So yeah, the basic review of the new Museum of Modern Art would have to be that the big spaces are nice and airy and pack in a lot of viewers. A whole LOT of viewers.

If you mounted a video camera at the entrance to the Bellagio Casino and to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and taped the endless droves of people entering each edifice and digitally removed the visuals surrounding the people, you would behard-pressed to differentiate which place the crowd was from - middle to upper middle class people playing adventurer for a short jaunt, their cosmopolitan aspirations ever-more apparent as they are as well scrubbed and presentable in their casual finest as ever. And in either Las Vegas or New York, they are embracing the physical locus of culture at its viscerally finest.

To capture them at the piercing of the veil, the crossing of the threshold, the first whiff on the cheek of the institution’s filtered air conditioning - they’d be a mirror, reflect what culture has really accomplished.

We went all over New York City today, but I will get right to the art review.

The best thing I can say about Greater New York is that it was like visiting Walter Robinson’s Artnet website in person. I just feel so bad for Walter now that I have seen in person what he has succumbed to upholding.

The sprawling P.S. 1 exhibition space had Greater New York, a show of what appeared to be hundreds of artists, all young and gallery-represented artists. This show was a showcase of what is going on – and because it is the young hip artists, supposedly reveals the future of art, the cutting edge if you will allow me to use the most overused term on the fucking planet.

Better that this show be thought of as cutting edge and not seen than to be visited and experienced - as it is the lamest conglomeration of inconsequentiality that could be assembled from the art world. To call it dreck would be to diminish the enchantment that slime and scum often have when glistening under just the proper sunlight.

There was a total of one good painting and a total of two clever ideas rendered useless as artworks. To name the artists would be to insult them, as association with this show is like sentencing someone to be forever remembered as a crony of the most classless unlikable hipster that ever roared into town on the night there was a great party out at the beach.

It is like the artworld wants to so cut itself off from life and the world that its youngest adherents are its most dogged fundamentalists in disregarding – perhaps even dismembering - pleasure and experiential joy. Just as Islam, the religion of peace, has its adherents who kill the infidel, the artworld too revels in its young set of true believers who have sacrificed their names and careers to the greater good of killing off hope that art may impact life and the world at large.

We brought the weather with us - a fabulous day, yesterday Chicago was perfect temperature, light breeze, and this on top of a relaxing train trip. Tomorrow we hit the Greater New York show at P.S. 1, plus Williamsburg until our feet drop off.

I am leaving for New York City in ten minutes.
If I update, I update, If I don’t, check back here on Labor Day.

Time to pack for the trip.
My years as a bachelor have paid off in that so hating to do laundry I have a large supply of socks, shirts and underwear.
A very large supply. Like a three months supply.

I have been rushing around to get things done before we leave on our vacation. Yeah, I have to pack and pay bills and all that crap, but there is an issue of the magazine to design and lay out, etcetera. That has taken up the last few days - I get into a state of hyper focus and get more done in one hour than I do in some weeks. If I could harness this intensity 24/7 it would be a whole different life - of course, without taking a break from it i probably would be stressed out and ill all the time.

So a few of my neighbors have hired my cleaning lady. Today she stopped by to change the dya she comes from tomorrow to Thursday. She brought me an espresso from the nearby donut shop - she’ll charge me for it later in the week.

A delicious, hot quadruple espresso delivered without me lifting a finger - is this the life or what?

Other than that I am crosseyed from computer screen time - almost dizzy when I go to walk around and need peripheral vision.

In the middle of a few deadlines, we drove down to San Diego for a surprise party for Shirley, my girlfriend’s mother. Shirley’s husband, Ray, organized the party at a line-dancing redneck country suburbanite bar. Well, Shirley was happy and surprised and it was good to see lots of people. I was mesmermized by the line-dancing lessons they gave. We were on a balcony overlooking the dancefloor. There was easily a hundred people out on the floor and an aerobics-like instructor teaching the simple steps that add up to the hick stomp or something like that. It was, unreal, almost dreamlike in a mundane, boring dream - we were in a cowboy suburbanite bar watching a dance class…

so after the party, we spent the night at Shirley & Ray’s and int he morning, Ray and I went to an Indian casino (Viejas, in the rural San Diego boondocks)) to play in a poker tournament. It was a $14 buy in with a chance to win $500 bucks. I got a lot of weak cards, nothing to bet on. Finally an Ace/10 come my way and i decide to bet aggressive. It scares off a few people, but one guy then goes all in. HE bets all of his chips. I’ve bet so many on this hand already that if i back out now, it is going to handicap me for sure, so I go all in.

We turn over our cards and he has a pair of Kings. then they turn over the flop (three cards). 10, King, Ace. HE has three of a kind. I now have two pair. The Turn (4th card exposed) is an Ace. This gives me a Full House. Only one more card to pull up and only one card in the whole deck can beat me.

This whole series has drawn a lot of attention and people are standing around, screaming, and that only draws in more people. Well they screamed for me as i was silent when that 4th King DID show up and beat me.

Ray, long since eliminated in the tournament, ran into the poker room wondering what the commotion was. He got excited that i had been at the center of it. He had made a hundred dollars playing blackjack in the fifteen minutes after being eliminated, so we split after he cashed in those chips, met up with the girls and the Blackjack money bought us all lunch.

We drove back in pretty amazing time, considering it was Friday and we hit afternoon traffic. Back to the grind, fourteen dolalrs poorer, one great story wealthier.

The non-profit that I am Board President of met Tuesday night. All it was was a meeting about what we need to do - dodn’t take a vote on anything, just went downt he laundry list of runnign the i-5 gallery and running the Brewery Artwalk. Pretty effiicent really. Not many peole volunteer, so it has to be.

More work on the new issue of the magazine - I am going to be out of town when it comes out, so i will eb the last one to know what it looks like. Funny how things are sometimes, when you work hard toward a goal.