Saul Steinberg at The Morgan

Saul Steinberg (1914–1999), the "Leonardo of graphic drollery," is the subject of a major (and surprisingly well-attended) retrospective exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum.

From Slate.

Brice Marden at MoMA + Mahler’s Symphony No. 3

On Saturday, I saw Brice Marden's retrospective at MoMA with a new art buddy - a math teacher with a much longer attention span than mine. The show is perfectly gorgeous, though it's hard not to laugh at the taped interview with Marden describing a romantic figure in a landscape when you're staring at a monochrome canvas the color of a wet slate roof. The end of the chronological exhibition is the most stunning; although Marden is using the same intertwined ribbons of paint against varying fields of color, the recent paintings have built up in intensity.

Jerry Saltz points out, however, in his review for the Village Voice, that "Viewers will leave the sixth floor of this retrospective never knowing that Marden was in artistic hell for nearly 10 years." That's for sure. The show unfolds as if Marden always knew where he was going, and excludes his "false starts, dead ends, and messy thoughts."

Later that night it was time for Gustav Mahler's titanic Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, performed at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle.

Above: 6 Red Rock I, 2000–2002

Susan Hauptman

Tonight a show of works on paper by Susan Hauptman opened at the Forum Gallery. Hauptman’s charcoal self-portraits are rendered so accurately as to be clinical. Some are androgynous but others incorporate lace gloves and slips.

Self-Portrait (with Branch) 2004

Charcoal on paper

The explosion of hedge fund wealth has created a new financial pecking order, and museums are scampering after its biggest beneficiaries.

Bizarre gift ideas for the pet lovers in your life

Is Fido taking up too much space when he sleeps? Then get him the Pet Murphy Bed, which stows away when not in use.

What about Kitty? Always shivering? Then she'll really appreciate the Heated Cat Cup. Maybe now she'll stop hogging all the radiators.

Wondering what to get the dog who has everything? Acknowledge his sophistication with Leather Cigarlike Chews, handmade cowhide chews that are rolled, sealed, and come presented in a cigar box.

What about you? Does Kitty complain when you wrap her around your neck? Give her a break and get a Black & White Tuxedo Herbal Therapy Cat instead; throw it in the microwave and enjoy soothing, aromatic warmth for about an hour.

One of the biggest complaints about cats is the unsightly litter box. Solve the problem in style with a Rattan Litter Pan Cover; add a little palm tree and you'll be wondering why the cat has a better-looking toilet than you do.

This is why I think I'd love Japan - they have a term for wandering aimlessly around an expensive shopping district: "ginbura," or strolling the streets of Ginza. (Maybe here we can call it "Madisonbura.")

Here's something I'll be sorry to miss:

Repetti Gallery: Alejandra Villasmil and D. Dominick Lombardi:
II STRANGE BREW
December 1-20
Opening reception Wednesday, December 6, 6-9 pm.

From Art Cards.

If you want to be a homeowner in New York, you have two options, generally speaking: (1) be a banker, or (2) marry a banker. (I suppose you could be born to a banker, but that would predate free will.) This is why every few months or so, after visiting relatives in Connecticut and contracting a severe case of Appliance Envy*, I start looking up real estate listings. And that is how I came upon this 1898 Victorian.

* An affliction that is familiar to all New Yorkers who have considered leaving the city after prolonged contact with a suburban dweller's sparkling new Sub-Zero refrigerator with freezer storage drawers.

What would you find inside?

John Currin & Lucian Freud

This afternoon I walked up Madison Avenue in the warmth and the rain to see an exhibition of new work by John Currin at the Gagosian Gallery. I don't normally visit galleries on weekdays, and the crowd was a noticeably more business-like lot than the self-consciously artsy types who roam around Chelsea on Saturdays, determined to make a day of it.

The exhibition of unframed canvases is in one large room, and no sooner had I turned from a portrait of the artist's instantly recognizable wife than I saw her - Rachel Feinstein - gazing at another painting. That seemed like an odd coincidence until I saw John Currin himself, talking to a gallery employee. It’s not unusual to see an artist at his or her opening, of course, but it’s something else entirely to see them examining their own paintings on an ordinary day, especially if the paintings include portraits of family members, not to mention assorted orgies.

