Murmurs of Desire

Pigs to the Trough

2009-11-11T07:52:00.004-05:00

As the media froths up the public in another frenzy over the H1N1 shots what ends up playing out across the nation is a naked view of the power of wealth and privilege. Why is it surprising that individuals who are not in high risk categories are able to access a limited supply of flu shots? Capitalism places value on the ability to access such stocks in a time of high demand and low supply. At the same time the media presents an unbalanced view of the need for these shots in order to fill their unending need to fill airtime. Those with access to power and wealth are not the only ones to blame, those lining up for the shots are often well outside of the categories who are eligible for the shots. But when the media fosters an environment of fear everyone puts their own needs first. Mixed together we end up with a culture of self-obsessed individuals behaving badly, like those at airports, pushing themselves forward in the name of egoism and greed.

A Wild Video

2009-11-10T15:39:00.005-05:00

Ran across this on Nightcharm. Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, the wild visuals bring back fond memories of George Michael's, Fastlove, even though David Mason over at House of Vader has a really pointed critique of Lady Gaga herself...

and of course the always amazing Leigh Bowery...

and from Jeff Brunner "Disney Princesses & Princes, Deconstructed"...

Oh, so pretty

2009-11-09T08:08:00.004-05:00

This weekend were finally able to make it to Lowes to pick up a simple, colonial-inspired medallion for the kitchen ceiling. Over the past couple of weeks I had scoured every home store in Toronto looking for a really nice simple medallion and all I ever found were over-embellished, garish styles that would be too strong a statement in the kitchen. In the end Lowes was the only place that had the medallion we liked and we spent Sunday morning putting it and our new chandelier up and it turned out lovely. The chandelier is light and airy and is such an improvement over the old set of 80s track lighting.

Work it...

2009-11-06T16:42:00.003-05:00

From Fleggard in Denmark (found on Fleshbot Gay) a really sexy commercial. Lucky Danes, why can't we have more commercials like this?

And from the Wooly Pocket Garden Company, plant containers made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. A great way to recycle and at the same time provide a place for plants to grow.

Funny

2009-11-06T08:14:00.001-05:00

Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune

Muddling Through

2009-11-06T07:40:00.006-05:00

I have accomplished little over the past couple of days. Sometimes everything works out and a whole host of projects can be completed, allowing me to bask in the glow of accomplishment and other times nothing works, leaving me feeling dejected and lost. I tried using some of the european-styled hinges we salvaged from the upstair closets to afix the found mirror to the basement bathroom, but it just didn't look like I hoped. I still need to find something to close off the space as the air from the unconditioned crawl space is really cold and not pretty to look at.

On the reading front my 1st New York Review of Books arrived. After years of purchasing it at local bookstores I decided to order it and have it delivered. It means a small financial saving and it is a luxury discovering it in my mailbox. I have also been reading Russell Shorto's Descartes Bones: A Skeletal History of the conflict between faith and reason (New York: Doubleday, 2008). Shorto using the journey of Descartes bones across Europe as a starting point for discussing larger issues about the Enlightenment and the birth of modernism. He is able to weave together an intoxicating narrative that is enjoyable and informative. He writes in a similar manner to Christopher Benfey, Michael Pollan and Tim Falconer, using one subject to launch into a much broader cultural history. His writing and style is welcome breath of fresh air after some of the plodding books I have been reading due to a lack of good reading material.

Over at Disney & More is an article about The Michael Jackson Neverland Theme Park that never was.

Projects...

2009-11-03T19:07:00.007-05:00

The look we are hoping for...

The past couple of days I have been puttering around the house trying to get a host of projects completed (at the same time savouring the new DIY network and all its handy hints for completing projects). Every time I get close to finishing a project I run into a roadblock, either unexpected costs or a car to retrieve items unavailable at local hardware stores. Because we are in downtown Toronto there are few options beyond a Home Depot on the streetcar line at Gerard Square. All the other big box home stores are located in areas readily accessible only for those with cars. Although I do have access to Zipcars in a pinch, $ 12.00 for an hour to pick up some moulding often seems a little ridiculous.

