James Frey Reading Tonight @ Barnes & Noble Union Square NYC
| NEW YORK Wednesday, May 13 7:00 PM BARNES & NOBLE Union Square 33 E 17th ST New York, NY 10003 LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES |
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| NEW YORK Thursday, May 28 7:00 PM BOOK COURT 163 Court St. Brooklyn, NY 11201 NEW YORK |
PHILADELPHIA Thursday, June 4, 6:00 PM BARNES & NOBLE 1805 Walnut ST Philadelphia, PA 19103 NEW JERSEY |
Am I Right Or Am I Right or Am I Right or Am I Right Or Am I Right or Am I Right
Some Truer Words of Wisdom
| QUOTATION OF THE DAY | |
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| “Banking should not be exciting. If banking is exciting there is something wrong with it.” CLAY EWING, president of German American Bancorp., |
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Kate Moss is going to live forever.
TARRED & FEATHERED
By Sans
TAR is not a fashion magazine – its editor, Evan Schindler will tell you as much. Sure a few fashion personalities make special guest appearances and there is a smattering of editorial content but ultimately these are amusing post scripts on an altogether charming love letter to the art world. The second issue’s cover of Kate Moss ala Damien Hirst is only there to grab your attention – the real nitty gritty of the magazine’s second issue lies in exploring the ways in which art is becoming honest. The issue’s theme of transparency is almost a misnomer – the content presented isn’t transparent as much as it is seditious – a pointed middle finger in the air to the status quo and its lies.
Which brings us back to Kate. There is no actual Kate Moss content in the issue. Sorry Moss fans. There is however a particularly amusing short story by James Frey about a character who bears some resemblance to the Moss we’ve come to know but this particular incarnation is more focused on cheating death and her time is spent at the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing rather than on the catwalk. While this may sound completely nutty, Frey is most adept at pulling “facts” out of thin air and it all blends together to form a rather odd tale. It is not the sort of thing that would run in any other magazine but its this commitment to doing things differently that makes TAR worthwhile.
A Jazz Memoir in Verse
Birth of the Cool: Minnesota
I know, Miles,
you didn’t have rural southern Minnesota
in mind when you
blew your classic mute
on your Birth of the Cool
sessions in New York, circa 1949.
But it’s the way the paper-thin
ice forms on the edge of the lake
today in late October:
meeting at the cold, dark water’s edge
–still open and free
though not for long–
with the ripples of these short, choppy
muted notes of yours
blown just out of reach
this cool windy autumn morning.
excerpted from Stompin’ at the Grand Terrace: A Jazz Memoir in Verse by Philip Bryant
[ click to read at Shelf-Awareness.com – about 2/3 scroll down the page ]
Start Wearing Purple
Happy Birthday, Buddha
Temple boys: Young South Korean Buddhist devotees pray under rows of lotus lanterns at the Chogye Temple in Seoul on May 1 (one day ahead of when Buddha’s birthday is celebrated in that country this year). Buddha was born approximately 2,553 years ago, and the day, or days, on which Vesak is celebrated varies from country to country. About 23 percent of South Korea’s population is Buddhist, the second-largest religion after Christianity, which is followed by 26 percent of the population. Just under half the population expresses no religious preference.
It’s All Wiki’s Fault
Student’s Wikipedia hoax quote used worldwide in newspaper obituaries
GENEVIEVE CARBERY
A WIKIPEDIA hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world.
The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March.
It was posted on the online encyclopedia shortly after his death and later appeared in obituaries published in the Guardian, the London Independent, on the BBC Music Magazine website and in Indian and Australian newspapers.
“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,” Jarre was quoted as saying.
However, these words were not uttered by the Oscar-winning composer but written by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin.
Fitzgerald was shocked by the result of his experiment.
“I didn’t expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised about,” he said.
However, the hoax remained undiscovered for weeks until Fitzgerald e-mailed offending newspapers to tell them that they had published an inaccurate quote.
Happy Day to Mom
Bad Cow Luck
Cow gets stuck…
Cow gets…
Ghost Rider Should Have Tried Quickly Driving In A Circle Instead
from the San Jose Mercury News
Girl, 17, run over by her own SUV during ‘ghost ride’ stunt
BRENTWOOD — A 17-year-old girl had to be airlifted to a local hospital Tuesday evening after she was run over by her own car while trying to “ghost ride,” a car stunt popularized in the East Bay, police said.
“Ghost riding” typically entails a car owner walking or dancing alongside or on top of a vehicle that is idling forward without a driver. The stunt has local origins, particularly in the Bay Area rap scene radiating from Oakland and Vallejo.