Those orgies – oddly unsexy configurations in which disproportionately tiny hands grasp at engorged genitals – have already attracted the lion’s share of attention. But the portraits of Currin’s wife and son are more memorable – sweetly luminous and sensitive, they fit well in the mannered style that he has so deftly adopted.

Still to come: Lucian Freud at Acquavella Galleries

A new Woodstock museum

DC Dude informs us that he is working on a new Woodstock museum to be built on the old concert site up in Sullivan county:

http://www.bethelwoodslive.org/im_overview.htm

Despite the resounding silence here, I did actually see some art over the long Thanksgiving weekend - Americans in Paris, 1860–1900, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Charles Courtney Curran (1861–1942)

Afternoon in the Cluny Garden, Paris, 1889

Another assassination in Lebanon

When I called my father to tell him that Pierre Gemayel had been assassinated, he said "The kid?" Pierre Amine Gemayel was the 34-year-old grandson of Pierre Gemayel, for whom he was named, and the son of Amin Gemayel, a former president of Lebanon. This prominent Christian family has been targeted before.

The choice of victim is also an act of historical blackmail, resurrecting as it does some key ghosts of the 1975-1990 Civil War: A 1980 car-bombing killed the 2-year-old daughter of his uncle, then-Lebanese Forces leader Bashir Gemayel; another blast killed Bashir himself after he became president-elect in 1982. The assailants' identities and immediate demands are unknown, but their message is clear: They will bring the country to - and possibly beyond - the brink of disaster to get their way. -The Daily Star

And the killing crystallized a sense of foreboding, as everyone waited for Sheik Hassan Nasrallah's "surprise."

An impending assassination has been in the air for the past few weeks. We could all feel it -- it stood out from the general sense of dread hanging over Lebanon since the war. It was specific. We didn't know who or when, or whether the attempt would succeed -- but we knew it was coming. - Chercheuse d'Or

Most observers expect today's killing to further polarize the pro-Syria and anti-Syria bloc and shape the country's future.

This weekend

Printed Matter presents the first New York Art Book Fair in Chelsea. 548 West 22nd Street (10th & 11th Aves)

From Pinky...

I feel compelled to post something once in a while, even if it doesn't involve art. Tonight we had a very nice dinner at a restaurant I'd never heard of. You see, there's Giorgione at 307 Spring Street, which I hear is very good, but we went to its cousin Giorgione 508, at 508 Greenwich Street, and it was really excellent.

I love this photograph. From New York Magazine.

Did you ever dream of monitoring the foot traffic in a hip store from the comfort of your home?

Oh good. Because now you can watch people shopping at Uniqlo, Japan's most popular retailer, in SoHo. Surprisingly mesmerizing.

The beginning of Art School Confidential reminded me of one of those Saturday-morning sitcoms aimed at teenagers. And not in a good way. It's too bad, because the insular universe of art school is ripe for a black comedy, and the premise could not have been in better hands: Terry Zwigoff directed the documentary Crumb, about the cartoonist Robert Crumb, and one of my all-time favorite movies, Ghost World. That's not to say that there weren't some truly funny moments in the movie, and seeing John Malkovich again made me want to order all of his movies from Netflix.

After I voted yesterday, I was treated to a pretty fabulous exhibition of self-portraits in my neighborhood public school. Apparently the art teacher there had taught his grade-school students about Expressionism, and they had learned their lesson well.

Gray skies are gonna clear up,
Put on a happy face;
Brush off the clouds and cheer up,
Put on a happy face.

I haven't been posting much lately because my job has gotten in the way. But that doesn't mean we haven't been engaging with our fellow freaks! Yes, on Tuesday we took in the Village Halloween Parade. Despite a creepy undertone of, well, advertising (how many Borats and Marie Antoinettes do we need in one parade?), I was impressed by the limitless supply of creativity that is unleashed whenever a New Yorker is presented with that most tantalizing incentive - an audience. Here I am thinking of the dude who dressed up as Viagra, or more accurately, the effect of Viagra.

And today was the event that I look forward to most all year - the New York City Marathon. It's hard to explain why this parade of agony has become a favorite of mine. I think it dates back to when I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and we'd cheer the (eventual) winners as they ran by, then go back home and eat bagels until they crossed the finish line a couple of hours later. I think I've gone to see every marathon since then, and I've known a couple of people who ran. It's very moving (and baffling) to watch people from around the world put themselves through this torture. Someone once told me that the most heavily represented profession in the marathon is lawyers; watching the runners today, I find that very easy to believe.

