Godammit, I’m Mad!

All day I’ve been thinking about Liz Lou. Maybe it’s because her art involves such a passionate, superhuman commitment in time and labor. My own fits of art are so half-assed and meager.

“Liza Lou has often been trivialised as the “bead lady”. Her art is distinguished by the thousands of tiny threaded and glued beads that cover every millimetre of her life-sized sculptures and environments. There are those who would see Lou’s work as a kind of extreme and cranky craftwork, an obsessional but minor art. Her most famous piece is a full-scale kitchen, whose counters, cupboards, sink, dishes, tap and even the gushing water are all picked out in chains and whorls of beads. There has been a beaded trailer home and a backyard, every blade of grass a spike of beads. Beaded blankets, beaded portraits of all the US presidents, a beaded toilet bowl with beaded stains, beaded saints, a beaded suicide. When can it ever end? It started when she was in college. If Lou could she’d bead the world.”

I would probably spray the world gold, because it takes less effort. Read more about Liza Lou here.

When Clint Eastwood heard Spike Lee’s complaint about the racial make-up of Clint’s war movie “Flags of Our Fathers,” Clint was exasperated. After explaining to a interviewer that his film was true to history, he remarked about Spike Lee, “A guy like him should shut his face.”

I’ve said that line in my head, over and over, and I love it. It is poetry.

When Abel Ferrara heard that Werner Herzog had cast Nick Cage in his remake of Ferrara’s film The Bad Lieutenant, Ferrara told an L.A. Times reporter, “I wish these people would all die in hell. I hope they’re all in the same street car and it blows up.”

Herzog came back with, “I have no idea who Abel Ferrara is. Is he Italian?”

Why can’t everyone follow the lead of these guys and say what they mean? In the arts, in politics, wouldn’t that be refreshing? Anywhere but in the home, of course.

On another note, I can’t wait to see “Mongol“, an epic film about Ghenghis Kahn. It was filmed in China, Mongolia and Kasakhstan. It looks like a visually stunning drama, filled with spectacular violence, and beautiful rugged Aisan men with long flowing hair.

Just when I was considering the possibility of throwing some shit out, I come across a group of compulsive collectors, thanks to Men.Style.com. I was looking for Philip Grangi, a jewelry designer, and discovered that he is a self-described “Avid Materialist” who can’t resist collecting things, even from dumpsters.

I personally have too many ‘collections’ but not as many as Philip Crangi. He is seized with a sudden urge to collect something and then scours the city for it. I like how unabashed he is about his compulsions. He admits that he’d rather put stuff in storage, where he can’t even see it, than sell any of it. Naturally, he loves and collects taxidermy. Who doesn’t, at this point? I’m ready to approach someone at the next cocktail party with the conversation-opener “So how much taxidermy do you own?”

On this same site, you can meet artist Hunt Slonem, who is also an Avid Materialist, but on a much grander scale. He makes Andy Warhol look like a slacker, collection-wise. You need to see the video clip to grasp Hunt Slonem’s delightful mania for color and collecting.

And then I came across these two guys who have a clothing company called Barking Irons. They are the ultimate New York Hipsters. Silly caps, long scarves, fingerless gloves, facial hair, the whole shebang. They collect old Victorian shit and they’re “obsessed with Authenticity.” One of them holds an old whiskey bottle and starts rhapsodizing about it. Why do I hate them? Oh, right, I’m a cunt!

I am exhausted from all the obsession. Anyone out there collect anything that isn’t taxidermy?

My new tattoo was inspired by this product from an online botanica. My Adopted Son (long story) got the same tattoo, and then we ate dinner at a bowling alley. My husband was displeased that he hadn’t been notified about the tattoo, but I can’t remember every little thing, can I?

It’s not really big, I’m just too stupid to size my pix properly, and I took this one with my cell phone. However, I can lead you to The Voodoo Professor, who is fun to listen to. For more serious Voodoo needs, I suggest going here.

I was surprised to find my self addicted to The Tudors, on Showtime, which just had its season finale last week.  It seemed pretty stupid the first time I watched it. That Jonathan Rhys Meyers is such a terrible actor. He seems to think he’s playing Elvis most of the time, or else he’s just glaring insanely. And I’m not really interested in historical drama.

What drew me in was the unforgettable face of Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn. She has what I consider a pig nose, in the best sense of the term. It’s so turned up, you could look right into it. And she held that pignose high, even into death. ( At least I think she did, because I had to close my eyes for that.)

Every Sunday night, I curled up on the couch to see that nose. The production values were excellent, the costumes were beautiful, the plot was full of intrigue, but for me it was all about Natalie Dormer. Her trajectory from devious minx to a deeply tragic figure was so gripping, and superbly acted.  And at the center of her performance was her nose.

I miss her already. I couldn’t care less about Season 3. They’re all dead to me now.

