It's hard to leave your body behind, especially when your body is always being thrown up in your face. But being heavy is a motherfucker. The question is: How to remove weight, to move toward lightness, as Hammons has? How to do this while still acknowledging the particular history of a body that has been used, as Stuart Hall suggests, "as if it was, and often it was, the only cultural capital we had"? These questions now occupy several young artists who walk the threshold between a dematerialized and a historicized body.

Glen Ligon, Art Forum, 2004

two new poetry books

Rain Charm for the Duchy, Ted Hughes
a small (47 page) exquistely printed folio of occasional verse by ted hughes, of his time as lauerete. it is an ancient book, royalist, conserative, deep about the chtonic power of nation and myth that rise around royalty. it also underlines his power as a great english mystic, this is a poem about the secret magick of albion. the two small songs for beatrice (her birth and her chrisening), which use her birthdate (8/8/88) and her star sign (leo) as a tangent, about the accidental nature of reward and risk, as it realtes to nations, and to basic humans, is masterful in how concise it is...a poem called little salmon hymn, a scottish rewrite of the psalmists, almost, is an idyllic little acardian thing, and it takes omse bravery to write about all of the miracles of creation and death, in a poem for the queens birthday, including " she links an arm/with a Fox glove, raggily dressed, Long-bodied, a rough blood-braid of dark nipples" . done late in his life, before the mawkish sorting of the birthday letters--his masculine, "red of tooth and claw" nature here, is so ancient that when he talks about contemporary things,like television or tabloids or car tops, he descends quickly into bathos (22)

Blert--Jordan Scott.

Scott, a stutter, amasses an amazing chunk of aural signifed texts, the words collected her abut, enjamb, and tumble into meanings about the formal nature of language, where meaning becomes a physiological process. an incredible important application of the abstractions of people like ron silliman. i wish i could hear him read it. (it ends as an essay, and there is one poem, that is repeated three times, if you must have an idea, have a short term idea:

a cocoa puff
a two step bluff
a fleeting rime

that suggests how meta contextual, amusing, and amused he can be. that it becomes a call for language as it is spoken, as opposed to what it should be, and that ti becomes punch drunk with language, are bonuses (21)

five greatest living painters

1) noland
2) ruscha
3) hockney
4) peyton
5) polke

sergio leone memioral day quiz

1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer went from a campy one joke mess,to a dark, eroticized and emotionally fine tuned reencapsulation of the gothic.

2) Living film director you most missing seeing on the cultural landscape regularly

kenneth anger, who i think doesnt make films because of capital, rather then anything else (ie if someone gave him a couple hundred grand, we would see a masterpeice)

3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn
Eugene Pallete, for the Bride Came C.O.D.

4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”

Gravity's Rainbow.

5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake

Veronica Lake (because of the mystery, and that she turned hair into acting)

6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?

Sarah Marshall (because I think Apatow is a master of heart breaking social manners more then gross out comedies, and jason segal is a masterful actor on How I Met Yr Mother) Shoot Em Up, because i have devoleped a taste for the old ultra violence (90 minutes of anarchic mayhem, fantastic trash)

7) Name an actor you think should be a star

Dan Futterman.

8) Foxy Brown or Coffy

Coffy, with its economic analysis of junk, its luridness, and its melodrama, should have been taxi driver

9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set
Daria

10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand
no answer

11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?
southland tales, after i have read the comic, because i am not sure if its a mess or genius, a bunch of the narrative warhol films, looking at narrative, some late nicholas ray

12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men
zodiac.

13) Using our best reviewer-speak, what is an “important” film comedy? And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years?
a) social realvence
b) acting that modulates moods
c) tight writing not related on gags
d) a certain anayltical spirit
e) of its time but not beholden to it
f) talky, with a nice splash of physicality.
Knocked Up

14) Describe the ideal environment for watching a movie.

15) Michelle Williams or Eva Mendes
Michelle Williams, for her realizing broke back was really a womens weepie, and making all of the domestic,the child rearing, the conjugal bed, tragic and isolated. she also showed a sort of californian, wholesome eroticism in both if these walls could talk and but i'm a cheerleader, which was much smarter then the material will allow.

16) What’s the worst movie title of all time?
Traffic.

17) Best movie about teaching and/or learning
If..., because there is something violent and invasive about knowledge, and also something absurdly freeing--to learn is to engage in a political and social act.

18) Dracula (1931) or Horror of Dracula (1958)
Horror of Dracula

19) Why do you blog? Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs? (Thanks, Girish)
as a way to keep my thoughts straight, for other people's thinking process.

20) Most memorable/disturbing death scene
Marat/Sade

21) Jason Robards or Robert Shaw
I want to fuck Jason Robards more.

22) A good candidate for Most Blasphemous Movie Ever
Lucifer Rising (because to be a Satanist is to reject the standard views of G-d, and because of its conflation of thantos/eros as opposed to the xian one)

23) Rio Bravo or Red River
Red River

24) Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage—that’s reality. Try to outdo reality by concocting a match-up of director and title for a really strange imaginary remake.

Peter Jackson remaking Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

25) Bulle Ogier or Charlotte Rampling
Rampling's recent work with Orzon, out Denueve's Denuve.

26) In the Realm of the Senses— yes or no?
yes/

27) Name a movie you think of as your own (Thanks, Jim!)
School Ties


28) Winged Migration or Microcosmos
Winged Migration

29) Your favorite football game featured in a movie
anything directed by Ken Loach.

30) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr
Kerr

31) Dirtiest secret you have that is related to the movies
Esther Williams movies enterain me

32) Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film.
Seeing History Boys, after the sublimated homoeroticism, and class discussions that suround american movies about boarding schools, and making it explicit, and almost being a defense of pedasrty, made me really consider what is unspoken of but believed deeply. i am esp. thinking of the sucide in dead poets society, where charisma is fatal, and school ties, where homosocial polite anti semitism becomes a discussion of both class and sexual ehtics, the class explicit but the sexual ethics much less so.

33) It’s a Gift or Horsefeathers
Horsefeathers

34) Your best story about seeing a movie at a drive-in
midnight,being driven in a thunder bird, in the interior of bc, chuck berry blasting on the stero, and a series of switchbacks/ hair pins, that go up this mountain, at the top, the blue flickr against black sky, some drive in i had never heard of--never went in, never saw a movie,but it was pretty

35) Victor Mature or Tyrone Power
tyrone power

36) What does film criticism mean to you? Where do you think it’s headed
it needs to be more conversational, more willing to point out things that had been missed, less authoritive and more authorial,

drunk

i wrote this as a comment on heathers blog, but i felt like i should write it here

my mom had a heart attack last week. she waited two days to tell me. she waited 3 hours to call aj. she didnt think it was that bad. i was home often so i could cajole her into going to the hospital, or seek help. i talked to her last night, and she has agreed, if it gets worse, to go to a seniors home.

she already has someone to help her with her bath three days a week and a house keeper once a week, she already has a commode in case she cannot go to the toilet. she already has a walker, and has been on long term disability long enough totake the buy out. she is now on a dozen meds, with co-pays up to 25 dollars.

she is not vain physically, but she is vain emotionally,or intellectually. she told me that she was being stupid by not calling the ambulance,by assuming the heart attack wasn't so bad.

she went to the grey nuns--what the fuck is it with sending people to the grey nuns.

its weird, because i try not to be generous, because generous suggests a heriachy, i try to be just, to create community, like my mother does and my aunts do, and my grandmother did, but i fail, and i try really hard to be cavalier about it, but the one two punch of Florie and Trudy dying, the last two matriachs in my life--old school crones in the best, most mythologically apt use of that word, i think i have yet to handle it.

i guess what i am saying, and i hope that this anecdote doesnt appear too selfish, is that it seems that it takes women longer to die, and they die in more indignity then men do, and the community suppourt is rarely there. we fail our matriachs

Russian Oligarch News:

1) Being a Russian Oligarch means you can spend about 150m on three paintings.
2) It also means you can rig Eurovision.
3) But you still cant rig Preiemer Leauge Footie.

When a messenger comes saying he has a message from God, offer him your hand and request him to shake hands with you. If he be an angel he will do so, and you will feel his hand. If he be the spirit of a just man made perfect he will come in his glory; for that is the only way he can appear— Ask him to shake hands with you, but he will not move, because it is contrary to the order of heaven for a just man to deceive; but he will still deliver his message.

If it be the devil as an angel of light, when you ask him to shake hands he will offer you his hand, and you will not feel anything; you may therefore detect him.

These are three grand keys whereby you may know whether any administration is from God.

(D&C 129:4-9)

Harem Girl (Taken by D)

Harem Girl (Taken by D)
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

i have a phone, and an apartment, and a metropass and a library card and a shirt that has chuck closes' phil on it and food ordered for the openin g on the 29th.

me be in the toronto, stealing yr awesome.

also on saturady, i am going to be looking at churches, and other places of architechture for open toronto, who wants to come?

love
ase

three thots for trinity sunday

1) the trinity teaches us that family are one, and seperate, that they flow together towards a singular purpose, but that flowing is not steady or consistent.
2) it is a metaphor, a set of adjectives, because the language we have is limited, but it is one of the few sets of adjectives, that is not rooted in a binary, that is not an either/or.
3) the trinity for me, is always rooted in the material, the solid of christ, the liquid of the holy spirit, and the gas of god Herself.

i feel like the upcoming flight should be commerated with some form of ritualistic language, if that is part of yr tradition, do so for me.

Hysterically funny ad about women and yogurt.

fantastic call towards ecclectic science fiction.

internet winning anteater in sweaters.

joesters' brilliant essay on GTA 4. Speaking of GTA, apparently the subway map is a mash up of Vignelli's from the 70s, and the current one. and a flickr set indicating where the virutal real estate of Liberty City and the meat space real estate of New York overlap.


Monoply Graffiti, Oak Park

wolverineM found near lake tahoe.

howard bringham's photos of foreman and zaire do the almost impossible thing, of documenting the politics of the event, the sideshows a well as the show itself. the show was vital in the history of Americas realtionship with an emerging urban class of Africans. Wished he was at the Accra Gold concerts or the James Brown in Lagos as well.

also some shots of indie comic superstars, who knew jordan crane was so cute.

i am only linking to this story about SAG troubles on the set of NAiled, because it adds evidence to my David O Russell is an asshole thesis.


Actual T Shirt being sold against OBama

the lds group blog by common consent, delinates the subtle differences in practices b/w lds and flds theology.

alice goodman who did the libretto for ADam's Nixon in China and the Death of Klinghoffer, became an anglican priest and preaches at Cambridge (UK not Boston) the link goes to a poetic, and beautiful detanglign of the marys int he gospels, written on occasion of Magadelene's saint day. the exgesis she does on Hopkins, and the sense of history, is esp notable.


Still From Otto, Bruce La Bruce's new gay zombie film

wonderful furniture made from old bowlign alleys.

clinton is 20m in debt

claims a third of women are raped.

i have never seen the new yorker be this angry, this sarcastic, on anything--though these three dispatches frmo the drug war sure deserve it.


Matthew Lawson, One Life to Live

silver jewelery cast from octpi

a zoo forum, an italian blog called pink, and

obligatory ny times obit on Rberg, with two great lines:

1) No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture.

