which means they are left w. two excellent writers on staff. saltz on art, who got a pulitizer nod this year, and i think won one, and musto, who has never been left in the same room with the committee...ironically both use their columns to talk about the role of women, queers, and other minority voices, few of which are left in an increasingly gentrified new york, saltz being one of the few bitter about the market, and musto one of the few refuisng to allow faggotry to be mainstreamed

xgau just got fired from the voice, so w/o chuck and now w/o xgau little or no chance that pazz and jop will go on for 07.

i got the last invite then? or at least the last of an era (and firing xgau is just stupid, hes a brand (i mean i dont like his writing, and reading him is often difficult, and well hes a bit of a pain, but he was the first to talk this pop cult shit seriously--and now him, marcus, eddy, tosches dont have a place to write day to day stuff, which is what rock crit is about...)

here isa copy of his resignation letter:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

If this comes completely out of the blue, I apologize.

It is now official--Village Voice Media fired me today, "for
taste," which means (among other things) slightly sweeter
severance. This despite the support of new music editor Rob
Harvilla, who I like as a person and a writer. We both believed I
had won myself some kind of niche as gray eminence. So I was
surprised Tuesday when I was among the eight Voice employees
(five editorial, three art) who were instructed to bring their
union reps to a meeting with upper management today. But I
certainly wasn't shocked--my approach to music coverage has never
been much like that of the New Times papers,

Bless the union, my severance is substantial enough to give me
time to figure out what I'm doing next. In fact, having finished
all my freelance reviews yesterday, I don't have a single
assignment pending. So, since I have no intention of giving up
rock criticism, all reasonable offers entertained; my phone
number is in the book, as they used to say when there were books.
What I don't need is a vacation--the three of us just had a great
two and a half weeks, and Nina matriculated at BMCC yesterday.

No need to respond. Forward to whoever you will.

Love,

Bob Christgau

(via gawker)

ann dean from art met, has agreed to rep, and send to nyc, the pick up truck artist book

drinx with brad, at jersey giant, lots and lots of excellent talk, about god, writing, sex, kids, and other intimacies

he seems genuinly saddened by not having in me at the wright awards, which kind of made me feel guilty, cause i mostly did the wright work to learn about, to gain expereince doing pr, and i really didnt like the art...but after a while, i did the work b/c i ended up liking brad as a person

and hes going to read this and its gonna be sentimental or anything, which is difficult because i am always shocked that people want to spend time with me

fiction
15/14 two volumes of scott pilgrim
excellent art, funny in places, pacing is off, concept is too odd i think for mew, other people think its genius, donest grab my balls

(im in TO, in the last 72 hours i have bought 6 books (Shiners foto book, Warhol book on his films, Robert and Ansel Adams dual show catalog, the lunch poems by o haraa in a handsome green/orange city lights pocket poets series, a book of fotos of nevada brothels, which turned out to be a sly essay on american taste, sherman alexies 10 little indians); met with people (glenys for drinks and greasy apps in the village; lorna, rm vaughn, a young curator named jennifer, a uni prof from guelph named sheila, and michael chambers, a toronto fotog. rm vaughn was charming, jennifer looked like sarah silverman, sandra did her degree from u of a, and reminded me of fern lebowitz, michael was debonair, well spoken, clever, and gave me a ride home, lorna has the most amazing victorian, and a great collection of sometimes text based, mostly taxonomic photo and craft work), david who told me great stories of his life with james, stories too private and sacred to tell here, plus rachel met me at the airport, and colleen and i saw art, and pat and i went for comix, hope moneys here tomorrow cause its running low...

art ive seen has mostly been medicore, cause its august

a slick, kelly green, double elipse, somewhere b/w a hot rod and an ellsworth kelly, proving colour field was back, by xian eckhart and wade krom's found foto seires called photographers shadow, 12 pictures bought vintage, of the photographer being in the frame and not in the frame, seductive and symbolic, but a little obvious

saw hri at mocca, hes doing install there, and paul butlers hosting a collage party,but i will be at the falls, so i will miss it

theresa sapergia, at kmprojects, huge pencil drawing of deer dead and floating, bigger then most of what i have in the show, so well worth having for the deer show, have contact info (

something called obsession at edward day, badly hung, not really working well together, but some great peices, including melissa dohertys small oil paintings, well lit, and constructed like american regionalists, of views from the sides of high ways, the chick can paint a mean gaurd rail, and is an excellent colouriist and the sizes are excellent, less then a couple of feet long and a foot wide, a drawing by lisa Iglesias of a sheep and a goat connected to a ravelling coat that they are both wearing, and anthony kortus super packed c prints, of mulitples, mostly items of helath and hygeine

i wrote about eric doeringer at flickr, but his iconic and deconstructive bootleg seires was a highlight also at km projects...as was stephen andrews prints, for his seires of paintings, called apostles, 12 sepia toned physique pictorial queens, the sepia colour perfect, for bronzed bodies, for the bronze of cathedrals, for the nostaliga of slowly rotting woodpulp (pulp!) and the two prints i saw were what happened when he took the original oils, and placed a sheet of paper, and pulled...some of the strongest work...

i also bought a print from magic pony, and saw the bruce davidson show at bulger, and found some other work for the deer show there, and also at studio brillante, all of which i will write about later

new meme
choose five from this random list, that you think says something about you:
here

