Can I take you to the movies? b/w plane crash

Posted on December 20, 2016 by Exile on Pain Street

Manifesto, currently at the Park Avenue Armory, is thirteen 11-minute films playing simultaneously on thirteen different screens.

The first film you see upon entering the drill hall is a lit fuse. Metaphor amok!

Cate Blanchett is a different character in each film. News anchor. Puppeteer. Punk. Homeless man. CEO. Conservative housewife. etc. She’s heavily made-up and unrecognizable in many of these.

For dialog, she recites manifestos from different art movements in dramatic fashion. Dadaism. Futurism. Pop Art. Surrealism. Architecture. etc.

At one point, all thirteen screens simultaneously cut to a severe close-up of her face as she delivers a penultimate manifesto statement. She delivers these few lines in the same monotone in each film, filling the armory with a buzz of art-speak gibberish. Sounds pretentious and dull, doesn’t it? It’s not.

It’s interesting to see what they do with this giant drill hall space. There’s been some great projects but it’s going to be impossible to top Ernesto Neto’s anthropodino.

~~~~~~~~~~

bins

March 23, 1992

There was a terrible plane crash last night at LaGuardia. 27 people died. It was trying to take off during a snowstorm. It bounced on the runway a few times and then burst into flames. It wound up half on the runway and half in Flushing Bay. I don’t know where I’d rather come to rest; in the freezing drink where I’d drown in ice water or on the runway where I’d burn up. Probably the former.

I always think about crashing when I take off and land. What a terrible way to go. It was a U.S. Air flight bound for Cleveland. That’s a little too close to home for me. They sent psychologists to Hopkins Airport in Cleveland to deal with traumatized family members. I keep thinking about the parasitic media crawling all over the victim’s families asking, “How do you feel?” Can you imagine going to journalism school and that’s what you end up doing?

The flight number was 405. Everyone is playing that number in the lottery. They always do that in New York. Ghouls.

Candace made dinner for me on Friday. I didn’t think that girl knew how to boil water but it was a very nice meal. The brown rice was a little undercooked but the chicken was good. We both got loaded. I wonder what possessed her to do that? Make dinner for me?

After dinner we saw The Master Builder on Broadway. It was awful. Not even having Lynn Redgrave in the cast could save the production. Ibsen’s work always seems comically outdated to me. The acting was atrocious. We left there laughing hysterically and went down to Continental to see Big Fag. The guitarist never showed up and their lineup changed but I still liked them. I don’t know what Candace thought. After Big Fag, The Funky Knights played. They were polished and dull.

Got a cab and dropped her off at Avenue A and 3^rd and went home to Brooklyn. I think she wanted to kiss me in the cab but I was so drunk I didn’t trust my judgment. Plus, I’m exhausted from being turned down so often. If she’s interested, let her initiate it.

~~~~~~~~~~

Look who’s trying to make nice.

Give me a break. This is the same villainous canine who bit me repeatedly. I know what’s going on. She hasn’t tasted my flesh in a while and is trying to get me to drop my guard. It’s not going to work. I’m not stupid.

Dressed in holiday style

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Exile on Pain Street

The annual holiday window displays are up at Bergdorf Goodman. My route there took me past Trump Tower. What a circus. A woman was protesting out front holding a ‘Not My President’ sign with a big erect penis drawn on it. Vacationing families with little children walked by.

As usual, the displays are a riot of craftsmanship and design. It takes nine months to create these. Here’s a sampling. My pics look a little blurry but if you click on them, they’re sharp.

This year, the theme is the kind of dioramas seen in natural history museums. This window is done in a jungle motif.

Feathered and bejeweled primates are tucked into every corner.

In this window, we find our femme fatale (they all have a femme fatale) surrounded by gigantic insects.

I like how icicles drip from his pincers.

In this window, a tightrope walk over a swamp.

