Take a minute and try to picture in your head a woman who sells Thomas Kinkade paintings on eBay.

What would she look like?

What would her promotional page oneBay look like?

Do you have an image in your head?

If so, you can click here to test you psychic / analytic powers.

Is fucking January almost over already? I was just getting used to it. Okay, so today my cleaning lady tells me that when i get out of the bed to get out with the right foot and not the left foot. What is weird is that is a total superstition of mine AND today I had gotten out with the left foot and was like oh fuck. Weird.

Superstitions are ridiculous, I know, but they are a way of acknowledging that there might be forces beyond us that we cannot control. Having a superstition or two is sort of a way of reminding the universe that you are not a narcissist.

So I have a psychic cleaning lady who spent all day discussing her love life (which is beyond telenovela dramatic) with my girlfriend and then came to the bank with me to get paid and starts bossing me around in the bank. And then she tells all the tellers that there were breath mints that i forgot to take out of my pocket and they dissolved in the laundry and that I have mint flavored underwear. And they are all laughing and she forgot that i speak a little ghetto spanish and told her i am not gonna pay her if she doesn’t check the pockets.

See what a mess your day can be when you get out of bed on the wrong fucking foot?

So I have been immersed in editing the print edition of Coagula, but I took time out today to coordinate a fashion shoot of graffiti artist JERK for Elle magazine, which i just heard was a big friggin’ deal of a publication, so there and double there mo-fo’s.

Then Michael Salerno had an art opening tonight. You see, if you have an art opening on a Thursday night, ART people show up for it, instead of the art students and the art teachers. There is a growing division. Go to an opening on a Thursday and see for yourself. You just might get into a discussion about art. Actually, most of my discussions tonight were about the upcoming Brewery Artwalk. Word spread fast that I am helping run the big shoe. I felt like John Kerry, ignored for so long and now suddenly needed. I will probably still vote for Howard Dean in the primary. I am a sucker for idealism. So it was a better art opening than it likely will be an election.

I had an interesting conversation with Brian Ruppel today. He said that critics should suggest solutions to the problems that they are able to point out.

I didn’t agree with him. It took a while to formulate the exact argument against his idealistic point of view.

A critic’s ability is to deconstruct what is going on, analyze it, and point out its flaws, or discuss what about it works so well.

This critical ability is totally separate from any ability to come up with good ideas and suggest ways to implement them.

To ask this ability of a critic is an assumption that people with one set of analytical skills also possess a different set of skills. He was not arguing that plumbers present their ideas for what would work in the art world. He was not advocating a role for fast food fryer operators in figuring out fair tenure track policy for art teachers in universities.

But because someone can write an essay that hits the nail on the head as to why something is wrong with a cultural system, he thinks that this person is obligated to offer working alternatives.

Nature abhors a vacuum. A solution, good or bad, will happen organically (unless you watch the X-Files and then you can smugly click your tongue that it is all a conspiracy, orchestrated with evil intent and executed with a dramatic precision) and all you can do is watch what is going down and try to define it before it defines you.

We went out for dinner to Louise’s Trattoria in Pasadena tonight. We have eaten there dozens and dozens of times. Tonight it was downright awful. I have eaten 98% of my adult meals in restaurants and have sent food back exactly six times. Tonight was the sixth. When you order the special, you can usually guarantee that it is fresh. Mine arrived cold. The server didn’t offer any free desert or anything to make up for it. Other tables were louder in expressing their dismay - the whole place was out of synch.

Louise’s has gotten ridiculously corporate with teenage introvert waiters giving you the “start off with a cup of minestrone or appetizer salad” line like they just got beaten with a whip by their managers for not pushing the whole menu more. It is forced, rehearsed and uncomfortable. I should be a food critic. If the art world disappeared tomorrow, would I be out of a job or liberated from an association with prestensious mediocrity?

