Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
The Fountain of Couth
The 'Fountain' attack: Art or crime?
While I've had my share of Angelina and Oprah news this week, one story that I can't seem to get enough of involves a 77-year-old man, a urinal and artist Marcel Duchamp.
Earlier this month, Pierre Pinoncelli, 77, was arrested after attacking Duchamp's Fountain at Paris' Pompidou Center. Created in 1917, Fountain is considered one of the most influential works of modern art of all time. As you can see on the left, it's also a porcelain urinal.
On Tuesday Pinoncelli was ordered to pay a fine and given a three-month suspended sentence for striking the urinal with a hammer. (Weirdly, this was the second time he attacked the urinal. In 1993 he, uh, urinated on it.) The case has revived that age-old question, "What is art?" -- especially since Pinoncelli's defense for his actions was that he was making an artistic statement. This week NPR interviewed an expert on Duchamp who maintained it was an act of vandalism; this commentary, however, suggests it "is exactly what Duchamp would have wanted."
Personally, this story sparked me to learn a little more about Duchamp. If you'd to do the same, this timeline is a good place to start and adds that he submitted Fountain under a pseudonym, "R. Mutt." The Met's website provides a good biography, while MarcelDuchamp.net offers some video interviews, shot several years before his death in 1968.
How do I feel about the Fountain case? I have to say Pinoncelli got what he deserved. The next time he feels the need to express himself, I can only hope he makes a urinal of his own at home -- and, if he decides to pee on it, decides to keep it there.
Posted at 09:52 AM/ET, 01/27/2006 in Random amusement, by Whitney Matheson, USA Today's Pop Candy blog
My comment:
While I agree that the work has been made into a mockery of itself by being touted as a great work, Mr. Pinoncelli's act was uncreative and hardly as inspired as his defenders make him out to be. Even if Mr. Pinoncelli had in mind all these great notions of anti-art and bringing the Dada piece back to it's original perception, the way he went about it seems just so pedestrian. If he had taken a crap in it, he would have been in Jackass 2. 'Nuff said. I think the key here is the notion that he was trying to destroy the work to make a point. There are many levels of destruction, and the level Mr. Pinoncelli has reached with his hammer and his pee is not the same level as what the Dadas were trying to do.
Appreciate the gesture, but the effort has to go much deeper than that.
Posted by: Buddhakowski | Jan 27, 2006 1:35:38 PM
While I've had my share of Angelina and Oprah news this week, one story that I can't seem to get enough of involves a 77-year-old man, a urinal and artist Marcel Duchamp.
Earlier this month, Pierre Pinoncelli, 77, was arrested after attacking Duchamp's Fountain at Paris' Pompidou Center. Created in 1917, Fountain is considered one of the most influential works of modern art of all time. As you can see on the left, it's also a porcelain urinal.
On Tuesday Pinoncelli was ordered to pay a fine and given a three-month suspended sentence for striking the urinal with a hammer. (Weirdly, this was the second time he attacked the urinal. In 1993 he, uh, urinated on it.) The case has revived that age-old question, "What is art?" -- especially since Pinoncelli's defense for his actions was that he was making an artistic statement. This week NPR interviewed an expert on Duchamp who maintained it was an act of vandalism; this commentary, however, suggests it "is exactly what Duchamp would have wanted."
Personally, this story sparked me to learn a little more about Duchamp. If you'd to do the same, this timeline is a good place to start and adds that he submitted Fountain under a pseudonym, "R. Mutt." The Met's website provides a good biography, while MarcelDuchamp.net offers some video interviews, shot several years before his death in 1968.
How do I feel about the Fountain case? I have to say Pinoncelli got what he deserved. The next time he feels the need to express himself, I can only hope he makes a urinal of his own at home -- and, if he decides to pee on it, decides to keep it there.
Posted at 09:52 AM/ET, 01/27/2006 in Random amusement, by Whitney Matheson, USA Today's Pop Candy blog
My comment:
While I agree that the work has been made into a mockery of itself by being touted as a great work, Mr. Pinoncelli's act was uncreative and hardly as inspired as his defenders make him out to be. Even if Mr. Pinoncelli had in mind all these great notions of anti-art and bringing the Dada piece back to it's original perception, the way he went about it seems just so pedestrian. If he had taken a crap in it, he would have been in Jackass 2. 'Nuff said. I think the key here is the notion that he was trying to destroy the work to make a point. There are many levels of destruction, and the level Mr. Pinoncelli has reached with his hammer and his pee is not the same level as what the Dadas were trying to do.