Watching workers below her rearrange the exhibit.

~~~~~~~~~

bins

I dug this out of my journal in honor of Miss Saigon‘s return to Broadway this spring.

February 20, 1992

I saw Miss Saigon with Ann Marie last night. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s not very good. I can’t recall one song. They’re all generic and uninteresting. Even the helicopter evacuation scene wasn’t impressive.The comps had a face value of $100, which tells you everything you need to know.

My mind is whirling with this Ann Marie business. Instead of watching the play I mused on how much she likes me. During the penultimate scene, Saigon was being evacuated but all I could do was gauge my interest in Ann Marie vs. my unrequited affection for Mimi.

I was in a bad mood today and called Ann Marie’s office for a quick hello thinking it’d cheer me up but I got her voicemail. I left a message and proceeded to obsess on why I hadn’t heard back from her. Minutes turned into doubt. Did she not get my message? Is not returning my message, in fact, a message? This went on all afternoon. Finally, towards the end of the day when I was ready to crawl out of my skin, she called and apologized for taking so long to get back to me. She’d been with clients all afternoon. We had a few laughs. I’m sick. I need psychological help.

I’m not sure anyone is doing well. Austin’s band isn’t going to make it. Klinger and Mimi aren’t going to be paid actors. I’m surrounded by corporate cogs. Society considers them successful, model citizens but most of them seem pretty miserable to me. I don’t envy them. Ann Marie wants to be a personal trainer. Melissa wants to be an artist. They’re not going to make it. I wonder what keeps them going? They’re better off than I am. At least they have an aspiration. I’m empty inside. Writing workshops and freelance gigs. Who am I kidding? I sit in this apartment in Brooklyn and have no idea where I’ll be in five months, much less five years from now.

The water was out again all weekend so I couldn’t bathe or wash dishes. You take that stuff for granted. I stank so I never went out. I bought a gallon of water at the corner bodega for my morning coffee, to brush my teeth and for the cats. Who pays for bottled water? It’s ridiculous. The building is united in our collective misery.

I’m dead tired. I’ve not gotten an unbroken night of sleep in a while. The cats wait until I’m asleep and then bat my face to let them under the comforter. They’ll wake up in the middle of the night and crawl out to get a bite to eat. Then they wake me up again to let them back under. They fall right to sleep but I’ll lie there wide awake until morning thinking my terrible thoughts. It’s no use shutting them out of the bedroom because they both sit outside the door and howl all night. Fucking cats. I just love them.

Maureen and I have stopped talking altogether. It’s just as well. I like to think of myself as sympathetic and am sorry she’s having a hard time but I can’t fill her void. The conversations are awful. They’re filled with long, uncomfortable silences. She asks me if I’m seeing anyone just to torture herself. I hope to hear from her again one day (no hurry) but am relieved that she went off to the mountaintop to heal.

Ann recently asked about her and since they are friends, I told her it would be a very, very bad idea to mention anything about us going to Mexico together. Maureen will snap out of it sooner or later. We all go through these things and sometimes it takes a while but it always passes. Don’t I know.

~~~~~~~~~~

Alexander Calder
John Graham
wire
Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000
Price Realized: $2,527,500

Yikes! They really undershot the landing strip on that one. I like Calder but $2M+ is a lot, don’t you think?

Jerks ruin it for everyone

Posted on September 29, 2016 by Exile on Pain Street

Two posts ago I riffed on the new internet kiosks dotting Manhattan. They provide free wifi and unfettered internet access. OF COURSE people took advantage.

As that titan of New York journalism, the Daily News put it, pervs were using them to watch porn. The service has come to its foreseeable conclusion. The kiosks still radiate wifi signals but you can no longer surf the web.

~~~~~~~~~~

bins

June 2, 1993

Had brunch on Sunday with Klinger. His place on West 4th Street looks bigger since his live-in left and took everything with her. He still has the mirror that looks like the MasterCard logo.

We walked a couple blocks to Boxers and got a table outside to watch the parade of humanity. When I first got to NYC that place was called Jimmy Day’s. Sinatra used to drink there. It closed, was sanitized and now it’s Boxers. It’s charmless.

Klinger got into a shouting match with a homeless transvestite with blue fingernail polish. Ellen from work walked by and stopped to chat. I’m sure she thinks Klinger and I are gay. She said she’ll finish her summer internship and return to Stanford in the fall and some other stuff but I got bored and stopped listening. Klinger and I flirted with the waitress.

Klinger suggested I get some 8×10’s made and try to land some commercial work. He said my face is just bland enough for it. He said one toothpaste commercial that runs nationally and I’m set. He wrote out a working resume that was all lies. He listed classes I’ve never taken and work I’ve never done. I protested but he told me to stop being such a pussy. That everyone in the entertainment industry lies.

After Boxers, we stopped in El Coyote and sat at the bar. He had to work in a restaurant in a couple of hours and said he needed a margarita or he’d never make it. The barmaid was enamored with me for some reason. I didn’t do anything to encourage it. She’s from Yugoslavia. Her teeth and fingertips were yellow from chain smoking. She has straight, shiny, black hair, like a Japanese girl. I couldn’t understand a word she said through her thick, Eastern European accent. She had a pretty face but smelled like an ash tray that needed emptying. I told her I loved the background music so she popped the cassette out and gave it to me.

Klinger was supposed to start work at 4:00 but we didn’t leave El Coyote until 4:10. He’s going to lose that job, too. He doesn’t give a damn. He’ll get another. I wish I could be more like that.

I walked down Broadway and at Bond Street there was a Beatles cover band playing outside an art gallery. They were promoting a show of Beatles photographs. I went inside and was immediately accosted by a gallery rep who tried to sell me a photo for $500. As if. I wanted to shoot pool but I was broke so I went home.

