Every morning at 5 a.m., there is a hum, the freeway outside has a noticeable uptick in the traffic. It is about an hour before i go to bed. Part of me wants to disconnect from the internet and write a novel or book of art theory (for the real world, not the theoretical world) instead of surf surf surf. But I DO get work done.

My birthday was painless. I recounted a horrible Vegas trip from my birthday 12 years ago. Mike and Shelley Horton were participants in that adventure. They were there to fill in some of my memory gaps. A long lost girlfriend who organized it, Maria, is long gone, whereabouts unknown, joining a long line of exes who ceased contact - that kind of miffs me, but I’ll take it as 50/50. for this birthday, one of my exes got me a painting she did of me 7 years ago. It was a successful relationship - no courts involved at any point before, during or after. Why the fuck do we bother? Oh, this was supposed to be a post about the freeway. The trucks make the building shake on occasion, wonder what an earthquake would do, but the hiss, the hum, it is natural, tells me the sun is rising, screws me up on weekends when it doesn’t occur (the 5 a.m. taffic increase, not the sun skipping a day, jeez).

In addition to lovely Maria, Cuban planner of Vegas birthday tours, the whereabouts are also unknown for the drunk friend that the Hortons brought along on the vegas-from-hell birthday who got thrown in jail for pinching the ass of a cocktail waitress. Maybe that would be a good novel. We got the tour bus driver arrested, need I say more to underscore the intensity of the trip?

Countdown to my 20 year high school reunion has begun: 20 days, tick tick tick .. .. ..

.. .. .. and last but not least, the weird photo of the day:

I doubt they really ate him.. .. ..

I was born the same day as Peter Finch (he was born in 1916), and like his character in Network (an awesome 70s flick), I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!
Actually, I’m not mad as hell, I used to be, and these days I could probably could take a little more, although it would make me crankier. I was born the exact same date as Janeane Garafolao, but does she have as classic a catch phrase? No way. Harpo Marx died the day JG & I were born, and he had no phrases, catchy or otherwise, at all! So I’ll take the Peter Finch line as a motto for now.

The new issue of ArtScene magazine is out. I have a feature profile of Roy Thurston and a smaller review of Carlee Fernandez /Tracy Nakamura at Acuna-Hansen Gallery.

I really enjoy writing about art, but being a writer, professionally, it is like being an artist in the art world - it doesn’t pay, so you have to find some other gig, preferably in the arts. I enjoy writing more than the other crap i do (this would be a far more poignant line if i were a mafia hit man instead of running a gallery).

Raid Projects Gallery here at the Brewery Art Colony has residencies of artists from other countries. You pay the guy who runs Raid and he gives you a show, but it is not a rental show (notoriously despised by the art world cogniscienti because these shows are not “earned” by the artists based on the gallery’s belief in the caliber of the art work, but in the ability of the artist to pay to play). It is nt a rental at Raid because your government gives you a grant and therefore, you “earned” the residency (your government, by the way, is not the USA). But you don’t keep the money, you give it to the guy at Raid (and he pays his rent and gets to have a studio at the Brewery Art Colony and run a gallery too). Your residency show is in a little room and there is a group show going on in the other gallery at Raid, probably some rental -er- residency money there as well.

I wish I could find a good artist who wanted a solo show residency here at Coagula Gallery. Imagine living for a month in an apartment/gallery/loft in downtown L.A. at an art colony, having a publicized solo show of your art and getting to discuss it on the pages of Coagula Art Journal for the interest of the 12,000 readers of our print edition. Yeah, keep imagining and email me if your imagination runs wild.

I normally don’t print gossip about the world of academia, all art schools are conning you out of your money and often out of your pink panties. But This Website dishes the dirt. I will say that the thought of Saul Ostrow teaching a class is awful, but not radically worse than some of the dullards and trendoids who get teaching positions at art schools out there. He is a repulsive human being, but we are talking art schools here, y’know, egomania manufacturing facilities.

And last but not least, here are my picks in the NFL for this weekend: Buffalo, New Orleans, Green Bay, Jacksonville, Miami, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Arizona, Tampa Bay, Oakland, New England, Seattle
Monday Night Game: Denver

I gotta go to bed, I gotta open up the gallery at Noon, it is the last day of Leigh Salgado’s solo show.

I was just about to go to bed (for two hours, then early wake up) and got this email, here it is with my response. Gotta love French women for trying to get a guy over there…

>Nice website consecrated to Matthew BARNEY.
>Will you come for the opening of “THE CREMASTER CYCLE”
>exhibition of Matthew BARNEY, Modern Art Museum of Paris ?
>That will be October 9.
>Best regards.
>Caroline.

I WILL COME TO PARIS for a better reason than that,
but not for lousy movies,
I can stay in Los Angeles and watch lousy movies.

