Benefits of being Married to a Facebook Slut:

a detail of a painting by a friend who paints faces but is not into facebook

This morning Mr. dd seemed to be particularly interested in addressing a long standing leak in our master bath, such as it is. This is not like him. I reminded him I will be away over the weekend and I didn't want to come home to a flood on the first floor.

He announced that he now has excellent instructions because he posted in his Facebook update an announcement that he wanted to know how to repair a bathroom leak. SIXTEEN people responded with detailed comments that described how he might approach remedying the situation. I was dumbfounded and VERY amused since Mr. dd doesn't know the difference between an allen wrench and vice grips. It's not his thing. He is a man of words and action - as in acting and writing... not home repair. I had a good laugh, though.

It was even funnier, I thing - because I am in the middle of David Sedaris' "Engulfed in Flames" and sometimes I think I may have married a straighter version of Mr. Sedaris. Both make me laugh out loud and during the past eight years humor has made my life much richer than home repair. While our economy is being flushed down the toilet is seems like humor may be our greatest asset!

Are you the child of Tom Waits?

Tom Waits is touring this summer to promote his new CD "Glitter and Doom." I'll miss seeing him so I thought I'd post this to honor his journey from there to here.

katzenmanifest

Ah. When one's second language skills are as bad as mine are I appreciate discovering universal alphabets or manifests that transcend region and cultural differences. This manifest, I believe achieves that which is so most anywhere on this planet and maybe even a few others.

Just In time for the Superbowl and Mardi Gras...

Although there may have been some karmic benefit for mainlining the fear and reality of the post you'll read below (with Mardi Gras just a few days away... I couldn't resist posting this. At least it still falls within the dangers of alcohol schematic!

Sad But True

An email is going around that includes a collection of what we are told are authentic vintage advertisements that are terrifyingly wrong. Everyone thinks they are funny, these old ads. I doubt this one is real. It's probably something a bored in-house designer put together late one afternoon when his or her boss was making a presentation and it was too early to go home.

Still, it makes me think of advertising we see today and wonder which ads are selling us things that will eventually kill us, maim us or make a lawyer and a plaintiff wealthy. It's happened before. Cigarette girls once handed our free packs of cigs at the art openings in the museum here!! I wonder if they were allowed to smoke them in the museum? Phillip Morris is a big art US art patron so you never know...

I taught advertising at the university level for many years and have tried to focus on selling things I could market without compromising my values... (ok, well, I did sell some mighty bad art back in the day when I worked on commission in the French Quarter) but OTHERWISE it isn't something I lose sleep over at night. Money just isn't enough for me and I have persisted in the luxury of living life as I see fit. Its a costly endeavor, not making money. I've learned that people with money are never expected to pay! Has it always been this way or just something made fashionable since the Republicans are running things?

Will cell phones be proven to be the cause of brain cancer? Depression, high blood pressure and heart attacks are on the rise since Bush was elected.We already know that plastic containers are contaminating the food chain and our fatty tissues due to so much bottled water and the misuse of microwaves. I read somewhere that microwaves are banned in Germany because they are considered to be unsafe. Does anyone know if this is correct? If so, well, another black mark on the risk side of the score card. As the husband of a favorite colleague said recently; on finding out a friend of ours has cancer: "we're all just sitting ducks."

Live each day as if it's your last since that's all we really have to go on. The rest is just a story or an ad trying to manipulate our motives and trick us from living our lives. Our housekeeper Ella Mae revealed this secret to me back in 68 or so but I didn't believe her. She was way ahead of the game, but that's another post for another day. If I seem glum I am not. I have a greater respect for cancer than the medical and advertising professions. It's a dilemma.

the life we pretend to live

We live very close to a number of excellent cafes and coffee shops. The closest chain is a mile away which is closer than we'd like.

Are blogs the the cafe society of our era? I am beginning to think so. If I had the time to hang I don't know if I'd find folks there I'd want to hang with or if I'd be willing to spend so much money on coffee on a regular basis. I make a pretty mean Cup of Joe myself and there are certainly times when I get a great deal of insight from my communiques here. Would I get as much out of my time with the barrista's? Not as regularly. We're all multitasking...meeting, planning, networking, listmaking, websurfing, etc.

There ARE places that defy these doubts but we are there far too infrequently to be considered regulars. Instead, here I am.

