The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

Well I just haven't written in a while. But I must talk about The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz. However I must also mention that this spring I went to see Cavallia (which should come with a parental warning label: Do not bring your tween daughters to this show unless you can fork out for a pony) and it snowed in LA while we were in the tent. Otherwise it was a typical Cirque show - a big marshmallow of a spectacle but nothing that sticks to your ribs. But horses, how can you go wrong? We also saw Mark Morris' Allegro at the music center. It was wonderful, a lovely, witty pastoral. At one moment the tallest female dancer (who was tall) and the smallest female dancer (who was a real shrimp) walked diagonally across the stage, tall one leading, holding hands like a mother and child. And two men came and lifted the smaller dancer up in the air so she became a lost balloon, floating away. Lovely images, the part where the men danced together and then slapped one another elaborating on male attraction and homophobia, the fox hunt. All lovely.

However, Chad Diety is just a blow away event. It's really one of the best things I've seen in ages.

It touches on a lot of the things I find important in art - how do you tell a story within the confines of the art form you are using? Set in the world of Wrestling, a male version of the soap opera (did I say that? Yes I did! Take that guys!) that tells jingoistic stories of humiliation, defeat and victory. But our protagonist, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, Macedonio Guerra wants to tell a different story about America. A story where people collaborate to put on a show - because Macdeonio is the guy in wrestling who is an actual wrestler who job it is is to make the bigger beefcake guys who can't wrestle look good. And the beefcake - Chad Deity, who is the wrestling star attraction - is supposed to make sure that the other guy doesn't get hurt. This collaboration is the hidden heart of the wrestling world. You have to be really good to make the other guy look good while you are getting beaten up. It was a fascinating look at who is telling the story.

MOCA Collection; Matisse: Radical Invention

I was walking the dogs one morning and thinking about Mark Rothko's paintings and how one needed to see them physically to understand them. Just seeing a reproduction wouldn't give you a sense of the scale or the subtlety of the surface as shades move into one another, how things glow. You get a sense that they are people when you stand in front of them because you have your physical body in front of the physical painting.

So I popped off to MOCA to see the collection which everyone is rightly excited about. It is a nice collection of modernism. And there, right in front was an entire room of Rothko's. Man that guy could push paint. It was like seeing the room of Monet's waterlillies at MOMA where you need a recovery room. I felt like maybe I should just waver in my physicality. And then it was off to another room of Franz Klines - those winter landscapes of gesture. So beautiful.
Anyway there were some spectacular paintings from the 50's and early 60's and then you wandered into some great Louise Nevelson sculptures and then on into the Rauschenberg combines and Johns - great messy paintings with the kitchen sink thrown in - very exuberant.
The show was arranged roughly chronologically for a large part. The photographic collection was incredible. In the 50's and 60's you have all these beautifully observed black and white prints from Diane Arbus and Robert Frank. Then the 70's happen and painting sort of stops. People paint paintings of stripes. Stripe paintings are kind of boring, especially walking through entire galleries of them. Painting was just not happening. Other things were like performance, conceptual art and photography. For example there was a hilarious Bruce Nauman where you walked through a square box hallway, there was a small black and white tv monitor on the floor in each corner and a small camera pointed at each corner which fed a one monitor back, so you were constantly chasing yourself, seeing just a hint of your back turning the corner on the far monitor you were approaching. It's like you were chasing your ghost. Another thing that starts happening is more color photography, the curators made a Nan Goldin room that is totally devastating.
Leaving the exhibit you pass a series of photographs documenting performances or earth works by the artist Ana Mendieta which are so evocative of loss. The human figure making a mark on the earth and leaving, graves - the metaphors are so rich when you look at the work, it is such a shame she died so tragically.
Then I popped off to Chicago and while there I did a brief run through of the Matisse show there. It's late work for him (and as opposed to the LACMA exhibit of Renoir late work which is go awful) it has some gorgeous important work in it. Matisse understood the 9000 shades of blue in the world. He understood green. He understood shapes. In the painting the Moroccans, he uses the shape of a turban to echo the shape of the mosque domes.