Consecrated? No, do you know who Barney Rubble is?
He is a cartoon - Nobody takes him serious.
Matthew Barney is a caricature - nobody should take him serious.

mat.

Alright, I have enough problems to deal with, here is A RADICAL AUDIO WEBSITE, it is a little obtuse at first, then totally addictive. The next time someone says that sound cannot be art, point them to this link.

Nest we have a little story i found browsing Live Journal, it is someone else’s entry, and pretty intense, a narrative that might make you think, Gee Whiz, my frickin’ life is pretty neat.

Then, here is some
weird news from the world of politics.

And now you will have to indulge me as I post pictures of my three favorite current Anahiem Angels:

Garrett Anderson

Troy Percival

Tim Salmon
I know, you thought Disney had only one Goofy

So now we get to discuss the subject of birthdays. The day that children look forward too and people in their early 30s dread and, suddenly, the day that almost means nothing to you, except that someone wants to throw you a party. And so it is, this Saturday, a few friends will be gathering at a restaurant and reminding me how old I am.

I had an interesting discussion today with some artists at the cafe here at the Brewery Art Colony. We were sitting around, wait a minute, before i go on, this is starting to sound pretentious, artists, cafe, discussion, fuck maybe I am getting (or have gotten) soft. I turn 38 years old on Saturday.

Digression: Historically (and I don’t believe in art history, but i do believe in journalism’s occasional credibility at noting important events), I was born on the day that the
Warren Commission report was released, the biggest lie ever told.

Back to being soft: So maybe getting soft is a relative term and i am still tough for 38, art colony cafe discussions aside, but I will get back to the discussion but first, a note about the real Warren Commission - I am pretty anti-conspiracy, rationally overall, analytically, and here is why: I personally have tried to conspire against people and events on numerous occasions and rarely succeeded. Try to get four neighbors to conspire with you on an exact plan against a fifth. Can’t happen. People are social animals and follow orders, but the ability for everything to tick in your favor is the fantasy of the control freak and the hobgoblin’s rarely seen cousin in little-mind-ville.

Simple Conspiracy Math Equation: Perfect People + Perfect Timing + Flawless Execution + everyone keeping their mouth shut = Successful Conspiracy. Never happens. Except maybe with Kennedy.

Anyway, we were in a cafe, on a nice afternoon, drinking coffee, years of experience in the art world between us, and we were talking about the art world social structure/power base. Here are a few things you should know about the art world:

Art World Dirty Dozen
1. The rich examine your shoes to determine your wealth, they want to know who the other rich people are.
2. The person being approached in a greeting is the more powerful/successful of the two.
3. If it is painfully apparent that the approacher is more successful than the person being greeted, the person being greeted has just gotten more successful.
4. Never approaching anyone is a sign that you are a nobody.
5. Approaching someone beneath you can be a way of buying insurance that those less successful than you are allied with you, thus ensuring a higher level of success and a longer run of successes.
6. Fresh gossip is currency, your wealth in this regard is constantly being gaged.
7. Two artists will end a friendship when their self-glorifying myths collide.
8. The ability to move freely among cliques* is a self-evident demonstration of power and success.
9. No one is ever impressed with your spouse/partner unless they are wealthy.
10. Three types of people who are not your friend:
10-A. The acquaintance who tells you a rumor about you that they heard who refuses to divulge the source.
10-B. Any acquaintance who withholds information that would obviously assist your career (wicked old shrew Sue Spaid was the most blatant offender in this category a few years back).
10-C. Any acquaintance who demands your loyalty to a particular clique*.
11. Your art school teachers are your most embittered competition.
12. Meeting someone from your salad days when you are out with colleagues has ruined more than a few careers.

*CLIQUES - Groups of three or more, often numbering in the dozens, these tend to form around artists from one gallery (think NY’s Metro Pictures in the 80s), or graduates from one art school or another (Art Center is the worst offender in L.A. at the moment, Claremont close behind), or faculty from any institution (especially State schools). Cliques socialize exclusively, go to opening receptions in posses, and demand loyalty from members (falsely labeled as friends) when exhibition opportunities arise.

Sorry this is not philosophical, or spelling out how things should be. Hey, looks like the discussion was anything but soft! This is how things are. You might want them to be different, but they are this way. The discussion was between a veteran artist, a veteran curator and myself (critic, gallerist, curator, publisher, 38-year old).

Woke up at 2 in the afternoon. Must be nice you think. Not. Can’t get anything done, can’t call people at midnight, whatever.

Okay, here is a fucking amazing website where I just wasted all day - make sure you sail the boat over to the cartoon section. This is approaching Simpson’s potential.

And here is Another awesome timewaster. Nineteenth century meets geek.

Typecasting?:

Find your inner Smurf!

