While watching the Euro 2008 Final, I realized the perverse majesty of listening to a guy with a heavy Scottish accent say the following things:
- “look at him inject the piss into that”
- “you can see the bleeding - may be a couple of quick stitches or the staple gun again”
- “get that blood and stem it from coming out of the eye”
- “he was earlier denied by the woodwork”
Finally got a list up on McSweeney’s.
And for the record, I got nothing but love for the trans folk out there.
On my flight home from Seattle I sat next to a man and a woman. The guy starts chatting up the lady, but she quickly points out that she’s married. He’s undettered in his chattiness, and I worry at the thought of 5 hours of this. After a while he turns to me and asks me if I want a piece of a bet — he says he’s the mayor of Newark (which he calls an “urban mecca” and which I quickly scoff at) and that there was an Oscar-nominated movie (partially) made about him. If I lose, we have to go out to dinner in Newark at a restaurant of his choice, and attend a show at NJPAC, the performing arts center in Newark.
After having a copy of Newsweek produced with an article featuring him (including a photo) and a security detail meeting him at the airport, I put both feet squarely in my mouth and said “Mmmph Grmp Frppp”. So off to Newark I go, I guess.
The dirt: he’s a really nice guy, a good chatter, a vegetarian, and is currently filling his Netflix queue with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And this is his personal e-mail address.
Marité has been busy editing for work, but also writing and getting published.
Here’s an article on burgers in L.A. she co-wrote, even though she’s a vegetarian:
http://www.fodors.com/wire/archives/002521.cfm
And articles for a new website, Divine Caroline -
One about shopping for wedding presents:
http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22270/30452
And one on bridal sample sales:
http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22254/30646
A great article from Modern Painters, November 2006:
One of the reasons California, and Los Angeles in particular, are challenging and unusual places is their persistence in conjuring a multiplicity of ideologies that appear to take concrete social form. Los Angeles projects an elastic quality, like that of images or a rubber band; it can snap back and forth from the politically radical to the politically conservative. The ideology of each blurs to the point where no one can tell the difference between the two, much less notice that the language and discourse produced by these positions only pretends to move, never escaping confinement with its own mirror image.
Faced with a world more fantastic than anything in any gallery or museum, dominated and defined by absurd wars that threatened to rage without end, what could be more delusional than claiming that contemporary art has the capacity to create social change? It’s not that I doubt the sincerity of any artist who makes work that is socially or politically relevant. What concerns me is the consensual lie we live in together, pretending that what we make as artists has any political value outside the artworld, when in truth these so-called politically manifestations are displayed in galleries and museums, bought and sold for the artists’ and institutions’ profit, benefiting no one else. A classic argument of neoliberalism suggests that preaching to the converted is worthwhile; I don’t believe it. I find neoliberalism as ineffective as neoconservatism, with both serving only to pacify the guilt and regret of this country’s history at the expense of new ideas that could move us forward. As much as I will argue for the genuine capacity of art to affect who we are as human beings, I can only observe that we have neither the strength nor the courage to commit ourselves in any way that is politically substantive. Who among us is willing to sacrifice for the benefit of others the lifestyle we have come to enjoy from living in an empire?
Fear, not hope, abounds when one believes hope no longer exists. In less comfortable conditions, the opposite holds true. I recently returned from a two-week stay in Cali, Colombia, where I was invited to teach a class at an artist’s space called Lugar a Dudas. The name translates, provocatively, as “room for doubt.” Artist Oscar Muñoz and gallery director Sally Mizrachi have created an aesthetic and political oasis, a utopian reality where need and risk of the highest order go hand in hand. The art center attempts to fill the black hole at the heart of the city, whose infrastructure has collapsed and whose populace is brutalized by endless cycles of violence. Muñoz and Mizrachi have used their own resources to purchase a building and create a program that includes exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, library and computer resources, and a residency program and classes that bring visiting international artists to Cali. While this all might sound familiar to us in the United States, Lugar a Dudas is the only place of its kind in Colombia. Everything that the space offers is free of charge. I would argue that no such institution exists in the United States, acting in such good faith and without ulterior motives.
What worries me is that so much gain is to be made from so-called political art, with careers and fame built on mannerisms that claim a political pedigree. These works regurgitate familiar rhetoric and offer cozy answers so everyone can feel warm and fuzzy and sleep at night. It has been said that people should not be afriad of their governments but governments should be afraid of their people. Similarly, there was a time when artists led the discourse in art—before it became an industry—and art and ideas were dangerous.
Just got a piece published on MonkeyBicycle.net, http://www.monkeybicycle.net/archive/Hart/text.html, an ode to my first New York apartment. Not mentioned is the time when the sweatshop next door caught on fire. Incidentally, the sweatshop has flipped and is now high-priced condos.
I’ve been submitting (and getting rejected by) McSweeney’s Lists. A LOT. Here’s one of my favorites (Note: The MOMH is a beguiling entry in the Denny’s menu). Marite gets credit for some of the better ones here.
ANAGRAMS OF “Moons Over My Hammy”
Have Mommy or My Son
Om, My Shaven Room
Mommy Has Very Moron
Oh My! Save My Mormon!
Rhyme Soon, Mayo (MVM)
Savor My Memo, My Hon
MMM! Yo-yo Harms Oven
O Ron! Shave My Mom!
Mr. Mom Moves On My Hay
Very Moosen Money Sham
Nemoy: Savory Hommy
My Homo Raven, Sommy
Mommy’s on Yam Hover
Roy, My Mom’s Ham Oven
Rove: Nosy Mommy Ham
Vary Me My Homos, Mon!
The George Plimpton Project (http://plimptonproject.org/) is holding a haiku contest on the subject of George. I entered a couple of haikus based on the time I found the book Paper Lion (read it!) in an airport shop in Guatemala City. It was (if I remember correctly) literally the only English book in any of the shops.
They’re finalists in the contest! $200 up for grabs and bragging rights. Here they are:
> A Guatemalan
> Airport, a lone book, tattered,
> George as a Lion
> A distant airport
> Shop, A single English book
> George in a jersey
Yeah, not fine literature, but you try working the word Guatemala into a haiku.
So after a few unfruitful attempts at submitting lists, I finally got a piece up on McSweeney’s: