I am going to Vegas for a few days. Here is an article that I wrote for you to chew on.

This is a LiveJournal specialty - quizzes by and for teenagers that make a 38 year old man look like a superficial troll.

A - Act your age? Not when excited
B - Born on what day of the week? Monday
C - Chore you hate? laundry
D - Dad’s name? Eugene
E - Essential makeup item? Smirk/Scowl
F - Favorite actor? Nicholson
G - Gold or silver? Silver
H - Hometown? La Mirada, California 90638
I - Instruments you play? Played trombone in the high schol band
J - Job title? Publisher
K - Kids? claiming none and none claiming
L - Living arrangements? Downtown L.A. loft
M - Mom’s name? Helen
N - Number of people you’ve slept with? 5 that you can name.
O - Overnight hospital stays? Almost three years worth
P - Phobia? Fleetwood Mac
Q - Quote you like? What matters most is how well you walk through the fire. -Charles Bukowski
R - Religious affiliation? Cultural Catholic
S - Siblings? 3 brothers, 3 sisters
T - Time you wake up? Noonish
U - Unique habit? Driving to Pasadena for yogurt every night.
V - Vegetable you refuse to eat? boiled carrots
W - Worst habit? talking too much
X - X-rays you’ve had? Lost count
Y - Yummy food you make? no kitchen
Z - Zodiac Sign? Libra

Went to MOCA today again, two women who work there wanted to tour the Laura Owens exhibit with me talking shit along the way. It was as paltry as reported here a few days ago. What a waste of exhibition space. The Lucian Freud show was so vastly superior - and it was funny how crowded it was versus the empty Owens galleries a few paces away.

Something that isn’t funny is the disgusting Koo Koo Roo chicken restaurant across the street from MOCA. Yuck. Another thing that isn’t funny is the Frank Gehry Concert Hall going up across from MOCA. It kinda looked dull really, walking across from it. the sun was past its peak and the metal exterrior reflected drab sky blue. The reflective titanium is going to look awful once it gets a shellacking of pigeon shit. Someone oughtta spread crumbs on Grand Street every day for a month, the birds would have the runs all over the most inaccessible and heretofore pristine swatches of the pretensious swooping palace, perhaps it would be a pinprick in the hot-air zeppelin of Gehry’s acclaim… or not.

A film crew was on Grand Street blocking traffic in rush hour to film a guy on a motorcycle being chased by a yellow Hummer. That is L.A.

I am getting sucked in to internet coverage of the war. Add to this that this makes me depressed. I probably spent ten hours today reading the whole bang-up coverage. Looks like Thursday’s trip to Las Vegas couldn’t be coming at a better time!

The best news of the day came when doing random google searches of my enemies list. A lawyer I tangled with in (and out of) court a few years back was in the news recently. According to the January 16 Metropolitan News article, California’s Supreme Court justices “adopted a State Bar Court recommendation that Los Angeles attorney Bradford E. Henschel (I knew him as Brad Henschel) be suspended for 18 months and until he proves rehabilitation.” He who laughs last laughs loudest. Of course, in the words of Saddam Hussein, “…don’t think about coming after Me, because by the time you get to me, the skin will have already been ripped away so many people await the chance to claw me to death…” Still, i am laughing heartily at the thought of Captain Litigation asking “Would you like fries with that?”

The New York Press held a poll of New Yorkers to pick the FIFTY Most Loathsome New Yorkers, and Coagula’s New York correspondent Baird Jones was #33, beating out #39 Jeff Koons by six places. I finally met Baird in person earlier this month in New York City at an opening reception for David Byrne at Pace McGill Gallery and he was a perfect gentleman (and so was David Byrne).

Coming from the NY Press, this is high praise indeed! Congratulations Baird!

Does Michael Moore strike anyone else as more self-promoter than earnest activist? Nobody could honestly think they are a man of the people when this is a country of rednecks. Unless he is going for the Soccer Mom look.

I didn’t watch the Oscars, except for like ten seconds at my friend Lainie’s, she treats the Oscars like anyone else treats the Superbowl. Nicole Kidman got up and I guess I am the last person to get the news bulletin that she is Australian. That blew my frickin’ mind. At first I thought she was fucked up, or goofing around. I don’t know why I didn’t know, maybe because she acts with an American accent.

I went to Traction Avenue today, to a coffee shop to try to write on my laptop, i have cabin fever, very fierce, and I cannot follow the War, but baseball season is coming soon, ha ha, fuck art, play ball, what can I say, i’m a boy at heart.

