All The Little Live Things

2008-03-12T01:03:00.000-07:00

ALL THE LITTLE LIVE THINGS
May 2005 - March 2008

Thanks, folks. It's been invaluable.
But over the last year I've grown more and more tired of the sound of my own voice.
And besides, the garden is beckoning. It's springtime isn't it?

I'm going to go outside for a bit.

For the regulars.

2008-03-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

My pal Jennifer McMackon is showing her new eight channel video project "Mansions" at Harbour Front Centre in Toronto this friday evening. I can't make it because I live 9,452 kilometers away, but if you live in Toronto you have no excuse.

2008-03-04T09:38:00.001-08:00

Hello garden, so long produce section.

2008-03-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

Two Hurt in View Towers Fire...

Fighting fires in View Towers, the 325-suite building on the corner of Quadra and View streets, presents unique challenges, said Matthews.

"There's been a couple of incidents over the years," he said. "It's a large building and it's laid out a little differently than we are used to. There's a high occupancy rate and the population tends to be a bit transient. Access is a bit of a problem."

2008-03-02T00:24:00.000-08:00

Everybody's asking me:
Where is Mary?
I don't see her at the theater
Or the parties

That's right
Because she's carving bamboo
Far from the artistic milieu
Never thought she'd live without
Allegiance to a life of art

O! My mother! Russian Ballerina!
You were a swan but now you're swimming in the caribbean
O! My mother! Russian Ballerina!
Nobody knows how you can live without the love of your life

2008-02-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

Great moment from Tom Dicillo's criminally underrated ode to the frustrations of independent filmmaking, Living in Oblivion.
The film is supposedly based on Dicillo's experiences making his first feature, Johnny Suede, which starred a very young and very difficult Brad Pitt (Oblivion's obnoxious lead Chad Palomino (James Legros) gives us a good hint of what that must have been like.)
See that look of shock and disbelief on Buscemi's face in the top link around 1:02, the one that gradually fades into a grimace of despair by 1:20? That look, I think, encapsulates Dicillo's reaction to feature-length filmmaking.

2008-02-27T00:36:00.000-08:00

Rackstraw Downes, Circumambulation Clockwise Of The Six Sided Bull Barn, Marfa, TX, (Six Part Painting) 2007.

"When you look at old art to learn about its language, you imbibe a taste for its imagery too, albeit unconsciously. You end up not painting the world you actually live in. People forget that in Constable’s paintings, the canals, the locks, the workman’s cottages are the equivalents for their time of our super-highways, clover-leafs, and public housing. The great nationwide system of canals was being built while Constable was painting—it was the latest thing in transportation. Now it’s about the end of the line in sentimentality."

"...I can’t paint a landscape without some notion of man being in there. Anyway, it’s impossible. When Ansel Adams went into Yosemite to find a place where there was no manmade structure at all, he was there with his camera! So the idea doesn’t work. Say you get up in the morning and you want to go on a hike in the mountains, when you are in the mountains, you say, "Oh look at that power line, it’s ruining the view." That doesn’t work for me, because when you get up in the morning, you take your electric shaver and shave with the electric power from that power line. Come on! Acknowledge it. That’s all I’m saying— acknowledge what we are doing, the kind of lives we really lead. That’s why I have these sub-stations. I’m very interested in the appearance of these sub-stations; they’re fascinating. But I’m also interested in the fact that this is the source of energy for most people; this is the way energy is being supplied to your house. The lights, the refrigerator, so much of your life, the tape recorder you’re recording on. So to deny it, to paint a landscape without electricity, is a little strange in a way. And I say I like to make friends with these things and find out what they’re about and how dirty really are they, and the fact that right next to the huge power plant there’s a bunch of egrets feeding in the water. There’s a kind of accommodation constantly being made between man and nature: nature, to me, is anything we didn’t make. But in another sense, nature includes those things we did make too—they’re all subject to the laws of nature."

Two great interviews with Downes here and here. The audio one is a treat. Downes is loud, boisterous and completely irrepressible - dorky even. He also talks about a mile a minute, exactly the opposite of what you would imagine from looking at the work.

2008-02-23T18:19:00.000-08:00

Neil Young - For the Turnstiles, Roll Another Number, Live 1980-something.
courtesy Tom Tomorrow.

Tom says:

"That line at the very start, “Don’t relax too much, time’s going by, you know,” reminds me of a show I saw around this same time. I was visiting Boston at some point in the late eighties or very early nineties and managed to snag the very last ticket to an acoustic show he did in some little rundown theatre (a spring sticking up out of my chair ripped a hole in the ass of my jeans that night). But it was a great seat in the front row of the balcony, practically hanging right over the stage. Neil was trying out some new work and was getting a little impatient, as he tends to, with the audience calling out requests for old songs. At some point I remember him looking out and saying something like, “All right, all right, but when you walk out those doors it’s still going to be 1990,” or whatever year it was. Might have even been this same show, who knows."

2008-02-22T10:56:00.000-08:00

Apart From That
Randy Walker & Jennifer Shainin
2006

"It begins at a party, where the five principals are introduced in turn. They appear only vaguely familiar with each other, loosely linked by the neighborhood they inhabit. Some are of different ethnic types-a Native American road-striper, a Vietnamese banker and his adopted son-and in fact, one of the film's more satisfying qualities is its matter-of-fact portrait of a multicultural America. Yet far from unifying the narrative, this incident proves a departure point, with each of the plotlines subsequently unravelling like a ball of twine. We follow each character over the course of the subsequent 24 hours, and in the process, gain a sense of the complexity and contradictions of their everyday lives. At which point the film doesn't end, so much as merely stop. As befits something so apparently anti-narrative, the film displays a cumulative rather than linear power: a depth of feeling that comes from close observation and patient attention. "Evesdroppings," as the filmmakers put it."

-Shane Danielsen, Edinburgh International Film Festival.

To that I would add the following:

A cinematographic style that successfully balances formal, measured shots like this one (which bears a strong resemblance to a panoramic photograph by Scott Mcfarland or a video projection by Mark Lewis) with more kinetic, off-kilter scenes that reminded me of moving William Eggleston pictures, complete with saturated colour and subjective focus pulling.

