Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

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Random notes: November 9, 2010.

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art opened in Biloxi, Mississippi on Monday.

Here’s a nice photo of the museum. Can you guess who designed it?

When Mr. Gehry’s massive, titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum opened in Bilbao, Spain, in 1997, thousands of art tourists helped revive that dying industrial town.

Later buildings by Mr. Gehry have not had the same effect.

Looking over Wikipedia’s list of completed Gehry buildings, I don’t see a lot of post-1997 that were designed with that intent. The only two I really see as being possible tourist attractions are the Experience Music Project and the Walt Disney Concert Hall; everything else seems to be corporate, college campus, or medical. That just seems like a pointless shot by the NYT.

The University of Texas has acquired Spalding Gray’s archives. I know that Mike the Musicologist is going “squee” with delight at this news.

I also know some folks who tried to go to the “Gypsy Picnic Food Trailer Festival” on Saturday. Their experience was very much like John Kelso’s.

If you wanted something to eat, it would have been quicker to sit on the corner with a tin cup, collect change and grab a tuna sandwich at a convenience store. Or bag a possum and build a fire.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Food, Gehry, Sarcasm | 1 Comment »

This one’s for Mike the Musicologist.

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Stephen Sondheim’s 1966 made-for-TV musical, “Evening Primrose”, starring Anthony Perkins (no kidding) is coming out on DVD Tuesday.

Just in case you were wondering where you could find it and how much it goes for, here’s a link to “Evening Primrose” on Amazon.

Interestingly, Tuesday is also the day that Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes will be released.

Posted in Art, Books, Clippings, Music, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Art, damn it, art! watch (#17 in a series).

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Because there’s nothing like a giant marble sculpture of a hand with an upraised middle finger.

Unless, of course, we’re talking about a statue of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite.

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

Posted in Art, Clippings | Comments Closed

Not since Carrie.

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

New York City’s MCC Theater is planning a “revival” of “Carrie”.

I put “revival” in quotes because…

[Stafford Arima, the director] predicted that about half of the songs would be different from the Broadway score, which was never recorded, contributing to the show’s legendary status.

and

Mr. [Bernard] Telsey [MCC co-artistic director]  said the draft script was in “very workable shape right now,” yet was so different from the original that he was not sure if MCC’s “Carrie” would be considered a revival or a reimagined work.

Posted in Art, Music | Comments Closed

Things that make us giggle.

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

In no particular order:

Posted in Art, Clippings, TV | Comments Closed

Sad news from Las Vegas.

Monday, September 13th, 2010

The Liberace Museum is closing.

I’ve actually toured that museum twice, and had a great deal of fun both times. I find it just a bit surprising that they employed 30 people, but with all the clothes, the cars, the musical instruments, and what not, as well as staffing the museum, I guess I shouldn’t be that shocked.

The mention that they also hired a professional curator from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (who lasted a year) is also kind of interesting. I know Mike the Musicologist had some thoughts on curation and the Liberace Museum after our first visit, but I’ll let him post those if he wishes.

(Thanks to Bill Crider for the tip on this.)

Edited to add: Here are links to two stories from the Las Vegas Sun: link 1 and link 2. I do not believe the Sun is associated with the Las Vegas Review-Journal or Righthaven, but if I’m wrong about that, please let me know.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Museums, Music | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch. (#16 in a series)

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

By way of Mike the Musicologist, we find out what Damien “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” Hirst has been up to recently.

(I love the caption on that NYT photo: “Damien Hirst with a spare frozen shark.” Because, you know, all serious artists keep a spare frozen shark around. You never know when a dead frozen shark might come in handy.)

Bespoke stainless steel wheel covers for your 4×4.

This is the kind of thing I could see myself purchasing. If I had a 4×4. And if I had money to burn. And if I was a moron.

Posted in Art | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch. (#15 in a series)

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

The Cardiff Botanical Society, in Cardiff-By-The-Sea, California, spent $120,000 to put up a 16-foot statue of a “surfer”. That is, for values of “surfer” that look a lot like…well, maybe, me on a surfboard.

Hilarity ensues, complete with people using the “Cardiff Kook” (as the statue is known) as a jumping off point to create their own works of art.

(Hattip: Reason’s “Hit and Run“.)

Posted in Art, Clippings | Comments Closed

More photos about architecture.

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

I’ve been trying to get the photos from my recent trips organized and put together for Flickr purposes. Here’s the first set, which contains some photos of a Frank Gehry designed building in Las Vegas (and a couple of other buildings, too):

Ruvo Center and other buildings July 2010.

I’m still learning how to use the Nikon. There’s a fair number of photos in this set where I did one photo with the camera set to full-auto exposure mode, and a second photo in the same position with the camera set to aperture priority and stopped down to f/22 or smaller, so I could get a sense of depth of field. (Most of these were taken with the 18-55 mm Nikon kit lens: I think I used the 80-200 mm VR lens for the Stratosphere/pyramid photos.)

Comments either here or on Flickr are welcome.

Posted in Art, Gehry, Photography, Travel | Comments Closed

Interesting moral questions from the LAT.

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Is it okay to tattoo a seven-year old child?

Is it okay to tattoo a seven-year old child if at least one parent gives consent?

Does it make a difference if the seven-year old child allegedly begged and pleaded until the parent gave in? (Note that this fact is disputed; the father claims this, but the child’s mother claimed that he was held down and forcibly tattooed. The child himself testified at the ensuing criminal trial that he didn’t want the tattoo and cried throughout.)

