Tom Sachs: Space Program Mars

Tom Sachs' Space Program Mars at the Park Avenue Armory up on 67th street definitely gets an A for effort. It's reasonably interesting...lotsa detail and humor, including integrated whiskey dispensers (though you weren't allowed to touch anything, unfortunately).

Not pot...

...or at least I don't think so.

Missile Kit

I didn't know what this was. There's an elaborate program so if I feel up to it I'll go try to find out.

See the screen?

...that's what that camera is seeing. Actually, all of these images were also visible at the "Mission Control".

Mission Control

That's the left member of a pair of bigass horn speakers that were playing British weenie-rock.

Bludgeoning Spongebob

No, I haven't yet bludgeoned Spongebob, though last night I got mad enough at him (already!) for the wife to get mad at me. Of course, this came after a long evening of being stared at, peppered with pointless unending questions, and having various phrases in Western languages launched at me. I asked him if I were Chinese would he be peppering me with phrases in Spanish, German and French. His response was basically just a big amused surprise-look on his face.

After being dressed down by the wife a bit, I drifted off to sleep thinking about what it would be like to bludgeon a mime to death with a hammer: As I swung the hammer again and again, I imagined the mime refusing to leave the mime character but instead responding back with wide mime-eyes and exaggerated mimed motions of being hit, physical pain & etc...This, of course, would fuel the rage even more, causing the hammer to come down again and again as candy-apple-colored mime blood started flowing from his ears.

And then, of course, on the edge of sleep I imagined myself bludgeoning Spongebob and, instead of reacting with the usual human expressions of shock and horror and just getting-the-hell-outta-there, Spongebob would remain perfectly in character, peppering me with inane comments and questions that would cause the hammer to fall harder and harder...

Spongebob: Why are you hitting me with hammer?

Me: Because I didn't have a bat!

Spongebob: A bat? OW! You mean like a bird?

Me: No, a damned baseball bat dammit!

Spongebob: You mean a cricket bat?

Me: Spongebob I'm hitting you with a goddam hammer!

Spongebob: OW! But WHY are you hitting me with a hammer?

Me: Como se llamas!

Spongebob: What? Yaaah!

Me: I'm speakin spanish like you been speaking to me, now answer the question!

Spongebob: But I don't speak Spanish!

Me: Neither do I!

Spongebob: How can I answer the question if I don't speak Spanish! Comodeyiamas!

Me: WHAT?

Spongebob: Comodeyiamas! Bon jour! OW! OW! I'm bleeding!

Me: That's your blood there, Spongebob, what do you think of that!

Spongebob: Scary! Yah!

Me: So why are you just standing there while I beat you to death with this hammer? How come you aren't trying to avoid it or run away?

Spongebob: I can't run away! You're hitting me with hammer!

Me: How come you don't even try to block the hammer from hitting your head?

Spongebob: You will get angry if I block the hammer!

Me: I'm already angry and I'm beating you to death with a hammer! Like THIS! And THIS!

(And so on.)

Spongebob Prelude

After successfully deflecting Spongebob to an apartment in Flushing for the last week or two, the winds of fate have brought him here today. Of course, the first words he spoke to me were, Bon Jour, a greeting he never gives Chinese people. And now, the sound of his running feet: Spongebob doesn't really walk but runs, even short distances (I mean, distances such as from the dining room to the kitchen).

Just now he brought me a plastic jug of Alkaseltzer and asked me, "This is drugs, and not for eating." I first of all pointed out that you might call it a drug (as opposed to drugs), but that yes: It was for eating when you had a stomach problem.

Spongebob also asked me why I was in here, the computer room. I told him, "Because it would be hard to see the computer from the dining room." Thinking about that he said, "Oh! You mean the wireless connection is not so good!" To which I replied, "No, if I leave this room I can't physically see my computer from another room."

This is just the beginning, unfortunately.

Urban Woodstock?

No, just Central park on a sunny Sunday.

Muhammad Ali and Malcom X

Quite a photo...

Yes, that's Malcolm X snapping a photo of Cassius Clay or, as he was to become known, Muhammad Ali.

