adrianduran

Are You Watching My Internet TV Show?

2011-09-22T11:02:00.002-05:00

Memphis' Own Dwayne Butcher and I have a monthly art show on the interwebs. Start watching now before we get too famous and forget where we came from.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/artbutcher

Captain America: A Brief Review

2011-08-08T17:46:00.002-05:00

By next summer I will have forgotten that this movie ever existed, but I will eagerly watch the new one if they switch everything but the costume.

Artbutcher Broadcast #2

2011-08-08T11:07:00.001-05:00

In case you missed yesterday's show, here it is:

Video streaming by Ustream

5 pm today! Sunday July 10!

2011-07-10T15:10:00.003-05:00

Go here if you want to hear the latest and greatest about the Memphis cultural scene.

Dwayne Butcher and I will be premiering our interwebs tv show.

You know you want to. All the cool kids are doing it.

We'll be accepting tweets and things as well. Cause we're interactive like that.

@art_butcher on the Twittering.

The Other King

2011-06-26T11:10:00.003-05:00

Hello again. I feel like I'm getting worse at this, but I also know that this past year at work was beyond bonkers, so I'll just play that card and see what happens.

Earlier this week, we went to see Dick Dale, the King of Surf Guitar. If you don't know his music, you already do. It's that fast-moving, oddly twangy song that was used as the main theme for Pulp Fiction. It's called Miserlou. I learned a few things. Here you go...

1. Surf Guitar might just be one of the primary roots of thrash metal. Guitar Player called Dick Dale the "Father of Heavy Metal," but I think they had the wrong reasons. They were talking about how he used to blow up amplifier after amplifier, which is pretty metal. But, I think there are better reasons. The superhuman pick hand work. The pedal tones on the low strings. The weird scales. The god forsaken volume. The way the songs are a huge puzzle of individual riffs. Go and listen to the intro of Pantera's Cowboys from Hell. Or anything Metallica did before they went to pot. Or Marty Friedman's work with Megadeth. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that a whole lot of that is because of surf guitar. Thrash came out of LA and the Bay Area. A pinch of surf guitar, a half cup of SoCal punk, two pounds of the NWOBHM, and you're on your way to thrash. Pretty awesome to hear live.

2. There is nothing more tragic than a hipster dropping an entire tallboy of PBR.

3. I am all for volume when it comes to rock n roll music. In fact, the more the better. Go see a Slayer show. It's very much a function of the volume at which the stuff is played. And they're definitely not alone. Ask Motorhead. Or Dick Dale. The guy rolled into the Hi-Tone with 4 12" speakers and an old Fender head and rattled my innards worse than a half dozen Marshall stacks. It was profound. And, to tell you the truth, it's mostly the reverb that does it. I felt parts of myself vibrating that I'm not sure I feel comfortable talking about. There was a point where I actually thought I might be disintegrating from within. Awesome.

4. Laramie Dean, the opener, is a bad bad man. He can play like hell and is exactly the kind of endearing gas station jacket-wearing, Brylcreemed, awkward with a microphone nostalgist that everyone should love. And, if that's not enough, he was gracious enough to shout out a local great when he saw him in the audience.

5. Shows at the Hi-Tone are fun, if only because everyone shows up. I saw 60 year old dudes in aloha shirts next to tatted-up rockabilly women next to a kid with a Misfit shirt. It was the same kind of crowd as at the Social D show I saw in Nashville a few weeks ago. The kind of crowd that reassures your faith in humanity to get along with itself. The kind of crowd that proves that good music is perhaps the most universal universal.

6. There is nothing more hilarious than a hipster falling off of a chair whilst trying to seduce a dude with a slew of poorly-balanced dance moves. Thankfully she wasn't hurt, and my wife was the one who saw the entire sequence, but it's hard to explain just how hilarious it was. Yell of hipster. Crash of chair. Thud of beer hitting the ground. Woosh of air as hundreds of heads turn to what just happened. Me laughing so hard I thought I was going to pee. I'm probably going to hell for laughing at other peoples' misfortunes, but this one was well worth it.

Happy trails. I'll try to get it together and be more productive.

PS: It's true. Ghost's Opus Eponymous is a really great album. If you like Priest and Sabbath, this will flip all of your switches.

I am furious.

2011-04-11T19:30:00.004-05:00

Allow me to apologize in advance if any element hereforth is in anyway obscene or offensive to any of you, but I have been wronged.

Some barbarian degenerate stole a small plastic trash can from out behind my apartment. There is already vindication in this, so I am sure that the universe does not need to be righted. Nonetheless I remain concerned. And infuriated.

This small plastic trash can which, until some point today, lived next to the back door. For those of you that just laughed at the words "back door," that's fine. I did too. But back on track.

This small plastic trash can was where we used to drop the bags of freshly-scooped cat turds before we took them to the garbage. This is less grotesque than it sounds. Well, it's cat turds, so it's already grotesque. But the day's scoopings go into a bag, which goes into a bigger bag in the small plastic trash can. This unknown turdosity is my only solace in this entire event, a slight vindication.

Either way, some barbarian degenerate has stolen my small plastic trash can!

Filth flarn filth cat dog hot ants angry bat cut rip and murder hives this is what i have to do to not use all the words i learned as a kid in new jersey and then the ones that i learned from my italian friends and my german friends and my french family.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Listen to me people. There is an agreement. We are all supposed to be members of a civilization. One of the implicit agreements that all members of a civilization make is to keep up their end of the bargain. The bargain that says "I will not act like a barbarian degenerate."

Seriously, if one person steals another person's small plastic trash can, it's essentially Armageddon. Barbarism must not exist if civilization is to be.

I realize that this may not be terribly meaningful to many of you, but I cannot abide this degree of carelessness towards the possessions of others.

Half of you people, according to the polls at least, are Republicans. This certainly violates a law, and you guys are supposed to be really offended by people who break the law.

And you Democrats over there with your ennui, don't act like you wouldn't spill coffee on your New Yorker if you learned that you had been personally affronted with robbery.

And all of you Christians out there should be angry because this violates at least one of the Commandments. Not the first, about Godness, or the second, about guns, but one of the other ones. Violated.

And, if what I hear on the TV is right, then half of the rest of the world is waiting to find the person who stole my small plastic trash can and either put them in a hellhole of a prison or kill them outright for it.

So, I think I have something that can bring us all together as a people.

As a civilization.

Quit stealing other people's small plastic trash cans.

Once we get that right, we can step it up a bit.

Thank you.

And sorry for being away so long. It's been really nutty around here.

Some Questions about Art Making

2011-02-19T17:12:00.004-06:00

These are questions that were brought up, in a broader way, at the recent CAA conference, so I don't want to make it sound as if this is my idea entirely. But those became remarkably present to me recently, so hopefully this is a different variety of question.

I was recently brought to a greater, more directly seen, understanding of artists with physiological difference of the optical variety.

We already know that we are all embodied. And that the linkages between the material physiological perceptive self and the immaterial intellectual self are rather difficult to explain.

But where I'm really caught up here is that we have, as of late, in our more linguistically politically conscious existence, always spoken of "visual impairment" or "the visually impaired."

This seems to me to hierarchize the physiologies of vision. That there is some 20/20 perfectly centered binocular pinnacle and everyone else--us glasses wearers, the cross-eyed, the albino, the wall-eyed, etc.--are visual at a lesser degree of quality.

Notwithstanding the castes that such belief creates, the more interesting, and I think far more important, question is what one does with this valuative (given its mathematical usage, this may not be the right word here) language when applied to visual artists? Perhaps I need to widen this to include all varieties of artists, but I am, for the moment, concerned solely with visual artists.

Does their different physiology of vision offer them an entirely different process of inputting, processing, and outputting art?

Perhaps is this difference parallel?

How, then, do we overcome these essential differences so as to be able to speak collectively about art?

I can't even believe I just said "essential differences." I feel like I just killed 100,000 people.

But, if it's physiological and we are each of our own physiology, how can this not be a question of at least one difference of essence?

I just hit a wall. I'm so confused. Please help.

For the Photographically Oriented...

2011-02-12T23:20:00.001-06:00

Check out this show that I've been working on with Curators Anne Leighton Masooni and Libby Rowe.

http://www.spinningyarnsphoto.com/

Birds of a Feather

2011-02-12T21:57:00.001-06:00

Dwayne Butcher interviewed me for CAA's conference blog.

Read it here. And forgive me for the moments where my mouth outpaced my brain.

CAA Updates

2011-02-10T11:20:00.002-06:00

Read Memphis' Own, Dwayne Butcher, as he blogs about the CAA Conference.

Art Criticism

2011-02-10T11:13:00.002-06:00

In case you've been wondering what I do, other than think about music and sports, check these out.

Something new, something old, for keeping warm in winter's cold.

http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/1590

http://blog.art21.org/author/adrian-duran/

A Brief Digression Towards Things Important

2011-02-07T21:44:00.004-06:00

Man, I'm telling you, I'm in crisis. I've been trying hard as hell to get into Death Magnetic, the most recent Metallica album. I'm failing.

I've loved Metallica for what may actually be two decades now. I came to them a bit late, being that I was 7 when Kill 'Em All dropped, and I don't think my parents were too interested in me getting into that before 2nd grade. But I do have quite vivid memories of coming upon ...And Justice for All, courtesy of my childhood pal Larry, who was listening to it at our friend Anthony's house. On a Walkman. Awesome. I subsequently came upon the rest of their work and fell immediately in love. I was a grumpy teenager who had just decided to learn how to play bass, which turned into a grumpy teenager who was learning to play guitar, and the Hetfield-Hammett-Burton axis of evil is about as much as you can ask for in the way of inspiration. Hell, I think I got into Mozart because of Master of Puppets, so don't try to tell me that metal will do nothing but turn me into a Satan worshipper. I actually ended up at Notre Dame, and I didn't even combust.

But Death Magnetic is a problem. There are elements of it that I like. The band is better than it's been in many a moon and their writing is closer to the classic material that I prefer. And I really like Robert Trujillo, who I thought was a beast in Suicidal Tendencies. There's a lot to like on this album, but it keeps underwhelming. And, then this morning I had a thought.

Rick Rubin and whoever engineered that sucker really dropped the ball. The sound of the thing stinks. It's not as beefy and full as it should be. Beyond some intermittent moments of lightweight playing, the whole album seems like someone stole all of their gear and rented them a bunch of stuff from some diet metal band. It's not chunky enough. And thundering, pummeling, propulsive chunk is what Metallica is all about. At least in my mind. And it sounds digital, which is a large, steaming bunch of BS. Everyone knows that the right way to get a good metal sound is to overdrive the crap out of a wall of tube amps. Tubes, as you all know, are analog, as are hands and guitars. Putting them into ProTools and compressing them down to digital files is like putting a whale in a fishbowl. Someone call Fleming.

In other music news, I have been reading Motley Crue's autobio The Dirt. If you were alive in the 80s and/or care about metal, you should read this. It's amazing. And the Crue deserve a lot more credit than they may get. I defy all of you to watch their Carnival of Sins DVD and then tell me that they don't still kick ass.

I've found a new metal band worth a bit of your time, and they're local. Memphis-based Sacrum. Check 'em out. Nice stuff. Powerful, agile stuff. Check it out.

Also, to bring things full circle, for those of you guitar nerds like me, the new Guitar World print edition has a ranking of the 100 best Metallica songs, as they see it. Now, I have plenty to pick about, but I'm happy as a clam to see that Creeping Death made the top of their list. It's a personal favorite of mine, the first Metallica song I learned how to play, and perhaps the best way to convince Christians that heavy metal and the Bible aren't mutually exclusive.

\m/

Reconciliation

2011-02-07T21:01:00.003-06:00

There has got to be something wrong with me. This won't make no damn sense, but I keep thinking about Ben Roethlisberger and Jesus. Stick with me for a second and I promise this will become even less lucid.

See, this is not really my fault. For the past three weeks, I haven't done anything but teach Art History and watch football. That's not exactly true. I also listened to a boatload of metal and broke the cat of a fully unsavory habit of leaving thank you notes next to the litter box.

But, I've been teaching this semester's crop of first years all about the Renaissance, which involves massive doses of Catholic Jesus art. Old World Jesus. Not that new fangled post-pilgrim stuff that we pass around like a bowl of popcorn stateside. Go ahead, born agains, feel free to damn me, but I've got a Notre Dame degree, infallibility, and Lou Holtz on my side. Bring it.

Anyway, before I slander/libel/blaspheme another dozen denominations, back to the point.

I, like every red-blooded, God-fearing, beef-eating, beer-drinking, gas-guzzling, democracy-bringing American watched the Super Bowl yesterday. I don't give a damn what anyone says, that was a hell of a game. Quietly great. Lots of good downfield blocking and a whole bunch of fun stuff happening away from the ball that I've begun to really appreciate.

And--spoiler alert--the Steelers lost, which somehow made a lot of sense to me in a cosmic, this is the way things go in an Old Testament sort of way. This is where Roethlisberger comes into play. As I'm sure you all know, number 7 has had some problems letting Little Ben do the thinking for Big Ben. No charges were pressed, but the Commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, suspended him for a bunch of games and Ben was subsequently dragged across the coals by the media and everyone else.

Rightfully so. Sexual harassment and assault are among the most offensive and repulsive crimes going, up there with human trafficking, stealing the White House, and enjoying Metallica after Cliff died. So I'm with you when you want to hate Ben.

But I'm not with you when you refuse to allow Ben the right to do his penance and carry on with his life. Same way I did when people tried to keep persecuting Michael Vick after he left prison. I've said it before that America has double-jeopardy laws and Jesus has forgiveness. We all suffer when we cannot move on and allow a person to better themselves and earn a place in society. This is why we should stop putting people in prison and start having them fill in potholes, teach people to read, and garden for the elderly.

So, when Roethlisberger started throwing interceptions, one of them a fantastically fun pick-6, I began to wonder if this was his final act of contrition. This is a guy who won two Super Bowls in his first four seasons and certainly deserves to be considered among the elite QBs in the league. Stat heads and Peyton fans can kiss my grits. I'll take a rings over numbers any day. So, for him to have a tragic evening in front of the entire world must have been gutting. Forget what they're saying about Mendenhall's fumble, Ben's wayward throws were the primary reason the Steelers lost. Say it with me kids: ball control.

Given the epic, public, and immortal devastation of losing a Super Bowl, in conjunction with his season-long drubbing, I believe that we may never see Ben in such a compromised position again. I'm not trying to excuse his prior, horrible behaviors, but I think it hypocritical and cruel of us to carry on with airs of moral rectitude whilst wishing ill on someone we don't actually know and demanding of them a perpetual state of agonized penance. I just don't think that's what Jesus would do.

OMMFNJG!

2011-01-26T14:46:00.003-06:00

Jesus has given me a sign.

The cast of Jersey Shore is going to Italy for Season 4. Read it here.

Now, this is probably career suicide, but I want to be their cultural guide.

Allow me to offer my credentials:

PhD/MA/BA in Art History, with a specialization in Italian art, Modern and Baroque
I speak Italian.
I have lived in Italy for about three years total.
I was born in New Brunswick, NJ 08901. That's halfway between 8A and 9 for those keeping score, and it means that I speak Jersey Shore.

Now, I understand that TV shows are organized years in advance, but I would like to volunteer my services.

If anyone works at MTV or knows someone who works at MTV. Tell them to holler at me.

Genealogy

2011-01-12T16:14:00.003-06:00

I was in the car today listening to Social Distortion. Their self-titled 1990 album, which is awesome. By the way, you can stream their new album online, and for every 100,000 listeners amazon is going to drop it's price by a buck. That's cool.

Anyway, I was listening away, happy as a clam, and during the third song "Story of My Life," and all of a sudden my brain went: "Carl Perkins." Actually, it came out in the voice of the guy from Mystery Train, which made it all a bit hilarious. What if that's my inner voice? This got me to thinking. I may have another link in my mental map of music history. But I can't really work it out, so I'm appealing for help. I'm gonna ask someone I know who is smart about this and will report back.

Anyway, and this is probably not new news, but I was thinking about how the Carl Perkins line of early r&b/rock clearly flows to California and manifests in bands like Social D. And then I was thinking about the wider culture of what I'm going to call California punk, mainly because I don't know enough of it to have a more appropriate or specific term. But I'm talking about everything from Social D to The Descendents to The Dead Kennedys. Maybe this should extend outward to bands like Black Flag, too.

I'm thinking mostly thematically in relation to the songs, rather than musically, but I still stand by my idea that Social D sounds like Carl Perkins. Anyway, then I was thinking about how important California punk was to metal in the mid-80s. Anybody who's ever seen Jeff Hanneman's guitar will know what I mean.

So now I'm trying to figure out exactly how the cow we get from Sun Studios in Memphis to Reign in Blood. And this is all I've got, so any help is welcome.

Thurp

2011-01-12T15:58:00.002-06:00

I just made up another word, which I can do because I'm an art historian. I have a few going.

Relaxicate. v. to relax to the point where you think you're on vacation.

Geometricize. v. to make geometric, as happens to form in a Cubist composition

Thurp. n. a thought burp, a distant cousin of the vurp.

I just got new glasses today. The doctor said that these will make me see 20-15. I'm worried because, so far, 20-20 is more my speed. This is a little intense so far. It also doesn't help that these have bigger lenses, which means that I can see more better in my peripheral vision. Try that. Try to see more of your peripheral field of vision. Then watch what happens to the walls, floors, and ceilings of the room you're in. It's a little intense.

I'm also afraid that these new spectacles might make me look like a hipster. If you see me and think I'm a hipster, please accept this preemptive apology. I'm not a hipster. I'm a metalhead nerd.

I'm Boycotting Christmas

2011-01-11T17:31:00.004-06:00

Actually, I'm not, but I wanted to be sure you were paying attention.

I like Christmas, second only to my birthday. I like any holiday where I get stuff for doing nothing, but I think we should rename it and just call it either Jesusmas, for the people who actually care about Jesus, or Capitalistmas, for the rest.

But, I have a new tactic for Christmas, which I started this year. I don't care about it anymore. That is, I don't care about what I get.

I'm an only child, so Christmas was all about me when I was a kid. Parents, beware, it creates really absurdist behavior. Everything that arrives is greeted with "Is that for me?" When the Wife gets me something, and makes the mistake of telling me about it before Christmas, I follow her around asking what it is. It's bad.

So, naturally, I used to, up until this year, make really elaborate lists of what I wanted. I even forced it upon the Wife's family, who took it like the sports that they are and made hay with my idiotic methods.

Then, this year, as I was assembling my list, I realized that there wasn't a single thing on it I couldn't live without. I didn't need any of it. It was all just excess stuff that I, like the good American citizen I am, already have too much of. So I emotionally divested. Told everyone that I didn't care what they got me and that they should spend as little as possible. Or, alternatively, do nothing at all, or give the money to a charity, or something that would be a better use of the energy and lucre.

And then I scored huge this year. Talk about a Christmas miracle. Art, books, shirts, socks, all sorts of football stuff, an arsenal of awesome cufflinks, glow in the dark shoelaces, a headlamp that lights up two colors, some really sweet pens just when my pen had died. It just kept getting better. It was nuts.

So, from here on out, I'm not even gonna get concerned.

Kids, the best way to get exactly what you want for Christmas is to not care at all what you get.

Awesome.

