Friday, April 29, 2005

Art never moves one to tears, but Nature is another story; the first sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker since 1944 a case in point. So much for Symposia's arch comments about The Nature Conservancy's preserving land for their own rich heirs.

There is not one single plus about getting older. Not even one. I envy everyone even a year younger.

Broadway is definitely worse than television. Spamalot as gruesome as Hairspray....for hicks from Kalamazoo or Amarillo.......that lumpy old MP troup must have a lot of debts or ex-wives. Tres affreux!

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Had the good sense to read latest NY Review of Books, the best $60 I ever spent. Updike's essay on an anonymous screenwriter rather graceful, so much better than his art crit. I wonder why the writer's life never interested me, (I can sound as smart as the next man) mainly because I like to move around and the prospect of sitting in front of a blank piece of paper almost every day impossible. The claustrophobia of the studio and the even worse oppression of one's own thoughts.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Symposia is experiencing an uncharacteristic dearth of opinions lately. Imagine if you had to cough up something regularly for a column. How brain addled you would soon become.

Like Jane Fonda Michael Jackson is too easy a target to hit spot on so anything one says smacks of bullying. Actually why does one even write that sentence it is so stupid?

Monday, April 25, 2005

New York is all about the abacus and the counting house in the dank basement. For the young and ambitious and fiercely focused it can be satisfying but for the rest of us, the visual ugliness cannot be ignored. Ownership and more ownership the alpha and omega of New York philosophy is such an illusion. Then again I am a Duchampian who never wanted to be tied down with that country house.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

According to most recent Forbes there is a certain art called P & C (pampering and coddling) which certain companies specialize in, such as Papamarkou whose CEO is ditzy Deborah Norville's husband. Can you imagine anything more demeaning than making a career out of being a paid sychophant?

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Greenberg-Ebbers-Stewart and all that ilk should be exiled to a sort of Modern Elba where they could cheat each other. Symposia was recently the victim of a securities fraud where we lost considerable money to unscrupulous parasites who preferred private aircraft to ....oh phooey on it all.

They elect a German Pope and the Greek chorus chants, "Nazi." The curse lives on into the 21st Century.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

When the serious becomes Monty Pythonesque: at lunch today shadow of himself Henry Kissinger and Harold Evans (Eric Idle-like) in Grand Central discussing "Middle East Peace".Platitudes and half truths but Christopher Walken, Jerry Rivers aka Geraldo Rivera and Robert Vaughn and ubiquitous Richard Meier tried to look like smart listeners. Oh God why did I leave Academia where you could bank on a few brains?

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

We read in the Sun Times that Mike Royko's son tried to hold up a bank yesterday.No surprise. We knew Royko in the 80s and he was a nasty abusive person. Malheureusement he came to symbolize Chicago the way Capone did, Sandburgian, innanely blue collar, kind of crooked.

Studs Terkel an altogether different story, a charmer, though rather simple-minded and halcyonic about "mankind" (shudder) in an entre deux guerres kind of way.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

I cannot understand why We Should Be Smarter Civic Groups want to encourage poor kids to take up art as a career. Arts in Education! Glory! It is The Worst choice the desole could possibly make. We, in fact, need less bloody art except as soma.

Have I said it before? New York is like a banquet to which you are not invited. The table is laden with riches but you cannot attain it. Rent. Rich Euro trash, cosmetics moguls, Trump and his entourage of Philistines.........who would want to dine with them anyway?

Monday, April 11, 2005

A major unpleasantness: The NY Public Library is selling my favorite painting, Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits. This is truly Lazlitt's The World We Have Lost, an art form that no longer exists and an America, once fresh and verdant and now34th and 7th Avenue at 8. a.m. Mon Dieu!

Sunday, April 10, 2005

You cannot underestimate the snobbery of the Royals.......Joan Rivers, a Windsormobile, a rock star's wife, all those seedy actors. OK if democracy is what you want we'll give it to you in spades. Tres amusant! Only the non royals were "introduced" to the public viewer.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Elizabeth II is a replica of her grandmother Mary. The dignity, self-importance, sense of history (how could you not have it with that background) and refreshing aloofness all learned from this delightful and dutiful woman.

Not one journalist has mentioned the morganatic implications of Camilla.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Saul Bellow died. He was the icon of all Eng Lit classes at Wisconsin but I could never understand a single word he wrote. Depressing books, depressing guy. Who needs That?

RE: The Pope. They had to close down Rome because all those desperate to believe that we are more than organic entities have the atavistic need to believe. The brave ones are those who soldier on without fairy tales.

and RE: Monaco et al. Ten years ago I was up late one night and flipped on the TV. It was before it was homogenized and sanitized to the degree it is today and quite by chance a program on Grace Kelly aired. It was a shocker: bizarre secret societies, odd ritualistic sexual practices (to say the least), deep unhappiness to the point of madness. Oleg Cassini is right: she should have married him and stayed in pictures.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Because I was entertaining a Catholic friend for the weekend I went to mass at St. Patrick's yesterday. The building a High Gothic 14th century pastiche and everything about the entire scenario very late Medieval. They should have kept the Latin mass for maximum dramatic effect. And the incense. And more of the organ. Carmina Burana!