I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?
Ronnie Shakes

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.
Rita Mae Brown

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Mae West

May your service of love a beautiful thing; want nothing else, fear nothing else and let love be free to become what love truly is.
Hadewijch of Antwerp

the 100s are better, b/c the colour is better
cerluen
the colour of skies in august, childrens television,
krsnas skin
the clothing of mary, mother of god

the 150s make me feel better, but are worse
purple
the colour of thunder storms, bruises,
industrial carpeting, and grape kool aid

i took this, i like this

fiction

18) v for vendetta, adoloscent, cryptic, silly, and camp--not as effective as his other work, and shows weakness for political naivetee, moore doesnt know what to do with the real world (but thats okay, neither did borges)

17) the postman always rings twice
i forgot how reading this, was like swimming thru a fever dream, a rock hard clarity, and likes women better then his pals

Art Show Idea

The Postmodernist Grid.

Trace Adkins, Red Hot Mama, just watch it.

i have a show at artshab, edmonton, 21st of Sept...more details coming

Customers who bought items in your Recent History also bought:
Everywhere ~ Tim McGraw
Undoing Gender by Judith Butler

(from amazon)

in my darker moments, i imagine them fucking

and i got aish

link dump:

this sketchbook by george grosz, drawn in 51, shows that his talent for the grotesque, the frightening, and the trapped, is still fully operational, in fact his drawings of mice caught in traps shows a man in full capacity of his talents, a better formalist and a more meloncholy artist then his angry berlin knife thrusts.

beauty tips for ministers

Carle Fernadez performance peice, documented here, features her stripping in and out of a ebar costume, it reminds me of marian engels novel

excellent ny times op/ed about xian zionists and the recent isreali war against lebanon

video
for the dresden dolls "sing". the song is a little gothy, but it hits my weak black heart every time i listen to it, thnx D

the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)continues to slide into batshit irrelavence with a book about how 9/11 was preplanned, and connecting this thesis to bush being literally satanic (i have more respect for The Dark Lord to assume that he is responsible for the bushes)

i like Pierre Trudeou(sp), but his naivetee about Cuba, and the dangers of the far left, has always struck me as deeply problematic, his son writing a love letter to castro, is like listening to someone who really loves che, talk about the revoution man


The art here, si the billboard painted silver, it was put up on james wagner's site, but he didnt point out the title, or the artist...

arthur grace took these photos, of state fairs, presidental races, etc a lot of it is pretty cliched, but so well constructed, and composed exquitely, that it all works out.

LIP-LICKING DEER SHITTING MEDITATION


When you become such good friends with black-tailed deer
that live in the black oak forest
Sierra Foothills
That 20 feet away they graze contemplating you
as you sit on a stump in silence
admiring them
And they think nothing of shitting in front of you
looking over their shoulders
across their backs and rear-ends
their black tails lifted
As the perfectly shaped same-size brown pellets fountain out
in a delicate continuous fountain
And when they gaze at you
with their big black eyes
while they shit
And suddenly their long pink tongues curl out
and they're licking their lips,
Licking their lips while shitting
and looking over at you
with their deep shy eyes,
Isn't it proper etiquette to lick your lips back
to think nothing of pissing in front of them,
showing off your cock
and the long arc of urine
saved up for them
knowing they like
its salty savor
like salad dressing
on their grass and mushrooms,
Isn't it proper etiquette you should look at them
curious playful friendly
and lick your lips in return?
Antler

the glories of pagan ireland, include crowned goats

shirts that tell the world wht you like to fuck, in cute, rcandy raver design qaulity.


Gospel Golf Balls

bbcvideos
of giant rats detecting mines in mozambique

everyone said that the 5th season of Oz, with the meidcal expriments, prisoenrs in cages, immigrants in mainstream populations and the like, was too unrealistic to be "real", now An influential federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the government loosen regulations that severely limit the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations of abuse.
this was done until the 70s, wehn they were entering into (if not fully entered into) mengele territory, they claim provisions, but to put rules down, is to find ways to break them, and another peice of 70s era history, progressive and humane, is flushed.

Kudah Samuriwo, a Queens Queen, from zimbabwae, tells her story, including her run ins with Magabe, and why she is now living in london

election officals were arrested in the congo for corruption, which is good news. suggests that tehy are serious about these elections, and are fighting a history of corruption

production stills from the black dahlia

a really funny interview with soderbergh

two kurd teenagers get killed for 6 minutes of cellphone sex


Copies kicking he shit out of marchers, pride parade jersuleum

Nigeriais naming and shaming the leaders who have acted liek theives in their own governments

catholic martyr in pakistan

some thots on luther's small cathechism (preface)

For [I give this advice, however, because I know that] young and simple people must be taught by uniform, settled texts and forms
AnthonySEaston (3:37:28 PM): by the mere act of reading, of discussing, and bring into yr personal space, a text becomes unsettled...no text is uniform
theminorthirds (3:37:58 PM): give him credit, srsly
theminorthirds (3:38:07 PM): that is his point
AnthonySEaston (3:38:43 PM): i dont think it is
theminorthirds (3:38:46 PM): the text becomes unsettled but you then have to guide the student into thecorrect settled form,and you need a settled text to do that,ifthe original text isalready unsettled then no settling will occur

