Hair gel = no mullet. Whew!

So I was thinking about the song Like A Rolling Stone which I heard here yesterday on the Kinko’s sound system. It is a song of sneering at someone who just got his or her just desserts. I can imagine being a down and out homeless bum in Las Vegas, coming here to make it big and getting stuck here with nothing but bad habits and time to ruminate in self-loathing anger. And then you hear that song — a great song when you can put yourself in the first-person position of the singer, but an awful thing to hear when you identify with the subject toward whom the singer is spitting out the lyrics — and you cannot do anything but admit to yourself that you have lost. Self-inflicted devastation confirmed by great art, perhaps the cruelest agony.

The slim chance that it could be me keeps me in Los Angeles. Oh, and my career as an art critic (internal sarcastic chuckling may commence if you know anyone who would take that shit seriously as a career to brag about, I sure as fuck cannot).

And imagine being down on your luck AND having a mullet? almost as bad as being a success and having one!

Angels’ minor league team beat the Dodgers’ minor league team 6-2 Tuesday and lost 5-2 last night. two more games. It is a very relaxing atmosphere. Remember the names ROB QUINLAN and ADONIS HARRISON, they are going to be big league stars one day.

Gambling has been a mixed bag. I am ahead exactly $18 after hours of it - I keep scrupulous notes. Like, i can make more per hour working at a McDonalds. Oh yeah, it has been more fun than working at a McDonald’s.

My girlfriend arrives at the airport here tonight, so it is looking like a fun weekend. We will hit what little fine art there is in this town (there is art everywhere, but not much if it is fine) as well as big time dining - the restaurants here are the best.

SO I had an hour and a half of sleep and the fat upstairs neighbor was walking around making noise and i just bolted up, had already packed and split jus before sunrise.

No traffic heading toward Vegas, made it in 4 and a half hours, stopped at Bun Boy for an omellete (the world’s largest thermometer was broken). It heated up twenty degrees between 8:15 and 9:40. Forgot to get gas in Baker and was shitting cookies panicking that iw s going to run ourt of gas before i got to Stateline. Then I saw a small gas station in the middle of nowhere and was humbled in front of the law of supply and demand: $2.79 a gallon. I bent over (paid).

Was checked into my hotel room by 10:30 a.m. and slept all afternoon. The purpose of my trip is the Warhol celebrity portrait show at the Bellagio and minor league baseball. The Angels’ minor league team (Salt Lake City Stingers) is in for four games (to face the hometown Las Vegas Area 51’s - Dodgers’ affiliate) and won 6-2 last night, banging out 16 frickin’ hits.

I am down 64 dollars in gambling. Lost a hundred at the Plaza, made it up a little at the El Cortez, where I will be performing at approximately 11 p.m. tonight. i bought a book before the trip Poker for Dummies, but after watching some of the action at Binion’s Horseshoe casino, I think i will pass on it.

Oh, my hair is getting long that when i wear my baseball cap, i have to let the hair in the front hang out or it looks like i have a mullet. Very depressing.

The Kinko’s has piped in music and as I write this, Bob Dylan just started playing, i am cracking up and peopple are looking at me like I am one of those insane people who cackle at Kinko’s. Uh-Oh, better check my mullet…

I am leaving for Vegas tomorrow and just found out it is going to be 106 in Barstow and 112 in Baker and 104 in Las Vegas.

Let’s see, uh, that sucks. Will be sweating my ass off as you read this in the comfort of your air conditioned office.

Will update from the LV Kinko’s. Warhol at the Bellagio should be fun!

What am i doing inside on a beautiful day like today?
(exit, stage right)

So I tell my girlfriend that i took the Matrix quiz and was trinity and she was all impressed. I didn’t seem too enthused and she asked me why i wasn’t excited and the testosterone started bubbling…

ME: I don’t want to be a chick.
HER: But if you were a chick wouldn’t you want to be her?
ME: NO, I’d want to be a dyke so at least I could get some chicks instead of Keanu.
HER: (low grumbling sound that included the word “pathetic”)

You are Trinity, from "The Matrix."
Strong, beautiful- you epitomize the ultimate
heroine.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I went to Bergamot Station today. Here is a rundown:

Patricia Faure Gallery:
John Divola photography show.
Utter fucking crap.