Slight Resemblance?:

Watched the gallery saturday afternoon. Three friends of Leigh Salgado came by. A few artists came by. A friend watching a gallery in Chinatown called me and asked “Is it always this dead?” and I just laughed in the affirmative. She said it was almost three in the afternoon and two people had been by her gallery that day so far - this is the main drag of Chinatown, the alleged glamorous center of the L.A. art scene - and that they both had slide packets (aspiring artists). I asked her to describe them. One of the descriptions fit a guy who brought a packet by my place and slipped it under the door at 11:30 a.m. (just drinking coffee, hadn’t open yet) and after we were done talking, about 3:15 p.m., a woman fitting the description of the other Chinatown slide stalker appeared here, smiling all fake and leaving a very elaborate presentation of lame-o work. Sorry darling.

Bill Farroux, the photographer who took the picture of Julian Schnabel that we ran on the cover of Issue #57 came by and we went and got a burrito at fabulous Burger Plus (recently upgraded to a B rating form a C by the L.A. Health Inspector - must’ve got the bribe amount right). Bill was going to a listening party for Beck’s new album at Gallery 2211. I had planned to go but then Bill mentioned he had heard about it on KCRW and, well, let’s just say that there are no events that involve KCRW that I want to go to (email me and I will rant why in private). And besides, I liked Beck better when he was making espresso at his mom’s coffee shop. No I lie, just bragging, he made me an espresso once in a cup he forgot to rinse - dish soap & gavina espresso.

Saturday night I hit three things: POST Gallery, Cherrydelosreyes Gallery and a party in Brentwood for Ashley Emmeneger’s birthday. At Post, artist Jamie Sholnick took a fascination with Hello Kitty to an extreme. There were drawings of ninja Hello Kittys and a movie about the Hello Kitty getting a mouth transplanted. Cherrydelosreyes had some realistic paintings. Tony De Los Reyes and I had an interesting conversation. I was lamenting the lack of gallery foot traffic and he agreed, but pushed the perseverance line. It was actually kind of inspiring, he said, “I want to be able to give a good answer if my kids ever ask “ ‘daddy, what did you do in the war?’ ” It really underscored how the big picture remains and the present bullshit is just passing. Made me want to stay in the damn art world, as if there was really anywhere else I could go besides the art world or a flea-ridden $19 a night Vegas Motel.

For Ashley Emmenegger’s 28th birthday bash, a crowd gathered at a house in the good part of town. The highlight was a secret bet i made with Patricia Correia about what gallery at Bergamot will go out of business first. It isn’t who you think. She had her own insider gossip, but printing it here might get me sued. One thing she did mention was that the city of Santa Monica is charging the galleries at Bergamot $100 for a permit to have an opening reception for their artists. It is this kind of bullshit that makes me want to leave Southern California. If you work for the government, especially some little regulatory agency, do me a favor the next time you are depressed, skip the prozac, be one of those people who goes to the office and murder suicides everyone, especially the bitch by the coffee pot and the dork by the copy machine.

I had a good time at Ashley’s, went to bed late and woke up Sunday at 2:30 in the frickin afternoon. Yes, P.M. ! ! !

Twice this week I had a hot dog for dinner. On Wednesday it was at Dodger Stadium. Friday night it was at the East Side Art Crawl. There was a whole outside theater convergence on Hollywood Boulevard. A Chevy Van full of art and a flatbed truck of performance art were on either side of the street. It was group show orgy in one and performance orgy at the other.

Artist Michael Arata had a barbecue set up and was giving away hot dogs. All you had to do was make a drawing of a hot dog. The glimmer in Arata’s eye indicated he would be using the collection of drawings he was amassing in some future exhibit. If so, my drawing was a very minimal frank/bun combo emblazoned with the slogan: My name is dog and i am hot or something equally infantile. I had mustard on my hot dog, but this is not an indicator of my being a hot dog snob. There are actually people who cringe at the thought of catchup on a hot dog, they get all high and mighty and lecture people for doing this. Swear to god. I am in the art world a lot of the time, where the elitist bullshit is manufactured out of thin air and snobbery is the destination not the means, and the manufactured consent emulating fashion within the galleries and classrooms is far more grounded than the traditions surrounding proper hot dog condiments.

The Van (owned by Steve Schmidt) was parked in front of Circle Elephant Art. Lisa Adams made a penis/mushroom cloud out of Christmas lights and mounted it on top of the Van’s roof. Mark Housley dressed up like a pig in a checkered sportscoat. Meanwhile Dark Bob led a production of performers on the street in front of La Luz De Jesus Gallery, he was funny and “on” like a good entertainer, but some of the others were kinda numbing so I bounced back and forth across the street all night.

Nobody wanted to go to Cheetah’s, a nearby strip club, so I just went home.