Does it make a difference that the tattoo was a gang symbol, and both the father and the tattoo artist were members of that particular gang?

If any of these things do make a difference, what’s an appropriate charge? Aggravated mayhem? Injury to a child? Felony f-ing stupid?

Who bears more of the responsibility here? Certainly, you’d expect the parent to be the bigger party here and say, “I don’t care how much you whine, I’m not letting you get a tattoo.” But we all know there are parents who give in to whatever their kid wants. And it’s easy to imagine a parent who says, “Hey, what’s the big deal with a tattoo?” Does the tattoo artist have a duty to say, “I don’t care what the parents say, I’m not tattooing a freakin’ seven year old”?

Edited to add: Speaking of irresponsible parenting and art, Patrick over at Popehat makes an interesting argument that Rachel Stieringer is a more important artist than Andres Serrano. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ms. Stieringer and her artistic output, I won’t spoil it for you; I’ll just encourage you to click over to Patrick’s blog entry.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Stupid | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#14 in a series).

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

I’m putting this under the “Art, damn it, art!” watch because I haven’t made up my mind about this one.

Would you pay someone to sharpen your pencil for you? (This is not a metaphor for something else: when I say “sharpen your pencil”, I mean a regular #2 pencil, with graphite and an eraser.)

Would you pay someone $15 to sharpen your pencil for you?

Would you pay someone $15 to sharpen your pencil for you, using a “specially selected” implement that “suits your pencil best”?

Would you pay David “Get Your War On” Rees $15 to sharpen your pencil for you?

My first thought was: this is moronic.

But considering it some more, “artisanal pencil sharpening” could be a subtle and brilliant parody of the whole “artisanal” movement. Artisanal food, artisanal axes; why not “artisanal pencil sharpening”?

Posted in Art, Clippings | 2 Comments »

After action report: Las Vegas, NV.

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

I covered a lot of stuff in my previous travel report, so this will mostly just be updates.

  • Project e worked spectacularly well at DEFCON. This is the first chance I’ve had to really push the battery life, and I was able to get an good 12+ hours out of the battery without running it totally dry. (This was with the machine set to “powersave” and putting it into “standby” or “hibernate” when I was in the dealer’s room, or driving around with Mike the Musicologist and Andrew. Continuous usage with the wireless would have been more like 6+ hours, I think, which is still pretty impressive.)
  • My one regret is that I forgot my Alfa external WiFi adapter. I would have enjoyed playing with that at the convention.
  • The 5.11 bailout bag also worked out well for lugging around Project e and various other equipment. Again, I was able to carry a pretty good load, including the laptop, charger, books, a couple of bottles of water,  the small camera, and miscellaneous other necessities.
  • MtM has the Nikon with him and has been taking a lot of photos. As you saw below, I did use the Nikon to take some Gehry photos. When I have more time, I’m going to put up an expanded and annotated Flickr photo set; I did some side-by-side experiments with aperture priority vs. automatic exposure.
  • Food in Las Vegas was, without exception, pretty darn good. The worst meal I had (at the Four Kegs) was still better than average (and I didn’t order the stromboli, which is the house specialty). We also had a very good (if loud) tapas meal at Firefly* on Paradise, the usual wonderful meal at Lotus of Siam, the previously mentioned dinner at Shabu-Shabu Paradise, and a Moroccan meal at Marrakech. (I had not previously had Moroccan food, so I can’t comment on how authentic it was. I certainly enjoyed my meal, and the belly dancer didn’t hurt.)

    Vegas does have something of a shortage of good breakfast places outside of the casinos (and even inside of the casinos, if you’re not looking for a buffet). We had several good breakfasts at Blueberry Hill on Flamingo and one excellent breakfast at The Egg and I on Sahara. I know that MtM and Andrew went to a good Italian place in New York, New York while I was at the convention, and I’ll let them comment on that.
  • Between Tucson and Las Vegas, the refurbished Kindle I ordered arrived, and it went on this trip. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the Kindle later on, but my first impression is “Meh”. I did manage to read John Clark’s Ignition! in PDF format and a Project Gutenberg MOBI format copy of Heart of Darkness without too much trouble, but my experiences with other PDF files and eBooks have been inconsistent.
  • On the other hand, I finished, and highly recommend, Ubuntu for Non-Geeks 4th Edition and am almost finished with Cisco Routers for the Desperate 2nd Edition (also recommended). No Starch Press rocks. And the coupon code “DEFCON18” will get you a 30% discount. And they’re running a half-price sale on all e-books.
  • My Southwest experience this time was much more pleasant. No misplaced bags, and no flight delays. One thing that was particularly unusual was going through the security line in Las Vegas; I had, literally, no wait. Just walked straight up to the TSA agent and got in line for the metal detector. It took longer to take my shoes off and the laptop out than it did to get through the rest of security.

My thanks to, in no particular order, the DEFCON 18 staff and presenters, No Starch Press, UNIX Surplus, SEREPick, Lotus of Siam, Shabu-Shabu Paradise, Sarah at the iBar in the Rio, and the unknown belly dancer at Marrakech.

Special thanks to my high-speed, low-drag travel companions in the primary, Mike the Musicologist and Andrew “Porous concrete? What were they thinking?” Wimsatt.

Posted in asus_eee, Books, DEFCON 18, Endorsements, Food, Gehry, Kindleing, linux, Photography, project_e, Thanks, Travel | 3 Comments »

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