In the basement I used up some of the mould and mildew paint left by the previous owner to apply a nice clean coat of white to the walls and the ceiling. We don't have an exhaust fan in the basement bathroom (something that will need to be added in the future) and the paint will help deter any humidity problems. On the weekend we found a wonderful old hinged bathroom mirror that will serve as the perfect cover for the entrance to the crawlspace. It has been sanded down and only needs some rusted hinges to come off before it can be measured for installation. At the same time I have been thinking about how to address the tiles in the bathroom. The subway tiles were installed on their end (probably to increase the perceived height of the room) but standing on their ends they don't have a finished edge. I had been thinking about buying a porcelain chair rail but the cost and the installation issues have held me back. However, today it occurred to me to use a pre-built beadboard chair-rail instead. It would finish the tiles, it would be cheaper and easier to install than a porcelain chair rail and would look really nice. At the same time I have been thinking about adding bead board wainscoting to the laundry room. Again the walls have always looked a little worn and tired and a little bit of bead board with some nice baseboards and a chair rail could go a long way to make the space appear more finished than it actually is.

Once that is done, all that needs to be addressed is replacing the rather dated lighting. Our vanity light is one of those 80s Hollywood type bubble strips and in the shower area there is some 80s track lighting. Both need to be replaced and I have been hunting for fixtures that would be inexpensive and also attractive for the space. Searching for lighting is always difficult. It is wonderful to be able to see everything displayed in the big box stores but the scale of the stores and the fact that so many are displayed together makes it hard to imagine what it will look like in a more confined and less well lit space. In the end there is always that leap of faith that something will look good. To achieve the best result possible I spend a lot of time looking and checking until I cannot see the space without that particular object, and then I know I have found the right fixture for the space.

Chrome and Glass Opal Fixture
(Love the porcelain look for the light over the vanity)

Good Earth from Glencoe Lighting at Lowes
(I like the nautical look of this fixture for the shower area)

A&B

2009-11-02T07:26:00.007-05:00

The New York Post on page 6 continues gossip about Anderson Cooper's sexuality. Like many who have come before he never speaks publicaly about his sexuality yet lives in an open manner. Lets face it, he's far too sexy to be straight, and the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, please! The folks over at Gawker are calling for him to come out, but who is he harming. Outing is one of those sensitive issues that should be raised when a public figure by his actions brings harm to the gay and lesbian community. Otherwise let them be. Calls to out everyone in the public eye irregardless of who they are and what they do smacks to much of holier than thou evangelical egoism. Let the guy be and we might get some sexy photos of him and Benji knoodling on the beach and then figure out what position he plays?

"Anderson Cooper has been consoling himself over falling ratings by living it up in Jaipur, India, at one of the world's most opulent hotels. The CNN star was spotted Tuesday with his muscular friend, Benjamin Maisani, an owner of East Village bar Eastern Bloc, at the Rambagh Palace, named the best hotel in the world by Conde Nast Traveler. Cooper's $3,200-a-night room features a four-poster mahogany bed and views of the gardens of the former Maharaja palace. Our source said, "Anderson's room has a large round bathtub. On the first night it was filled with bubbles and sprinkled with red rose petals." CNN declined to comment."

On a whole other gay front I picked up the only biography of Paul Lynde that I could find at my public library Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story (San Francisco: Advocate, 2005). Written by Joe Florenski and Steve Wilson the book is one of those quick, slapdash efforts pushed out by presses to capitalize on the popularity of a celebrity. Although poorly written and thrown together by pasting selections from biographies of others the subject is too entertaining. After discovering the Paul Lynde Halloween Special last week I remembered how much I adored him as a child. Growing up in a small town anyone in the media spotlight who was campy, or over the top always caught my attention and like many a gay child I was enthralled with his antics on Bewitched and anticipated any of his guest appearances on any other shows. Although caustic and bitchy his sense of humour came from a place I understood. Reading the biography it is not surprising to discover he enjoyed the booze and that the humour that gave him celebrity proved a double edged blade that could skewer anyone at anytime. While Florenski is certainly a fan of his subject it would be nice to a biography that situated Lynde's particular form of humour and his popularity with a generation of gays and lesbians in a larger cultural context (something similar to Irene Gammel's Baroness Elsa would be so exciting).

On Sunday T and I decided to tackle another room in our quest to paint the whole house. We decided on the middle bedroom (the office) as the room has little in it and the walls didn't need much preparation. The most amazing thing about painting is how quickly a drab and dull ceiling is transformed by a little paint. It makes the room look quickly look better and brighter. As the back and front bedrooms will eventually both be washed in light blues we opted for a light beige, named Moroccan Sand from Pittsburgh Paints. When looking at paint chips it is always hard to decide on which colour to choose and I usually cut out a group of chips and tape them to the wall to get an idea about which one I like the best. It takes time to decide, looking at the colour in various kinds of light and the Moroccan Sand was the one colour that seemed the best to brighten the room while not being to light. We spent the better part of the day prepping and painting (2 coats on the ceiling and the walls) but still have to finish the primed trim that came with our new floors.

To escape the smell of the paint we went for a walk through Chinatown on the search for a planter for T's money tree. His room will be painted a beautiful soft blue and we found a lovely blue-white patterned Chinese porcelain planter that will look lovely in his room. While wandering through Chinatown we found a Chinese restaurant that served Northeastern inspired Chinese food (something I have been missing) and decided to try it out. The food was less than inspired and not at all what I expected. One of my favourite dishes from my time in Beijing was Kung Pao (shrimp) and I was hoping to find something reminiscent. But alas the dish didn't bring back any the warm memories leaving us disappointed but sure we would not be returning to that particular restaurant. The quest continues for Beijing-styled food in the downtown area.

Happy Halloween

2009-11-01T09:50:00.007-05:00

For Halloween T and stayed home until 8ish to hand out candies to all the little ghouls and goblins and then walked over to Church Street to check out the costumes. As has been usual for the past couple of years there were more looky-loos and gawkers than those in costume but it is always the best place to catch a glimpse of anything cutting edge and creative. Almost everyone on the street seemed to have a camera, snapping away like a group of Asian tourists at everyone in costume. I love seeing costumes that are creative and innovative, especially when they are not store bought and show some real thought. The first to catch my eye was someone carrying a clear bubble umbrella dressed up to look like a jellyfish. Really fun and a great use of materials and a wonderful idea. Would have been nice paired with some of the characters from Finding Nemo, but fun none the less. Most straight people never seem to get how to dress appropriately, either depending on a store bought mask or opting for something strange and odd that is difficult to identify. After all costuming is about the art of illusion. One should be able on first glance to get what the costumer is trying to convey. If it takes too much thought or head scratching the costume has failed. A number of costumes left me confused about what the person was supposed to be. Often it was because the costume had been cobbled together too quickly, or often with little thought about what it was they were supposed to be. I have never been a big fan of zombies and they seem to be the costume of choice these days as they are easy to throw together.

However, one of the most entertaining, although most certainly store fabricated was a giant clear bubble that was labeled the H1N1 virus (there were a couple of swine flu costumes). But in this one, someone was walking inside a giant bubble virus making the street part as he rolled along inside his giant sized microbe. It was really creative and fun, but would make it difficult to go anywhere but Church Street (or the toilet?). We hung out for about an hour, but the cold was getting to me and my tooth began to hurt so we began our trek home, spotting on the way an entertaining Queen Elizabeth and a palace guard. Hopefully more photos show up in the blogsphere over the next couple of days as everyone rushes home with their cameras. A great way to pass the magic night of Halloween.

Slip Back...

2009-10-31T08:58:00.002-04:00

A sexy reminder from Radox in the U.K. about turning back the clocks.

One of the continuing health issues that complicate my life are problems with my teeth. Over the past couple of weeks a filling has become more and more painful making it difficult to concentrate on the mundane tasks of life. I have always had a high tolerance for pain except for two areas in my body, my teeth and my guts. Ironically enough most of the pain I have experienced has been in these two rather unrelated areas. My cancer was located all through my stomach regions and my teeth never cease to bring pain to my life. Robert Darnton writes somewhat tongue in cheek in his George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century writes how toothaches were one of the major concerns in the 18th-century. Everyone it seems had a toothache during this period, probably due to the availability of cheap refined sugars and the pain can drive one to distraction. Visiting the dentist this week we tried together to localize the pain to discover which tooth was the problem. In the end it was hard to localize, after tapping, probing and sensitizing with cold and I have been sent home for the weekend to see if it localizes to make sure we attack the right tooth next week (probably for a much dreaded root canal). In the interim I have been flooding my system with pain killers to deaden the feeling and to make it bearable over the Halloween weekend.

