Are we dead yet?

With all the media overhyping the swine flu and officials around the world, including WHO, reacting to the pandemic scare with dire warnings, it is no surprise that family and friends are calling us, freaking out and worrying about our health.

Let me reassure everyone that we are just fine. NYFD black-plague carts are being hauled through the streets piled high with dead bodies, corpses are being stacked up on Madison Avenue very efficiently, the Waldorf-Astoria hotel is being used as an isolation hospital, all Hispanics found on streets get systematically beaten up, disinfectants are being sprayed every 2 hours, and we’ve been distributed gas masks to wear in case we need to break the curfew and leave the house for urgent matters like, say, you have tickets to a Broadway show you bought back in unsuspected times. On top of this, pork ribs are selling cheap these days.

The irony is that the day before the wave of panic started I bought pork chops. It’s funny because I don’t buy meat very often. We have meat once a week with a preference for white meat, and according to my online grocery records the last time I bought pork was a year ago, on Thursday, April 3, 2008: Boneless Center Cut Pork Loin Chop, 1.0”, Standard, Hand-cut, Standard Pack.

The single most adventurous, thrilling experience of the year: having balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard glazed barbecue pork chops in the middle of a swine flu pandemic outbreak. Take that, WHO!

Art consists of limitation, and the most beautiful part of every picture is the frame

A few months ago an ad on the Internet caught my attention. The New Museum was searching for women volunteers to take part in a contemporary art installation. The living statues were required to go to the museum a.m., take a sleeping pill, get into a bed installed in the exhibition space, and sleep as many consecutive hours as possible.

It turned out the sleeping installation was part of the exhibition “Generation younger than Jesus”, showcasing 50 international artists born after 1976, that we saw last week. First off, the reason why we can still sleep at night is that we were wise enough to visit the exhibit on their free day. Otherwise those 30 dollars would have haunted me for the rest of my life, together with the following (and I quote a review) distasteful, borderline offensive, and cliché in its romanticism of martyred youth (close quote) bullshit:

• A new banana skin is placed anywhere in the exhibition space every day by one museum employee after he’s eaten the banana. Of course we were relieved to see that there's a security guard always hovering nearby to protect the masterpiece. Basically this banana skin is more guarded than the Monna Lisa;
  

• Three platforms displaying personal items from three Chinese guys approached on the street by the artist who offered to buy everything on them for $500;

• Clips of skateboard catastrophes to “rethink the concept of revolution”;

• A Czech artist asked her depression-crippled grandmother to draw from memory items on inventory at a home supply store the woman worked at in Brno for 30 years;

  
  

• The museum’s fourth-floor gallery watcher, who has to wear a white tracksuit, stained with embroidered blood;

• A black steel staircase that only minutes ago I found out to be an art installation. At the Museum I simply thought it was an emergency fire escape.

The event is drawing enthusiastic reviews such as “With nearly all the selections, one gets the sense that these youthful artists are themselves becoming parents. They’re bunch of Geppetos displaying little Pinocchios for the first time”, and “These young artists show us that the sublime has moved into us, that we are the sublime; life, not art, has become so real that it’s almost unreal.”

While attempting to convince myself that looking at nothing is good for you, I started listening to other people’s conversation because, yes, I wanted to know if I was the only one in the room where the sublime had not taken residency. Man telling his friend: “What really strikes me is… the freedom these artists have”. Right, the freedom to add a bunch more crap to the world.

In the end I don’t blame the so-called artists, though. I think of Maurizio Cattellan (see quote below), or the young painter who issues an invitation to his new exhibition that reads “I've got a bunch of crap showing at The Chicago Art Department's”. Most don’t take themselves seriously. Critics take them seriously. Museum goers take them seriously.

Or perhaps the problem is that I’m turning one year older than Jesus. Or 50 years younger than Geppetto.

