…i am less depressed when I am working on something than when i am procrastinating … i think this is one reason I like tto take on big projects and develop new ideas. Rote reiteration is one thing i could never stand. That is why I am not a teacher - what patience it must take tto replicate Sissyphus and teach the same thing year in and year out in the guise of knowledge amidst a government-enforced babysitting program.

I have been pretty busy over the past few weeks- even when factoring in a packed and restfully exciting (the word, therefore, is stimulating) vacation. While it seems that a few projects are clearing off of my desk, the backlog is immense, and a magazine dedline is almost here. Yikes!

I really want to focus on streamlining things, but I suppose that I should be grateful for all of the opportunities coming my way. The art world is like that song by the Clash, Death or Glory, as those are the only two choices and money hardly factors into the equation at all.

A preview article I wrote ended up being the Cover Story for the current issue of ArtScene Magazine.
I think I could just expound on it and make it an article in the next issue of Coagula as well !

Here is a video clip from my talk tonight, courtesy of Roger Macintosh.

Back from Reno. Refreshed if frazzled.
Putting the finishing touches on my lecture.
You ARE going to my lecture on Thursday night, aren’t you?

So I am on my laptop and we are in our jacuzzi suite in Reno - actually the town is clean and not nearly as sleazy as everyone had set it up to be - of course, I have lived in piss-stained downtown Los Angeles for 20 years, so maybe these minor league parks are just not up to my level of degradation.

Actually the best part of this trip - and there have been no bad parts - is the absolute lack of air pollution. It has made me pause about living eye level with the five freeway, let alone anywhere within Our LAdy’s Gridlocked Basin of Soot.

Played a little dice, had a gourmet meal, attended a wedding on Lake Tahoe, saw the new Star Wars thingy (two thumbs up) with the GFW’s extended family (also two thumbs up). Okayy, back to the craps tables…

I’m getting the fuck out of town on quite the big weekend - Angels playing the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine (almost walking distance from here), New Star Wars movie opening up. Perhaps too many art openings getting under way prior to the Memorial Day madness next weekend.

I don’t understand the implications that the new Star Wars is anti-Bush, with specific lines being drawn out by observant cultural critics to imply that, since they are being spoken by the evil characters and they are similar to Bush administration rhetoric, the film critiques Conservative policy. I’ve always felt that the Star Wars franchise was inherently conservative, at least in its outlook of a definable evil and a definable good, amidst a culture that embraces what our Pope calls a dictatorship of relativism. The left embraced the grey of equality long ago. In Star Trek the prime directive is to never interfere with a distinct culture, no matter how repulsive it may be to one’s own value’s. In Star Wars, you just blow up the planet in question.

This blog journal entry was supposed to be about Reno, Tahoe, road trips, feeling comfortable and relaxed around one person on Earth and being fortunate enought to travel with her, all that crap. Instead I took it right to outer space and politicized it. Weird.

So Tyler Green and his Modern Art Notes blog asks bloggers to post their favorite American painting and their favorite painting in America. This one was totally easy for me, as I have thought about it before.

My favorite American painting was purchased by the Australian government, but I did get a chance to see it in New York as the centerpiece of the Jackson Pollock retrospective in 1998. I am speaking of BLUE POLES

My favorite painting in America is owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and was painted by Llyn Foulkes. It is simply entitled Pop

So there, put your frickin money where your mouth is.

the cleaning lady was a minute late. I let it pass.
She tells me she wants to get a real job so she can declare her income and establish credit and buy a house.
That is all well and nice and sweet and peachy except that she wants to leave early today for a job interview.