December 2003 Archives

And the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God.

-- from a fragment of a manuscript found at the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem in 1958. The fragment shows that the full text of St. Mark, Chapter 10 (between verses 34 and 35 in the standard version of the Bible) included this passage.

[via 365gay.com]

What's with the little red things on top of street lights on Metropolitan Avenue?

I not a big fan of marriage - gay or otherwise. I would prefer a world where we Americans all get to have health insurance and a decent retirement and the ability to leave our estates to someone we love regardless of our domestic arrangements. However, if we're going to provide lots of benefits to married people that single people can't have, then damn it same sex couples should be able to have them too.

The NY Times "Weddings & Celebrations" page on Sunday made sure we remember who really counts. On a day when they reported on the marriage of Terrence McNally (a quite commercially if not always artistically successful playwright) and Thomas Kirdahy, they stick it down on the page without a photo, after the heteros. I would have expected that to be the featured event on the page, given that he lives in NYC and his plays are regularly produced in big theatres.

Which ceremony did they choose for the "Vows" feature? Senator John Warner's third marriage, in DC, to an Alexandria, VA real estate agent.

Nice priorities.

From Ray Sanchez, Newsday's MTA watchdog:

In approving its 2004 budget, the MTA cut the subway and bus workforce by 857 positions while increasing the workforces of Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road by 304. City subways and buses receive only 63 percent of state transit aid while moving 84 percent of the state's riders. Metro-North and LIRR move just 5 percent of riders but get 23 percent of state transit funding.

Spread the word. I'm concerned that Thomas Kean, the Bush-chosen head of the 9/11 commission, can say these things and only one major network (CBS) has mentioned it so far.

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

...

Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those positions, Kean said, "Yes, the answer is yes. And we will."

Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginning next month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President Clinton.

Plus, a couple of statistics:

Amount spent on Whitewater investigation: $100 million
Amount spent on 9/11 investigation to date: $3 million

No More Mister Nice Blog has a nice post on the National Review's David Frum telling us that

it’s becoming increasingy difficult to doubt that God wants President Bush re-elected.

Too bad God had to kill all of those people on 9/11 as part of the plan.

I think it's only a cold, but I'm a mess. Why else would I be awake to do a post at 6am?

I'm getting a wingnut posting on my Hussein post. Should I just delete him? I love the idea of people that think World Net Daily is a reliable news source and that there are obvious links between Iraq and Al Quaeda, but the BBC is a crazy thing to use for a news source.

We headed out to Williamsburg today for what we thought was the last day of K48 Klubhouse at Deitch, but it's going to be up through next weekend. There was so much to see, but one of the things that really struck me was the Daniel Joseph installation. Here are some photos by Paul Laster from the opening.

We happened to meet up with Cory Arcangel there, who was with Superstar Artist Frankie Martin. She is beautiful, smart, and fabulous. I love her "mall tour" with downloadable poster for getting her autograph:

The other cool show we saw was the Team Lump show at Plus Ultra.

Cory and Frankie both highly recommended we check out Little Cakes in the East Village.

I will be interested to see how this affects the resistance to the US occupation of Iraq. Some will probably argue that this will make things easier for the US, but I think the opposite may happen. Many articles have cited the fact that some people fear driving the US out of Iraq because that would allow Saddam Hussein to return to power.

Now that he is captured, are those people more likely to attack the US to get it out? Maybe their fear of Saddam Hussein was the only thing keeping the lid on a lot of the hostility.

This isn't to say I'm not glad he was captured, and certainly that he was captured rather than killed. He was an evil man, even if I don't think that justified an unprovoked attack by our country. I can't imagine how our government can allow a real public trial for him. Are they going to allow his defense to bring up things like the fact we provided satellite intelligence to him when he was gassing Iranians and others during the Iraq/Iraq war, or that Rumsfeld was happy to meet with him during that time? I doubt it.

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For a more in-depth take on this, see Whiskey Bar's post.

Amazing! For your listening pleasure, the Schoenberg Center provides a list of all compositions by Schoenberg, along with streaming recordings of all of them!

what are those young men doing?

Spotted in an article on CNN about New York tourism returning to pre-9/11 levels:

For adults, "the city that never sleeps" offers such attractions as guided night walks through Central Park -- by foot or rickshaw cab -- and private jazz tours, with club-hopping into the wee hours.

...

Central Park night crawlers are advised to bring along a flashlight, said guide Eric Stein, for a tour that includes "the darkest 37 acres" of the park -- The Ramble, an almost untouched patch of Manhattan wildlife.

The Statue of Liberty is still closed, for "security reasons", 27 months after 9/11. It sends a nice message about our priorities, don't you think? There is a campaign to raise private donations to re-open it, since our government can't afford the $5 million to re-open it. I just saw a banner ad on My Yahoo!