Which posits, a new and all queer, four horsemen. (and cage becomes a pivot, about avant garde practice, poetic practice, as opposed to defacto image making) (reading Jasper Johns Work after 1974, a catalog for a 1989 show in Philadelphia, there is a qoute inthe preface, that seems to be about both groups:

...given the extraordinary richness of cross references and teh cumulative intellifence offered by a group of these paintings and works on paper...John's art has always had an aspect of intensely personal reflection, seemingly without ambition to persuade, to admonish, or even to address its viewers directly... (6)


Ann d'Harncourt

It is then the webs of ambigious signifiers, the visual noise, and the interlacings, the accumaltion of images, and the juxtaposition, the clash and the bang, rather then the synthisizing that combines the work, it also allows for the community to work together, not only the community directly (both the work, and the gossip after the work, and sometimes the gossip is the work) but the historical community as well. One example, in the 80s, Rberg, Johns and Warhol all used varations of a Skull motif, the Johns catalog claims it is an oblique reference to the art historian Ethel Scull, who was a mutual aquantice and owned work by almost everyone in that group--but it could be the start of middle age, or the mainstreaming of hiv/aids (rberg and johns is a poison sign), or something else entirely, and that is just one motif that they all share...the accumlation of konweldge, of interactions, of mutual surfaces, makes them forver almsot workingo n one opus. .

or if not one opus, then one project, the rejection of formal depth in western picture making

"a culture of surface is not simply a culture that declares its immunity to historical anxiety, it is also a culture that has become suspicious of history with a capital H, moving with awesome solemnity and depth through our lives, a culture which recognizes that history, for the most part, is also made out of the particulars by people whose every day acts do not always add up to the grand aggregates of canonical martyrdom that make for real politics"
Andrew Ross, The Death of Lady Day, qouted in Lyttle Shaw's Frank O Hara the Politics of Coterie (93)

the project of pop, was then an aggregation of found elements, not to drag them higher, but the opposite, to make history (art history, history history) an act of scrumble, gossip, lo fi, casual assemblage, heresey, personal narratives, informal faking incredibly difficult formal work, quirk, questioning, and queering...and making all of those things, solemn and deep. like 13 Jackies, by Warhol where she looks bearded, or the goats and chickens of the early combines, or Lstein;s mirrors, or the skulls of Johns...

but it is also, v. much about community, what Lyttle Shaw talks about thruout his book on O Hara, better as a poetry critic, he mentions art in the second half, and he has an adroit chapter on O'Haras complicated realtionship with Rberg (he liked the work, i think better then Warhol and Johns, because it was much more ambigious if the messes in teh combines, the gestural paintings over the collages were aggresive to the new pop movement or to the old abexers--seeing a couple of early 60s Rbergs at SF:Moma, what was shocking about them was how gestural they were, how much they were about the varagacies of putting paint on canvas, just like Franz Klines telephone paper drawings were much about reclaiming commonly found objects...

but one of the things that Shaw says in this chapter, is about Rberg's untitled from 1954:

"Untitled is no simple allegory for the queer reguasl of heterosexual narrative. If that refusal operates, in potentia, within the combines raw material, the peice as a whole problematizes the narration of a self more broadly--both by proliferating visual information beyond the possibility of any neat recuperation and by collapsing distinctions between interior and exterior registers of discourse. Thus one finds images of quiet lakes and quaint Victorian interiors, Rberg seems not to visit next to discarded wrapping papers, paint smeared fabrics and encrusted comic books framgments, reproductions of Da Vinci's drawings of cherubs, next to original drawings by Cy Twombly, Jack Tworkov, and Rberg's three-year old son, in combining these materials, Untitled elaborates not so much a particular background as an intersubjective struggle among several marked by evacuation's, revisions and impossible conclusions..." (Shaw, 212)

there are three lists that are important to note there--the list of materials found in the work, and the trinity of Evacuation, Revision and Conclusion... the list is full of people he loves, people he is close to, historical figures, and trash--there is the scribble aesthetic of twombly, and the automata of his history, tied into the three year old, there is the not really drawing comic books and designs attached to the real art, but only in reproduction, of Da Vinci, there is calling the child an art historical cherub, etc etc etc, the coterie of imagery, and the coetrie of fellow workers, become a way of intergrating ideas of family, history, and art historical practice. Evacuation (literally, the evacualtion of bowels, of blood, of liquids from the body) and of pyschic energies, are made one and he same, the mess of emotional blockages, become the start and stop of vertical and horiziontal progession. and revision, this is lifes work, the reworking of the same images--you see it well in johns, where cross hatches and flags, for two, intermingle prolfigatly throughout the canvases of the 80s...

The other qoute from the times obit:

The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

I dont think that process is counter intuitive at all, i think that the opposite is true, we learn about history, about how to make narratives, about how to place images properly, of taxonomies and cultures, the finger painting spread, the copereal nature of mark making is much less academic--though the second half, is it a mistake, is learned, or a deliberate unlearning that comes from learning how to avoid the tricks they taught you in college

Playground, Ainsha Wilderness Area, Ohio,

murakami my lonseome cowboy deserves its 15m

1) it is the last great iconic sculpture of the 20th century
2) it is a mark of the pacific rim culture working farther and faster then east coast and euro work work
3) it is a work of fantastic, joyful biro
4) it is funny, and sexy, and amusing, which are things often over looked
5) it is as good or better then the more iconic koons work, the person he is closest too, and koons is getting twice that
6) there is a literal, art historical baroque sensiblity to it, its over size dimensions, its slickness of surfaces, its raptous xtc, but all of that abstracted and made renewed---it can be compared to berinini of course, but w/o the religious baggage.
7) the political and social implactions of post war japan, and his anaylsis of post war japan, beginning with comfort brides and ending with otuaku, are folded into this work
8) it rewards flatness and betrays the notion that formal flatness cannot carry the signifers of history
9) it is paraodic of phallocentric bravado, and with the companion woman, provides a model for a new eden.
10) because it causes people such discomfort

New world record for living painter, and living artist, 17.2m pounds for FReud's Benefit Worker Sleeping.