Back in the Saddle

2011-01-11T13:13:00.009-06:00

Yes, it's true. I'm not as consistent at this as, say, Peyton Manning's forehead is at being huge. But, much to my shockification, I have noticed that people are still reading this even when I am not writing. So I thought I'd get to some achievement and actually write something.

And, since I've just finished the brain-melting, boredom-inducing, tree-killing experience of assembling my advancement packet, I've got some reason for taking a break from the real labor. For those of you outside of the weird world of academia, advancement is when someone changes rank. Assistant Professor is the first rank, then Associate, then Full. For all you college kids and English people out there that have no idea what our titles mean. What you have to do for this advancement thing is work your ass off for about six years and then make a giant binder with all of the things you've done inside of it. Then a committee (presumably) reads it all and decides if you're any good at it. If you are, you are advanced. If you aren't, you're (presumably) supposed to lose your job. But my institution of higher learning believes in advanced complexity, so our system works a little different. Either way, if you have access to the art history gods, ask them to favor me. I like my job.

I also like beets, which is the first thing that I think I should address today. Consider it an appendix to The Duran Diet, or whatever I called that craziness I tried to pass off as a health plan. By some odd coincidence, I've been eating a bunch of beets this break. Had some with the family at Jesusmas, then we decided to make some at home, then we had some at some friends of ours's house. That's the New Jersey possessive for all you grammar nerds. First of all, beets are awesome colors. There's even yellow beets, which are less common that the purple-red ones that we all know. Both are amazing and, to boot, both can be used to dye clothes, which is why you have to be careful when you eat them. At any rate, I've done some research, the veracity of which I refuse to verify, and it turns out that beets are both anti-inflammatory and detoxifying, which means that they will cure more than one property of a mean hangover. That's a plus, right? And, in a recent study from Italy, which, after all, started the Renaissance and is thus totally credible in all things scientific, beets may actually be better for your eyes than carrots. Of course, they're harder to feed to horses, so you've got to pick your battles. But, hell with the horses cause beets are also known to lessen tumor cell growth. That's bad, meaning good. Go beets. Also, in case you are wondering, the leaves are awesome to eat. You can do to them the same thing you do to greens and they're just as tasty. Or, look here for other ideas. And the best thing about beets is that their scientific name is Beta vulgaris, which means that they're especially healthy for New Jersey people like me.

In heavy metal news, I think I need to quit bitching about how metal has been a total pile since Vulgar Display of Power. As I'm sure you all do, I've been scouring the interwebs for those awesome Best of... lists so as to learn about things that I never hear about, or only hear about a decade after they happen. Most recent example being why it took me so damn long to get a copy of Dio's Holy Diver. More like holy shit. That's a great album. And who knew a guy named Vivian could play metal like that. Awesome.

Anyway, I've come upon some really great stuff recently that I think you need to know about. Intronaut's Valley of Smoke is sweet. Really smart, proggy, but heavy. Imagine sort of if Helmet and Rush made a baby while listening to Call of Ktulu or Orion and you're sort of in the area. The interwebxperts say that they are the inheritors to what Isis was up to. They're worth your time as well. Oddly, it's the clean stuff that I find the most compelling. If you're into the epic, classical vein of metal, Agalloch might be up your alley. It's really not the heaviest stuff in the world, so you should go back to High on Fire if you want to get pounded (Check this out. Best metal track I've heard in forever. Shout out to Stephen Deusner for hipping me to them.). But it's really awesome nonetheless. Has great momentum and texture, and is way more interesting IMHO than what a band like Opeth is doing. No offense to Opeth, they're just not my thing.

OK, last two. Tryptikon's new album Eparistera Daimones is what I'm listening to right now. Actually, I'm listening to that High on Fire video cause it rules, but I'm going right back to Tryptikon. Listening to a video? What the cow? Welcome to our post-media state. But, this Tryptikon stuff is great. It's a Tom Warrior project, so that's got lots of cred. Nice and sludgy, heavy as an anvil with gout, and doused in all the right kinds of Satan. Seriously, kids, if you're afraid of the devil, steer clear of this. And, last but not least, there is this awesome band I just came across called Christian Mistress. Best name ever, number one, but you'll also get crazy on this if you're into NWOBHM stuff. You should also listen to the Nachtmystium stuff that I've mentioned before. And we should all reconsider the greatness of Slayer's Hell Awaits.

A moment of silence for the Eagles.

So, now that I'm only half invested in the NFL playoffs (I'm wacco for Flacco!), I can reflect on 10 things I've learned from this year in pigskin.

Rex Ryan is still the funniest man in football. He and Belichick should go on the road as a comedy team. Belichick is hilarious when he's trying to ignore Rex. Hi-larious!
I was right about Michael Vick. Don't even start talking to me about dogs. I've already addressed that, and I'm talking about football. He was great this year. And, in the greatest maneuver in my brief career as a Fantasy Football GM, picking up Vick put me Sly Stallone over the top in my league and I went from worst to first in a single year. Yep, that's right, what I learned this year is that I freaking rule at Fantasy Football. Going for a repeat next year.
Congratulations Kansas City. You actually have a team. Todd Haley needs a haircut bad, but the man can coach. Speaking of haircuts, I'm comfortable enough in my excess manliness to say that I think Tom Brady's haircut is cool. With that helmet on, it's awesomely retro. Reminds me of the 70s, when football was supermega.
Chad Ochocinco, who I really do think is great, needs to shut up and play some ball. His production and his mouth exist in inverse proportion. Let's just say that the former needs more attention.
This Tim Tebow thing is great. I know lots of people want to hate, and I too am glad that damn scripture-on-the-eye-black crap is over with, but I want to see if this guy can last. He's improving, has the aura of something exciting, and I'm learning a lot about throwing motions, too. Let's all support this for a while and see what happens. I'm not buying no damn jersey, and I'm certainly not expecting much, but I think this is interesting.
WHY THE HELL IS DON CORYELL NOT ON THE HALL OF FAME BALLOT?
On that note, my vote, entirely emotional is: The Bus, Cris Carter, Andre Reed, Ed Sabol, Richard Dent, and Prime. I don't actually even know how many votes I get.
I love what Jerry Jones is doing with the Cowboys. By which I mean I love that they suck.
Keeping Tom Coughlin is brilliant and should be commended. That kind of patience and recognition of the fickle and accidental nature of the league is why the Mara family is as esteemed as it is. My Philly friends are going to kill me on this one. Speaking of such things, Bud Adams made the right choice.
The people at the NFL Network need to check their game. Jerry Rice is an indisputable #1, but Otto Graham not holding the top position? 4 AAFC Championships, 3 NFL Championships, 5 Pro Bowls, 105-17-4 record in an 11 year career in which he appeared in 11 championship games, winning 8? C'mon son!

One last addition to The Duran Diet. Sierra Mist Natural is great stuff. I decided that getting high fructose corn syrup out of my diet would be worth my time. It's hard, that crap is in everything. But I saw a commercial for Sierra Mist Natural, with natural sugar, like Mexican Cokes, and decided to try it. It's awesome. All it is is lemon-lime flavored fizzy sugar water. What's not to like? And, after drinking it for a while, you begin to realize that regular American corn lobby Coke makes your teeth feel hairy. It's nasty.

And, because I'm an edumacator, I need to recommend a great series of books. If you haven't already heard of the 33 1/3 series, you better get with it. Each one is about a single album, and they're unbelievably good. I'd read the ones about Slayer's Reign in Blood and Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's Facing Future, both of which are freaking amazing albums. And the books are just as good. And then I got two more for Christmas, Led Zeppelin IV and The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society. Finished the first. It ruled. And their blog is totally awesome, too.

Ok, that's it for now. I hope this gets my momentum back. Thanks for being patient. And for reading.

Another Reason to Love Painting

2010-11-12T19:08:00.005-06:00

From the left hand of Titian's Venus of Urbino to Mel Ramos's Val Veeta, painting and sex have had a wonderful history together. The Freudians have described the paintbrush as a proxy phallus, and art historians have argued that Rubens painted his women as he did because there was a certain masturbatory pleasure embedded in the application of layer upon layer of paint. Hell, even Susan Sontag argues that what we all need is an erotics of art. And if Sontag says it, you know it's got to be worth thinking about.

For this reason, I am utterly compelled to point you all in the direction of a painter I know, Alla Bartoshchuk. Now, Jerry Saltz says that I should offer the following disclaimer: I know Alla, she was one of the students at the Memphis College of Art, where I teach, and I own some of her work. So, if you want to judge me and claim that my criticism is corrupt, that's fine. I don't care because good painting speaks for itself. I am simply the messenger.

At any rate, the painting that greets you at the beginning of this post is one of her most recent works, which she just posted today, Fertility, 2010. I would like to extoll its virtues for a moment or two.

Firstly, pomegranates are just plain pornographic, second only perhaps to figs. And the role that they played in the abduction of Proserpina by Pluto simply elaborates the tense sexuality embedded in the history of this one fruit. Moreover, Pluto's plight, where he was unloved by women and had to take his, ahem, wife by force speaks volumes to the danger inherent in such iconography. The devil's deal, if you will. Pluto was, after all, the Lord of the Underworld.

Looking at art is an act of forceful possession. Optical, yes, but if Laura Mulvey teaches us anything, it's that all looking is an act of possession, often of an explicitly sexual kind. And that the subject of this painting is a young woman, the eternal cipher of fecundity and seduction, I can't help but think that we're looking at one apotheosis of Mulvey's construct of gendered taking.

Now, watch the juices drip for a second. Look closely. Luxuriate in them. Don't be afraid. Looking at art is already a quasi-sexual, optically masturbatory act that we are all complicit in, whether we want it or not. Nobody's going to judge you. And if they do, they're hypocrites. This is the same reason why Wayne Thiebaud's cakes are so infinitely wonderful. The fusion of subject matter and viewing pleasure, the way that whichever neuron is responsible for the pleasure of looking is that same neuron that governs the pleasure of a sugar high, or any kind of arousal.

Now, doesn't that juice look like blood? There's a sinister side to all of this, a threatening side. Women dripping with blood generally calls upon one of two situations. Violence or menstruation. Or, if you're a Freudian, both. The good Doctor tells us that all men are roving the earth in mortal fear of having their own personal Bobbitt experience. Vaginas are nothing more than absent penises, and the first sight of this absence is the most terrifying realization any young male might have, doubly frightening when blood issues from the wound. That's why we used to make the women go live in tents outside of the city for that one dangerous week of the month. This woman, with those drips running down her arm, simultaneously pure paint, and pure menace, looks as if she's just come from the kill. That pomegranate drips like the severed head of Medusa, which only complicates the gendered danger in play. And then she offers it to you, as if to ask that you too participate in this vampiric ritual. Oh, dear.

So here we are, caught in between. The pleasures of paint. The violence of emasculation. The nubile, stolen daughter of the goddess of crops. The God of blackened death. The pleasure of looking at beauty. And the puritanical guilt of lingering too long.

As a painting, it's nearly perfect. It's both beautiful and terrifying. And that it's both simultaneously only redoubles its potency. What more can you want?

In Case You Want to Be Like Me...

2010-11-09T18:59:00.003-06:00

I've really been sucking at this recently.

But I have an excuse. I've been totally busy at work. And, since this doesn't pay yet, all I've got is an apology.

If it makes you feel any better, though, I've given two conference papers, went to see my parents for my Dad's 70th birthday, joined a search committee at work, and managed to be accepted to participate in a forthcoming issue of Aspect, with my friend Anne. So, I feel pretty productive, except here.

Anyway, I was in class today teaching about Mesoamerican art and, as it always happens, I was trying to explain human sacrifice to my students. Now, I'm not advocating human sacrifice, but I don't see why it's so confusing to people. So, in my crap way of being an academic, I tried to explain to them that it was just like Highlander, where cutting off someone's head gets you their powers. But, instead of a parking garage, you need to be at the top of a temple and pull out someone's still-beating heart.

Pretty simple, really. The difficult part was when I realized that most of my student didn't know about Highlander. They were talking about some movie called The Prophecy, which I've never seen, so we broke even.

So, in an attempt to make sense of each other, one of my students suggested that I make some lists of things that I think they, and by extension everyone, ought to know about for me to make sense to them. I thought that was a pretty good idea, mostly because I think the stuff I like is pretty good. Please be aware that these lists are partial and subjective. Here goes...

Ten Books I've Read That I've Learned the Most From, or Had the Most Fun Reading:

Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum--Helped me make sense of Postmodernism. And proved that being a conspiracy freak is really fun.
E.L. Konigsworth From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler--Turned me into an Art Historian.
Dr. Seuss The Lorax & The Butter Battle Book--Taught me that we should care about the planet. And that war is stupid.
God The Bible--My parents tried to raise me Catholic. Go Irish. The Bible taught me the difference between what Jesus says and what religion says. And it's really helpful if you're into art. And the Psalms and the Book of the Apocalypse may be the most amazing imagery I've ever read.
Pearl S. Buck The Good Earth--Quite simply the most magnificent novel I've ever read. Stunning in scope. I don't care if you think I'm a wuss, I get weepy every time O-Lan dies.
Paul Zimmerman The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football--Mandatory.
Confucius The Analects--Proves that efficiency is the best way to write. And that you need to act right if you want your civilization to work.
Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching--I'm not really one for poetry or religion, but this is one of the better examples of each that I can imagine.
Gene Colan's work in the Tomb of Dracula series--If you like things with fangs, this is where you go after you're done reading Stoker.
Leon Battista Alberti On Painting--It begins here. And everything else is explainable through or in relation to this.

Ten (or more) Albums I Can't Stop Listening To:

Social Distortion Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell--Badass songwriting 101.
Brian Eno Music for Airports--You want sound? You want calm? You want beautiful modulations? Ding. Ding. Ding.
Metallica Master of Puppets (3b. Ride the Lightening)--As perfect as the first 2 Godfather movies. May not be as fundamental as Sabbath, but I would argue more pivotal.
The Beatles Rubber Soul (4b. Revolver)--IMHO, the best albums by the best rock band ever.
Lush Split--Can't explain it, but everything about this album strikes me as amazing. Saw them at Lollapalooza and haven't looked back.
Ice Cube AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted--This is why Hip Hop is serious social critique. People who say otherwise are ignorant. Of this album.
Slayer Seasons in the Abyss--If rock and roll is cocaine, this is absolutely the best freebase you can imagine. Loudest band I have ever seen live. Just fantastic.
Outkast Aquemini--People who think Hip Hop is stupid or uninventive need to shut up and buy this album.
Arcangelo Corelli 12 Concerti Grossi--I tried to convince my wife that this should be our wedding music. She didn't buy it, but I still think it's that good.
Eric Satie 3 Gymnopedies--Imagine a small child trying to learn the piano. Imagine that that child is an unadulterated musical genius. This is the best I can describe this.
Wu-Tang Clan Enter the 36 Chambers--It's true. You best protect your neck.

Ten Essays You Should Read to Be a Good Art Historian

Susan Sontag "Against Interpretation"--Looking at art is best as an erotic experience.
Giorgio Vasari "Life of Michelangelo"--This is the cornerstone of everything that is right and wrong with modern art writing.
Rosalind Krauss "Sculpture in the Expanded Field"--Think about what art is. Now think that it's the opposite. And consider that those might be linked. Or, just read this.
Clement Greenberg "Modernist Painting"--So filled with problems that it might actually be flawless. If you want to think about the last few centuries of painting, start here.
Clement Greenberg "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"--Anyone ever tell you that something isn't art? Anyone ever tell you that visual culture is BS? This essay will put all of that in perspective.
Clement Greenberg "Can Taste Be Objective?"--The answer is no. Except that it might be yes. Even though I know it's not.
Umberto Eco "How to Write an Introduction to an Art Catalog"--Art Critics beware. The rug is being pulled out from underneath us.
Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author"--Attention artists. This is why we like you better dead. Just kidding. We love you. But we don't care about what you think your work is about as much as we used to. This is one of the reasons why.
Theodor Adorno "Commitment"--If your art isn't about anything, your art isn't about anything.
Walter Benjamin "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"--Sometimes somebody figures it all out at the beginning. This is one of those essays that helps explain everything from photography to DJ Shadow.

More Memphis Malarkey

2010-09-22T20:29:00.002-05:00

One of the other things that we have here in spades is good radio.

Check out the following.

WEGR-FM 102.7 classic rock

WKQK-FM 94.1 funk soul r&b

WEVL-FM 89.9 hawaiian slack key guitar the best rock show ever is on friday evenings susan does a show with louisiana music there is apparently a metal show on sundays that i keep forgetting to listen to because i listen to enough metal already and they do all sorts of things that you have and have not heard all of which is of extraordinarily high quality

WKNO-FM 91.1 is our NPR/classical

I'm not kidding. If you skip around between those four stations, you don't ever run out of something to listen to.

Look Into This.

2010-09-22T20:25:00.002-05:00

I just watched this when I was watching dinner tonight.

It was totally amazing.

And actually came down to the last trick.

I'm in.

These are the terms of the deal.

2010-09-22T19:43:00.002-05:00

Literary Conflict

2010-09-22T09:21:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to read Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (for the second time.)

I'm not that far into it, but am having a really hard time figuring out what's going on.

I have two possible explanations:

1. I'm a Yankee.

2. Dave Mustaine's autobiography, which I just finished, actually was that good.

Can anyone offer a few pointers on what I'm supposed to be getting out of this?

Maybe I need to go to Oxford first. I just added Dexter McCluster to my fantasy team, which I'm hoping is a start.

Metal

2010-09-21T20:56:00.004-05:00

I just got finished listening to Back in Black. The song, not the whole album. I'd forgotten how slow Angus plays that solo. It's pretty awesome. Sometimes I forget how heavy slow can be. That's why the first Sabbath album is so great. Sludge. Angus is playing the blues, which is why we shouldn't ever forget that metal is the child of the blues.

That's also why there are certain moments of greatness in some of the stuff that came out of Florida.

Al, when you read this, I want to hear your take on Florida metal.

Chuck Shuldiner RIP

Photograph: Erwin Olaf. Used without permission, but respect.

Zep just came on the radio. I love it when the universe throws a perfect pass.

In Summation...

2010-09-18T00:49:00.002-05:00

"No, no, I’m a lowbrow. I read that material, more out of obligation than enjoyment. For enjoyment, for me, it’s a beer and the football game."
--Woody Allen

"Oh, yes. But I don't distinguish between being laughed with and laughed at. I'll take either."

--David Sedaris

"Hey, Bartlett. Suck it."

--Me

Shake My Money Maker

2010-09-18T00:15:00.005-05:00

I'm not the most inventive person in the world, but every once in a while I really convince myself that I have a good idea, one that will make me such a pile of cash that even Scrooge McDuck will want to come over for a swim.

These are my top two, which I submit to the interwebosphere in that hopes that I am not bamboozled by some parasitic capitalist bastard looking for an idea to exploit for its potential for the generation of filthy lucre. By which I mean if you steal this idea I'm going to sue the crap out of you like your name was Mark Zuckerberg. (Me getting sued for picking a fight with the FaceSpace? Unlike.)

