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The New York Conceptual artist Glenn Ligon, whose paintings, prints and drawings use phrases written or uttered by famous personalities, has a new midcareer retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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Although bookstore workers love their customers, or are at least morally obligated to, sometimes the love is so great it turns murderous. Ever tried to finish all-you-can-eat coconut shrimp? That’s the love we’re dealing with here. Although your narrator worked at a used bookstore just outside of the city more than a decade ago, he shut his eyes tight, remembered three years of Fat Slice Pizza, and relived some moments of quiet desperation.
You Stole All Our Bukowski
It’s hard to keep Bukowski on the shelf when he keeps getting stuffed in the pants of street punks when no one is looking (but we are looking!). Although punks love him (he’s so easy to read) so does the staff (Hank worked a menial job for years, drank an eternity, and stillended up famous). He provides hope for apprentice alcoholics who are going to start writing sometime tomorrow or Thursday for sure. If you do steal him, please sell him back to us when you’re finished.
You’re Spending Too Much Time in the Erotica Section
Huh, and you’re totally and creepily not moving.
You Camp Out in the Self-Help Section
What is it about the self-help section that attracts people who take off their shoes and eat fruit salad right in the stacks? Or what is it that doesn’t attract them, amirite? Though we don’t mind you blocking the aisle, making your little piles of books and scribbling action items in your notepads (this means we can avoid the section), at least tidy up when you’re finished for the night. This goes for everyone in the spiritualism section, too. See you all tomorrow.
You’re Asleep
You know that’s weird, right? Barnes & Noble may have the square footage to stock recliners, but used bookstores don’t. Used bookstores use their space to sell books. Ever notice how much empty air a superbookstore contains that could be going to books? Of course you don’t, because you’re asleep on our footstool.
You Were Our Favorite English Professor
Oh look, it’s the bastard who inspired us to skip a useful degree for one in contemporary American fiction, here to again dash through the store with a comely grad student in tow and witness, once again, how well we are doing with our crack alphabetization. Looking for Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex? Try the Ds. College!
The founder of On-U Sound tells Nick Coleman that there is more to reggae than ‘ooom-chicky…’
Not much reggae music came out of the Home Counties during the early 1970s, but an awful lot went in.
More than you might think. Quite a lot of it made the journey from London in the record bags of Adrian Sherwood, would-be reggae rebel, junior DJ, and pale-faced teenage entrepreneur of the skank, a boy so transfixed by Jamaican rhythm and its culture that, by the age of 15, he’d already committed himself to the life while skulking around the clubs of Luton, Dunstable and High Wycombe, getting off on the “better and better, madder and madder” threads of reggae’s Seventies narrative.
“It was the sheer diversity of it,” he reflects ardently in 2011, settled in his management office in Bloomsbury, one of the several places that serve as a nerve centre for his 30-year-old On-U Sound operation. “People say reggae is just ooom-chicky, ooom-chicky, but by the mid-Seventies there was a fantastic range: the mellow stuff, stuff for grown-ups, stuff in the American vocal group tradition, beautiful solo singers, the DJs, the mad stuff, early dub. And then there was the Rastafarian movement. It was like entering a whole other world: the weed, the Special Brews, the sound systems, the parties, the lifestyle, and this image of a place that was far away and better than where we lived.”
Reggae music was then a segregated art form, regarded as second class, its sales figures far outweighing its national chart impact. “Records would sell 100,000 copies and still not make the charts,” rasps Sherwood, “because of where they were sold – outlets like Baba’s in Dalston Market and Bailey’s in the Bullring in Birmingham. You could go to Baba’s on a Friday with a load of records and he’d say, ‘We’ll take 700 copies of that.’ The next week, he’d need more.”
At 53, he’s gearing up for the year-long 30th birthday celebrations of his label, an institution that was as groundbreaking in its time as it was passionate. But at 19 he was just one small stitch in the cultural gash which scabbed over to form punk’s affinity with roots reggae.
Over the past weekend, we were having a conversation we’re sure thousands of other people were also having either right at that very moment or close to it: the second coming of the internet bubble. With more and more headlines including words like startup, v.c. funding, and IPO, it’s a serious case of deja vu. However, the fun part of a budding boom is learning about companies eager to try something new, crazy as their idea might sound. Enter Artsicle, who we found by way of ArtInfo. The elevator pitch of their service is essentially “Netflix for art.” You pay them $50 per month, they lend you a piece of art by an up-and-coming artist. If you don’t like how it looks on your wall or you want to try something new, you simply return the piece and get something else. If you decide you can’t live without it, you simply purchase it outright. They’re still a startup, so they’re only operating in New York (where they’ll deliver for free)….
A puppy euthanized by veterinarians has risen from the dead.
The black-and-white pooch was one of five young dogs put to sleep Saturday at a shelter in Sulphur, Okla., News 9 in Oklahoma City reported. Each dog was checked and confirmed to be dead, then the 3-month-old and his four siblings were placed in a trash bin.
On Sunday morning, an animal control officer looked into the bin and discovered that the one pup somehow survived.
“He was just as healthy as could be,” Scott Prall told News 9.
The puppies were selected to be euthanized because of illness, as well as overcrowding due to limited shelter space in the state, said Amanda Kloski, a veterinarian in Oklahoma who has been caring for the puppy since his resurrection.
By Jen Chaney
Yesterday was a day of great significance for anyone who ever admired Andie Walsh, reviled Steff and wanted to hang out at Traxx.
Feb. 28, 2011 marked the 25th anniversary of the release of “Pretty in Pink,” the teen classic written by John Hughes about a thrift-store-chic girl (Molly Ringwald), a pastel-preppy guy (Andrew McCarthy) and the pompadoured geek (Jon Cryer) who wants to drive them apart.
In honor of that anniversary, as well as the genius of John Hughes in general, I recently visited to Gallery 1988, a Santa Monica, Calif., art gallery currently hosting the exhibit “The Road to Shermer: A Tribute to John Hughes.” The exhibit features paintings, posters, drawings and mixed media creations inspired by Hughes’s films, from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to “The Breakfast Club” to “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” And yes, “Pretty in Pink” is well-represented, too.
