Artisté Florenza and I took in the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the Whitney. Fantastic. I love walking into an exhibit wondering if it’s going to be worth my time and end up being blown off my feet. I wanted to take 8-Year Old Daughter but this was an exhibit of O’Keefe’s abstract paintings and I thought they’d be inaccessible to her. I want to be careful how I dole this stuff out. For instance, I’d never take her to a Francis Bacon exhibit. She’d have nightmares for months.

I didn’t find O’Keefe’s abstracts to be all that abstract, which is a good thing. Abstract expressionism is pretty hard core stuff that I sometimes have a problem digesting. Like some forms of jazz, it’s art that’s best appreciated by other artists, not mainstream schmoes like me.

There was a healthy representation of her beautiful floral works.

Her paintings of flowers have been said to have a somewhat feminine bent to them. Do you agree or is that just people being sensational?

Note to Nursemyra: Do you know who Roni Horn is? They allocated *two floors* of space for her current exhibit! I know she’s a pretty big deal and I tried to keep an open mind but I wasn’t very impressed.

I was waiting for the crosstown bus on 23rd Street at Lexington Avenue. A young man, about 18, baggy pants, ballcap askew, comes out of Beach Bum Tanning on the opposite side of the street, crosses 23rd Street against the light, gets mad and curses a car that almost hit him, walks into a pizza parlor, buys a slice, crosses the street against the light again, and before going back into Beach Bum Tanning, dumps a huge handful of napkins onto the sidewalk. A gust of wind blows them all over 23rd Street. I wanted to walk into Beach Bum Tanning and mash him in his stupid face in.

In Congressional testimony this week, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase said that a financial crisis is something that “happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.” In other words, he had nothing to do with it. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs said the financial crisis is like a hurricane that nobody could have predicted. See? It’s an act of nature and has nothing whatsoever to do with how these stupid greedy fucks conduct their business. Earlier, Blankfein said that at Goldman Sachs was doing “God’s work.” I wanted to reach into my monitor and bang their two heads together.

My phone had a glitch and the Verizon customer service techs over the phone couldn’t figure out how to fix it so I had to make a special trip into the store to get it fixed. It was such an obscure problem that it took three techs two hours to solve it.

Someone cut me off. He was driving a Toyota Sequoia; a massive, unnecessary pig of a car.

If you’ve ever done any heavy lifting in therapy, you learn that the things making you angry aren’t really the things you’re mad at. It’s not litter or investment bankers or bad drivers or phone glitches. It’s always something else. I wonder what’s eating at me?

Although, I have pretty good idea.

Saturday night. Mrs. Wife is out with the girls. Kids are in bed. Let’s see. On Ovation TV I’ve got:

Byron: British poet Lord Byron spends the last 13 years of his life longing for the affections of his half-sister and searching for a meaningful existence.

or

The Indianapolis Colts vs. the Baltimore Ravens.

Sorry, your Lordship. Let me know how that half-sister thing works out.

According to a Reuters report this morning, the CEOs of the major U.S. investment firms will testify in Washington today about the global financial crisis. The story states that the CEOs and their companies are “swimming in bonuses but sinking fast in public esteem…” and that “…public fury is growing over the crisis.”

I’ve worked for these guys and their ilk for the better part of my career—not as an “earner” but as someone who works in the trenches—and I can assure you that they couldn’t care less what public sentiment is. New York City is awash with people like this. They only speak one language and that’s the language of currency. They have what’s referred to in the industry as “F.U.” money. That means they have amassed such a copious amount of cash that they can’t be touched by the law or anyone else. It’s what they aspire to. Public fury? It’s irrelevant.

Sobering, but true.

Money, it’s a gas
Grab that cash with both hands
And make a stash

Money, it’s a crime
Share it fairly
But don’t take a slice of my pie

Pink Floyd

Money don’t get everything it’s true.
What it don’t get I can’t use.
Now gimme money (that’s what I want)

Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford