I pasted up the magazine at the printers and for all I know it is printed now. It is B&W this time, those get done faster, 40 pages, which is thin, but that is good as far as saving money. Sometimes i have to shift gears into businessman identity. I do it pretty good actually, i could be a bloodthirsty shark but there just ain’t the poetry on that end of the pond.

So I have a flare up of gout today. I have had this condition for many years. I rarely talk about my health but I am in excruciating pain. this happens a lot after I have been sick for a while, it is the body being taxed. Having gout was central to my decision to quit drinking. I control it through diet these days BUT I have been eating pretty gnarly lately - fast food, rich food, or as I call it, deadline food.

Anyway, the new issue looks great, Marty the designer did a great job. My place is really trashed after this deadline. We have to start installing shelves for the next show, small sculpture by Sandra Vista. I made sure to create a window of time to get this done. I am going to go up to the Bay Area to give a talk about the art world. I will post the pertinent info once i get it. Hmm, anything else? I am frazzled, in pain and surrounded by clutter. But I am always happy when a new issue is coming out and that should be today.

So I was laying in bed last night thinking about life. I am finally in better health and my favorite sports team won the world series so things are going quite well, I am sure some chunk of the sky will fall soon. But I was thinking about how much effort I had put into following this team for so many years.

And my mind drifted to what I else i wanted to do. Not accomplish, like publish a magazine or write a novel, but things I want to experience in life, things like my team wwinning the world series, which believe me, I had already convinced myself, it wasn’t gonna happen. So as my mind wandered I thought that one thing I have always wanted to do was meet Leonard Cohen. I would never think to stalk or seek out a chance meeting with a celebrity, but a chance to meet Charles Bukowski came about in 1990 and I am glad I took it.

So that was my thought pretty much as I dozed off around sunrise on Tuesday. At 10:38 my phone rings and it is the wonderful and talented Shana Nys Dambrot (pictured here on the right) I let the machine pick up and when I hear her voice, I assume she has some typo in her article in the upcoming issue but instead she excitedly tells me about meeting Leonard Cohen that morning at Starbucks, finding out that they are neighbors and sitting in his car and talking to him for ten minutes.

It has been a lot like that lately. Maybe when your team wins the World Series, you will find out.

I am going to go to the printer’s today with the new issue of Coagula Art Journal.

It has a very un - p.c. cover that I am quite excited about.
ME SICK:

Well, progress is really coming along on the next issue of the magazine and I may have a speaking gig in Northern California lined up for a week from now. Very busy today, plus watched an amazing baseball game.

Nobody really showed up at the gallery today, I called around to a few other galleries and it seemed slow out there, foot-traffic-wise. Oh, one woman did show up and asked me how I picked the art to be in the gallery. I thought it would be a better day as far as people coming through what with the cold weather. Let’s all face it - the idea that the Brewery Art Colony is somewhere to see good art is always doing battle with the reality that there are lots of hobbyist artists here, crafts people, yuppie lifestylers, and other various/sundry pretenders. Not to mention photographers, designers and architects, all of which take the focus off of Fine Art. The gallery is a great space and the artists I show are top rate, i totally believe in them, but if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it …

So watch the World Series Game 7 and tell me what you think.

My theory was that more people would be coming by the gallery today because it is cool and cloudy - thus limiting the number of recreational activities open.

Of course, they’re all taking their sweet time helping to prove my theory.

I finally got so sick of being sick that I went to 7-11 and bought thirty bucks worth of stuff at 6 a.m., expectorant, throat lozenges, Perrier, Tiger Milk bars. I didn’t even buy lottery tickets, if you can believe that! Plus a care package from a reader of this journal in Wisconsin arrived (thanks!)and now the whole gallery smells like Vick’s VapoRub.

So yesterday, a freelance writer interviewed me and artist JERK for a possible article. The same day, there was a headline in the Los Angeles Times that the new Police Chief has declared graffiti public enemy number one (Personally, murder, rape and crack are on the top of my list, but what do I know?). Then a freelance photographer went and took pictures of her doing her thing.

If the article comes out, i hope to have shaken this cold and congestion in order to seize the moment and any opportunities that arise from it. Not everyday you make an independent film and people come out of the woodwork to help.

Last night i followed the whole sniper thing on the internet as it broke. I had been sleeping all day, sick, watched a tragic world series game and then was on the internet and caught the breaking news report and followed updates until 5 a.m. or so.

