Woke up Wednesday with a migraine, now I got more work done in two hours than in the previous ten.

No time to relax, more work here now to do before bed!

We went and saw The Queen. It was very funny even though it is not a comedy.
The British really are subjects! Hilarious.
Monty Python couldn’t have done better.

I hope the lady wins best actress and the British re-rigidify their class structure so every last one of them knows his or her place in that oppressive pecking order masquerading as democracy.

Art L.A. at the Santa Monica Civic was a bit of a disappointment. The opening was crowded but not full. About one-third of the galleries had what you might call “name” artists. The other bunch really threw together as much brightly colored eye-catching gloop as possible. The problem is that it was once a tacky and desperate sales tactic, this filling up a fair’s space with inventory - but it has evolved into an aesthetic in itself!

Therefore, the galleries with name-brand artists follow suit and fill their spaces up with badly drawn debris in between the good stuff. It is then something like watching a favorite movie at home while the neighbor blares the new Brittany Album - bad pop trumping great art by simple sensory overload. Pump up the volume is everywhere.

Just about every artwork at the fair had to have a smug twist – for example, if it was an abstract painting, it had to have a cartoon turd or stick figure in it to ensure the hipsters that the art wasn’t taking itself too seriously. We all know when we take ourselves too seriously that people can make fun of our commitment and our beliefs, and the contemporary art shown at the Art LA Fair was made by people with no capacity for either commitment or belief.

We left early … the opening was just kinda boring. Maybe after the tremendous fair last night, with the amazing food and the huge crowds, the big bucks and the good art, maybe this letdown was only relative and Art L.A. was fabulous. But if you can only go to one fair this weekend, go to the one at the Barker Hangar, that one I am sure of, Art L.A. I will go back to on Saturday and look again, but the overwhelming dullness of candy colored smug doodles screaming to be recognized for all of their own inadequacy - it wasn’t cutting it tonight and people shouldn’t make any weekend plans expecting that to change.

I got an email from Steve Jones - and I am thinking, WOW, the guitarist from the Sex Pistols an DJ on 103.1 is emailing ME.

It was spam wanting me to send my bank account for a wire transfer…

We have a booth at the Los Angeles Art Show – Wednesday was the gala opening. “Gala” of course means “feedbag central” as there was a lot of free food. They went overboard with trays of bite size food and dessert, wine and snacks, and then whole cubicles and of food – sushi, salads, seafood, more dessert. Food coma time.

The art was divided into two sections – mid-century and older in one section and closer to cotemporary in the other. It was a sales oriented display. If you want a pleasant aesthetic rejoinder with art masterpieces, go to a musuem. This is about show-and-sell only.

We saw some celebrities, most notably Barbra Streisand, who my girlfriend refused to believe that anyone who looked so good so recently in Meet the Fockers could look as frumpy as the lady we saw looking over some pretentious plein-aire painting booth. So I insisted my girlfriend go take a closer look. She walked back and said ”Maybe it is Penny Marshall…” So I looked again, certain it was Babs – it was. My girlfriend was still shaking her head when I pointed out James Brolin had arrived. He put his arm around the aging chunk of love and my significant other expressed that then and only then was she convinced.

Tomorrow is the Art LA Fair at the Santa Monica Civic, I guess I will have a full review of it…

Oh, and may I add that I did NOT see Meet the Fockers in case you are keeping score at home.

Well, my first “official” 1 hour radio show was posted on Art Scene Visual Radio today.

They sold all of the commercial time on it - it really follows a radio format. Luckily I did not trash any shows at the advertisers’ galleries - that would have been disastrous (but funny).

I am pretty happy with it, said what I wanted to say. It is already time to put together the subjects for the next episode, as there will be a one-hour show each month where I talk about Seven things going on in the art world, the show is called

The Mat Gleason Seven (click the top line in the box with “56:00″ in it, that is the good one)

So if you care about art and if/when you have an hour to listen, enjoy!

So a few people saw me on the evening news on Tuesday and called and/or emailed and that was cool, the funniest response was from my nephew Joseph who told me he liked my haircut (I had removed a ski cap like ten minutes before they taped me and the hair was everywhere). I went and visited him and his triplet brothers/sister - the triplets are growing but are in the phase where if they spot anything unfamiliar they get terrified - and they thought I was terrifying!

I spent all day at my storage space in Pomona, i now have a LOT of room that I pay for - maybe I could hold a nightclub there except that they close at 5:30 p.m. - maybe an “afterhours” club that opens at 8:30 a.m. … nah, those days are long gone…

We are going to Bergamot tomorrow, someone is shooting pictures of Leigh’s show (which is now sold out save for 1 large and 1 medium-sized artwork) and it will be nice for her to bask in true art world glory while I am just standing there as the proverbial “trophy wife”…

I will be on as the L.A. Art Critic for Art Scene Visual Radio on the NBC Channel 4 news in L.A. tonight at around 6:10 - 6:20 … just finished the interview.

COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TAPE THIS???