SOS - Big Art Group

So last weekend, in a fit of devil may care spending we went to the theatre. Unlike going to a broadway play, the symphony or the opera, CalArts' Red Cat is an affordable venture if you are willing to see stuff that is off the beaten track. I, for one, am obviously off the beaten track, so I've enjoyed everything I've seen at Red Cat, while I have spent money on Broadway tickets and been totally grossed out. I remember being appalled at seeing a revival of the Music Man - the content of the play was reprehensible and the direction was something to the effect of let's try and be as bland as possible for the IOWANS who are VISITING our FAIR CITY who would not be able to understand anything sophisticated and who will be wowed(!) by a little breaking the third wall by having a marching band go up the aisle.
So for a mere 30 bucks we saw Caden Manson's group perform SOS. It was a loud play with many video screens that were edited on the fly with the actors performing in front of small video cameras and changing scenes were created by holding up postcards for backdrops. There were three lines of action - one was Logan's Run with Plushies, another was Valley Girl Consumer Competition and the third was Bader-Meinhoff America's Top Model. In the end all of the actors encased themselves in balloon armor and had a fight.
At one point the contestants in Bader-Meinhoff America's Top Model were having a car chase. One actor held cards of streets up to a camera. Another actor held cut outs of a car hood, roof and windshield up to another camera. Two Actors stood in front of a camera - while another one (in the car behind) was in front of a fourth. Edited together it looked like there were two people careening in a car through the streets of a city with another person in hot pursuit behind them. The plushies - See here for a definition - were actors dressed in plush-outfits representing a raccoon, bunny, deer and wolf (I knew something was up when there was a carnivore amongst the ranks, quite frankly, that was a bit that you could see was coming from miles off) with a camera strapped on a pole in front of them and a flashlight that they could use to illuminate their faces. It was always dark during these scenes and the way to see the actors was to follow their flashlight faces or to watch the video screens which could only see the actors who had their flashlights on. Very fun.
Last weekend we also went to the Hammer to see Nine Lives work of 9 LA based artists. It was fun to see Jeffrey Valance's work again - I dimly remember him from nine thousand years ago and it's nice to see him alive and kicking, but the work I thought was totally standout in the exhibit was a series of large scale photos (I wouldn't be able to fit one in my house - don't have a wall big enough) about motion and stillness. They were black and white photos, exquisitely printed of a moving cat - where the exposure was long so that the cat was a blur, except for one where the cat was sitting curled up and still. Gorgeous work, really gorgeous.

A Great Weekend, Beach, Dogs and Expiremental Theatre

Last Sunday we went to Red Cat to see Teatro Ciertos Habitantes perform Monsters and Prodigies: The History of the Castrati Which was hilarious and beautiful and not only was there a beautiful horse on stage there was a food fight! Yea! Teatro Ciertos Habitantes is a theatre collective based in Mexico where they live in a forest and try and preserve the eco system and create plays.
On Saturday we went to the Huntington Beach Dog Park to meet other pbgvs and that was swell.
Beso of course was the total ID. Total Id - I'm not sure who the superego was but Beso was the Id. He ran into the water, ran up on the sand, rolled around in the sand, humped a few dogs, ran in the water, rolled in the sand, tried to rip the treats out of passing strangers pockets and bags, humped a bit more and gave voice freely. Cartman won the second runner up in the Id category, while I think that Cooper won the most photogenic. I didn't get a good photo of Frankie, but Beso met a cousin of his, Zoe and I have a shot of them together.

Here are some photos.

