One of the reasons things have been so quiet around here is that I have been working on ArtCat, a service for hosting artists and galleries. The artist part is about finished. Gallery stuff has a way to go, but I have at least one "guinea pig" starting soon.

Recognize the background image? Unfortunately it doesn't animate on my Mac.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) uses a cell phone camera to record the Senate Judiciary Committee mark-up hearings to discuss the nomination of John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill, September 22, 2005. From (L-R) are: Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Our senators have turned into the woman that annoys me at my local bagel place by checking her email on her phone while she's supposed to be working the cash register. She once just took calls, but now she uses a little keyboard on her phone.

More from the Washington Post here.

[via Wonkette]

... remind yourself that Cindy Sheehan managed to visit 21 states and over 50 cities and towns before being threatened with arrest. She had to come to NYC for that.

Tom Moody has more. Allegedly it was over the use of amplification, but the city wouldn't give them permits after they were requested, and Union Square can be a noisy place.

They should have added some religious content. People like the "Black Israelites" in Times Square are allowed to yell anti-white and anti-gay crap and Holocaust denials, using bullhorns, under the courts' view of the First Amendment. It's interesting that the denial of permits by the NYPD for things like a Cindy Sheehan visit don't seem to cause the same concern.

Cindy Sheehan speaking out in Union Square with Al Zappala, who also lost a son in Iraq photo: Sarah Ferguson

[Image from a Village Voice article]

--

Updated: Via a comment, Kim Arnold just provided a link to some of her video and images from the Union Square rally.

Two people we know and love have shows in Miami right now:

Installation view

Carlos de Villasante has a solo show at Spare Parts through September 30th.

Orly Cogan, Allegory (detail), 2005
Hand stitched embroidery and paint on vintage linen
44 × 44 inches

Orly Cogan is in a group show titled Hanging by a Thread at The Moore Space through October 28. The show includes a few other people we follow and like such as Brian Belott, Christian Holstad, and Frankie Martin.

I told you earlier that last Saturday was your last chance to ride Austin's El Camino. It's now up for sale on eBay.

I took the photo above. It is from a small parade in Long Island City two years ago.

If you're going to the peace rally in DC on the 24th, Florent has organized some buses.

Bill Bartman, the founder and genius madman of Art Resources Transfer, died this morning after battling all kinds of illnesses over the last two decades. He will be missed by all of us who were lucky enough to encounter him.

More from James.

Update: Ed Winkleman tells one of my favorite Bill stories.

Austin Thomas, Perchance: A Floating Scenic Overlook, 2003

Start (or end) your Chelsea gallery crawl on Saturday by hitting The Kitchen High Line Block Party which is happening from noon to 6PM. Click on the link for a list of participating artists, restaurants, and organizations.

According to an email I received from Austin Thomas, it is also your last chance to ride the El Camino, of which I have written before.

What's the High Line you may ask? Go read all about it at that link.

Related: Joy Garnett on the event.

Check it out.

I don't feel like writing about the Katrina tragedy much. You can read James, Kos, or Atrios instead.

When I heard about Bush visiting the areas hit by the hurricane, my first reaction was that it would waste a lot of resources for photo ops that could be put to better use. It hadn't occurred to me they would actually ground helicopters delivering aid while he was there!

From the Times-Picayune:

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.

The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.

We're not going to Berlin until October, so we'll miss Ostpunk, an exhibit revisiting the punk movement in the GDR (East Germany). The web site plus this article from Deutsche Welle will have to suffice.

When Michael Böhlke, otherwise known as "Pankow," took to the stage at the opening of Germany's first-ever exhibition on punk in the GDR last Friday, it was as if the last 25 years had never happened. Reunited with his former fellow renegades, he brought down the house.

"It felt so right -- I realized that I was born to perform," he said later. But while members of many former punk bands in West Germany went on to become household names -- die Toten Hosen, die Ärtzte, Einstürzende Neubauten, to name but a few -- Pankow never managed to carve out a successful musical career for himself.

Like many of the GDR's punks, his flirtation with counterculture had lasting repercussions. In the late 1980s, he was refused permission to study theater directing and forced to train as a mechanic. His former girlfriend Jana -- whose photo features in the exhibition -- was sent to jail for her punk activities and is psychologically traumatized to this day.

...

Broadly dismissed in the west as nihilistic, punk in the GDR was fuelled by optimism and a desire to change society.

...

"In retrospect, I was probably more of a hippy," shrugged Pankow. "I had a vision; I was full of hope that things could improve. We didn't do drugs and we didn't drink -- we thought we were better than everyone else, and every last loser in the GDR drank beer like it was going out of fashion, so being a teetotaller was a form of rebellion."

...

The cultural depth of GDR punk is reflected in the exhibition. Housed in a former industrial warehouse in Prenzlauer Berg, a neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, the show features paintings, drawings, print graphics, photography, super 8 film, collages, rare audio footage and miscellaneous pop culture ephemera such as record covers, buttons, flyers and posters.

...

"Punk inevitably became political very fast," said Pankow. "If you were in a band, you had to apply for permission to perform in public and audition before a committee that would assess your musical competence, the way you looked -- and above all, whether you were politically acceptable. The punks refused to go along with this -- it was considered a compromise."

As the youthful rebellion began to spiral out of state control, punks in the GDR were no longer seen as disaffected teenagers -- they were denounced as enemies of the state. By 1983 the secret police had sunk its talons into the movement and the scene was slowly but surely infiltrated with informants, forced under pressure from the State to choose between cooperation, a jail sentence, expulsion or military service.

[Image from the Ostpunk website.]

It's called The Pit.