Appreciate the gesture, but the effort has to go much deeper than that.
Posted by: Buddhakowski | Jan 27, 2006 1:35:38 PM
Robert Pinsky and Bill Hicks
The poem featured in the new POETRY magazine, February 2006, by Robert Pinksy references the late, great comic Bill Hicks and one of his most famous and provocative quotes: "I support the war, but I'm against the troops."
Which segues into a recent Joel Stein column:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein24jan24,0,3682678.column?coll=la-util-op-ed
From the Los Angeles Times
JOEL STEIN
Warriors and wusses
Joel Stein
January 24, 2006
I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.
I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.
And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.
But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.
Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.
Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."
The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.
I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.
After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.
But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.
I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.
But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.
And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.
I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.
I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.
Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.
Which segues into a recent Joel Stein column:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein24jan24,0,3682678.column?coll=la-util-op-ed
From the Los Angeles Times
JOEL STEIN
Warriors and wusses
Joel Stein
January 24, 2006
I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.
I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.
And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.
But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.
Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.
Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."
The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.
I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.
After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.
But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.
I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.
But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.
And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.
I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.
I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.
Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Synchronicity and The Number 23
In 2002, I began an essay about the number 46 and the theory of Shakespeare and the Bible (Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564. It is widely assumed that he was born that year. The Authorized Version was being revised in 1610, by which time Shakespeare would have been 46. In the King James version of Psalm 46 (see below), counting 46 words down from the top, we find "shake", and counting 46 words up from the bottom, we find "spear." "Selah" doesn't count -- it is sprinkled throughout the Bible as a sort of punctuation mark.)
The essay was intended to poke fun at those who spend their time chasing these synchronicity rabbits down their respective holes. But a funny thing happened:I briefly became one of those people. Half of 46 is 23, and once I started digging up that number from my life and the world around me, there was no going back. It was everywhere, suffused with meaning, and beckoning my mind to join the schizophrenic contingency. Significant events happened in my life at the time and the number 23 was prevalent. After a brief time of exploring the meaning behind all this, I realized I had a choice: follow the rabbit and risk madness, or let it go. I let it go and my life has been one of relative stasis ever since. Had I followed the rabbit, perhaps I could have been the writer in the following story:
Carrey Counts On Number 23
Jim Carrey told SCI FI Wire that he's particularly excited about his next film, The Number 23, a mind-bender about a man who becomes obssessed with the number 23. Carrey said that it was likely fate that brought the project to him, since he himself is obsessed with the number 23.
"I've had this obsession with the number 23 for years," Carrey said in an interview, while promoting his current film, Fun With Dick and Jane. "[The script] was given to me by a friend who had the obsession with it, where he talked about the Earth's axis is on the 23rd degree and 23 chromosomes in the human body from each parent and all that, and he has books written about everything that adds up to 23. As soon as he told me, I started seeing 23 everywhere. And it's shocking how much adds up to 23; it's a primary number, but it's bizarre. But it really works out in a strange way to be very prevalent everywhere."
Carrey (Bruce Almighty) will share the screen with Virginia Madsen in the film, which Joel Schumacher will direct. Schumacher last directed Carrey in Batman Forever. But, Carrey said, The Number 23 is not a comedy. "No, it's a thriller," he said. "It's about a guy [Carrey] who finds a book that's about a character that is obsessed with the number 23, and the number 23 is haunting him and leads him to do some very bad things. And then finally it starts happening in his life, and he starts to notice parallels between the book and his life, and the character and his life."
Carrey added: "I don't want to say too much about it, but it's really an interesting movie. I was talking about all this 23 stuff. ... First of all, the number 23 thing for me culminated in ... me talking about it, and at the very same moment, someone handing me a book about the 23rd psalm, which became like my kind of mantra a little bit. Because it's about living without fear, feeling like you're taken care of, like you're safe. And so I changed the name of my company to JC23 a couple years ago. I started telling somebody about the 23 thing, and 'the valley of the shadow of death' and all those things it means, and they said, 'I just read a script called The Number 23.'"
Carrey read the script and found it compelling. "It's so interesting, and the way the mathematics are worked out in it, it's like this guy is Rain Man, the guy who wrote it, Fernley Phillips. So I decided to do it, and I gave it to a friend of mine to read. He read it in an hour and a half, [and] when I came back in he was on page 23, circling every 23rd word, to see if there was a puzzle. That's the kind of thing that I want to do to an audience." Production on The Number 23 begins this week, with an eye toward a late 2006 release.
