Katie Couric - The Girl Next Door

Do we miss Katie Couric already? Is she the 'girl next door' who has moved away? Not for me.
Ms. Couric has always traded on the girl next door identity. She could be silly, facetious , and vain without a pause. The girl next door is immune to any criticism because we don't take her seriously. She is a one-size-fits-all media personality. She belongs on the Today show. Her ingenuousness will not pass for journalism. Of course, journalists have disappeared from television giving way to entertainment. Katie might work. Perhaps we are seeing a further dumbing down of network news. The real broadcasters who have either died or retired or have been replaced by audience builders linger in our memory as whole people, not a type. Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, and Tom Browkow had a formality of presentation that did not betray their preoccupation with ratings. They did not tweak their news with magazine stories. If they did report on something from the popular cutlure they treated it the same way as all other stories. No winking, smirks, maudlin gestures, tears. So the feminine may be asserting itself in broadcast journalism. The heart working its way into a cold, brutal, mean, greedy, vulgar society. If that is needed, well, I will seek hard news elsewhere.

Honor The Parents

Memorial Day and Memorial Day Weekend move into memory. Hot dogs and potato salad, parades and proclamations over, families resume their lives ...if they have not lost someone in a war. Yes, we are sensitive to the loss of lives and the questions around war. But that sensitivity and those questions are different for a parent who has brought a child, now turned adult, through crisis after crises growing up. When the time came for their son or daughter to exercise the independence that parents nurture, it couldn't have been easy to wave them goodbye to go off to fight in any war. Every day must be filled with anxiety for parents with a son or daughter engaged in battle 24 hours a day. It's not the measles, or the first date, or first automoble, its war and death lurking in every minute if they are on the field of battle. The empty place at the dinner table, their absence at holidays, the loved face threatened with extinction. When a death notice comes to a parent it must seem like the darkest night of their soul. Honors, folded flags, comfort from friends and family and then the silence of the forever absent. Memorial Day opens the memory wider and the grief returns along with the good times remembered. So, if we stop our nation for a day to remember the dead we must remember the living.
Parents Day Might be useful new national holiday.

Memorial Day - "Lost in the Stars"

Source: Kurt Weill's Musical "Lost in the Stars"

Lost in the Stars

Before Lord God made the sea and land
He held the stars in the palm of his hand
And they ran through his fingers like grains of sand,
And one little star fell alone.

Then the Lord God hunted through the wide night air
For the little dark star on the wind down there,
And he stated and promised he'd take specical care
So it wouldn't get lost again.

Now a man don't mind if the stars grow dim,
So long as the Lord God's watching over them,
Keeping track of how it all goes on.

But I've been walking all the night and day,
Till my eyes are weary and my head turns gray,
And sometimes it seems Maybe God's gone away
And we're lost out here in the stars.

Little stars, big stars, blowing through the night,
And we are lost out here in the stars,
Little stars, big stars blowing through the night,
And we are lost out here in the stars.

Low Tide - Cape Cod

Walking the Beach. Asking myself why I have to walk a certain distance at a certain pace while others are playing on shining flats in low tide. A couple in their beach chairs. One reading and one with his face to the sun. On I trudge in the soft sand taxing my body a bit. I soon have my pace established and notice three girls and an older female playing on a small flat that had become a little shoreline island. The sand was silver grey and shining due to the slight slaver of water covering their playland. The older female was alive with the joy of the soft, misty, warm air that played in the atmosphere. She danced ungracefully lifting her legs high and twisting her body one way and then another. The children ranging from petite to adolescent where equally charmed by their little island of pleasure in their playing and running . Unbounded pleasure is what I saw. Human life released from the fetters of the everyday. Walking further a man and a boy were gathering driftwood for what looked to be a fire mound. The boy was fully engaged in this task. He was working at it and wore a two piece military-like outfit, while his father or grandfather in a swimsuit sauntered along side with his belly draped unselfconsciously over his floppy swimpants. With my goal reached, I turned around and walked back with the sun behind me. The island of playing females was illuminated and their animated bodies clad in
colorful bathing suits darting in many directions, still charged with the excitment of this unhibited freedom to be. Walking along the flats behind me figures were dark against the silver sea. Their adult forms moved with concentration as they leaned over and picked up something causing them to gather and study the object. All of these figures were no more than twelve inches high in the perspective I was watching them from. So I had a panoramic view of life on the beach, the flats, the sky, the ocean with its brilliant silver sun stripes generated by a rippling incoming tide. It was all quiet action. I could not hear them. It was life in motion. If they had stopped to consider me, I would be life in motion. I understood my walk better now. The couple enjoying their rest. The females captured by joy. The man and the boy building something together. The dark human forms gathering around an object found. The steel blue sky and ocean with ripples of silver almost sacred in their presence. Life.