Also our blessed fathers understood this well; for they all used the same form of the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments
the Lords Prayer is given by Christ, the Creed by political committe, and the 10 commandments by YHWH, might not be a good idea to conflate these, in western tradition


Hence, choose whatever form you please, and adhere to it forever. But when you preach in the presence of learned and intelligent men, you may exhibit your skill, and may present these parts in as varied and intricate ways and give them as masterly turns as you are able. But with the young people stick to one fixed, permanent form and manner, and teach them, first of all, these parts, namely, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, etc., according to the text, word for word, so that they, too, can repeat it in the same manner after you and commit it to memory.
he is paraphrasing milk before meat here, and i know that he is, adn there is something radical about the phrasing choose whatever form you please--a beleif that a parishoner can determine theology for him or herself, but there is something difficult in the idea that one form should last you from cradle to grave, one way of viewing the protean nature of g-d will take you thru the 70 yrs of yr life on earth. what he views as skill, as intricate, denies the organic nature of knowledge, of the slow and ardous unveiling that occurs in the intercessonary work of man/god.

But those who are unwilling to learn it should be told that they deny Christ and are no Christians, neither should they be admitted to the Sacrament, accepted as sponsors at baptism, nor exercise any part of Christian liberty, but should simply be turned back to the Pope and his officials, yea, to the devil himself. Moreover, their parents and employers should refuse them food and drink, and [they would also do well if they were to] notify them that the prince will drive such rude people from the country, etc.
this isnt christian, christ didnt say feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc so that they may learn the gospel, or that the body of christ, the communitarian ethic of church depends on the right lessons, he said that anyone who comes to me by the father--we should learn, we should grow in faith, but it should not be to the expense of food&drink... i can forgive the line of the devil and the pope, due to context--but it sort of obliterates the idea of luther not wanting to be a heretic...

For although we cannot and should not force any one to believe, yet we should insist and urge the people that they know what is right and wrong with those among whom they dwell and wish to make their living. For whoever desires to reside in a town must know and observe the town laws, the protection of which he wishes to enjoy, no matter whether he is a believer or at heart and in private a rogue or knave.
ive never been a big fan of legalism, and i think that this calls legalism into question, i think that he is saying that following the laws means that you are safe, and conflating the laws of he state with the laws of god--i need to be careful about that though, b/c "rend to cesar what si cesars an what is god gods" i tend to be in favour of one half of binary pairs, this time assuming that christs work against the state trumps his concessions to the state--and the state is THE STATE, a monolith (which isnt the case), i think that what makes me nervous about the catholics, and something i dont find in the lutheran churches, is (are) a definite attempt at not engaging in state craft, but if i wanted critics of the states, i would go to the mroe radical edges of anabaptisim, which i think im heading to...

Especially should you here urge magistrates and parents to rule well and to send their children to school, showing them why it is their duty to do this, and what a damnable sin they are committing if they do not do it...
i like this

Lastly, since the tyranny of the Pope has been abolished, people are no longer willing to go to the Sacrament and despise it [as something useless and unnecessary].
the first half of this is something im really scared of, terrified of in fact, adn the eucharist is so vital to my understandign ofthe gospels that going up to the euchurist and hating the church, being scared that i am not good enough, feeling humilated instead of humbled, and something that should be an example of the joyful, radical, inclusivity, that encompasses under the mystery of grace, is absent, and maybe a bit im feeling udner the thumb of the pope, the tyranny of the pope--though we have to keep things in proper historical persepctive

he goes on to talk fo the sacrament, as one, ie the eucharist, and im sacramental, in that i think there should be many sacraments, not one, but at least 7, and maybe everything we do, to other people or ourselves in the memory of god, the theology of the sacarements should begin with the paschal mystery, but not perhaps end there...

the Blair government, paranoid that "england" has no real idenity anymore, and that kids arent reading, has some suggestions:
11-14 English curriculum

Staying in

Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, John Bunyan, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jonathan Swift, Anthony Trollope, HG Wells

Under threat

EM Forster, William Golding, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell, Muriel Spark, William Trevor, Evelyn Waugh, JG Ballard, RK Narayan, Berlie Doherty, Susan Hill, Laurie Lee, Joan Lingard, Alan Sillitoe, Bill Naughton, Mildred Taylor, Robert Westall, Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, Willa Cather, Anita Desai, Nadine Gordimer, Ernest Hemingway, HH Richardson, Doris Lessing, John Steinbeck, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Some notes:
Bunyan, christian allegory--are you going to teach a bunch of muslims, sikhs, hindus, jains, secularists, and the like, a very long, very involved, very coded journey of xian virtue.
Conrad--Maybe if you are restling with the results and implicatiosn of empire ni a mulitcultaral, post colonial society, a racist apologist for it would be a poor idea,
Dickents/Trollope/Feilding/James/Hardy/Eliot--you are teaching 11-14 year olds. Eacho f these writers clocks in somewhere b.w 400 and 1000 pages. All of them are heavily poltted, archaic, and difficult. Dickens might be doable (i read Twist at 14, and a few others in high school--it taught me to hate the novel); Trollope is long winded, dull, and cares deeply about the politics and social sets of 19th century england--how many 11 years have devolped an interest in a glacial desire to know more about 19th century. Feilding might have enough fucking to break up the boredom, but the writing is incredibly unusal, over the top, and fecund in a way that causes loss of limp. James, who the hell thought 14 year olds could read James. the musty, dead scent of obsessive desire and lost sexualities, and the writing so limited, airless, and suffocating, is difficult enough if you have a purpose to read it. Hardy is so opressive, depressing, and heavy, reading him is like swallowing lead, and I like Hardy (though a Muslim study on gender and honour, in works like Jude the Obscure might be fascaitning).
Wells/Stevenson/Swift--kids might actually like these three, and swift might give them the tools to take the fucking thing down brick by bricl