Gallery Luisotti:
Christina Fernandez
Boring conceptualism comes to East L.A.

Richard Heller Gallery:
Marcel Dzama drawings and paintings.
A great artist, a great show, almost too much to see.
The paintings he did in collaboration with Neil Farber hanging in Heller’s office are messy masterpieces.

Patrick Painter Gallery:
Kenny Scharf solo show of new paintings.
If this show is not a rental, than Patrick Painter must be just a nice guy with a soft spot for balding hetero’s.

Track 16 Gallery:
Some show of political art I think. It was so bad I ran out without even looking at the whole thing and if that makes me close-minded, oh well, it doesn’t mean the show sucked any less.

Sherry Frumkin Gallery:
Alex Donis solo show.
The best show at Bergamot. I could write a whole fucking thesis on these. Excellent draftsmanship and a great theme drawn together. Plus any show that has a drawing of Betty Brown straddling a sawhorse dressed as Napoleon - c’mon it has got to be great.

Ikon:
Wild Girls Group Show
When a show has Kim Dingle and Nan Goldin, it has to be good.

Ruth Bachofner Gallery:
Brett Osborn solo show
and B & W, abstract painting group show
Brett is a rigorous realist. His work was selling well, something to be proud of in this climate. the group show was lean and mean, everyone whipping out there stylistic strengths in the most serious of color combos.

I actually went to Bergamot today to meet with Patricia Correia to discuss the group show I am curating for her gallery this September. The show will be in the project space, next to the main gallery, where a solo show takes place concurrently. The bad news is that Frank Romero will be having the solo show there. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the proposition, but then i realized that the guy’s stories about having many collectors just might might might be true. Not that i am holding my breath, but if collectors materialize at the show, this would be a good thing for the artists in my show. Always look on the bright side.

After the meeting my girlfriend and I went to Venice for a baby shower for Maritza Mazariego. Yes, i am going to goddamned baby showers. The food was great and i avoided playing any of the games. Then we drove to Pasadena and had frozen yogurt!

Confession: Without coffee* in the morning, I would be an invalid.

* - quadruple espresso, kindly delivered with a knock o my door at noon by my girlfriend.

“Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.”
Bob Dylan.

Happy birthday Bob. He’s 61 today.

And belated birthday wishes to Morrissey. He’s getting up there too.

Burn down the disco / Hang the blessed DJ / Because the music that they constantly play / It says nothing to me about my life

This is an interesting art read, although with idiotic lines like:
It was this irony that gave the painting its strength. Even though its colors resembled Pepto Bismol and a rotting orange, they enhanced the work’s emotional content. it is obvious that Richard Polsky may have an eye for what sells and a memory for what happened, but he is full of shit in when it comes to explaining idiosyncratic greatness.

Anytime someone uses the word enhance, especially in the art world but in life in general, they are attempting to fuck you in the ass. Another word is emotion or emotional, words thrown around as absolute to describe the most mercurial of states.

Of course, the biggest no-lube ass-ream term is resonate. This word combines the cheap sales tactic of enhance with the suckerpunch appeal to your feelings of emotion. And don’t even get me started on the linguistic sodomy that can occur when spiritual or transcendent are bandied about.

Enhance means to make better. The implication is that something is good and does not need to be enhanced, but that the subtle addition of some element magnifies or brings out the inherent qualities of something. Leather seats enhance a BMW, of course to the tune of an extra 4 grand they do.

But the book looks like a good, informative read. But never mistake a dealer for a critic, curator or historian. They have less in common with artists and art world denizens and more in common with the schleps selling used leather-trim Beemers tomorrow.

Polsky’s pretense forces him to write about art as an inspired auteur to the word processor. In one essay a few years ago he compared dried-up has been Chuck Arnoldi to Matisse. Seriously, deadpan, direct. Ouch dude, it hurts, could you use some grease before reaming us with your next sales pitch, er, serious art essay?

Addenda: Someone mailed me a reminder that the article linked to in the previous post, the book review, failed to mention that James Corcoran was reportedly one of the biggest cocaine dealers in the art world. One email even alleged he pioneered money laundering drug profits through his gallery. See, the author would have you believe you are getting the goods but he still wants the goddamn party invitations. But it would explain why a bunch of art stiffs were having a food fight - they were coked to the gills.