Jackson Pollack

Source: NY Times 5/26 Weekend Arts p. B.25 "Pollack on Paper: A Magician Flinging Swirls and Pixie Dust" by Holland Cotter

Jackson Pollock must have done something remarkable. Everyone says so . Some say he was a genius. Holland Cotter uses four words to describe his reaction to an exhibit of works on paper now at the Guggenheim Museum: "ordinary, puzzling, extraordinary, gone." He writes that before Pollack modern American art did not exist internationally. He states that Pollack wasn't a tragic hero. His story is "B-movie, boozy, embarrassing, pathetic." "He transformed picture-making into dancing, the picture into a magic place, over which he distributed pigment like pixie dust." "...this is the artist I want to spend time with who, for a sort short time, got beyond himself, and did work that was like nothing else in modern art up to that time." Pollack's work seems to be experienced as "presences, surfaces reflecting whatever ideas and desires are projected on them." I guess that's ok. Sort of Zen. No quarrel. So Pollack broke new ground. Artists do that. His paintings are quite busy. I guess being the first to do something in art is a distinction. Pollack seems to have had a brief time where his work was "untranscendentally gorgeous" and then "In the fall of 1950 he went back to drinking and turned ordinary again." Untranscendentally gorgeous? Turned ordinary? I guess modern art pulled itself together and managed to contunue without him.

Vanessa Redgrave & Joan Didion

Source: NY Times 5/25 Weekend Arts p.B1 "Being Joan Didion" by Campbell Robertson

A large photo of Vanessa Redgrave sitting and Joan Didion standing in Ms. Didion's living room or study. They both look out at us pensively as if to say, "Do you understand?" or "Do you doubt our intention to collaborate?" Vanessa has her hands folded across her knees. Joan stands next to her with her arms folded across her slight frame. Vanessa is wearing a khaki-colored, long sleeved dress and Joan is wearing a pale green cable stitched long sleeve sweater, a pleated grey skirt, and black tights. Joan looks school girlish and Vanessa looks urbane comfortable in her skin. Joan Didion has a penetrating, almost electric stare emanating from her small eyes, while Vanessa Redgrave's eyes are large pools of quiet certainty. Joan's face made me think I must explain myself. Vanessa's face told me she knew what I was thinking. This odd couple are to collaborate on a dramatic treatment of Ms. Didion's autobiographical book, "The Year of Magical Thinking," to be developed into a one woman play. Here were two faces that showed age and experience but had the same source. May I call it the human condition? What was apparent was the fact that these creative women were sitting down to discuss the development of a story that deals with " fear, despair, and the exasperation of bereavment". The photo clearly revealed the wisdom of their collaboration. During the interview Vaness said, " If you care very much about what someone has written, she said, looking at her hands, " and it's a life, it lives, it's not like you talk about it like a book. I find it difficult to talk about it because it is even closer to me now." She looked over at Ms. Didion. We don't know each other that well." "But...," Ms. Didion said, smiling and not finishing the sentence."

Al Gore

Source: NY Times 5/24 The Arts - "Warning of Calamities With A Scholarly Tone" By A.O. Scott

Al Gore never seems to get a break in the news. The Times is no exception. If they report on anything Al Gore does or says, or in this case creates ,they make some kind of snide remark discrediting him and his views. It's even in a review of "An Inconvenient Truth" a new film about the dangers of climate change. Here is one line describing how he is usually perceived...."Mr Gore as a stiff, humorlless speaker, someone to make fun of rather than take seriously" or "more professor than politician" who if he was not the "used to be the next president of the United States of America" " he might have settled down to tenure and a Volvo (or maybe a Pruis) in some leafy academic grove." or a "matter-of-fact scholarly tone" Eventually, after coloring a reader's mind with this high schoolish condescending commentary A.O. Scott plugs the documentary having warned viewers that they will have to put up with the (not meaning to be entertaining) Al Gore. This is really anti-intellectual and just plain uncharitable. We all know an Al Gore.