They are getting rid of mostly 20th century, mostly political writers, including a large chunk of women and immigrant writers...insert rant about racist, classist, misogyinst assholes here.

english writers who arent really english: Nobel Prize Winners: Kipling (his time in India), Yeats (Irish), Shaw (Irish), Eliot (American), Beckett (Irish/French), William Golding (actually english), Walcott (Caribbean), Heany (Irish), Naiapul (Trinidad/India/Anglo).
Booker: Hollinghurst (actually anglo), Ian McEwan (scottish), Roy (Indian/English), Graham Swift (anglo), Roddy Doyle (irish), Ben Okri (Nigerian), Byatt (Anglo), Lively (Egyptian/Anglo), Amis (anglo), Rushdie (Indian), Murdoch (Anglo)
Orange: Zadie Smith (Caribean/Anglo), Shriver (anglo), Levy (Anglo/Jamican), Levey (American), Linda Grant (Russian/Polish Jews), Helen Dunmore (anglo)
Whitbred: Spurling (Anglo), Haddon (Anglo), Tomalin (Anglo), Pullman (Anglo), Kneale (Manx), Wagner (american), William Trevor (Irish), Joan Brady (american), Aliasdar Grey (Scottish), Gardam (Anglo), Shiva Naipul (Indian,Caribbean), Iris Murdoch (Anglo/Irish), William McIvlaney (Scotish), Bainbridge (Anglo), Paul theroux (American), Kazuou Ishriago (Japanese), Christopher Hope (South African),Christopher Nolan (American), Paul Sayer (Anglo)
Commonwealth Writers Prize Earl Lovelace (Caribbean), Festus Iyayi (Nigerian)
Harold Blooms Western Canon (20th Century): Sean O'Casey (Irish), Conrad (Polish), Isaac Rosenberg (Jewish), Robert Graves (American), Lawerence (Self Loathing enough not to count), Spark (Scotish/Italian), Bowen (Anglo/Irish), JG Farrell (Irish), Burgess (Post National), Isherwood (American), Hugh McDimarand (Scottish), Louis McNeice (Scottish), Paul Muldoon (irish), Tom Stoppard (Polish), Flann O Brian (Irish), Pinter (Jewish),
Edna O Brien (Irish) (Ive avoided the anglos on Blooms list)

Norton Anthology: Alerfic (Danish), Ramon Lull (Norman), John Gower (French), Marlowe (time in Holland), John Cabot (Italian), Elizabeth Browning (Jamacian), Burns (Scottish), Byron (Pan European), Arthur Clough (American), George Darley (Irish), George Eliot (Swiss/German), Shelly (Italian), Swift (Irish),


Other
Patrich Kavuanugh (Irish), Ali Smith (Scottish), Linton Kwesie Johnson (Caribbean),Jean Rhys (Caribbean),

I am obv stacking the deck, and one could include woolf, lawerence, hardy, hopkins, housman, maugh, greene, ford, wells, owen, lodge, hughes,witterson, larkin, orton, Shakespeare,

(I am noting large amounts of time spent in other countries, parentage in other places, or strong ethnic roots outside England, not counting Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Manx, or Cornwall as English)

(I am aware that colonial attachment to outside places, and residency are two different things—like Clough’s American heritage or EB Browning’s Jamaican is different, then people born and enslaved there)

(I am also, basically saying that what we assume to be english, politically, is anything but)

LDS
honeymoon advice, remarkably frank.


One of 17 Hitchcock themed Mosiacs, decorating the Leytonside Tube Station. Leytonside is where Hitchcock grew up.

American executions by lethal injection are becoming more difficult to perform, because of the lack of medical staff willing to perform them. Right now they require doctors, but I think Ray is right when he says they will find disgraced anesthologists, or nurses. Acccording to Andrew Sullivan, up to 55 Arab Linguists have been booted frmo intelligence jobs cause they fuck in the wrong ways.


Various Colombian organizations are calling on government officials to intervene and prevent a massive “sexual exchange of partners” scheduled to take place in cities on the Caribbean coast of Colombia from October 13-16. The event, which is being organized by a self-professed pedophile who calls himself “Jesus,” is being promoted on popular Colombian radio stations. (from Indian Catholic Daily)
Trans Met Lives

they are starting to excommunicate radicals who seek to change catholic policies


Manchester firemen tumble dries himself

A man who sued the city for entering his apartment without a search warrant after he was mauled by his 450-pound pet Siberian tiger demonstrated a lot of nerve in taking the city to court, a judge said as he threw the lawsuit out.The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan was filed by Antoine Yates after he was arrested Oct. 4, 2003, at a Philadelphia hospital where he had gone for treatment of a deep bite to his right leg suffered three days earlier.Police removed the 10-foot-long tiger, Ming, and an alligator, Al, from Yates' East Harlem apartment. story here