~~~~~~~~~~

The fam and I saw this beauty at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

Nari Ward
Iron Heavens
Oven pans, cotton and burned baseball bats

The oven pans reminded Ward of a starry night.

The bats ‘ground’ sky and earth. The cotton references the old South slave trade, but is also the material used for bandaging and healing.

Lots of messages and mixed meanings but, as is usually the case, this works for me primarily on a visual level.

Lesbian baby daddy

Posted on September 6, 2016 by Exile on Pain Street

bins

June 19, 1992

Woke up on Sunday and there was a downpour, which I love. I was ready to enjoy a Brooklyn shut-in day with the cats, a pot of coffee and the Sunday Times when the phone rang. It was Kat. I’d forgotten that I promised to meet her for brunch. It’s her birthday. I swallowed my sour mood and got on the subway to the Upper East Side.

I paid $25 for two dozen half-dead carnations. The guy who sold them to me was an ass. Kat’s girlfriend was there so it was the three of us. Her girlfriend is a gym teacher. You wonder where these stereotypes come from. I am completely at ease around lesbians. I don’t feel threatened the way I do when I’m around a girl I want to sleep with. When you’re with a lesbian, the pressure is off. We can just enjoy each other’s company.

Kat has a big apartment but it’s right on 2nd Avenue by the Queensboro Bridge. It’s only three flights up so you get a fairly constant concert of traffic horns, bus fumes, sirens, yelling and other urban horrors.

Kat asked me if I wanted to be a sperm donor. She and her girlfriend want a child. She said I’d be free from any financial responsibilities or obligations. They can certainly afford to raise a kid. It’s very flattering but I said no. What about that poor kid? Isn’t he/she going to want to know who his/her father is? What do I say when that day comes? “Oh, your mothers said I didn’t have to have anything to do with you and I was okay with that.” That’s not right! I’d feel ashamed. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I don’t like the idea. They should look past their own selfish needs and see how these other lives would be affected.

I had planned to go back to Brooklyn after brunch but Kat insisted—INSISTED—I join them for the matinee of Man of La Mancha on Broadway. I felt kind of bullied but she bought my ticket and I ended up having a nice time despite my bad self. They already had tix so I sat alone, which was fine.

Raul Julia was Don Quixote. He’s such a good actor. And a hell of a voice, too. Sheena Easton was Aldonza. She’s so beautiful and so my type that I didn’t notice whether or not she could sing or act.

In one dance, Aldonza is beaten and raped by several men. Her hands are tied together and one guy gives her the business end of a whip. The choreography included a lot of gyrating and thrusting hips that inferred penetration. It was pretty graphic stuff, especially for Broadway. It was uncomfortable to sit through. I’m still haunted by it. There were a lot of little kids in the audience. Their parents must’ve been mortified. I don’t know how my poor Sheena does it eight time a week.

Rapper Sister Souljah said that black people should take a week off from shooting each other and only shoot white people. Isn’t that pleasant? Presidential hopeful Bill Clinton went on TV and called her a racist. There’s a huge outcry in the black community. They’re saying Clinton attacked her. Jesse Jackson called it a cheap shot. Vice President and professional idiot, Dan Quayle, was making an appearance at an elementary school. After a student wrote “potato” on a chalkboard, he walked up and added and “e” at the end, thinking it was a spelling error. What an imbecile. That guy is only one heartbeat away from the presidency. What an unexpectedly entertaining presidential campaign this is turning into.