For that price:

1. Sugimito's Musuem Peice Gemsbock
2-24 A Hockney photo collage, and 20 uncollaged Hockenys
24-26 Two Goldin Landscapes
27. Helen Levitt's iconic photo of a child finding a ball under a green car
28 A Warhol Polaroid of Muhammed Ali
29 A really nice, v. early Andre Cedar
30 A Peyton Drawing of Cobain
31 Lichensteins Rings, which i wrote about earleir this year
32 A Koons Stainless Steel work
33 A Prince Cowboy
34 Wayne Theibauds roe of Pumpkin Pies
35 A fantastic, fairly early earthy De Kooning Landscape
36-39 Three vuillard Interiors
37 A female portrait by Bonnard
38-40 A Pissaro ultra close up of trees
41 Degas drwing of a dancer
42-44 Two Molinia still lives
45 A beautiful Provence landscapes by Cezanne
46 A Leger monochromatic, work of his icnoni figures abstracted
47 A Scheiele nude with excellent colour
48 A Degas Bronze of a Horse
49 A still shiny bronze bimorphic abstraction by Arp
50 A Malloi giantess
51 A basquit Head Litho
52-57 5 Close Self Portrats
58- An important DEibroken Aquatint
59 A Frankenthaler, watercolour Etcing
60 A Guston woodcut
61-63 Two Hamiltion Colalges
64-67 Three Harings, including the black and red Totem
68 One of Hockney's beautiful boys, from the Gemmini GEL print studi, from teh late 70s
69-72 Three Johns, including two lead releifs,
73-79 6 Judd Woodcuts
80-83 Three Smal editioned large Scall Kelly abstractions
84 A Koons Donkey
85-88 Three Lichenstein prints, a sunrise, and a parody of fasicsm, hand and boot, and one of the Mirrors
88 Stella, Print of PErsia, from 1967,

538 left over, 4.75 for the Cezanne the most money spent

London Photo Auction, Sothebys

1. more work from early in the history, incouding some great vintage albumun and salt pritns, from the 1850s
   
2. Lawton Albums of Ceylon, from the 1870s, 78 vintage prints, really impt historically, bought in (low estimae 5k)
3. Two Keresetz iconic photos, made in the 20s, reprinted in the late 70s, most likely under the supervision of the Met, unsold
4. Hoping that Bellmer is getting some respecft as photog, which seems to be happening
   
5. Nothing a blockbuster, most sellign for fairly low estimates, in the 3500 range
6. I havent figured out if the Penn photos of cigarettes, big sexy cprints, in elegant black and whtie, have n interesting contradiction in mateiral and subject, or the expected grammar of fashion work.
   
7. The fantastic Arbus photo of Blaze Starr back stage, tired, intimate, and exposed literally.figuratively sells or 7500
8. How accdiental are the compositons of the NASA photos? i still find it interesting they are authourless
9. Weuiredest photo, a Helmut Newton glamour nude of Jody Foster stretched over a couch, from 1990
10. this is the only way you can get a Warhol print for 4 figures
11. has anyone done a show of Goldin landscapes, because the two here, one from Switzerland and one from STrombli, are better composed and constructed, more historically minded, then other work, and it points to interestnig fissures in her accidental, nto really a formalist armour
12. Conceptualists, like Nauman, Lawler, Ruff and Prince didnt do well
13. 94 of 208 unsold, including work by Nauman, Prince, Hockney, Arbus, Caroll (female nude), Bild, Lawler, The lunar Atlass of Loewy and Piseux, Charles Jones, Sander (several portraits, including a fantasitc Lichenstein), Rifentsthal (an image from Blue Light), Henri Carier Vresson, a few Sudk ndues, and others
    

meredith, from trunk books, really liked my essay i sent her, about my beard, and it has a fair to middling chance to being in the book she is including. here is the drat i sent her:

Thirteen Personal Anecdotes About My Beard


One:

My father had a beard. He has a beard, for decades, from living in Vancouver in the 60s, to raising me, and leaving at 7, his beard is a constant. It is the only constant thing about him. I have a beard, have had one since I was 15. Not a small one: big, bushy, and unkempt. It is the only constant thing about me. Seeing us together with the beards is a mirror to a primal scene; At least in terms of the hair, I have become my father. (I am also going bald the same way he is)

Two.
There is another kind of primal scene that my hair invokes, I grew up Latter Day Saints (e.g. Mormon), and the Saints have a weird relationship to beards. For most of the19th Century and into the twentieth century, the prophets have had beards. Majestic, sagacious cascades of white down their chests. I grew up in Sunday Schools with drawing that lined up all the prophets. The beards started with Brigham Young, and ended with George Albert Smith, who died in 1951. The rise of protestant mainstreaming in the LDS church began when the beards ended.

Three:
My favourite prophetic beard (well prophetic in this context, I have a soft spot for the beard of Charlton Heston as Moses, of St Wilgefortis, St Francis Assisi, and others) is Lorenzo Snow. He was more of a theologian then his predecessor; he had to clean up the messes of statehood and polygamy. He had to maintain calm, while the church was at risk of collapsing in on itself. Seeing his photo, during Sunday school lessons and early morning bible classes, was to be inspired. It was a perfect cone of white wool, growing over his craggy face, it embodied everything eternal about this man. This beard was both orderly and chthonic. (Think of Gandalf or Merlin but from the Missouri, then Utah.)

