Yes, I actually saw a skinny little guy wearing these $300 Gucci sneakers at my gym yesterday, talking on his cell phone while “working out”.

Daniel Reich finally has a web site!

On a somewhat unrelated note, Christina Mazzalupo has updated her web site. Check out the recent collages.

I’m still busy coding, so here are some art recommendations:

Tom Sanford
The Defosition, 2002
Oil and acrylic on panel
60″ × 80″

Tom Sanford at 31 Grand in Williamsburg. He has a weblog called thug4life.org dedicated to his transformation to Tupac, but it seems a bit messed up at the moment. We started following him after picking up a work on paper by him at a benefit for Groundswell.

Paul Mullins
Sugar (Hood Up)
acrylic on panel
48″ × 48″

Paul Mullins at lyonswier – think Lucien Freud meets Nascar. Really brilliant painting technique.

Chris Ballantyne
Untitled (Split Double), 2003
acrylic and ink on paper
12 × 16″

Chris Ballantyne at DCKT Contemporary – beautiful suburban/landscapish show recommended to me by Andrew LaVallee.

Joe Ovelman’s wall piece (search my site for other discussions of his work) at Apartment 5BE Gallery. Also, I have a gallery of one of his outside wall installations.

The inaugural exhibition at a new new media-oriented gallery called Bryce Wolkowitz is definitely worth a visit. Here is a work by John F. Simon made from an Apple Titanium PowerBook:

aLife
Software, Apple G4 Titanium Powerbook, Acrylic Plastic
2003
21 × 17 × 3.5 inches

Outrage Radio, described as “Liberal Talk Radio with Attitude”, will debut next month. I’m not a talk radio person (I don’t even like Leonard Lopate or Brian Lehrer on WNYC), but maybe this will foment a bit of unrest.

Florida Marlins catcher Ivan Rodriguez® kisses pitcher Ugueth Urbina after the Marlins 3-2 win over the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium in New York October 18, 2003. REUTERS/Mike Blake

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More of this might get me to watch these sports things.

Remember my bitching about having to pay the full price for the Panther upgrade? My serial number has mysteriously started working on the up-to-date form, so I’m now getting it for $20. Interesting.

I hope my PowerBook comes back from the shop by then.

Via CNN:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are defending a new deputy undersecretary of defense “who has reportedly cast the war on terror” in religious terms.

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, whose promotion and appointment was confirmed by the Senate in June, has said publicly that he sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Appearing in dress uniform before a religious group in Oregon in June, Boykin said Islamic extremists hate the United States “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. … And the enemy is a guy named Satan.”

…

Discussing a U.S. Army battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia in 1993, Boykin told one audience, “I knew my god was bigger than his. I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol.”

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UPDATED: From James I learn this too:

In another speech, General Boykin said God had selected George W. Bush as president. “Why is this man in the White House?” he asked. “The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

Does anyone doubt we’re being run by a radical theocratic regime?

I have a new dedicated server at RackSpace for my art website hosting project.

For $20 tickets to “Gone Missing” by The Civilians, use this link, or call 212-868-4444. To get the discount on the web site, choose “Use Discount Code” in the Select Price pull-down menu and enter FWEML.

On Friday night we saw “Gone Missing” by The Civilians. James provided a preview in July inspired by an article in the NY Times about Steve Cosson, the artistic director.

“Gone Missing” is a theater work, with original songs by Michael Friedman, about things lost and found. It’s very clever, and manages to go from silly songs and stories to very profound ones about loss and memory. I think the way it is wrapped up by the end is pretty brilliant, all the more so from being a collaborative project rather than a work by a single smart playwright. To give you a sense of what the songs are like, here are MP3s of two of the songs from the show. I don’t think the CD is as good as they are live, in case you’re wondering.

• Lost Horizon – sung by Trey Lyford, a kind of mini-epic
• Etch A Sketch – a somewhat silly song sung by the brilliant Jennifer Morris. I have talked with her about it, and she admits she is more of an actress than a singer, so she is lucky to be working with a composer who can write for her. Live, she is such a charismatic performer you don’t think about whether she is a great singer, and she pulls it off. Actually, listening again to the recording — she sounds great on the CD. How can you go wrong with a song that begins, “Once I was a Lockean tabula rasa”?

I would like to add one more MP3 – of the French song “La Canaille” (English translation and arrangement by Michael Friedman) from their show “Paris Commune”. I talked about it here. This performance is by a lovely young woman named Quincy Tyler Bernstine. I sat next to her at Joe’s Pub a few months ago and blurted out “I love you!” when I recognized her.

There is a nice article in the latest Brooklyn Rail about them and “Gone Missing.”

I want to point out to those reading this that I’m normally not a fan of musicals, so I rarely recommend musical theater. The Civilians produce very out of the ordinary works.

The show runs through November 2 at the Belt Theater on West 37th Street.