1. The "You're Welcome" card. Everyone knows that we are a species governed by social grace and obligatory obligation. It's what separates us from the monkeys at the zoo doing a Nolan Ryan with their aftermath. But, did you ever give a gift that was so awesome that whosoever was the recipient immediately sent a Thank You card? And, since you were their friend, you thought "Hey, man, no dilemma." "No sweat." or "Of course I bought you a thoughtful gift. We're pals."? Hence the "You're Welcome" card. Easy peasy. Just fire back an Adrian Duran Industries patented "You're Welcome" card. No obligation to thank me. But, since you've gone through the social motions of saying thanks, I, by the transitive property of expectation, am supposed to brush off the gratitude in a very self-deprecating Max Weber Protestant work ethic sort of way. Hence the "You're Welcome" card.

2. The no splash urinal. This is sort of gross, but every one of you with a phallus will understand. Sometimes, just hypothetically, because none of us have ever done this because we're all professionals here, you find yourself about three pints into the night with a bladder suited for two. What then, you ask? Naturally, as the Aussies say, you're busting for the dunny and end up with a stream to strum about as loud as a Kerry King riff. And, since porcelain is neither absorptive nor textured, there is the inevitable threat of backsplash. Gross, isn't it? So, some ceramics engineer (and I'm thinking about that building at my alma mater the illustrious University of Delaware) should create a way to divert the inevitable physics of the equation away from unsuspecting pant legs or bare, flip-flopped feet. Sort of like those fancy suits the speed skaters wear. You can kill two birds with one stone. Relief and dryness. Like a chaise-lounge in the desert. It's just a question of changing the mold, I would presume. But, since I'm an Art Historian and not a materials engineer, I'm just going to throw this up for grabs. Especially since the shuttle program is being shut down and someone somewhere has been spending their career perfecting heat-resistant reentry tiles and probably needs something to do.

The other one that I think might be worth mentioning, Genius Idea 2.5 if you will (even if you won't), is the temperature regulator on those amazing Xlerator hand dryers. Explain to me why it doesn't make sense that you should be able to make cold air shoot out of those things. Nothing is less enjoyable than a blast of hot air during the summer. Cold air would be great. You could dry your hands and air condition simultaneously.

That's what I'm talking about. Innovation, people. It's what makes America great.

Ask Bill Gates.

Or P.T. Barnum.

Quit Hatin'

2010-09-14T21:36:00.005-05:00

I am sick and tired of people bitching and moaning about Memphis.

This city is great. Sure, we're apparently violent and sedentary, but we've got lots of things going on. Here are my Top 5. There are more, but I'm starting to fall asleep.

1. Music. Where else in the world, in a period of just a few years can you see, among others, James Brown, Booker T and the MGs, Government Mule, Chicago, KRS-ONE, Blackalicious, Exodus, Megadeth, Testament, Amy LaVere, the Cowboy Junkies, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, 38 Special, Lord T & Eloise, High on Fire, and Nachtmystium? And I haven't even been trying that hard. I just recently missed Blondie and Nancy Wilson, simply because I was being lazy. Try and beat that. And when you can't, I'll meet you at Wild Bill's. Oh, wait a minute. You don't have Graceland, do you? Or Sun Studios, where they sort of invented rock and roll? Or Beale Street, where WC Handy sort of invented the Blues? Do your local Hip Hop legends have an Oscar? No? Then shut up, hater.

2. Fried food and BBQ. I don't give a damn what any of you other states say. I've eaten 'cue in Texas, North Cackalack, and Kansas City. Ours is better. And if you find a better fried chicken joint than Gus's, I'll buy. And then I'll take you out for some meatloaf, mac and cheese, greens, cornbread, and sweet tea. Maybe my friends will give us a ride in their 'lac, like we did this Sunday. Don't sweat the technique.

3. We've got all the stuff you have, but easier. Ballet, opera, symphony, I just saw that Wicked is playing here and, even better, so is 9 to 5. There's a brand new theater three blocks from my house, just a bit past the local brew pub, the southeastern Italian restaurant, the Cajun place, the movie theatre, the place where I get my haircut, and a fairly good massage spa. How far, you ask. Less than 10 minutes on foot. Beat that.

4. Sports. Sure, the Grizzlies suck and the Calipari era was crooked as a bent stick, but we got hoops all day. And two semipro football teams. And the Memphis Redbirds, who have swept three PCL AAA championship series. And roller derby. And those people who joust in the park on Sundays. And, the cherry on top of all of this is the Liberty Bowl, one of America's most beautiful football stadia. Google it. Never before have I seen such a beautiful, graceful profile of a football stadium. And I went to Notre Dame, so that's saying a lot. Blasphemy even. Hell, there's probably a jai alai team here that I just haven't heard of yet.

5. Memphis is cheap as a mother. For less than $100 more than we paid in Philly for a studio apartment with crap carpet and a view of a parking lot, we've now got a sunlit, 1920s-era three bedroom place literally across the street from a park, in which there is a museum, a bandshell which has free concerts during the summer, and the zoo. And I can walk five minutes from my house and get a Peroni on tap in a glass as big as my forearm for about $4. And the guys working there know us all by name, give out hugs if we've been away for more than a week, and will turn the tv on whatever game we want to watch. Best $4 ever.

So, if you don't like it here, go somewhere else. I ain't got time for your whining.

I'm the New Peter King

2010-09-14T20:55:00.003-05:00

Not yet, maybe, but who says I can't dream big? If he can watch all the games and say things that get him on tv, why the hell can't I? All that separates the two of us is a big ass contract with Sports Illustrated, a half-time show, and millions of readers. Well, that and his connections, but I don't care. I watch just as much football as he does and see things with two eyes just the same.

So, here's my version.

1. Soft corners suck. Notre Dame, I'm talking to you. Press. I always vote that getting burned is more acceptable if the guy beats you fair and square. If you get jerked just waiting for the guy to run into your five yard cushion, you're a schmuck.

2. I hereby retract all bad things I've said recently about Vince Young. Until he screws up. But I was really impressed with ol' Vince's poise and presence in the pocket, like a 6' 5" wocket. Nice distribution, none of the typically stupid decisions he tends to make late in the game on third-and-longs. By the way, where the cow is Kenny Britt? One more week of this, and I'm dropping you off my fantasy team, sucker.

3. Albert Haynesworth is a punk. If you gave me that much money, I'd shut my fat face and play whatever position I was told. 4-3. 3-4. Get on the field and quit making grumpy face. If Tennessee spends a single cent or draft pick on this jackass, I'm going to drive to Nashville and give Bud Adams a piece of my mind. He's a overgrown, lazy whiner. And if you've got an issue with that, Fat Albert, bring it. I'll bet you $100 million that you'll kick my can, but I'll put in more effort. Sucker.

4. If Mark Sanchez throws one more check down, I'm so not going to the prom with him.

5. Those Philly throwback uniforms are the coolest. Best. Helmets. Ever. And Michael Vick just turned into the greatest moral dilemma this side of trading McNabb.

6. Speaking of which, nicely done #5. Don't hate. Congratulate.

7. Don't even talk to me about the Jets not being that great. Sure, their offense was dull as dishwater, but that defense gives me tingles where they don't belong. Did anyone else see that eight man blitz? That's what I'm talking about. All in, gentlemen. Sure, defense alone won't win championships, but it sure is a good start. It's only Week 1. If the Sanchize can get his act together, there's still much to be seen.

8. I'm not comfortable with the increasing use of the word "violent" to describe football. I'm not so naive to think that it isn't a violent game, but we need to reconsider. Football is also a game of finesse, whether it's the footwork of a pulling tackle or the touch of a ball dropped in between double coverage. It's just that I can't figure out how violence is a virtue. I love watching Ray Lewis drop some unsuspecting back as much as the next guy, but violence isn't the thing we should be concentrating on. Sure, F=MA, but what the hell ever happened to technique?

9. Legadu Naanee is a name you need to learn, and not just because it's fun to say. He's the newest member of my fantasy roster, mainly because I can't justifiably fantasize about Andre Johnson actually having a good week next week after all of that coverage.

10. Speaking of which, every player on the Chargers and Chiefs should be heralded far and wide. That MNF game in a downpour is one of the best things I've seen in a while. And I saw Slayer just over a month ago. I've never been to a game at Arrowhead, but those Chiefs fans look like a great bunch. I haven't seen that much red since May Day. Love it.

11. Dexter McCluster should never be allowed to rap again. His Cellular South commercial stinks more than a cow pie. That being said, at least someone is addressing all of these idiots who are texting and driving. Memphis, I'm talking to you. Guy driving past my apartment today, I'm talking to you.

12. Randy Moss needs to shut up and play ball. He's as bad as Haynesworth, just less expensive. If he doesn't quit this crap by the time I get famous, I'm not voting for him to go to Canton.

Baker's Dozen: That Calvin Johnson no catch call is malarkey. Especially because it cost them the game. And would someone please keep Matthew Stafford intact? He's getting paid too much to get broken like that again, for the third time. Speaking of which, Bob Sanders gets hurt so often that I actually can't remember if I think he's any good or not. Shame.

Honestly?

2010-09-14T20:26:00.002-05:00

Seriously, what the hell is a Big Red?

Someone from Western Kentucky hit me up.

Awesometastic.

A Think or Two

2010-09-02T21:05:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm still waiting to hear from Rich Eisen and the people at NFL Network, so I thought I'd give them a reason to not forget about me.

And, since I'm sure you are all tuned in to the NFL, here are a few things you might consider as things progress.

Tim Tebow isn't going to suck. Overall. There will be times when he really sucks. Or gets himself damn near killed. But he's going to do some pretty slick things as well. He might lose them a game or two, but he'll break even with the other stuff he does. Kyle Orton, by the way, needs some damn respect. I'm not saying he's Joe Montana, but his stats are fully respectable.
The NFC West is crap. The Cardinals are looking such a mess at Quarterback that even Derek Anderson is starting to look good. The Seahawks are just as dull and will have the inevitable new coach growing pains. Nobody's fault, but it'll just happen. That leaves us with the 49ers, who at least have a group of compelling personalities, and the Rams, who are at the point of pathos. I'm intrigued as to what Sam Bradford is capable of, cause I've seen him look pretty solid at certain points.
Vince Young can't ever seem to look to me the number of years he's been in the league. Somehow Vince has managed to slip into the slow-developing category or something that keeps him from being a total bust. I know Bud likes him, but look at what's happening to Matt Leinart. Other than his rookie year, Vince isn't really blowing anyone away. I hope he finally has a huge breakout year this year.
LaDanian Tomlinson has been looking good. I wonder if there will be some crow eaten somewhere in southern California.
Joe Flacco. You better recognize.
The Eagles remind me of the Memphis Grizzlies. Young. Lots of really highly drafted talent. Maybe going to come together sometime soon here? Sure would be great if it were this year.
The NFC South bores me.
Brian Urlacher should just retire if he gets a bad injury again. Nobody's going to forget that he's one hell of a linebacker. Chicago certainly won't. Speaking of which, which one of these Bears WRs is going to surprise all of us?
I don't really want the Bengals to win the Super Bowl, but I certainly will be taping whatever the hell Ochocinco and T.O. will be talking about. I really couldn't care less about the Bengals, cause I really just want to see the Ravens win that Division in perpetuity, but this lineup is really powerful. They certainly have the talent. And I want to see what happens when those two meet the President.
I'm tired of Peyton Manning. I get it. He's great. He throws a million passes to a million guys who catch them all. He wins lots of games every year. He moves his arms around a lot at the line of scrimmage cause he understands football better than all of us. He's boring. His only redeeming quality is that he's hilarious in commercials. I'm tired of all of this talk about him and best quarterback ever. No. Way. You ask me, we need to talk about rings. Best quarterback ever? There's three possibilities. My vote is for Otto Graham. Look him up. If you didn't think of him first, you probably said Joe Montana or Terry Bradshaw. Except for all of you that said Troy Aikman. The first two would have made my top three, and I hate the Cowboys. I was just telling my students today in class that they needed to be more critical of greatness. I reminded them that Peyton has exactly as many rings as his brother. And one fewer trip to Disney World. So, enough with the Peyton Manning already. Blah blah blah.
What the hell is going to happen to the Raiders this year? Seriously. Does anyone know?
Mark Sanchez is, unfortunately, becoming less interesting. But The Jets keep getting more and more fun to watch.

There you go. A dozen. I'm tired now. Let the games begin.

Music Recommendation

2010-09-02T20:56:00.002-05:00

You should listen to Nachtmystium's CD Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. 1.

I've only just gotten it (from my Wife, who gives the best presents ever) and haven't really had enough time to digest all of the lyrics, so I'm not going to hold your hand when you go and turn Satanic. You're grown. That's on you.

But, if you like really heavy, smart, forward-thinking metal, I'd give this one a shot.

Lucky for me, they're playing in Memphis on the 27th at the Hi-Tone.

I Volunteer for this One

2010-09-02T20:43:00.003-05:00

We might have a problem. And, if they form a committee to help figure this one out, I hereby nominate me.

See, the Catholic Church is in it pretty deep. I don't know how deep in the grand scheme of things, but deeper than in a while. Numbers were down even before this madness over the priests started. And all this new wave Jesusism is drawing people in other directions. And I certainly wouldn't disagree with someone who said that the current Pope is less cuddly than the previous who, while one formidable footballer, might not have been super progressive.

And I'm not wishing the end of the Catholic Church, if only for Notre Dame Football reasons.

But here's the rub. What the cow in the manger next to the baby Jesus are we going to do with all that art?

Let's just, for the sake of me being a paranoiac on the level of a two thousand year old religion coming crashing down to the ground sort of way, say that La Chiesa cade, eventually all the Catholics will go where all the Catholics go and there will be a whole lot of buildings with a whole load of art in them.

How are we going to take care of that stuff? Presumably someone in the Vatican should form a commission to consider the issue.

I volunteer to be on it.

Wir brauchen Solomon.

2010-09-02T20:26:00.003-05:00

Image: Time Magazine. Photo: Jodi Bieber.

I'm in a moral quandry.

I've talked to a few people about this and it came out awkward no matter how I tried to put it, so forgive me when I say something absolutely unbelievable.

I think I've found a loophole that might make human trafficking justifiable. See. That sounds insane. Seeing it written down is even worse.

Anyway, I was reading a Time magazine article in a magazine I picked up in some airport at some point towards the end of this summer. It reported on an Afghan woman who, in some insane form of what was claimed as justice, had her nose and ears cut off by her husband as a punishment for running away from him.

And somewhere else, where I cannot remember, I read about women who were being sold into marriage. And for prostitution and who knows what other horrific things.

So, let's just say that I was someone with some extra cash. Why should I not snatch up these cruelly unfortunate people and bring them somewhere safe and help them get set up on another path? We adopt kids for those reasons all the time. Why can't other people catch the same break?

Yes, I realize that it's a mess to participate in, let alone condone, the buying and selling of humans, but what happens when it's done for the sake of betterment?

Aiutatemi.

Breakfast of Champions

2010-08-13T16:59:00.003-05:00

I'm going to say it out loud, and not just cause I was recently in England. The traditional English Fried Breakfast is the best breakfast in the universe.

And I say this with absolute deference to the German muesli + yoghurt + fruit meisterstuck, which I also duly love and recommend for the days following the English Fried Breakfast.

But, before I start someone humming the Dambreakers theme, let's get back to the point.

The English Fried Breakfast is two eggs, a fried tomato, baked beans, fried mushrooms, and, in the pig eaters' version two rashers of bacon and two sausages. For poofs like me who don't dig on swine, you get those amazing hash browns in the shape of a triangle things, which I've inserted above for your viewing perversion. The best I've had is at the Hackney City Farm, where I believe all the food you eat comes from within about 50 feet. People who think British cuisine is bad are ignorant.

Magictastic. Rule Britannia. Britannia rule my plate.

Review: American Carnage Tour 8/12 New Jersey

2010-08-13T09:15:00.013-05:00

(Graffiti in Faenza, Italy)

Full disclosure: I was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the Fall of 1976 and left for college in the Fall of 1994.

This means one thing exactly: heavy metal was and continues to be my destiny. If Megaforce Records, WSOU, and the Rte. 1 Flea Market mean anything within this strange universe of ours, it will offer some credence to my words. Put it like this, I was the nerdy kid on the track team, building sets for the drama club (Alchemists, stand up) with the Testament and Obituary tapes in my walkman. One of my bands stole chord changes from Metallica when we needed a bridge for a song. On another occasion, our drummer and I declared that playing Aerosmith songs wasn't metal enough. I'm not saying that I'm the most metal dude in the world (see below), but I think I have some critical experience to let you know what I just saw last night.

Earlier this year I had enough sense to go see the Megadeth 20th Anniversary Rust in Peace tour when it came to Memphis. Exodus, Testament, Megadeth. Testament played the entirety of The Legacy. Megadeth played the entirety of Rust in Peace.

With all due respect to that flawless night, and to the true greatness of Exodus, last night's second date of the American Carnage Tour (tix here) was arguably the greatest concert I've ever seen.

And this includes sublime shows by KRS-ONE, Phish, the Philadelphia Opera, and a pair of the early Lollapaloozas.

Testament opened.

A pestilence on all of you who skipped their show. Testament is the unfortunate victim of the Big Four (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer & Anthrax). My suspicion is that this is geographism. Testament, like Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer are from the Bay Area, so you can't have all four from the same place. Admittedly, they started out a bit later and could very easily be seen as a second wave after the Big Four, but this is no explanation away from their fantastic career, innovative writing, and absolutely gigantic stage show.

And, with all due respect to Ozzy and Ronnie James Dio (RIP), I will always argue that Chuck Billy is the greatest metal singer ever. Maybe he isn't Giotto, but he's definitely Michelangelo. Firstly, he must be at least 8'10"--at least that's what he looks like towering from the stage. And, moreover, his voice ranges from subtly melodic to a bellowing growl that sounds like the gates of hell opening. I may be wrong, but I think it was John Tardy, the singer from Obituary, who said that Chuck was the most important metal singer ever because he was the first to demonstrate the vast range within metal singing. The guy from Fear Factory, who I do in fact like quite a bit, owes a lot Chuck. All respect due. The rest of the band is equally amazing. Alex Skolnick is my favorite guitar player ever (except, maybe, for Dimebag) and living proof, like Chuck, of the virtuosity within metal (though he should fiddle with his volume knob a bit less). Don't believe me? Check his jazz cred. Eric Peterson is metal's most underestimated rhythm guitarist and no slouch at lead either, and Greg Christian is just fantastic--everything you want in a metal dude, and perhaps the most thundering bass player this side of Geezer. Both are blue chippers. And Paul Bostaph, though I regret never having seen the band with Louie, is a titan. There were points where I was quite fearful for my heart rhythms, which is just what a metal drummer should induce.

Their set was about 45 minutes of new and old, all as good as the rest, and an absolute pummeling. As is often the woe of openers, the sound was a bit imperfect, but everyone was clear and audible nonetheless, prowling the stage and absolutely putting on a master class of what happens when five boundless talents work together for decades perfecting their craft. For the life of me, I don't understand why these guys don't get more credit. If metal was a basketball team, they'd be one of my starters.