It's too late for me to drink coffee anyway and if I went to a bar/restaurant with good coffee I'd have to deal with the smoke of the masses. Living in a tobacco state is great for buying cheap cigarettes to give my European friends but it means we'll probably always have to taste smoke when we eat out for many years to come. Its not as bad as Berlin but its bad enough to keep me out of restaurants and cafes I love when I know they'll be full of smokers... Fri night at Cous Cous, for example!

In the meantime we look for places with patios when the weather is agreeable. We try to take in the present with a glass of wine of a cafe au lait and all is well with the world.

premonition of another time

Mr. dd and I attended The Devolution of Chuck Statler, Part 2 on Sat night. Chuck is known as the Godfather of music video and he was the keynote speaker at the local film festival.

He grew up with the Devo guys and produced their initial moving promos in super 8 and eventually went on to produce videos for Madness, Elvis Costello, Tiny Tim and others. I enjoyed seeing these blasts from the past but also wondered if it was the best use of my time. I'd rather be looking forward than back these days and this part of history doesn't even really seem like history yet. Hell, we're gonna see Elvis Costello in a few weeks at a music festival we attend each year. I'll be curious to see if he really fixed the gap in his teeth. I don't remember him having one and he certainly did when he first started out. (Again, is this the best expense of my time? Elvis would certainly prefer that I bop along to his catchy pop tunes but this is the stuff that occupies one's mind when they aren't really present.)

There seem to be a lot of former rock and rollers surfacing these days. The former roadie for the Beatles just resigned as the CEO of Apple (the Beatle's Apple), there was a story in esquire on catching product plagiarists and one the investigator was a former attorney for a number of R&R acts. There is certainly a place for R&R in my heart but I think I had rather listen to it and dance to it than look back at the good ole days when sex, drugs and rock-n-roll were a lot more fun and the risks of having too much fun seemed as foreign as the film "Go Ask Alice."

Mood Music

I found an art blog more eclectic than mine with the file above embedded. Someone commented on his blog asking if this clip was posted in honor of President's Day...

Auspicious February

Last night Mr. Beloved and I nearly missed the PBS American Experience focus on New Orleans due to a review I read in the NYT: "City of Feel-Good Music and Feel-Bad History" By NEIL GENZLINGER. I am relieved we gave it a chance since it was very enlightening and I KNOW more about NOLA than most folks.

It's very obvious to me that Mr. G just doesn't get IT. Last night I realized that most Americans don't and perhaps IT's a place ya just have to live in to get tho that wasn't a requirement for moi. My first real New Awlin's experience was when I was a sophomore in college. I'd made some friends from the Gulf Coast who were planning to drive down for the ruckus of Mardi Gras. I was game. We left the Thurs or Fri prior to Fat Tues... I think. Its funny... I don't even remember who I rode down there with... nothing about the drive or where we stayed. Maybe with someone's parents someplace in the suburbs that first night. I wore my first pair of pointy cowboy boots... they weren't premium, since I was on an art school budget. That was a mistake.

I remember painting faces and taking photos of Lucy and Brian playing their juice harps by the light of the street lamp on Jackson Square. I remember painting faces on Bourbon Street with a little wooden sign Brian had made saying "Face Paints While U Wait." I'd use one hand to prop a slightly tipsy person against a wall so I could paint their face and they would hold their drink in one hand and the paint water in the other. It was interesting watching how often they would mistake the paint water for their Hurricane as the night wore on. I had NO MONEY. I took 20 dollars with me and if I didn't get tips from the face painting I probably would have eaten saltines from the salad bar all weekend... and I certainly didn't have money for drinking. When one is completely sober in the Zeitgeist of New Orleans during Carnival it is a true circus. We went to the Cafe du Monde. I had my first cafe au lait and beinets. I ran into people I hadn't seen in years. I felt like I was in the place I needed to be maybe for the first time in my life.

That night I wound up crashing with Jeff and Adele (an Egyptian scientist with three masters degrees and workin on a Phd who was flippin pancakes at the waffle house because he didn't have a green card) Don't ask me how we found these guys in a city crammed with revelers since I'll never know. Cell phones weren't even on the horizon back then. I didn't have any friends in NOLA at the time and barely knew most of the the people I was traveling with... we were all studying poetry or science or social work or fine art at a southern university about 5 hours north of NOLA... like minded souls in a land of southern belles, jocks, rednecks and good ole boys. Fraternities and Sororities tried to run things in those days but we did a pretty good job of giving them a run for their money.

