We drove right past my high school today. I hadn’t planned to, hadn’t been by it except once since they kicked me out in 1981, and there it was, and on I drove. Weird. Then we had lunch in uptown Whittier.

A friend of mine got dumped by his girlfriend and we talked for over an hour on the phone. Classic line:

ME: Are you listening to Blood on the Tracks?
HIM: Yeah.
ME: Good, you’ll be fine.

Saw my old friends Jonas and Par, the Swedes from Amsterdam, there is a Nordic invasion of the Brewery, big show here Saturday night.

Always good to see old friends, to be there for an old friend. The old places don’t mean shit to me for some reason, but there are people in your life, once you know them and they know you, ten years can go by, and then it seems like less than ten minutes passed.

Have you ever taken a nap, maybe just for an hour or a little more, and woken up and you had slept so deeply , so soundly that you were more rested than if you had slept twelve hours prior to your normal waking time?

Wow. Let’s talk about being totally revived.

So we had the girlfriend’s mother and her spouse over on Thanksgiving. Bought the Bristol Farms heat and serve thanksgiving for our. Fabulous. Then we went and saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which was great as well. Robert Downey Junior is awesome and Shane Black put together a great film with a fun pace. Many good jabs at Hollywood.

Then we went to my folks’ place. They have this house in the mountains where the family can gather on holidays. Everyone else had been there Wednesday and Thursday so when we made through the thick Vegas traffic we were the only ones there.

Despite numerous lectures by my father about how China is taking over the world, we had a good time and ate well as well. This morning we got up said goodbye and drove to Santa Monica as my girlfriend wanted to see the Wallace Berman exhibition at Bergamot Station, as it included some art by Jay DeFeo, one of her favorite artists of all time. The show was great, glad we could make it. Tonight it is leftovers and getting caught up in work.

So we went to see Rick Robinson’s solo show at Bedlam Gallery on Hilhurst. Rick is an advertising maven and his wall sculptures take the blunt language of advertising, codify it into a sharp, aesthetically-pleasing symbol and replicate it for display. This was all on Saturday. We ate at Tropicalia, a Brazilian restaurant on Hillhurst. It was great and pretty affordable for dinner for two. Then we went to the Broadway Bar, which is a fabulous hip hangout on Broadway next to the Orpheum theatre. Artist Stephanie Mercado was having a birthday. The place was nice, the crowd was hip and I was on the balcony looking out on Broadway thinking about the days when I practically lived in the gutter there. It always makes me take a shower first thing when I come home when I revisit skidrow. Stephanie showed me some pictures of a group show she was in and the stuff looked fabulous. So a night of good art and good food and good nitelife vibes.

But who cares about art when there is the great Poker Win of all time to be told. Okay, we have a weekly game here at the Brewery and lately I have been tanking, but Sunday I brutally took John Fukada for money, took James Slay for money, took Bruce Dean for money (to Bruce’s credit, he got a little of it back), and took Patrick Braden’s dough (he is still learning and managed to get $13.50 of it back). I could bore you with the details, but suffice to say, was able to treat my girlfriend and her high-end art-representative from the wealthy suburbs to lunch today.

And what is life without a great quote from the cleaning lady. Actually, the cleaning lady’s homegirl sister will fill in today:
“When you see Mariah Carey wearing platforms all the time, you know those shoes ain’t never goin’ out of style again.”

Is this really the FOURTH Harry Potter movie? I haven’ seen any of them or read any of the books, but four???

This is like a cultural phenomena. I guess this is how poeple who are not into art feel. When i mention I publish an art magazine, they almost apologize for not being into art. I feel left out due to missing this whole Henry Potter guy and all his fun activitites.

So Keanu Reeves was at an art opening tonight. He is taller than I would have thought, had a thick untrimmed beard and unwashed hair, but a sportscoat over jeans made him fit in just fine.

The gallery, Gallery C, was hosting a two-person show for painters Kirtland Ash and Kenny Harris. Keanu spent a lot of time talking to Kenny and complimenting him on the giant scenes of empty, wistful interiors. These pieces are about the pregnant pause, the poetic light of an ephemeral ambiance. Ash’s paintings in the front of the gallery were an exciting veering of abstraction toward a naturalism, landscapes of the remembered, recollections of the afterglow the exterior world imprints on consciousness.

I was so enlightened by it all, I came home and won $80 playing poker and retelling the Keanu Reeves sighting until he and I had signed a three-picture deal together to hear me tell it.

Hey look, a news story proving that there is life after death.

While you enjoy the afterlife, I am going to enjoy my new job.

Did you know that Michael Ovitz is the first person to ever haggle over the price of a painting?

That Mary Boone never talks up an artwork in order to make more money that it is worth?

That Pace Gallery’s Arne Glimcher, who doesn’t have an eye for art, is a shitty movie producer and arrogant to boot?

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