“Io non mi prendo sul serio, questa è la mia forma di difesa. Ho sempre odiato lavorare. Nella mia vita ho fatto di tutto: la donna delle pulizie, il postino, il becchino, il giardiniere, il cuoco, il contabile, il
disoccupato, perfino il donatore di sperma, a Verona. Ora mi inseguono tutti e rimango stupefatto, perché io sono sempre lo stesso idiota di prima"

Maurizio Cattellan, il cui Papa di cera abbattuto da un meteorite e’ stato venduto per due miliardi.

The Deep South

Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi

April 3-13, 2009

The end of an era

Just finished watching the series finale of Six Feet Under.

It's been an awesome 4 year journey.

God bless Hollywood.

In loving memory

Los Angeles, 12-14 December 2008

Photo Mitzi Mandel

Back from or to the jungle?

Just came back from Mexico. Eleven days traveling throughout the Yucatan peninsula and all the way down to Chiapas, a couple of which spent in the jungle with swarms of mosquitos who mistook me for a taqueria, plus the last three days spent in Tulum where electricity is limited to nighttime use, from 6 to 10. You get back home and you think what a great, unforgettable vacation, but I’m glad to be back to the comforts of home. Then you turn on the tap in your NY apartment and… have the water come out black? Gee… que viva Mexico!

“You're entering a world of pain, son.”

We are in recession. Some say that everything will rebound soon while others say that we're in an economic crisis that rivals the one of the 30's. The specter of the Great Depression fuels fear and panic. “We're going into the worst global recession for sure that that we've ever seen”, Obama told the  press today.

It’s almost impossible to carry on with this kind of drama almost everyday. No wonder the Kremlin sent an order to all newspapers and broadcasters banning the words "collapse" and "crisis." In search for positive news, I found out that the global economic meltdown will not impact motor sport in India (The India Times) and will not have a major impact on the NBA (NewsDaily Entertainment Headlines). Also, McDonald's sales rise during economic crisis. Chief Executive Jim Skinner commented: "McDonald's strong October sales show that we are delivering what customers count on from McDonald's —choice, variety and high-quality food and beverages at affordable prices". I would have rather said “we are delivering what customers count on from McDonald's — affordable prices with a side order of burger and fries”. Well, I’m not a big fan of McDonald’s but at least Mcemployees won’t get Mcfired.

Thus far, our life hasn't really changed much. Thanks God we have not had to resort to living on Ramen noodles. But maybe unconsciously, somehow we adjusted to the general mood of doom and gloom. Our life in the new Great Depression includes:

The New Yorker. My husband received a gift subscription to the New Yorker for his birthday. A typical article is 15 pages long, a real challenge given the increasingly short attention span of the average web user. Reading the New Yorker is a full time job. Indeed I was offered a job a couple of weeks ago and I had to refuse: “Sorry, I just subscribed to the New Yorker.” And more, it’s a zen exercise. The first few times you read one of those neverending stories that any other journalist would have told in two columns you get an urge to yell out "get on with it already!" at least a dozen times. This side effect disappears with daily practice. Once you attain enlightment you’re all set. (Reader, you may have noticed that this post is longer than usual; that’s because I’m trying to do to you what the New Yorker is doing to me.)

The Philoctetes Center is our new preferred destination for lectures. It’s a club of psys whose declared mission is to “promote an integrated approach to the understanding of creativity and the imaginative process.” Emotionally appealing words like creativity and imagination have been used here in order not to scare the shit out of potential members and attendees. Truth is, one of their last roundtable was aimed to “consider theoretical questions in relation to Franco-Algerian politics, the cinema of cruelty, the use of off-screen space, and the Freudian scenario of the bourgeois family”. Last Sunday we went to the Philoctetes for an afternoon roundtable and film screening devoted to Samuel Beckett. Our motivation for attending the event was because of John Turturro taking part as a panelist. Seeing Jesus Quintana from the Big Lebowski discussing Beckett is priceless.

The Big Lebowski Fest was supposed to be the highlight of the year, if only it weren’t sold out when we got to the place. While my husband first tried to argue with security and then to sneak in, I stopped to think about this annual celebration of a massive cult movie that holds sold-out events all across the United States. Dedicated to those who have no clue where they are in life right now.