I was alone tonight and happy for it. I went to Café Mogador on St. Mark’s Place. I had a bowl of split pea soup and a cappuccino. I watched the pretty girls come and go. I’m invisible to them.

~~~~~~

These wifi kiosks have popped up all over Manhattan. In addition to a wifi signal, they provide a touchscreen with full, free, internet access. it’s paid for by city tax dollars and advertisers.

The problem they’re having is that homeless people are pulling up chairs and watching porn all day and night.

Fights have broken out. NYC is pretty cleaned-up as compared to when these journal entries were written, but it’s still got it’s share of grifters who game the system. In a twisted way, I find it admirable.

Van Gogh’s ear. Schnabel’s head.

Posted on July 17, 2016 by Exile on Pain Street

I’ve got a ton of art to post. Not all of it is good, but it’s all interesting. That’s where the rubber meets the road. Here’s a double-dip.

Elmgreen & Dragset
Van Gogh’s Ear

Another large-scale public piece at Rockefeller Center. It’s a 30′ upended swimming pool. It works best if you don’t know it’s there. You turn a corner and are met with this displaced object. It’s comical.

I’m not sure how they arrived at the title. Does it look like an ear? Elmgreen & Dragset’s previous installation was Project Marfa, a Prada store located in the middle of the desert in Texas. Equally pointless. Nice contrast and angels.

This errie giant is standing sentinel at the Whitney. It seems as pointless as the previous piece but I like it.

Urs Fischer
Standing Julian
Wax, pigment, steel and wicks

It includes wicks because it’s a candle. This is a wax statue of Fischer’s friend, fellow artist Julian Schnabel. The idea is that the wicks are lit each morning when the museum opens. It’ll burn down and be discarded. There are two wicks; one is on his shoulder.

The clothing is made of steel but passes convincingly as cloth.

The cast of Schnabel is a remarkable likeness. The mold can be repurposed. Fisher should create an army of Schnabel candles. He can sell them at Pier 1 Imports.

The second wick is inside his head. I wonder how long this has been burning?

bins

May 18, 1992

I called Lucy and accidentally slurred a couple of words. She asked me if I was drunk and I decided to run with it and told her yes, I was. I said I had a few glasses of wine and pretend to be drunk. I continued to slur a word every now and then and say things I’d never say sober. I occasionally threw in a cuss word.

I told her I thought she should change her mind about dating me. She said she’s a nightmare to date and she’d only make me miserable in the end. That’s probably the best piece of free advice I’ve received in a long time. I sure would like to see her naked, though. I occasionally think she’s ready to crack and surrender herself to me but then I look in her eyes and I see there’s nothing there. Do you know how sometimes a girl will look right inside of you and give you a soulful, sorrowful look that tells you everything you need to know? I get the opposite from Lucy. One look and I can tell she feels nothing for me.

She asked me to come over a couple of times during the course of the conversation. I told her Kat was going to Atlantic City over Memorial Day and that I’ll be staying in her condo in Long Beach in her absence. She stamped her foot and wanted to know why I hadn’t invited her along. Is she really that stupid?

On Saturday I had comps to a Broadway show, “A Small Family Business.” It’s by Alan Ayckbourn, who’s one of my favs. I met Maureen at the theater but once we got there we decided we’d rather see something lowbrow. We tried to give the tickets away but had a hell of a time. People in New York are so full of suspicion. Nobody wanted them. We were on our fourth couple when I finally thrust them into a guy’s hand and said if he and his girlfriend didn’t want them, they should pass them on to someone else but to NOT THROW THEM OUT.

We ended up seeing “Wayne’s World” in a disgusting Times Square theater that I wouldn’t bring mom into. It smelled like cats sprayed all the seats. The plaster was cracking and there were big holes in the ceiling. It smelled bad and looked worse. [Note: this is what pre-gentrified Times Square was like. I don’t miss it.] Sinéad O’Connor sat in front of us. She was with a gigantic bodyguard.

The movie was stupid, just like everyone said, and also very amusing, just like everyone said. We ate pizza and ice cream before the show and bought popcorn at the theater, which tasted like cat urine. We were kind of sick afterwards. I got home in time to see Geraldo Rivera box Frank Stallone on Howard Stern’s TV show. Geraldo got a proper ass-whopping. His protective headgear wasn’t on secure so when Stallone punched him, it would slip a bit and he couldn’t see. Hilarious.

I’m reading a book of essays by David Mamet. He says it’s no longer a thrill to see his words in print or spoken on the stage or screen. What a dick. Even if you felt that way, why would you say such a thing?

The storm that ate Manhattan. I took these from my office window on Thursday at 4:00. This entire sequence took 30 minutes.