On the reading front I just finished Josephine Marchant's Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000 year old computer and the century long search to discover its secrets (Da Capo Press, 2009). The book follows the story of the discovery of an ancient Greek mechanical device, named the Antikythera device. Found in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean the device perplexed scholars and led to a whole host of theories. In the end it turns out that this sophisticated gear driven mechanical device was akin to a modern celestial clock that provided details about the movements of celestial bodies. It is a fun, light detective like story about how this device intriqued a group of scholars and enthusiasts.

At the same time I finished the more interesting Hobson Woodward's A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways who rescued Jamestown and inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest (New York: Viking, 2009). Woodward traces the life of William Strachey and his journey on the Sea Venture to Virginia in the early 17th-Century. The ship was thrown of course by a hurricane and stranded in Bermuda and the subsequent narratives provided the basis for Shakespeare's last play The Tempest. Woodward an archivist in....provides a fascinating detailed narrative of the adventure that makes for a good book and a great read.

Halloween is coming....

2009-10-30T08:34:00.001-04:00

And from Onion News a few costume tips to help butch up those young fey guys...really funny...

Finally

2009-10-29T07:49:00.002-04:00

President Obama finally signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act making it a federal law. A long time coming the law finally recognizes sexual orientation as a hate crime. Although this law will not stop hate crimes it will make them easier to track and help in the fight against hatred of all forms. A legacy for Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. and all those who have suffered at the hands of violence and hatred.

A Classy Broad

2009-10-28T17:54:00.002-04:00

The NY Daily News reports that Bea Arthur, who sadly died earlier this year has generously left $ 300,000 to the Ali Fornay Center in New York City. The Center provides transitional services to young gay and lesbian youths who are homeless or cast out by their families. A generous gesture from a Golden Lady.

Halloween Contest, c.1970

2009-10-28T08:00:00.003-04:00

A Halloween costume contest from 1970 at a gay club in Chicago.

What to Wear?

2009-10-27T17:12:00.006-04:00

From Geekologie

As all Hallow's Eve approachth, and all the little goblins plan their costumes to dazzle all they see I wonder what costumes will Halloween bring this year? Every year I am amazed by the costumes that people come up with. From Halloween's past I remember, Borg Cows (hilariously funny), Madonna in full concert gear trailing her first child on an umbillical cord undetached from her body (sick, but really funny), a chandelier that lit up, just to name a few. What you can count on are lots of interpretations of current events, like balloon boys, zombie Michael Jacksons, the kid or the house from UP and hopefully some Wild Things and who knows what else?

And from 1976 Paul Lynde's Halloween Special (in 6 parts)...

Deflating American Culture?

2009-10-25T08:42:00.004-04:00

Deconstructing "Balloon Boy" Frank Rich in The New York Times tells us what it says about American popular culture.

In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad

By FRANK RICH

Published: October 24, 2009

FOR a country desperate for good news, the now-deflated “balloon boy” spectacle would seem to be the perfect tonic. As Wolf Blitzer of CNN summed up the nation’s unrestrained joy upon learning that the imperiled boy had never been in any peril whatsoever: “All of us are so excited that little Falcon is fine.”

Then came even better news. After little Falcon revealed to Blitzer that his family “did this for the show,” we could all luxuriate in a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter what our own faults as parents, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor could we ever be as craven as the news media, especially cable television, which dumped a live broadcast of President Obama in New Orleans to track the supersized Jiffy Pop bag floating over Colorado.

Or such are the received lessons of this tale.

Certainly the “balloon boy” incident is a reflection of our time — much as the radio-induced “War of the Worlds” panic dramatized America’s jitters on the eve of World War II, or the national preoccupation with the now-forgotten Congressman Gary Condit signaled America’s pre-9/11 drift into escapism and complacency in the summer of 2001. But to see what “balloon boy” says about 2009, you have to look past the sentimental moral absolutes. You have to muster some sympathy for the devil of the piece, the Bad Dad. And you can’t grant blanket absolution to those in the American audience who smugly blame Heene and television exclusively for the entire embarrassing episode.

It would be lovely, for instance, to believe that cable audiences doubled in size that afternoon because they were rooting for little Falcon’s welfare. But as Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler would say on Weekend Update at “Saturday Night Live,” “Really?!?” Many of those viewers were driven by the same bloodlust that spawns rubberneckers at every highway accident: the hope of witnessing the graphic remains of a crash, not a soft landing.