We Have Become Death

Source: NY Times 5/22 A photograph of restaurant in Baghdad where 13 people were killed by a suicide bomber

We Have Become Death

We have become Death
Our credentials cover the earth
Like leaflets avowing our good intentions
But we are destruction come to stay
Outliving our welcome
Spreading like AIDS
Infecting religion, commerce, art, the sacred , the marketplace, the home, the streets
Death has become our work
We use it like a spray to disinfect our displeasure with the oder of other lives
Satisfied
We turn to the big screen, a cruise, an indulgence, a meal
" It is for their own good."
We have become Death.... "the right thing to do."

The Marketplace No Place At All

The Da Vinci code reporting reminded me that we have lost a quality in our culture that used be not less commercial, but less mercantile. A property ( let's say a manuscript) always needed an investor to produce the work. Leonard and Virginia Woolf published books, invested time money and energy, but worked the press and set type. They published poetry,essays, and fiction. James Joyce had a patron and found a publisher who owned a book store and was willing to take a chance on him. Today an author is truly property. An army of commercial interests descend on a property and divide it up into square feet of interests that eclipse the author/creator and mark out little squares of ownership almost losing sight of the work as art. The work appears and the investors hold their breath. One day makes or breaks the bank. A work standing on its own merit is ancient history. If a creation can be inflicted on the public by elaborate marketing strategies, it stands a chance of at least a small success.. The public will eventually catch on to a flop, but not because the creator failed, but because the marketing failed...so they think.

Bucky and Noguchi

Source: NY Times 5/19 Weekend Art p. B34 "The Architect and the Sculptor: A Friendship of Ideas" by Grace Glueck

"Great, friendships are rare, but friendships that enlarge the spirit through ideas, ideals and new insights are in a class by themselves." Grace Glueck makes this observation about the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and the visionary designer R. Buckminster Fuller. In show entitled " Best of Friends" at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. This friendship that dates from 1929, includes a collaboration on a car that can fly (1932) and design for an unrealized theater for Martha Graham (1976). Fuller's geodesic dome geometry also played a part conceptually in other works by Noguchi. We don't hear of the enlarged spirit much these days. Enlarged prostates seems to be on our minds more often than not, so to learn that two major figures in our culture inspired each other and that it is being celebrated publicly is just plain old-fashioned nice. If you would like to see some photographs of the exhibit go to nytimes.com/design

The New York Times....hurrah!

I am a home delivery subscriber to the New York Times. I chose Mon-Fri because that's when the important stories develop. It seems that major bad news and good news either happens weekdays or reporters don't all work 24/7. With so much excitment in Manhattan who would work weekends anyway? But the fact remains that all of the newsmakers mostly make news Monday to Friday. My paper arrives about 5:30 am. Do I go out in my robe and pajamas? Yes, I do. I rush out and rush in. Being seen in my sleepwear is not my preference. Why can't I wait until after breakfast and stroll our in my unsleepwear? The Times prints all the news fit to print and I am eager to read what it is. Such a civilized newpaper! It is not always easy to read about war casualties, despots, crooks, creeps, and crime but it is bearable because the Times' culture knows what a reader's psyche can process in the a.m. light. And then when I have all I can bear of catastrophes on a global scale, I head for the the Arts section to read about success and some catastrophes on a local scale. Ah! I made it through major breaking news and ranting columnists to the world of art. Much narrower in scope but broader in its humanity.

The Da Vinci Code

NY Times 5/18 The Arts "Was It Kind Of Quiet at Museum? Dead, Actually by A.O. Scott

FM-FM: Comment
To save you time reading the review. A.O. Scott in final paragraph writes...."So I can't support any calls for boycotting or protecting this busy, trivial, unoffensive film. Which is not to say I'm recommeding you go see it."

Someday Never

Source: NY Times: New York Report p.C17 5/17 "Hopes and Dreams, Lost on 9/11, Saved on a Laptop' by Dan Barry

FM-FM: Comment
Some days the NY Times Art section does not resonate with me. Today was such a day. I was caught by the concept of 'someday' in a human interest story. "Who knows why never becomes someday and someday becomes today." In a story about a mother who discovers her daughter's vision for her life found in a file in her laptop that she had ignored since her daughter's death in the 9/11 Twin Towers catastrophe, the young woman's thirty-six points bespoke of modest goals and affirmed what her father and mother already knew about her. "She recognized that you appreciate a few things and kind of live your life wisely," her father said. The mother interprets the discovery of the list as as another way in which her daughter communicates with her when she is most in need. Of course, it could have been on a sheet of paper or in notebook. It gives one pause about the efficacy of keeping everything locked up in an electronic box.. Yes, "Who knows why never become someday and someday becomes today."

