La Rumba

I've never had more fun than I did yesterday riding around Manhattan and Brooklyn on this bad boy.  Get on it.

Gallery Openings and Land of Talk

Two things of note occurred last night:

1) Ryan Cobourn legitimately made his way into the New York art scene by opening his first solo show, which is currently on display at the Fishbach Gallery in Chelsea.  It's a beautiful, beautiful show by a truly dear friend and wonderfully talented artist.  And it was amazing because a handsome European couple came in and almost immediately bought one of the paintings.  Seeing that sort of success happen for someone I really care about is pretty spectacular, and I can honestly say I'm not sure who was more proud, his mother or myself.

2) Land of Talk played an early show at the Mercury Lounge and it was so loud and so good.  The new songs they played were polished and sounded brilliantly tight, even with a stand-in drummer who was arguably the highlight of the show.  The crowd there was the biggest I've seen them draw, and going on tour with Broken Social Scene this fall is sure to help them just completely blow up after the release of their new album, Some Are Lakes, in October.  

Only problem with these events happening on the same night: complete exhaustion that not even loads of coffee/caffeine is able to cure.  At least it's Friday.  

The 60s in television and on stage

Recently, I've become increasingly obsessed with the hit AMC show Mad Men. Though I was late to the scene (I only first knew it was even a show after riding the shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square in a subway car that was a full-on advertisement for the show: the walls, seats, everything were plastered with that Mad Men 60s feel), I wasted no time catching up on the first season and falling absolutely in love with the second. Joan Holloway is without a doubt my idol. She's curvy, sassy, self-assured and bosses men around as her job while also dangling her sex appeal temptingly in front of them. Loves her. Anyway, Mad Men—a drama about the Madison Avenue advertising scene—is really effing great for a multitude of reasons, namely that it seems to deal with so many conflicts seamlessly, and the characters feel so full and well-developed that I often forget that they are not, in fact, real people dealing with really intense issues. For me, the exploration of gender roles in the work place and at home is the most fascinating part as both men and women attempt to reconcile their places in these vastly different worlds. And it’s emotional, pulling at the heartstrings while also invoking the desire to punch the shit out of both the men and women on the show who get a little too big for their crinolines.

But, if you’re looking for 60s period entertainment to make you laugh shamelessly in a room full of old people, I urge you to go to the Longacre Theater and see Boeing-Boeing immediately. It’s been ages since I’ve seen anything on Broadway, mostly because I’d rather spend my money on dance or concert tickets, but after hearing rave reviews of the show from critics and friends alike, I figured that it would be well worth the price. Boy howdy was I right! Boeing-Boeing is a play set in 1960s Paris (I mean, how can you even go wrong?!) and is about an American business man who is juggling love affairs with three different air hostesses from three different countries with three different air routes. This, of course, is a recipe for disaster but the way the conflict plays out is seriously laugh-out-loud funny, the three women—an American, an Italian and a German—play their parts sort of one-dimensionally and stereotypically but they are so over the top it just works. While the first act takes a little patience (or, if you're lucky enough to be friends with an excellent bartender, delicious cocktails) to get through, the second act is outrageously hysterical and I can't think of an stretch of time during the whole hour or so that I wasn't giggling. In fact, I’m still laughing.

Why I became a fan of John Krasinski on Facebook:

J.M.W Tuner: A Retrospective

Edmond Burke, in his work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, says that astonishment and terror are the “strongest emotions which the mind is capable of feeling” and, after seeing the retrospective of the 19th century British painter, J.M.W Turner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there’s really little doubt as to why this is the case. Turner was painter ahead of his time—his use of color had, really, been unprecedented and caused critics to be confused by him, some citing that he had “yellow fever” in the middle of his career when he was overtaken by the effects that a newly developed yellow paint could have on a landscape, while others (like John Ruskin) praised his treatment of the canvas. And, his early use of abstraction drew criticism that his work looked hasty and unfinished.