An attention to the specific vernacular of Cascadia, that vague region encompassing everything from southern British Columbia to Northern California (the film is set somewhere in the vicinity of Munro, WA. by my guess.) The photographs of Shawn Records, similar in tone and content to the film, document this same region.

An assortment of wonderfully present actors, especially Alice Ellingson and Tony K. (Ties Me Up) Cladoosby (above), that manage to inhabit their difficult roles with grace and spontaneity. Cladoosby, in particular, is a sight for sore eyes; managing to make Leo (who could have been yet another Native American cipher, all message, no substance) funny, direct and utterly individual. Have a look at his 'actor's resume.' Nothing up the sleeve, as they say.

A consistently alienating, disconnected emotional tone to the proceedings, that gives way in the last fifteen minutes to a series of extremely subtle moments of spontaneous warmth and connection. Not a happy ending so much as a refusal to give in to despair.

2008-02-22T09:49:00.001-08:00

100 Views - Addendum 01
2008

2008-02-21T21:17:00.000-08:00

"I like to think of myself as a person who can make a good judgment call on Music... This guy's voice SUCKS!!! COMPLETELY SUCKS!!! sounds to me like a wanna be Joe Cocker... but thats just my opinion..."

2008-02-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

Some Uncommon Places photographs that weren't in the travelling exhibition or the Aperture monograph.

2008-02-19T10:07:00.001-08:00

Chris Engman, The Empty House, 2006

Courtesy, via, by way of...

2008-02-18T19:47:00.000-08:00

Intermission

End of the Show

2008-02-16T22:36:00.001-08:00

Taping a Window
2008

2008-02-16T12:20:00.000-08:00

"WELCOME. WE'RE GLAD YOU'RE HERE BECAUSE, TODAY, THIS IS YOUR GALLERY."

Reception: 6:00pm

Dinner & Program: 6:30pm

Tickets:
$500 Individual
$750 per Couple
$5000 Table of 10

An idea:

Leave the pots, pans, drums, didgeridoos, effigies, masks, costumes, crystal balls, fire-sticks, Free-Mumia posters, and 1920's union chants at home and come as you are.

2008-02-15T01:28:00.000-08:00

The little known film adaptation of Ken Kesey's "Sometimes A Great Notion" - shown to me by my father when I was about 13 and lodged painfully in my memory ever since because of a single scene, played to devastating effect by Richard Jaeckel and Paul Newman.

2008-02-10T23:42:00.000-08:00

So long Roy Scheider, regular guest on ATLLT.

One for the road.

2008-02-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

"Dead Man is a strange, slow, unrewarding movie that provides us with more time to think about its meaning than with meaning. The black-and-white photography by Robby Muller is a series of monochromes in which the brave new land of the West already betrays a certain loneliness. Farmer brings to the Indian a sweetness and a curious contemporary air (he talks like a New Age guru), and Johnny Depp is sad and lost as the opposite of Nobody - which is, I fear, Everyman. A mood might have developed here, had it not been for the unfortunate score by Neil Young, which for the film's final 30 minutes sounds like nothing so much as a man repeatedly dropping his guitar"

-the normally level-headed Roger Ebert weighs in on one of my favorite soundtracks of all time.

2008-02-04T18:10:00.001-08:00

for James Affinito esquire, on the occasion of his olfactory renaissance.

2008-02-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

Alison Yip, Two Bathers, 2007
collage on paper, 13 x 13 inches

2008-02-02T11:41:00.000-08:00

...and while we're on the subject.

What if Spielberg did to Jaws what Lucas did to Star Wars?

2008-02-02T11:31:00.000-08:00

Mr. Jamie Tolagson,

After a quick review of Jaws last night I was inspired to take to the internet. As I know you are a man who enjoys leaping Great Whites as much as myself I would like to offer up the attached pictures for your comment, found through this fascinating article.

I particularly enjoy the file 'shark08.jpg' as it brilliantly synthesizes one's fear of flying and one's fear of sharks into a remarkable Fear of Flying Sharks.

Sweet dreams,

Courtney Moore

2008-02-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

the powers that be
that force us to live like we do
bring me to my knees
when I see what they done to you

2008-01-29T23:12:00.001-08:00

Kelly Wood

Monica Grzymala

Curated by Jessie Caryl
18 January – 16 February, 2008

Catriona Jeffries Gallery
274 East 1st Avenue
Vancouver, British Columbia
V5T 1A6 Canada

*Entrance at back lane*

2008-01-25T10:46:00.001-08:00

Rodney Graham, “The Gifted Amateur, Nov. 10th, 1962” (2007)

Rodney, who is the gifted amateur?

He’s a fictional character: a professional in the midst of a midlife crisis who has just discovered art. He saw a 1962 Morris Louis exhibition at the Andre Emmerich Gallery and decided, “I’m going to give this a shot. Any idiot could do it.” At first, I was going to call him "the aficionado."

Tell me about the gifted amateur’s living room.

It’s a bit of a fantasy of males my age: The guy has a kind of Playboy Mansion bachelor pad. I looked at a lot of interiors in Architectural Digest. I wanted it to look like an upper-middle-class, West Vancouver adaptation of Richard Neutra-like architecture—a house built into the mountainside. And I wanted it to look like a decorator did it all. There’s no trace in the decor of any prior interest in art. The interest is a sudden explosion; there are art books piled up all over the place.

2008-01-22T21:04:00.001-08:00

2008-01-21T20:46:00.000-08:00

Fischli & Weiss's The Way Things Go shambles it's way onto youtube, here and here.

2008-01-20T19:42:00.001-08:00

Hundreds of stunning large-format photographs of the american war effort in WWII, at the Library of Congress Flickr site. Click to enlarge.

2008-01-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

"Local Trees" and other things, by Pete Culley.

2008-01-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

No Regrets

Going Rural, one of my favorite blogs, calls it quits.