Hit some galleries this afternoon, but gotta write about the art stuff for the magazine. You are not missing anything from the Mid-Wilshire galleries, hoooooooooo, it was weeeeeeeeeak out there.

Went to a party tonight, an 80s revival party, it was hilarious, as so many of the costumes looked almost normal to me - they still cognate as a legitimate way to dress. I made a total mullet and it only made me want to get a haircut soon. My girlfriend looked, well, pretty in pink of course.

I am kind of proud that the music I liked in the 80s has become much more popular in hindsight. the movie Lost in Translation features a Jesus and Mary Chain song. In the 80s, nobody liked them, clicked their tongues at noisy critical darlings. And proportionately, they were huge. Nobody could even get a Joy Division album for years, they were like a myth or urban legend. One friend of mine made dozens of vinyl to tape copies of Unknown Pleasures in 1982 and 83 for people. Now kids can buy their entire ouvre with alternate takes and live cuts for 60 bucks on Amazon.

So when I hear people rant about the access to information being controlled or manipulated by corporate America, I just gotta laugh. It has never been more free. The lack of control over the process is what is frustrating, but the lack of access has never been better, the inability for censorship to occur defines our present era.

Then we went to some parties and saw some old friends. Every time I see the girl who runs the Blessing of the Cars event I rub her for luck - I bumped into her in Vegas in December of 2001 and after talking to her went and won $700 bucks in 40 minutes of dice.

Thursday night is movie night. My girlfriend and i went with neighbor Chris to the movies. Buddy Roberts was at the restaurant and recommended 21 Grams. we walked out of it after forty minutes. My girlfriend could not take it, I could not look at it and Chris had fallen asleep.

So we got something to eat and then went to another movie, Lost in Translation, which was good, would have been better if we all were not in such bad moods.

Today I started work on the next issue of the magazine. A freelance writer in New York is working on a feature about the publication. She called my ex-New York editor and he apparently let her have it. She wrote me an email laughing about what a pompous ass he was. She said he told her “Off the record, I am a very famous art critic.” Think about the madness in that statement and understand the peace of mind I have these days. She spoke with Baird Jones and said he was a real straight shooter.

States I’ve lived in…
California / Iowa / Wisconsin

States I’ve visited a few times…
Arizona / Illinois / Minnesota / Nevada / New York / Washington

States I stayed a few nights in…
Florida / Hawaii / Indiana / Massachusetts

States I’ve at least stopped and spent the night…
Missouri / Nebraska / New Hampshire / New Mexico / Utah

Train or Car through…
Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Kansas / Maryland / New Jersey / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / Texas / Wyoming

Airport only…
Kentucky / Michigan / Tennessee

Never been…
Alabama / Alaska / Arkansas / Georgia / Idaho / Louisiana / Maine / Mississippi / Montana / North Carolina/ North Dakota / South Carolina/ South Dakota / Vermont / Virginia / West Virginia

The meaning of this song just became crystal clear. It is as if my DNA were wound around each stanza…

The Old Revolution

I finally broke into the prison,
I found my place in the chain.
Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows;

All the brave young men
they’re waiting now to see a signal
which some killer will be lighting for pay.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.

I fought in the old revolution
on the side of the ghost and the King.
Of course I was very young
and I thought that we were winning;

I can’t pretend I still feel very much like singing
as they carry the bodies away.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.

Lately you’ve started to stutter
as though you had nothing to say.
To all of my architects let me be traitor;

Now let me say I myself gave the order
to sleep and to search and to destroy.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.

Yes, you who are broken by power,
you who are absent all day,
you who are kings for the sake of your children’s story;

The hand of your beggar is burdened down with money,
the hand of your lover is clay.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.

(Leonard Cohen, Songs From a Room, 1969)

This meme was copied from

In the comment section, leave your recommendations:

1. A movie

2. A book

3. A musical artist, song, or album

4. A LiveJournal user not on my friends list

and then cut and paste this into your own journal (if you have one)