I only have one real curiosity about the whole sniper thing… it strikes me as amazing that this type of thing does not happen more often. Why aren’t there snipers every few days in every city?

Cynical and jaded? Who me?

>
>
>What do you guys think of Cezanne?

I swear it was a one-line e-mail; really, that was all it said.

My reply:

“Cezanne is nice to talk about when you are trying to impress a date at the museum, but as an art writer, for me to write a lot about the modern masters in detail or with passion only creates one effect:

Every amateur hack immediately sends me (or any art writer, really) piles of promotional materials screaming that Mr. Am-Hack is the next Cezanne (or Van Gogh, or Picasso, or Matisse) and that I should obviously see this and stop everything i am doing and feed his bottomless narcissism (albeit an allegedly art historical narcissism).

Why do you ask?”

We’ll see if he writes back…..

I am still sick. My neighbor Wayne brought a television over and I have been watching the World Series and that is about all. Work on the next issue of the magazine is at a standstill, Marty is laying out the pages, etc. but i am just wiped out.

Macintosh released their new i-toilet today:

I thought this was hilarious and more original than most of the “art’ I am forced to deal with these days. Can you tell I am on deadline and not happy with a damn thing i have seen around the galleries? Actually, I have not been out a lot lately and everytime I do go out the stuff is so weak that I lose a lot of enthusiasm.

I caught a cold when the weather turned cold. Sore throat arrived when i awoke this afternoon. I am bundled up and still shivering. The next issue of the magazine is shaping up though, Peter Preston in New York wrote a killer commentary about artists and their dealers. I am giving Peter a column, Big Apple Bites Back. The only late stuff in this issue are my own writings and I am still waiting to hear from Bryan Styble. All in all, it looks good and should hit the streets Monday, but keep your fingers crossed for me.

Despite this frickin cold i am in a good mood because a lot of people at my 20 year reunion told me I look exactly the same as I did in high school. Clean shaven is the definite look for the forseeable future.

Well, i went to my 20th High school reunion. Let’s just say that there are lots of people having babies, and going to church. I don’t know what else to say.

People were very nice, but I felt a profound alienation - not out of any sense of superiority, or being more cool, but just in being confronted with how suburban ideals are apparently as attractive to people as they are. Everything that I was confronted with on Saturday night (jesuspicketfencebabiessquarejob syndrome) were things I consciously forever rejected by the time I was, oh, probably 17. I have lived according to those values - no pregnancies, no mortgages, nothing I can’t get out of in six months if I feel the need - ever since.

Perhaps all the no-shows were living in cool bohemian enclaves or were at the world series, but the event still left me feeling out of place among the familiar. I don’t own a house, I’m not married, I’m not what you would call conservative…

ME: Hi, what do you do these days?
SCHOOL FRIEND: Home-School my children.
ME: (to myself) Why am I here?).

I got a few laughs, but a lot of sneers at this line:

RANDOM CONVERSATIONALIST: So, how many kids do you have?
ME: None that I know about.

I was starting to think lately that I was middle-of-the-road, kinda getting fuddy-duddy, but no way. For some reason, a majority of the class of 1982 from St. Paul High stayed in suburbia and ascribed to the values therein.

Baby-sitters from Whittier to Riverside made a fortune Saturday night, and again, the people were genuine and pleasant. Nobody was grotesquely different in their physical appearance, but you figure that the real bloated ones are too embarrassed to come and the real strung out ones are out of touch. So the cross section of people is a definite mainstream, but still, things had an eerie consistency to them. I was surprised by the number of stay-at-home mothers.

There was no way to properly explain the function and position of Coagula Art Journal or the gallery to people:

SCHOOL FRIEND: So, what kind of art do you show in your gallery?
ME (resisting to say “Nudes” just to fuck with people): Postmodern.
SCHOOL FRIEND: (blank stare).

You know what got the wildest reaction, the strangest stares? When I said that I dine out three times a day, that I don’t have a kitchen and that i haven’t had a home-cooked meal since 1999. Nothing about art, publishing, living in Downtown L.A., getting and staying sober, nothing freaked people out more than my preference to pay establishments to cook my dinner for me. That is all the money I would be spending on my kids and mortgage, get it?

I could go on, but honestly, I did have a good time. It was just a little weird. the people were nice, I just don’t hang around large groups of people with whom I have nothing in common. Hey wait, that makes me sound as conformist as them! Actually, I didn’t feel too different, really, and that might be the reason I am a little freaked out as I decompress from my weekend journey through the time tunnel….