2008-01-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

More Radically Still

"Art video still has a funny reputation, left over from the 1960s, of being a serious medium, made for function rather than pleasure, as opposed to film. Yet "I-Be Area" was pleasure all the way. It was non-stop visual razzle dazzle. It drew on every cheap-thrill trick in the digital graphics playbook.
More radically, it was the length of a feature film. More radically still, it told a story, one with dozens of characters and multiple subplots, which is what entertainment, not art, is supposed to do, if you assume there's a hard and fast difference between the two."

-Holland Cotter, "Video Art Thinks Big: That's Showbiz," New York Times.

I-Be-Area doesn't hit any of my 'pleasure' buttons (not from the excerpt available on the Times website anyway.) Stimulation, sure. Pleasure, no. Nothing wrong with that, but there is a difference.
Also not too sure about the idea of 'function' and 'pleasure' being mutually exclusive (Fischli & Weiss, Kevin Schmidt and Rodney Graham would definitely call foul.)
But the contention that there is something 'radical' in the making and showing of feature-length films with 'characters and sub-plots' is just plain loopy, and a sure sign that the art market is heading for a hyper-implosion of biblical proportions. The last time this brand of pseudo-naive, ahistorical thinking descended on the art world, things didn't end well.
Curators and artists have been screening films in art galleries for a long time without deluding themselves into thinking that the context of the screening had altered the medium itself. You don't have to be a confirmed 'Greenburgian' to grasp the common sense of this. I suspect the appeal of the current feature-length-film format lies in it's usefulness as an escape hatch from the discipline required to work in either 'art' or 'film.' If it doesn't work as art one can always claim film, and if doesn't work as film, well then, art. Either way the artist wins, the critique is deflected, and the work remains safely 'off-limits.' That's not radical, it's cowardly.

Roy Arden's Supernatural and Juggernaut are both included in his current retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery. I'd recommend them to anyone wondering about the difference between art and entertainment.

"I am not that interested in making narrative, or stories; I prefer short scenes or vignettes. I like to think of the videos as "appearances." I am very wary of video and film because I think art today is in danger of becoming entertainment. Art, under capitalism, is always being drawn toward the entertainment industry. I try to use video as a counter to entertainment, an anti-entertainment."

-Roy Arden

2008-01-05T23:52:00.001-08:00

Adam Harrison, An Artist Painting With The Aid Of An Overhead Projector, 2006.

2008-01-03T20:24:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year to all ATLLT readers from my new twin cousins, Tillie & Finn!

Congratulations to Nicole & Matt & Grandma Sue!
And now, everyone, please. Stop with all the baby-making. This is an art blog, not an Anne Geddes calender. It isn't designed to withstand cuteness of this magnitude.

2008-01-02T19:10:00.001-08:00

The Encyclopedia of My Death?

Also in the new issue of BC, a long and interesting interview with Dutch artist Marcel Van Eeden, whose ongoing "drawing a day" project ( 6,000 and counting) is comprised of drawings made only from source images which came into being before the artist's birth.
Film stills and news photographs figure prominently, but also details of famous works of art, cartoon characters, text paintings, pornography, still life's, and most recently, an ongoing 'story,' inhabited by multiple characters, that teeters on the edge of narrative cohesion. Van Eeden's dispassionate draughtsmanship (a three-way mash-up of Edward Hopper, Ed Ruscha and Gerhard Richter) seems less a form of direct observation than a light-hearted parody of it, a tripling of the already multiple degrees of separation at play in the artist's source images.

2008-01-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

The Last Time We Saw You You Looked So Much Older...

Leonard Cohen talks to Robert Enright about poetry, drawing, music and feeling better in the new issue of Border Crossings:

LC: My life was very painful for no reason that I could discern. Most of the time the background was anguish and almost everything I did, from the pursuit of women, drugs and religion to my monastic life, was to address this problem. The cover story was successful: I had money, I had fame, I had most of the things people want. So I felt ashamed about feeling bad. But honestly, to get from moment to moment was extremely difficult. The sense of anguish was acute. What happened was that the background of suffering totally dissolved.
...I read somewhere that as you get older, certain brain cells associated with anxiety die in some people. In any event, what happened was that I stopped suffering.

BC: Was this an epiphany, or was it gradual?

LC: It happened by imperceptible degrees over two or three weeks. I didn't even know it was happening, I just woke up one day and I said to myself, this must be what people feel like, I don't feel great, I don't feel bad. I know that if something bad happens, I'll be bummed out, but everything is okay, the background has dissolved. It's just an ordinary day, it isn't a struggle, it isn't an ordeal.

2008-01-01T18:18:00.000-08:00

2007-12-30T17:45:00.000-08:00

Komar and Melamid & Dave Soldier
The People's Choice Music (The Most Wanted Song/The Most Unwanted Song)

" The most unwanted music is over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos, and features timbres of extremely high and low pitch, with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition. The most unwanted orchestra was determined to be large, and features the accordion and bagpipe (which tie at 13% as the most unwanted instrument), banjo, flute, tuba, harp, organ, synthesizer (the only instrument that appears in both the most wanted and most unwanted ensembles). An operatic soprano raps and sings atonal music, advertising jingles, political slogans, and "elevator" music, and a children's choir sings jingles and holiday songs. The most unwanted subjects for lyrics are cowboys and holidays, and the most unwanted listening circumstances are involuntary exposure to commericals and elevator music. Therefore, it can be shown that if there is no covariance—someone who dislikes bagpipes is as likely to hate elevator music as someone who despises the organ, for example—fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population would enjoy this piece."

-David Soldier, 1997

2007-12-18T09:40:00.001-08:00

A big ATLLT shout-out to brother Jim - currently under the knife at Monterey Hospital.

2007-12-18T09:37:00.001-08:00

Christopher Brayshaw, Readers, 2007-8. Panel 2 of 6.

2007-12-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

2007-12-10T21:45:00.001-08:00

Jeff Wall (AKA The Puppet Master) planning his SF MOMA retrospective.

2007-12-09T12:05:00.001-08:00

All The Little Live Things proudly presents the online premiere of the work of "modern swiss" painter Erhard Jacoby, courtesy my mass market paperback of Man and His Symbols.

