HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The Thanksgiving Ten

The Ten Things for which I am Thankful:

(1) Not ending a sentance with a participle.
(2) Safeway: both their delicious foods and mind-bogglingly incompetent staff make my life more interesting.
(3) My new car: el Yaris es el mejor. ¡Orale!
(4) My new job which provides my new health insurance. Three flu shots? Why not?! I'm not paying for it!
(5) All the travels I have done and all the people I have met. If I died tomorrow, at least I would have gotten to drink questionable things with strange people in dangerous places.
(6) My family: all of you are, in one way or another, completely insane.
(7) The Boyfriend. We get along. Sometimes rockily, sometimes smoothly, but I wouldn't want to attempt the journey with anyone else. It's too intoxicatingly fun to do it with you. Even Safeway and MetroBus become more hilarious, disruptive and ridiculious when you are along.
(8) The Friends: You know who you are. Well done, all of you. Except you. I know what you did.
(9) Having a brain: trés useful.
(10) A holiday where the only religion visible is gluttony, the only worship is directed towards poultry and football incants a verse all afternoon that we need to hear.


PS>> Bon Voyage to The Princess and Arjewtino: ¡que coman unos tacos para mí!

Feasting on Babette

I just watched Babette's Feast . Yes, I am totally lame. I am aware of that. Does it make me less lame that I have already seen it? Twice. And read the book? No? Oh. Well then. What if I told you I had read everything that Isak Dinesen has ever written? Or that she spins a fantastic story about living with unfufilled lives? Still nothing? Well, you must be a Calvinist then. Or dead. Both are possibilities. Maybe you didn't hear me because you were eating a Double Big Mac Combo meal from McDonald's.

Babette's Feast is about the interplay between sensuality and pietism, specifically the sensuality of food. It's a great story. Go read it now. Or rent the movie. And do not watch it while eating a Stouffer's Lean Cuisine. I will hurt you.

Babette, staring wistfully at food, while an old man wishes she would get off her ass and make a pie.

Canadian and Their Bacon

I spent the weekend observing Canadians in their natural habitat. It's a lot like observing Americans, except they are quieter and they all have health insurance. Also, they unabashedly promote their feelings that Canada is in every way nicer and kinder and better than their neighbor to the south. I feel they may have a point. Much like the passive-aggressive relationship of a nice gay couple and their white trash neighbors, Canadians feel that with a little love and maybe some nice mustard or or a new shirt America would really be better off. I find find that we rarely lift our be-mulleted heads from under our Camaro hoods to notice that we have neighbors. We should pay more attention.

I'll admit it wasn't exactly a hardship tour. I spent three days drinking beer, cooking and playing board games in a cabin with our friends. Little did they know they were under the unblinking eye. In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I am not so much an unpartial observer. Before returning to the states and our fair city, I taught The Engrish in Japan for three years. I've seen things that would make your eyes bleed, including signs that stated "Don't Shit Down Here" and "Poop in Toiret". But I digress.

The entire time I was in Japan, the whole populace, including my employers who had processed my visa and had copies of my passport, thought I was Canadian. It might have been because there were like six Americans in all of Japan, versus the thousands of Canadians. Maybe it was because I like snow. Who can know? It was at first uncanny. Then, unsettling. Finally, it became simply part of my life. I was a fake Canadian. I've become comfortable with being fake Canadian. It's comforting at times to know that if the S2 bus was hijacked by hardline Islamic fundamentalists intent on killing Americans, I could probably name enough provinces to make them let me go. But if it was fundamentalist hardline Christians, you better believe I would be the first one gunned down in the name of Christ.

It's all because those Canadians let the gays marry. And we all know where that leads: universal health care, civility-in-government, heavy underwriting of university education and bacon that is the wrong shape and texture. And America must stay the course against enlightenment if it in anyway affects our bacon.

No, really, it was nice to notice that when I held hands with the boyfriend in the supermarket, no one stared at us weird. Or actually, no one looked at us at all. Which is all I'm asking for. That and health care. Also, comprehensive welfare. I'm tired of working. Really.

Sigh. (Le sigh).


PS> To the Canadian friends: thanks for a great weekend. I never knew that Cilene's husband was named Rene. And Le Toast Francais? Delicioux. (I don't speak french. I just attach 'X' to the end of adjectives)

PPS> To the Asshat that Stole My Temporary Tag From the Brand New Car: Karma will keep you in rural New York state. You will contract rabies and have to undergo painful injections. Your hand will become inflamed in a freak Pabst Blue Ribbon accident. You will marry your sister and die in a mine fire. That is all.

Deconstruction, Badger-Style

The badger's boyfriend loves that modern art. I love me some modern art, too, as long as no one insists that it means anything. I like colorful tape on the floor! I like splattered paint! I like decaying animals in tanks of preservative just as much as the next guy! I just can't find meaning in it.