Moss is a design store with a great online shop full of stuff to drool over or laugh at or both. I love this necklace by Katja Prins, called Bound by Blood.  It “represents prayer necklaces from differing religions, and is stained in red to represent the blood that has been shed in the name of religion.” Amen.

What I really want from Moss is this set of exquisite dolls, called “les bebes du monde.” In fact, I need them.  Only three months till my birthday!

Now, this is hair! Do you love it or do you love it!

I believe these hair sculptures are the work of Nagi Noda. I hope Amy has seen these.

Last night, the entire Sister Wolf family got off our asses and went to see the Dresden Dolls perform at the Wiltern. The Sons were intent on standing right by the stage, and did so.

The Husband and I chose to take one of the few tables in the back of the theater, the better to have a drink and sit our two asses back down. It’s not like I can’t stand up for hours and scream my head off if I want to, but last night I didn’t want to, and here’s why:  Because god in his infinite wisdom wanted to let me cast my eyes upon Morrissey, who stood just a few feet away from me!

If you don’t revere Morrissey, it may be due to your lack of cultural literacy, i.e. you haven’t heard his masterpiece, “I Know It’s Over.”  I admit that until I heard it, I just thought of Morrissey as an interesting songwriter with an arresting persona.

Then, I heard Jeff Buckley’s version of I Know It’s Over, and my heart nearly imploded from its beauty and intensity.  It is one of the most exquisitely poetic songs of all time. You can read the lyrics here.

So there was Morrissey, but one can hardly go up to him and bother him when his whole deal is about being alone and asexual. For an asexual man, he is pretty damn unbelievably attractive.

So, shit, I now wish I could have taken a photo or kissed the hem of his robe. But he’ll always be there when I close my eyes.

The Dresden Dolls were terrific, and they basked in the love of their hardcore fans, who tended toward the Disenfranchised…..the strange, the fat, the emaciated, the ambiguously gendered and of course, the Queer. God bless them every one, and Jeff Buckley too, may his soul rest in peace.

I was intrigued by a review in the Los Angeles TImes of Matthew Barney’s latest performance piece, called REN.  The two hour event took place in a car lot, and featured the destruction of a 1967 Chrysler Imperial.

The car was dragged by “four dozen dirt-smeared laborers” into a showroom, where it was smashed by a backhoe. The shattered glass injured three people in the audience, but hey, they came to see Art and they got it!

After the paramedics left, the audience was ushered into a fake tomb where Lila Downs sang to a corpse and - this is my favorite part - “a menstrual shroud was extracted from the loins of a masked nude woman.”

Is Matthew Barney a fucking genius or what?!

If you’re not convinced, how about this: Just last month in New York, Barney used another Chrysler to fascinate a crowd of 200, wearing a dog on his head. A legless athlete in a silver ballgown and a marching band in terrorist masks were there to bring Barney’s vision to life, as were a pair of semi-nude girls who peed in an arc onto the floor. Then a bull was led over to the Chrysler but refused to mount it.

I’m not too good as symbolism, but I think it’s obvious that the bull was a witty reference to shit. Right?

Poor Bjork!

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about introducing some of my more obscure Objects of Hatred, for anyone interested in post-graduate Hating. I’m talking about raising the bar for those who seek more people to hate besides Chloe Sevigny or Selma Blair. That kind of hating is child’s play, after all. Everyone hates those two, it doesn’t take any brains or discernment.

My first Object of Hatred in this advanced curriculum is the one and only horror known as Liz Goldwyn. She is the granddaughter of film mogul Samuel Goldwyn and therefore has a huge trust-fund. She has used her buying power to divest eBay and the auction houses of all the best vintage gowns on the market.

So unrelenting is her hunger for more vintage finery that she courted some aging burlesque artists in order to get to their priceless spangled costumes. In her documentary about them, she pretends to have some kind of sociological interest in stripping. What she really wants is to get her hands on the clothes. The best part of the documentary is when a savvy old stripper tells her to forget about getting any of her outfits. She sees right through the horrible greed and manipulation.

I hated Liz Goldwyn before the documentary and I hate her each time I see her name. She recently “sourced” some crappy vintage sweater clips for the shop Opening Ceremony in Los Angeles. When I saw them, I sneered to the sales person, “Did you know you can get these at the VIntage Fashion Expo for around ten or fifteen dollars?” Liz has priced them at something outrageous but I’ve forgotten the figure.

Now to make matters worse, I’ve come across a video clip of Liz visiting the guest house of Tony Duquette, a brilliantly over-the-top designer whose close friend Hutton Wilkinson manages the Duquette estate. If you watch the video, you can see how much Liz wants to keep the jewelry Wilkinson shows her.

She has ‘designed’ her own jewelry for Barneys, and it looks like Duquette-on-a-budget. I fucking hate her. Too much money in the hands of an acquisitive narcissistic bitch like Liz Goldwyn makes the world a tiny bit worse for the rest of us. She has plundered the earth’s finite stores of Vintage treasures, and now she’s messing with Tony Duquette.

I hate Liz Goldwyn and now you can, too!