One intrepid reporter rolls up his sleeves to study a single block of 25th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues.

Also in the Times, apparently the lack of available men in Beirut is worse than in New York.

Time to get squiggly with it.

Brice Marden's retrospective opened at MoMA.

For the past couple of Fridays, we have been hitting the happy hour at Lure pretty hard. But this past Friday night I went overboard and ended up seeing stars. I haven't been that wine-soaked since my last Christmas party at Morgan Stanley, when at least a dispatcher put me in a black car home. Even then, the trip from the sidewalk up to my apartment seemed long and unnerving. I guess you're never too old to regress into adolescence; it just takes longer to recover.

Tonight, art journalist (and blogger) Lisa Hunter officially launched her book The Intrepid Art Collector: The Beginner's Guide to Finding, Buying, and Appreciating Art on a Budget. Lisa (who is actually cuter and prettier than her photo), is a charming and engaging speaker. Her advice is pragmatic and realistic, and tailored to those of us who are not in a position to make a career out of collecting. My favorite line of the evening was her characterization of contemporary art as New York’s “contact sport,” in lieu of a football team. Lisa, I’m sorry I didn’t hang around to meet you but I have to be up at 5 a.m. tomorrow. I hope you’re throwing a few back at Otto.

Make way for an icon

Opening on Wednesday at Gagosian Gallery, at 555 West 24th Street and 522 West 21st Street, is an exhibition of Andy Warhol's late work.

On Saturday, I went hiking with a friend up on Fishkill Ridge Trail, about 1,500 feet above the Hudson River. It was a beautiful day and the vistas begged to be painted, but the hike was fairly strenuous and I was not prepared; my legs were really sore for a couple of days.

Today's post is about savory Indian snacks. The great joy of living in New York is not just access to every kind of cuisine that your heart desires; it's unlimited access to the salty, crunchy snacks that are peculiar to every culture. I've tried* a number of spicy Indian snacks, many of them made with chickpea flour, and I've settled on a new favorite: Fulwadi.

*Inhaled alarming quantities of

Bakeries and patisseries in Paris

Via roboppy.

Tierney Gearon & Lena Cronqvist

Last night we went to a pair of gallery openings for artists I had never heard of but who seemed thematically linked.

First was photographer Tierney Gearon, at the Yossi Milo Gallery. Gearon apparently faced some controversy in the past, when police warned that two photographs of naked children displayed at the Saatchi gallery could be seized under indecency laws. This show focuses on her mother, and again, some of the images - of the artist and her mother together in the nude, violating the border that is laid down when children grow up into sexual beings - will make viewers uncomfortable. Gearon has captured more than just her relationship with her mother, though, because each photograph is a complete narrative landscape.

Second was Swedish artist Lena Cronqvist at the Nancy Margolis Gallery. Cronqvist, who is in her late sixties, has painted a series of spare self-portraits, sometimes holding puppets or marionettes.

Star sightings in Chelsea

Spied at the opening of Gary Webb’s first solo exhibition in New York, at Bortolami Dayan, 510 West 25th Street - Rachel Feinstein, Cecily Brown, and Hope Atherton.

Djuna Barnes & Maggie Gyllenhaal

Separated at birth?

Why illustration should not be allowed to enter the corporate bloodstream

Traditionally, most designers viewed illustration with reverence; many even regarded it as inherently superior to design. And with good reason: design was about the anonymous conveying of messages, while illustration was frequently about vivid displays of personal authorship. But during the 1990s, illustration’s "individual style" became a liability.
- Adrian Shaughnessy, Design Observer

Ernesto Neto.

Junebug is an interesting little movie about culture and taste in America, two topics that Hollywood is least equipped to explore with subtlety.

Autumn in Geauga County, Ohio

Photos by Pinky (aka Keith Urban's stalker).

Tonight - New York Repertory Orchestra

The New York Repertory Orchestra presents its first concert of the 2006-2007 season:

Program

• José Pablo Moncayo: Huapango
• Darius Milhaud: Le Carnaval d’Aix – Mitchell Vines, piano
• Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1 “Winter Dreams”

'We’re very picky.'

