Norman Rockwell Conquerors

The crispness in the air, the leaves changing and my civil rights are up for a vote in a few weeks. Gosh, I love fall. It really is great to have to remind the confused, out-of-touch voters in remote areas that Ref 71 has nothing to do with taxes or (god forbid) the children... And I can't tell you how much I trust the virtual hoards of these voters like I would if they were carrying torches and pitchforks. I'm picturing a Norman Rockwell mob here - a well-meaning lynch mob decked out in Pendleton wool plaids; civil, optimistic, and helping to start a bonfire where we're all chained... Gruesome, yes - but pastoral and in fall colors.
Sorry for the dark cynicism - but this whole thing is like the annoying children's game "Perfection" -- we run around plugging the oddly shaped pegs into manic small holes with seconds to pass, and then boom - our rights are thrown asunder and taken away and we're three steps back. I try to think bigger picture here - that maybe there is some paradigm shift around the corner where people realize it has nothing to do with them. That there is some point where where you're not the manifestation of years of dogma coming at you, that there might be a few more advances toward enlightenment. But then again, there are still people who believe in witchcraft and cosmic forces, so there you go... we've not advanced...

Flarts

The air is artificially crisp, movies are slower-paced, and the poly-wool blends are hitting the racks at H&M. That can only mean one thing - FALL ARTS (which I'm hoping to condense into a new phrase: FLARTS... workshop it around, etc). Flarts means more art than we can shake a stick at. Instead of foliage, we hibernate into big buildings with theme-shows... Like we have SAM anticipating "Target Practice", and who better to intro this but Paul McCarthy here in all his goeyness at SAM ... I share the same fascination with him as the Stranger, but alas, his talk is happening as I type this and had i known, i would have cut my cardio-20 minutes short and walked down there from the gym. Oh well. I can only hope they can stop things like this from happening:


Also - my perennial fave Ryan Trecartin has posted new videos from his Younger Than Jesus Show on UbuWeb. K-corea is bit too blond and shrill (but the themes are global credit which is both blond and shrill), but i do like the Sibling Topics (which you can tell he filmed at the PDX Eagle of all places).
Sibling Topics (section a) from Ryan Trecartin on Vimeo.

Peel slowly...

Randomness (or this is how I spent my summer vacation while the world spun out of control...):

• 500 Pine Party - You can't return home. Even for a night. We've tried, but good attempt.

• Apparently , late-century art school transgressive passion is back in all it's androgynous Cate Blanchet fabulosity.
  

• But then again, so are hipster beer guts. No, No, no!!!

Idea for a reality TV series: Dinner Party Disorder - 2 people are given a mystery ingredient and a celebrity guest list. They are given one hour to clean their place and create a meal using the ingredient. They then have to entertain celebrities for approximately one hour. Merriment ensues. Guests leave. Last 20 minutes features the cleaning up in silence as waves of melancholy wash over the hosts.

• Ed Varga featured for Homo-a-go-go (*which I quasi-attended this year in SF) on Butt.
• Also featured - Sissy Nobby shows you how to do that thing (that i need to learn how to do by Saturday Night)...
• And while we're on the subject of freak dancing, is there such a thing as too much freak

Ways that my life currently resembles a Wes Anderson film:
Working out to Ziggy Stardust on my MP3 player next to a father and son in matching unitards.
Brightly colored zip covers on book jackets in Viet Wah.
The cab that takes me uptown.
A montage of various activities accomplished over the course of 3 months.
Ways that my life currently resembles a Hal Hartley film:
Repetition.

• You can buy shit from Tao Lin on eBay. Don't though - because he's going to teach us how to Shoplift from American Apparel soon enough.
• Finally - a lunatic fringe of our very own...
  

I lost it at the movies...

...to quote the late film critic Pauline Kael. Not that there's any major cultural void with the passing of John Hughes, however you can't deny that he recreated our teenage years (if you were part of last century) and had an impact on modern movie comedy. Time will only tell if he'll be seen as prolific as Capra (maybe - even with cheeze-doodle fare like Home Alone), but he did give us some moments and lines that still come out from time to time. Plus - his protagonists were usually those boho-80's nonconformists and freaks that we were at one time (Ducky does not fall from anyone's tree...) In any case - this is honor of the late mr Hughes, the BratPack mashup:

Beacon Hill Aquarium

More light rail enthusiasm, which will probably soon give away to boredom, and later anger - Beacon Hill's station which is impecibley cute and twee: an undersea world 167 feet down beneath the surface...

If they can put a man on the moon...

...then they should be able to solve [insert social injustice or economic inequity here]. Yes, I celebrated the 40 year old anniversary of the first (staged?) moon landing by having a day of anti-gravity surreal proportions (mostly bad, small hellish bursts], but the highlight was finally getting chance to ride Seattle's own entrance into spage-age transportation... No, not the monorail, sadly - but the LightRail... Yes, finally - our 20th Century urban development has arrived - in the 21st Century Ladies and Gentlemen (applause, applause - ribbon cutting, fanfare, end scene).
Having lived above the tunnel boar-er for a good 5 years, I finally got to go from downtown to Mount Baker in less than 20 minutes flat. I can't tell you how gratifying that was. No stops on every other block. No (intentionally) having to knock elderly grandmother's out of my way to get out the back door. Pleasant arrivals, chimes and a friendly voice advising you where to exit.
The stations are cute in that playful NW post-millenial-design and art-commissioned kind of way - the Beacon station has gleeful sea creatures and Bill Bell's subliminal art in the tunnels is kinda cool (and I realized that one benefit of having the downtown bus tunnels all this time is that the art and design from late 80's makes it all seem like we've had light rail all along for the last 20 years). What made the trip? Having a car full of small children who were loving every minute of the ride and kept reminding us how, even though it's a mid-century too late, our eagle has landed... (PS - photo of my metrocard for proof of concept).

Precious Moments (in History)

I know that in many ways, it's a cardinal sin to go after people who completely do not have any sense of irony (with your own), and I also know that you should not track-back to someone's site unless you're 'pro' whatever freak flag they are choosing to raise at a given moment, but for some reason, I totally realized that this site here will explain everything to you about white people. No need to sign million dollar book deals from your own blog, or hijack the nation's attention through gay-baiting pranks. This site explains everything: Red States, 2004, Mythology, Creationism, Sense of Empire, Decay, Deliverance and Death. It is a symposium of all that is terrible and terrific in this county and exemplifies the true meaning of Christmas.