Of course, my modern eye did not see it that way, in fact, the last room of the exhibit titled “The Unfinished Paintings,” a collection of several works left to the Tate upon his death, was the most striking (in my opinion) room of the entire exhibit. It's clear that Turner was primarily concerned with color and movement—though it can also be argued that he was searching for a way to express more social and historical conflicts in his paintings—and these paintings display this preoccupation in a way that many of the finished works cannot. Still, I couldn’t help but feel as though the idea of the “sublime” in Tuner’s work was sort of underplayed in the show. It was long—over 150 watercolors and oil paintings are on display—but only exhausting in that he seemed to be forcing me, time after time, to reconsider the vastness of this world, this life and the fact that this entire universe is utterly infinite. Even though his paintings are always masterfully contained within a frame, I cannot help but think that his images are but a snapshot of the world—his vanishing focal points seem to go on for an eternity, and his placing of objects and further landscapes in the deep distance seems to illustrate that there is always something beyond that at which you are looking. Indeed, his fascination with grand landscapes are enough to leave me intimidated by this world. Just look at this:


How can you not be mesmerized by the sheer scale of humans to the world (You might not be able to see it clearly from this tiny image, but there is a long figure near the very center praying before a cross on the edge of a cliff)? We are so infinitesimal, a fact that I very often forget when I find myself wrapped up in my own petty struggles and dramas, and it was good to be reminded of this on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when I was feeling particularly tired and melancholy.

Sarah Palin: better or worse for (working) women nationwide?

I'll admit it.  When I first read that John McCain had selected Sarah Palin as his running mate I wanted to throw up a little bit.  It just seemed so contrived, so transparent an effort to steal the votes of Hillary supporters even though one very big problem stood in the way of that: Hillary supporters like her for her policies (primarily), not just because she's a woman.  Then, a shitstorm was unleashed this weekend while I was in Potomac, avoiding news in general, drinking my face off and eating bushels of crabs.  I couldn't deal with the media frenzy surrounding Palin's pregnant, underage daughter that seemed to actually attack me upon my return to New York.  My initial reaction was to say to John McCain: serves you right!  You're running mate's family is almost akin to the Spears'.  But then I began to really think about this issue and to realize there is so much more at stake here. 

First, there's the statement that the Palin camp issued about supporting Bristol's "decision" to keep the baby.  Okay, wait gosh darn minute.  Isn't the whole issue about the pro-life camp the fact that women don't have the right to make that decision?  I mean, if Bristol cannot abort the baby, what else is she really going to be able to do aside from keep it.  Sure, she could give it up for adoption once it's been carried for nine months and birthed, but, really, she didn't have a choice at all in this matter.  She had to keep this baby or else an even bigger debate would have to take place about the daughter of a pro-life conservative Republican having an abortion.   So no, McCain / Palin camp, I'm not happy that you've decided to support her decision, I'm enraged that this decision was, in essence, made for her both by being the daughter of a Republican and by being the daughter of a highly publicly profiled Republican.  Sigh.

Then yesterday, a story ran in the Times questioning whether or not Palin is capable of caring for both her small child with Downs Syndrome as well as fulfilling her potential duties as Vice President.  Mothers interviewed seemed not just skeptical but entirely unconvinced that she could, in fact, be capable of doing both of these tasks effectively and, more importantly, well. But what about all the men in our great nation who have had to struggle with personal as well as professional responsibility and have never once been questioned about their capabilities? The wise women over at Feministing make a great point that no one even questioned whether or not John Edwards would have any trouble caring for his sick wife as well as being senator and running for Vice President.  

Plus!  They also point out that the bigger issue should not be about whether she's able to perform well in both these positions, but what she is going to do about making it possible for other women to have the ability to do the same.  We live in a country where women are still paid less than men, where there are many companies that do not offer paid maternity leave, so what about those women?  I ask you, Sarah Palin, what are you going to do for all the other women in this nation who wish to be both mothers as well as working professionals?  You're running on a ticket with a man who has been voted "the worst senator children" and yet you wish to have a crib aside your desk in the White House.  These two things just don't line up.

Still, it's good that this scandal can, at the very least, serve to really highlight where McCain and Palin stand on the issues surrounding the incident and, hopefully, illuminate all the weaknesses in their policies.  One things for sure, we're going to be totally fucked as a country if they win in November.

Proof that the creators of kid's television shows drop loads of acid

When I was little I watched Nick Jr. shows like The Littl' Bits and the remarkable David the Gnome. Now, it seems as though the only option kids have when it comes to television shows are programs that could only have been thought up by a bunch of crazy people on acid. The evidence: Teletubbies and Yo Gabba Gabba. The effect of these shows on America's youth? Erratic and sort of inappropriately vulgar dancing. Witness exhibits A, B & C:

A:


B:


C:


I'm both disturbed and endeared. Ah, youth.