Megadeth? If I have to explain why they are on par with or superior to every metal band since Sabbath, I'm going to ask you to stop reading now. And, pound for pound, to my tastes, I think Rust in Peace is one of the best metal albums ever. See, Dave's whiny paranoia is a font of intelligent writing and constantly compelling material. Sure, he's got an ego the size of Montana and probably could stand to be less of a grump in interviews, but the guy makes a good point. Heavy Metal, born of the industrial wastelands of Northern England filtered through the demise of the promise of 1968 and incubated in the pessimism of 1970s America and the Reagan/Bush debacle, owes it to itself and us all to be smarter than its critics. Metal, despite all of Tipper Gore's rantings and ravings, offers a remarkably acute view of the societal ills we've faced over the past four decades and should be given credit for its insight. Megadeth is sort of like the Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky of the genre. And Rust in Peace is the dissertation we should all have at hand.

To put it lightly, Megadeth is the F1 car of metal. A highly tuned, laser-precise machine that exceeds even our most wild visions of possibility. I listened as hard as I could last night, from the center point of the GA floor leaning against the soundboard barrier, and I don't think I heard more than one or two flubs. Chris Broderick deserves tons of props. Despite what might be one of the schlockiest guitar ad poses ever, the guy is a master. If we could photoshop Marty's head onto his, I'm not sure anyone would notice that the old samurai isn't with the band anymore. The guy shreds. Makes you want to put down your own guitar and cry. David Ellefson is maybe third in line after Geezer and Cliff in the metal pantheon (JPJ fans, I'm not counting Zep as metal here), and somehow looks like the nicest guy in the world. Actually, I think Chuck Billy, Ellefson, and Tom Araya all look like unbelievably nice guys. I sort of wish we could all have tea one day. Seriously. Call me. And Shawn Drover, who I don't mean to make sound like a footnote, is spectacular on the kit. I remember thinking to myself what a horrible task it must have been to sit on the Menza stool. My next thought was, damn, Drover's really as good as anyone could ask for at any point.

At any rate, the show was great, a perfect 10 with a bonus plan and a kiss goodnight. Launched directly into Rust and put the pedal to the floor the whole time. I've never been decapitated, but I know that they used to take the just-severed head and show it to the crowd and the body. That's about as close as I can get to the sensation one has after hearing these guys just plain burn it down. To boot, they followed up with a set of other material. I'm not really big on Headcrusher or A Tout Le Monde, but neither is necessarily a drop-off of momentum, and Symphony still holds up after 18 years. To say that Peace Sells should be the new American national anthem might get me thrown in Guantanamo, but I'm hoping Dave finds it in his heart to bail me out when that happens. Megadeth is what happens when masterpieces are allowed to age properly. Sure, there were hiccups and growing pains, but we're talking about Rembrandt level stuff here. Proof that the cream will always rise to the top and a stern lesson that any artist in any medium should be certain that what they are doing is good before they even begin to do it.

Slayer? Excuse me and pardon my French, FUCKIN SLAYER! I'm going to go on record now and probably be accused of blasphemy for it, but I think Seasons in the Abyss is a better album than Reign in Blood. I think the writing is more interesting, the lyrics more diverse and mature, the production is better, and, frankly, I think it hits harder. Maybe not faster, maybe not quite the shock (only because by then we'd heard Reign in Blood), but better overall.

And, though this might make me sound like a nostalgic, I think the old material (Reign, Seasons, South of Heaven) is superior to the new stuff. True, I don't know the new stuff as well, but it seems oddly coy to me, as if they're aiming, rather than just swinging with power. But, listen, Slayer is undeniable. Listening to them is one of the world's great adrenaline rushes and their power is unparalleled. Sort of like a buzzsaw, road-grader, energy drink, cayenne, gunpowder smoothie IV. Great stuff.

Now, Mom, before you get concerned that I'm listening to devil music, let me make the following argument. Yes, I am. But so was Robert Johnson when he went down to the crossroads to learn the blues (And, for the record, I've been there too. No devil, though.) or Elvis when he shook his hips below those tv cameras. Or Wagner. Or Stravinsky. Diabolus in musica, friends, do the research.

I'm not saying that they're not terrifying. Kerry King is the single scariest human I've ever laid eyes on. And Jeff Hanneman looks like someone who would rather not be near you. (Watch this amazingness.) But, frankly, they're probably the two nicest guys around and are certainly the Jordan-Pippen of this metal universe. Well, if either of those guys was super scary and made a guitar sound like it was an instrument of damnation. The only other person I've seen strangle a guitar to this kind of sonic effect was Stevie Ray Vaughan. In comparison, even Hendrix looks like he's got the thing under control. Oh, and Tom Araya is flawless and Dave Lombardo is the gold standard for metal drumming. The gold standard.

Slayer's music is fantastic. Brutally direct and relentlessly fast (proof that metal and punk are siblings, not cousins), masterfully technical and really quite groovy. Seriously, the stuff makes me want to dance. Not mosh, dance. It's beautifully syncopated stuff, for which Tom Araya deserves a ton of credit. And, before we return to the satan accusation stupidity, go read the lyrics. Sure, there's plenty of the demons/satan/blood and gore stuff, but that's one of the metal food groups. There's also loads of reflection on militarism, gun violence, human psychology, and the complexities of religion. Dig it, kids, Slayer is sociology, plain and true. Oh, and their live show is a malestrom. Thank you, sirs, may I have another?

Anyway, best show ever, no exaggeration. And not just for fanboy reasons. There is something deeply satisfying to watch three bands age gracefully and skillfully. People who said that metal was a stupid, childish outburst were and continue to be wrong. These are grown men whose virtuosity continues to impress and grow, pillars of their genre and masters of their craft. It's endlessly reassuring to know that there are bands that still respect the album as an art form, and even more gratifying to see them maintain the album as a standard of performance. And, like other masterpieces, it's wonderful to know that you can return to great works again and again and derive just as much pleasure as from the original revelation and continue to find new nuances and points of fascination. That's what great art is and what great art is for.

On other fun notes, I was heartened by how great the pit was, how everyone helped each other out and up, kept each other from being trampled, and acted so intensely civil in what is actually a rather dangerous thing to do. I was also happy to see how many friends seemed to be reuniting, giving daps to everyone around, and, yes, giving out hugs.

Metal is a culture that we must defend with our words and our acts. If last night was any sign, we're in good stead. Let's help keep it that way.

Oh, and I caught a shoe that came flying way up in the air from out of the pit. The people next to me gave me looks that will stay with me forever.

Peace, love, and metal forever.

And, follow my craziness on Facebook and Twitter at adrianduranblog.

Travel Advisory

2010-08-10T22:20:00.004-05:00

This will run counter to what many of you may hold dear about travel.

Travel in France and Italy is the worst thing ever.

Being in France and Italy is one of my favorite things to do, but travel in either is a cacking nightmare.

See, neither the French nor Italians have any sense of the Pauli Exclusion Principle which, according to my research on Wikipedia and Ask.com, is the source of our general belief that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time.

Kids, research on Wikipedia and/or Ask.com is not acceptable in an academic setting. It only works if you intend to fail your assignment or use it for the less credible venues of life.

And, by the way, full disclosure, if you are a boson, apparently, you actually can occupy the same space as another boson at the same time.

However, neither the French nor the Italians, though filled with bosons, are themselves bosons.

The proof for this is the past two weeks of my life, when I have had to inform a number of our European friends that I am neither permeable nor invisible. This, unfortunately, did not impede any of them from attempting to walk right through me. Nor did it prevent my rear end from being the recipient of a number of blessings from innumerable luggage handles.

Even worse is what happens when attempting to get on a flight. At the first available opportunity, whether French or Italian, everyone rushes to the front of the waiting zone, smashing themselves in like a herd of sardines looking to have a family reunion all in just one tin. It's preposterous. Forty minutes until takeoff, and they're crammed in like bosons in the same place at the same time.

Even worse still is when they have to drop off a loved one. I swear, just a few days ago in Tours, two Frenchies were dropping off their English friends at the airport. They waited at the end of the line. The end of the line. Not near the beginning of where you line up, but actually at the end of the line of people who were getting in line for the plane. A friend with whom I was traveling actually had to smoosh by them to get on the plane for which he had a ticket. Too bad he wasn't a boson.

Frenches. Italians. If any of you cares for your fellow man, and you both claim to have invented western civilization, I would humbly beseech thee to cut it out.

It's far more annoying than wearing white sneakers, visors, or fanny packs.

Trust me. I'm a boson.

My First Dwayne Butcher

2010-08-05T09:33:00.004-05:00

Dear London,

You'd be way better if you were as affordable as Memphis.

Love,

Adrian

Killing is Complicated

2010-06-11T17:24:00.003-05:00

I've been on a killing spree. It's been great. And I don't want to hear anything about it from all you moral crusaders up on your high horses about how killing is all that bad.

A bunch of wasps have attempted to colonize my dwelling. And not the Blackie Lawless or Brooks Brothers kinds.

There's a crack in the pane of glass in our middle front window. It's horrible, cause it's one of those poured glass glass windows, so it's really great to look at and through.

But these bastards are sneaking in and building up a breeding ground hive thing.

And if you know me at all you know two things. I have personal space issues. And I'm terrified of flying insects.

Add in the stinging and the devil form of the damn things and I'm doing a George W Bush preemptive come in and bomb your ass into the Stone Age sort of thing.

So I got a can of some wasp death spray foam and popped the window open and blasted those bastards. The bodies are still at the scene of the crime.

And then, just yesterday when I got back from teaching, some other bunch of those sumanabeeches had begun building one on the back staircase. And fast, too.

So they went the way of the first ones. With equal, if not greater cataclysm, as the attack had been effected from above.

I don't care if it makes me a bad person and I have to pay for it in an infinite number of afterlives, which would be perfectly fair, I think I'll be zapping every future wasp that attempts to invade my domicile.

I Learned Something from Capitalism!

2010-06-11T17:10:00.003-05:00

So there's this new product that I saw on TV. Hanes Lay Flat Collar t-shirts. I mean, I've worn Hanes t-shirts before and I think they're (that's their or there to all you anti-spellaticians) ok, but this new Lay Flat technology is actually some far beyond stuff.

It can teach you English.

See, and as Betty will tell you just as she told me, the best way to remember this rule.

Things lay.

People lie.

So. Bravo Hanes. For holding down some semblance of educational intent.

Star & Micey

2010-06-11T17:06:00.002-05:00

I saw a really amazing band last night here in the M-town.

Star & Micey

Folk / Pop / Soul

Their website is here or you can probably Google them.

Trust me, they're dope. I can't wait to hear what the Deusners think of them.

Why Wii Rules

2010-06-11T16:58:00.002-05:00

I'm sure you already know that the Wii rules. But I had another moment today that verified this on a deeper level.

The Wii Madden 10 game is real.

Seriously.

I was playing as the Cardinals against the Raiders.

Two things happened.

Kurt Warner threw up a bomb for a touchdown. Forgotten--by myself as is also true of reality--and woefully underestimated third receiver Steve Breaston caught this one.

And JaMarcus Russell, as he is wont to do all too often in reality as well, held the ball too long, rolled too far out, and got sacked.

Wii rules.

An Open Letter to the New York Times

2010-06-01T08:22:00.003-05:00

Dear New York Times,

Whoever decided to switch the format of your online slide shows should be petitioned to switch it back. Please.

I understand that this is probably a violation of every copyright rule ever, but it used to be possible to save the images. This was intensely useful for people like me who use these images for blogging, study, etc. etc.

I can't explain how useful this was. This new format is the loss of a terrific resource.

Saddened,

The Management

Review Addendum: Marina Abramovic @ MoMA

2010-06-01T08:06:00.002-05:00

That Abramovic show must have really done something to me. I woke up this morning thinking about it, instead of my usual thoughts about food and going back to sleep.

I have had two more thoughts in the night.

Uno: Too many documents, displayed too wrongly. There is not only a whole room filled with Abramovic-related documents and exhibition ephemera, but a case filled with documents pertaining to her parents. The latter was quite smartly placed near The Hero, which does, in fact, take her parents' careers in the Yugoslav(ian?) military as its subject matter. But, in a show that is so much about self- and body-abnegation, there is something a bit pornographic-fetishistic of the artist's biography and physical artifact that seems all together too MoMA for my tastes. I understand that MoMA is the house that Pablo built, and that Alfred Barr (bless every bit of his heart) may have created an institution specifically designed to perpetuate the myth of the heroic artist (let's toss that one, along with the whole divine inspiration and "it can mean whatever you want" malarkey), but it's just plain off-key for a show about Abramovic, who seems so focused not only on self-denial, but also collaboration.

Dos: Talking about Abramovic's work solely in terms of body damage-stress-denial misses one of the really amazing things I noticed yesterday. The works measure themselves in the smallest and most silent of increments. For every gun pointed at the throat and burning-star almost asphyxiation, there are an infinity of micro-motions. I was absolutely floored watching the arms of the performer in Luminosity slowly weary and descend from the upper position of Vitruvian man to the lower. It was like seeing St. Andrew's martyrdom take an intermission. And the slight ticking back and forth of the performer's eyes as she tried to hold them up was one of the most profound envisionings of futility I can think of.

Same with the performances of Relation in Time and Point of Contact. Slow incremental movements and microscopic alterations of distance. Like breathing or growing or each and every measurement of the body.

Pretty great stuff.

By the way, this is a really amazing site for Abramovic's work. Kudos to those who designed it.

Point of Order: Sex and the City Dos

2010-06-01T07:58:00.004-05:00

I'm certainly not a graphic designer. In fact, I've been told that my unwavering love for Times New Roman 12 point automatically excludes me from even talking about graphic design. But I know a bunch of designers, many of whom are quite good.

Which is why I feel compelled to cry foul on this damn Sex and the City unnecessary and conspicuously indulgent at a time of national financial and economic crisis sequel movie advertising campaign.

Look at that ad, which is on buildings and billboards all over Manhattan and presumably elsewhere.

If I were Matthew Broderick, I'd be really confused about waking up next to Kim Cattrall each morning. And how come Cynthia Nixon is the only one properly labeled? Can I be a conspiracy theorist and say that this is some nefarious way of making sure we know which one is the, ahem, non-traditional-lifestyle one? Because, frankly, that's conspicuous.

What I do know about design is that it's about two things: communication and brainwashing people into buying crap they don't need.

Houston, we have a problem.

Review: Marina Abramovic @ MoMA

2010-05-31T20:05:00.002-05:00

Went to go see Marina Abramovic The Artist is Present at MoMA today. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this might be the show of the year. The whole art world (by which I mean everyone in the 5 boroughs) is atwitter. And, since the reviews have been rather mixed, I feel like I need to add to the chatter. And because you probably won't learn much from them that you don't already know if you know anything about Abramovic or her art. That is, of course, that Holland Cotter doesn't exactly like some of the work (really useful information) and that someone, either Jerry Saltz or his editors, thinks it's ok to write a three paragraph review about the first major retrospective by one of the most fundamentally important artists of the past 50 years. Seriously? Only Arthur Danto got it somewhat right, but, in his usual Arthur Danto way, he offers a plethora (Forgive me, El Guapo) of amazing ruminations without much of a sense of whether or not the exhibition is going to be satisfying or not.

I'm going to do a lot of the same, mainly because you'd be an idiot to think that the exhibition wouldn't be satisfying. What I'm not going to do is offer much information on Abramovic or her work. Go read a book. Or, God forbid, take an art history class. That's where that happens. This is criticism. I'm here to criticize. I mean critique.

So, let's start with the obvious. I have personal space issues. This makes for an exceedingly rewarding experience in a Marina Abramovic retrospective on its last day, on Memorial Day. MoMA deserves kudos for being open on Memorial Day. We don't all like parades. But, for those of you keeping score, going to MoMA on Memorial Day is really stupid. Really stupid.

But, within the context of this show, it was almost ideal. My wife told me to keep an eye on the crowds, so she deserves the credit for this, but there is much truth to my saying that Abramovic's work is best experienced with too many of your closest friends, bashing bodies with strangers and being constantly forced to jostle for space in and around the crowds. It wasn't simply that Impoderabilia was one of the centerpieces of the show. For all of you who don't know, this was a 1977 work in which Abramovic, with her then art-making partner Ulay, stood, as they say, butt-ass nekkid, in one of the doorways of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna. It was recreated, as were a handful of other works, by Abramovic-trained performers at MoMA.

And, yes, I squoze (not a proper conjunction, but an in-joke with my parents) myself through two naked bodies. I faced the woman, mostly because all the other people in line in front of me did and I thought they must be onto something. To be honest, it was an amazing experience. Firstly, the tangible smooshing of three bodies together is unbelievably tectonic. And, no, juveniles, it wasn't sexual. But it was one of the most tangible bodily experiences I've ever had. The performers were standing really close together and even my skinny ass had some trouble getting through. I felt everything. The closest comparison I can imagine would be blindness, and the way that blind people report having a heightened sense of touch because of their lack of vision. All of a sudden my torso, arms, legs, everything became hypersensitive and aware of every smashing, rolling, pushing that it took to get through two naked bodies. It was perhaps the most fantastic reminder that all art, even the optical Greenbergian stuff, is supposed to hit you everywhere. Art, dear friends, is a visceral experience. All of this Cartesian bullshit that we've been forced to believe for centuries is exactly that. Bullshit.

Op. Cit. Susan Sontag. Art, dear friends, is best when it is erotic, not hermeneutical. Look it up. It's the titular essay in Against Interpretation. If you haven't read it, you haven't lived.

Those of you that know me know I have this thing about being too close to people I don't want to be too close to. Watch my students corner me after class and watch me back up until I'm melting into the wall. This was totally different. The anticipation was, to quote a cliche, palpable. The only thing I can compare it to is the rush of adrenaline one gets before performing on stage, an apropos sensation. But I have to say that the rush kept going for quite some time after. Shaky legs, dilated pupils. I'm anything but an adrenaline junkie, but it was pretty cool.

Angular narrative turn here.

One of the best things about this exhibition was its way of navigating the impossibility of showing performative works, a dilemma that Abramovic herself attacked head on at the Guggenheim in 2005. I'm not interested in the ideologies of recreating performance pieces, or debating the necessity of ephemerality for the credibility of performative art. That's for the artist to decide, the critic to pontificate upon, and noone to decide.

But, MoMA really got it right today. They placed the script (that's what I'm going to call it) next to a single still from the performance. Then, next to it, there was one of those fancy digital picture frames that rotated through a series of still images from the original performance. It was actually a pretty successful way to give a sense of the works that weren't recorded to video. Those, to my great enjoyment, were on huge screens at grotesque volumes, just the kind of multi-sensory assault that made sense for the work.

And, of course, I must offer this caveat. Whoever decided to put the performers in the free-standing boxes might have dropped the ball. It was simply too detached from the communal space of the viewers' bodies, our bodies, all of which are implicated in any of Abramovic's works. Her body becomes ours, her fragility and mortality ours. Separating the performers in these oddly Turrellian spaces didn't make any sense. It was too pictorial, which doesn't make any sense to me for an exhibition focused on performative art.

Before I go, I need to make a point of something remarkably obvious.

Marina Abramovic is beautiful. She has been stunningly beautiful her whole career and is even moreso today, as I saw her, seated in the atrium of the museum, draped in heavy gown that framed her face against the space, the crowd, and her entire career.

This shouldn't be such a big deal, except that we, as an art culture, have been deeply and overly ashamed of beauty for far too long, at least since Caravaggio or Goya or Courbet or something so obvious I'm forgetting it. Perhaps, pace Laura Mulvey, this is because we've all been party to centuries of patriarchy and the exploitation of the bodies of infinite women for the purely genital pleasure of mostly white, upper-class, heterosexual males. That is, looking at beautiful women has been a guilty pleasure for centuries, laden with the baggage of misogyny, intentional or otherwise. Abramovic herself made this unbeliveably apparent and complex in her 1975 work "Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful."