'The Fantasticks' Returns

Source: NY Times May16, Arts- "It's Time To Remember: The Fantasticks Returns" by Campbell Robertson

FM-FM: Comment
Many years ago while teaching speech and drama at a small college in Vermont, I took my handful of actors who gave their best to make two one-act plays by Tennessee Williams an evening's entertainment for a loyal college audience, to see 'The Fantasticks" as a form of thanks and reward. It was by then a standard for small theatre companies and a sure money-maker. It still is. It's called the longest running musical at 42 years. After 17, 162 performances it closed in 2002 and suddenly its back Off-broadway. Events occuring early in a teaching career remain as precious memories, trophies that sit on the ledge of the mind ready for a sentimental review when a light is cast upon them. That time in my life and those students and that musical really bring comfort in the slow decline of an academic career. I am encouraged by revivals, especially if they are works that I cherish. I too, have had a long run, have not closed, and am not scheduled for a revival.....as far as I know.

Wake Up America!

Source: NY Times OP-ED, P. A25, "America The Fearful" by Bob Herbert

FM-FM: Comment
This column by Bob Herbert ends with a chilling paragraph that I can't ignore and will include in my Arts FM-FM Blog. "Well, I give you fair warning. This is a road map to totalitarianism. Hallmarks of totalitarian regimes have always included an excessive reliance on secrecy, the deliberate stoking of fear in the general population, a preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions in foreign policy, the promotion of blind patriotism, the denial of human rights, the curtailment of the rule of law, hostility to a free press, and the systematic invasion of the privacy of ordinary people." Go to your library for the complete article. It is not available on the internet NY Times unless you are a subscriber. My reason for quoting a part is to point out that columnists do not shout louder than you can usually manage, but they are shouting. Are you doing something in your community?

Art Is Awareness and Action

Vincent Van Gogh saw the face of human suffering. Rouault saw the face of human suffering. Picasso saw the face of human suffering. Beckett saw the face of human suffering. T. S. Eliot saw the face of human suffering. Virginia Woolf saw the face of human suffering. Do we see the face of human suffering? Art helps us see the human condition and to reach into the innocent life of our nature and ask the 'why' of torture, cruelty, abuse, murder, atrocities, destruction, genocide, and environmental degradation. You say, "But I am just one person. How can I prevent the evil I see before me?" One person may effect the lives of countless people once they see that they have within themselves the capacity to do so. We are more than ourselves when we take up the questions and needs of others.The artist is an example of this principle. Art is awareness in action. We do not have to be artists to take our awareness to others and ask, "How may I help?."

David Blaine and " The World's Fastest Man"

Source: NY Times 5/13 " When the City Was Magical" p.29 Kenneth Silverman

FM-FM: Comment
David Blaine stories linger on in the news. Kenneth Silverman writes today about a time when the city was united in interest over Houdini's stunts. After all, Houdini's 'getting out' and Blaines 'staying in' do not require too much from us. We wonder about it and fix our minds and eyes on something remote from our routine. Justin Gatlin, "The World's Fastest Man" setting a world record for the 100 meter sprint is just a variation on this urge to do the almost impossible. We spread our goals out broadly in terms of years usually, whereas these folks narrow their goals to one thing and train to achieve them sooner rather than later. We wonder at it. We would never imagine ourselves doing it, so we will spend some time with it. It's something like an aquarium visit, punctuation in the more complex events our lives. We leave it easily and it lingers like smoke for a time and then vanishes.

Brooklyn Art Students Dumboed Down

Source: NY Times 5 /12 Arts "Student Relocate a Shuttered Art Show" by Randy Kennedy

FM-FM: Comment
This week the NY Times has been reporting on a Brooklyn College graduate student's thesis art show in a World War II memorial hall near the Brooklyn Bridge that city officials have found offensive and forced the college to shut down and move. Of course, the students (18) objected and protested enough to bring it to the public's attention. The issue is about content. A genitilia sculpture and rats were not appropriate for families claimed the city officials. Tricky question. The horrors of war are not likely to be prominent in a World War II memorial hall, but horrors are implied in a war memorial. I'm not saying that rats and a part of the human anatomy usually kept in one's trousers should not upset families, plus the exhibit seems to violate an oral agreement made with Brooklyn College. It remains a free- speech issue nevertheless. The students threatened to file a federal law suit and have accepted a new location for their show. The Times gave space to the story. The college found an alternative space to show the work in the Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn. The students still plan to file a federal law suit. Civilized, educational, and democratic.