That night poet Jeff drove us to his friends' apt and parked in the parking garage. I think we were in a Colt or some other small hatchback of the late 70's vintage. His friends never came home. We tried to sleep in the Colt. My legs were cramping from the walking, the boots, maybe from growing out of my tight levi's, from drinking bourbon...maybe from all those reasons. (Bourbon always gave me leg cramps. I don't drink it today... every)

I was 19 years old, almost 20. Adele and Jeff were so sweet. Neither of them ever made a move on me though I had a slight crush on Jeff and Adele had a slight crush on me. Those were the days when bohemia was full of kindness and people were just sweet... (what happened?)

That car, though. It was a disaster on wheels. Early in the morning after Fat Tuesday many of us (MSU bohos) were crammed in the same car and passing over the Lake Ponchatrain Bridge. The car died. There are 7 or 9 people crammed in this COLT and it is shaking as semi s roll past us. I have to admit, it was a little scary. Just like in a sweet fable, some Jed Clampet-like family with an open truck stopped on the bridge and let us all cram into the back of their truck. We were in face paint and costume and must have been quite something to see. The most amazing thing is they used what they had: jumper cables!!! - to attach the two cars and tow Jeff's Colt to the other side of the bridge.

We poured out of the truck at some fast food joint on the other side of the bridge and everyone SOSed their connections from a payphone for help. I had one phone number with me - my mother's old college roomate and her family. They lived on that side of the lake. They had visited us when I was kid and gave us our first Siamese Cat, Pepper. I hadn't seen the Rusts since I was a kid. I called them out of the blue. They came to the rescue, picking up me with Jeff and Adele and towed Jeff's car to their home.

(At this point - its Wednesday - I've missed three days of classes back at old Moo U...) They let us shower (encouraged us, I'm sure!), fed us and put us up for the night. In the meantime, their daughter's boyfriend proceeded to repair the car. I think it may have cost 35 dollars in parts. I never knew if Jeff had the money to pay him or not. We took off on Thurs or Fri. I missed a week of classes but found my muse for many years to come during that auspicious week.

New Orleans showed me what was possible when one lives in a place where "do what thou wilt" is laizze faire. No one judges as long as you aren't hurtin anybody. The most memorable Mardi Gras costume I saw that year (1980) was a young man dressed as Peter Pan. He was struttin past St. Louis Square with nothin on but a pot hangin from his waist over his peter. On the back of the pan was scrawled in black marker "Peter Pan". He was wearing high tops and nothin else. It was a mild, sunny Mardi Gras that year.... or this guy woulda been way ahead of the season!

When I reorganize my office I'll hope I can come up with some images of that time. It was pure magic for me. A much better education than anything I would have learned in class that week.

telling it like it is

I've missed writing and barely have had time to read anything this month... luckily I didn't miss this.

from the NYT:
State of the Union: Another Take

By RANDY NEWMAN

Published: January 24, 2007

Randy Newman, the singer, songwriter and composer, performed this song at Carnegie Hall in 2006. It will be released soon online. This is an abridged version.

A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

By Randy Newman

I’d like to say a few words
In defense of our country
Whose people aren’t bad nor are they mean
Now the leaders we have
While they’re the worst that we’ve had
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen

Let’s turn history’s pages, shall we?

Take the Caesars for example
Why within the first few of them
They had split Gaul into three parts
Fed the Christians to the lions
And burned down the City
And one of ’em
Appointed his own horse Consul of the Empire
That’s like vice president or something
That’s not a very good example, is it?
But wait, here’s one, the Spanish Inquisition
They put people in a terrible position

I don’t even like to think about it
Well, sometimes I like to think about it

Just a few words in defense of our country
Whose time at the top
Could be coming to an end
Now we don’t want their love
And respect at this point is pretty much out of the question
But in times like these
We sure could use a friend

Hitler. Stalin.
Men who need no introduction
King Leopold of Belgium. That’s right.
Everyone thinks he’s so great
Well he owned The Congo
He tore it up too
He took the diamonds, he took the gold
He took the silver
Know what he left them with?
Malaria

A president once said,
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid
It’s patriotic in fact and color coded
And what are we supposed to be afraid of?
Why, of being afraid
That’s what terror means, doesn’t it?
That’s what it used to mean

The end of an empire is messy at best
And this empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We’re adrift in the land of the brave
And the home of the free
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Are you ready? But who cares....have fun anyway

The Real Deal

I've posted the image posted above on my studio door. Its nice to have an image that demonstrates my point of view that transcends language and point of origin!