The injured girl was “performing a horseplay maneuver” as her 1980s-model Chevrolet Blazer idled along about 6 p.m. near San Jose Avenue and Stonewood Drive, said Brentwood police Sgt. Mark Misquez.
With music blaring from the vehicle, the girl apparently was standing on a footstep on the driver’s side while the SUV crept forward, Misquez said. At some point she slipped, lost her grip and fell to the ground, and shortly after the vehicle ran over her upper legs, he said.
The girl appeared to be performing the stunt alone and was not as a part of an impromptu sideshow, a sort of street corner exhibition where the ghost riding the maneuver is done along with other car stunts such as “doughnuts”— quickly driving in a circle.
She Was 15 And Naked And He Tanned Her Anyway
from The Herald-Times & WSBT Bloomington
Lawmaker Shocked By Nude Spray-On Tan Case
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — A state lawmaker says he plans to sponsor a bill next session that would bar adult males from applying spray-on tans to female juveniles at tanning salons.
State Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, said he was shocked by a recent case where an adult man who works at a tanning salon applied a spray-on tan on a nude 15-year-old girl.
Borders said he, along with State Rep. Sandy Blanton, D-Orleans, will seek to introduce legislation next session putting restrictions on spray-on tanning. He said he isn’t sure what form the proposed law will take.
A Greene County woman, Brandy Holtsclaw, said she was furious when she learned her 15-year-old daughter got a spray-on tan while nude from a grown man at a Linton tanning salon.
Her daughter had forged a note from her mother. The tanning salon’s owner said that when he entered the booth to apply the tan last month, the girl had taken off all her clothes. He proceeded to apply the tan and then left her to dry.
Che Lovelace @ HALF GALLERY
I know my chicken. You got to know your chicken.
Man vs. Nature, With a Little Bit of Heaven In The Midst
Well, now that makes sense (finally).
Art historians claim Van Gogh’s ear ‘cut off by Gauguin’
‘Self-portrait with cut ear’ by Vincent Van Gogh. Photograph: Roger-Viollet/Rex Features
Vincent van Gogh’s fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist’s bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin
According to official versions, the disturbed Dutch painter cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin in 1888. Bleeding heavily, Van Gogh then walked to a brothel and presented the severed ear to an astonished prostitute called Rachel before going home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed.
But two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists’ letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth.
Dracula In Your Inbox
from the Dracula Feed at Blogspot
Dracula Begins
Experience Bram Stoker’s Dracula in a new way — in real time. Dracula is an epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of letters or diary entries,) and this blog will publish each diary entry on the day that it was written by the narrator so that the audience may experience the drama as the characters would have. Please subscribe to the RSS feed so that you don’t miss any installments!
Marilyn French Gone
Marilyn French dies at 79; author of feminist classic ‘The Women’s Room’
The 1977 novel, which captured the frustration and fury of a generation of women fed up with society’s traditional conceptions of their role, sold 20 million copies.
By Elaine Woo
May 5, 2009
Marilyn French, a writer and feminist scholar whose provocative 1977 novel “The Women’s Room” captured the frustration and fury of a generation of women fed up with society’s traditional conceptions of their roles, died Saturday at a hospital in New York City. She was 79.
Although it received mixed reviews, “The Women’s Room” became a feminist classic, selling more than 20 million copies in two dozen languages with a story that spoke powerfully to women seeking liberation from societal norms in the latter quarter of the 20th century. It traced the evolution of Mira, a repressed suburban housewife in the 1950s who divorces her brutish husband in the 1960s, goes to Harvard and finds friendship with other women seeking to redefine their lives in the midst of sweeping social change.
“It came at the right moment,” said Feminist Press founder Florence Howe, who knew French for 30 years. “It said to women you just have to stop being oppressed, you have to stand up and fight for yourself. Women heard that. Women recognized themselves.”
The novel’s most-quoted line — “All men are rapists, and that’s all they are,” spoken by the protagonist after the near-rape of her daughter — was often erroneously attributed to French herself, giving critics what they thought was proof of the author’s man-hating rage. The accusation infuriated French. “What I am opposed to,” she told the London Times a few years ago, “is the notion that men are superior to me.”
When Illusion Crashes With Reality
Nicolas Cage Movie Stunt Goes Awry; Injures Two
Chan Kam Chuen/Lionsgate
Nicolas Cage‘s latest movie is already a smash hit in New York. And that’s bad news.
A car chase stunt sequence for the Oscar winner’s new flick, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, went awry last night in Times Square, with a vehicle careening into a pizza parlor and injuring two bystanders.
The accident occurred around 1 a.m. as a Ferrari darted down Seventh Avenue to keep pace with a Mercedes, whose stunt driver apparently lost control and ended up plowing into the entrance of a Sbarro.
Although the street had been closed for filming, plenty of pedestrians were watching the action unfold—some too close for comfort…
“The Ferrarri took a sharp right to the left and lost it, swerving across the lanes, taking out a lamppost and a newsstand,” British tourist Mark Watkins, who was stationed atop bleachers at the new TKTS booth, told the New York Post,. “One lady was knocked to the ground and a lamppost landed directly on top of a chap.”
Susan Boyle’s Sister Becomes First Female UK Poet Laureate
Amazing this has not happened yet in all of British history. Amazing. -Editor
Carol Ann Duffy becomes first female poet laureate
Duffy takes poetry’s most prestigious job, succeeding Andrew Motion, as a standard-bearer for women poets
‘I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing’ … Carol Ann Duffy. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
Four hundred years of male domination came to an end today with the election of Carol Ann Duffy as poet laureate. Duffy, the widely-tipped favourite for the post, only agreed to accept the post ahead of poets Simon Armitage and Roger McGough because “they hadn’t had a woman”.
Speaking on Woman’s Hour this morning on Radio 4, she revealed that she had thought “long and hard” about accepting the offer.
“The decision was purely because they hadn’t had a woman,” she said. “I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing, like Alice Oswald.”
PULP FUNCTION at the James Michener Art Museum
March 28 through June 28, 2009
Fred Beans Gallery, Doylestown
Lead Sponsor, Judith and Bud Newman
Additional support from Silverman Family Partnerships and The Doylestown Bookshop
For decades, innovative artists manipulated paper products as a means of creative expression. This process is rooted in older traditions that are often culturally unique such as origami in Japan or Scherenschnitte in Germany. Contemporary artists, especially since the 1970s, have pushed the possibilities of this malleable material even further. Pulp Function surveys a wide variety of artistic expressions using handmade paper pulp, recycled paper, paper cuts, cardboard, papier-mâché, and folded paper. Tactile and familiar paper innovatively used include industrial strapping, paperback books, egg crates, trading cards, US dollar bills, diapers, NYC transit maps, photographs, Tyvek—and much more! The 3-D objects in this exhibition range from jewelry and clothing, furniture and lighting, to vessels and purely whimsical sculptural pieces and everything imaginable in between! Organized by the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, and curated by Lloyd Herman, founding director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery, this exhibit includes more than 70 works and is accompanied by a full color publication.
“Stuff with animals doesn’t normally bother me … but this does.”
2 upstate NY men accused of stealing, eating calf
PALMYRA, N.Y. – Two unemployed, hungry men stole a calf from a neighbor’s barn, shot it with an arrow and slit its throat before roasting its meat, police said.
David Lochner, 21, and Timothy Welch, 18, were camping outsidePalmyra, 20 miles southeast of Rochester, several weeks ago when a dairy farmer reported his calf missing, said State Police Investigator John Stubbe.
Authorities found a bloody bow and remains near the barn and in a river.
Stubbe said the two “decided they wanted something to eat,” led the calf out of the barn, shot it with arrows and cut its throat.
The two gutted the animal and sliced off steaks, leaving the carcass behind, the investigator said. “I’ve seen farm animals stolen, but I don’t recall anything like this, where two kids were out camping and they thought they needed a meal,” Stubbe said.
The Forgotten King of British Pop Art
Joe Tilson: the forgotten king of British Pop art
On the eve of this year’s London Original Print Fair, the Alan Cristea Gallery is mounting a retrospective of neglected Sixties artist Joe Tilson, who found fame before the Beatles and David Hockney.
By Colin Gleadell
Affordable: a detail from Joe Tilson’s Stones of Venice, Pomegranate, which was inspired by San Marco in Venice and costs £1,500 Photo: COURTESY ALAN CRISTEA GALLERY, LONDON
Who is the best-known living British artist in Italy? Is it Lucian Freud, David Hockney or Damien Hirst? Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. The answer, according to Cork Street dealer Alan Cristea, is Joe Tilson, a first-generation British Pop artist, for whom Italy has been a second home for decades.
Tilson had been spotted for Marlborough in 1961 by John Kasmin, the dealer who later gave Hockney his first solo exhibition, and was the first of a group of young art stars to launch the gallery into the Swinging Sixties with a highly successful first show in 1962. “I was famous before the Beatles and Hockney,” Tilson says. However, fame, money and the machinations of the art market have never much interested him.
After he started making prints in 1963, similar objections were raised. When some were hung in the gallery window, the Printmakers Council objected on the grounds that they were not “original” prints because they had incorporated reproductions of images from magazines and newspapers.