2007-12-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

Literally hundreds of homemade Boards of Canada music videos floating around on youtube now, an amateur phenomenon more interesting for its breadth than its depth, but a fitting response to the group's early oblique strategies with regards to identity, authorship and fame.

Pete Standing Alone

Whitewater

Macquarie Ridge

One Very Important Thought

2007-12-05T18:56:00.001-08:00

A snapshot of my favorite picture from Mike Grill's show at CSA a few months back (the second best thing I saw all year, after Roy Arden's curated selection from the VAG vaults.)

Christopher Brayshaw, examining a completely different picture by Grill, summarizes the work as "...an image of fragments, held terribly and precariously together."

^^^^^^!

2007-11-16T22:43:00.000-08:00

Robin Donovan Reeves, born November 11th at 4:08 am, 7lbs, 13 oz.
Congrats to Dawn, Ben and Isaac!

2007-11-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

My flag touched the ground. Do I need to destroy it?

2007-11-09T22:44:00.001-08:00

Roy Arden - The World as Will and Representation

Off to Vancouver to see Arden's big retrospective at the VAG. Back sunday.

2007-11-09T10:12:00.000-08:00

"You, Mr. Bemis, are a reader."

As of late:

Thomas E. Ricks - Fiasco
Jeff Wall - Selected Essays and Interviews
Leonard Shlain - Art & Physics
Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
J.M. Coetzee - Diary of a Bad Year

2007-11-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

Woman on a Treadmill
2007

2007-10-31T19:10:00.001-07:00

Another picture of the nest, taken earlier in the year by V's mom.
Thanks, Karen!

2007-10-30T00:51:00.000-07:00

New Todd Haynes Dylan biopic I'm Not There comes out on the 28th of next month, which really is the best news I've heard in a long time. Skip the shite studio trailer, which as usual tries to pound a round peg into a square hole, and check this small scene fragment, found online this morning:

Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan and David Cross as Allen Ginsberg.

2007-10-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

Exposed by the season: one of the largest and most beautiful wasp nests I've ever seen, right under our noses all summer long, but cloaked by growth.

2007-10-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

Just viewed: vastly underrated 70's realist classic Scarecrow, featuring young versions of Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, the latter of which I'd honestly never fully appreciated until now.

Watch him in the final scene, coughing up the last of his hidden cash to pay for the round-trip train ticket, then calmly but determinedly banging the hollow heel of his shoe back into place on the counter, totally oblivious to the shocked teller, the line-up, everyone.

BANG BANG BANG.

I had to watch the scene twice, amazed at the amount of compressed emotional energy it managed to release with the most minimal of cues.
Hackman plays it as straight as ever, never telegraphing, always in the moment, the definition of Mamet's "nail that looks like a nail," but in light of the previous two hours, it's triumphant.

"Winner of two Academy Awards for Connection and Unforgiven, Hackman considers Scarecrow, which won the Golden Palm at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, his favorite of more than 80 films."

2007-10-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

Robert Crumb - A Short History of America
1979

Crumb also drew three possible epilogues to the strip in 1988, remarkable in their prescience of the current debate.

2007-10-20T16:52:00.001-07:00

Timothy O'Sullivan - Desert Lake Near Ragtown, Carson Desert, Nevada. 1867

Great essay by Robert Adams on early photographers conceptions of western space (found yesterday while digging through an old pile of Aperture magazines.)

"The chief reason the photographers did better than the painters, however, was that when the painters were confronted with space they filled it with the products of their imaginations, whereas photographers were relatively unable to do that. The limits of the machine saved them. If there was "nothing" there, they had in some way to settle for that, and find a method to convince us to do the same.
...The resulting pictures have an element almost of banality about them, but it is exactly this acknowledgment of the plain surface of things that helps legitimize the photographer's difficult claim that the landscape is coherent. We know, as we recognize the commonness of places, that this is our world and that the photographer has not cheated on his way to his affirmation of meaning."

2007-10-17T17:55:00.001-07:00

Theological Positions
2007

New pictures from Mile 0 and all 100 of the 100 Views are up now on jamietolagson.ca.

Big thanks to Lori K. for turning my cro-magnon html code into something that actually resembles a functioning website.

Apologies in advance to all small monitor owners.

2007-10-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

Vancouver Artists Mournful As Civic Strike Concludes
By "Paul de Plume"

2007-10-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

A photo of my godfather Phil Foster enjoying his vacation, courtesy Maya.

Of course, if we had access to that nifty photo-examining technology from Blade Runner, we might edge slowly around the left side of his profile, thereby revealing the curious, delighted expression I know is there; undaunted in the face of a lot of bullshit.

2007-10-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts - I Love Rock n' Roll

Sudden memories this morning of a weird sexual attraction I had to Joan Jett in the 6th grade. Weird in the sense that all prepubescent sexual crushes are weird, given the surplus of imagination and drought of experience at that age (what exactly did I imagine Jett would do with my emaciated 12-year-old self if we were alone together? Snap me in half over her knee and use my flat ass as a coke table?)

I Love Rock n' Roll was the first album I ever bought, on tape. I played it till the text was completely gone from both sides, and the blank plastic began to yellow. Jett's infamous "Yeaaow" on the title track (1:19 in the video above) made the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time. See the way Jett immediately turns her back to the audience after the "Yeaaow," then flips back around to sing the second verse in close up, while chewing gum? That blew my mind. I wasn't 17 like the guy Jett is creeping on in the song, but I got the point loud and clear (much to my Jackson Brown-listening moms dismay.)

The next summer, in a state of excitement way out of proportion to the actual event, I stood in line with my endlessly patient Aunt Sue to see Joan Jett live at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. I was just young enough to not realize how utterly uncool it was to be chaperoned by my aunt. I was dressed in what I thought at the time to be suitably 'badass' attire: black converse, combat pants and a Clash-Combat Rock t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. A studded leather bracelet about 7 sizes too big for my pale twig of a wrist finished the ensemble off.