Joe Dallesandro, actor, hustler, sex god, muse of both lou reed (lil joe would never give it away) and andy warhol (heat, trash,flesh, my lonesome cowboy, frankenstein, haircut, one of the screen tests), is one of my icons. I love his taut body, his wide cock, and his genuine apperciation of the joys of perversity--that avedon foto, of him and candy and teh rest of the factory, always struck me as an example of new kinds of gender. There have been three short films of him, in stark black and white, shiny, and laughing, naked, found from his AMG/body building days. The funny thing, is that their is some matching to the films Andy made--but these are much less angsty, more direct, cut in ways that indiacated the pleasure of the flesh rather then the pleasure of filmed aesthetic. watch them here (i like the stuff from the 50s more then the 70s, erotically, but thats me)

Here is a photo of Candy, by Gerard Malenga, the poet, i couldnt find the Avedon of Joe Candy Darling c1971 Gelatin Silver Print


Divine Sings on Letterman

beautiful interventions in nyc, with rubber bands

Irving Welsh's New Play is abuot real life dwarf orgies, and other such bizarreness, on teh seto f the wizard of oz, full story herewith details

Counterfactual marylin monroe stories, for her 80th

Istvan Kantor does it again, this time at Warhol.

best titles ever, a flickr set of odd titles, from an alskan librarian

footage of a f-14 and a concrete wall, at 500 mph, from the pentagon


Dolly Sisters, Cabaret Act, From the Edwardian age to he late 1920s
from 100s of Zeigfeild Folly Photos

a man on television just caught a hard boiled egg from 180 feet in his mouth

Jason McCoy, here, has a lurid, desperate, self loathing quality, and the song is obsessed about a woman who "aint missing missing him". The track has a tabloid restraint, where silences replacing details, and loud noise work in the place of sexual explicitness.

Listen to how he sings two lines at the one minute mark--where McCoy talks about a lover doing things he dont, and wont. He gives a long space of rangy, wiry guitar, before adding the word anymore. In those seconds, our minds grow any large with all sorts of decay. Anymore suggests they did that kind of decadence together.

McCoy does this kind of song well because he still believes in sin (there is a song on this album called I Feel a Sin Coming On) but also pleasure. The two break apart into something wilder then much standard country, and even his most tender ballads have an isolating despair.

From his greatest hits.

YSI here

some things i did recently with ashley

we watched talledega nights, i laughed at the film, it had excellent satirical elements, but it might be homophobic.

we drank several gin and tonix at a club, and hung around the dj both, with handsome boys and punk rock music...it was nice.

we ate mexican food, good mexican food, and margaritas, in one of those home cook hovels, on 107th ave

we made art featuring apoclyptic imagery from an old JW book, using lots of material--ashley redeemed my medicore attempts at image making

i put together a list, of geographical locations for 30 photographs, placing them in public places, as a performance peice

i purchased compact discs (best of liberace, kelly osbourne, linsay lohan, jason mccoy, some protest folk)

there are other things

This Pitch was picked up for Pop Matters:

Oh My God, You Fucked Kenny: Kenny Chesney, Unruly Bodies, and Celebrity.

Pitch: Kenny Chesney, one of a few male country superstars, provides an ambiguous and coded sexual message. His work has an obsessive, preening, masculinity apparently above any current sexuality. The texts where he talks about having sex, all occur in a Middle American place not connected to actual bodies but some Arcadian construction of space and time.

The gay rumors, the short lived marriage to a major Hollywood figure, the lack of sexuality in his work, the exotic Caribbean constantly found in his work, and his frat boy homo-socialism all tie into something destabilizing about his sexual personae.

Every major male country performer has more of an audience/performer sexual frisson then Chesney, but he keeps trying to create this artificially. He functions as a slippery sexual signifier. The binaries we use to talk about people (audience/performer, gay/straight, butch/femme, top/bottom) all fall down around Kenny.

Talking about this instability is a way to approach a postmodern sexuality, deconstructed, free floating, away from certain geographies, and explicit identity politics.

I will finish a draft in the next couple of days, its only 1200 wds, but im trying not to back burner meritt.

Article Ideas:

The aesthetics of spectacle&multiple narratives in nominally non fiction docs, wrt 9/11, and its relation to mainstream genres.

Schumacher's Batman/Judy in A Star is Born

Kenny Chesneys Sexuality (pitched)

david, a fellow at the wedding, sent gerard a whole slew of photos, and he sent them to the rest of us--and it made me think of my photographic practice

daves purpose was to take pictures of the wedding, not really caring about cliche, spotenatity, aesthetics, or anything but the message i am at a wedding...so teh fotos are badly taken badly lit, unedited, adn you know of people an shit.

there is ap hoto of me and john in the midst of the 150 or so, and i dont like it, i look a little drunk and a little haggard, but i think i dont like it b/c for the past half decade or so, i have been v. careful about the photos taken of me, either:

a) they were taken for conceptual reasons, as jokes, as camp, as roleplaying
b) they were taken udner circumstacnes i could control
c) they were taken at my bequest, or by people i trust not as friends, but as aesthications, who i was sure could maintain an image projected (ie ray or ashley)

so looking at this photo, having a heart break convo with a basic stranger, being snapped, and then not having any input, must be similar to the photos i take of other people, the random off moments, and its strange how uncomfortable it made me.