And it got even moreso today. There is something particularly spellbinding about Abramovic's beauty, perhaps because we all know such a beautiful body was subjected to such dangers and damage. Perhaps because we all know that her beauty is not ephemeral, as we have all been convinced that beauty must be. Perhaps because we all know that this beauty hides the fact that she is the strongest among us, both in body and will.

I'm not sure that I can put my finger on it exactly, but I am sure that I have seen no more compelling argument for the necessity and value of beauty than I did today.

The Adrian Diet

2010-05-30T16:00:00.003-05:00

I'm a skinny little bastard. Have been since I was born. In fact, if it wasn't for my Herculean athleticism and natural balletic grace, you might get away with calling me scrawny. This is mostly a gift. See, I was born about six weeks early and have a lightning-fast metabolism. You combine being undercooked and overly excited and the math just sort of works out.

Of course, this hasn't prevented nearly everyone I know from remarking about what a skinny little bastard I am. But, as I'm sure Kate Moss and Lindsay Lohan can tell you, there are other ways to stay skinny than skiing the snowy mountains. And, since one of my cousins raised this highly interesting question on the FaceSpace earlier this week (I'll give you a cut if this makes me rich), and since, as a certified professorial-type, I think that every opinion of mine is both worth saying out loud and the solution to all of your problems, I thought I would contribute to our national dietary hysteria and introduce The Adrian Diet, the virtually-all-natural way to get in touch with your inner skinny little bastard.

But, before I change your lives (Can you believe how arrogant you need to be to be a self-help guru? What a bunch of smug bastards...)...let me congratulate Dario Franchitti (known to most of the world as Mr. Ashley Judd) on winning his second Indy 500 in three years. And, on a similar pitch, let's all give thanks that both Mike Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay walked away from that horrible crash. In the immortal words of Reggie Noble: "the bricks the bricks the bricks."

Prelude: This ain't about being fat. People in America need to reevaluate their attitudes toward fat. I'm not going to get all soapboxy about this, but let's just say that if we substituted all the fat jokes for African-American jokes or gay jokes or Asian jokes we'd all have the ACLU's foot where the sun don't shine. Next time you make a fat joke, substitute a racial slur for the word fat and get back to me on the results. So, all you fatists can go fat yourselves.

This is about eating good stuff and not being unhealthy.

Anyway, here's how you do it:

Rule #1: Don't listen to me. I am not a dietician. Therefore you shouldn't listen to me. You should listen to your body. I read a great book a few weekends ago at my sister-in-law's house. It should be on everyone's bookshelf, next to Everybody Poops, mainly because it's about poo. Before you all get grossed out, why don't you go write a review of the latest Saw movie and get back to me when you toughen up. See, I have a yoga friend (who does yoga--I stay away from the stuff) that says "Your only as healthy as your spine." And, my Mom's a nurse, so I know that you can get most of your health info from your excretions.

You make the yellow pee? You need more water. You got funky ear wax? Probably the same. You sneezing a lot? Probably getting sick or allergic to something.

Alls I'm saying is that you got to listen to your body. If eating something gives you heartburn, cut it out. If it makes you tired and worn out, cut it out. I read an article in the Nueva York Times a while ago that said that most Americans get sick at work because some idiot decided that work was so important that they couldn't lay at home in bed and get rid of their cold. I'm just saying. That we're stupid about our bodies. You got to listen. Pretend your body is Oprah if you have to, but keep your ears open.

Rule #2: Apples. You know that old saying about keeping the doctor away. Well, they're not bullsnapping you. Apples rule. Natural sugars are good for a quick, natural, totally legal high. The fiber is amazing for your digestive health. The vitamins and minerals in an apple are good for you. And the crunchy noise is so satisfying. Keep them in the fridge for extra crunch. Imagine, when you hear the crunch, that you're biting Sean Hannity's head off, Ozzy-style. Or whoever bugs you. Pretend you're a Sarah Palin dinosaur that roamed the Earth about 35 years ago and chomp those buggers till there gone. I prefer Cameos and Galas, mainly because I like R&B parties, but you do what you want. Just eat a bunch of them. One a day minimum, national holidays and all.

Rule #3: H two motherskunking O. You all remember Chemistry, right? How many electrons does Oxygen have? If you said eight, you're right. This means that it makes one hell of a bond (word is...) with a pair of Hydrogen atoms. That gives us water. Did you know that each one of us is mostly water?

I know, I know. The French are all "Ma, non, je suis totalment French." And the Germans are all "Was the hell ist das? Ich bin total aus bier gemacht." Whatever, my dear Maginot-straddling friends, you, like beer, are mostly water. You gots to drink it all. They say you should drink 8 8 ounce glasses a day. That's 64 ounces, not a stutter. That's a little more than 3 pints. English people, this should be easy for you. Drink a pint of water between each pre-dinner beer and you'll be good. I say that you should drink enough water to have to pee every hour. You'll know that you've got it right when you pee clear, like water. Eeeeew. That's gross. Yeah, so it what the Titans paid LenDale White to get fat on tequila, so I don't want to hear it. You want gross? Go read The 120 Days of Sodom. Otherwise, fuggeddaboutit.

Rule #4: Pot of Beans. I eat one of these a week. Fo sho. A pot of beans is the cheapest, easiest way to get a whole load of nutrition. I do it like this, and you needs to be patient, or the beans won't work out. And beans that don't work out are inevitably trouble.

Go to the store. Find the Goya aisle. Buy some damn beans. Dry ones. No canned premade anything. That shit will kill you. If it comes in a box and it is premade, that shit will kill you. That's why they call it shit. It's about as good for you as what you'd normally flush down the loo. I prefer red beans. I also like black beans and pinto beans, but you know, you've got to have a favorite.

This is important. Don't mix beans. If your bag o' beans is ending, continue with the exact same beans. I mixed brands once and I had half a pot of cooked beans, half a pot of gravel. No go. I think the best way to do this is to start before you go out on Friday night. Soak the beans in a vat of cold water. I use about half a pound of beans a go. Soak them until they bloat with water, like a dead guy fished out of the New Jersey swamps. Overnight and the whole next day usually does it. Then, here is the best part.

Get a bunch of vegetables. I have friends that don't eat vegetables. They think they're gross. Well, so is dying from malnutrition. You got to eat your veggies. I go for onions (red and white, for ethnic harmony purposes), celery, carrots, peppers (of whatever colors, see onions). If you're totally renegade, use other things. Now, you only need one pot for this recipe (shout out to my grad school roommate who swore by one-pot cooking). Put some olive oil in it (no butter. minimizing butter is key to The Adrian Diet). Chop the veggies and sautee them until you get them to where you want them to be. Sautee is French for cook over low heat. It'll make you sound like you've read a cookbook if you use the big words every now and then. Works with art history as well, but don't tell anyone I told you that.

Once the veggies are just so, pour the beans in. Drain them first. Then, take as many cans of diced tomatoes (one of the few times canned food is ok for The Adrian Diet) as needed to fill the whole concoction with liquid. Cook slow over low heat. This is the hard part, Americans. You need to be patient. When I say slow, I mean you need to cook this for about 8 to 10 hours. Sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Like the plot of the nominees for Best Foreign Film. We all know what happens if you don't shower for a few days, right? You start to stink exponentially, cause the filth creates more filth, which makes for profound stinky. Same theory, just reverse. The longer you cook this, the deeper and richer the taste will become. If you don't belive me, ask someone's Italian grandmother how long she cooks her sauce. Then ask her why. The nice thing is that you can do other stuff. Just get up and stir it every half-hour or so. This is why I think starting Friday night is best. You can cook the beans all day Sunday, while you're reading the paper or watching the game or doing whatever you do. Oh, yeah, add spices. I do salt, black pepper, cayenne, hot sauce, and without doubt a few squirts of high quality barbecue sauce. And not that KC Masterpiece sluice. Something made below the Mason-Dixon line that has a secret recipe. It's the right touch of sweet and sour and happy. Trust me.

Now, if you do it on an industrial scale, you'll get enough beans for multiple meals, and the veggies and beans will stew themselves into a delicious zinger of protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. You can add meat if you want. Chorizo is the best, cause it's the most flavorful, but I've used chicken, beef, and turkey, all of which are perfectly fine.

Pot of beans: the whole food pyramid at once, except for milk, which comes later.

Rule #5: Drink Mexican Soda. I mean, you're not supposed to drink soda on The Adrian Diet, except for one small glass a day. I do it with lunch, so I can break the day up with a nice jolt of sugartasticism. But, as you all know, that partially hydrogenated horseshit that they put in all of our beloved sodas is terrible for you. Mexican soda has real cane sugar in it. The reason that they call it cane sugar is because it's as addictive as crack cocaine, which is sort of what regular Coke is like. Crack. Because of the freebase corn syrup. Avoid that by drinking Mexican soda. Jaritos are really awesome. And fancy flavored. Flavoured if you're European. Frankly, your best bet (that's "you're" for all of you internet-educated spelling deficients) is to stop shopping at the white people supermarkets all together. Now, before you call me a reverse racist, let me remind you that I'm half white. And, truth be told, the non-white people markets have more interesting food that, generally, is less industrially-produced than the white people food. Industrial production is the enemy of food. You can take that to the bank. Avoiding industrially produced food is pretty key to The Adrian Diet, barring certain exceptions, which, in a Scientology-derived scheme, I will not reveal to new initiates. But you're better off avoiding them anyway.

Rule #6: Exerciso ergo shrinko. Get off your ass and move around. Take the damn stairs. Walk to work. Jump up and down on the bed. Whatever. Just keep moving. You can't intake calories without having a way to burn them. And, exercising makes you feel good. It's good for your spine (see above) and might actually have you looking all grown and sexy before too long. And don't try to act like you don't want a six pack. We all do. It's just that sometimes it can't be a sixer of PBR. You gots to moderate. That's another critical law of The Adrian Diet. Moderation. Everything in moderation. Including moderation. I'm not above eating a whole tube of Thin Mints. But I do it once a year, not whenever I get the spirit, or I had a shitty day. You having a shitty day, puddin? Get a punching bag. Beat the hell out of it. See Rule #6.

Rule #7: Beer and Ice Cream. I'm not kidding. There is a reason that we're not all monks and nuns. It's cause most of us can't handle that degree of asceticism. Same with dieting. You need to be realistic. If it took you 30 years to build up that beer belly, it ain't going away by swimsuit season. Seriously. It doesn't take a time-space genius to know that a lifetime of excess and indulgence is going to go away RIGHT Fing NOW. Americans, this is on us all. Patience is not a virtue we have maintained over the years. You need to nurture a slow patience. You know how long it took to build the Duomo in Milan? Damn near 600 years. So, taking a few months to get all grown and sexy isn't asking much. Truth be told, grown and sexy is like keeping the car running or the house intact. It's a constant effort.

My point, however, is that you need to drink beer and eat ice cream now and again. If you aren't used to The Adrian Diet, it will take some acclimatizing, like deep sea diving. You can't be expected to jump right in and, even once you're in, you need to be realistic. We are all humans. Humans like fun. Humans like to self-indulge. So, do it. Just don't be an idiot. And remember that every self-indulgence might set you back a moment or two, so you might have to double-up on the exercise tomorrow. But, trust me, it's worth getting a little fatter if you get to enjoy yourself.

Rule #8: Reset foods. Everybody has them, you just got to figure them out. Everyone get to feeling bloated or lazy or unhealthy. This is where reset foods come into play. Mine are cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese (I used to be a Kraft Klassicist, but have recently learned that Whole Foods 365 brand is actually quite good. That Annie's stuff tastes like reconstituted cardboard to me, but you can figure that out for yourself). If I get to feeling like hell, I go eat a cheeseburger. A good one. Not some rubberized cow-butt meat from MacDonalds. Avoiding fast food is rule number one for The Adrian Diet. Go to a farmer's market and get some good grass-fed, beer-rubbed, free-range, laughing cow cow meat. That'll set you straight, oooooh yeah. Figure out what your reset food is. If your belly is gurgly, eat it. Sushi also works really good. You vegetarians are sort of on your own, but bless your heart for keeping the animals in mind. I'm not that kind of dude.

Rule #9: This is sort of a personal one, but I swear by four small meals a day, not three ginormous ones. And you, there, the one skipping breakfast or lunch or both and then going apeshit at dinner. That isn't smart. Metabolism needs a constant burn to work at all. Think about leaving the heat off in the winter. When you get home, it's gonna be cold as hell and you're going to have to crank it up, which isn't good for heating or your sanity. Same principle. I do breakfast at 8, lunch at 1, snacky snack at 6, real dinner at about 8.

Anyway, that's how it all begins. Frankly, I don't know why any of you should listen to me, but I feel like I have a few secrets in here worth sharing. More than that Atkins craziness. My wife tried that once and said that all the protein made her so energetic she had to take up kickboxing just to burn off all the energy. I'm a believer in balanced mediumness.

If this works, please let me know. Maybe then we can all get together and make an infomercial, like that Tae-Bo guy. You know that you all want to see me in sleeveless shirts and a wireless microphone anyway.

Creepiest Ads Ever?

2010-05-24T16:03:00.004-05:00

I'm certainly not an ad executive, but I do know a fright when I have one.

These ads for the Dorchester Collection of hotels are horrifying, with a capital HORROR.

They were featured in an article in the Media and Advertising section of the New York Times about a year and change ago, but, given that print media is dying and I don't read magazines unless they involve the word "sports" or "guitar" or "art" in the title, you'll have to forgive me.

You see, if you follow the logic of the Times review, there is some genius in these.

First, dead people can't hassle you about logistics or fees, and they certainly can't show up late, with mysterious white powder on their shoes and proceed to vomit all over your faux Louix XIV divan.

Secondly, and you'll have to excuse me while I wish death upon myself here, there is apparently something magical and post-historical-post-modern-post-photography in this that makes all the nostalgia lovers-celebrity worshippers go "schwing!"

Anybody who is about to try to tell me that this is glamorous or exciting needs to go find a date in Disney's Hall of Presidents.

While I'm sure some greybeard of an ad exec is at home, sitting on his endangered species-skin faux Louis XIV divan, stroking his Clio Award like it's a bald cat, I can't help but think this violates two of the cardinal rules of advertising, at least as I would have brought them down from the mountain.

Rule #1: Photoshop is not to be abused. Look close at all of the, ahem, people in these ads. They look like they just got rolled out of the coroner. Maybe this is some post-humor joke. They are dead, after all. But why, dear God, do they look so plasticine? If I was Thandie Newton, I'd be coming right back from the dead to curse the hell out of all of those mouse-weilding yahoos that CS4-ed me into Robert Smith. I spend most of my days surrounded by students who can Photoshop better than this with their eyes closed, hands tied, and a piranha nibbling on their sensitive bits. Seriously, Warhol's the only one that looks half normal, and that's because he tried his whole life to disguise the way he actually looked. The rest of them look like they've spent the night drinking embalming fluid and lacing themselves into medieval torture corsets.

Rule #2: Don't scare the bejesus out of people you want on your side. Ask anyone who can't stand clowns. Why, you ask, don't you like clowns? They're funny and make kids laugh. Yeah, when they're not busy scaring the shiznit out of them. Scared once, scarred for life.

Honestly. People wonder why print ads are going the way of the dodo.

Review (sort of): The Blind Side

2010-05-18T17:56:00.004-05:00

Well, it seems to be the case that I've been out of touch, so I'm about to try to get back in the saddle. To be honest, the past month of my life--and that of any academic--has been a total blur. I can't for the life of me remember what was involved, but there were dozens of hours of critique, grading, and at least one lecture that I can remember. But, again, I can't hardly remember.

I don't know how the rest of you cope with insanity, but I use Netflix. I'm a total junkie. To the point that I tend to fall asleep in front of it. A few weeks ago I nodded off and spilled a whole mug of tea on the couch. Luckily it wasn't that hot. Then, last week, I fell asleep in front of it again and woke up to the birds chirping at 5 am. Pretty sweet. I used to think it was funny when my Dad fell asleep in front of the TV. Now I think it's a bit heroic.

Anyway, one of my forays into the Netflickery involved The Blind Side. This makes me exactly the last person in America to see it. But, since there are very few opportunities to flex my expertise in football and Memphis simultaneously, how am I supposed to resist?

Let me begin thusly. I don't care about how good the movie made you feel. In fact, I actively oppose feel good movies. They make me feel like I've been suckered. It's a bunch of Hallmarky pandering to people who seem to want to dive headfirst into every God-forsaken Hollywood cliche.

But, Adrian...it's a true story.

I don't care. And that's not my point. And neither is Sandra Bullock's acting, which, much to my absolute confusion, was actually good. Normally, she makes me want to jump off of the nearest bridge. And, I have local informants that tell me she nailed Mme. Tuohy right on the button. Tim McGraw, by the way, doesn't look at all like Sean Tuohy, who, as the color commentator for the Memphis Grizzlies has one of the jobs I most desperately covet.

My interest in The Blind Side is based in ancestry and tradition. The part of this movie that was the most authentic, the most fundamentally heartwarming was when Michael Oher was being interrogated by that horrid woman from the NCAA. Remember? She kept asking him about how he'd been cajoled into choosing Ole Miss. That's the University of Mississippi, in case you're keeping score at home.

What did he say? Do you remember?

He said that he wanted to go there because his family had been going there for generations.

He was adopted, remember?

How does that make sense, you ask?

This, dear friends, is the strength of the tradition of college football. Trust me, I went to Notre Dame. And, if you don't believe me, go to the downstairs bathroom in my dentist's house, where you can simultaneously relieve yourself and gaze upon prints of the Ole Miss campus.

For all of you that missed that part, let me assure you that it was the moment at which the entire movie demonstrated its veracity.

Second was every moment when the Tuohy family actively hated on the University of Tennessee, every one of which was totally hilarious. I mean, seriously, what is the problem with that orange color. And, before some RealTree-wearing fanatic decides to set up a deer blind near my house, we really need to talk about Albert Haynesworth's work ethic and Peyton Manning's latest interception.

Having studied amidst America's greatest college football tradition, I cannot explain the depth and resonance of such moments. If you need proof, ask someone from the University of Michigan about dotting the i. Or someone from Notre Dame about the University of Michigan.

You see, that's why The Blind Side was such a good movie. It was able to boil the entire history of college football into a single sentence. The ways in which our colleges and universities are able to create cultures around their sports is one of the most uniquely American experiences we've got. And the ways in which these sports create allegiances and commonalities amongst enormously disparate populations is essential to weaving this odd national fabric of ours.

And the way in which these allegiances can change the course of a single life--of an individual, of a family, of a viewing nation--is quite extraordinary.

Michael Oher, bless his Flacco-protecting soul, is simply the most tangible example of this we've had in a long while. Presumably, there are innumerable others. Their success simply hasn't had the benefit of the Walt Disney Corporation, the 24-hour news cycle, and Roger Goodell's marketing aggression.

For this he should certainly be celebrated, most because he represents all of the unnamed student-athletes who damn near kill themselves for the fleeting and ephemeral opportunities afforded by sports. They are, like the rest of us, looking for that small window of opportunity through which to jump.