My main memory of the show itself is of being lifted onto some huge guy's shoulders when the band launched into "I Love Rock n' Roll" and carried up to the front of the stage. I didn't know who the guy was or who had lifted me onto his shoulders. It didn't matter. I shook my fists in the air and screamed loudly. The band played the song, just like on the tape, complete with the bendy guitar solo. The bassist (the guy with the v-neck in the video above) pointed his bass at me and the crowd actually cheered. Jett even gave me a little cool nod at one point.

A few years later my attraction to Jett was replaced overnight with another weird sexual obsession, this time with actress Jenette Goldstein (or more specifically Vasquez, the character she played in the film Aliens.) Again, weird in the sense that I can't for the life of me remember what I could have possibly been fantasizing about. I don't normally find 'butch' women attractive, and I've never had the urge to be tied up or dominated by a woman. Why this early fixation on hard asses?'
Maybe it wasn't completely sexual. Maybe I just wanted to hang out with them. Or maybe I was attracted to them precisely because I knew they would never be attracted to me. They were my antithesis in every way.
Why are you still reading this?

2007-10-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

2007-09-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

A Local Tree (for P. Culley)

2007-09-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

The future of comedy, courtesy New Zealand.

It's Business Time

Mutha-uckers

If You're Into It

Bowie's in Space

2007-09-09T14:27:00.001-07:00

2007-09-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

"Thank you very much, South Carolina."

-courtesy Simpleposie.

2007-08-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

Washington Road Trip - Day 3

2007-08-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

And on the other end of the spectrum...

George Michael jumps on the hiphop bandwagon, circa 1982. Street credibility in spades.

2007-08-28T23:57:00.001-07:00

A blisteringly dense and achingly gorgeous live set by Tim Hecker, courtesy the equally dense UBUWEB.
Gerhard Richter above - his smeared, fractured, electric slabs of black, white and red bearing more than a passing resemblance to Hecker's opening salvos of tectonic white noise.
(Click image to enlarge.)

2007-08-26T22:10:00.001-07:00

New stuff by Stephen Gill, up now at his site under the headers Archeology in Reverse, Anonymous Origami and 22.963 Steps, Bristol.

2007-08-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

Why the Seventies Were a Good Time to Grow Up - Part 2

2007-08-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, my fourth grade teacher Barbara Morgan (above right) is currently orbiting the earth. Congratulations, Barbara!

2007-08-11T15:18:00.000-07:00

Washington Road Trip - Day 2

Awaken and flip on the tube. More breaching White Sharks. Shark Week needs to diversify.
Over breakfast at the local greasy spoon the consequences of having absolutely no trip plan begin to sink in. San Francisco is too far, a run along the border too time consuming. Mount St. Helens smiles up from the map.
I have vivid memories of running around in the falling ash of the eruption as a child. Even all the way up in Vancouver, it came down like grey snow. That same ash would reach the east coast three days later, and eventually circle the globe. A big eruption, in other words.

The initial blast released 24 megatons of thermal energy, a concussive wave that flattened 230 square miles of Washington state. The forest literally just lay down. The landslide of released material that immediately followed was the largest in human history, moving at speeds of up to 150 mph at temperatures up to 660 degrees F. The secondary flows that continued to pour out of the mountain hours later were hotter still; 1,300 degrees F (hot enough to sterilize the soil for 6 square miles.)
In the end: 57 people, 7,000 big game animals and12 million salmon killed, massive infra-structural damage to local communities, and a mountain 1,314 feet shorter than it used to be. Worth a look.
The drive up to the monument is beautiful, but something about the Weyerhaeuser forests that line each side of the road rubs me the wrong way. It takes me a while to hit on what it is. The trees are all perfectly symmetrical, like computer renderings of trees, or better yet, lego trees. See for yourself:

After staring at them for an hour or so, I begin to suspect that I've become trapped in some kind of virtual earth computer program. A quick stop at a Weyerhaeuser 'learning center' doesn't do much to alleviate the feeling. CB tries his hand at a virtual forest management test (a little screen with a forest that you plant and then harvest.) "Harvest Now?" the screen asks. "No" says CB again and again, eventually growing an enormous jungle, losing millions of virtual dollars and dragging his virtual logging community into financial ruin.
On the way out there are tiny little Weyerhaeuser pamphlets available, printed on earthy brown paper and filled with delicate zen ink drawings of birds, trees and chainsaws.
The road to the mountain eventually dead ends at an enormous parking lot, one end of which gives onto a concrete path which leads up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, a huge viewing platform swarming with tourists. And looming beyond that, looking placid and spent in the summer air, is the mountain itself.

An extremely high-energy guide gives a lengthy talk with the aid of large laminated photographs he has brought from the observatory on a wheeled cart. Me and CB knock heads jockying for position to photograph the photographs.
In the parking lot I purchase a hot dog from a vendor, then watch it grow cold as CB photographs it in my hand, trying out various angles one after the other, saying "hold still, hold still." More than a few curious looks are thrown our way.
Back down the road and on to some bookstores. Coffee is drunk repeatedly over the course of the day, leading to long, circular discussions about everything imaginable, mostly art and girls.
Into Portland to check out Powell's Books, easily the largest bookstore I've ever seen. Unbelievable selection of art books. After much deliberation I decide on a single purchase (all my budget can allow.) CB vacuums up a floor or two. Then its on to another Motel 6 for the night.
"THE GREAT WHITE ERUPTS FROM THE WATER LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN FROM THE DEPTHS!" (say in Australian accent.)