i think it made me uncomfortable, because i have started to postion my work as "art", with shows in galleries, conversations with artist books, placement in publications that center on art and design etc (jacko, from elk, wont be publishing the pick up truck book after all, but he thot about the work, and he treated it as impt, adn it seemed like he wanted more work), and even some conceptual energy, in that context, and when talking about the photos with other artists, i split b/w doc shot and other--the doc shot being, i saw this and i want you to see this (like the joke at the wedding: obligatory shot of the bride, obligatory shot of teh groom, obligatory shot of geographical locatiopn )--the categories arent stable, doc shots become art shots, and art shots are downgraded, and sometimes it relates to function, but i always think of comoposition, and lighting, adn colour, and crop/edit/refuse to show/erase photos that arent very good...

i took 400 photos at teh wedding, 50 polaroids including. I saved 150 on my computer, and published 38, and if i had another site, i would break that down to maybe 10...of those 38, 9 are doc shots, and 3 are of me...all of them gaurded.

i guess, what im saying is that it seems liek all of Dave's photos are doc shots, and most of them are shit, but they actually feature people, and the people seem to be having some kind of fun, and having a bit of a neurotic flutter, cause an unflattering picture i didnt control ended up on a website...

anyone who wants a link of the photo, can email

fiction

19) Spontenous Combustion David Feinberg bitchy, funny, fags dying of aids in ny, slice of life work, from the mid 80s, enjoyable enough

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords/details.asp?id=1011&hospital=Neth&town=&searchdatabase.x=28&searchdatabase.y=12
this site says i can get patient records up until 1960, ca 1953 was WK, so it shouldnt be a problem

kureleks main biographer morely, claims that she couldnt get access to the records in the late 70s, but her work sounds like she did get access (it says this: All records less than 30 years old are closed to public inspection; staff records are closed for 75 years; records relating to named patients are closed to public inspection for one hundred years...so im fucked here---if i get permission from the estate, or if its academic, or are there other loopholes?

part of the access i want to get to is the maudsley hospital in london (now part of kings college london), part of what i want to get is in surrey, so part of teh national archives...does this mean that all of his records are in surrey, or in london or somewhere else, as the natherne hosptial grounds are now condos

how do i get access, from canada, if i can get into there at all

part of what i want to get into, is the edward admonson collection, who owns several of he paintings i want to talk about, but that website is down: http://www.slamart.org.uk/p2_artsprojects/adamson_collection.htm
he seems really kind of famous, some abstracts, adn other things--so could i get his general notes somehow? (his collection, moving from 10k to 50k peices, is in the South London Maudsley London Trust--if it was 50k and now 10, where did the 40 go?)

(three hornets nests the national archives, the nhs and kings college london)

i put up my photocopies of the WK paintings i want to talk about, took done the mess of postcards...i got to be careful, b/c the biographical similarties are too much (depression, hospitalaztion, sucide attempts, conversion to r/c, prarie apocolypticism, TO as promised land)

Notes on Kurelek from the AGA archives

Canada House Cultural Center
Preface to Catalog for the Show WK:The English Years
Show 5 July-21 Sept 1990

Kurelek came to England in 1952 to find a cure for his chronic depression and during the eight years, he remained in this country he produced a remakrable body of work whilst undergoing therapy at the Mausley Hospital and later at the Betherene Holspital, where an artist has been appointed to work, with the patients. Kurelek proved to be no ordinary patient , his genius as an artist contributed substatinally to the growing realsation that art had an impt role to play in the field of therapy ...
he imaged that he was being forced intoa coffin
....

Professor Carstairs
Edward Adamson, Netheren Hospital
Maudsley. Admonson Collection'

Globe and Mail, Thursday, Oct 2, 86
William French
WK regarded these paintings, which he could churn out at teh rate of three a day, as pot boilers, his real mission as an artsit was to prsteyize on behalf of teh Catholic Church and to warn of impending nuclrar holoucast. He may be the only resident of the beaches to get a premit from City Hall to build a bomb shelter.


Letter from former director Terry Fenton to Mrs AE Sheilds
(the work) is not represtive of Miss Grants taste, and that ti depicts a scene that it is not suioted to a memorial picute. ths feeling was brought to my attention on one other occasion, and while I apreciate your concern, Im not certain that anything can be done...obtain a represtational picture by an Alberta artist...

Note on the Back of a Painting in the AGA collection, as typed/written by WK: 27
AND THEY WERE TAKEN UNAWARES; WHEN THE FLOOD CAME AND DROWNED THEM ALL;SO IT WILL EB AT THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN (TITLE)

The previosu picture. I discovered to my deight, led neatly into this one. Although the barn in the previous work is neighbour Peleshaty's and this one is our own, they could be interchangeable.

emph and puncutation WK's, Matt. 24:3, i think, but not a direct match

Back of Lest We Repent we perfer not to think abotu death adn the afterlife:
This is a scene I recall from early boyhood, when I first began school. I knew this boy before he died of TB, for my brother adn I sometiems played with him. I have shifted teh season slightly drom late fall to early winter, to better convet the ipression of theo nce warm body ging into the cold earth. The mother backe away from the mouth of the grave with a moan, as if crying, "No,no, no. It cat be true." During our years of farmign in that Manitoba distrcit, there were several deaths in that family and yert the family, which was rather moraly lose, turned over no new leaf. this is the coniditon of our society geerally to-day, which leeaves it to the funeral palour to disguise death as quickly and as quietly as possible, so as not to distrub anyones state of mind or body"

