Art Stars Forever: Chaos and Gonads

World standards seem to be set by surrealists lately. Sick, sad ironies dominate the news of a metal bands pyrotechnics gone bad, foriegn diplomacy seems to have regressed back to medieval times, and Matthew Barney is an Art Star, and not just an art-star, but THE ART STAR of the moment.
While I can't say I'd found the movies as gripping as their images (in fact, Laura and I got in trouble during Cremaster5 for talking too much), he is a cult unto himself. It seems timely that we've a former northwestern linebacker plumb the subconscious of the country and throw it back in a weird series of films, anthropormophic oddities and sculptures that basically revolve around the muscular function of the testicles. Probably because we're done with the old irony... found objects... we're now ready for the alien that looks at us and tells us what we really are - strange creatures with undeveloped desires, crawling over histories that are both magnificent and horrible.
If you're in New York - go see at the Gugg...

Belly of an Apologist

Today, I took my stomach for a walk. Yes, the return of the gut problems that plagued me 2 years ago have seemed to have returned. I've been feeling a heavy sunk feeling in my gut for the past 2 weeks, very reminiscient of my awful bout of bad digestion which seemed to last a year. I have no idea why this has returned other than stress, stress about the pending war, job, and a dismal future seem to be giving me reason to not digest my meals properly. It sits in my stomach like an acidic child hating me, hating my choices. I'm responsible for all the ills of human kind. A group of students from Central were doing documentary work on the bus today. They all had a camera and were asking me questions about the Japanese internment and institutional racism. I stuttered, gagged on words while trying to recount why the govt decided in the 40's to violate the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans. I felt like I was naked. I didn't like being filmed going through the bus tunnels and me trying to give my definition of 'institutional racism'. Great. Somewhere there will be a telling moment of me trying to define institutional racism and wording it badly. Again, I am responsible for all ills that have been wrought. I am the foreign policy that messes up lives, causes small tribes to kill each other, and later becomes a nasty world conflict that people do not want to engage in. My breath is the monopolizing breath of an ugly beast who consumes 3 tubs of cottage cheese a week, wastes about so much kg's of power a day, exerts nothing, learns nothing and ultimately falls asleep while watching past episodes of "6 Feet Under". If an asteroid hit earth and made us extinct, would they dig up my bones and bill me as a fearsome monster? The monsters in my stomach stir and look a day when, like that awful scene in Alien, they can pop out and start shopping.