Can art make us feel? Yes. But there is a degree of feeling that is directly related to the degree of abstractness. Painting of hideous dead people killed in terrible ways? Might cause a reflection on death, mortality and cruelty. Pieces of tape on the floor? Most likely will cause reflection on highschool basketball courts, or possibly school plays. Picture of sad-looking, beautiful young woman? Exposes us to the juxtaposition of youth and unhappiness, exploring the idea that the ideal is not always desirable. Sculpture of a blue cylinder? Makes us think of tinker toys, or legos. Maybe blue poop. Nothing more.

This is the description of a new exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum, "The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas: Recent Sculpture". Just reading the title of the exhibit makes my eyes bleed:

In her catalogue essay, Hirshhorn curator Anne Ellegood speaks of "a feeling that beliefs and meanings are continuously unmoored and in flux" and of how her artists' works "embrace an uncertainty of meaning, multiple meanings, and meaning in flux." But what happens when artists take this as a rule to make art by? Once meaning goes entirely adrift, all that may be left is fiddling around with trash and craft supplies to make amusing stuff. It's fiddling meant to speak of impotence and failure as the standard artistic condition. It produces art that is profoundly anti-profound, committed to being noncommittal. Slightness is this art's reigning principle, as the only principle that's left. It's a brave stand that rejects the possibility of courage.

Excuse me, was that talking? Let's review this art exhibit in pictures:

Charles Long

Winterwork, 2004. Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

Clothes hanger with white clothes on it. Maybe they are sheets. It hasn't caused me to become 'continuously unmoored'. It's meaning isn't 'in flux'. Ikea anyone? It's called Craäpgarten, it's $22.95, it's made in Bangladesh of Chilean parts.

Isa Genzken
Geschwister (Brothers and Sisters), 2004

Eighth grade science project by Joey Johansen. “This is a recreation of my imaginary friend, Bil the Woodsman. I made it out of stuff that I found in my grandpa's garage. He said I could take it. I put a speak-n-spell in the bucket. But it's broke. So it only says adverbs.” The above article says: “ all that may be left is fiddling around with trash and craft supplies to make amusing stuff.” And a damn fine job of fiddling.

Mindy Shapero
Courtesy of the artist and the Artist Pension Trust, Los Angeles

A used chair. With no legs. Painted by six year olds at a Fort Skokie, IL kindergarten while their teacher, Ms. Smallstrom, sold hand-made angels on Ebay. “It produces art that is profoundly anti-profound, committed to being noncommittal.” says Anne Ellegood. Ms. Smallstron was noncommittal about that characterization of her art. When reminded we were talking about the chair, she volunteered “Oh, I thought you were talking about the angels. Now angels, those are committal. I found that chair in the alley.”

Franz West
Caiphas & Kepler, 2005

Oh Jesus. Floating organs? Painted crap set on a pallet? All I can say is this collection of painted shapes definitely fits the Hirshhorn's theory “[Abstractionism] produces art that is profoundly anti-profound.” Yes. I agree. However, it seems that profoundly anti-profound things would cancel each other out, like anti-matter and matter. Leaving nothing. Or energy. I can't remember from physics classes what actually happens. What ever real things do, this art is less than impressive. And I mean that in a “ fiddling around with trash and craft supplies” kind of way.

Words mean things, America. Really. They do. No matter if you are the Hirshhorn or that annoying Rachel Ray advertisement when she proclaims “a rebellious show would be a fun show to have!” No. What the hell does that even mean? If history has taught us anything, it is that rebellion is not fun. Real rebellion leads to bloodshed and beheading, not tips on saving four dollars a month by reusing dryer sheets.

“Slightness is this art's reigning principle, as the only principle that's left. It's a brave stand that rejects the possibility of courage.”

As I bang my forehead against the desk, the mind wobbles. And it rejects courage.

And Give Us Today Our Daily Sugar Ration

I dressed up as the pope for Halloween, and I had the largest hat possible. No kidding, it was like three feet tall. I am awesome. Being the pope requires a certain amount of gravitas, which I lack completely. Therefore my rendition of the pope becomes a cross between his holiness and a truck driver. Classy, to be sure.

His holiness. He dances so elegantly.

(Big props to DC Katastrophe, my partner in so many crimes against religion and humanity for letting me steal from her flikr. Also props to my buddy for dressing in an 8 year-old's superman costume. Intensely creepy, yet hilarious.)

Walking around DC dressed as the pope seriously brings a share of attention unwarranted by my actual costume. It was a tablecloth with paint on it and a huge hat. I was with a congressional page, superman in a very tight outfit, K-fed and Dead Audrey Hepburn. All of their costumes were much more arresting. However, everyone wants to get down on their knees in front of the pope and get blessed. That's what the kids are calling it these days.

It's why I like dressing up as the pope (it's my second offense... the first was in Japan where the most of the Japanese thought I was dressed as Santa Claus- explaining why they lost the war). Everyone from bartenders to taxi drivers to old ladies gives you a second glance. The weirdest of all: on the train ride home, four strapping young lads from Catholic University knelt on the platform reciting the prayer for forgiveness used in confession, in Latin. Uhh, I think that is going to require some major hail marys boys.

Halloween rocks.