Willie-B

Le Petit Sau

Check out the handles on those beer-pumps: Yeah, butcher knives and whatnot. I can't believe someone hasn't already lost a couple of fingers absentmindedly reaching for a tap.

A decent place, but I won't be back too often except to bring perhaps out-of-towners who want that hipster experience. It's basically a giant cafeteria: You stand in line and order your meats by the pound, which they plop on a big tray that you take over to the communal seating benches. The meat is good, but it's not necessarily hot. But the place is crammed to the rafters with hipsters and whatnot.

Zimerman and Florida

We need to face the possibility that Zimmerman was in "the right" legally in shooting Treyvon Martin.

What?

Yeah, in Florida the stand-your-ground law makes it in effect legal to shoot young black males.

We need to bomb Florida. Not because of anything they have done to us. Not because of anything they might in the future do to us. But simply because it is such a right-wing cesspool of a state. Between right-to-work and cheap housing that gets blown down by a hurricane every couple of years (necessitating yet more federal help), along with the throwing of an election or two to the "Butcher of Baghdad, Florida is a stinking liability we simply can't afford. And worse than that, it's just such a stupid hunk of shit of a state that bombing it is the only logical response, like smashing a silverfish.

Sorry to beat around the bush.

Actually, while I'm on the subject, isn't it becoming clear that there are a whole batch of poor, stupid, union-hating states that have just such different values that it really isn't worth continuing on with them as one country? Isn't it about time we thought about going our own separate ways? The Carolinas, the Virginias, Georgia, Florida, Kansas, Arkansas and Tennessee and texas can be the "United States of America" while the remaining states can be the "Fag Loving Socialist Union" or whatever they want to call us. But a two-country solution is becoming more and more obvious as time goes on.

But is it art?

Apparently so.

Navigating Crapplebees

Crapplebees, like many American food chains, thrives on sheer quantity: Americans in many parts have never actually encountered food with flavor. As a result, chain restaurants like Crapplebees work the quantity angle and, in doing so, betray the fact that their food has little or no actual flavor. Look for these signals in their menus:

Piled High. It mostly boils down to this: A pile of food, and the bigger the pile the better. Menus will tout that their "Rueben sandwich is piled high...". This is basically a signal sent directly to your rat-brain to shut down all flavor processing and to focus on the sheer large quantity. Me, I don't like my food in a pile. Dobermans on leashes leave piles behind, but you don't see me eating them.

Smothered. This is basically a joke from the head restaurant chain "chefs" that they believe their food is disgusting and that this dish should be taken out back and smothered, like Jack Nicholson smothering that poor lobotomized inmate with a pillow in One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest.

Stuffed. Think, force-fed. Imagine a funnel stuffed into your throat and food being pushed down into the funnel and into your rapidly expanding size 50 stomach. Sure, in the food description ("our porkchops are stuffed with chunks of caramel and hotdog pieces") is ostensibly about one ingredient stuffed inside another, but it's not like they think you believe this would be a particularly suitable or satisfying flavor combination. No. Once again, this about food quantity, not quality, and ensuring that you are stuffed to the point of bulimia.

Drenched. This is when one one food ingredient is solid and the other is in a liquid phase. Once again, a key signifier that the main ingredient is by itself inedible but, no worry, you won't be able to taste it because it's 'drenched' in another ingredient.

Moondog!

Not a lot of people in the WONY (World Outside New York, believe me I know it exists because I've been there) know about MOONDOG.

Moondog was a homeless guy who lived around 6th Avenue by Carnegie Hall. No wait, he apparently wasn't actually homeless, though most people who know about Moondog didn't know that (and it's conceivable that he was actually homeless for long stretches). And he wasn't just some guy, he was a minimalist composer who arrived in NYC from some other part of the US in about 1956, and lived there until the mid 70s, when he moved to Germany. Toscanini, Charlie Parker and other legendary greats were fans of Moondog, who made his own instruments and dressed kind of like a psychedelic viking:

There he is. I think that's Carnegie back there. Moondog made his own clothes, too, which must have been somewhat difficult given that he was blind, and had been blind since his teen years due to some accident.

