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.

Last Sunday we went to DUMBO to see Outpost at Smack Mellon and Future Species at DUMBO Arts Center (DAC). The press release for “Outpost” is from a real estate site, since Smack Mellon hasn’t updated their web site in a month. While you’re on that site, feel free to buy me one of the penthouses at 30 Main Street as a present.

The DAC show was a bit disappointing. The best works in the show, and not just because we own one of them, are the Matthew Callinan sculptures. They’re quite magical, hanging in a space with large windows in DUMBO, and everyone walking into the gallery talked about them and smiled. I also liked the twisted toy sculptures of David Krepfle.

The “Outpost” show at Smack Mellon, curated by Ada Chisholm, was excellent. I’m very sorry I missed Cory Arcangel‘s power-point-presentation-with-Van-Halen-guitar-solo at the opening. His work in the show consists of “videos” on DVD created by tricking QuickTime to interpret memory blocks in his computer as video data. They’re quite beautiful. Greg Simsic, who is also the author of some design and computer books, had a great installation of 11 video monitors stacked on several folding tables. They showed various activities in his studio — picking up objects, things getting soaked, hands dipping into paint, etc. Chad Silver had a funny video in which he looks around his apartment for animals and characters hidden in the patterns of the wall textures, clothing piles, and other places.

Non Sequitur on single-party rule

The Washington Post reports that the White House was so unhappy about an ABC News story about bad morale in Iraq that they pointed out to Matt Drudge that the reporter who did the story is gay and Canadian. Unless they’re trying to use jingoism and homophobia to further their fascist aims, what’s the point?

Some folks in the White House were apparently hopping mad when ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman did a story on Tuesday’s “World News Tonight” about the plummeting morale of U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq.

So angry, in fact, that the next day, a White House operative alerted cyber-gossip Matt Drudge to the fact that Kofman is not only openly gay, he’s Canadian.

Yesterday Drudge told us he was unaware of the ABC story until “someone from the White House communications shop tipped me to it” along with a profile of Kofman in the gay-oriented magazine the Advocate.

…

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan “is having a rough first week,” Drudge said. “The White House press office is under new management and has become slightly more aggressive about contacting reporters. This story has certainly become talk radio fodder about the cultural wars-slash-liberal bias in the media.”

A network insider was less sanguine about the White House tactic: “Playing hardball is one thing. But appealing to homophobia and jingoism is simply ugly.”

Mr. Drudge is rather quiet about his own orientation when the subject comes up.

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I didn’t know Mr. Pokey. I just saw this in the Village and liked it.

James has posted a report from our friend Steve about his activities with the International Solidarity Movement and Jews Against the Occupation in Palestine.

Work stuff, plus German class twice per week is killing my schedule. That’s why I haven’t had time to post about our lovely Bastille Day evening at Florent with Glenn and (as we all refer to him) Chris From Texas.

I left my class early on Monday, making sure everyone realized I was leaving to celebrate Bastille Day (festen Bastille Tag) and hopped in a cab. I had a very cool cabdriver name Khalid, who had one of the longer cabs, good air conditioning, was listening to WBAI, offered me one of his apples, and found Gansevoort without me having to give any directions.

We all sat outside for hours and drank lots of red and sparking wine. It was a bit more low-key than some years, and they didn’t close off Gansevoort as they sometimes do. The burlesque performer below is Dirty Martini, whom I’ve seen a number of times, including at a contemporary music concert on Valentine’s Day. If Chris of Uffish were a stripper, this would be her. She is quite fabulous, and the the first burlesque performer to appear in Sarajevo as soon as the peace accord was signed.

Yes, that is Betsey Johnson in the yellow hat in the back of the Dirty Martini pictures.

Glenn

Chris

Dirty Martini

Dirty Martini

One of the arguments people use to justify our “free market” medical system as opposed to some form of national health insurance is countries with such systems “ration” healthcare. Well, what are we doing with our corporate HMO system? Who elects them?

Via ABC News:

A new study done by the American Medical Association’s Institute of Ethics finds that 31 percent of more than 700 doctors surveyed say they sometimes withhold medical information about treatment options from patients when they believe the patient cannot afford them.

Of these doctors, 35 percent were doing so more often than they had in the five years leading up to the 1998 survey. Doctors whose patients were largely poor and unlikely to get appropriate help from their health plans often fall short on disclosing information. The study is published in the latest issue of Health Affairs.

…

According to the study, doctors are often caught between their obligation to provide information and their fear of being asked to cheat insurance companies so that patients can receive care they are not eligible for — a practice called “gaming the system.”

It is also suggested that doctors whose revenue is significantly tied to managed care companies tend to hold back information about non-covered treatments to some patients.

Many doctors contacted by ABCNEWS cited time constraints as the number one difficulty. Dr. John Messmer of Penn State Hershey Medical Center says doctors are now expected to explain complicated medical information to patients while having less and less time to do so. They are caught between their duties to their patients and their lack of resources.

“The ethical issue is that we no longer work for patients since we are no longer paid by them. Practitioners who want to be compensated must follow the insurance company’s or government’s rules, even if we disagree with them,” says Messmer.

I thought people justified gas-guzzling SUVs because of their safety (ignoring any penis-size insecurity issues). Do you think most cars would flip over after being hit by a smaller vehicle?

The Subaru:

hit the BMW, which flipped over:

Quoting the Newsday article:

Two women walking along Queens Boulevard were crushed yesterday when a sport utility vehicle struck by another car careened, flipped and slammed into them, police said.

…

Witnesses said the 1:20 p.m. accident began when a 63-year-old man in a Subaru Forester stopped, then drove through a red light on 78th Avenue at Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, police said.

The Subaru smashed into a BMW SUV driven westbound on the boulevard’s service road by a 37-year-old man, police said, causing the BMW to veer out of control and overturn.

Am I the last person to hear about All Too Flat — the geeky humor site? I heard about their Rubik’s Cube stunt via Travelers Diagram.

They transformed the Tony Rosenthal sculpture at Astor Place into a Rubik’s Cube, via safe materials that wouldn’t harm it. Plus, they provide cute pictures of themselves as they do it. I’m reminded a bit of the nephews — the sons of James’s brother.

I think my favorite member is Kenny B — check out the blog. They also provide a page of Geeks Gone Wild at Mardi Gras.