Four:
I remember when I was 6 or 7, growing up and thinking, I will have a beard as wonderful as Snow's. My hair does not grow to a point, it just sort of collapses into shaggy layers of wool. I would notice, as I grew older, there were no members of the bishopric, stake counsel, which had a beard. They were all clean-shaven. Those who had beards, or moustaches or even goatees were not chosen for positions of power. I asked a woman in our ward about this, because she had a reputation for cosmic wisdom, she responded with an anecdote about Spencer W Kimball, the prophet who was in favour of African Americans and the war in Vietnam, but against homosexuality and the Equal Rights Amendment.

Five:
Here is the anecdote: LDS members believe in a profoundly personal, corporeal God, and the place where that God is the most visible, where the veil between heaven and earth is the most transparent is the temple. So a young man, about to be a missionary, who had a beard, met the prophet in a temple, sometime in the late 70s. Kimball told him to shave. The missionary responded but Christ had a beard, and Kimball said, not last time I saw him. At the temple, literally, in the flesh. This story was supposed to awe me with the closeness the prophet had with the spirit of God, and also tell me about important lessons about obedience. Kimball was not found of women, of queers, of dissidence. The book told me that my masturbation, lead to mutual masturbation, which lead to homosexuality. My secondary sex characteristics were interlaced with my faith. My desire to fuck men and my desire to grow a beard interlace into a perversion of the mystic union between the Bridegroom and the bride.

Six:
I could start shaving in grade 9, at 15. I took my grade nine at an adolescent psychiatric facility. The staff had two goals: to socialize me and to save me from suicide. Every day they would give me a razor, and I would shave. Then I would give the razor back. I was poor at shaving and because I had no idea where my hands, my face or my body would interact, I would cut my face to ribbons. Last year, when I was in the hospital again, for the same reasons, I told the nurse how much I felt like my gender was fluid, that I was not real man or a real woman. She said but you have a beard, I said and I have a penis. She couldn't make the leap.


Seven:
In grade 10, I decided not to shave, again. I would go to the barber once a month for trims, but never bare faced. I also started wearing outrageous clothing and painting my nails. In my suburban high school, this was not only viewed as confusing, it was viewed as dangerous.

Eight:
My grade eleven class photo makes me look like a Mennonite.

Nine:
I keep telling myself there something radical in my beard. It's a signifier that I think about deeper things, that I make instead of follow trends. The previous few paragraphs suggest that the prophets had beards when they were hearing from G-d, and stopped having beards when they became technocrats. The beard and belly mean that I am not vain, or silly, that I am not the typical fag. The beard makes me better, and besides I look better with one. However true those ideas are, it is mostly, that I am incompetent in daily tasks, and that besides I'm lazy.

Ten:
A couple of years ago, I tried to shave it off by myself, at my friend Raymond's house, because I wanted to look nice for someone coming from out of town. It has become a story dragged out every time someone asks, why don't you just shave it off. The results were disastrous, they looked like I had the mange: empty in some quarters, patchy in others, and whole sections completelymissed. To rescue me from my own disaster, Ray had to shave the whole thing completely off. I looked like Chuck Lorre in M, if Chuck Lorre was dating a feeder.

Eleven:
I have found, lately, that beards turn me on. But not the beards that look like mine. I find skinny hipster boys at rock and roll shows with a chin strap or the mooks and frat boys with goatees and soul patches, or the just out of college, awkward finding yourself forgot to shave, or the businessman with the five o clock shadow, or the working class men in the semi rural town I live in—even the just baptized Hutterites during farmer's markets during the summer, all have sexy beards. I stop when a film or television show has a boy with a beard in them, Ryan Reynolds going crazy with the ax in that execrable Amityville Horror remake, or Tim McGraw/Toby Keith, or this episode of One Life to Live that had a bearded boy tied up with belts, a double whammy, and of course, playoff beards. All of those Slavs, or Russians, or from Saskatchewan, with the beards, and the ritual, the magical thinking, the devotion to a cause, but that cause being winning a silly kids game, play off beards are the greatest boon to jerking off post jergens.

Twelve:
I have a secret though, sometimes I get sick of the beard, and I want to shave it all off. But I cannot imagine my life without it. It has taken over my life. I have become the person with the beard, with all of the semiotic weight that attaches itself. I can only do drag as postmodern performance, I get food caught in it, I look a little too devoted to abstract causes. In my ongoing negotiation between being normal and being queer, between being radical and being conciliatory, my beard is a site of contention. Could I get a day job, and two kids, and a husband without the beard? But my friend Joe, an Anglican priest, orthodox, but wise and kind, has three kids and a wife and a steady job, and a fantastic beard, a beard sort of just barely kempt, and very much about dropping out.

Thirteen:
So I think, I will keep my beard, as a commitment to competing signals and heterodox holiness, because like Samson my beard contains my hair contains my strength.

and the erased de kooning--the erased dekooning had a holiness unmatched, all of that mysticism, of trying to erase, and failing to erase, and the weird freudian energy of recreating the primal scene there, and the making of work via absences, and how absences are presences, and how tender, he worked on making sure that drawing disappared, how the amount of tools for erasal were matched by the amount of tools of creation...

the four, johns i struggle with, and lstein i just started getting his glacial surfaces a few months ago, and andy, well andy is andy, with the mix of fucking and jesus, of artifice and family, and i can always find something interesting in his work, his colour choice, everytime i see a warhol book there is something else (this week, his 70s green and pink portrait of holzer, and some party snap shots from 85 or so, of people smoking) but rberg--it was personal and historical and cerebeal, and coded of course, but i wanted to do that, to have work that competed, broke apart, were horribly moving, were erotic, and were spiritually profound.

rberg for me, was a stream i immedieatley slipped into, then drowned, his exprimental energy was never slap dash, always had an elegance of half finished puzzles.

my favourite work of his, continues to be the work of mourning made in the late 70s, the hoarfrost and the cardboard, for their decay, their performative time based elements, and for their sublime trash. its difficult to do sublime trash well.

rberg died. one horseman left.

