I first encountered Carlos de Villasante’s work at a White Box benefit. Via artblog.net, I see he has just done a new mural in Miami.

James has posted an account of Wolfowitz’s appearance at The New School today as part of The New Yorker’s “cultural” festival.

Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, Left Brain

On Friday we stopped by ATM Gallery on Avenue B for the opening of Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir. There was a bit more buzz than one usually sees at an East Village opening these days — Björk was there, supporting her fellow Icelander. She hung out in the gallery and on Avenue B for the entire time I was there, so she was probably there for most of the opening. I love NY! She can hang out like that without being accosted, which would be more likely to happen further uptown, or further west in Manhattan.

Then we hopped on the L to go to Williamsburg to check out the Third Friday happenings. One thing about the Plus Ultra show — the cartoons by Will Self were surprisingly good.

The highlights of the evening were to be found at Brooklyn Fire Proof and Open Ground. The former is morphing into a gallery space in addition to being artists studios. They showed some great work, and had a good band with videos and people dancing in costumes. They’re a little “at the edge” geographically, but that’s changing — witness the location of The Morning News party. I can’t find anything about her via Google, but there were some nice works on paper by Stine Hedegaard Andersen, and I got a chance to meet Steven Baines, whose work I had seen recently at White Columns.

The other highlight was the (In)Security show at Open Ground. Approriately for a collaborative gallery space, they have a Wiki for a web site!

One of the things from the show is available for download from the artist, Rebecca Ross‘s web site. It’s called “The Okay News” and is described thusly:

The Okay News
memory resident Mac OSX application

A re-formed newspaper that runs in the background of everyday computer use. Every twenty minutes OkayNews delivers a headline from that day’s New York Times to an operating system warning box with the single button “Okay”, which must be pressed to continue using the computer. </blockquote>

I think the “Third Friday” event was a big success. There were a lot of people at every gallery I visited, including neighborhood people that asked questions as if they didn’t normally go to galleries. As we walked around, we encountered quite a few people who were asking for directions, or asked where to get a copy of the gallery map.

I just finished moving James’s weblog from b2 to Movable Type. Yea!

If you have any problems with his site, let me (or him, but I’m the one who is going to fix it) know.

Some recent excellent posts from him:

• On our new French friends</li>
• The Dalai Lama says war may sometimes be justified, but homosexuals and oral sex are always bad
• Art and Fun in Chelsea last Saturday </ul>

After the adventures James and I experienced when a National Review columnist decided we weren’t sympathetic enough about dead Catholics, it is amusing to read the Antic Muse’s Oh, Get a Room…

Congratulations to Chris Caccamise and *sixtyseven gallery for a fabulous review by Roberta Smith in Today’s NY Times. It’s a fun show that made me giggle a bit when I walked into the room.

The other highlight of our tour on Monday of Williamsburg galleries with the “charming French boys” was Chris Doyle’s very strong show of watercolors at Jessica Murray Projects — huge works based on video stills of his life with his partner and daughter.

Chris Doyle, Failing to Levitate in the Studio, 2003
watercolor on paper, 46″×73″

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Tonight is a good night to head out to Williamsburg. All of the Williamsburg Gallery Association galleries will be open until 9, and many of them will have music, as part of their new “Third Friday” events. Do not miss the opening of Plus Ultra’s new, larger space, and make sure you go around the corner to check out Dam, Stuhltrager at 38 Marcy Ave. The Plus Ultra show, titled “arts and letters,” features drawings and paintings by Jonathan Ames, Dave Eggers, Susan Minot, and Will Self.

See, I did do something for Fashion Week. I attended a reception at the Swedish Consulate on Park Avenue for two young designer/artists, Aïa Jüdes and Johanna Hofring. The exhibit, called In the Land of the Midnight Sun, featured clothing by both, with inspirations from Sami and other traditional costumes, plus photography of Sami people by Aïa. I met her at the opening and talked about the work a bit. She made some pretty beautiful ensembles, and where else would one want to actually talk to the models but at an event like this one?

I can’t quite explain why this bothers me so much, but the latest column by the idiot known as Thomas L. Friedman really bothers me. I am so depressed to live in a country where the NY Times can print a columnist who writes such an intellectually dishonest and meretricious column.

It’s time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy.

If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq’s transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.

…

But then France has never been interested in promoting democracy in the modern Arab world, which is why its pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government — after being so content with Saddam’s one-man rule — is so patently cynical.

Ah, yes. America has been so anti-Saddam.

In the mid-1980s the Reagan administration sent current U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Saddam Hussein to improve relations between the U.S. and Iraq.

It is laughable for the country that overthrew a democratic government in Iran in 1953, which re-installed a male-only oligarchy in Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War, and which props up the Saudi royal family, to protest much about democracy in the Middle East.

So Americans expect France to not act in its own interest, or to not tell us when we’re being stupid? They’re evil for not making it easy enough for us to give Saddam Hussein ultimatums? Ultimatums for what? Admitting to weapons that apparently don’t exist?

James and I spent a lot of the last week hanging out with a couple of young artist/musicians from France. They were very upset when they saw t-shirts for sale in Times Square that said, “Iraq First, Then France.” This country is really scaring me. Is it going to be “us” against the world?

According to a release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of employees receiving health care from employers has plummeted in the last decade, from 63 percent coverage a decade ago down to just 45 percent today. [via Nathan Newman]

A [Canadian] married gay couple say they were refused entry into the U.S. because an American customs officer wouldn’t accept their clearance forms as a family.

Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell said they ended their trip to Georgia because the customs official at Toronto’s Pearson airport insisted they fill out separate forms as single people.

Bourassa said he complained to a customs supervisor and was told the couple wouldn’t be allowed to enter the U.S. as a family because the country doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages.