Godammit, I’m Mad!

Today we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see an exhibit of graffiti and street art. Little did I know it was The Place to Be, with a long line of hipsters waiting to get inside the museum.  My husband and I thought “Fuck this” and decided to leave , just as we saw my adopted son Chris and his girlfriend Ada walking toward us.

It was wonderful to realize that we crypto-hipsters all gravitate to the same places. Ada became a museum member to help us avoid the long line for non-members.  The guy who helped her had 14 piercings in his face.

The exhibit was crawling with people who could each qualify as a piece of graffiti art. The was no air inside, where the temperature hovered near boiling point. Everyone was madly taking pictures of the art and each other. You had to dodge the iPhone flashes as you tried to avoid screwing up someone’s photo op.

I complained to my husband in a non-stop whine, but he’s learned to live with this. I objected aloud to a wall of Shepard Fairy crap, noting “Shepard Fairey is a fucking punk!” and thereby quoting my own self. I loved the cars and some black and white photos of Chicano homies. But most of it seemed boring and outdated, like break-dancing only less dimensional. Shuffling along the narrow passages between makeshift rooms, I felt like a character in “Hi, Mom.”

I wondered what would happen if someone broke out a can of spray pain and graffiti’d the graffiti.

Out in the street, an even longer line of hipters stood sweltering. I said to my husband: Haha, look at them. We walked to a Yogurtland, where a pretty girl sitting next to me blabbed about her reality show and insisted to her morbidly obese friend that what she really wanted to do was “make art.”

I don’t know where I’d be without it.  I found this here.

And you can still find me here.

I confided to my psychiatrist that I’m obsessed with the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan and that I’ll be disappointed when they get it under control. I was shocked when he said he felt the same. “Of course.” he agreed, “We all crave this drama, it’s great. It lets us externalize all our feelings of anger and chaos.”  We both agreed that we weren’t actually hoping for something apocalyptic, although I am personally ready for the world to end.

A better way to distract myself has been tumblr, where I can scroll through images for hours.  I’ve learned to avoid the ones with the aggressively teen-aged nihilism: All those morbid photos of skinny kids with septum rings and animated gifs from horror films and topless hippies with guns in their mouths.

There is so much beauty out there. Visual stimulation excites some pleasure center in the brain, like eating chocolate or listening to an aria. Tonight my tumbler stopped working and it was horrifying to be cut off from my new addiction.  I have a lot of avoidance to accomplish. Max’s birthday is coming up at the end of the month.

Can we distract ourselves from everything serious with a focus on beauty products? I’ve always found them comforting, their promise of transforming us from ugly ducklings into flawless supermodels. Okay, so, what is your favorite beauty product that has surprised you by actually doing something good? I really want to know (remember: I’m desperate,)

My favorite product is Kate Sommerville Sunblock 55.  It’s light, greaseless, no fragrance, and leaves a dewy glow.  You don’t have to wear make up and you don’t have to get skin cancer.  I prosthelytize about it to everyone.

Okay, what’s yours?

I love my Tumblr! It is nothing but beautiful or evocative images that I wanted to keep in one place. No 90s, no irony, no pictures of dead people in bathtubs,  or tattooed bikers or teenagers wearing Indian feather headdresses from etsy.

Go look if you feel like it!  http://sisterwolf.tumblr.com/

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
-George Bernard Shaw

Am I the last one to know, again??

If not, check this out. Malplaquet House is an 18th century brick mansion in East London, that hadn’t been occupied for a hundred years until 1998, when a pair of historians/designers moved in and let their compulsive hoarding run rampant. Now, after 12 years, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan and Tim Knox are ready to sell the place and and find fresh environs to clutter.

The house is breathtaking, in a Miss Havisham meets Tony Duquette kind of way. More is Not Enough here, and you certainly get the feeling that these guys have several more tons of antique statues and taxidermy stacked up in storage somewhere.

Even the bathroom is a shrine to their insanity. (Click to expand the picture)

In a hallway, there are enough antlers to make all of Williamsburg and Los Feliz cry bitter tears of envy.

I feel ambivalent about this place.  Except for the dead things, it has a baroque faux-religious aesthetic that I personally favor in my own house. And I like obsessive art, as I keep saying. But the thought of being surrounded by this much crap…..and the way it’s  just thrown  everywhere almost randomly…I think no.

One day in Malplaquet House would probably convince me to throw away all my hoarded old crap and live in pristine minimalism like a monk. But I would love to spend an hour there, just to ogle all that maniacal splendor.

This week, Sea posed in an ugly sweter and blamed it on Mom. I sense a rift between them, an overdue separation of their creepy merged identities. They no longer link to each other’s blog and they’re making subtle digs at each other.  I am hoping for a titanic war with no holds barred. Don’t they owe us that?!

Meanwhile, Sea declared herself a tragic know-nothing would-be hipster by foolishly writing a post about “Bad Art.” She doesn’t know the difference between kitsch, outsider art and folk art. All she knows is that stuff that looks crude is cool to like. Like, omg, Bad Art! It’s so funny! My own definition of bad art would be that crap in Sea’s living room.

Sea won’t publish your comments, you worthless proles, but you can leave them here. I will go first:

Dear Sea, Please don’t write about things that are way over your head! Stick to Miu Mui clogs! Go find out about Reverend Howard Finster, Adolf Wolfli, Renaldo Kuhler, and then read Jim Shaw’s mission statement in his book on Thrift Store Art.  What will it take to make you feel ashamed? This is a real question. Love, SW

Few things are more compelling to me than a heated debate over What Constitutes Art.  A recent controversy surrounding Sarah Silverman also offers a quandary about ethics.

Ms. Silverman was invited to speak at the prestigious TED conference this year. Her “presentation” was so offensive to the man who curates the event (Chris Anderson) that he tweeted an apology for her “godawful” material and has since elected not to post her presentation online. Co-founder of AOL Steve Chase also tweeted that Silverman was an inappropriate choice for TED. Silverman came back with some tweeted insults of her own.

At issue, apparently, is Ms. Silverman’s repeated use of the word “retarded.” However, according to reports, she also sang a song about penises.

If only we could see a video of the actual performance! But since we can’t, we are left with some hypothetical questions.

First, I must admit that I fucking hate Sarah Silverman. Hate as in HATE. I don’t think it’s because she’s shocking. I think it’s her delivery, along with her face and mannerisms. I have laughed my head off to Larry David’s comedic take on incest, racism, and the Holocaust. He has made fun of every disability I can think of, and I laughed because he’s so funny. Therefore, I can’t pretend that some subjects are sacrosanct.

Should Chris Anderson apologize to Ms. Silverman for publicly denouncing her performance? Should he post it online even if he finds it offensive? Does TED have an obligation to post it if it posts other speakers who appeared at the conference?

Should Ms. Silverman take into consideration the type of audience she is addressing, i.e. people who are gathered to hear about ideas? Or should she be applauded for daring to shock them? Is something Art because it is shocking? Is it always laudable to challenge taboos? If not, why not?

You can go here to watch Ms Silverman defend herself to Bill Maher.

I don’t know why anyone wants to hear Ms. Silverman say penis, vagina, and asshole with the smugness of a six year old who has just learned the power of swearing. If you think she’s a comic genius, you are certainly in good company. To my ears, she is nails on a chalkboard.

Here’s another question I just thought of: Would Silverman be funny if she couldn’t rely on “bad” words for effect?

Jump right in!