Last day for Art

On Nov. 15 we went to LACMA to see Machine Project's Field Guide to LACMA and it was a fun way to spend the day. Part of the reason was that the activities - scattered around the LACMA campus allowed you to see some art and galleries that you normally just avoided because let's face it, not only is LACMA blessed with the most hideous buildings for housing art (don't get me started on that - including the new Broad) but the collection isn't first rate, so you have a lot of second tier work from first tier artists or you have work from really justifiably obscure adherents to historical art movements. Though I do like the Georges de la Tour Magdalene a great deal - but it's sandwiched between such terrible work that I forget to go visit it. But to be in a room of rather okay religious works from the 1500 - 1700s and to hear Lewis Keller's Thornton Room Rumble Modification was great. The live re-mix of the ambient air conditioning system of the Ahmanson building lent a direness and urgency - a sense of dread to these paintings. The Musical Elevator was funny. And the Gothic Arch Speed Metal - one minute of speed metal from the roof of a building - complete with Gothic Arch and smoke machine was totally hilarious. My favorite piece was the Peeping Netsuke by Jason Torchinsky - Netsukes being these little hand carved ivory talismans from Japan. In the Japanese pavilion you went into the Netsuke exhibit room which has hundreds of these little carved figurines in little boxes and suddenly you see a photo of a large one popping up outside the window. Walking to the photo you look outside and discover the apparatus - a hand made machine - powering a slowly turning bicycle wheel that has the Netsuke photo attached. It causes the photo to appear and then disappear - all with a sly wink to Marcel Duchamp. Great fun.
In another element that would bring joy to the Dadaists - the throngs of people walking around behaving in a most un-museum goer like ways had some of the more uptight guards in a tizzy. As people snapped photos of performers and talked on cell phones they would be chastised by the ignored guards desperately trying to enforce rules.

We also saw the Martin Kippenberger and Louise Bourgeois shows at LACMA. Kippenberger reminded me of RW FAssbinder - prolific, intense, obsessed and lost. Seeing all the Bourgeois pieces together, the limp structures with the hard materials was all together creepy and made you wonder about her childhood, which the accompanying materials hinted at was dark without elucidating with specifics.

Finally we popped off last week to the Hammer to see the woodcuts and the Oranges and Sardines exhibits. Oranges and Sardines takes abstract work as it's starting points and asks several abstract painters to select two pieces of their own and then several ones that influenced them. This is an interesting idea that resulted in a completely uninteresting show. Which is I guess why curators have jobs. However Gouge the woodcut show was an excellent example of why we need curators. There was an idea for the show, excellent examples that displayed that idea and crisp language inviting the viewer to understand and wonder. My particular favorite was a print that was just a sinuous black line wandering down the page. This line depicts the map's border between India and Pakistan with the rest of the picture being gouged out into nothingness - the empty space, the negative space on either side of the border. Killer. Best thing I've seen in years.

Bill T. Jones - Blind Date

So the beloved C. and I went to see the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company perform Blind Date at Royce Hall. The parts of the dance were thrilling, the athleticism of the dancers was fantastic. Part of the war/anti war message was lost, but it was great to go out and see old Bill - who can still move.

Sacred Monsters

So the beloved C and I went to the U.S. premiere of Sacred Monsters a performance by Akram Khan and Sylvie Guillem at Royce Hall. Well I just had to see the best ballerina of my generation.

So here was an example of how two traditional forms, ballet and kathak can be fused using the meta language of modern dance. And what a fabulous example it is. My word - so wonderful. Sylvie Guillem is very tall and you could see a movement start somewhere around her hip and snake up each elegant vertebra until it moved along and ended at a finger tip. And other times her movements were so spare and cohesive that you didn't realize how tall she was. It was like she could assemble and disassemble each movement depending on her whim. When Khan and Guillem danced together they were wonderful, elegant, wry and humorous. All in all, a wonderful night.

Reviews: Magritte, Tiajuana, Icons

Okay, how long did I say these slippers had a chance of lasting? Beso chewed the balls off them last night. He was playing with a ball and I had my slippers right next to me on the floor by the couch. Because I don't put shoes or slippers on the couch, because I was not raised in a barn. So he was running around and I was knitting a baby blanket for a friend and then suddenly he bounces in so happy happy happy that I know something is WRONG. Well somehow he had done it.

