Bunches of art

So a while back I mentioned this amazing show that I was in SOHO at a fantastic gallery called Spattered Columns (you remember, the opening I missed back in September because I was working on my tan).  Well, the closing was on the 19th, and it was also a spectacular success (in the words of the gallery owner at least).  There was a panel discussion between the artists, the curator, and the Director of the Flux Factory, Ginger Shulick, which I naturally stressed about for weeks, and went quite smoothly and absolutely nothing embarrassing was asked while my parents were in the audience.

Also, remember that restaurant with the amazing clams from god? Well, I actually got my parents there to enjoy its plentiful splendors...mmmmm clams from god...after all my talk of never getting my parents that far south to enjoy some of the wonderful food choices hidden around the rest of Manhattan, they found themselves already that far south, so it was a natural leap to dragging them a few blocks away to MSG heaven.  And yes, we ate until we almost burst...and then I went a celebrated some more with some good whiskey in the LES.

But back to the more important part...here's your chance to take a look at the show! Even though it's already taken down, walls returned to white, and the next show already installed.

The blue wallpaper installation in the back is Sean Lugo's and the wall collage is by Natalie Lanese.

Here's another image of Natalie's piece and how it then interacted with Beth Ann Morrison's installation space.

See! Awesome! Woohoo! Artstars!

If you feel the need to just see the highlights of my part of the show, feel free to come by my apartment...because there's now a lot of framed art up in my entryway just in case anyone missed it at Spattered Columns.  Or if you did see it, but just miss it, and want to spend some more time with pretty dirty pictures.

Four and a half hours

That's how long "Boris Godunov" is, including intermissions.  Longer than "Lawrence of Arabia", longer than I don't know what...long enough to miss the incredible hail storm that hit Brooklyn...long...but luckily, it's fantastic.  Your back may hurt, your legs may be stiff, but the drama keeps you going, interspersed with catchy little Russian folk tunes,  and the singing was wonderful.  Although the standing ovations went not necessarily to those that deserved it, mostly because of people's resounding bravos for a 9 year-old kid in the show that was a bit off key, but he was like 9, and it was way past his bedtime.  But it was great.  Not one of the operas that I leave the Met humming to myself wishing I could grow up and be a diva, but one where I had to work not to shed a tear at Boris's death aria.  Not much comedy, and at no time did Moose and Squirrel make an appearance.

Yeah! Opera season has started!

Although I do have one real reservation...the people I was surrounded by I pray are not subscribers.  I don't want to spend the whole season surrounded by them...to my left, a man who excitedly conducts while he sings under his breathe, to the right an elderly gentleman who reeked of piss.  Please, please, please, don't make me sit with them every opera.  Please.  I miss the grumpy old Russian couple I had last year...

sell-out

I love my gym, for real, I do.  They had a series of contests recently in celebration of their 21st birthday and I won tickets to "American Idiot".  Not that it's something I've ever wanted to see, but hey, free tickets! Right?

Let me start this again.  I am not a huge Green Day fan.  I wouldn't say that I actively hate Green Day, but I've never bought an album, I've never jumped up and down at the prospect of seeing them in concert (even in high school when even though I never bought anything of theirs at least I thought they were good)...but how bad could it be? American Idiot, people seem to love it...it's been on Broadway forever...

I've never been so pissed off in my life.  Green Day, you wanna see suburban-raised angst? I got yours right here.  I've never been so insulted.  It more than mocked my entire teenage years and young adulthood, it trivialized it.  Yeah, I grew up in the 'burbs, I wore grunge clothes, and I listened to hardcore, alternative music, and I went to art school and then moved to the city with a big dream, and I may not be the huge artstar that I will be some day.  But I sure as hell didn't sell out in the process.  And neither did 99% of my friends.

The whole show follows 3 friends, who want to go off to the city and start a band...1 never leaves cause he knocks up his girlfriend, 1 gets to the city and hears the call of patriotism and joins the military, and the other left to his own devices becomes a smack head.  They never played a single song as a "band".  And in the end, they all give up and go home, one (who never left) without his new family cause his girlfriend and baby left him, the other angry and without a leg from the war, and the third, just a failure. And their other friends all show up in suites and tailored skirts because they've all sold out and joined the mainstream. And everyone reunites at home and makes up and is happy again.

Cause that's it, we're all losers, huh Green Day? We're all strung out failures at life? Forget your dreams, go back to you parents' basement and you'll still have music at least, right?  Fuck you.

I have no problem with rockstars making it big, getting famous, and making buckets of money.  That's the dream.  That's why we all want it- buckets of money.  I have a problem when after they've gotten famous, and made their fortunes, they then turn around and sell out by trivializing the people that got them there.  Sitting in an audience of people my parents' age as they clap along to this farce of my life.  How would they have felt if 'Hair' had come out in the 80s? 20 years after the actual cultural movement, trivialized, and basically called your entire generation nothing but burned out hippies that would never amount to anything?  This is how if feels to have your revolution pandered to tourists who don't even know better than to give a mindless show with mediocre singing a standing ovation.

In the end it was worth every penny.  And I have given Green Day exactly as much money as they deserved over the years.  You guys had better had made enough money to support your lifestyle for the rest of time, cause this is it.  Every fan that you had, that's seen this piece of shit, is one more fan that you just lost.  Enjoy it, who's the loser now?

art sans artist

Why hello there all!  I send this to you while sitting in the lobby of my resort being eaten by mosquitos carrying Dangay Fever, but this is all just proof of how dedicated I am to my own artistic career (and tan).