“In the Sixties, I thought the question, ‘What is an original print?’ was totally irrelevant,” Tilson recalls. “My aim was to make things that corresponded to my feelings and thoughts – not to pre-established categories.” He made a list of things you were not supposed to do in printmaking: “Make each print different; paint on prints; tear the paper; crumple and fold the paper; make holes in the print; make three-dimensional prints; glue objects to the print…”, and so on. One by one, he broke each rule.
To Mr Chatt’s Insurer – It’s not a Banksy
Banksy artwork painted over in graffiti clean-up drive
£5,000 Paddington Bear mural covered up by Glastonbury council volunteers
A group of volunteers clearing graffiti from the walls and bus stops in their home town have inadvertently painted over a modern masterpiece – and cost its owner £5,000.
The work, attributed to street artist Banksy, depicted Paddington Bear with the caption “Migration is not a crime” and was painted on to a wall owned by Julian Chatt in Glastonbury, Somerset. But well-meaning volunteers painted over the artwork as part of the council’s drive to rid the area of graffiti.
Chatt said he had struck a deal to sell the piece for about £5,000 and had agreed with the council that it would not be removed. “I’d spoken to the town council in the past and asked them not to paint over the artwork,” Chatt told the Western Daily Press.
“Sure enough, the last few times the council have been out they didn’t paint it over. But on Saturday morning, I came out of my house and there was this chemical smell, and when I turned the corner Paddington was gone.”
He said no one had asked him for permission to paint the wall, adding that his insurance provider would examine whether the painting was covered. Chatt said he had also reported it to the police.
Apple-wood-smoked bacon and farm-fresh egg risotto
Pontiac Gone
Pooh On The Flu
Everyone Is Guilty
Le Bande de Picasso – The Wild Men Of Paris
The story behind theft of the Mona Lisa
Picasso and poet Appollinaire were prime suspects when Leonardo da Vinci’s best known painting was stolen from the Louvre
On a mundane morning in late summer in Paris, the impossible happened. The Mona Lisa vanished. On Sunday evening, August 20, 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s best-known painting was hanging in her usual place on the wall of the Salon Carré, between Correggio’s Mystical Marriage and Titian’s Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos. On Tuesday morning, when the Louvre reopened to the public, she was gone.
In the seven years from 1905 to 1911, the genesis story of modern art was being written. Pablo Picasso was its genius; Guillaume Apollinaire was its impresario. A flamboyant poet and cultural provocateur, Apollinaire enunciated the modernist creed, adopting the Marquis de Sade’s maxim, “In art, one has to kill one’s father”. Urging the destruction of all museums “because they paralyse the imagination”, he championed Picasso “as a young god who wants to remake the world”.
Apollinaire and the artist were leaders of a group loosely known as la bande de Picasso. Familiar from Montmartre to Manhattan as the “Wild Men of Paris”, Picasso’s gang of painters and poets were the outlaws of traditional art. Young, brilliant and ruthlessly ambitious, they strutted through the cobblestone streets of Montmartre and filled the cheap cafes, defining themselves as well as a new creative idiom, breaking the rules to free art from art history.
After two frustrating weeks [following the Mona Lisa’s theft, police prefect Louis] Lépine believed he had cracked the case. In la bande de Picasso, he had found the international ring of art thieves he had been hunting.
“Middling” Metal Machine My Inharmonious Ass
All Those Sounds From the Stage: Processed, and Not Always Pretty
Chad Batka for The New York Times
Lou Reed performed with his group, Metal Machine Trio, at the Blender Theater at Gramercy.
It was good to have this Lou Reed back: not an American Master nor a Legend of Rock, but a barking, brooding, beneficial irritant. On Thursday night at the Blender Theater at Gramercy, onstage between Sarth Calhoun and Ulrich Krieger, two much younger musicians, he was making noise — improvised, loud, heavily processed, and some of it ugly enough to make people leave.
Not many, though. There were extra-musical reasons to stay put. An emotional reason: he’s Lou Reed, poet of New York City, et cetera. And a big intellectual reason: Mr. Reed calls this group Metal Machine Trio, which refers to a notorious double-LP he made in 1975. “Metal Machine Music” is a kind of personality test. Many average listeners, even average Lou Reed fans, heard it as long-winded, discordant feedback.
You couldn’t really rely on Mr. Reed to tell you how to feel about it, either. He’d had a hit record the year before — “Sally Can’t Dance” — which he didn’t seem to love. He seemed to propose “Metal Machine Music” as corrective honesty, almost clinical, as if he’d hooked up a mixing board directly to his neurons. “No one I know has listened to it all the way through including myself,” he wrote in the record’s liner notes. “I’m sorry, but not especially, if it turns you off.”