$87 billion for Iraq, $5 million for the Statue of Liberty. Think about it. I guess President Flight Suit's handlers don't want a photo op in front of a symbol that might make people think of France or immigrants.

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Statue of Liberty image from Great Buildings Online

There is one more night of Swan Lake at Dance Theatre Workshop -- Saturday the 13th at 7pm. We saw it tonight, and I highly recommend it. It's a dance theatre work from the Von Krahl Theatre involving Estonian and Russian artists and plays off of the fact that totalitarian regimes have found the "high art" form of ballet a useful art form for their purposes. The music (by Sergei Zagny and recorded by NYYD), dancing, and design are all brilliant. It's part of the Central Station series which features work from Central and Eastern Europe.

P.S. Not only were we there tonight, so was Mikhail Baryshnikov.

We just came back from buying work from "holiday sales" at White Box and Wallspace. Wallspace hasn't updated their web site, but the hours are every day (even Sunday and Monday) 12-8pm through the 23rd.

From some of our White Box purchases:

Alejandro Diaz Wetback by Popular Demand, 2003 Ink/cardboard 9 1/4 x 12 1/2"

Carlos de Villasante Odalisque S.P., 1999 Ink/wallpaper 38 x 50"

We picked up a plush sculpture of a green helicopter titled Fluffy Green by Koji Shimizu at Wallspace, plus a CD from 1992 by Lisa Dilillo.

Bush is unelectable.

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What's Google Bombing?

It's always a good thing when a new art space opens. Tonight is the opening party for Gigantic Art Space in Tribeca, with a show called D Troit curated by Trevor Schoonmaker.

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Update: That was certainly anti-climactic. We went down there, but there was a big badly-organized line that wasn't moving, so we left. Not gigantic enough, apparently.

What I'm listening to as I work on code...

"No Hoes Bored" with DJ's Sonny Ray, Decibel, and MC Long Division

on East Village Radio.

I agree with what she said:

To the Editor:

You quote a United States lieutenant colonel in Iraq as saying, "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them" ("Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns," front page, Dec. 7).

Have we become a country whose primary exports are violence and money?

ELIZABETH P. LOVE
Durham, N.C., Dec. 7, 2003

Also, read Road to Surfdom on our military attacking a union headquarters in Iraq. We'll have no collective bargaining under our occupation! The Bush regime is keeping Saddam's anti-organizing laws as it rewrites the Iraqi legal system.

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While we're on the subject of unions, Queerday gives us this story:

Calling their action "Queer Eye for Justice at H&M," U.S. Representative and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, Gay & Lesbian Independent Democrats, UNITE union members and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender activists staged a protest at H&M's busy Soho store in New York City, complete with a 20 foot inflatable skunk draped in a rainbow flag ascot. H&M, known for aggressively marketing to the gay community, was targeted for their anti-union contract. "The workers at H&M have made a brave decision to try to exercise their right to organize and bargain collectively," Kucinich told the crowd. "Exercising this internationally recognized human right helps keep our democracy alive."

I think Kucinich is pretty great.

The new one is out. Here is a sample:

Eschaton provides some context.

So, did anyone else experience wonky sound while watching Angels last night? I have friggin' digital cable and their digital recorder from Time Warner. One would hope they could get sound right.

I have a comment on an older post from an Iraqi woman who speaks English and is hoping to find work with one of the international groups or companies working in Iraq.

I'm not in a position to help, really, but I'm hoping someone who reads me, or their readers, might know someone.

No one can challenge our art creds. James and I trudged through a northeaster to see some gallery shows in Chelsea yesterday.

We started on 19th Street, which has two great painting shows. The first is Raoul de Keyser at David Zwirner. He is the teacher of Luc Tuymans, which I didn't know when I first saw the paintings, but I certainly saw an affinity with Tuymans's work.

Recover
2003
Oil on canvas
82 x 67 cm

The show across the street at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert (no web site, so these are examples) is a group show titled Every Heartbeat is Past and Gone! with four European painters: Siegfried Anzinger, Axel Kasseböhmer, Marie Luise Lebschik, and Andreas Schulze.

Siegfried Anzinger
Madonna, blau, rot, blond, (2002)
Leimfarbe auf Leinwand
75 x 60 cm

Axel Kasseböhmer
Yellow, green and brown landscape I
1993
oil on canvas
60 x 90 cm

On 20th Street we tried to see AES+F's King of the Forest at Claire Oliver, but I didn't feel like spending much time with the work, given the reception from the gallery guy working there. We had come in from the snow to check out the show, and given that it's a highly conceptual show, it seemed reasonable to ask to see the press release or checklist. His response? "Sorry, my friend. The show's coming down today, and we've given out all of the materials." Ugh. No wonder sometimes people want to go into galleries and say, "Oy, shopgirl!"