So the whole Traction Avenue, formerly where Al’s Bar was and where lots of crack addicts hung out in downtown Los Angeles, the whole neighborhood has been gentrified by the addition of Sci-Arc, an architecture school. It is not the worst thing, they had very good coffee at this place and i got some writing done. Had lunch prior to that with Edie Pfeifer, she picked up the work of hers that sold form the show. Spoke a few days ago with Mark Brandvik, he will be showing here in April. Write down the dates:
April 12 & 13, 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.
Yep, it is the Spring Brewery Artwalk. As the economy goes to shit, many artists living here can no longer afford to pretend that their work commands high prices, so come to this event with your haggling shoes on.

Prior to the artwalk, as in, this weekend, I am going to go to Las Vegas, Nevada. I am taking my nephew for his 21st birthday. That is the kind of uncle i am. When I was a high school teacher i told my students that when they were out of school and over 18 i would get any one of them a tattoo if they wanted it. One took me up on the offer out of four years of teaching. Of course, I would have gone broke if they all had.

Went to the Laura Owens show at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art today. It was lackluster decor. The artist is probably on prozac and playing it very safe and noncontroversial, sucking the asses of the right people at the museum and in the art world.

MOCA played a cruel trick on this local painter - they put her show opposite Lucian Freud’s retrospective. A talented artist investigating the structure of what makes us human balanced with a vicious careerist being seizing real estate in a museum as a validation of her own narcissism.

The only painting that revealed anything was one of two black people cowering away from the viewer, their unity the only apparent means of survival. They were in a drab, lifeless background, save for a puddle in the mud which reflected some of Ms. Owens’ signature style candy-coloring landscape. So the reflection in the painting, the thing that is not a part of a possibly emotional or volatile scene, that very absence of vulnerability is revealed as the essence of who the artist is: rich-white-successful-secure. Most of the other work was just self-impressed wallpaper.

Perhaps one day Ms. Owens will have someone close to her die at the hands of someone very cruel and she will be forced to find a non-verbal way to express something besides her enjoyment of pictorial masturbation. Until someone takes it upon themselves to inflict such pain into her world, we are left to gaze at the fruits of her institutional rectal-lipping. If we lose to Iraq, understand that the skinning alive of Cal-Arts graduates by a defeated administration looking for someone to blame is a distinct possibility. I’d join the army for a chance at being picked for that brigade. If we lose this war, it is gonna get at least that weird.

Here is an objective opinion about the panel discussion last night!

Went to an art opening here at the Brewery Art Colony. A group show, lots of the crowd here, I just had to get out at some point and go with my girlfriend to get yogurt. Old Town Pasadena was crowded, it seems everyone wanted to be out and not watching the war.

It is times like this that I love not having a television. Marine Helicopter flights have lessened over downtown Los Angeles in the past 24 hours. Maybe once every three hours. I can’t be a part of the hysteria - on either side, the self-righteousness of both extremes is depressing and angers me. It must be nice to be certain about something, tell me how it feels. My pragmatic side is an icy cold bastard and understands the engineering and execution of war as a means to an end. But my emotional side is alarmed, enraged and, well, in shock and awe of this whole goddamned thing and this side of me needs to be numbed, and I don’t drink or smoke or inject so i am left with avoidance and yogurt.

So I spent the day thinking about art and baseball and yogurt. Try mixing in Mango with your yogurt. Mmm, good and I have deluded myself into thinking it is good for me!

The panel presentation went really well tonight. 50 - 60 people showed up, although Diane Gamboa didn’t, she called to say she got stuck somewhere, so the worrying can subside.

The crew from Modern Painters took the panelists out to dinner afterwards, I wanted to stay and talk with friends who had come but it was time to go get fed, my blood sugar was getting low after the 90 minute presentation. Brian and Llyn were perfect, Brian was precise and didactic, Llyn was prophetic and hard-hitting. I tried to keep things focused on Los Angeles, asking if there was a distinct quality that kept working here compelling to artists.

At one point Brian dismissed digital art and some dude spoke up, contesting Brian, and then used it as an opportunity to pass out a postcard of his digital art. It proved Brian’s point, the guy whips out plain rorschach seascapes that make one hungry for Vija Celmins they are so cold and seemingly rendered in an easy ten seconds. Digital art is quickly produced by a guy bent on being an artist, not bent on making art. Does that make sense?

The women from Modern Painters said that they understood me once i mentioned that I was of Irish heritage. I think that was their way of telling me i talked too much at dinner.