2007-08-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

Washington Road Trip - Day 1

Down to the waterfront to catch the Victoria/Port Angeles ferry. Bustle my way through customs and onboard with what feels like seconds to spare. Ferry leaves 40 minutes later. Sun is unbearable out on the reflective white deck, and I make a mental note to head inside before I get too sunburnt. But then the boat leaves the harbor, the wind picks up, and everything feels great. Lie down and fall fast asleep on the front deck, backpack serving as a pillow.
Wake up about 45 minutes later with head buzzing and skin the colour of a neon turnip. Boat is heading into deep fog and they are closing off the front deck to passengers. Temperature drops about 15 degrees. Suddenly everything looks like a Fritz Lang movie.
Head inside to get some food and discover that the boat's 'cafeteria' consists of a coffee-flavored water machine, a pile of packaged rocks disguised as donuts, and a sullen teen applying pink nail polish to her fingernails. This ain't BC Ferries, as sign after sign reminds me:

Buy some coffee-flavoured water, grab a seat next to the family playing bridge, and read about crocodiles (via David Quammen) for the rest of the trip.
CJB is there right on schedule in Port Angeles. Already having vacuumed the local thrifts and paperback exchanges for everything they're worth, he's ready for lunch. We eat at a diner that looks straight out of a Stephen Shore photograph. The first of many.
Head south along the peninsula in CJB's new/old car. Photographs are taken, art argued over, the finer points of relationships examined at length. Stop for dinner in Aberdeen, where the local restaurant's book rack has copies of "Western Logging," "The Founding of Aberdeen," and "Kurt Cobain: The Real Story."
Long, fruitless discussion of Iraq over bad food.
Head further south and find a motel for the night. It's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Three hours of Great White breaching footage later, travelers drift off to sleep.

2007-07-30T23:24:00.001-07:00

Mike Grill Update:

It's a composite. And according to the artist, the guy in the baseball cap appears three times in the photo.
Damned if I can spot that third appearance.

2007-07-30T08:24:00.001-07:00

MIKE GRILL
RECENT PHOTOGRAPHS
CSA Space - July 13th - August 26

I don't know about you, but to me it looks like the fellow with the dog appears twice. Once going in, once coming out (his second self is missing the dog, the plastic bag and the bottles that made his backpack so tall, but everything else is the same - baseball cap, goatee, raincoat, pants, running shoes, posture.)
Word on the street is it's a straight photograph, so who knows. Maybe it's a doppleganger.

2007-07-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

Some photographs by V of her place of employment, a small wholesale nursery located off a quiet country lane on the Saanich Peninsula. Work days apparently consist of watering seeds, potting plants, listening to birds and watching funny Youtube videos.

Here's where I work !

2007-07-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

Which One of You Bitches Wants to Dance?

Bernard Black, the drunken, curmudgeonly owner of London's Black Books, finally hits on a way to not do the shop's accounting.

(For the drunken, curmudgeonly CJB)

2007-07-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

the smell of oil
from the camera
the sea under my feet
is just firm enough
the shutter fires

the glare of sun on the
fallen snow
the ground under my feet
the sunlight recedes
the shutter sleeps

-Lomo

2007-07-22T11:00:00.001-07:00

How Milk is Made

For Chris Harris, in apology for bailing on his friday night show in Victoria due to extreme Harry Potter pre-release customer service exhaustion.

2007-07-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Let's Dance.

2007-07-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

Messages from the future, courtesy Mike Judge.

Carl's Jr.

Identification.

Fox News.

2007-07-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Pomona Queen - Kem Nunn *****
Heat - George Monbiot ****
You Don't Love Me Yet - Jonathan Lethem ***
Sailing The Wine Dark Sea - Thomas Cahill ****
The Mess They Made - Gwynn Dyer ***
Hokusai's Mount Fuji - Jocelyn Bouquillard *****
Vancouver Art and Economies - Melanie O'Brien ***

It's hot out there.

2007-07-10T21:02:00.001-07:00

Some kind soul has finally posted a few choice excerpts from Ross Mcelwee's Sherman's March up on Youtube. It's hard for me to convey how influential this film was (and still is) for me. I've posted about it once before. A few short clips won't convey much of whats really going on in terms of structure and themes, but a quick trip to the nearest public library would probably turn up a dog-eared vhs copy if you're interested. I've watched at least three different tapes of it over the years, all from libraries.

2007-07-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

“I think anybody who had been moderately competent, reasonably alert to the vitality of what was actually going on in the medium would have done the same thing I did,” he said several years ago. “I mean, the idea that Winogrand or Friedlander or Diane were somehow inventions of mine, I would regard, you know, as denigrating to them.”

John Szarkowski, 1925-2007.

I've posted excerpts from Szarkowski's essays here on more than one occasion.
His writings meant a lot to me.

Of all the enormously influential photographers that Szarkowski championed, William Eggleston seems to me the most vital. Pull him from the timeline, and the last thirty years of the medium really do collapse.
Hilton Kramer called William Eggleston's first one man show at the Museum of Modern Art (curated by Szarkowski) "perfectly banal" and "perfectly boring" (lazy, incurious remarks that are in fact, perfectly wrong.) The show, besides being shockingly good (to the point that it still looks contemporary 30 years later), was inarguably a major turning point in the history of the art form; a sudden, bewildering release from the predictable monochromatic poles of social-documentary moralism on one hand, and vacuous "zone-system" refinement on the other. Photography in the mid-70's (as practiced by people who referred to themselves as photographers, not 'artists using photography,') was dangerously close to a kind of formal calcification. William Eggleston, in effect, detonated the medium. And a lot of contemporary art photography is still operating in the chaotic, ear-ringing aftermath.
Legend has it that Ansel Adams himself sent a letter to Szarkowski protesting the hanging of Eggleston's pictures - irrefutable proof, if required, that Szarkowski was on the right track.

Here's Szarkowski's original introduction to Eggleston's first book of photographs, William Eggleston's Guide, published in 1976. Note the clean, lucid prose, the surplus of insight and ideas, and the absence of rarefied art jargon.

2007-07-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

"Under the Constitution, the Senate has the unique power to try an impeachment. The decision as to whether to convict on each of the articles must be made separately. A conviction must be supported by a two-thirds majority of the Senators present. A conviction on any one of the articles of impeachment brought against an individual is sufficient to constitute conviction in the trial of the impeachment. Should a conviction occur, then the Senate must determine what the appropriate judgment is in the case. The Constitution limits the judgment to either removal from office or removal and prohibition against holding any future offices of "honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." The precedents in impeachment suggest that removal may flow automatically from conviction, but that the Senate must vote to prohibit the individual from holding future offices of public trust, if that judgment is also deemed appropriate. A simple majority vote is required on a judgment. Conviction on impeachment does not foreclose the possibility of criminal prosecution arising out of the same factual situation. The Constitution precludes the President from extending executive clemency to anyone to preclude their impeachment by the House or trial or conviction by the Senate."