Howard Stearn, Martha Stewart, Catholic Church

Source: NY Times 5/11 Arts Section

FM-FM: Comment
What do Howard Stearn, Martha Stewart and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese have in common? They are all extra-terristrials beaming down from the Sirius Network. Somehow I thought of Howard Stearn out in space alone, but no, Martha and Cardinal Edward M.Egan will keep him company. I doubt either will have much influence on the bulk of Howard's listeners, but it is comforting to know that there is a dial to turn on a Sirius radio.Do you suppose they will all attend a corporate awards dinner together sometime in the future? The Catholics will be 24/7 this fall and a spokesman for the archdiocese said that the Catholic Channel is a way to "spread the word in a new way," so we can see that Howard has been an influence on the church unbeknownst to him. Those are Howard's exact sentiments. Of course, I don't know what Martha has in mind for her listeners.
Could it be "Twice Told Tales From Jail"or new ways to keep your combs clean? Well, I will never know. I still have dial up internet and an FM/AM radio tuned to PBS. . Incidently, Howard Stern announced yesterday after five months into his five year $500 million contract with Sirius Satellite Radio, that he will never return to terrestrial radio. "I would throw up if I had to back. I'm never going back." Fill in the blank spaces
T - - -! G- -!

Am I Missing Something?

Source: NY Times 5/10 Arts -Theater Review- "Where Even the Ghost Struggles For Words" by Ben Brantley

FM-FM: Comment
In my daily search for the new Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, Anton Chekov, Samuel Beckett, John Millington Synge, Henrik Ibsen Tennesse Williams, Eugene O'Neill etc., I seem to find reviews of new plays that have excited the reviewer but does not say the work is the new benchmark for drama or reflects the traditions these playwrights established. Even more, a new playwright that is cutting his/her way through the jungle of greatness towards a clearing uniqely their own. Clifford Odets is currently enjoying a brief time before audiences, but revivals are not what I am talking about. It's ground breaking, revolutionary, cathartic work that seems to have missed me. Today, a review of "Shining City" by Conor McPherson is very interesting and very favorablly reviewed.. A "quiet, haunting and absolutely glorius new play." Could it be that we have exhausted the muse of epic plays and must settle for quiet and haunting?

All The Nooz That's Fit To Print?

Source: NY Times 5/9 Arts p.1 by Critics Notebook, "Portrait of a Party Girl as a Serious Young Actress" byCaryn James

FM-FM: Comment
The NY Times today used roughly one third of a page to expose a 19 year old film actress in a dress easily mistaken for an undergarment except for two pale roses attached to the pink frock she is wearing. It is broad daylight and other people are gathered around her in street clothes not at all like the flimsy garment this "tabloid-ready partying and on screen talent" is wearing. She stares into a fan's digital camera holding an autograph pen. Not news that film actresses are addicted to photo opps. It is news (to me) that the Times would slap a scantily dressed teen on the first page of the Arts section in color without wanting to attract readers who must be dragged into a story by a visual. This is second story in two days about film persons and their off screen behavior somehow having an influence on their box office success. A non-story in my estimation and would be loath to comment on it accept for the fact that the NY Times seems too be doing something similar in its coverage and photo. I do not read the Times to be stopped in my tracks by someone's 19 year old daughter who may be occupying print space just for the effect,but there it is! THE NEW YORK TIMES is fast becoming a noozpaper. The articles's title also borrows from James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" hoping to catch the eye of its novel readers should they be passing by.

Cruise Missile Dud

Source: NY Times Arts , 5/8, New 'Mission' Opens Weaker Than Expected by Sharon Waxman

FM-FM: Comment
One would think that Hollywood was important the way the press pays attention to it. The on and off screen attention Mr. Cruise gets is disproportionate to his importance in the popular culture. The NY Times gave four columns and a photo to this box office under achieving film "Mission: Impossible III". Mr Crusie had to bounce around in real life as much as he does in films to promote this latest bungy cord effort. Rome, Paris, London and Mexico City. Helicopter, fire truck, subway and boat to promote. Someone once said that acting in films was like being in high school only more fun. Same mind set. Same antics. Fun. We have become interested in box office numbers. Why? When I was growing up box office numbers were Adults .65 cents Children .35 cents. Mr Cruise's public persona seems to have become a distraction when watching him on the big screen. Since when has it not been true that the off screen life of "stars" is what produces box office success? It may be that the behavior of "stars" may effect box office, but this is something new and different. Somehow Mr. Hanks is not supposed to have an off screen life that in any way colors the perceptions of its audience. Folks, he is an actor. He has a job to do. I've spent more time here than I intended to...bye!