"Murder, adultery, theft, cursing, unholiness in masters, disobedience in servants, unfaithfulness, improvidence, hatred of God, disobedience to husbands, lack of natural affection, high-mindedness, flattery, lustfulness, infidelity, indiscretion, backbiting, whispering, lack of truth, striking, brawling, quarrelsomeness, unthankfulness, inhospitality, deceitfulness, irreverence, boasting, arrogance, pride, double-tongued talk, profanity, slander, corruptness, thievery, embezzlement, despoiling, covenant-breaking, incontinence, filthiness, ignobleness, filthy communications, impurity, foolishness, slothfulness, impatience, lack of understanding, unmercifulness, idolatry, blasphemy, denial of the Holy Ghost, Sabbath breaking, envy, jealousy, malice, maligning, vengefulness, implacability, bitterness, clamor, spite, defiling, reviling, evil speaking, provoking, greediness for filthy lucre, disobedience to parents, anger, hate, covetousness, bearing false witness, inventing evil things, fleshliness, heresy, presumptuousness, abomination, insatiable appetite, instability, ignorance, self-will, speaking evil of dignitaries, becoming a stumbling block; and in our modern language, masturbation, petting, fornication, adultery, homosexuality; and every sex perversion, every hidden and secret sin and all unholy and impure practices." (Kimball, Miracle of Forgiveness, 25)

We are looking for a new housemate for our house near Dufferin & Bloor. We've created a home where the four of us are deliberately focused on helping each other in our personal growth. We've all been involved in personal growth work and enjoy building a deep family connection and supporting each other in working out the challenges in our lives. We all have our own rooms and share the rest of the house together.

Starting June 1st we have room for another person to join our home. We have a saying on our fridge, "friends are the family you choose". If you would like to explore this kind of deeper connection living situation please call Philip @ (416) 200-4198. We look forward to meeting you.

Hope

Green ravisher of human life,
mad Hope, gilded frenzy,
the waking man's sleep,
confused and proud of its treasures as of its dreams;

soul of the world, flourishing senility,
decrepit and imaginary prime,
the today desired by the lucky,
and the unlucky man's tomorrow;

let them follow your name in search of your light,
those who wear green-tinted glasses
and see all as they would desire it;

But I, wiser in my fortune,
keep both my eyes in my two hands,
and see only what I touch.

San Juana de la Cruz, qoutes in this amazing blog of a celtic studies prof at oxford, d read his essay on Taleisn.

every so often i see some photos from a Maya Lin project I hadn't seen before, and I am reminded of how wise and gentle her work is. That she made the iconic post modern statement of mourning, often preculudes an appreciation of her other work, like the langston hughes library, on Alex Haley's farm...practical, close to the land, and devoted to local forms, it is a v. smart building that is humble about the skills of its maker.

innovative twisting drawers.

this story about Deborah Palfrey killing herself instead of going to jail, makes me so angry and so sad.

60 photos of school lunches. do not look nutrious or appetizing.

has anyone seen Jorgen Leth's Scenes from America? The synopsis, written on imdb by Anon, sounds fascianting:

As a visual narrative 66 scener fra America is reminiscent of a pile of postcards from a journey, which indeed is what the film is. It consists of a series of lengthy shots of a tableau nature, each appearing to be a more or less random cross section of American reality, but which in total invoke a highly emblematic picture of the USA. With the one travelling shot (through a car windscreen) and one pan (across a landscape) the tableau principle is only breached on two occasions; exceptions that prove the rule, so to speak. The images or postcards may be viewed as a number of interlaced chains of motifs, varying from ultra close up to super wide, include pictures of landscapes, highways and advertising hoardings, buildings seen from without, mostly with a fluttering Stars and Stripes somewhere in the shot, objects such as coins on a counter, refrigerator with a number of typical food products, a plate of food at a diner or a bottle of Wild Turkey, and finally, people who introduce themselves (and sometimes the content of their lives in rough-hewn form) facing the camera: for example, the New York cabbie or the celebrities Kim Larsen and Andy Warhol. The film actually consists of 75 shots but in some cases several shots combine in one scene, thus ending on sixty six. Each scene is delimited by the narrator; at the end of each shot he pins down the picture content, often by a simple indication of time or place, but in some cases more playfully, often shifting our perception in a surprising fashion. Similarly the sound close-ups in some scenes are intended to alter the viewer's immediate interpretation of the picture content, while the mood-creating or interpretive use of Erik Satie's Gnossiennes (No. 5) provides the final component of the film

i wrote this

godwin on godwin's law. where he makes clear the rhetorical itnentions of his concept.

the independent on global proifteers of the world food crisis.

fascianiting
first person essay on what men who loev men and women who love women, do with bodies, the difficult and personal realtionships between our need for affection and our need for saftey--my aspies, because of its realtion to touch, and because of its elimnation of social boundries, means that i am much less aware of and require much more, the touching of people, and so i never considered the implications of pdas.



