Sell Anything

"Well, I've given this a lot of thought, and I don't want to buy anything, sell anything or process anything for a living. I don't want to buy anything sold or processed, or sell anything bought or processed, or process anything bought or sold or processed. . . Or repair anything bought or sold or processed. I don't want to do that for a living."

Chelsea Terrible

I'm starting a sister blog dedicated mostly to bad art in Chelsea. It won't be restricted to Chelsea or bad art but I'm going to try and restrict it to works in galleries.
Why separate?

• Blogger lacks categories
• Chelsea Terrible is a nice name.

Guggenheim lunch

Seriously, I was around during this conversation

Christina was like, "Isn't it amazing how quickly art techniques have turned into Photoshop filters?"
Zani was then, "But you can imagine the way they would feel about it. For them these were ways of seeing, not a level of on top of what is seen. Think about how Manet would have felt."
Judith then said, "Or Seurat!"
And we laughed, because we all knew how Seurat would have felt.

Larkin's Wants

I've started Philip Larkin's Collected Works. Many of them are shorter than I expected, clearly he was depressed.

Wants

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flag-staff -
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.

Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes away from death -
Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs.

Below this it, oblivion desire be:
Before the memory washes in the morning,
Bank drafts of shameful chances
Faces heading past you
Below this it, oblivion desire be.

Spanish movie

I've turned into my father. This was me watching a foreign movie last night.
Me: This seems to be quite a bit of overreaction to seeing them have sex.
...
M: Wait a minute, who died?
B: The daughter.
M: What daughter?
B: The daughter.
M: She died? He killed her? Why would he have killed her?
B: The dog.
M: The dog?
B: Don't you remember how the dog was acting crazy and then she told it to guard the door, and then the girl came in?
M: ...Okay. Now the thing I don't understand is why the mother was babysitting her own daughter.
B: What?
M: That was the mother and the daughter... and the other one was also the daughter.
B: That's the babysitter and the babysitter has a mother but it is not the mother of the daughter.
M: Well why is the woman on the island so upset?
B: Because she's the mother.

It's like my brain has turned to sand.

Note to readers

Previously I had kept my thoughts in large files- growing them until they became dark beasts in dark rooms. Then beginning again in a bright white room where I could again fill, and then when there were too many files then I would have the massive editing session and begin to rework and categorize...
At least in theory. But even these editing sessions don't happen. So perhaps I've been a blogger all along.

An especially humorless note on rap

From my rap experience it has become clear that the violence and misogyny is part of the form, and to a degree without meaning. When an artist creates a new work they use their knowledge of the form- they warp it, break it down, and work against it- but not without it. And the form of rap, the basic vocabulary is of aggression and dominant sexuality.
The mental process has parts in common with translation. These rap subjects may not be part of the way the artist speaks in every day life but during composition he uses them the same way a poet may suddenly decide to describe the outdoors. To use these subjects is false to the writer's life but not to the form.
This doesn't remove an artist's responsibility for what he expresses but seeks to put it in context. In a sense saying that rap itself is party responsible: that technique and subject are not as easily divisible as we may assume them to be.

Punk planet

A decade ago I acquired a discarded Punk Planet and Maximum Rock and Roll. I expected moralising and poorly written interviews and reviews of bands I'd never heard of. Instead I found myself in a Europe that I kept questioning the reality of. The article seemed real- the accounts were detailed, the style consistently earnest. If it was a fake it would have taken incredible dedication and been of a kind I hadn't encountered. Yet here in, a continent by all accounts more civilized than the U.S., were these neo-Nazis and skin heads which were anti-Nazis and they were getting in pitched battles. Wouldn't the newspapers and magazines jump on this juicy stuff- youth out of control, fighting, good and evil. But I'd never heard of any of this.

Today I was reading Vice which had an over-heated article about a neo-Nazi/ anti-Nazi altercation. I've gained small bits knowledge over the years. Never anything close like the original report which told of the encounters, the life, what it was doing to the universities but brief bits about the neos desecrating graves.
The article was over-heated and illogical but I was struck once again that is what magazines needed to be doing. I soon began to beat myself for not having subscribed to one of the punk magazines and wondering what I was doing with this one. This was Vice's Hate issue which had also had celebrities on hate, cute white power bands, and a hate fashion spread. Next month would be back to rock or drugs, nerds or porn. Vice was merely the midmarket between MR&R and Spin- a way to combine punk and panty ads.
A few moments later I realized that I was being drastically unfair. Vice is teenage. Not at all in the way of Spin or Rolling Stone but honestly. It always seems like it is done the way you would have with some friends in high school. If it was funny you were going to do it, even if it was "stupid" or no one would get it. If you wanted to do an issue where you cut-out everyone's face in the magazine and replaced it with one of your friend's, and put him on the cover, and had everyone you interviewed say something about him then you did it, and laughed with your friends all month. If you liked an artist and wanted to mention it every other issue, you did.
What's more you knew what you were doing was stupid which made it even funnier.
There are flaws with this but it's also freedom. This is the magazine you would have wanted to have as a teenager, Vice is the cool kid who could hang out with all the groups.