From The New York Times: It's good to know that it's just as competitive to buy a work of art from a Chelsea gallery as it is to get your work inside one, as "top galleries are in a position to handpick their clientele these days."

Checked out the graphic novels at McNally Robinson. Drinks with Pinky at The Dove Parlor.

Photo (and illustration): Marjane Satrapi

I forgot to relate a strange anecdote that took place the other day. On Tuesday afternoon I was sitting in Central Park, which for some reason was filled with Hasidic Jews, when I noticed a young blond woman wearing a pink bikini top and a very short denim miniskirt prancing around on a grassy slope above one of the park's paths. Soon I saw an older male photographer directing her to pose in various seductive ways - on her back, on her stomach with her legs raised behind her, strolling through the branches of a nearby tree, bending over, and so on. Well, this session soon caught the attention of people walking by, including all of the Hasidic families with their children in tow. At this point, another young blond woman stationed herself on the other side of the path, opposite the amateur porn session that was taking place on the grassy slope, and started singing. Really belting out the tunes. The only conclusion I could draw from this was that the second woman was trying to distract attention away from the photographer and his model.

Like I said, just a weird anecdote.

Courtney Skott's beautiful Cloud Bed.

Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror on Fifth Avenue

Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror is a 35-foot-diameter concave mirror made of polished stainless steel, and it is now on view at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center.

If you can't get to New York in person, you may want to check out the photos of it on Flickr.

Queens International 2006

Most people don't know or think about the Queens Museum of Art, but years ago I went to a retrospective of conceptual art there that really belonged at MoMA. QMA is now showing Queens International 2006: Everything All at Once.

"Queens International 2006 is the third installment of the Queens Museum of Art's biennial survey of Queens-based artists. This year, 52 artists and two collaboratives weigh in on American culture, the politics of war, contemporary feminist issues, spirituality, the environment and a host of other subjects close to the hearts of many local residents.

The show opens on October 1, but the true opening reception is Sunday, October 8, 3-6 pm and is always an event to remember."

Above: Orly Genger, Studio view, 2006, nylon climbing rope and paint.

This just in from our Atlanta correspondent

Niki de Saint-Phalle at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

He who never set foot in America

Today I went to see Picasso and American Art at the Whitney Museum. The exhibition, which illuminates the fundamental influence of Pablo Picasso on American art during the last century, is just outstanding. I know it doesn't sound like the premise for something new, but there is so much to see and think about here. (Oh, and since we've been counting: Male artists - 10; female artists - 0.)

Art therapy

Last night, after drinks at Thalia, we went to an art opening in a chiropractor's office on West 50th Street. And, while we drank more wine and ate as much cheese as we could without attracting attention, the show sold out! Australian artist Cimon (pronounced "Simon") paints impressionistic portraits of his friends using frenetic brushstrokes and a broad palette.

So to any artist who despairs of ever showing their work, I say broaden your horizon. Hanging your art in a doctor's office, with its steady stream of captive viewers, is one of the best ideas I've heard lately.

What, too much?

Blugirl - Spring 2007 Collection

Sketches of inequality

Last night I watched Sketches of Frank Gehry, Sydney Pollack’s unpretentious documentary about his friend (and world-renowned architect) Frank Gehry.

I suppose because I watched it immediately after reading several discussions about gender inequality in the art world (on Edward Winkleman and Lisa Hunter), I couldn’t help but marvel at the complete absence of any women in this otherwise absorbing portrait. Pollack does interview one female at length – writer/curator Mildred Friedman – but the rest of his subjects constitute a pantheon of powerful white males, including Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Bob Geldof, Philip Johnson, Thomas Krens, Herbert Muschamp, Michael Ovitz, music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, Julian Schnabel (wrapped in a bathrobe and holding a drink), and even Gehry’s 94-year-old therapist. Indeed, the most memorable woman in the film is found only in a passing reference to the architect’s pushy ex-wife, who made him change his name from Goldberg to Gehry in the 1950s. Even in his office, we meet only male designers and assistants. Are there really no women working at his firm, apart from (presumably) the receptionist?

To me, the overriding theme was one of risk-taking: These men are all gamblers, risk-takers on a gargantuan scale, with the colossal egos that such risks require. And that sentiment echoes what I’ve been reading lately – in a nutshell, that society rewards the grand gesture, not modesty; conviction, not timidity; and boldness, not diligence. It’s not that these are male or female traits, but they are cultivated differently.