So, the beloved and I have gone to a few shows. The Magritte show at LACMA was beautifully arranged by John Baldessari, you walked on a carpet of clouds (how surreal!) but the Magrittes were you know, pretty Magritte-y and not very interesting. The work around the Magrittes by contemporary artists was actually very interesting. It was good to see some of Doug Hubler's Crocodile Tears series and some dynamic work by Vija Celmins, who is also having a major retro at the Hammer, which I haven't seen yet. But it wasn't really the best show I've seen and was rather disappointing. Though it will not be disappointing to the museum because it is one of those block buster shows that everyone takes their children to see. "Look honey the APPLE is a BIG as the ROOM!."

In contrast a more modest show at the Santa Monica Museum of Art does not disappoint. "Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana" was lively and engaging. It had some of the funniest video art I'd seen in a while. And there were some damn good paintings. SM Museum

At the Getty (Yes, we've been going going going in search of an art fix) there is a show of Icons from the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine underneath Mount Sinai. The Monastery is the continuous monastery going and they had a lot of icons that need restoration. So the Getty conservators stepped in and did a damn good job restoring things but then they took them to California and put them on display here. I assume the icons are eventually going back, since the Getty seems to be returning things these days. Anyway I figured that I would never get my ass over to the Sinai peninsula to see these in situ, and I'd probably be struck down by angry monks if I did, so off to the Getty we went. So as Fellini and Bunuel have ever been fond of pointing out, there is something surreal about priests in their robes. But really nothing is more surreal than having 50 Eastern Orthodox Priests on a pilgrimage to the Getty Center in their medieval-man robes and large crosses and long, long, long beards. And like medieval-man, they haven't really discovered deodorant so they are au natural. But like people everywhere, you could tell who the cool monks were. They could occasionally make jokes. There is a tension, however, in the display of objects shown both as objects and as objects of veneration. These are religious artifacts that have been in continuous use for 1000 years and as such are wonderful examples of medieval art. And so there is tension between the use and purpose of the object when taken out of it's context and placed in a secular modern one. It's rather embarrassing to see people kneel and pray in an art museum. Especially the Getty that temple to Mammon.

Anyway the monks made a good visual along with the art. There was a portal of full length portraits of Moses and Aaron, dark curly hair on one, long white beard on the other, one was holding a tablet and the other a scroll. I thought the white haired bearded one was Moses -- even though he was holding the scroll, but on reading the text I found out he was Aaron! Moses was the cute dude with the curly dark hair holding the tablets. Upon finding this out I then stood around and watched people approach and then would ask them, which one is Moses? And everyone pointed to old white beard. So poor Moses has over the centuries been slowly becoming less cute in the popular imagination. Cause I'm telling you two thousand years ago, he was the hunk. Speaking of which, there is an icon of St. Catherine (or 97 icons of Catherine, the monastery is named after her) where she is gazing coyly at the viewer, seductively leaning against her wheel. Which I thought was what she was martyred on , but apparently she was going to be put to death on the wheel and her touch broke it, so she was beheaded instead and angels whisked her away to Mount Sinai and the monastery started. Who knew?

Reviews: The Coronation of Poppea

Well, yes, I know that there was no PBGV action happening when Monetverdi was around, but still, Beso is adorable and happy.

So we, the beloved C and I, went to see Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea by the L.A. Opera at the music center.

The Coronation of Poppea is a very long opera, 3 acts, two intermissions, 4 hours, one murder suicide, one attempted murder, three exiles and some royal adultery. A lot happens.

The Coronation of Poppea is one of the earliest operas and is a baroque opera. The orchestra was not a modern one, but one filled with a disarming lack of wind and percussion instruments. There were violins and a viola, harps, harpsichords, baroque cello, baroque guitar and best of all three, count 'em three theorbos. They were like lutes for Atlas-sized giants. I'll just let you google them, but dear me they were large - and we could see them big as ever from our outpost at the top of the balcony.

Anyway, it's a very long opera and it is not a "classic" opera, the music is baroque, the narrative arc is odd. It's about Nero and his girlfriend Poppea, who wants to be empresses so they need to get rid of the current legal empress who wants to get rid of Poppea.