New Yorker Cartoon

I don't agree with Jerry Seinfeld that the New Yorker's cartoon's are inscrutable or unfunny, but the small illustrations can be dodgy. Usually they are small and poetic, a pair of glasses on an open book, a whisk, etc. But sometimes they are compact and timely stories.
Here we have two superheroes one with plain socks and a polka-dotted cape, the other, more conservative, with striped socks and a plain cape. He comes either from a University abbreviated as A, is known as A man, or has magnetic capabilities. The first (D) is flying towards him with a ringing cell phone. "Get with the times" he says.
"No, no, I won't" says A.

Lolita LOL

There is a very funny line at the end of Lolita where Nabokov is talking about trying to get published. He receives a note advising if he'd changed

Lolita into a twelve-year-old lad and had him seduced by Humbert, a farmer, in a barn, amidst gaunt and arid surrounds, all this set forth in short, strong, "realistic" sentences ("He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess...")

...
I picture Nobby in his study, off to one side the thousand carefully worked index cards, on a another a highly scientific and soporific book on butterflies and him with this note in the middle- coming to face with America.
Finally here's someone that is comfortable with the sex, what he doesn't know about is all this writing.

The Crib

Wipe off your feet, because this episode of MTV Cribs will have you walking inside the grand homes of Cash Money Millionaire Lil' Wayne, Orlando Magic's Steve Francis, and actor/model Antonio Sabato Jr.

The tour begins with rapper Lil' Wayne's fabulous New Orleans digs. The first thing we see is his ultra-posh living room complete with a long, white, stretch sectional sofa reminiscent of gangsta Tony Montana's in Scarface. His model car collection adds a whimsical touch to the pristine space. If you're looking for somewhere to crash in New Orleans, you should definitely check out Lil Wayne's guestroom. With satin sheets on the bed and pictures of Lil' Wayne himself on the mirror, you're sure to be comfy. Lil' Wayne's five-year-old daughter Reginae also has a nice space in the house. Her room is decorated in the oh-so-cute Dora the Explorer theme. When Lil' Wayne really wants to get away, he heads off to his "Kick It" room. Purple lighting and a picture of Bob Marley set the cool, laid-back mood for the room. Decadence is the word to describe Lil' Wayne's bedroom. Again, the bed is wrapped in satin sheets, and an impressive collection of bling drips from the sides of the nightstand. After taking us around his abode, Lil' Wayne leads us outside to show us his rides: his amazing Austin Powers "Shaguar" and his big-body Escalade truck.

Checkit here's another one, got it tricked out soft.

The recollection of my crib, with its lateral nets of fluffy cotton cords, brings back, too, the pleasure of handling a certain beautiful, delightfully solid, garnet-dark crystal egg left over from some unremembered Easter: I used to chew a corner of the bedsheet until it was thoroughly soaked and then wrap the egg in it tightly, so as to admire and re-lick the warm, ruddy glitter of the snugly enveloped facets that came seeping through with a miraculous completeness of glow and color.

Similsame

On Jessica Simpsons's TV show she went to the golf course, to prepare she had to pick-up some items at the pro-shop. Trying on a small fingerless glove she held it up to everyone and the camera exclaiming "fits like a glove!"
I haven't seen more of the show but I imagine this is a world of knives that "cut like a knife!" and which when heated cut through butter like "a hot knife through butter!"
Since then I feel like I've seen more of this, the similsame, where a simile is contrasted with its object.

The similsame's counterpart is the unpun. I've witnessed attempts even closer than this but here the surprise rests on "used" being both a state of ownership relfecting prior use and a state of usage.

Everything's wrong

(Sheet lightening follow-up)
I'd forgotten that Underworld was supposed to be like this. I'd lain the book down for a while and I was thrown by the third-person voice. But this is current- the third-person isn't what it used to be. News sources are known to be unreliable- so instead of absorbing the facts we keep the whole thread (the voices) stored in different locations and then weigh them against each other. We give them points ratings, or try to, but we end up with a muddle- a thing we hope is our opinion.

After reading a few more pages I realized that this was a book where everything is wrong. Or ""wrong"". Not false but incorrectly thought. In contrast to Pale Fire which is also false. A torrent of false ideas- which should in theory be hilarious. And maybe it is. I continually get the feeling with Nabokov that I'm missing it. So I sit and frown at the book. And occasionally when I get something sniff, because I get it, or think I do.

So it's a lot of fun.

The summer of sheet lightening

It was the summer of sheet lightning and red wine, those deep Bordeaux that resemble lion's blood, and she stood on the rooftops and terraces and wondered how all these things could been here so long without her ever noticing.
Don Delillo Underworld p. 379

When I had trouble with the spectral narrowing from red wine to deep Bordeaux I put it down to my lack of culture. One day, I thought, when I go out to all these dinners with cheery intellectuals and I select the correct Bordeaux to go with my some-type-of-fish and then smell it to detect something, I will understand this reference and it will resonate within me because I will know the exact type of muddy red that is being referenced and will fully understand appreciate how it fits with the sheet lightening and it will be like savoring a fine... But then I came upon the lion's blood.

And I still don't know what to do about it, I'm either going to have give up on this sentence or kill a lion. I've thought about just Googling for some images of lion's blood but this seems foolhardy- with initial lighting, camera considerations, on one side and jpeg compressions, monitor calibration, and incadescent lighting on the other any hope of understanding...