D Sent me these, but I haev no idea who took it, the clothes are D&G

three thoughts about the sdsu drug raid.
1) tactically, one never deals large amounts from one fixed lcoation, esp. when the world knows of yr rep as a party school.
2) tactially, one decides b/w coke or pot, one is much safer to be caught with then the other, one is much easier to hide.
3) it is alot safer for students to sell to students, then to get the gangs and guns involved, when real criminals come in to fill the whole.

the 100 worst album covers ever.

snubs her family on her deathbed, and leaves the entire (substantial) estate to her wife, who she marriedo n her deathbed. (Almodavar, make this movie)

bill henson opera series, 1990-91, taken at the paris opera, beutiful but expected, note the comments on the bottom though.

longish suckjob on Gagosian, still cryptic.

this boston article about people trying to sell their pick up trucks is reflected in the pick up truck ads i see on televsion, which lately have become more and more hectoring and desperate.


the Mothers day card I am sending mine.

roger ebert on the inevitale hillary clinton movie.


This is kind of sweet, and kind of sad, and more then a little creepy, the virtue of the net, i think, is to allow these discourses to seep out.

teh problem with serra is that you cannot fully dismiss him until you see his stuff live.

the birth control pill in common usage, is not an aborfeacent, and i really wish rabid conseratives osbessed with maintiaining power over women's body would quit saying it was. (also, when yr cites include Eternal Perspective Ministries, The National Catholic Register and the Humane Vitae, i am not going to start truting yr ability to read medical texts well)

fascainting online collection of LDS Primary Ephemera, from 2003. Look esp. at the primary logos on the lower third of the page.

even Houllebucqs mother hates him. My favourite qoute:

This individual, who alas came from my womb, is a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame."

erica barnett's colelction of misogynst links against hilary, is a slap to the face for obama supporters, a bracing call to make sure that this rhetoric is not used.



Photo of Gennie, who provided the genetic samples.
my spirit animal the platypus, has been found to be stranger hen thot possible, after the genome has been mapped. article on the toxicology of platypus venom.

four hopeless but v. well drawn, diary entries from Anders Nilsen


Johnathon King, There is Nothing Wrong With Buggering Boys. (where he plays Oscar WIlde.)

Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale, Sothebys, New York

1. The day sale is returning to its role as garage sale for the upper classes, with lots of work of minor value by people you haev never heard of
   
2. Standard works, but some deals, a Degas Bather Pastel for 993k and a Charcoal Bather for 333k, a REdon watercolour bought in, A Klee Utopian cosntruction, some Elizabeth Frink bronzes, a bimorphic Arp bronze (shiny!), a couple of Virigina Fanton-Letour flower pictures, a Moore table top bronze,
   
3. Kitsch nude by Rysselberghe, modified odaliesque, was the only one to go over a million
4. Lots of, mostly, nudes and landscapes, which indicate a certain cosnerative trend (after 300 or so lots it becomes difficult to figure out who painted which naked lady or plein hair south of france scene)
5. Kees Van Doegen's nudes, even in pencil, are creepy.
6. Much less Buffett, Chagall, or Duffy though
7. This is wehre you bought your giocemetti, with a bunch going for low five figures, including a double rat
   
8. 94/308 unsold, including a monet paste, 3 sisley landscapes, 2 luce lanscapes, an important renoir double portrait, a vuillard landscape with epic greens, a moore bronze, some minor picassos, a Grosz sketch of a sex worker, form the weimar, a few matisesse, the under rated Lubin's portrait of an alien insext, and a sexy, sleeping balthus loliita.
   

sotheby's new york, impressionist and modern.

1. less impressionist work then modern work sold (for example, Degas, Renoir,Van Gogh, Pissaro, Signac all sold low or not at all), with the rise of prices in the post war market, and the best impressionist work already been sold under inflated prices, this would make sense (though a 1873 Monet landscape, of the french countryside, went for 44m, which means his market for iconic pictures is solid) (though a more abstract, and i think better paitning, from 1908, Nympheas, went for a 1/4 of that)
   
2. i mean there is still french art from the 19th century that sells for more then its worth, (for example, Matisse's derritave 1935 canvas, Portrait au manteau bleu for 22m)
3. A handful of excellent Schiele drawings for 1.77m, 888k, 1.04m, and 668k)
4. also, one great Vuillard, for 7.9
5. Giocemetti did well, with several prices above 10, and the nearly 8 foot skeletal bronze Grande Femme DEbout II, for 25m, and a couple of really nice Moore's also sold for decent if not great prices, sculpture should do better
   
6. 14 out of 58 unsold including Leger, Kees Van Dogen (because some ididot thought it was worth 12m), tow monets, a van gogh, a matisse, a gaugin, a picasso, and a Malloli went unsold) and 5 below estimate, including selling a gaugin (a great if unconventional gaugin, for 2m under, which is unheard of during a boom)
   

Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel I, January-May 1992.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XI, January-May 1997.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XII, June 1997-January 1998.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XIII, January- May 1998.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XIV, June 1998-January 1999.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XV, February-April 1999.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XVI, June 1999-January 2000.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XVII, February-September 2000.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XVIII, September 2000-March 2001.
Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Szenenwechsel XIX, March-September 2001.

excerpt from provenience for lichtenstein's ball of twine.

i am in this

this is the first time i have been in a real live book, as opposed to the net, or on more ephemeral paper, i'm excited.

Two excerpts from a 1978 production of Black and White Misnterls, a UK Blackface show that lasted until the 1980s--notorious among certain fandoms, first time i have seen them--aside from their strangeness, i wonder why only the men are wearing blackface (i mean i also wonder in 1978 why anyone is wearing blackface, but thats another point)

in toronto (one way ticket motherfuckers) on the 17th of may.

Prints, Sothebys New York,

1. 1989 prints by BAcon, of his more famous work (screaming pope, etc) sell well, but exist only to sell well it seems.
   
