This was a densely packed few days – especially filled with people freaking out about my hair.

Thursday
We went to the Getty. It was nice to watch the sunset. The art was made more enjoyable by the absence of tourists. The guard told me that Thursdays after 3 p.m. was a time that saw the tour group busses gone without too many crowds. Timed that one well.

Then we drove to the Santa Monica Civic for the opening night party of ArtLA. It was fifty bucks a ticket but luckily, I was comped a pass for two. Anyway, the fair was a big swap meet. No galleries exhibited just one artist. Many of the booths had product stacked floor to ceiling. But it was good to see a healthy diverse exhibit of contemporary art in So Cal – it has been 11 years and five weeks since the last one.

Friday
Hit the galleries with a friend. The Moira Hahn solo show at Koplin Del Rio was the highlight for me, David Trulli at Earl McGrath was nice as well, but a little too graphic for me to rave about endlessly. Culver City galleries were all installing shows slated to open that weekend while the spaces at 6150 Wilshire were weak. Vielmetter Projects had a Sally Ellesby exhibit along with a painter of trees and nature named Scott Calhoun who – well, the images stayed with me, kind of confounding cross between Audobon illustrative precision and controlled gooey painterly foliage, and then a Jess – like collage twist in places. When I cannot slap an opinion on something that is usually a good sign.

That night my lovely girlfriend and I watched a double feature, Rocky Horror Picture Show (this was to show her how Hedwig was a driblet in the bucket compared to true glam decadence) and Rookie of the Year, a movie that is the polar opposite of everything RHPS stood for.

Saturday
Went back to the art fair. Again, lots of stuff. Nothing radically offensive, nothing that stopped me in my tracks. Sales seemed slow but people were all getting some networking foundations built.

Here now is my funny art fair story. I was talking to Kim Light in her Faure & Light ArtLA booth and art consultant/collector Michele Eisinberg stopped by (name intentionally misspelled, as I wouldn’t want someone to google her and read the following embarrassing anecdote). So Michele says hello to Kim and looks at me and shockingly says “My, you are looking fabulous!”, and I am all vain and happy and peppy and she says, “We were talking about you just the other day,” and I am curious, and she starts talking to me like I am Patrick Painter, asking me why tommy Solomon would be avoiding her and stuff on a personal biz level. Now, in case you didn’t know, Patrick Painter and I are both (A)White guys, (B) wear black framed glasses, (C) are blond (me for about 72 hours when this happened). Other than those superficial things, Patrick and I do not look at all alike. I am a men’s medium and he has a few XX’s after the L on the tags at his tailor’s. So I waited for her to ask Kim Light a question and politely bolted the fuck out of there.

Saturday night we went to a party at painter Doug Meyer’s house. Had a good talk with Tim Forcum, a painter who I have known since before he showed at Sue Spaid Gallery. He is at d.e.n. in Culver City now.

Sunday
Went to a family thing at the house I grew up in out in suburbia. Saw many old neighbors and installed my old G-3 in my sister’s pad. Happy birthday, if I don’t win Brother of the Year, I am taking the fuckin’ thing back! My niece handed me a flyer for a Catholic casino night to raise money for her club that wants to travel to Europe to meet the Pope. Some things out that way leave me speechless from deep within the cocooned normalcy of bohemia.

Email I got just now…

I have just heard from a good source (which I cannot name), that Lari Pittman will also be leaving UCLA.  Do you know abot this?  Will you find out?

I heard Lari went on sabbatical and - after drama queening it in front of the whole faculty (and not geting his way) at a meeting - emphatically notified everyone days later that he was NOT resigning … at this time. I hear he’s got a lawyer for the whole thing as well.

The story is here in case you’ve been living in a cave.

We drove to Gallery C in Hermosa Beach. We parked at Edie Pfeifer’s place and walked to the gallery. Donald Kuspit was giving a talk for the show he curated there, a group show called California New Old Masters. Kuspit’s theory is that Modernism didn’t amount to much after all and that it is time to look around at art that picks up where the old masters left off.

So the great Dr. Kuspit had a nice powerpoint presentation explaining some ideas and ideals of the masters like Rembrandt and Titian and Carravaggio. Then he went artist by artist in the show and explained his reasons for liking them, for choosing them.

The show is a wide selection, and with Kuspit you cannot just throw to thumbs up and walk away. I will have to go back and see this one again a few times. It was great to hear him dismiss Clement Greenberg and he did provide some insight on a lot of the work, but it was an overview and it was a little party so the noise made it less scintillating, but he definitely can follow a thought from start to finish and illustrate great ideas well. On the negative, some of the art seems stronger hanging next to very good artworks, so I would need to isolate each one visually and mentally – and then bring them together and then accept them together – does this make sense on how to see a show?