I have an opening tomorrow night in SOHO! Yeah!!!! And those of you that have encountered me in the past few weeks know all about the stress of pulling an installation out of your nether regions in mere weeks, but it's done, and it looks great, and I'm going to miss the festivities.  But if you want to go, just to brag to other artworld fixtures that you know the famous artist herself, and have actually spoken to her on numerous occations, then please do!  Here're the deets:

Seeing as I won't be able to grace everyone with my presence, there will also be a closing, on October 15th, which I will be sure to send out a real invite for.  And in the meantime, just think of me here:

 

Yeah, I know, I have a really difficult life.

more divine mollusks

So naturally my parents saw my recent post lambasting their unwillingness to venture far from Times Square for meals, and when they last came to visit half of them wanted to try the amazing "Clams from God" while the other half complained that Canal Street was way too far away...I'm not naming names, here, I'm just saying...so instead I met them with a list of fabulous restaurants near their hotel, and they settled on Brasserie, on 53rd and Park Ave.

And I'll admit that the reviews I read of it said they had recently remodeled the space, and no one had anything nice to say about that part, but they all guaranteed that the kitchen staff hadn't changed, so it was supposed to be delicious.  So we walked the few blocks, and in the middle of what I consider midtown hell, we found it.  Located in the basement of an office building, looking like a cross between 1984 and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (OK, it didn't look anything like any of those movies, but for some reason it felt like a cross between those two movies...way too many video screens and oddly shaped wood panelling), it was exactly what the critics had said...ugly.

But, the food was way better than the space looked, and some how I had the chance to continue my culinary mollusk revelations.  As many of you know, or at least now realize, I love seafood.  Especially the kind that comes in shells...clams, mussels, crabs, shrimp, lobsters...all of them.  Except oysters. I hate oysters, they're gross, really gross...Anyway, the menu had plenty of real food, brasserie staples, just with a fancy twist.  And then they had moules frites...one of my favorite things in the world. And they had it with a choice of three different sauces, the standard white wine and garlic, the spicy tomato based sauce, and then one I've never had before: Pastis.  Pastis? What? Isn't that an after dinner drink you sip on your terrace in Provence? Turns out to be a saffron and star anise based broth...and it turns plain ordinary mussels into "Moules de Dieu".  They were amazing.  Completely different from the Clams from God, but equally tender and perfect, swimming in a practically drinkable sauce.  The fries were even good! They stayed crispy until I was done (seeing as sometimes it can take a while to eat a giant bowl of mussels), and seeing as Bloomberg took away or transfats, they were a little bit of heaven in themselves. 

So there you go.  Just in case you're stuck in midtown and you have a hankering from some divine mollusks, and are with people that don't want to go as far away as Little Italy, fear not! There is salvation even in the scariest of sky rise purgatories!  And I promise, they'll even be so tasty you'll forget about the awful decor.

if you loved me...

I know I don't blog about this this sort of stuff...but it's rare, very rare, I find something in the fashion/design world that I want this badly.

And if you loved me, really, really love me, you'd get this for me...

http://www.michielschuurman.nl/2009/06/colouring-dress-for-sale.html

Clams from God

Yes, I sit before you so full I may die.  So full of Peking duck, some mustard green and pork soup (complete with mystery yellow discs of wonderfulness) and clams from God.  And yes, I may die before I finish this post, but in case I survive (or don't depend on how you look at it) I have to spread the good news.

Jeff, my friend who I mentioned earlier who took me to the symphony, took me tonight to an amazing Chinese restaurant technically in Nolita called Yong Gee Seafood (or possibly The Dining Room Management Group, Inc...you know how Chinatown can be) at 102 Mott Street, a little bit north of Canal.  He had been there a while back and had the best food in forever, so we decided to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

And yes, the soup we had as an appetizer was delicious.  Mustard green and pork soup: a heaping bowl of pork and mustard greens and funny little yellow discs that looked like egg yoke but where the consistency of shellfish roe in an amazingly light but rich broth that we didn't finish, much to the chagrin of the lady in charge of our table.  Not because we were already full, but because we were anticipating the feast to come...because naturally we had over ordered.

Peking duck...miss ordered, but crispy and wonderful, and gladly accepted in place of what we had really been looking for.  The first and last time I had Peking duck was in Beijing, not the same, but yummy and worth the mistake.  And seeing as we're adults we ordered a vegetable: mustard greens with dace and something else.  Since I have no idea what dace is I figure not remembering what the something else was doesn't really matter (although we came to the conclusion that dace must be some sort of preserved fish, which sounds worse than it tastes, which is pure yum).  Both of which were excellent.  But nothing compared to the dish I picked out...

Clams cooked House Style.

Or as they should be known from now on...Clams from God.

The most amazing clams, with HUGE pieces of garlic, and green onions, and scrambled egg and minced pork...yes minced pork...and tiny sprinklings of heaven (which to the untrained eye are invisible but very, very tasty).  Each one perfectly tender and well just...perfect.  I've never tasted anything that made me so happy.  And I may be serious about this, or I could just be so full that all the blood has left my brain and is so busy digesting that I just don't remember having ever eaten anything before tonight.  I honestly don't even know what to say about them, except I will dream about these garlic and pork drenched mollusks for years, and although the place is not expensive I hope that I'll be able to convince my parents to venture south of Times Square when they next visit New York so that they too can have their eyes opened to the wonders of Clams cooked House Style.

I've never been so happy.

This is the aftermath...as you can see no clams...lots of mustard greens.

Go! Go and eat Clams from God! Go and spread the joy and the waistlines! Go! And let me know when  you're going so I can have some too.