It would also be nice to think that the “balloon boy” viewers were the innocent victims of a dazzling Houdini-class feat of wizardry — a “massive fraud,” as Bill O’Reilly thundered. But even slightly jaundiced onlookers might have questioned how a balloon could waft buoyantly through the skies for hours with a 6-year-old boy hidden within its contours. That so few did is an indication of how practiced we are at suspending disbelief when watching anything labeled news, whether the subject is W.M.D.’s in Iraq or celebrity gossip in Hollywood.

“They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,” the local sheriff, Jim Alderden, said last weekend, when he alleged that “balloon boy” was a hoax. His words could stand as the epitaph for an era.

In this case, the show wasn’t even that good. But, as usual, the news media nursed it along, enlisting as sales reps for the smoke and mirrors. While the incident unfolded, most TV anchors hyped rather than questioned the aeronautical viability of a vehicle resembling the flying saucers in Ed Wood’s camp 1950s sci-fi potboiler, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” But no sooner had the balloon been punctured than the press was caught in another flimflam. Reuters and CNBC delivered the bombshell that the United States Chamber of Commerce had abruptly reversed its intransigent opposition to climate-change legislation. The “spokesperson” source turned out to be the invention of liberal activists who had attempted to stage a prank press conference at Washington’s National Press Club.

Next to the other hoaxes and fantasies that have been abetted by the news media in recent years, both the “balloon boy” and Chamber of Commerce ruses are benign. The Colorado balloon may have led to the rerouting of flights and the wasteful deployment of law enforcement resources. But at least it didn’t lead the country into fiasco the way George W. Bush’s flyboy spectacle on an aircraft carrier helped beguile most of the Beltway press and too much of the public into believing that the mission had been accomplished in Iraq. The Chamber of Commerce stunt was a blip of a business news hoax next to the constant parade of carnival barkers who flogged empty stocks on cable during the speculative Wall Street orgies of the dot-com and housing booms.

As “balloon boy” played out, the White House opened fire on one purveyor of fictional news, Fox News, where “tea party” protests are inflated into a national rebellion rivaling the Civil War and where Glenn Beck routinely claims Obama is perpetrating a conspiracy to bring fascism to America. But the White House’s argument is diluted by the different, if less malevolently partisan, fictions that turn up on Fox’s competitors. On CNN, for instance, Lou Dobbs provided a platform for the nuts questioning Obama’s citizenship. When an ABC News correspondent insisted that Fox was “one of our sister organizations” in an exchange with the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, last week, he wasn’t joking.

Richard Heene is the inevitable product of this reigning culture, where “news,” “reality” television and reality itself are hopelessly scrambled and the warp-speed imperatives of cable-Internet competition allow no time for fact checking. Norman Lear, about the only prominent American to express any empathy for little Falcon’s father, vented on The Huffington Post, calling out CNN, MSNBC, Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS alike for their role in “creating a climate that mistakes entertainment for news.” This climate, he argued, “all but seduces a Richard and Mayumi Heene into believing they are — even if what they dream up to qualify is a hoax — entitled to their 15 minutes.”

None of this absolves Heene of blame for the damage he may have inflicted on the children he grotesquely used as a supporting cast in his schemes. But stupid he’s not. He knew how easy it would be to float “balloon boy” when the demarcation between truth and fiction has been obliterated.

There’s also some poignancy in his determination to grab what he and many others see as among the last accessible scraps of the American dream. As a freelance construction worker and handyman, he couldn’t find much employment in an economy where construction is frozen and homeowners are more worried about losing their homes than fixing them. Once his appetite had been whetted by two histrionic appearances on “Wife Swap,” an ABC reality program, it’s easy to see why Heene would turn his life and that of his family into a nonstop audition for more turns in the big tent of the reality media circus.

That circus is among the country’s last dependable job engines. More than a quarter of prime-time broadcast television is devoted to reality programs. And so, with only a high-school education, Heene tried to reinvent himself as a cable-ready tornado-chasing scientist. Robert Thomas, a Web entrepreneur who collaborated with Heene on a pitch to ABC for a science-based reality show, saw the “balloon boy” stunt as a sad response to his economic plight. “I think in this case the desperation was too much for Richard to bear,” Thomas said in an interview with Gawker.com. (It’s no less desperate a sign of the times that Thomas insisted on being paid for his interview.)

