James is your source for news on the queer angle in the City Hall shooting. Here’s the first post.

Thomas Locke Hobbs has launched his new web site — a photo blog.

Check out his ingenious solution for dealing with 1200-page books.

I spent the evening in the East Village, meeting my friend Cynthia at Benny’s East, a regular meeting spot for us over the last 13 years. As I was walking there, I was aware of how bourgeois (and old) I feel now, but then I see an abomination such as some frat boy walking on 13th Street between 1st and A and I realize I’m not much of an intruder after all.

I ran into a certain blogger on the way there, but I used his secret agent name rather than his meatspace name, and he didn’t realize I was talking to him at first.

After Benny’s we went to our favorite East Village music store, Etherea. I was somewhat stunned to notice the tattoo on the Williamsburg-esque young man working there: Arbeit Macht Frei, accompanied by a yellow star.

After seeing my post The men of ward 57, a friend who was a “Donut Dolly” visiting soldiers in the hospital during the Viet Nam War, and says it’s time to do it again, sent me the information for people interested in volunteering here in NYC:

To register to volunteer at the Veterans hospital

423 East 23rd Street (just east of First Avenue)
Room One South (ask Security)
Frank Civitillo or his assistant
212-686-7500 × 7920
walk in Mon-Fri 8:00 am to 4:00 pm

They will interview you and arrange for a T.B. shot. There are plenty of volunteers now, during this height of feeling, but many surviving Veterans probably need whatever you offer.

Yeah!

ArtsJournal has launched several weblogs:

• Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
  
• Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
  
• Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
  
• Tobi Tobias on dance et al…</p>

Interesting… I just noticed Greg Sandow mentions that his wife is NY Times critic Anne Midgette. She has an interesting way with reviews. I didn’t care for this one at all, and I was at the concert, but her review of Verdi’s MacBeth by the Kirov was pretty funny, if a bit light in its attempts to amuse the reader:

David McVicar’s 2001 production looked as if the Kirov had given him the lowest budget possible, then left the sets at home.

Wow — look at this headline:

Jessica Lynch Due Home After Media Hype on Heroism

PALESTINE, W.Va. (Reuters) – Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks.

But when the 20-year-old supply clerk arrives by Blackhawk helicopter to the embrace of family and friends, media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters.

“It no longer matters in America whether something is true or false. The population has been conditioned to accept anything: sentimental stories, lies, atomic bomb threats,” said John MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s magazine.

…

Lynch became a national hero after media reports quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying she fought fiercely before being captured, firing on Iraqi forces despite sustaining multiple gunshot and stab wounds.

In the end, Army investigators concluded that Lynch was injured when her Humvee crashed into another vehicle in the convoy after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Far from a scene of battlefield heroism, the Army said the convoy blundered into the ambush after getting lost and many of the unit’s weapons malfunctioned during the battle.

The U.S. military also released video taken during an apparently daring rescue by American special forces who raided the Iraqi hospital where she was being treated.

Iraqi doctors at the hospital said later the U.S. rescuers had faced no resistance and the operation had been over-dramatized.

Quoting the Harper’s publiser? They’ll be banned from Washington! Well, they are a British company, so they sometimes act like real journalists rather than what we’re getting out of our own media at this point.

Jessie of contrasts.net has up some cool photos from his recent NYC trip.

I was reminded that I hadn’t posted anything about this when I saw the article in the NY Times today. The Guardian, a great leftish British newspaper, is considering an American weekly magazine. I would buy several gift subscriptions right away? Not only is their political and world events coverage great, they are one of the smartest voices covering books and the rest of the arts. For an example, see this article on Strauss’s opera Die Schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman):

The librettist was Jewish. The composer was head of the Reich Music Chamber. But Stefan Zweig and Richard Strauss still managed to beat the Nazis and get their comedy sea opera on stage.

New York Magazine had an article by Michael Wolff titled En Guardian! on this a couple of weeks ago.

Even though he will begin married life in a wheelchair after the loss of both his feet, First Lt. John Fernandez, a West Point graduate, swears he won’t feel sorry for himself. Not when three men around him came home from Iraq in body bags.

While our media writes about what seems to be considered a relatively low number of (American) deaths in Iraq, Daily Kos tells us about The men of Ward 57. More than 650 seriously wounded soldiers have passed through Walter Reed Hospital since March. If we had a real media this would be in the news more.

This line really got me:

Pfc. Danny Roberts was wishing for Faulkner instead of a glossy guide about adapting to limb loss.

These people are maimed in a war that we didn’t need to fight that was built on lies. Today the NY Times reports that we were conducting air raids starting in 2002 to prepare for an invasion of Iraq.

The strikes, which were conducted from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003, were justified publicly at the time as a reaction to Iraqi violations of a no-flight zone that the United States and Britain established in southern Iraq. But Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, said the attacks also laid the foundations for the military campaign against the Baghdad government.

Indeed, one reason it was possible for the allies to begin the ground campaign to topple Mr. Hussein without preceding it with an extensive array of airstrikes was that 606 bombs had been dropped on 391 carefully selected targets under the plan, General Moseley said.

One of the things that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan was the streams of amputees coming home despite the government and the media telling the people that the war was going well.

I went to the opening of Today’s Man at John Connelly Presents. Due to the fact that the MTA decided to shut down the L-train from Eighth Avenue to Lorimer Street(!) the crowd took a while to assemble, which meant those of us arriving near 6 could actually see the work, a rather unusual occurrence at his openings.

It’s a very good show, with about 50 works by male artists on male subjects. As James pointed out, there isn’t a lot of nudity, as you might expect at such a show. The link above on Douglas Kelley’s web site lists all of the artists, so I’ll only mention the works that struck me:

• A dark oil painting of a boy on a windowsill by Tim Lokiec
• A drawing by Paul P.
• A collage by Tony Feher that included a sexy ass shot of someone, a coffee cup lid, an cigarette butt, and a prescription label — hey, he and James have the same doctor!
• A beautiful drawing (on vellum?) by Assume Vivid Astro Focus/Eli Sudbrack
• A drawing of a boy in a rowboat about to be attacked by a tentacled monster by Hernan Bas
• A collage by Christian Holstad
• A delicate drawing by Nick Mauss
• A painting by Michael Wetzel — I really like his work the more I see it

Speaking of Paul P, check out the nice review he got from Holland Cotter. Knowing that Paul loves Whistler, getting compared to Whistler and Caravaggio’s “punk angels” is a good thing. He was down from Toronto for the opening.

On the subject of reviews, in a week when even the troglodyte Michael Kimmelman reviews this sort of work (see the Holland Cotter link above), it shocked me to see New York Data Probe’s dismissive comments on the John Connelly show. There is a fine line between amusing Gawker-esque snarkiness and being a philistine. I think NYDP has crossed that line. Quote:

John Connelly Presents presents its second opening in two weeks, for the show “Today’s Man,” with 49 artists, not many of them artists by career.

…

Lucky for me that this is basically a rerun of the last opening, because I can’t be there—I’m going to the Hamptons.

What does “not many of them artists by career” mean? I’ve seen most of them in galleries whose taste I respect. Are they not “by career” unless they’re making a good living at it like Ross Bleckner or Annie Leibovitz? Ugh.

It’s also poor journalism to say “a rerun of the last opening” when there isn’t that much overlap. I assume he is referring to the work that John is showing at D’Amelio Terras, and not the last show in his space with Dearraindrop.

What’s the point of having an art blog if your writing is even more sloppy than the print journalists? I’m no Tyler Greene or Tom Moody, but I would be embarassed to write such a thing without some air quotes.