Picadilly records out in the UK has apparently rounded up a bunch of the Moondog recordings and you can check out some of his pieces (such as Tugboat Tocatta, which features a real tugboat) here. Moondog's pieces use, yes, regular instruments as well as instruments he invented, such as the Trimba:

as well as the bleats of animals, construction equipment and so on. And yet, it's for the most part remarkably pleasant and even at times quite modern-sounding (his percussion could often sound like modern beatboxes).

In my memory I don't remember having seen Moondog myself, unfortunately. Though I will ask the older NYC musicians if they have Moondog stories to relate.

OK. My father said that "everybody" (meaning all the musicians) would often go say hello to Moondog "between shows" (which usually meant Wednesdays or Saturdays, between the matinee and evening shows), and just hang around with Moondog shootin' the breeze and catchin' up on stuff. My father used to talk to Moondog pretty frequently (he just informed me), though he had no interesting stories to relate. He did say that Moondog tended to hang around a little downtown of Carnegie, say around 52nd street.

Hey...here's a "video" of Moondog's theme
 

Space shuttle!

I just saw it! Yeah! I was so disappointed when I missed it flying around the other day. But we were driving into JFK went I pointed at the enormous hanger and said, "That's a 747 in there right now". But as we passed, the tail of the 747 featured no logo I had seen before but instead sported that Retro-futuristic NASA sign.
And then, of course, the butt of the Space shuttle came into view attached to the back of the 747.
I'm going to try to catch a photo on the way out but that will require another lap around the airport so let's see.

The Return of Spongebob

My heart just sank. The wife just informed me that SpongeBob will be back this coming Monday. Of course, I knew he was going to be coming back at some point, but I didn't know it was quite so soon and I thought that, actually, he'd be staying at my wife's sister's house. But the wife's sister's husband (who is Chinese) can't stand him and has barred from the house. So even in Chinese Spongebob is incredibly annoying.

You, oh reader, may figure you have hit the veritable blog jackpot but consider this: What if I can't take it? What if I can't resist a sudden urge to push Spongebob off the Brooklyn Bridge, say? Who, then, will amuse you and befuddle all of your accepted notions as I have done? No one, that's who. All because I grew so incredibly annoyed with Spongebob that I momentarily lost control of my basic primal instinct (ie, to make it stop).

I still plan on throwing SpongeBob bodily into an Iggy Pop mosh pit if at all possible. Or maybe I'll slip Spongebob some acid and then dance around in an African mask or something. Who knows? I'm sure I'll maximize my end of the fun by almost any means necessary.

Morning Ride

CloneSprout 2012

Due to the fact that I'm simply too lazy or (as I'd frame it) overworked to put this post together, well, I've been too lazy to put this post together. But it can't wait any longer!

There's an important phenomenon in popular culture that I have been aware of for many years but that I have not shared. That's the phenomenon of an actor "sprouting" a "clone". Here's the most recent example. Actually, my Brothers started the conversation around this particular example of CloneSprout by pointing out that this guy:

Was not the same as this guy:

I didn't believe them at first. In fact, I'm not 100% convinced I do. But after a detailed examination of the photographic evidence, I have to conclude that these are not the same people.

If confirmed, this is a recent example of the CloneSprout phenomenon.

It works like this: A clone sprouts when there's not enough actor to meet the demand. In other words, some cigar-chomping studio exec says, "Get me that guy from the Social Network NOW" and the exec's flunkies go rushing to make a deal with the "Social Network Guy". After they fail (either due to budgetary constraints or simply scheduling issues) they grab some other up-and-coming actor that looks kind of like the 'real' Social Network Guy and then promptly inform said cigar-chomping studio exec, "We got him". Thus a clone is sprouted: He's "the other one" or, more simply, "the clone".

Another example? Consider Single White Female:

and...

Interestingly enough, these are not the same people. One is called "Bridget Fonda" and one is called "Jennifer Jason Leigh". They are "clones" though, of course, not literal genetic clones. They are Hollywood clones and exist (as an interchangeable pair) because the demand for their "type" can't be fulfilled by a single actor.