Where does that leave architecture? A pessimist might say that a museum designed by Gehry will be best suited to showcase only the most muscular art, along the lines of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and so on – in other words, art that projects itself across an immense expanse of space. And so the cycle continues, as some have criticized about MoMA's recent rehanging. I am not that cynical, but I also don’t see where the change can come from. Where is that pipeline of young female architects and engineers?

Finished with jury duty!

Multiply this by 12 and you'll get some sense of our collective relief.

The Dahesh

Jury duty has left me agitated, annoyed, and unmotivated (though I’m happy to report that my experience in the New York City court system doesn’t bear any resemblance to these barbaric accounts of small-town justice). But that doesn’t mean that we haven’t had fun lately! Adding up the places I went to over the weekend reflects a peculiar, only-in-New-York diet - Zlatá Praha (Czech), followed by an obligatory trip to the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden; Ginza (Japanese, supposedly, but I suspect it’s really Korean); `inoteca (cute Italian, as signified by that saucy apostrophe); Katz's Deli (hello brisket!); and Veniero's (old-school Italian pastries). Yes, a very weird list, more a function of geography than any real planning.

But more importantly, I finally made it to the Dahesh Museum of Art. This is quite an interesting and odd little museum, devoted to academic art of the 19th and early 20th centuries and located in what seems like the basement of 580 Madison Avenue. The Dahesh Museum was founded by, and named for, Dr. Dahesh (1909–1984), the pen name of Salim Moussa Achi, a Lebanese writer, philosopher, connoisseur, and/or cult leader, depending on your point of view. The museum’s main attraction right now is Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt, a visual account of Napoleon’s attempt to add Egypt to the French empire.

Above: Charles-Louis-Fleury Panckoucke, Monuments of Egypt, ca. 1821-24

Can you love Tokyo without hating your own city?

This is what Pinky does when she is not chained to her desk at Beige, Inc. She takes incredible photographs!

Today, on the Seventh Day of jury duty, the judge dismissed us a little early, so I finally went to the Morgan Library and Museum, on Madison Avenue at East 36th Street. I never visited what used to be called the Pierpont Morgan Library before its recent expansion, so I had to sort of deconstruct the airy campus designed by Renzo Piano in order to understand how he unified its three buildings.

On view now are 50 of Rembrandt's greatest etchings, culled from the library’s extensive collection.

Above: Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Self-Portrait, Etching at a Window, 1648

One other note in a long and strange day (which actually ended with pomegranate margaritas, but there is no way to make a coherent leap to that): At St. Mark's Bookshop, I finally had the chance to take a close look at Aftermath, the photographic archive of Ground Zero by Joel Meyerowitz, the only photographer to gain continued access to the area after the attacks. What struck me was his record of the impact on surrounding buildings; for example, I hadn't seen the three-story sections of the World Trade Center lodged into the facade of the Banker's Trust Building or the Pompeii-like dust covering everything inside the World Financial Center.

Countdown to Tuesday's (pre-) birthday celebration . . .

Il Buco . . . and a stripping policeman?

For addicts of sites like The Sartorialist, a new book provides a bit of New York fashion history. “On the Street, 1980-1990,” collects some of Amy Arbus’s portraits of people on the street in downtown Manhattan in the 1980s.

Elinor Carucci

I caught this exhibition of Israeli-American photographer Elinor Carucci by accident as I passed by the Edwynn Houk Gallery on Fifth Avenue. Carucci photographs herself, her husband, and her parents in surprisingly intimate settings and often in the nude. But these carefully composed images don't reveal as much about their subjects as they do about the artist's loving self-examination, a frank narcissism that encompasses her startlingly beautiful mother.

Caché

Caché - a psychological thriller that came out in 2005 - unfolds "at the Hitchcockian junction where voyeurism intersects with paranoia," in the words of A. O. Scott. It begins slowly - indeed the first thirty minutes seem fairly directionless - as Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche, who play a literary couple in Paris, begin receiving vaguely threatening videos and drawings. But instead of a domestic drama, the movie has important moral ambitions, namely concerning France's treatment of Algerians and the terror of personal complicity.