2. Estate pritnings of infamous basquiats seem such a rip offs, why pay 17k for something done 20 years after his death
   
3. dreary selection of expected albers, clemins, christos, closes, francis', warhol,
   
4. Deirborken's figuritve work might be finally getting decent prices, though is masterful 1980s prints from Crown Point, equal to the ocean park paitnings, are selling for low 6 figures, which is nice
   
5. Frankenthaler is getting bolder, with wide feilds of almost primary colours, a 2005 here bought in, was a real shame
6. Can anyone tell Haring's apart, or explain to me why one Haring is worth more then others--shape, motif, colour or lack of colour?
   
7. couple of dozen hockney's, from the 80s mostly, none good
   
8. speaking of iconic, two johns, both monochromatic, same peroid, same printer, same edition size, one of numbers and one of a ruler, the numbers selling for 151k more
   
9. collection of numbers, flags, etc from 68, for four figures, makes me think again that johns career died before 72, at least creatively
   
10. best johns is a lead relief called critics smile, with gold teeth, worst one is a cryptic clusterfuck litho from 88, it and 5 from the mid 90s unsold.
    
11. I really like Judd's woodcuts from 1988-90, they attempt to make classical the instincts of his earlier work, both the foundry drawings, and the boxes, plus what it means to cut wood (this seems so obvious to say, i feel the same way about the aquatints, and they are undervalued in the market (6 for 55k, 1 for 12k)
12. someone should buy more of Koons easy fun messy donkey
    
13. Lichenstein's Landscape 3 is gorgeous, with a thin bend day hills over a litho of perfect blue sky (i keep liking lichenstein more and more, keep discovering him.
14. Four Mirrors, for five figures a peice, which means i have a power of progistication
    
15. Pearl Masque by Nauman is a hard Ruscha rip offs
    
16. Bridget Riley's coloured grey no 2 is oceanic, in sort of irish sea colour
17. Only 4 Ruscha's, but a thwack of really fantastic warhols from the late 80s, including Garland/Blackgama, Ingrid Berman as a Nun, Ladies and Gents, Queen Liz, and others
18. only one good wesselman tit painting, but an epic foot fetish painting makes up for it.
    
19. 29 bought in
    

i went to the baths today, and thought i was in luck, big butch dude, newfie accent, red hair, went back to his room, and he wanted to wear black pumps and nylons. this makes me a bad person, but it was so comical i couldnt get it up

Rodeo Rider, Carstairs

Rodeo Rider, Carstairs
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

What could impel Jodie Foster and director Neil Jordan to whisk us back to the bad old days of Death Wish and Ms. 45? Were their credit cards maxed out? Were their kneecaps about to be broken? In The Brave One, Foster plays a radio host who delivers meditative monologues about our precious but too-ephemeral metropolis, only to find her romantic notions of identity shattered along with her skull when she and her fiancé are mugged by sniggering predators in Central Park. After she recovers (in body if not soul), she can’t seem to leave her apartment without being set upon by rapists and murderers. Lucky the lady has a gun … Homicide detective Terrence Howard—an avid listener of her weird radio spiels—faces an ethical decision: bust her or let her do what the law won’t let him do—blast the scum off the face of the Earth. You probably think I’m oversimplifying—that Foster and Jordan are too thoughtful, artistically ambitious, and politically progressive to make a movie that would have Bernie Goetz rolling his eyes. But Foster’s feminist victimization complex seems to be looping around to meet Nixon and Agnew. Next she’ll be hunting Commies for the FBI.
New York Magazine, David Edelstein, 9/07/07

(also good in it, nicky katt, who's career has a seires of rebel teachers, rookie cops, firemen, and the like, 67 roles on tv and film since 1980, cameos, half roles, peic here has a casualness and a grime, even for 10 minutes or so, that is missing from the entire film)

three things:
The facebook photo that was censored was the wesselman nude below, a female wesslman
from the mid 60s has gone a few days wtih no comment.

the brave one is too polite, too well acted, to much about making love, too well shot, too obsessively middle class, to be pulp, but how does one remake deathwish with such delicacy? starting with a comment about how the cleaning of cities, the gentryfying of cities is killing them, the rest of the 2 hours seems to be an apologetic for new new york, which is made stranger, when one looks meta-contextually at the rest of foster's career, esp. the accused, with the court room scenes (absent here) and taxi driver. that said, terrance howard is excellent as a good cop. (the only suprising thing in the film) (also jodie foster is aging really well) (one of the reasons why i think that tarintno is still a vital film maker is that he refuses to make clean or neat, the implications, aesthetics, politics, and sexuality of pulp, but still deranges and deconstructs it--there is an essay to be written in the victim narratives of the nominally liberal foster and the nominally liberatain tarintino)

one more poetry book, a fascinating anthology of nightengale poems edited by richard howard, not only idnicating the history of a trope and lciche from the 14th century on, but with some great examples by two dozen poets, including a heine sonnet, adn a long sequence by clare, which combines the best lyrical romanticism with a hard edged, close to the ground, field study observational energy...what you see as a thread thruout the selection, is how poets claim, reclaim, and disclaim cliches, with a certain reductive obsession. (23)

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Hooray Hooray The First of May
Out Door fucking Begins Today

Around 8 pm, on the 29th of April, my friend Ashley Andel and I tried to find a place to have a drink and catch up. Being a Tuesday in downtown Edmonton, there were a dearth of possibilities, and we ended up at The Bank, on Jasper at 107th. We were looking for quiet, since we wanted to have a conversation, and the place seemed empty enough to facilitate this.

Instead of a cocktail and kvetching session, we were forbidden entrance. Instead, five bouncers made homophobic jokes, threatened Ashley with psychical violence,called him a faggot, told him he was not welcome, and pointed him to the gay bar down the street.

We were calm, and left without incident. Instead of a pleasant night out, we had yet another example of power tripping security gaurds acting way outside their jurisdiction.