies, I made several efforts to avoid falling into the dismal flypaper that is a bad interview. I called another writer who had spoken with Merritt in the past and asked him about the singer's conversational traits. "Oh, he's a monster," he told me without hesitation. "Whatever you do, don't interrupt him, even if there's a pause." Check. A representative of the Magnetic Fields' label, Merge Records, asked if I had ever spoken with Merritt before. When I said no, he quickly ticked off a list of helpful suggestions that rivaled a Miss Manners column in intense, nit-picky etiquette: "Whatever you do, don't tell him you like his music. Don't gush; it makes him disgusted." Check, check. "Ask him about French and Brazilian pop--he's a big fan. He likes movie soundtracks, too. Oh, and you know he's a writer, right?" Triple check. Despite the caveats, I didn't think talking to Merritt would be traumatic. His songs are filled with broken hearts and tearful admissions of suicidal desires; surely anyone who writes such teetering-on-the-brink keyboard pop can't possibly be a demon interviewee. Krista Ojala Williamette Week, April 12 1998

At TMF's previous Philadelphia gig, club patrons briefly considered the quartet's odd instrumentation and studied, low-affect vocals, then threw bottles and shouted "Go away, faggot! Village Voice, Rob Tannenbaum, DEc 1-7th Concert Review, 1999

tephin Merritt is a gay east villager who has recorded mostly for indie labels but has little affinity with indie culture, an introvert who spends many of his nights in a gay bar, not socializing, but writing songs in a notebook while listening to a jukebox. Although he was never closeted, and on the Magnetic Fields' 1990 debut Distant Plastic Trees called his publishing company Gay & Loud (the other half refers to his manager, drummer, keyboardist, singer, and close friend Claudia Gonson), his poker face keeps emotions closeted ibid

"I have a low voice and a sad facial expression, and I'm not enthusiastic about anything," Merritt explains unenthusiastically, "and I prefer honesty in conversation. That combination drives some people crazy. Almost everyone in California thinks I hate them. I relate well to the English; they understand that I don't hate them." The emotions detailed on 69 Love Songs, he says, include many unknown to him, like—er, such as ecstasy, joy, jealousy, and boredom. All are "emotions I don't actually feel," he says, because his own moods range only "between delight and agonizing depression." ibid

He never had to come out, he says, because "no one thought I was straight." Friends kept telling him he was gay, "and finally I said, I guess you're right." His mom gave him a book called The Gay Mystique, and he followed the author's advice on how to find sex: He went to New York and struck up a conversation about Fassbinder in a West Village bookstore. "But I hadn't read the part about what you're supposed to do," he laughs, "so it wasn't all that satisfying." ibid

And TMF have expanded to include Gonson, a Harvard College grad now studying with queer theorist Eve Sedgwick at City University while pursuing a Ph.D., plus two of her college mates, Chinese American cellist Sam Davol, a Legal Aid lawyer, and Korean American guitarist John Woo, a graphic designer. ibid

The wit and conceits of your lyrics seem to have a lot in common with country music. Do you like country?

Country, back when it was awkward and funny and smart and odd, was simply Southern pop. Now that it's marketed to death (again) as "down home" -- read "stupid" -- it's stupid a priori. In Nashville they eat their young and then expect them to reproduce. They drove Nanci Griffith and k.d. lang out, and they're doing it to Lyle Lovett. Creative people won't live there anymore.
Mother Jones April 1999

Before long, Merritt goads Bruno into a gentle debate about lyrics: Bruno -- a philosophy doctoral candidate that could be likened to a wordier, American Elvis Costello - decries the use of cliché in his songwriting, preferring to find new ways of expressing his emotions. Ever the counterpoint to the thoughtfully animated Bruno, Merritt explains that he likes to use clichés as a sort of emotional shorthand, a way of expressing something with a few words rather than a whole verse.

I'm confused. "Do you ever worry that people might not pay that much attention to your lyrics if you load them with clichés?," I ask. "That they might overlook the meaning of what you're trying to say?"

Merritt pauses, dramatically. He often does this before speaking, though whether he's collecting his thoughts or intentionally increasing the tension in the room is anyone's guess. The effect is the latter. "Are you familiar," he asks, his voice monotone, "with the works of Andy Warhol?"
Earshot April 1997 Randy Silver http://www.sfbg.com/Dilettante/newbible.html






some guys have a beer, and do anything, anything anything (i wish you were my bf,i)