In other news, the left now has it's own Bill O'Reilly. It's about time.
Here he is going off, at length, on MSNBC.

2007-07-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

A tautly edited, extremely hot homo-erotic "Star Trek" video, courtesy Jim Affinito.

2007-07-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

Old Lady: Do you have this new book by this englishman, Richard Dickins- or Dorkins something- or-other?

JT: Dawkins? The scientist?

Old Lady: I don't know, some nonsense about God being an illusion or something.

JT: Delusion. Yeah, that's Dawkins. It's over here in our "current culture" section, under "religion."

Old Lady: "Culture?" Hmpf. Should be in "sub-culture."

JT: Well, it was one of the best selling books of the year, so that kind of bumps it up out of the "sub-culture" category. Here it is... (arriving at the store's newly created culture-religion section [AKA the "Atheist Section"], which consists of two big shelves packed to the brim with titles like "The End of Faith," "God is Not Great," "In Defense of Atheism," "Coming to Our Senses," etc. etc.)

Old woman scans shelves, eyes bugging out like Wile E. Coyote going over a cliff.

Old Lady: This is just...unbelievable.

JT: Yes.

Old Lady: What is all this????

JT: (Grinning stupidly) Well, we recieved so many of these new atheist books in the last year or so, we decided to give them their own section. We seem to get a new one in every month or so. Big sellers, these.

Old Lady: (Examining a copy of "The God Delusion" up close, as if it were an invasive weed.) Unbelievable!!

JT: Isn't it?

Old Lady heads for the front register, book angrily in hand.
JT returns to the side desk, where an amusing surprise awaits him, buried in the morning's new stock.

2007-07-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

A stunning opening to a stunning film: the creation myth sequence from Watership Down - still my favorite feature length animated film of all time, and still as beautiful and horrifying as it was when I was 12.

2007-07-01T14:51:00.001-07:00

25, BHP, Victoria, B.C.
2007

2007-07-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

Carrie Walker
The Storybooks Have Been Unfair
mixed media on rag paper, 22"x 30"

New watercolour/found-drawing mash-ups by Carrie Walker will be on display at Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery from July 5th to the 28th.

2007-06-30T13:15:00.002-07:00

"The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the steep glide began, people rose, fell, collided, swam in their seats. Then the serious screaming and moaning began. Almost immediately a voice from the flight deck was heard on the intercom: "We're falling out of the sky! We're going down! We're a silver gleaming death machine!" This outburst struck the passengers as an all but total breakdown of authority, competence and command presence and it brought on a round of fresh and desperate wailing.
Objects were rolling out of the galley, the aisles were full of drinking glasses, utensils, coats and blankets. A stewardess pinned to the bulkhead by the sharp angle of descent was trying to find the relevant passage in a handbook titled "Manual of Disasters." Then there was a second male voice from the cockpit, this one remarkably calm and precise, making the passengers believe there was someone in charge after all, an element of hope: "This is American two-one-three to the cockpit voice recorder. Now we know what it's like. It's worse than we'd ever imagined. They didn't prepare us for this at the death simulator in Denver. Our fear is pure, so totally stripped of distractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. In less than three minutes we will touch down, so to speak. They will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. I love you, Lance." This time there was a brief pause before the mass wailing recommenced. Lance? What kind of people were in control of this aircraft? The crying took on a bitter and dissillusioned tone."

-Don Delillo, White Noise, 1984.

A bit of black humour that shrinks and expands depending on the context you place it in, pre or post 9-11 America. I find it funny, especially that last sentence, but it's 'meta' style; that winking, amused distancing of itself from it's own subject, is maybe better for a laugh in the context of 1984 than 2004. I don't know.
I haven't attempted Delillo's latest yet (Falling Man, a book that revolves around the events of September 11th) but two reviews I read today on my lunchbreak; one by Andrew O'hagan (New York Review of Books) and the other by Jennifer Szalai (Harpers) both present Delillo as a writer unable to deal (narratively) with the shocking arrival of an event he prophecied so consistently in the disasters, cabals and toxic spills of his earlier novels. Delillo's style: observational, detached, and increasingly devoid of the humour found above, is found wanting (to put it mildly) in the face of it's subject. O'hagan is particularly disappointed by what he considers to be Delillo's (and others) inabilty to present the event as anything other than a string of metaphorical evasions:

"The hallmark of those novelists who have tried to write about the attacks is a sort of austere plangency—or a quivering bathos —that has been in evidence almost from the moment the planes hit. Those authors who published journalistic accounts immediately after the event failed to see how their metaphors fell dead from their mouths before the astonishing live pictures. It did not help us to be told by imaginative writers that the second plane was like someone posting a letter. No, it wasn't. It was like a passenger jet crashing into an office building.
...Metaphor failed to do anything but make one feel that those keen to deploy it had not been watching enough television. After the "nonfiction novel," after the New Journalism, after several decades in which some of America's most vivid writing about real events was seen to be in thrall to the techniques of novelists, September 11 offered a few hours when American novelists could only sit at home while journalism taught them fierce lessons in multivocality, point of view, the structure of plot, interior monologue, the pressure of history, the force of silence, and the uncanny. Actuality showed its own naked art that day."

And that actuality, in Hagan and Szalzi's view, seems to have been so powerful in it's instantaneous confirmation of the author's fictional work, that it "instantly blows Delillo's lamp out."

"DeLillo the novelist prepared us for September 11, but he did not prepare himself for how such an episode might, in the way of denouements, instantly fly beyond the reach of his own powers. In a moment, the reality of the occasion seems to have burst the ripeness of his style, and he truly struggles in this book to say anything that doesn't sound in a small way like a warning that comes too late. Reading Falling Man, one feels that September 11 is an event that is suddenly far ahead of him, far beyond what he knows, and so an air of tentative rehearsal resounds in an empty hall. What is a prophet once his fiery word becomes deed? What does he have to say?"