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Let's end on a happy note. Our last stops were at Rare Plus's holiday gift store to buy a hankerchief by Orly Cogan and some t-shirts by Emily Noelle Lambert, and then across the street to Massimo Audiello. Massimo had an over-the-top show titled Pantone, curated by David Hunt. We know a number of people in the show, and I would have to say the highlight for me was seeing Emily's first large painting. She is a young, smart artist, and I'm enjoying watching as her work grows. We picked up a painting by her when she had some works showing at the Mini minimarket in Williamsburg in May.

Emily Lambert
Keep Back, 2003
Oil on canvas
56 x 88 inches

My other favorite work in the show is the amazing chandelier, titled Shanty Lair created by Jesse Bercowitz and Matt Bua. There is a little 'zine titled Old Person's Guide to the World's of Shanty Lair (Liar) that they did available for free at the gallery. Make sure you pick up one.

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See James for more on our adventures, including images of the two works we picked up at the DUMBO Arts Center benefit.

Wildlife
12 x 18 inches
Acrylic on canvas
2003

We first saw Teresa's work in the Soft Cell show at Foxy in June. I was really struck by the large painting she had in that show, and the gallery already had some works on paper that I liked and thought we might want at some point.

The current show, titled Wildlife has paintings (acrylic on canvas) and works on paper (gouache) of various pieces of furniture. Most of them are floating in space rather than in a recognizable setting. The perspective is often off, and the object often lies off-center in a large field of blank space.

I waited until we had decided what to buy before I posted. We bought three works on paper that are not in the show, but we were able to see at the opening:

We're headed to d.u.m.b.o. arts center's winter auction tonight. There are some great works by artists we know in the silent auction - Matthew Callinan, Jenny Scobel, etc.

DUMBO is so nice in the snow...

We may not make it to the opening, as we'll he headed to BAM for Death of Klinghoffer, but check out Pantone, curated by David Hunt, which opens tonight (6-8) at Massimo Audiello. The show includes works by Emily Lambert, Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua, and Nicole Cherubini.

We saw the opening program of Central Station -- "a multi-week, multi-venue and multi-city program that will bring East/Central European work into the spotlight in many U.S. communities."

The evening consisted of La Sonnambula by Galina Borissova (from Bulgaria), Two and Stretching Thighs by Márta Ladjánszki (Hungary), and Serial Paradise by Cosmin Manolescu.

Galina Borissova

The Borissova, danced by her as a solo, was an excerpt of a larger work. It's set to various sections of opera recordings, and mixes odd, fascinating movement, humor, and bits of sadness. The entire work consists of solos by 14 women dancers, and I would love to see it.

Mircea Ghinea and Eduard Gabia in Serial Paradise

The piece by Cosmin Manolescu consists of various excerpts from an hour-long work. It includes some great dance making fun of machismo, the boy band phenomenon,

and nationalism. There is an amazing solo danced by Eduard Gabia, who wears earplugs to prevent hearing the Romanian folk music that plays as he dances.

Here is a page with some more images from works by Manolescu.

The events take place at DTW, Danspace, and P.S.122. Go here for more information.

This is my World AIDS Day post, in a way. Last night James and I were talking with fabulous health care activist Karen Timour at a sort of "kick-off" party -- generously supported by Counter, for the ACT UP Oral History Project.

Karen told us about a program we didn't realize existed. New York State's ADAP (The AIDS Drug Assistance Program) will pay for the health insurance of people with HIV, assuming they make less than $44,000 per year, which is a pretty generous number for most people I know. Go here to learn more and download the application. Spread the word! I'm sure we all know people who need help paying for their health insurance.

Appropriately, we had just come from a program, titled Pink Mafia: Movement and The Bent Minor, of short queer films dealing with youth issues at Galapagos/Ocularis. We went mainly to see Matt Wolf's Small Town Boys:

Smalltown Boys imagines the historical relationship between AIDS activist artist David Wojnarowicz and Sarah Rosenburg, a teenage lesbian on the Upper West Side in 1994. In a "fake documentary" story, Sarah fights to save the television show My So-Called Life from cancellation on ABC in 1994. David is dying in the face of culture wars and an aggressive AIDS activist movement during the late eighties and early nineties. The collision of biographical fantasy and historical fiction calls the efficiency of contemporary modes of political protest into question. Wojnarowicz spread his seed -- in a lineage of political rebellion through different cultural times -- like a disease. Smalltown Boys addresses a precarious generational transition and the shifting fantasies of aesthetic and political liberation.

The Ocularis event also included a chance for us to see Scott Trelevean's brilliant Salivation Army again. Here is what James wrote after we first saw it last summer.

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One more item: Matt Wolf's film uses footage by ACT UP documentarian James Wentzy. If you haven't seen his documentary on 15 years of ACT UP, you have another chance on December 15.