Saturday, May 31, 2008

wishlist item #1






http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290233754861
oh, what's that? just a townes van zandt fan club shirt.



are you kidding me?!? how could it be any better?
and designed by "rusty chest"?

graduation gift, hint hint

lonely hearts flub

me and hannah went to see the new harmony korine movie mister lonely last night. as i expected, it is so so so good. strangely, there is a central plot which is a sort of love story of a michael jackson impersonator and a marilyn monroe impersonator. it's not that i didn't like the narrative parts. but, to be honest, they aren't what made my jaw drop in the theatre. it was the smaller, unconnected parts that made we go wild. the there are these incredible scenes where nuns in the bluest blue robes are skydiving in panama against the bluest blue sky without parachutes from a plane flown by a priest played by werner herzog. it is the perfect meeting -not really a balance- a shifting meeting of these two poles of unrationalized beauty, like actually sublime, and then this bizarre surreal joke. an example: in one of the scenes the nuns are riding bmx bikes as they fly through the air, flipping, turning, grinning (talk about catching some air!). the speed of their fall and the blending colors as they are spinning makes this pinwheel image that i couldn't get over. also, the abe lincoln impersonator might be hannah's favorite character in a movie ever which is really saying something.

i think what i love best about the things korine makes, his books, movies, even the name poems he and mark gonzalez make, is that what comes out is just what he wants to see. it is sheer fantasy. it is completely generated for his own enjoyment. the fantasy itself feels so personal. there is never a moment where the film tries to justify its contents. there is just a castle filled with impersonators in the highlands. the how's and why's are not important. they can't be the exact things that i am dreaming up when i fixate, eyes-closed, on an image. but, there is something great about watching someone else's fantasies materialize before your eyes. it reminds you that there are ways of making the things you want to see in the world.

the day before i went to the art institute to go to mario ybarra jr's opening "no man is an island." blake had made a replica of wrigley field for him. the whole installation was centered around the baseball and the chicano power movement in the early 70's. the song "no man is an island" was playing the whole time. fuck, that is a good song. the gallery it is in is the last room of the contemporary wing. i was wandering around and stumbled into this



holy shit! david wojnarowicz!



bizarrely, there was just this room of david wojnarowicz and keith harring. i am not sure that i love the choice to put the two of them together, or at least the pieces that were actually put together. plus, i think it would've been really great to put these late wojnarowicz works into conversation with the felix gonzalez torres pieces in another part of the very small contemporary wing... but, still! i finally got to see that print! really, it's wojnarowicz's writing that i love most. that said, some of the photographs are simply incredible; like in the aperture that he did, or, rather, was done about him. but, some of the paintings are sometimes a little simple or even cheesy.
this is is on the cover of close to the knives and i think it is still absolutely mesmerizing.





this one is an earlier work that is part of a fairly large series where he took photographs of himself with a mask of rimbaud on.



in terms of the idea, isn't that really charming and sweet? but, the photographs are so much more complex than that.

rimbaud seems to be one of those figures that people really try to embody. in the chris kraus book i love dick, she talks about david rattray moving to paris and going to the bibliotech nationale to look up every book rimbaud checked out. then he actually read them. all of them. the idea was that if he filled himself with the things rimbaud was filled with that he could be that much closer to understanding him. i love the romanticism of that, in a way. but it also grosses me out a little. do you have to become someone else to love them? i mean any other person -whether a writer or a lover. i don't think so. isn't the really gratifying part learning about the other person and yourself, the distance, the contrast, the bridging?
in some ways, it seems like the desire to be rimbaud through reading is no less bizarre and self-effacing that the impersonators in mister lonely. where do we start to think that we can be other people? not aspire to have other traits, to fix ourselves, but really be someone else?

take some time, drink some beers and get to the bottom of this:

Thursday, May 29, 2008

what did you do today?

this is what i watch over and over instead of applying for jobs.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

artist statement

how do you describe your art practice?
what do you have on a leash?
why wouldn't you want the ball?




oh wait, r kelly won't let me embed his video, so go watch it here

Sunday, May 25, 2008

secret beach





it's no secret that i love beaches. but today on the megabus (single-decker) back to chicago, i started thinking about how everyone needs their own secret beaches. what i mean is, when i get bummed out it becomes brutally clear how much place becomes important. having both mental and physical spaces that become refuges seem to me to be one of the healthiest defenses against the annoying and sometimes devastating shit life throws at you.

going to bloomington is that kind of defense for me.

it's always going to be my secret beach.

WHY?

because of BBQ"S FILLED WITH BUDDIES!





because everybody likes hanging out and drinking beer like i like drinking beer and hanging out,



because its in the....

mid-best

becuz of pupppppy love
meet rawny's new dog! -as yet to be named.
<

he was rescued from a shelter that is closing down in marion, indiana. a place i have never been, but the way rawny and kater were describing it, it sounds like absolute hell on earth. stacked cages, overrun with uncared for and dirty animals. and creeps.
this handsome lover was named "whitey" by the trashy skinheads that ran the shelter. wtf!?

because of the funniest local graffiti! because of lindsay's lazy eye! because of dumb jokes!






speaking of dumb jokes, i love bloomington because i get to hangout out with my dad. who this weekend uttered my new favie phrase when talking about how awkward my mother can be. "yeah, becca," he explained, "she is a real turd in a punchbowl."
yes, dad, she can ruin a party.


i always know where to find my

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Monday, May 19, 2008

banana peals of laughter

new favie joke:

what did abe lincoln say on his way to ford's theatre?
"i need to see this play like i need a hole in the head."



hellllllloooooo monday.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

back in the saddle again

delicious sandwich party!












one less thing to do before i die.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Mental As Anything

it started out just drinking beer....



btw, "nips" in australia means "shots"

Friday, May 2, 2008

FUNITO

I DID IT.



THE THESIS IS DONE!


LOOK HOW THICK IT IS!


59 pages of pure genius.

Which I decided to title "Neg(oti)ation of History: Notes Toward an Anarchist Avant-garde."
LOL.


now i can finally return to being a normal person and get back to what's really important....