Back of Christian (Charity/Chasitiy) (as reported from a letter from Sir GEroge Williams, now concordia)
This is often confused today with prutinaism or Victorian prudery. What I am trying to say here is that sex is a wonderful physical expression between man and wife. Even veiwed from a human angle, viriginity too easily given up results in loss of resepct. The courtnig Christians represtend by the yong man and woman picknicking in the grass olvoe each other adn express this with modest caresses adn kisses. But all the while, realizing their weakness before sexual pssion, each keeps his other hand in Chris;ts hand for strenght. The wall represtens the division between single and married lifwe, and the b;uebirds, the happiness of a newly weded couple at lest in each other embrace. Teh house with the children palying in front rperesents the fuirts of Christian marriage.

This is the painting referred to in Dr McLeods letter to a Twetny Year Old girl...(no idea what this sentence means)

the provence report marks ti as chasitity, the letter here calls it charity...

spelling errors all mine


Winnipeg Free Press
Helen Norrie
1/21/84
Among Important Canadian artists of recent times, WK, was the only one to believe his ability to make art was literally a gift from God and Msut be tied to Gods Service

Saturday Night
Sept 1986
Mark Albey

In Kureleks case the tyranny stopepd shortof outright brutality, Dmytro KLurelek rarely his lack of mechincal prowess and ciricised his failure to help around the farm. Dmytro and his wife, Mary, worked logn hours toprosper and they were unable to spend much tiem alone, with William. A familar immigrant story--except that William Kurelek could never see hsi parents disapptiontley adn may bever have been able to forgive them for hsi solitary, insecure childhood.

Contarary to his myth of hapiness, in the wake of conversion , one of these attemtps took place in 1964, soon afte3r the birth of his first shcild...)

Prarie Boy winter, painted in a week.

The unnerving thing about the children in his paintings is that few of them look young. their fqaces ae either aged or ageless. In thsui they resemble a brilliant despeate painting...The Maze

when he tried to build two bomb sheleters, worked in an airless basement bunker, and paitned hundreds of doomsday scenes, are jsut as disquiting, as his earleir portraits of dispair...

Alberta Report, May 2, No byline
4 years
autobiography which he wrote in 1973 for Dr James Mass to use for his pyschology students. WK finsihed this version shortly before his death in 1977,
(long qoute im not transcribing)

Globe and Mail, Letter to the Editor, 1984, From his biographer Morley
The collectiosn curator, British art theraist Edward Adamson has stated that Mr Kurelek was in Neterene for 4.5 years, adn that he was proably the msot twisted charachter he had ever seen...The hosptial records, mmade availble to me as MR Kurelek's biographer, indiacte that he was at Netherene for only 15 months )nov 1953, to Jan 1955). He ahd been in and out of a London hospital for 17 months previously adn been rtransferred to Netherene. It is difficult to quarrel with a personal memory but in fairness I must insist that Mr Kurelek was never irrational or pyschotic. He was during the mid fifities, severely depressed adn introvered, until shock therapy adn more importantly new foudn religous faith reesatblished hsi ability to fucntion soically...)


Globe adn Mail
Jan 6 1987
Kolankiwsky

The paintings have a narrow appeal, and dont nessc. reflect the body of the Kurelek work...It would be worth an awful lot of money, theoritically, but tis very dificult to sell a colelction like that. A religous instituition would have to buy it...
Av Isaacs (which makes me nervous about getting resources in york.)

link dump (less doomy)

marine myspace. poltically impt--look at the opening video, its corpeality, its bodies, and the editing towards fury w/o release is v leni. (and statist power intervening in previously free flowing forms of info)

nevada porn star runs for govenor

me

this is most likely bullshit but hokey pokey apparently mocks roman mass.

long, erudite interview with Alan Moore, about Lost Girls

bechdel
goes back to the fun home, for the ny times (fasicating article)

more 19th century american polymorphus sex cults.

at the Pompideous show about La Art, post war, two major works fell to the ground and shattered. there is much pissing b/w galleries at hos responsible, but this causes great sadness, on a couple of levels, first, one of my favourite works by one of themore under rated american colourfield sculptors is kaput, and it means that it is less likely for this show to travel.

The Two Works Destroyed:
Craig Kaufmann, Untilted, 1967

(it takes some dark magic to keep those extant, being that they are all resin and vaacuum formed plexiglass at the beginging of those techs, and the materials are fragile anyways) (they are also really huge this one is 4x6) (this is the one i loved)

the other is a peter alexander, in black acrlyic, from 68, 8x7 feet.

Jason Roades, provacteour, freduian, adn naughty installation artist, who was going to portland this week, to install a large peice whos central core was homeless teenage boys wrestling in swimming pools fulled of lube, died in LA before he got a chance to move.

Here is one of his insallations, at Dave Zwimner, in Chelsea:


20 anti syph posters from the 40s

Charles Kamm
is an amazing, every day photographer, from California, beuitiful colours, odd angles, excellent example of lcoal geoographies, dozens of examples...