©2006, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
The essay was intended to poke fun at those who spend their time chasing these synchronicity rabbits down their respective holes. But a funny thing happened:I briefly became one of those people. Half of 46 is 23, and once I started digging up that number from my life and the world around me, there was no going back. It was everywhere, suffused with meaning, and beckoning my mind to join the schizophrenic contingency. Significant events happened in my life at the time and the number 23 was prevalent. After a brief time of exploring the meaning behind all this, I realized I had a choice: follow the rabbit and risk madness, or let it go. I let it go and my life has been one of relative stasis ever since. Had I followed the rabbit, perhaps I could have been the writer in the following story:
Carrey Counts On Number 23
Jim Carrey told SCI FI Wire that he's particularly excited about his next film, The Number 23, a mind-bender about a man who becomes obssessed with the number 23. Carrey said that it was likely fate that brought the project to him, since he himself is obsessed with the number 23.
"I've had this obsession with the number 23 for years," Carrey said in an interview, while promoting his current film, Fun With Dick and Jane. "[The script] was given to me by a friend who had the obsession with it, where he talked about the Earth's axis is on the 23rd degree and 23 chromosomes in the human body from each parent and all that, and he has books written about everything that adds up to 23. As soon as he told me, I started seeing 23 everywhere. And it's shocking how much adds up to 23; it's a primary number, but it's bizarre. But it really works out in a strange way to be very prevalent everywhere."
Carrey (Bruce Almighty) will share the screen with Virginia Madsen in the film, which Joel Schumacher will direct. Schumacher last directed Carrey in Batman Forever. But, Carrey said, The Number 23 is not a comedy. "No, it's a thriller," he said. "It's about a guy [Carrey] who finds a book that's about a character that is obsessed with the number 23, and the number 23 is haunting him and leads him to do some very bad things. And then finally it starts happening in his life, and he starts to notice parallels between the book and his life, and the character and his life."
Carrey added: "I don't want to say too much about it, but it's really an interesting movie. I was talking about all this 23 stuff. ... First of all, the number 23 thing for me culminated in ... me talking about it, and at the very same moment, someone handing me a book about the 23rd psalm, which became like my kind of mantra a little bit. Because it's about living without fear, feeling like you're taken care of, like you're safe. And so I changed the name of my company to JC23 a couple years ago. I started telling somebody about the 23 thing, and 'the valley of the shadow of death' and all those things it means, and they said, 'I just read a script called The Number 23.'"
Carrey read the script and found it compelling. "It's so interesting, and the way the mathematics are worked out in it, it's like this guy is Rain Man, the guy who wrote it, Fernley Phillips. So I decided to do it, and I gave it to a friend of mine to read. He read it in an hour and a half, [and] when I came back in he was on page 23, circling every 23rd word, to see if there was a puzzle. That's the kind of thing that I want to do to an audience." Production on The Number 23 begins this week, with an eye toward a late 2006 release.
©2006, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Clever Reverend #1
This is the first in what will be a series of shots of the church sign a few blocks from my house. I will post new shots as often as there are new slogans. I will limit my comments because the signs speak for themselves. One has to wonder, though, if these are the emanations of a single mind, or if he is pulling these from some monthly Church Sign Newsletter. One has to wonder, too, if Baskin Robbins would have the balls to go after Christus Victor the same way Pizza Hut went after Papa John's.
Enjoy.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
the doog has a blog? what is happening to him?
The Justification (from the Justifier himself):
1. Immortality. Let's not pretend that we stopped looking for this. The connected world is just the latest attempt.
2. Synchronicity. It exists in and of itself, and it can be nudged along. I am making myself available to the possibilites of both.
3. I abhor my job. My mind is beginning to rot in this place. I am taking the necessary steps to counter this from leading to any kind of permanent damage. But if you know me, then you are prolly saying to yourself that this is a futile effort — there's too much other-kind-of-damage already done.
Enjoy. I'm sure this will be fairly infrequent.
Reverend Mo.
1. Immortality. Let's not pretend that we stopped looking for this. The connected world is just the latest attempt.
2. Synchronicity. It exists in and of itself, and it can be nudged along. I am making myself available to the possibilites of both.
3. I abhor my job. My mind is beginning to rot in this place. I am taking the necessary steps to counter this from leading to any kind of permanent damage. But if you know me, then you are prolly saying to yourself that this is a futile effort — there's too much other-kind-of-damage already done.
Enjoy. I'm sure this will be fairly infrequent.
Reverend Mo.
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