Onward to victory.

I'm Joining the Army

2010-04-12T19:20:00.004-05:00

For those of you keeping score about how behind I can be when it comes to the obvious and music, let me remind everyone of a few things we all already know...

Sometimes, you know, it's important to say things that we think we all know. I recently told a student of mine who confessed a love of punk about Fugazi. New information to the student, so I like to do this for safety's sake. And cause I'm an edumacator.

First, I need to offer an apology to Linda and Tommy G. (last initials for anonymity's sake, but as we used to do in New Jeruz). These two were my first introduction to KISS, through a massive quantity of t-shirts and tunes being pumped. At the time, I was about 6, so I don't know how much I can be held responsible for not catching on, but the imagery is quite vivid, so maybe we can talk latency. Well, ma'am, you son seems to have a case of latent KISS. This'll all work out when he hits puberty and learns to headbang. Anyway, by the time I got to high school, I should've known better, especially as another guy I grew up with, Dom P., was a huge fan with his own collection of t-shirts.

Once again, I prove to be an idiot.

For those of you that don't know, KISS might just be one of the best bands ever.

Yes, I know Gene Simmons is on TV and all that, but did you know that his songwriting was that good? I didn't. Well, I did, since I knew all of the KISS tunes without ever owning any of their music.

That's how good they are, and how integrated they are into our culture.

And their stage show is certainly unstoppable. Unless, of course, you're boring.

And Paul Stanley dances like my friend Alan from tha M-town, which, if you know either, is pretty astonishing.

Anyway, get your head out of the sand, people. Go listen to some KISS. It'll change your life.

My Students Kick Ass

2010-04-12T19:09:00.003-05:00

I don't know what y'all are doing out there in your version of art school land, but I just came upon another reason why we're doing it right.

Last week, I went to an appreciation dinner for a number of our students who run organizations, clubs, the Student Alliance (yeah, we take it Star Wars down here), etc...

And I learned that, in addition to being artists and scholars, our students have been up to the following things:

-making mosaics for local hospitals

-painting murals for a local retirement home

-tutoring inner city children

-planning and constructing a garden for that same retirement home

-raising money for Haiti

And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

So, next time anyone wants to start perpetuating stereotypes of art students as being dyed-hair, mohawked, black-clad, no bathing, disenfranchised weirdos and anti-socials...

...you'd better add community-builders and philanthropists to the list.

Nicely done, artists. Way to be part of the solution. Keep going, and many thanks.

A2K

2010-04-12T18:43:00.002-05:00

Sweet. I've gone bimillennial.

Looks like over 2,000 innocent humans have come and read the ongoing shenanigans of this blog, which makes me feel pretty good about a few things.

So, in an act of Volunteer State pride, I'd like to remind you all that Chris Johnson also had a 2K+ year this year.

And that the NFL Draft is on April 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.

Thanks again everyone.

Don't forget, I'm on the Facespace.

Search "adrianduranblog" for more updates, insight, and localized idiocy. Ole!

It's all been done before.

2010-04-07T18:28:00.005-05:00

Speaking of only writing when something makes me mad, I have been involved in something I can no longer countenance.

There seems to be a school of thought circulating in the arts today that all has been done already.

And that we should accept this as some justification for a protracted pessimism about the ontological possibilities of the art object, thus apparently by extension, its metaphysical, phenomenological, ecc. ecc. potentials.

I find this deeply disturbing.

Not because I take particular issue with the termination of ontological ecc. ecc. possibilities for the art object, but I find it very difficult to believe that we can't find some less fatalist method here.

For example, let's consider the art object as the sum total of its constituent parts. I would find it difficult to do otherwise, especially considering that even the smallest of atoms has is constituent parts.

Then, can we not find the new possibilities in the interrelations of these constituent parts? And, then to the whole as the sum total of these parts and interrelations?

That sounds like Minimalism, so we'll have to consider the nature of these constituent parts.

Certainly, they ought not be made of Minimalist parts, though it would be quite fun to obtain a series of Minimalist works and recombine the constituent parts without obligation to the original configurations.

So, perhaps they could be made of regular stuff or junk or shit. Nope. Nope. Nope. Among a million other examples, Rauschenberg, Arman, Manzoni.

Shit.

For real.

So, maybe they could be made of nothing? But, if we categorize them as art, don't we just end up where Yves Klein started?

They can't be made of everything, if only because of the paradox of the acquisition of everything in an ever-expanding vacuum of a universe. And Manzoni, but I guess he just claimed the Earth.

And, just for giggles, how do we get around Tom Friedman? Or Warhol? Or Duchamp for God's sake, as if we didn't just invoke one of his manifestations.

Hell.

It occurs that there is another rather persistent pessimism that be useful here. And that is the pejorative nature of Mannerist. Ben Street has already addressed this recently, but you'll have to search the site for it. I certainly don't mean to lay this pessimism on him as it is neither his fault nor, would I ultimately submit, his position. But there seems to be a rather cavalier dismissal of the value of a Mannerist period within the history of art.

First, I think it might be worthwhile to get back down to study, which is one of the things at which Mannerism excels. Obviously, it made for something of a mess at certain points throughout cinquecento Italy, but look what it did for Rubens early on. He's hardly a Mannerist by the end of his career, except in that he maintained throughout his life a certain ability to recombine things that had already been done into forward-looking and thinking innovation. It's one of the fundamental reasons we celebrate him as we do.

Perhaps art should embrace this notion of everything having already been done and get to thinking about how to make new combinations of things that look forward, rather than getting stuck in some kind of pessimistic backwardistic looking.

If nothing else, the work will keep us all occupied away from the pessimism.

Support the Arts

2010-04-07T18:21:00.002-05:00

Dwayne is having an art show. I'm DJing. It'll be worth it. In fact, if we're lucky, it will be the place to be seen.

As my friend from Emden says, "It's not about seeing. It's about being seen."

Viva l'arte!

Dwayne Butcher: “Forget What You Know, this is Dwayne”

Friday, April 9, 2010
Time:	6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:	Motamedi Gallery
Street:	500 South Second Street
City/Town:	Memphis, TN

Review: Chocolate

2010-03-30T17:23:00.003-05:00

Ahem, I'm two years late on this one. But, if Walter Benjamin's taught me anything, it's that mechanically reproduced media exist outside of historical place and time, so I don't have to care that this was a movie that came out two years ago. Or something like that. Let's call it the idiot unconscious.

Anyway, if you like martial arts movies, you need to get your hands on Chocolate immediately.

Immediately.

I'm not necessarily an expert on martial arts movies, but I know a guy who is, and he's been my personal Yoda for a while here, so I think I can speak with a certain credibility.

The genius of Chocolate is in its synthetism. Apparently, blogger doesn't think synthetism is a word, but I'll be damned if it isn't.

Anyway, the basic plot of the movie is a bit saccharine. Our heroine (Ahem, heroine in a martial arts movie? Even recent greats like Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi aren't given this kind of top-billing, usually dropped in with an ensemble or secondary to male leads.) has autism, a particular variety that allows her to absorb fighting styles simply by observing them optically. It's a hell of a talent, one that I really would like. Beyond my present mastery of the crane style, of course. So, she's got this great skill, which comes in particularly handy because her mother has cancer and needs the treatment. So, our heroine, Zen, and her slightly husky-pants friend Moom embark on a collection campaign, hoping to reclaim debts owed Zen's mother by a whole load of generally shady guys that were part of her past, a past that included defying her clan and falling for Zen's father, a (gasp!) Japanese Yakuza. Wouldn't be a problem if Zen's mom wasn't Chinese. But, of course, being of Chinese descent seems to be rather useful if called to martial arts heroics.

All of this Hallmark card pathos doesn't really matter, except that it provides the backdrop for a story much in line with the enforcer/debt-collector topos of martial arts and western films. Well, except that our enforcer is autistic, hardly speaks, and really can't be much older than about 14 or 15.

Lucky for us all, she is one of the best martial artists I've seen in a while.

And, even more lucky for us, the director, writers, and cinematographer know their history.

Classic en masse henchmen ass kickings and boss battles? Check.

Multiple styles? Check, including one of the best scenes I've seen since the Drunken Boxing in Jackie Chan's Drunken Master series. Zen and a Japanese kid in a gold and black Adidas break-dancing sweatsuit square off in a monkey-style pas de deux. Not only is it an amazing vision of monkey style, but the nod to breakdancing is both obvious and knowing.

Jackie Chan style prop and architecture fighting? Check, with a freakishly amazing scene on and around the facade of a building, street signs, a train trestle, and street level. All at once, in a single scene. And this doesn't even begin to explain the slaughterhouse scene, which can't be described as anything less than a paradigm shifter.

And, for those of you new to the genre, it's even got that hilarity and self-parody that Kung-Fu Hustle had in spades. Less slapsticky, but still self-referential. Who knew that martial arts films were in their pomo phase?

You need to see this pronto.

Absolutely my martial arts film of the year. Or 2008. Whatever.

Me, Humiliating Myself Publicly. Again.

2010-03-28T22:09:00.006-05:00

I'm DJing the below opening.

Dwayne Butcher: “Forget What You Know, this is Dwayne”

Date:	Friday, April 9, 2010
Time:	6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:	Motamedi Gallery
Street:	500 South Second Street
City/Town:	Memphis, TN

Come for the art, which will be great. Much better than the DJ, who intends to play lots and lots of Ted Nugent. Or not. You'll have to come to the opening to find out.

Metal at the End of the World: Appunti per una storia

2010-03-28T16:21:00.003-05:00

Let it be known.

I intend to write a book on metal.

See, this past Wednesday, it turns out that two movements of the universe played into my favor.

First, I say the Exodus/Testament/Megadeth 20th Anniversary Rust in Peace tour the night before.

If you need a review, you probably haven't ever listened to any of the bands in question. The only complaint I have is that Testament played the whole of The Legacy instead of the whole of Souls of Black. That's sort of like saying, gee, I wish we'd've won the Super Bowl by more.

Anyway, then, Wednesday, it turns out that the cord that connects the computer to the digital projector in the classroom in which I teach was crushed by some misfortune and thus not working.

So, like any good academic, I improvised and lectured at my students about Benjamin, Barthes, and Megadeth. I was sort of mindblown on the larger cultural significances of going to see Megadeth, absent two original members, playing the whole of an album live that had been released 20 years earlier. I feel like I did a pretty decent job at it and may have created at least one more metalhead amongst America's vulnerable youth. Everyone wins.

I kind of wish someone would break that cord again, but don't tell my boss I said that.

Lecturing about metal is lots of fun.

Thus the book, which is currently a figment of my imagination. In fact, I looked on the ol' amazon.com today and realized that there is actually a nice body of literature out there. Author's note: that's what academics say instead of using normal phrases like "there's a lot of books."

What this means really is that I have no idea if someone has already talked about what I want to talk about, so this may all go belly up. But that's the risk of academia, right? Someone's probably said something similar already. But I'm still hoping to contribute. Right after I manage to figure out when I'm going to have the time to not be a specialist in 20th century Italy.

Anyway, just in case you're a book publisher or grant giver, here is the tentative table of contents. I've made some pretty corny titles out of some of these, so forgive me. In no particular order...

-Apocalyptic City: Politics and Metal at the End of the Cold War

-Roots, Bloody Roots: Sepultura and Post-Colonial Metal

-Metal's Constructed Masculinities, or Why Dave Mustaine had to take His Shirt Off

-The Benjaminian Nostalgia of the Rust in Peace Anniversary Tour

-Metal's Classical Instincts: Anti-Simplicity and Anti-Punk

Review: Marlene Dumas @ David Zwirner

2010-03-28T15:31:00.007-05:00

The Wall 2009

Marlene Dumas

Against the Wall

March 18-April 24 2010

David Zwirner

533 West 19th St.

NYC

Well, it's official. I don't hate Marlene Dumas anymore. For years, I've been hearing about her work and seeing the stuff everywhere. Consequently, I blocked it out, victimized by oversaturation and what I thought was a disproportionate excitement over works that struck me as mostly insipid and self-indulgent.

Dumas, like contemporaries Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, and Michael Borremans, paints pictures of people doing things.

Of course, Currin and Yuskavage like to paint people doing slightly titilating things. Like touching tit or tweaking the teats of those with tits. Each, to their credit is odd enough to make the tit tweaking actually tittilating. Currin's figures are squirmy and Mannerist, like Kate Moss, except curiously pretty instead of peculiarly creepy. And Yuskavage's works look like a cotton candy machine on full tilt, so they're fun, if nothing else. And, both can move paint with the best of them.

Peyton, too, who seems to have built a career on painting pictures of people that our collective cultural memory deems important. They're usually doing important people things, like smoking or walking around, so important people doing important people things apparently makes for important paintings. Or dull, were it not that Peyton actually does wonderful things with her materials. Ultimately, we get interesting paintings of interesting paint depicting uninteresting people doing uninteresting things. So we break even.

Borremans is about the same to me. Interesting painter, uninteresting people. And, bless his heart, he looks sort of like a poor man's Luc Tuymans to me, which is the kiss of death, because Tuymans is one of the better painters working today and has maintained a level of consistency that makes the rest of the bunch look like dabblers and dilettantes. But Booremans isn't all bad, and tends to be worth the time.

Dumas was about one show away from being lumped in with the rest of them until this most recent show at Zwirner. Total redemption.

Now, this can't be understood without a nod to the 2008-09 MoMA semi-retrospective Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave. Poor Dumas really did get the short end of the stick, with her exhibition running in parallel with MoMA's Miro retrospective. Sort of like watching me shoot hoops with LeBron. Anyway, the PR for the exhibition says it all: "Dumas merges themes of race, sexuality, and social identity with personal experience and art-historical antecedents to create a unique perspective on important and controversial issues of the day." Notwithstanding a worthy and honorable curatorial intention, this is code for "blah blah blah." Or, translated into another over-art historicized English, Dumas makes paintings that suit the omnivorous sado-parasitism of our contemporary media culture. Unfortunately, much like the text, the paintings didn't say much beyond what they were. The paintings were bland, the show was bland, and I left wondering why I'd been guilted into caring about Dumas at all.

Then, I saw the Zwirner show. I like being wrong. Dumas is, in fact, a very strong painter. She seems currently possessed of a fixation on dry application and brushwork that barely sketches the essential elements of any form. And, thankfully, her subject matter has visibly matured, engaging the complex politics of the Middle East, Israel/Palestine in particular.

The Wall is a great one. More or less, compositionally inert, the painting is made of two competing sets of five verticals, one of people, one of the slabs that make up the Wailing Wall. The whole thing is sublimely self-reflexive, a picture of people standing in front of a wall, for people standing in front of a wall looking at a picture hung on a wall. The explicit rectilinearity of things--mostly the perpendicularity of our gaze in relation to the mirrored parallels of the painting, the Wailing Wall, and the gallery wall--stabilizes the composition and reminds me of the depth of tradition of pictures of people looking at pictures. Struth's museum photographs, Rockwell's art critic, they're both in there. It's wonderful stuff, implicitly Modernist in its perpetual flatness and beligerently contemporary in the frozen temporality with which it depicts a recurrent ritual occurring at one of the great palimpsests of both history and politics. Man Watching is much the same, the great repoussoir of the Road Map.

Under Construction swivels the picture plane ever so slightly, implying an eternity of expansion, the infinity of time displaced by the Israeli security fence, that blemish of the now on the land through which our collective history must pass.

Mindblocks was probably my favorite, something a bit Ernstian in its stacked masses and faux-decalcomania. What were once the citadels of Ernst's own apocalyptic imagination are replaced by an insistently mundane stack of stones, blocking a road, probably the one from that Map. The grim inevitability of the present is lost within the diversity of her paint applications, a strange paradox that allows our refuge in the autonomy of abstraction while always reminding us of its connectedness to contemporary events. Painting and politics: never the twain shall not meet.

Go to the site. Read the titles, linger over the word play, consider the truth of which they speak, both political and painterly.

Dumas has done something quite magisterial with this exhibition. She has made paintings that are wonderful to look upon. She has made paintings that are wonderful to think about. She deserves much credit. We should all start paying attention.

Point of Order: Civilization, For the Ladies

2010-03-14T21:17:00.002-05:00

Attention members of the fairer sex.

I've already pilloried the guys for this, but now it's your turn.

I realize that public restrooms are often not the most sanitary places.

And, I realize, that as the more evolved of our species, you have developed the ingenious and admittedly more sanitary "squat" technique.

But, ladies, since we all know that intelligence and beauty come at the expense of aim, let me ask the following.

After you have finished, please leave the restroom as clean as possible for the rest of us.

Some of these restrooms are universal.

Maybe I'm a bit precious, but I don't like to walk into a loo that looks like a monsoon has just passed through.

You think you're grossed out, dear reader? Imagine how I felt.

Thanks.

A Lenten Prophet

2010-03-14T21:09:00.003-05:00

Well, here we are, somewhere close to Easter. I've never been anything but a half-assed Catholic. Frankly, other than supporting the Fighting Irish and thinking that Saints Francis and Anthony are pretty cool, I'm mostly a whole-assed Catholic.

But, I was out for lunch yesterday with some pals from the 215 and we got to talking about giving things up for Lent. See, every year I give up Lent for Lent. I relieve my soul of some excess blemishing and the Holy See gets its tribute. Everyone wins.

Somehow, we got to talking about indulgences, and I realized that we need to give Elvis just a little bit more credit.

We've already heard about the rock n' roll thing and the amazing style and the photo-ops with Nixon and so forth.

But I'm convinced that Elvis needs to be given additional credit for being the prophet of the American apocalypse.

For Trinitarian reasons.

See, Elvis, in all of his glory inaugurated what I would like to call the trinity of American doom.

And, in true Kingly fashion, did it alliteratively.

So, for this Lenten season, at least for a moment, I would submit that we might replace faith, hope, and charity with fried food, pharmaceuticals, and firearms.

In celebration of the King of Kings.

All praises due.

May God have mercy on my soul.

ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS!

2010-03-12T11:24:00.004-06:00

Pell Grant Updates. Congress may not screw us, after all.

One Hell of a Good Idea

2010-03-06T15:27:00.003-06:00

Just found out about this, which I think is really a great idea, particularly since so many of my friends and colleagues are right in the midst of the breeding eras of life.

I have a friend from New Jersey who has started a company called Baby Baubles and More which takes your old baby clothes and other child-related fabrics and turns them into quilted Christmas ornaments and other baubles (fig. 1).

This is such a cool idea.

As soon as I can figure out where I've hidden my Underoos, game on.

Quitcherbabycryin'

2010-03-06T15:10:00.003-06:00

So, there are some rumors that the Super Bowl, that most sacred of events, may be held in the new J-E-T-S/Fools in Blue stadium, which, as you should all know by now, is actually in the great state of New Jersey.

People are belly aching and baby crying about this already.

Might I offer the following counterpoint?

Do you like how I ask, even though I'm doing it already? I mean, this isn't like, "Ahem, so sorry, but I'm going to have to remove your spleen with chopsticks."

Anyway, what the hell kind of world are we coming to?

Football in the snow is how the Universe intended it.

Ask anyone who cares about the Packers, the Bills, the Steelers, the god-forsaken Patriots.

Hell, even those apostates at the University of Michigan know what I'm talking about.

Football in the snow is what separates the wheat from the chaff.