Terminology in this case is at sometimes murky: Is that the real one or is that the clone?, is usually meaningless if not downright dilettantish. Deciding which is which is splitting hairs.

There are plenty of other clonal pairs but I leave it as an exercise for you, the reader, to list some of the more obvious ones.

Earth, Wind and Fire (Shining Star) & Macy Gray

I liked this song as an adolescent but would have completely forgotten it had it not come on the radio in the early 00s while I was driving into downtown Baltimore.

If it hits you in the right time or place it will demolish you. If not, it'll seem like nice-ish disco music. Hopefully, you'll experience the former.

Oh, fast forward 30 years later and here's another R&B song that is ineluctable, almost ruthless. Turn it up and don't be afraid to let it kick your ass:

Sri Pra Phai

This is the reigning champion Thai place in NYC these days, out on the edges of Jackson Height. It's where Thai working folks go to get a solid and inexpensive meal like what they'd eat back home. And this, mere blocks from Kebab King, to which Pakistanis will haj from even other states to purchase food that rivals Pakistan itself for quality and flavor.

Deep Freize

The Freize art "show" is in New York this weekend, at Randall's Island. Randall's Island is a big weird Island between the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan over which the Triboro Bridge passes and bifurcates:

View Larger Map
(Randall's Island has an odd assemblage of institutions on it, including a golf driving range and batting cages, baseball fields and even a state institution for the criminally insane.)
Long time Magic Lantern readers will know that, back during the "London Years", I forced myself to go, repeatedly, to the Freize which was stationed in Regents Park, the park literally across the street from my flat.
I always hated it.
Well, hatred is such a strong word. But the vast majority of the art was not beautiful or even interesting but, instead, a sea of desire of the countless artists wanting to find their way into greater artworld acceptance. Some pieces attempted to move art in odd little ways away from what has been done before but, to my mind, much of the art in this category was ugly and banal.
Nevertheless, a perusal of some of the images I brought back will indicate that there were plenty of interesting things to see even if the density of such things was small. So I was kind of tempted to go, particularly seeing how this is the inaugural year here in New York. EXCEPT, between the high admissions fee (of $40!) and the high catalog cost ($30), we'd be looking at a cost of $70 just to attend and get the interesting catalog. Too much, I say, though I guess there are scenarios under which I might be compelled to go.

Actual Conversation...

...with Out-Of-Towners, prior to the Yanks game Monday night.

OOTs: So what are the boroughs of New York City? Lemmee see...there's the Bronx (which we're in now), Manhattan, Brooklyn....what else?

Me: Queens.

OOTs: Yeah, Queens. Isn't there one more?

Me: Yeah. And that's the right borough to forget: Staten Island.

OOTs: Yeah, Staten Island. And Manhattan's an Island, right?

Me: Actually, the only Borough that isn't an island or isn't on an island is the Bronx.

OOTs: And what's to the...east of Manhattan? What's the border?

Me: The east river.

OOTs: And what's to the west?

Me: Oh there's nothing out there. It's a wasteland.

OOTs: But that's on the other side of the Hudson, right? There has to be something out there.

Me: Oh, you know, indiscriminate blobs: Malls, houses, trees...you know. That kind of stuff.

OOTs: Yeah, but what do they call it? You have to call it something.

Me: I believe they call it "New Jersey".

Super Spies from Outer Space

Above, hopefully, will be the full shebang. One day, mark my words, folks will take notice of this record and realize that something absolutely, confoundingly out of left field came down and kicked all sorts of ass. Do you dare to doubt this? Start with Evil Mysterions, where you hear the backstory...pay special attention at 2 minutes in and then blast the volume: That's Sean and Lex trading flaming bebop licks. Then try our radio-friendly hit: Barbacoa, Feynman in Vegas (which I wrote the lyrics to). Move on from there to hear yours truly 'rap' on the near-futuristic ultra-noirish My Girlfriend. Long time blog readers will remember my travels to Paris and therefore be only mildly surprised to hear me talk about it (in fictional form) on Mirror in the Rain. At this point you will be stunned but now go to What An End, which is great on many levels. Gettin' the picture yet? It's really a great record and we're proud of it.