Okay, okay, okay, holiday weekend, I am hanging close to home.

Three things:

ONE. I tried to look up gallery listings on the L.A. Weekly website and gave up - wow, a scatterbrained thingy there. So I am going to MorYork Gallery and Ave. 50 Studio openings this weekend (Neighborhood Arts Link).

TWO. I have my own page on the IMDB, fame and fortune await…

THREE. Out of like 60 submissions for Art World Poker, I accepted 41 artists, meaning there are 7 slots still available. But the show is approaching way too fast to submit work. So here is the deal - email me a link to your art. Put ART WORLD POKER in the subject. If I like it and you want to register for $45 (registration fee $5 late fee), you can be in the show. Coagula at Hot Mail Dot Com is the email. If I do not email back, at least I saved you a stamp. First come, first i like, first served.

So the new issue of Juxtapoz features a history of art magazines written by artist Robert Williams. He is excepetionally kind to Coagula in this short editorial piece. Greg Escalante just read this all to me over the phone, I am kinda blown away. It is the June issue, gotta go out and get a copy of it right now…

Surfing the net, i just found a great interview with Karen Finley.

So, art is actually stolen quite infrequently., It is lumped in with jewelry and silverware on all police reports to make it appear as if fine art is heavily trafficked, but it is not, really. And it is hard to sell once stolen. Art thieves, successful ones that is, are garden variety burglars hired a priori by someone who wants a specific artwork.

Anyway, a painting was stolen form La Luz De Jesus, here is the info:

LINK TO PICTURE AND REPORT

Again, perhaps this is the highest compliment an artist can receive.

We went to my girlfriend’s mom’s in San Diego for Mothers Day. We’d been doing quite a bit with my family lately - my mom turned 75 and one brother turned 50, so that side of the world was taken care of.

San Diego just has the weirdest vibe in the world - it is mellow California, but I feel like it is also ruthless Texas. A suburb that doesn’t look beyond its own lawn but closed off from evolving as it feels nirvana has been reached. Not smug, just relaxed, self-fulfilled.

We had a good time, nothing else to report, things are nice here, uh oh, it may be like San Diego is creeping up into our world things are so even and mellow…

So, there has been a lot of medical stuff going on, but it is basically terrific news.

Other than high blood pressure, I am totally healthy.

I avoided going to the doctor since 1984. Finally it was capitulation time – the visit to an adult cardiology specialist (as I was an infant heart surgery survivor)..

My diet: I eat steak and cheesecake for dinner four nights a week, deep fried fish tacos for lunch three times a week minimum, sushi at least once a week, and rich restaurant food for every other meal – and never exercise.

My Cholesterol? 172.
HDL Cholesterol was great and LDL was right on target.

11 years of all-day-all-night drinking (now 11 years past) coupled with living in industrial L.A. for 20 years: Liver functions perfect.

So my first inclination, mentally, and this is serious, is to move to Vegas and take up smoking and start drinking again.

Having lived 41 years with the idea that I was a frail little fellow going to die soon, everything has been oriented to accomplishing something NOW. Never had kids, always did things one hundred and ten percent today (there might not be a tomorrow), avoided the doctor because, what if they were like ”We have to operate immediately” and there was no way Mat Gleason was going to die on an operating table and not get an extra, say, few months or weeks or days more of life. My first memory is vowing to get the fuck out of the hospital and never let them strap me down to an industrial metal-rail bed again. That was probably at around two years old. Perhaps writing - since you could write something and people would read it – pow! Immediate impact – perhaps that is why I landed at this stupid keyboard.

So I am in the Sav-On parking lot thinking about moving to Vegas and debating the merits of smoking Lucky Strike non-filtereds or Marloboro Reds when, well, there is an epiphany here, a parking lot enlightenment at dusk in the barrio and some lady thinks I am walking to my car instead of from my car and she is in her minivan, following me thinking she is going to get my parking space when instead I am walking into the store leaving her at the lot’s exit. So her headlights reveal my shadow on the pavement and I see my outline walking and just make a vow to live healthy, to go all out with this medical thing.

It is a change – I have inherently lived for the moment all of my life, valued every minute of it as if it were the last, and now I have been told maybe that was not needed. Maybe I could have raised a family and invested into a pension fund from that safe, stable job I would have gotten. I’m walking into the store wanting a drink and my rule is if I feel like a drink, I immediately think about my first day of kindergarten and go off on another mental tangent. It worked again.

I had been at Rite Aid’s Pharmacy to get my prescription filled and they told me it was a forty-five minute wait. I laughed and pulled my prescription from the lady’s hand and drove to Sav-On. This was the first time I had ever been to a pharmacy. The girl at Sav-On says it will be a twenty-minute wait. I agree and realize that they are probably still wondering what the problem was back at Rite Aid. So I take my blood pressure at Sav-On: 139/90, so that is, they tell me, not good. Then I start reading a pamphlet and it recommends a million vitamins and herbs for high blood pressure and I walk down the vitamin aisle and grab a bottle of everything they recommend. So of course the vitamins are more expensive than the medicine – so much for the evil pharmaceuticals, eh? The woman at the counter and I are talking about having never been to a pharmacy and she says ”Don’t come on the 1st or the 15th of the month”, and I nod, knowingly. The poker dealer in Laughlin told me the same thing.

The goal her now is to take the medicine and live forever without the medicine or the health being the subject. But it has been on my mind quite a bit. I was ready to be told I was dying three weeks ago. Now my cholesterol score is better than my vegetarian girlfriend’s and vanity will probably motivate me to keep it that way.

Hey, do me a favor would ya? Could you help spread the word about this fundraiser, Art World Poker.

It is a chance to win a solo show at the i-5 Gallery - Artists are always looking for solo shows and here is a chance to be in a group show AND have a chance at a solo show.

Please spread the word, it will be a fun summer event.

I’m gonna march today, are you?

Okay, I might not be awake until afternoon, but I am going to go out into the streets and see what it is all about.

Well, probably just watch it on television.

Sympathetic as all hell to the cause though.

More…

The terrifying part of proposed immigration law changes are making illegal immigration a felony and empowering local law enforcement to arrest and deport.

Think anyone of possible immigrant status is going to call the cops when they see a shooting? Nope.

By overcriminalizing illegal immigrant status, the gub’mint is given a ton of extra powers and the immigrant class becomes a caste that is simply encouraged to be less and less a part of the mainstream culture.

Oh and soon those imperial police powers will apply to more than aliens, they will apply to teens, and then ex-felons, and then misdemeanor offenders, then everyone.