Often in Operas the wronged wife is this noble character - like the Marchande in der Rosenkavalier, though obviously this was not a trope in Opera when Poppea was composed since it is one of the first operas, but Octavia, the empress, she sings sweetly about love and how her husband, Emperor Nero, is her one true love and how heartbroken she is that he's cheating on her, etc., etc.

And I thought, you know, if my husband was Nero - I might have a few other issues with him. Like the poisonings, murders, assassinations, thefts and the horse in the bedroom. Sleeping around is nothing.

Poppea and Nero arrange to murder Seneca, the stoic philosopher. He kills himself after the villagers sing to him asking him not to die. There are a few goddesses running around quarrelling. Mercury pops down and hovers around to tell Seneca that he's going to go. Seneca, being a stoic is a baritone and is glad to leave handling Nero to go take his chances with the gods. Nero and Seneca's nephew sing about love and feel each other up. (STOIC=BARITONE)

And that's just part of the first two acts!!!! The song where the villagers ask Nero not to die is absolutely gorgeous as is the duet between Nero and the nephew.

So (we're going to go faster now) Poppea's jilted boyfriend, Otho is told by Occtavia, Nero's wife, that he has to kill Poppea by dressing as a woman. He asks Drusilla, the woman who loves him to borrow her clothes and declares his love for her. She is stupid, so she believes this and gives him her outfit. Otho goes to kill Poppea who lies asleep in her garden but Amore, the goddess of love, stops him from killing Poppea, he is discovered and escapes though all can say that it was Drusilla who tried to kill Poppea. Did I mention that Otho is a counter tenor? That means he sings higher than I do. Love duets between men and women where they are both in the same vocal range are rare.

So Otho escapes, but Drusilla is easily caught and Nero threatens her with torture so she admits to wanting to kill Poppea and she is sentenced to death. But wait! Lo! There is Otho, striding forward and declaring that it was he who tried to kill Poppea! At the request of Ottavia! So Otho is exiled, Drusilla goes with him, and Ottavia is exiled. Now is Poppea's chance to be empress, Ottavia is gone and the way is clear!

The opera notes made a great deal of the fact that there is no moral compass for the audience to root for. Seneca the stoic baritone is killed off in the begining of the second act and didn't do to good of a job teaching Nero ethics. Ottavia wants to kill her rival but isnt' appalled at a husband who routinely murders his relatives and former teachers. Drusilla is willing to sacrifice herself for her lover, but she is also quite happy to help her lover kill her rival. Otho is totally willing to point the finger at the Empress, there goes loyalty. Nero is an adulterer and murderer. Ditto Poppea.

But my word, the closing duet between Poppea and Nero, declaring their love; gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous!

Reviews: Wolfgang Tillmans

We went to the Hammer Museum to see the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibit. The photographs are curiously closed down and matter of fact. Like they're pretending to be neutral and devoid of content. But they are queer, odd and emotionally resonant at the same time, they're tilted. One of a man and a deer on a beach, you can't quite reconcile beach, man, deer. Why is the deer that size, who has ever heard of a deer on a beach, why is the man near the deer? It's all very odd.

We saw it a while ago and I haven't mentioned it in my political catatonia and switching jobs and all. But I recommend seeing the exhibit. Go to Westwood and park in the building, they'll validate!

Reviews: What to Wear

So we went to see "What to Wear" an opera with music by Michael Gordon and libretto by Richard Foreman.

It was a totally amusing event, with fantastic music and a truly Dadaist sensibility. The costumes and props, of which there were many, were charmingly home made, like the original Dada costumes by Hugo Ball.