Not much apparently - but like I said, I haven't read the book yet. At the end of his long and surprisingly moving review, O'hagan concludes:

"DeLillo's novel was inspired by a photograph of a real person—most agree that he is Jonathan Briley, who seemed at a certain point in his descent from the North Tower to plummet straight, upside down, one leg bent, his shirt flying off in the ferocious breeze, his head scorched, "The Falling Man" whose image became a token of horror and a mass-media legend. And the things pertaining to his image are what interest Don DeLillo. Yet the person inside the legend was a man from Mount Vernon who worked in the North Tower restaurant, Windows on the World. He was flesh and blood, not just an idea. He was born on March 5, 1958. He was six feet five. His father was a preacher. He suffered from asthma and had a wife called Hilary. He died sixty-five minutes twenty seconds after Mohamed Atta, and is currently awaiting a writer sufficiently uncoerced by the politics of art to tell his story."

2007-06-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

"A cloud of mosquitos descending upon me."

My best friend Jim Affinito just got back from a 4 days of solo hiking in the alpine of Yosemite National Park, and lucky for us, he took pictures. Mosquitos, marmots, mule trains, bear cubs, crew critters, alpine weirdos and a pretty studly self-portrait, all here.

2007-06-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Bernd Becher, 1931-2007.

2007-06-20T22:37:00.001-07:00

...and speaking of forests:

Robert Smith and Co. tearing the normally sedate "A Forest" a new asshole - Amsterdam, 1980.
Stick around till the 3:48 mark to see just how amazing these guys were once.
WTF happened?

2007-06-20T22:00:00.001-07:00

Maren Ade's mesmerizing The Forest for the Trees, viewed last night in a state of slowly escalating discomfort. The film reads like a feature length adaptation of Schopenhauer's famous quote about life being an irrevocable 'error,' in which things "...begin badly, then grow worse with each passing day, until finally the worst of all happens."
I watched the second half through my fingers.

2007-06-20T09:57:00.001-07:00

"The sheets of Shore's fourteen-by-eleven-inch notebook have yellowed some with age and appear brittle. Unlike a blog, which lacks materiality, his diary is a unique, tactile object. The idea of deathlessness in cyberspace can be reassuring, especially during a time of extreme transition: Wait six months, the technology will be better; but wait six months, the world will be worse. Shore's diary is not virtual, it is indexical, presenting the things themselves, which, like people, react to time. Now everything would be scanned and digitized, and it would never color, fade, or crack."

-Lynne Tillman ponders Stephen Shore's infamous travel 'diary,' an itemized account of the road trips that produced "Uncommon Places." No personal thoughts or observations, just dates, receipts, postcards, and detailed lists of every meal eaten, bed slept in, and photograph taken.
Phaidon, following along on it's "everything and the kitchen sink" plan with regards to Shore, will be publishing a fascimile edition this spring.
This seems odd to me, and in almost direct contradiction to Tillman's observations about it's worth. Surely some stones can be left unturned? I'm often surprised, upon finally viewing a long-coveted, previously inaccessible piece of work (Chris Marker's "Sans Soliel", Robert Frank's "Cocksucker Blues") how small and one-dimensional they seem in comparison to the imagined version in my head; a version of minimal reference and maximum optimism. I think documents like Shore's diary ( or Prince's "Black Album" circa 1990, or Wall/Wallace/Graham's "Hitchcock" film circa 1975) can function as tremendous inspiration to other artists, precisely because of their relative invisibility. The legend of a thing unseen is potent stuff, like a cipher we fill with our own possibilities. The internet, like a deep sea fishing net, hauls all these legends up into the light of day, where (like those frightening and beautiful fish that live two miles down) they deflate and expire.

2007-06-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

He's keeping busy, yeah he's bleeding stones,
With his machinations and his palindromes.
It was anything but hear the voice,
anything but hear the voice.
It was anything but hear the voice
that says that we’re all basically alone.

2007-06-15T23:53:00.000-07:00

Old Lady: What is this? (holding up "Smush Bush" squishable GWB doll.)
Fellow Employee: It's uh..George Bush. You squish it. Him.
Old Lady: This is an outrage. How can you carry this?
Fellow Employee: Uh...
Old Lady: This man was democratically elected to be president of the United States! Can't you have the slightest bit of respect? This man is a world leader! He deserves your respect!
Fellow Employee: Well...
Old Lady: I can't believe you would carry this! I've always shopped here, but this is too much! If you are going to sell garbage like this than you don't deserve my business, or anyone else's!!
Fellow Employee: Uh, we uh, we try to be a forum for free speech here, and not a -er, forum for uh, censorship (reciting from long forgotten memo on store policy regarding outraged customers.)
Old Lady: I don't think so! I think you just lost yourself a customer! (storms out.)
Fellow Employee: (as if suddenly remembering) We carry Ann Coulter books!

2007-06-13T09:33:00.001-07:00

Dennis Oppenheim - Device to Root Out Evil, 1997.
Galvanized structural steel, anodized perforated aluminum, transparent red Venetian glass, and concrete foundations, 22 x 18 x 9 ft.

A great little interview with Oppenheim here.
-and in related news, The Creation Museum is now open for business. Adults: $19.95. Cheap!

2007-06-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

Fairfield Porter - Island Farmhouse, 1969.

"Porter's intellectual world...was extraordinarily complete. He was a practicing artist with a developed theory of art, and a practicing critic with a developed theory of criticism. In person, he seemed to form concise, measured ideas about everything, and they added up; his intellectual poise made you want to improve your own. He spoke with an authority which did not stem from will, but was that of someone who had made sure of his point of view and could therefore permit you yours. He was absolutely straightforward; he knew what he had to say, and said it. Some found his manners harsh, even rude. He was tall with a windblown complexion, and stood very straight. He entered and left a room without ceremony, and his walk was a stride. His directness in conversation could be uncomfortably challenging; when he was not interested he would be conspicuously silent, or walk away. It was only that what was important for Porter mattered beyond compromise, and time was not to be wasted on the little conventions that make the fabric of easy social life. His friends found his clarity a priceless exchange, and his warmth, expressed in a smile you could call boyish, completely trustworthy."

-Rackstraw Downes, from his introduction to Art In It's Own Terms.