David Blaine Spectacle

Source: NY Times, New York Report. p.28 May 7

FM-FM Comment:
Cultural malaise and domestic ennui are not without consequences. With revivals, retrospectives, and reality shows popping up frequently, one can expect to see growth in the spectacle industry. I saw David Blaine in London in 2003 suspended in a clear plastic case from a crane near the Thames. A small crowd stood looking in wonder at this man doing this odd thing. Three teens shouted "We love you David." He waved. Businessmen and women scurried along casting a brief glance in David's direction. The event was a non-event to Londoners. I had the feeling that I have when I trap a mouse in a Have A Heart plastic mouse trap. I must help it out as soon as possible or it will suffocate. In 2006 David is at it again in an 8 foot sphere of water for seven days near Lincoln Center's performing arts venues in New York City. Since Monday he has been living under water and breathing through an air tube and living on various liquid nutrients and disposing of them through an appartus described as a condum catheter. He plans to return to the sphere after the seven days in locked chains, hold his breath long enough to break the world record of 8 minutes and 58 seconds and escape. Our culture's current obsession with novelty or the wierd is a healthy sign that we might be somewhere along the way to some new art form or revolutiuon, or worse, even more bizarre events......say marathon dancing. Mr. Blaine clearly does well doing wierd. He recently purchased a $1.67 million apartment in TriBeCa and has been progammed on ABC five times. Liberace said of those who scorned him, " I cry all the way to the bank."

Twyla Tharp (Alywt Praht)

Source: NY Times 5.6.2006- Critics Notebook, Gia Kourlas reviews "Howling Near Heaven: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance" by Marcia B Siege

FM-FM Comment:
Twyla Tharp is really Alywt Praht spelled backwards. Philistine! you charge. Perhaps this once.
I must admit that the stick figures I have seen in Ms. Tharp's choreography place me in another time and another place. Let's say pre-Twyla Tharp. The last time I saw her work was in Amadeus. The sticks were repetitive vertical and horizontal and moving. In this review of a new book about T.T. Kourlas writes that T.T. " has somehow avoided the cultural branding that afflicts other known choreographers." "Crusty, driven, demanding, and admiring, she hurls challenges to the dancers. It's the most subtle form of competition and cooperation, a process so intutitive, so intimate that no one can say in the end whose dance it is, and none of the parties can be removed without endangering its identity"writes the author of the book. Ms Tharp is quoted to explain her aesthetic, " It seems to me that art is a question of emphasis. That aesthetics and ethics are the same. That inventiveness resides first in choice and then in synthesis - in bringing it all together. That this action is repeated over and over again, the resoultions being marvelously altered each time" After accounting for T.T.'s dance history Gia Kourlas concludes the review: ..."but seeing her slippery, deviously difficult dances performed is something else altogether." No quarrel there! C.

Cirque Du Soliel Encampment

Source: NY Times, Weekend Art - May 5

FM-FM Comment:
For a nation so clearly overweight we seem to enjoy watching the sleek and fit forms of aerial artists. One wonders how difficult it may be for some of our citizen's posteriors to wedge themselves into seats usually small unless the management is smart enough to offer benches, in which case they would have difficulty determining what a seat is if the customer occupies two bench spots. Could be a revenue problem. Anyway Cirque Du Soleil is now the McDonalds of circuses with seven companies on tour and many expected to settle permanently in various circus and tourist oriented regions. Spectacle is the appeal of this airy band of angels, jugglers, rubber chickens and acrobats jumping on beds. The french languagae turns the traditional circus tent into "Grand Chapiteau." Unlike the circus, the cirque is not about a single performer, but jaw dropping spectacle. The attention span needed for this kind of art is unchallenged. However, it does require a jaw that drops frequently. Americans will come out for spectacle any day of the week. Watching is what we do best and eating while we do it. The Cirque Du Soleil still has drawing power for us, in spite of our national obesity problem .But when we have "been there, done that" the Cirque may have to fold up some of its tents having grown rich and not fat.