Three Astronomy Quilts:



by Ann Harwell rest here

if joe francis isnt a rapist, he sure is an asshole (girls gone wild dude)

small children depict incredibly crude scenes from resivor dogs.

an amazing painter, in prison for murder, starts working with m&ms, his own hair, and spare paper, sends things out, some of them sell, instead of rewarding his rehabillitve work, they punish him.

good media gaurdian story about trophy videos

36 photos of kudzu covered homes in South Carolina
here
tehy all look the same, but in sequence, rather amazing

world w/o end and apaprently beginning (apparently this is supposed to shake my theism, but it kind of strgehtens them)

victorian taxidermy remade

some videos about how coture sounds

Present Concerns

1) Gallery for the Religious work
2) Make my peice on Kurelek, Jesus, etc different then some of the books, etc written about the paintings (ie kurelek heaven and hell, for example)
3) 100 artists for the ruscha, how the fuck is this going to happen
4) digitial photos dont do as well as polaroids, why?
5) the hunters condundrum. wrt the deer show, and a place to put it.
6) the meritt essay.

Authority is a servant of God. Of itself it cannot keep any public order. It is like
a net in water: The good Lord drives the fish to it. God guides the evildoers to the authority, so that they do not escape … God is a just judge on earth. For this reason, no one escapes who does not do penance, the just punishment by way of the authority. Even if you escape from me, you do not escape the hangman

Luther

mom found the first comic she really loved

im going to start a german hard core band, and call it the ausberg confessions.

link dump (O'DOOM)


Big Moose


Bobs Yr Uncle, 4 Melamine Plates, by Green Grass Design, 36 american.

Lance Bass is Gay. He tells us this, but does not want to be an activist type.
the interview is not online, but in the issue, and is so blank, and banal, that it reads like godot rewritten by warhol. (or in the words of my mother: its persnoality matched lance bass)

a male australian journalist attempts to seduce fred phelps jr video here hilarty ensues

e-pooja, straight from madurai menakshi, for all my hindu friends here

pray the rosary here

on the rosary note, here is scott walker, live in concert, singing.



J Bennet Fitts takes fotos of bled out light, decript palm trees, and empty swimming pools, if hockeney is LA as paradise and McCarthy is LA in Hell, this is LA in purgatory. haunting, difficult, and lovely work.


Tori Spelling and her husband, in Vancouver, posing for paparazzi, as very poor, because her mean mommy only gave her 800k, just like her brother. i will have to say that tori has stage managed this death thing brilliantly.

random sexy cowboy

from the ns gay rodeo assoc

lj community for dead machinery--most of it is awful, first year art students making delicate statements on life and decay, but some good work as well here

albert morse makes great portraits, esp of flea market buys and sellers, his tatoo fotos has a suppersaturated colour, that makes me curious abuot his techinque. i think rachel told me about this dude.

a sioux jaquline keeler, first nation advocate, writes about the drubbing Cecillia Fire Thunder is getting from both siox and american patriachs, well worth reading

if the vatican keeps acting like a state lets treat it like one.

sebastion buescher makes jewlery from dead, and barely dead creepy crawlers, including earth worm rings, spider brooches, bee stingers, adn this:



great essay on an early medieval antomiocal model of a pregent woman. i dont know if anyone who reads this is a medevialist, but there is a call on papers about anonomy adn that era here

jesse hamlin has fun writing about the alabama truck driver who dlevered a tanker truck full of vaseline, to matthew barney, for his SFMoMA show.


One of three, homophobic ads, from NZ. Teh others are worse. One could email, call, or write to the company:
83 Roper Road
Colyton NSW 2760
Ph: 02 9623 3333
Fax: 02 9623 0301
Email: sales@sargents.com.au


worst web design ever

men of mortuarties, pose as beefcake, rasie money for breast cancer, while lowering a coffin into the ground. it would be less creepy if it was hotter

katjabase
thinks its proper for three kids to go to jail for a year for some minor property damage. i think this attitude resulted in the minor property damage in the first place.

Some activists in San Diego are playing volleyball over the fence b/w mexico and teh states--a brilliant protest idea, here
is a story from LA Weekly. (its theater, its camp, it makes fun, and deconstructs the ideas of boundries, it is non violent...

great essay on the uncanny and unruly sculpture of ron muek.





Three Images from Pam Andersons St Tropez wedding

i want to get back to, for a second, that fleeting thot i had about tradition and queer issues.

queer folks have a tendecy to probe dissident/heretical/othered traditions, and place them at the forefront, for fairly obvious reasons, while forgetting the obv homophobia of the mainstreams.

esp in catholicism, with its fecund history of oddness, its an easy trap to fall into--but an impt part of being catholic is to balance the tradition with the scripture--and that tradition includes much more work against same gendered realtions as it does for...and that tradition isnt the work of 1890s, either. Michel was wrong about that.

some protesant acceptence of same gendered desire, must be a bit easier, because of the belief in continued, personal revealtion and the pbelief in interperting the scripture by oneself, as a seperate object...

questions,
is this correct?
how does one (de/re/un/construct tradition) and stiull live with it openly?

at concordia college, watching construction, and there is a crane holding an i beam, encased in wood, and slowly rotating it 40 feet in the air, as people scurry below it, i dont have my camera today, but it is one of the prettiest things ive seen...like this photo that blair took in cambridge ontario, of messed up yellow parking medians, arranged to work as a skateboard jump, but looks like some cross faded tuttle/andre thing...this looks like a hyperindustrial ballet, i have no idea how things so fucking large manage towards any sense of deliacy?