If you aren't tough enough to bring your long underwear, your three layers of gloves, your hand warmers, and your flask, you don't deserve to be at the game. F'real.

And, teams, if you're such a bunch of weenies that you can't trust your front five, your running backs, and the timing of your timing routes, you don't deserve to be playing in the game. And that's fo sho.

I demand that the Super Bowl be played in a snowstorm. I demand that we return God's game to Lambeau, where it deserves to be, or to any other stadium so close to inclement weather.

It rains in Miami all the time. Are these guys so soft that they're afraid of its frozen cousin?

Look what Tom Brady did to the Titans this past year.

59-0. Six touchdown passes. Five in one quarter.

In one of those verdammte Massachussetts blizzards.

You can't do that?

You don't deserve the Lombardi.

Strap it on, gentlemen. This is football, not pick-up stix.

Point of Order: Civilization

2010-03-06T14:47:00.003-06:00

Might I offer the following?

If you are in line at a store, a coffee shop (as I just was), or anywhere else in the universe...

And someone in front of you in line finishes their transaction and moves to find a table...

GET OUT OF THE WAY!

Honestly, this is far beyond my usual fussiness concerning personal space and the demise of manners.

I know a guy who knows a guy who, in order to make the point that car motorists should share the road with bicyclists, built himself an armored cage with protruding metal spikes that would attach to his bicycle when he rode the road.

I'll go borrow me one of those Gwar outfits if I have to, but GET OUT OF THE WAY!

And, if you must be on the phone, use your Church voice. Your inside voice is still too loud.

And turn the volume on your phone down below Armageddon level.

Barbarians.

Un Mystere.

2010-03-03T22:58:00.002-06:00

I just had to do one of those "type these word" verification things, and it was "1972 misdeed."

I wasn't even alive in 1972.

But now I'm intrigued.

The End of Days

2010-03-03T22:43:00.003-06:00

I may be losing perspective.

My phone has the internet and I was on it earlier killing time, which is exactly why having the internet on your phone is worth every penny it costs.

And on the homepage, in what they are calling "Odd News," was a story about the price of Chicken Wings going up.

I don't think the people at my phone internet news company understand.

This is not odd news.

This is a major crisis.

If we can't get wings, what the hell are we supposed to eat?

In other sort of hard to believe chicken wing news, to be sure that this really happened, I Googled "yahoo odd news chicken wings," and the first thing up returned "Bandits rob delivery man of chicken wings in Georgia." The same return involved the news "Panda found eating like a pig."

A Refutation of Intelligent Design

2010-03-03T17:13:00.005-06:00

Now, before somebody gets things all out of whack, and threatens me with excommunication or burning at the stake or one of those tea bag rallies, let's pause for a moment and remember the following.

I don't doubt the existence of a supreme power. But I'll bet it isn't a white guy with a beard.

I don't doubt the theory of evolution. But, most days, I think being a monkey would come with less hassle, so neither am I convinced by its implications of betterment.

But I've been watching a lot of the Tudors these days, so I'm sort of back on my heresy bandwagon, and I thought I'd touch on the topic of intelligent design.

I have nothing against intelligent design.

In fact, I really like El Lissitzky.

But, if this design is so intelligent, explain me the following.

Why, if this design is so intelligent, is it that the aforeimplied intelligent designer decided that it would be wise to design the human finger such that the pain of smashing it accidentally will linger for hours afterwards?

If this design is so intelligent, why are my fingers so fragile?

And why were they put in a place that is so easy for me to smash?

Not really that intelligent if you ask me.

Omnipotentus hic null disegnator intelligentus est.

I made that up, but I figure a little Latin will at least keep the Catholics at bay.

Olympic Crisis!

2010-02-26T12:27:00.003-06:00

I'm only going to say this once.

Whoever decided that the Canadian Women's Hockey team should celebrate their gold medal victory with cigars, champagne, and beer on the ice should immediately be made team captain.

Seriously, are we so opposed to joy that we are going to ban gold medal winning athletes from celebrating their victories?

Maybe, yes, there is something somewhat less than tea parties and ascots about blue line boozing, but this is absurd.

We should change the name to the Immediately Opressive Committee.

If I ever win a gold medal, cigars and champagne are going to be the least of the worries.

If I can manage to be found conscious in the same country I'm going to request another medal.

Frankly, if I ever win a gold medal, I'm going to get a limousine, a bunch of friends, and a goat. We're going to dress up the goat in Chuck Taylors, sunglasses and a tuxedo and take it gambling. Once the goat is up a few Gs, we're going to all going to go back to the Olympic Village for photos with the fans. Cigars and champagne for everyone will be subsidized by the goat's winnings.

For real, people, it's the Olympics. Getting a little out of hand is the least we can allow those who are the very best in the world at what they do.

I sure hope Anette Norberg has packed some hooch for today's gold medal match.

Because nothing says party like Swedish curling.

Idiocy Alert!

2010-02-25T18:23:00.007-06:00

I've taken this quote from Dan Savage's column in today's Village Voice.

Nancy Elliott, a state representative in New Hampshire, wants to ban same-sex marriage in that state—where it’s been legal for less than three months—and here’s her reasoning: "We’re talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wiggling it around in excrement. And you have to think…would I allow that to be done to ME?"

I can only imagine what the same-sex couples of New Hampshire are thinking when they have to envision hetero sex. I'll bet that they wouldn't want that done to them.

And I'm willing to bet that all the lesbian couples are offended because, apparently, Rep. Elliott cannot even conceive of their existence. I wonder why two women don't qualify as a same-sex couple...

All excrement aside, I'd like to issue an official warning to the state of New Hampshire.

You are about to be overtaken by idiots.

Be careful, they may be coming in from the Maine side of things. They've already proven their idiocy in this matter.

Fixing America

2010-02-19T20:44:00.003-06:00

I'm not a politician and, frankly, I really don't know that much about how politics work.

But I know that I was born here and pay taxes and vote, so I figure that I am entitled to submit the following idea.

Congress should travel.

There are 52 weeks in the year.

There are 50 states.

And 1 District of Columbia.

And I'll give them 1 week of vacation a year.

Even that seems forgiving. I mean, the country is running every second of every day.

And they chose this path.

So, every week, Congress has to go to a different state and all the people in Congress have to travel around that state and meet people and figure out what they are like and what their concerns are.

And then they all get on a train and travel to the next state.

That way they will have lots of time to think and talk and see America.

This will allow every member to go to their home state and be in touch with their constituents and also learn about everybody else's constituencies.

You know...We the People...in order to form a more perfect union...

Well, Congress sure has been a bit underwhelming recently.

So I say we get them the hell out of Washington and send them all over the country instead.

They can vote on the train.

They'll have the internet and phones, so I don't see what the big problem is.

Obviously, I haven't worked out the details, but I think that this is a sound idea.

Notes on Westminster

2010-02-16T20:09:00.004-06:00

Clearly, you will all see this ex post facto, but the show results are here, with photo links. For video, you'll have to go elsewhere. Sorry, I don't know how to do simulcast yet.

Dwayne, that's a challenge.

I just started now, in the Working Group.

This is, of course, all based on my own two eyes. I'm not a AKC certified judge of dogs. But I've probably logged more hours at AKC events than most.

That Weimaraner is beautiful.
The view from the back of the Black Russian Terrier is a bit, let's say, ample. And his name was ridiculous. And the whole 'not for the first time dog owner' commentary was a bit Cold War, wasn't it?
That is a beautiful boxer. Especially in profile. I'm not sure that I don't think it's facial markings aren't a bit distracting from the geometry of its head.
It's true. The Doberman is beautiful. The coloration, especially is so velvety and rich.
Dogs of French origin are hilarious. Dogue de Bordeaux? Hilarious. PBGV? Hilarious.
Am I the only one who thinks that the Great Dane is a bit pigeon-toed? And perhaps a pound or two thin? Nice gait, though.
I'm not into the facial geometries of the Great Pyrenees. Too pinched around the eyes, and too trapezoidal of a muzzle.
Komondor are awesome. Anyone who doesn't agree is crazy. I can't possibly imagine what their undercarriage must be like filth and dander-wise.
The Mastiff, as Foucault would've seen it, is an initiator of discursive practice. If we're talking dogs, of course. They're all amazing.
The Neapolitan Mastiff is pretty wild. The skin distribution on that thing is akin to a Shar Pei, which makes me wonder the extent to which the Venetians, Sig. Polo particularly, can be blamed.
That Portuguese Water Dog was too spazzy. Leaning in the stack, shaking, and running diagonally.
Rottweiler. Shout out to Kingston.
I'm not really into white dogs, but I think the Samoyed might be the coolest of the bunch. Interesting how the olive-brown tones of the handler's shoes draws the eye to the ways in which a white coat actually contains sweeping color gradations. I wonder if she planned that.
Siberian Huskies are great because they remind us that so many breeds still have a little wolf in them.
I love the facial coloration on this Standard Schnauzer.
Tibetan Mastiffs have the most beautifully emotional faces. So many different states of mind simultaneously.
I just saw the cut. I'd go with the boxer. The Doberman is also great. That Akita would be in my top four. And the Kuvasz would round it out. In that order. There, I said it.
But I feel bad about the Tibetan Mastiff.
Yeah, I don't get the Portuguese Water Dog or the Malamute.

Congratulations to Aaron Bradshaw, winner of Junior Showmanship.

May We have the Terrier Group in the ring please...

Dandie Dinmont Terrier. That's what I'm talking about.
Am I the only one seeing a weird groom on this Airedale that makes it look like the line of its rib cage carries across its back leg?
That Am Staff doesn't really want to be touched, does she?
People think that they look weird, but Bedlington Terriers are quite beautiful if you stop expecting a round headed dog and look at its ovoid rectangularity instead. It's a geometric divergence from the norm, but quite elegant nonetheless.
If I were you, I wouldn't piss off a Border Terrier. You'll lose. Look at that little bastard. Pure killing machine. That's the thing with Terriers. Up close, you're lunch.
I don't really know the standard, but that Bull Terrier (Colored) looks like it has extra long front legs. And the Bull Terrier (White) needs to gain weight in its front legs. This makes me think that I really need to read the standard.
Holy Shit! That's Cathy. Pennywise Kennels, people. Dandie Dinmont Terriers. The best of the best. Don't even ask twice. 2004 AKC Breeder of the Year. She's the best.
For once in my life, I actually like the coloring on a Smooth Fox Terrier. That's a pretty damn nice dog.
This Wire Fox Terrier wouldn't be my 14th Best in Show winner. It wouldn't even be in my cut, so far.
The Glen of Imaal Terrier is really wild. Makes me think of how that's an Irish line of Terrier and not Scottish.
It's really too bad that Joe Garagiola isn't doing the color commentary anymore. He was amazing, and, for those of you that have seen Best in Show, the prototype. Fred Willard owes him a ton. Tamron Hall, bless her heart, just can't fill those shoes. If anyone knows anyone who works at USA, tell them I'll do it next year.
So far, I'm going with the Dandie, the Smooth Fox, and the Bedlington. I hope this judge doesn't do something corny and go with one of those breeds that always wins just because they always win. Not that I begrudge the dog the win, but Terrier judging can be a bit traditionalist for my tastes.
I sort of think that this Parson Russell is ok, but I really don't know the standard at all. Mainly because most of the ones you see running around aren't up to the AKC standard.
Shit, man. That Scottie is really pretty textbook. I can see why she's winning everything. Gonna be hard for anyone else to beat that. Whoever groomed that dog needs a little credit as well. Propers.
Speaking of white dogs, but not really all white, the Sealyham Terrier is pretty great.
The Skye Terrier is proof that judging a dog is a tactile experience. How the hell am I supposed to judge that dog's bone structure on TV?
Clearly, this judge and I have very different tastes in Terriers. Excepting that Smooth Fox and the Scottie, who will probably win this sucker. This is actually a sort of interesting dilemma. Dogs are judged according to individual breed standards as adopted by the AKC. However, in an ideal show, each dog would be a perfect manifestation of its breed. Thus, the dilemma of taste in relation to a preordained canon. Perhaps this interestingly problematized Greenberg's notions as discussed in 'Can Taste Be Objective?." I've never thought of it that way before.
If I were handling that Sealyham, I'd be pissed at the woman with the Westie for crowding me.

Best in Show

Turn the damn lights on. This is about evaluating dogs, not theatre.
After the first go around, the Brittany is my dark horse candidate, with the Scottie looking best, essentially even is the Doberman.
Every year this guy has a great poodle, but I'm just not into poodles at all.
I have absolutely no idea who I'd give this to. Every year it's impossible. I think I'd go with the Doberman, to be honest, but I'd feel really bad about not giving it to the Brittany, and the people who say I should give it to the Scottie have an indisputable argument.
I hope I'm not the only person that gives that French Bulldog a lot of credit. That's a beautiful dog.
Well, you can't argue that.

Umm...

2010-02-16T19:58:00.002-06:00

So, I'm sitting here watching the dog show and there was just an ad for Simponi.

When they read off all the side-effects and considerations, cancer was brought up. And there was quite a bit of focus on infection.

Umm...

Further Proof That There is a God

2010-02-15T20:15:00.003-06:00

Just when I thought the universe had screwed me again and left me out to dry with no more football...

Ladies and Gentlemen, the second greatest sporting event of the year is upon us...

Presently on CNBC , and tomorrow on USA, there is, for our viewing pleasure...

Drum roll please...

The 134th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Go ahead, try to act like I'm kidding.

By the way, that's a Dandie Dinmont Terrier. You want to root for that one.

An Open Letter to Dave Mustaine

2010-02-10T22:18:00.002-06:00

Dear Dave,

I underestimated you. You see, the last time we spent any time together, I was in high school.

High school people don't know what they're talking about. Maybe they do, but their teenage brains are so addled with confusion that they make arbitrary, impulsive, and absolutist decisions.

I decided that I didn't really like your band.

This was sort of your fault.

You're a terrible singer. Or, you were then. Now, I'm better able to appreciate what that sort of thing is about.

And, to make matters worse, I've always been a Metallica fan first. Having made this judgment under the influence of teenaging, I didn't really think much beyond the fact that they threw you out of the band and, like being an NFC East fan, you just have to pick one and hate the other.

Ask my wife about my opinions on the Giants.

Anyway, I chose Metallica. Really, I'd chosen Metallica and Pantera and Testament and Sepultura, so there wasn't any more room at the inn.

You can only pick four. Like suits of cards. Or evangelists. Or cardinal directions.

But I was hasty.

You are significantly better than I'd thought. You are, in fact, one hell of a writer of melodies. And your chord progressions are super interesting. More than most.

So, I just want to say I'm sorry.

And that I'll see you in March when you come here on the 20th anniversary tour.

I'll be the one up front eating crow.

XOXO,

Adrian

PS-I'm glad to hear that Ellefson's back in the band.

Cat Question, Episode 2

2010-02-10T22:16:00.002-06:00

Am I the only one with a cat that likes to rest his butt right on the computer mouse?

Confused Yogism

2010-02-08T23:09:00.001-06:00

Why does my sphere have to be sphere shaped?

I don't yet understand the nature of its bounding membrane.

Cat Question

2010-02-08T21:50:00.002-06:00

Is there anybody out there that has figured out what it is that makes cats so interested in looking at what's in the fridge?

Holy Shit!

2010-02-08T21:44:00.002-06:00

As of right now, over 1000 people have gone to this page.

That pretty well blows my mind.

Thanks for reading this craziness.

And please keep telling your friends.

And remember that I'm on the Facebook.

Just search "adrianduranblog" and you'll find me.

If I didn't set it up stupid.

And I think I'm on the Twitter.

If you're into smaller nuggets of idiocy.

I think it's "adrianduranblog" there, too.

But there's always that @ thing involved.

I haven't figured that out yet.

Anyway.

Thanks again.

I Did it Again

2010-01-29T19:18:00.002-06:00

So, I've made a film. Not necessarily a follow up to my show at the No-Exit Gallery, which I've discussed here previously, but a certain next thing.

I made it about a week ago. Last Saturday, January 23. In front of Dwayne and Gadsby's house. Dwayne and Morgan were there, so they're the only ones who have seen it. Sort of.

I made the film in my head. I screened it in my brain and described it to Dwayne and Morgan as immediately thereafter as possible.

We rode in the back of Matt's new pickup truck with Gadsby's chiminea alight. Dwayne and Morgan and I. So clearly, it was something of a collaborative process. In fact, Jill shot some of the footage from a car driving along side our truck, on our left.

We drove the car around town for a while, rather swiftly. There was much wind and the according sounds.

So, far, I am certain that the film has to do with the indigenous primitivism of behavior instilled in and subsequently relished by the American male.

And I can't help but think that it has to do with color, because of the black truck and the earthen tones of the chiminea and the color of the flames.

I believe that Jill's shooting of some footage has to do with the inversion of the usual masculine-feminine dialectic of technical expertise in the making of an artistic object, but, to be honest, I'm quite certain that there is much more to Jill's participation than just the easy stuff.

And, as per protocol, I'm still trying to come to some position on the material presence of the art object, here manifest through film as both medium and behavior, as required for the viewing experience.

I think the next step will be to have a retrospective.

Super Bowl Update #2

2010-01-29T19:01:00.003-06:00

As we begin the festivities with the Senior Bowl on Saturday and the Pro Bowl on Sunday, I think it is essential that we all consider one thing.

In his biography of Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari discusses the artist in unhesitatingly Messianic terms.

As the media further deepens its onslaught of football-related media, it is essential for us all to be careful to avoid doing the same.

Despite the individuo-mania of this weekend's exhibitions, this is a team game.

Discussing football players amidst Messianic implications does harm to the player, and it does harm to the team.

Let's leave poor Peyton alone from this point forward so that he can concentrate on the game. If he leads the Colts to victory, only then may we recommence the hyperbolic linguistic gymnastics.

But from now until someone is lifting the trophy, no more.

Super Bowl Update #1

2010-01-26T17:02:00.003-06:00

No matter what has happened or what the future holds, I think we all owe both of these men a huge thanks for making this season that much better. See you both in Canton.

Required Reading

2010-01-25T16:07:00.003-06:00

For those of you interested in morality, celebrity, or sports...here's a gem.

Selena Roberts is essential reading for those of us who want to worry about things beyond the lines...

And, SI, before you sue the bejesus out of me, be aware of the citation below. In my line of work, it's called research and membership in a scholarly community.

Selena Roberts. "Coming Clean: It's Complicated." Sports Illustrated. Volume 112, No. 3 (January 25, 2010): 68.

http://157.166.224.105/vault/article/magazine/MAG1165035/index.htm

INT. ROOM WITH A FIREPLACE—EVENING

Two men sit in cushioned chairs facing each other under soft lighting. MCGWIRE is a former ballplayer with a graying goatee and a dress shirt open at the collar. He looks smaller than in his playing days, like a grape gone straight to raisin. COSTAS is an ageless TV journalist wearing a serious tie. He has notes in hand but rarely looks at them. He knows this drill.

COSTAS (somewhat incredulous)

What you're sitting here telling me is that you could have done essentially what you did without ever touching performance-enhancing drugs.

MCGWIRE (voice shaking, bites lip)

That's why it's the most regrettable thing I've ever done in my life.