Picasso Sells for $95.2 Million ...and in Paris....

Source :Arts and Business Day NY Times May 4

FM-FM Comment:
While Picasso's portrait "Dora Maar With Cat" sold last night at Sotheby's for $95.2 Million, the some homeless people of Paris settled down in new gray, blue and maroon pup tents supplied by an organization called Doctors of the World. The tents are scattered around in public areas. A van Gogh sold for $40.3 Million the night before. There has been an upsurge of immigrants in Paris lately and the doctors are trying to embarrass the French government to do something for estimated 15,000 homeless living in Paris. " An all-star cast led by van Gogh and two important Picasso paintings played to standing-room only crowd at Christie's on Tuesday night. Not everyone is pleased with tents. " They're ugly," said a short woman with a large red purse marching past two tents in the affluent Seventh Arrondissement, where four young Poles are living beneath the sycamores with a view of the Hotel des Invalides. "Few people were surprised when an earlier Picasso, the Blue Period "Portrait of Germaine" which Christie's estimated at $12 Million to $18 Million" sold to a Manhatten dealer, who was in a skybox above the salesroom bidding by telephone for a client paid $18.6 Million. There are an estimated 86,000 homeless people in France.

EXTRA! EXTRA?

FM-FM Comment:
Bob Dylan is a DJ- "As DJ...he taps America's musical heritage with words that veer for from the logically linear to the abstract" - The New York Times....uh huh. " He's informative, funny...his taste is impeccable." - Boston Herald...hmmmm! "The triumph of Dylan's show is that it really is unlike anything else you could hear, and as such is priceless." The Observer UK.....gooood! "...revelatory...Dylan's song choices are impressively varied" - Rolling Stone...What a relief!. .....and to hear he's spaced out on Satellite Radio.

Opal Mehta. Mean anything to you? Kaavya Viswananthan? Anything? Thought not. Don't worry about it. C.

Financial sit down comic Louis Rukeyser is dead at 73. He hosted Wall Street Week in review. I mention him in the context of the arts because he made investing seem cute, innocent, fun, not to worry kind of activity. He gathered experts around him weekly and they talked shop way over my head. It was voyeuristic at best. He got a raw deal from PBS , but reinvested his time and talents at CNBC.

Fine Art Of Courtship

C. says.
Yesterday, I had lunch in a local favorite, called Pannera . It's a smart hangout for people of all ages, shapes, and sizes. It's informal and people seem to relax and settle in very quickly. It's a meeting place and an office for laptop users. It's a disguised cafeteria. You don't get a tray and stand in line. You stand and place your order with a battery of friendly faces and a few steps away you pick up your meal and find a seat. It's modern,clean, efficient....a cafeteria. Anyway, yesterday I watched a sixtyish woman dressed very smartly with loose, neck length, white hair. Soft and silky. Dressed conservatively and not prone to eye contact and definitely waiting for someone. She had a pampered demeanor that suggested a small degree of discomfort with her very public presence. Time passed. Her waiting meter was ticking away. Her eyes moved outside to the parking lot and downward to the table. I noticed her fingernails were painted a bright red. Curious about that. Why paint your fingernails?....and red! Never mind. A little more time passed and soon a sixtyish man with fluffy grey hair, pink face, navy blue jacket with a monogram whisked into view and rushed to the table. She looked up with a degree of "Your late" in her eyes and he said loudly, "Been waiting long?" He placed both hands on the table and leaned into her placing as much as he could of himself as close as possible. He muttered something and she beamed a girlish smile back at him. He was obviously was a pro and so was she. He took her order and soon returned with two trays and settled down to romance. It could have been 20 somethings meeting for a first luncheon date.....but it wasn't. It revealed that the package may change but the contents remain the same. Happy Ending. Boy Meets Girl.

"Quiet For Quiet"

Beit Hanun, Gaza Strip. April30th
NY Times Page A4

( A found poem: Fragments of a four column story about Israeli attack in northern Gaza)

"Quiet For Quiet"

Shells screaming across the sky
Dishes flew and the television jumped in the air
Everything was upside down
Roof collapsed
Bedroom walls crumbled
Windows blew out
Closed doors blown out of their frames
Over a vista of empty fields
That were once orchards
The army had just dropped leaflets
Promising "quiet for quiet"