Heene is a direct descendant of those Americans of the Great Depression who fantasized, usually in vain, that they might find financial salvation if only they could grab a spotlight in show business. Some aspired to the “American Idol” of the day — “Major Bowes Amateur Hour,” a hugely popular weekly talent contest on network radio. Others traveled the seedy dance marathon circuit, entering 24/7 endurance contests that promised food and prize money in exchange for freak-show degradation and physical punishment. Horace McCoy’s 1935 novel memorializing this Depression milieu was aptly titled “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

In 1939, the year that John Steinbeck published “The Grapes of Wrath,” his Depression classic about dispossessed Dust Bowl sharecroppers migrating to California’s Salinas Valley in search of work, Nathanael West published “The Day of the Locust,” about those equally destitute Americans who traveled to Hollywood hoping to land in the movies. “They have been cheated and betrayed,” West wrote. “They have slaved and saved for nothing.” He could have been describing Americans who lost their jobs, homes and 401(k)’s in our own Great Recession.

The role models for today’s desperate fame seekers are “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” not Gable and Lombard. But even if they catch a break, as Heene did on “Wife Swap,” they still may end up betrayed by a stacked system. As The Times reported in August, many reality shows are as cruel as the old dance marathons. The usual Hollywood workplace rules allowing breaks for rest or meals often don’t apply. Nor, sometimes, does the minimum wage. Let ’em eat fame.

If Heene’s balloon was empty, so were the toxic financial instruments, inflated by the thin air of unsupported debt, that cratered the economy he inhabits. The press hyped both scams, and the public eagerly bought both. But between the bogus balloon and the banks’ bubble, there’s no contest as to which did the most damage to the country. The ultimate joke is that Heene, unlike the reckless gamblers at the top of Citigroup and A.I.G., may be the one with a serious shot at ending up behind bars.

Knowing what to expect

2009-10-24T18:37:00.003-04:00

"I know just what I want out of life... my pearls large and my hips small."

According to Ann Clare Austin, the mother of playwright Clare Boothe Luce this all one should expect from life. From An Aesthete's Lament a fabulous blog devoted to decoration, inspiration and edification.

Yesterday was another of those gray, rainy days and so T and I decided to slip into a movie to escape the rain. We opted for Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak's popular kid's book. Although it was nice to escape the rain for a couple of hours the pacing of the film was slow and the story was bracketed by a unnecessary story. The story explains why Max needs to escape to the land of the Wild Things but we both found the story clumsy and awkward. However when it came to the Wild Things Jonze remained true to the 'feel' of the book and presented a fun and often dark view of Max's world.

Today the rain held off long enough for us to begin tackling all the fall leaves strewn across the back and front yards. It gave us chance to clean not only the leaves but also some of the windows to let a little light back into our lives.

Mario Dunked

2009-10-23T15:35:00.003-04:00

Mario Lopez, shirtless on Ellen.

Last night was D's birthday and we were invited out to one of his favourite restaurants, Bistro Camino on the Danforth. I arrived early and had plenty of time scope out the decor and the menu. While inspired by French bistro the restaurant is owned by a really friendly and pleasant Japanese family. The atmosphere was odd, a mix of styles and design elements with no real cohesive core which was often mirrored in the food. I am always suspicious when a printed menu runs longer than one page. It makes one question the freshness of all the ingredients being used. Especially in a bistro where the best options should always be those offered on a chalk board. There is something about the immediacy of a chalk board that allows quick changes and substitutions and an attention to quality over quantity. Camino's diverse and odd menu ran to three pages including multiple seafood, lamb and beef dishes, with appetizers and unnecessary tapas. While there were few vegetarian or vegan options I decided on a smoked salmon appetizer and shrimp and sole dinner stuffed in a banana leaf. D had the red snapper special, while T had a lamb caccitore. The menu options ranged from French, to Italian with the odd asian ingredients thrown into the mix. While the service was good and the food decent for the location and the price it mirrored a larger confusion about its own identity. While everyone at the table sung the praises of the food, I found myself wishing that the kitchen spent time winnowing down what it offered, making a stronger and simpler menu with more precision and style. There could be more attention to quality rather than quantity which in the end would give the place more focus and direction and hopefully more clientele (we were 1 of 3 full tables). In the end it was nice to spend time with D&Z for D's birthday and to spend time with friends.