The opera concerned the concerns of Madeline X, who is beautiful. Madeline X was represented or discussed by a quartet of singers, dressed up like four psycho Andrews Sisters. Madeline has a brain inside her brain that is a box that either is or is not open. Madeline likes or doesn't like to play golf with or with out ducks. There are big ducks and BAD DUCKS in the opera. Ducks who go into restaurants beautifully dressed are eaten. There was a gaggle of "movement ensemble" performers and a rather large chorus who also moved. The performers who were not Madeline were dressed in black suits, with short trousers (the golf thing) and large kilted barrels wrapped around them. They wore striped glasses and a daub of paint on their chins to represent goatees. One of the chorines was an adorable young thing who was having a great time, she couldn't stop smiling. Though when you have a striped golf club as a prop you probably shouldn't be smiling. The set was a charming homemade mish mosh, with a card and mirror motif reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. Indeed the movement ensemble and chorus looked rather like pawns. Occasionally the movement ensemble would push in a large duck tank. I really enjoyed myself and would certainly buy the album - the music was absolutely wonderful. And I would recommend the opera to anyone who doesn't mind not knowing what's going on. If you have to know what's going on, then don't go.

This picture is of Leche with the "PRE" version of the french market bag. I knitted and knitted and got this huge bag, all floppy. This was my first knitting project that did not involve a rectangle or square. It was also my first felting project. I knit the thing in the round and it was large and floppy. Then I popped it into the washing machine in hot water. And it came out like below. I followed the recipe (I guess they call it a pattern) which I would never actually do if it was a recipe, and the things I wanted to change I should have changed. Proving that knitting isn't really that complicated. Here's a picture of the POST felted bag.

Reviews: Omayra Amaya

Okay Okay, I get more comments about Sci-Fi than I do about the shameful behaviour of the U.S. Government. So I'll shut up about torture. However there's a good op-ed piece in the LA Times today about the situation. Read about it Here

So Last Weekend we drove up to Santa Barbara to visit ye olde daddy and go to a flamenco dance concert that some lovely friends of ours had given us tickets too. As we drove along the 101 we passed the Day Fire in the distance, churning smoke into the sky. In the morning our car had a fine layer of ash upon it. Smoke is best seen with polarizing lenses otherwise you can mistake it for haze or for or clouds. Like when we were coming into California last, over the Sierras, driving over Donner Pass (7089 feet high) and into the great San Joaquin Valley I saw smoke - through my polarized sunglasses and suggested to my companions that maybe we should turn the radio on and see if we could get any news about the fire and whether the road was closed. But there was scoffing, scoffing at my suggestion. I was told that the Valley was always hazy. And then of course we turned a corner and went down into a smoke bank forest fire. But the Day fire is something, fanned by Santa Anas, it is huge and has scorched acres upon acres. Luckily though no one has been killed, and very few structures have been damaged.

Well ye olde daddy made us some artichokes and mahi mahi for dinner and then we went all greased up and happy from having some champagne and mayonnaise with our protein and veg to the theatre where we saw the Omayra Amaya dance troupe. They consisted of a guitarist, a singer, a percussionist and two dancers one of each genders. The percussionist played a box which is apparently a cajon drum, but that is what you find out if you google percussion box flamenco which, of course I didn't do at the time. The two dancers did not dance with one another, they had a series of solo dances. I liked it all, I thought it was rather thrilling and that Omayra had beautiful arms. My beloved companions were less enthusiastic. But we still had a good time. I actually like going to things I don't know anything about. Was this good flamenco? Bad flamenco? Is combining Modern Dance with flamenco a tragedy or brilliant? I don't have an opinion about it! I rather liked the Isadora Duncan\Martha Graham parts of the dance. I was reminded of dancers on Greek friezes during the modern part. I liked the stampy footy part too. But the performance was part of a greater Santa Barbara effort called the Flamenco Arts Festival, so when I read the program notes, I read about the other shows that were part of the Festival and I learned one crucial thing about flamenco. You have to be BORN to it. Flamenco dancers and guitarists have pedigrees and lineages, so don't go see someone who isn't the niece of an uncle of a grandpapa. So I recommend going to the theatre and seeing some flamenco. Oh, the guitarist, Roberto Castellon was brilliant.

And just a general note, I'm so glad the U.S. government has figured out that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms. And now they're busy taking away our freedoms so that the terrorists won't hate us. Isn't that sweet?