The official opening is Thursday night, so if you are in the South Bay, go!
Donald Kuspit is in town for a few days, and he is speaking at Jack Rutberg’s on Friday about Arshille Gorky. Jack liked my new haircut!

My hair turned yellow today at Lucas on Echo Park Boulevard.
A picture will soon follow.

I had a nice flood of Johnny Carson memories today. As a kid, I wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch The Tonight Show most of the time, so I absolutely treasured the times that I was able to.

Thinking about it made me realize how much I must have enjoyed conversation with adults - when I was 11 & 12 for example, I had a stock of topical Johnny Carson jokes that I would only break out when talking to adults, sort of get them to see me as being on their level. I milked one monologue about Gerald Ford’s clumsiness for his entire presidency.

When I was old enough to stay up, there were few things that couldn’t wait for The Tonight Show, or at least the opening monologue. I watched Johnny probably more than any other entertainer in my lifetime, at least in total hours logged.

The monologue he gave after the October 1987 Stock Market crash was one I recall as so funny. Everyone in the audience knew what had happened and was primed for some good ones and he was like Barry Bonds in batting practice, hitting every single joke out of the park. He had this look when he walked on the stage. He had obviously gotten kicked in the (financial) ass, like many Americans, but he was so excited knowing he was going to deliver fifteen one-liners and each would be a perfect masterpiece. It was like it was worth having lost the money to be in the position to let these jokes rip. He was ecstatic to have suffered for his art.

Johnny’s look was like the look of Mary Lou Retton being announced for the last exercise after she had scored all tens and knew she was going to get the gold and she just had the confidence of every psyche on the planet. Johnny had that look often, I guess it was inspiring in some manner, that someone had it and was giving it out and you could sit there and see him smirk and get a little of it for yourself, that confidence in your art.

Charles Bukowski told me he turned down going on The Tonight Show because he didn’t think Johnny really wanted to talk to a writer so why bother him.

One great coda to his career was going out on top in 1992 and never setting foot back near the limelight. It was an immense, intense confidence to know that he had done it. And he had.

So we went to the Citadel today. This is a cluster of outlet stores in the refurbished Uniroyal Tire plant most notable for looking like an Assyrian temple. How many Assyrian temples have Vitamin World and a juice bar to go with Old Navy and Izod outlets? Not many, don’t bother googling.

We went to the leather jacket store and I saw this coat, it was so perfect, it was suede swatches, squares of dark brown and light brown, divided equally as triangles. It was either hideous or divine but it was awesome, a signature type wardrobe accoutrement that would have kept me aloof of the constraints of fashion for the next five years. So I tried it on and was jazzed as all hell.

So I walk around the store to see if there is anything else and some guy walks up and tries on MY coat and talks to the girl and buys the goddamned thing! I am standing there like I have just been stabbed in the stomach and ask them if they have another. Last one. Then the girl says that that jacket is about four years old and has never sold. My girlfriend adds that it was ugly and she was glad that i didn’t buy it.

Their reassurances healed the wounds a little, but if you see a Korean dude wearing the aforementioned suede triangular monstrosity, bow down to a signature patch of style.

The titles of songs in your iPod, arranged alphabetically, often simulate poetic expression…

We’ll meet again
we’re a happy family
We’re desperate
we’re going to be friends
we’re having much more fun
we’re only gonna die
We’ve gotta get out of this place

On Wednesday night we had gone to see the Lassie Foundation at the King King on Hollywood Boulevard. We had dinner prior to that at Musso & Frank’s. Delicious. I saw a lot of old familiar nightclub/barfly/rockscene faces at the show, drinking and lingering in the crowd. A little memorylanish, in that wasted-life-but-sorta-proud-of-it looking back.

I still haven’t gotten used to the no smoking thing at bars - it didn’t seem the same - I am not a smoker, but it was weird to be in that environment without a hefty fog of white tobacco smoke floating about.

if I could think of a single productive thing that I did today I would write it down, but other than return emails, this day was fer shit. The highlight was seeing Jim Morphesis in the Brewery Office, he was checking on loft availability. He is in the middle of a Sabbatical and his art studio complex on Molino Street is going condo and he is forced to look around L.A. during the middle of a loft boom.

The one Democrat who is actually doing something to become an electable candidate.

There ain’t no Left left…
(i gotta go get some coffee)