You saw him in New York first

If you're in London, you can catch the end of Pierre Huyghe - Celebration Park at Tate Modern.

The artist's first solo exhibition in the UK will include This is not a time for dreaming (2004) and A journey that wasn't (2006), which attentive readers may remember reading about right here!

Today I actually got selected to serve as a juror. I don't know why anyone would want a porcupine on their jury. After the voir dire (or, in New York parlance, "vwah deeyah"), during which one of the six lawyers repeatedly asked "Can you promise to apply the lawr* as it is explained to you?," my name was called.

My plan is to take notes furiously, casually mentioning that I need to "get the details right" for my blog. "Your whaaat?" "My blog. Don't worry, Your Honor. I'm not using your real name. I am calling you Judge Squinty."

*This is a New York City court.

Remembering the World Trade Center

One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now at the Asia Society

On Sunday I happened to stroll by the Asia Society at Park Avenue and 70th Street and decided to go in. The Asia Society is one of many small museums in New York that I've never visited despite its proximity to the major art institutions on Fifth Avenue. On view is One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now, an exhibition of seventeen artists, most of whom were born in the 1970s. Two in particular caught my attention.

Binh Danh was born in Vietnam in 1977 and has invented a technique for printing found photographs onto leaves through the natural process of photosynthesis. (He was interviewed about his process - he calls his images "chlorophyll prints" - on NPR.) For his One Week's Dead series (2006), he took photographs from Life magazine of American soldiers who had died in the space of one week in Vietnam and printed them on leaves. The faces are not visible until you get quite close, and even then their clarity varies. The effect is subtle enough to avoid being maudlin; exhibited in clusters and showing signs of decay, the leaves evoke the decomposition of both life and memory.

Above: Drifting Souls (2001)

Indigo Som, a Chinese-American woman who grew up in California, photographs Chinese restaurants in isolated parts of the United States. The buildings are shabby, with fading signs, but they record the story of immigrants who moved beyond the country's urban ports of entry and tried to assimilate in remote areas where they may have been the only Chinese inhabitants.

You know how I was saying that my new glasses look like Nana's? This is actually more accurate.

Inez appears on Cyberchase on PBS.

Nana!

This is a fairly close approximation of my new glasses. I think I've just figured out what to do with my hair. Also, I will have to stock up on black eyeliner.

Nana Mouskouri, Song for Liberty (1982)

Jury duty and a Chelsea crawl

Today I began jury duty - just about the worst possible timing, as it came on the heels of starting a new job. (I'm really building quite a fan base at work.) But I met a very interesting woman there who helped make the experience considerably less excruciating - an engineer who is working to upgrade New York City's infrastructure.

Unwilling to miss the big kick-off of the fall gallery season, I rushed over to Chelsea as soon as I was dismissed - just in time to catch some of the crowds and some of the shows on 23rd and 24th Streets. As expected, it was more of a scene than ever before, and I'm not sure what that augurs for the art world.

Good job

Princess Kiko has given birth to a baby boy - the first male heir to the Japanese throne in 41 years - thereby dashing our hopes to see a woman ascend the throne.

Have you always dreamed of living in a hotel? Well, you can buy a one-bedroom apartment at the Carlyle Hotel for the reasonable sum of $450,000. The catch? The monthly maintenance charge is $6,626 - but the maid comes twice a day.

Like "offshoring" to India, here is a trend that we all should have seen coming: au pairs from China.

From my sister: A nationally known psychiatrist is killed by a patient, and the profession reels.

I'm starting to put together my Fall 2006 look. (Click on the photo.)

Check out Pinky in Nantucket...

And here's an approximation of my new specs!

Today I ordered my new Alain Mikli* eyeglasses. I know that these will be risky for the office, and that I will be forever identified by them. But, on the upside, I expect automatic and expedited entry to art events.

*Guess what - Alain Miklitarian is Lebanese!

By the way, if anyone reading this is really into glasses (and no, I'm not turning this into a shopping blog), Morgenthal Frederics is having a sale on their house brand, and they're not half-bad.

A perfect movie for a rainy Saturday afternoon is Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows, with Jeanne Moreau and the music of Miles Davis, a "richly atmospheric thriller of murder and mistaken identity unfolding over one restless Parisian night."

One day I really want to attend the Burning Man festival...

This year's theme: The future.