Reviews

There is a wee show at the Museum of Arts and Crafts that we went to see this weekend. Called Tigers and Jagaurs it featured local artists (L.A.) and was about Asian\Latino synergy and influence. Of note were Bari Kumar's "Mas Para Menos", which featured a multi-armed Kali\Jesus figure. Totally fantastic. And Clement Hamani's "Rice Rocket", a low-rider rick shaw blaring 70s oldies. Richard Duardo's energetic mish mosh of punk\asian\latino prints and Shizu Saldamando's chinese screen of a Hungington Park party. Small but choice. Upstairs there was a much larger exhibit of palestinian embroidery, that made me think, "Oh those Poor Exploited Women!" It certainly didn't make me feel how great palestinian culture was, it just made me think about how OPPRESSED those women are.

Reviews

Don't read a review or talk to anyone, just go see Little Miss Sunshine. Damn I wish I'd written it.

I finished Allison Bechdel's Fun Home yesterday. It is a beautiful graphic memoir about growing up, reading with your father, and finally putting the family secrets all in perspective. Speaking of perspective, the drawings make use of prespective brilliantly, with the point of view shifting to help portray the story. At one moment you can be on the ground, the next looking up at children hanging off the stairs, looking down at your father catching you in the pool. It's really wonderful.

We also saw Devil Wears Prada, a perfect movie to spend some time enjoying yourself in air conditioning. It made me incredibly nostalgic for New York and the publishing world. My old haunts, my old scramble to clean the desk, my old not getting into the same elevator. The clothes were pretty awful and the story was pretty lame - she's BAD because she has to work late! But Meryl was magnificent and the girl who plays the first assistant was hillarious.

Reviews

This is a flower from a tree - I think it looks like parrot beaks. Anyway we've been seeing things. Last week we went on a public radio movie binge and saw the two public radio movies. Prairie Home was a stirring reminder of why some people are on radio - Garrison Keillor is very, very odd looking! And WordPlay was a fascinating reminder that Bill Clinton is smart and able to solve problems, so it made me nostalgic for the days when the U.S. was run by someone who was smart and could solve problems.
TAXIDERMY! We also popped into downtown LA and saw the Rauchenberg combine show at MOCA. This was a rather comprehensive show of just Raushenberg's combine work. It was very interesting and actually I thought it packed a greater visual punch than the Rauchenberg retrospective at the Guggenheim a couple of years ago. That show was so huge that you were beat down by the sheer output of the man. There were a couple of paintings that had a chain and a brick attached to them, so that they couldn't run away, a commentary on slavery? Who knows, but just fabulous to see a chained brick painting. And of course the famous goat combine was there. The kashmir stuffed goat surrounded by a tire and standing on a painting is a classic Rauchenberg image. And I was glad to see that it had been cleaned up and restored. The last time I had seen it the goat was rather dusty, but now it's coat gleams. The amount of stuffed animals in the show made me think that maybe Rauchenberg was into taxidermy the way David Sedaris is into taxidermy and that maybe they are related, since this taxidermy fetish is genetic; Gengis Khan --> Bob Rauchenberg --> David Sedaris. Makes sense doesn't it?
We also went to the Hockney portraits show, and I found out - once again, but like oysters you have to try occasionally to see if your tastes change - that Hockney's work leaves me cold. I did enjoy seeing a portrait of a friend of mine, but the paintings did not move me or transport me or make me think of anything except that Hockney paints a lot of paintings. He has a good work ethic.
Speaking of paintings I was cruising around and checked in on my friend M. and she put some lovely watercolours up on the web.

Watercoloursbymolly

I also found this blog site of a painter who is, I guess, attempting to paint one painting a day. At least his blog is titled one painting a day. He paints a lot of images from video games, which I guess is the next step of art dealing with pop art, and there are some images of circuit boards that I rather like. But it is this painting of toast being buttered that I think is pretty fun.

toast painting

We've also bought a lot of music, and I must say that I bought the new Neil Young album simply because he has a song called lets impeach the president, because I've never really been a Neil Young fan, that's for rather older surfer dudes, not moi. But it is a rollicking album, and Young's raspy voice makes singing along, at the top of your voice as you drive down La Cienega with your windows open very fun. "LET'S IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT!"

Yeah baby!