It was good theater, wasn't it? For 48 minutes on Jan. 11, Mark McGwire deluded himself in front of Bob Costas on the MLB Network, the climax to a one-day steroid confessional that began with a statement to the Associated Press and interviews with select major media outlets. Touch 'em all. Call it the Redemption Rollout scene in another baseball chick flick filled with tears, produced to cleanse McGwire's image just in time for his reentry into baseball as the Cardinals' hitting coach.

The director of this p.r. strategy: a sports communications firm run by Ari Fleischer, the spokesman during the early years of W's White House—an administration not well-versed in apologies. But Fleischer didn't require an education in contrition to guide McGwire; he merely had to stage a public display that would go straight to YouTube. Whether a player's I'm sorry spills out evasively (Jason Giambi) or clumsily (Alex Rodriguez), with earnestness (Andy Pettitte) or cluelessness (Manny Ramirez), he need only emit emotion and never admit to cheating. He must calibrate his words like an artful banker: concede mistakes but never confess to perpetrating a fraud built on exotic numbers that brought riches at the expense of clean players and the bill-paying public. Plenty of regret, zero refunds.

And yet as angry as folks are with Wall Street, no one is looking to claw back the loot gained by deceptive athletes. "Sports fans are the most forgiving consumers of any industry," says David Carter, executive director at USC's Sports Business Institute. "If any other business treated its customers the way athletes treat their fans, in a lot of cases they would not have anyone lining up." Outrage barely lasts an inning. After McGwire endures the excoriation period—taking his beatdown from bloggers—he will no doubt become the beneficiary of America's short attention span as everyone Googles the next foolish act by a sports figure. (Gilbert Arenas brandishes pistols in locker room! Lane Kiffin runs out on Vols!)

And why wouldn't elite athletes, already awash in perks from red-carpet passes to punch cards for strippers, feel entitled to unconditional forgiveness once they express sorrow as the cameras roll? (Think it wouldn't have worked for Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds? Just imagine if they had been less defiant.) Wrap up the comeback with a title—think Kobe or A-Rod lifting a championship trophy—and a disgraced star is once again a darling.

But true atonement isn't intertwined with a victory parade. It's a private reckoning—with your conscience and with those you've harmed. What makes McGwire's coming out now most disturbing is how self-serving it is: His confession was a career move. The redheaded slugger had never told his son, Matt, whom he hoisted at the plate after he wrapped his biceps around homer number 62 in September 1998. Had he used Matt as a prop throughout the phony joyride? He had never told Roger Maris's children, who had to grieve the loss of their father's single-season home run record with grace and dignity from the front row that same season. How could McGwire have put them through that? He had never told St. Louis manager Tony La Russa, whose smarty-pants don't quite fit the same after he depicted McGwire to be as pure as spring water all these years. How willfully ignorant does the manager look now?

Of course, if every ball the Cards hit looks as if it's hitched to a comet next season, the collateral damage of McGwire's lies will be largely forgotten. He'll be Big Mac again in a happy Hollywood ending. "There is no sacredness to [sports] anymore," says Charles E. Yesalis, a retired Penn State professor who has written books on PEDs. "The games and the players are seen as another form of entertainment. Look, I like Spielberg movies, and I know there are special effects, but all I want is the movie. I don't want to see how the special effects are made during it. It would wreck it."

To see the reality is to ruin the escapism in sports. So offenders of all kinds are routinely welcomed back to the land of make believe. A St. Louis Dispatch headline last Friday read, MCGWIRE GETS BACK TO WORK; RELIEVED AND "READY TO MOVE ON." I get the need for closure, and certainly there's a place for forgiveness. But only if it is earned through personal accountability and not merely bestowed as a welcome-back present. Shouldn't atonement require more than a staged television event in which the actor takes a deep breath, dabs his eyes and says, "Bless me, Bob Costas, for I have sinned"?

10 from the 00s

2010-01-23T11:41:00.003-06:00

Check out my Top Ten of the Decade list over at Art:21.

Also read Ben Street's Top Ten. You can't miss it. It's right above mine.

Review: Yinka Shonibare: Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play @ St. Louis Art Museum

2010-01-14T10:51:00.004-06:00

About two weeks ago, on the way to the Italics exhibition at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (closes Valentine's Day...review to come), we stopped by the St. Louis Art Museum to see the new Yinka Shonibare exhibition Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play (closes March 14).

Installed in their lower level period rooms, we are faced with the same old, same old from Shonibare, who is my nominee for the art world's most heralded one note band. At best, what we are faced with is a slightly clever variation on a theme. And when I say slightly, I mean marginally.

Shonibare has been celebrated, quite rightfully, as one of the more topically engaging artists of the 1990s, emerging from the cauldron of Goldsmith's in London with his own unique tangle of revealing, haunting, and at times absurdist post-colonial identity politics.

In the 1990s, such a brew was magically successful, drawing our attention to so many of those considerations we hadn't considered before and still need to consider more.

This deep into the new millennium, however, Shonibare's go-to methods are beginning to have the flavor of six month old tortilla chips. Frankly, the only marked novelty about these new works is in their poses, which already change from work to work, and their installation in the period rooms of the St. Louis Art Museum, which I guess is supposed to (and actually does, but in a rather frustrating and wandering way) perpetuate a reenactment of the original colonial exploration in search of culturally or fiscally valuable goods (by which we used to mean natural resources and here mean art).

The problem is that we already know the rest. We have for nearly two decades.

We already know Shonibare is the England-born child of Nigerian parents, himself a sort of walking embodiment of our current purported post-colonial and post-national existence.

We already know the batiks are a kind of Post-Pattern and Decoration signifier of the deceptive and forced importation of European garmentry (and culture) into African culture, and the subsequent absorption of said garments to the point of an inauthentic African authenticity.

We already know that the decapitation (non- or anti-capitation, perhaps) of the mannequins resists relational humanity. It is, after all, hard to relate to someone with no head.

We already know that this is, perhaps, also a kind of mantian retribution, in the name of all colonized peoples.

The disturbing reality of all of this is that Shonibare's art has been riding this wave for such a long time, with so little visible modulation or nuancing of what cud we've already been chewing.

And, at the risk of placing blame where it does not belong, the writers of the texts affiliated with the exhibition seem to be rather thrilled with regurgitating the same four or five catch phrases that have followed Shonibare throughout his career and have served as a kind of enabler to our post-colonial self-satisfaction.

You see, if we have an artist that fits the bill, and we support that artist, somehow our historical complicity in colonialism, or in its aftermath, is somehow alleviated. The jury is still out on this one. At least for me. Primarily because I don't quite understand how such an moral-intellectual jump can be made, if it can be made at all.

Which brings me to a rather peripheral concern. Peripheral to the art, at least. I'm confused as to the hows and whys of Yinka Shonibare MBE. I, myself, have never been afforded such an honor as being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire. I'm generally more of an Order of the Phoenix guy to begin with. Anyway...

While, realistically, I must recognize that this is an honorific title, one given to the culturally significant and the Britishly excellent, it still seems rather tricky given all of the post-colonialism we keep rehashing in regards to the work. I have never been an advocate of merging the artist and the work, or expecting that one is causal to the other by necessity. But, since we keep dredging up the spectres of colonialism--and I'll eat my hat if the work doesn't make that its primary concern--is there not a kind of historically problematic recolonialization happening here? Yes, Shonibare is a British citizen--born, raised, and educated--so the MBE is certainly appropriate and, more certainly, deserved for his contributions to British (and global) art.

But, in our post-colonial post-national world of millenial identity politricks, does this suffix not perpetuate the importance of recognition by a once dominant colonial hegemon, within the shadows of what is left of that same hegemon, which, of course, still is a hegemon, only of a different variety? Am I being fussy? Am I, instead, supposed to comfort myself with some kind of intellectual gymnastics wherein this is actually a kind of reappropriation of nomenclature, a subversion of the once uniformly British membership of the Order of the British Empire?

Order of the British Empire? (Natural) Order of the British Empire?

It all sits very oddly with me, to say nothing of the fact that I'm still rather bored by what looks like an artist piping us all out of Hamelin with the same batik-printed, headless tune.

Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play.

Maybe we shouldn't concern ourselves with play. Or let Mother and Father's sacrifice be in its service.

Back to work.

I miss the photographs. But I take comfort in knowing that the mannequins are sharing time with more of the flat stuff these days.

The 2010 LeRoys

2010-01-11T20:46:00.005-06:00

Attention everybody!

Since this year is my Dad's 70th birthday, I'm inaugurating a new tradition.

Don't worry. You haven't missed his birthday yet. You can still get him something.

I hereby announce The 2010 LeRoys.

Now, just because it's my Dad's birthday and he's got an award named after him doesn't mean he wants to be bothered. Sometimes quiet is what he's going for, so don't bug him unnecessarily. If he wants to talk, you'll know.

First things first, the rules...

The LeRoys are awarded when there are sufficient deservees.

The LeRoys may be awarded in any category.

The LeRoys at the present do not award material objects.

If you are the namesake of a LeRoy and do not wish to be so, please let The Management know and amends will be made.

The above does not apply to my Dad.

All speeches must be left in writing as a comment to this post. Please consider that children may be reading.

If you do not like sports, keep reading. There are non-sports categories.

And awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay we go...

The 2010 LeRoys...

Sports

Stupidest NFL Trade You Never Heard About: Chris Carr (from TEN to BAL)

Least Stupid NFL Trade You Did Hear About: Albert Haynesworth (from TEN to WAS)

Best Trade of the Year for Me: Zach Randolph (from LAC to MEM)

The I Told You So: Tony Romo and Mark Sanchez

Rookie of the Year: The Sanchize, Brian Cushing, Beanie Wells

Coach of the Year: Rex Ryan’s mouth

Offensive MVP: CJ2K

Defensive MVP: Darelle Revis tie with Charles Woodson

Excellence in Journalism: Rich Eisen and the staff of NFL Total Access

Miserability in Journalism: Tony Dungy and the NBC Saturday AFC Wild Card team (Hammond, Gibbs, Theismann)

Best Maintenance of an Immaculate Legacy: Cris Collinsworth

Book of the Year: Chad Ochocinco’s autobiography

Excellence in Fandom: Andre Nistico’s collection of Jets jerseys

Most Overreactive Fan Base: Memphis Tigers tie with Philadelphia Eagles

Most Sensible Ownership Decision: Da Bears, for keeping Lovie Smith

Facebooking

Best Photo: Evan Stark’s thumb drawing tie with Isabelle Lachat’s Medievalism

The Julie Henderson Award for Hilarious Posting: John Dowgin

Best Entertainment Posting: Jim Alan Cook

The Making Kids Seem Amusing Award: Julie Henderson tie with Nikki Green

The Making Us More Socially Aware Award: Rebeccah Sanders

International Hilarity: Ilaria Simeoni

Mishaelaneous

Best Album You May Have Forgotten About: The Singles Soundtrack

Best Movie Seen on Netflix: Coraline tie with Berlin: Symphony of a City

Best Movie Seen in the Theatre: GI Joe

Most Underwhelming Movie Seen on Netflix or in the Theatre: Inglorious Basterds

Opinion You Must Hear: Maureen Dowd

Best Ice Cream (awarded in perpetuity): Blue Bell Creamery

Best Band Hardly Anyone Likes: The Freecreditreport.com band

Best Airport Book: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction (written by David Michaels)

Paradigm Shift

2010-01-07T12:37:00.009-06:00

OK, this will gross some of you out. Vegetarians beware. Vegans don't even bother. Raw fooders, this won't even be in your lexicon.

I went to Hot Doug's in Chicago (corner of S. California and W. Roscoe) this past week.

It changed my life.

I used to think tubed meat was suspect at best. Always a gamble, rarely gourmet.

Holy Sweet Relish was I wrong.

We had a Chicago style dog which, for the uninitiated, involves a beef dog on a sesame seed bun with sliced tomatoes, diced onions, electric green relish, mustard, a sliver of pickle. It's the greatest indigenous twist on a national staple I can think of.

Then, we had two others. Get ready...

A venison and blueberry dog with blackberry sauce and goat cheese and...drum roll please...a duck and black truffle dog with foie gras.

Magic.

Frankly, I've only had this kind of transformative experience twice before in my life.

The first was Pizza al Volo in Venice. The second was Cozy Corner BBQ in Memphis.

I cannot stress enough how unbelievably superior each of these three eateries are.

I'm going to publish a book called "Three Things to Eat Before You Die."

Cancel that, I just told you. Go forth and engorge.

I Hereby Volunteer for Democracy

2010-01-05T22:40:00.003-06:00

Let it be known.

I am ready to take off my clothes for freedom.

All this hoopla about strip searching escapes me.

I'm not joking or making light of things. I'm being totally serious. I think this is a mostly reasonable safety measure, and one that might actually make life a little bit better. Maybe even a little bit safer.

Seriously. I don't see how this will impact my life in any particularly distasteful way.

For the following reasons:

1. Other people have already seen me naked. My parents saw me naked when I was born. The doctor did, too. And I don't even know his name. Or her. And I'm certain that nobody took me out to dinner and a movie before that moment of other people seeing me naked. I once mooned the entire state of Montana. In fact, I was housesitting once and the cat saw me naked. So I'm not afeared of being seen naked by people trying to save my life.

2. I don't have any body parts that people haven't already seen elsewhere. You're already on the internet. Most of you have seen a painting of a naked person. If you haven't, try it. You might learn something about art. Or anatomy.

3. I never rush through airports. I get there a full hour and a half early. That way I can go to the Hudson News, the loo (at least twice), eat at least one full meal, play a few games on my PSP, and needlessly walk past all the gates to fantasize about where else I might want to go. In fact, I recommend this to everyone. Especially you, the idiot who is in the line freaking out about being late. You wouldn't be freaking out if you got there on time. A few extra minutes in the line ain't gonna kill you.

4. It's important to air things out every once in a while. Consider the following. The house. The bedsheets. Your feet. The litter box. Art studios. The Bubonic plague. Frankly, I think a few extra minutes of ventilation at the airport might make things more pleasurable once I get inside of that big metal tube.

5. Airport screening is already too impersonal and adversarial. Nothing will familiarize us with the TSA people who are trying to protect us than a little bit of the ol' whatcha looking at.

So, Mr. Rove, Mr. Beck, and all those other presumably conservative, heterosexual, morally superior white males...

I'm ready to take off my clothes for you if it makes you feel safer.

And God Bless America.

Trifectas, Part 2

2010-01-04T23:36:00.003-06:00

So, I'm going to make a public case out of this, mainly because I have a forum, and I know that at least 12 of you are reading, plus my parents, which makes 14.

I'm trying to do that Joel Osteen routine of envisioning my ideas into being. I think it might be worth a try. Worst thing that could happen is that nothing happens.

See, I'm 2 for 2 on my New Year's resolutions.

2008 was "Streamline the BS."

2009 was "Shake off the haters."

2010 is "Positivation."

For all of you who don't speak New Jersey, Positivation is Positivity + Activation.

Here's hoping good things once again come in threes.

Oh, and by the way, I'm on the Facebook now. Search "adrianduranblog" and become a fan.

There'll be a BBQ. Don't forget the BBQ.

Happy New Year to you all. Bonne annee mon amis.

Point of Order

2010-01-04T22:59:00.002-06:00

Dear American Men,

I am one of you.

I understand how things are.

However, I would like to publicly shame certain members of this shared demographic.

Given that we are all members of what I would still like to consider civilization...

Flushing toilets after use is not optional.

In the course of a single afternoon, I happened upon two public toilets in which the previous user left a less than welcome present.

This is unacceptable.

Please flush.

Letting it mellow, even with the most eco-friendly intent, is not acceptable in public.

Thank you.

With regards,

Adrian

PS: This is a good habit in private as well.

PPS: The ladies will thank you for this as well.

Flippin' Irish

2010-01-03T20:44:00.003-06:00

So, it's the first week in January and I keep getting voicemails from friends, grad school roommates and all sorts of other jokers who like to remind me that Notre Dame didn't go to a bowl game this year.

This serves me right, because last year I did the same to a University of Michigan graduate friend of mine, turnabout being fair play and all.

But I'm a little more than a little annoyed by this. And, as an alumni of our dear university of our dear lady of the lake, I believe it is my God-given right to comment on this God-forsaken situation, especially because I have been watching such great games as the Idaho victory in the Humanitarian Bowl and the Arkansas victory in the Liberty Bowl. And because I am quite sure that Notre Dame, even in its most grotesque iteration might add some dignity and gravity to a landscape of bowls that includes such corporate flatulence as the Papajohns.com Bowl and the Meineke Car Care Bowl.

I mean, c'mon man. Let's think about this for a second. And let's quote ND Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick...

"The unique circumstances surrounding our program at the current time prevent us from making the commitment required to compete in a bowl game..."

"If the landscape had been different, we would have been thrilled to take part, and we certainly look forward to being part of the bowl system in the years to come..."

Jack, with all due respect, this stinks worse than the Eagles' tackling did this afternoon. And I mean stinky like baby diapers.

I'd like to put this in some perspective.

1. Some of these players were actively denied the opportunity to play in their last game ever because ND refused this bid. Last game ever. Ever. Final. Finito. End of their football career, which has been one of the primary themes of their lives since early childhood.

2. Some of these players may have been able to shine in front of NFL (and, gasp, UFL) scouts.

3. Some of these players may have made the play that might have helped their draft stock rise just a little bit higher. Or the play that would have stuck in their memories for the rest of their lives.

Yes, I'm a sentimentalist about college football. I believe it is a noble endeavor that promotes many of the ideals that I (and we) hold dear, that offers opportunities otherwise unavailable, that grows community and culture, and offers us all an escape from whatever mundane worries we have to endure for the other 21 hours of whichever day the game is played.

And I'm a fan that loves the drama, the hooting and hollering, the adrenaline, the epic thrill of victory and agony of defeat.

And I got the short end of it this year. We all did.

Even if the Irish went to the Scott Tissue.com Merde Bowl, we would've had the opportunity. The chance.

And that's what this is about. The elusive possibility of greatness and immortality. The opportunity. The chance.

And Notre Dame, the one place that carries its history, and the whole history of college football with it onto the field with every snap, blew it.

Worse than Michigan, USC, Navy, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, and Stanford combined.

So much for waking up the echoes.

Thank God for next year.

A Blooming Good Charity

2009-12-26T12:11:00.003-06:00

Happy Kwaanza everyone.

Happy Boxing Day Commonwealthers.

Happy St. Stephen's Day Heads.

I just read about something yesterday that I feel compelled to unvertise to everyone.

Jeremy Bloom, Olympic skier, ex-Philadelphia Eagle, ex-Pittsburgh Steeler, ex-Abercrombie model, has a charity that he started in 2008. I know about this only because of the great Point After column Selena Roberts wrote in this week's Sports Illustrated.

It's called Jeremy Bloom's Wish of a Lifetime.

The purpose of this charity is to fulfill the dreams of low-income seniors, sort of like Make-a-Wish for grandmas and grandpas.

I have to say, I think this one is particularly special. One of the episodes that Roberts cites is a woman named Nancy Tarpein, who Bloom helped travel to see her daughter, who had been diagnosed with cancer. They hadn't seen each other in five years.

This is exactly the kind of thing that this holiday season is supposed to be about. When I look at my bills and statements next cycle, I'm going to kick myself in the ass for not making Bloom's charity one of my impulse spends.

Spread the word.