New Jobs

2009-10-22T08:12:00.002-04:00

After painting the back bedroom last weekend this week has been spent pulling the room back together and basking in the new light, bright colours. At the same time I have been putting together application packages for a host of academic jobs. Each September and January new jobs are posted for the following year and I can never resist throwing my hat into the ring. The biggest drawback is the fact that a 5 year gap appears on my c.v. after graduation in 2004. It is hard to explain such a gap when not addressing my time in hospital with cancer and the ensuing recovery. Cancer can take the wind out of your sails and beyond the physical recovery is the emotional and psychological recovery trying to find one's bearings. In the past I have been lucky garnishing 5 short lists out of well over 70 applications and hope that out of this batch I get at least 1 shortlist. It would be nice to believe myself a viable candidate to cobble together my identity as an academic.

So Beautiful

2009-10-21T07:56:00.000-04:00

For City Opera Costumes, Lofty New Roles

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

E. V. Day's sculptures made from vintage costumes from the New York City Opera's warehouse, now suspended in the promenade of the David H. Koch Theater. More Photos >

By RANDY KENNEDY

Published: October 20, 2009

NORTH BERGEN, N.J. — In deepest urban New Jersey, just off the hellish Routes 1 and 9, past the Lincoln Tunnel Motel and the Hoboken cemetery, sits an unlikely place that might be thought of as opera heaven. Or maybe opera purgatory, a cavernous building where hundreds of pieces of faux-ormolu-encrusted furniture, brass goblets, rubber plants and costumes — rack after elegant rack — end up when not in use in productions by New York City Opera, awaiting their next night on the stage.

Slide Show

But for many of the costumes, the ones in odd sizes or past their prime, the wait is in vain, their requiems sung. And that is where E. V. Day comes in.

Over the last several months, while the opera has been preparing to begin its new season after extensive renovations to its home at Lincoln Center, the David H. Koch Theater, Ms. Day has been given free rein to rummage through its considerable closets. An artist best known for transforming clothing into sculpture material — deconstructed dresses arrested in the act of exploding, frighteningly dissected wetsuits, G-strings arrayed in fighter-jet formations — Ms. Day, 42, has described her work as “futurist abstract paintings in three dimensions,” and as a means of examining social constructs, particularly the roles that clothes can impose on women.

But when George Steel, the opera’s new general manager and artistic director, told Ms. Day that he was interested in commissioning her to create a temporary installation for the theater’s grand promenade space, she was quickly plunged into a world of grand fiction and high tradition in which clothes don’t just impose roles but also practically define them.

“I would be going through all these beautiful dresses that looked very similar initially, and I’d say to the costume people, ‘Who might wear this one?’ ” Ms. Day recalled recently inside the opera’s costume repository, where she has been working on the project since late August. “And without missing a beat they’d say, ‘Oh that’s Violetta from ‘La Traviata.’ ”

The clothing that Ms. Day has transformed in her work for the opera — 13 pieces in all, which will go on view to the public on Nov. 6 and remain in place through the fall and spring seasons, suspended among the promenade’s catwalks — is a veritable opera traditionalist’s cast of characters. There is Don Giovanni, represented by his black gloves, one flying up a cloud of a crinoline skirt like a hawk attacking a flock of doves. There is Mimi from “La Bohème,” represented by a stark-red velvet dress that is, like all of Ms. Day’s work, suspended using dozens of pieces of fishing line attached to the cloth with fishing-tackle connectors called swivel snaps; in this case the dress looks as if an elegant form of rigor mortis had set in after tuberculosis claimed its owner. There is the lacy, ethereal shell of Manon’s dress, a copy of one worn by Beverly Sills during a performance as the character in Massenet’s opera. And Cio-Cio-San’s kimono from “Madama Butterfly” is shown ascending in a kind of triumphant flight from her tragic fate.

No one was more surprised by the classical nature of the choices than Ms. Day. “I came into this knowing very little about opera,” she said. “And when I started, they gave me carte blanche. I could pick whatever I wanted. I was just looking for some kind of organizing principle.”

She considered hundreds of costumes that the opera’s wardrobe department showed her. But as she began to listen to more opera (“We immediately equipped her with a huge mountain of CDs,” Mr. Steel said) and to read more about it, she found herself drawn to the more timeless stories. “I started to get very involved,” she said. “I got so revved up by these characters.”

Mr. Steel, under whose leadership the opera has also mounted a show of the work of contemporary photographers like Ryan McGinley and Elinor Carucci in the promenade, said he had always felt strongly that opera should forge stronger connections with the contemporary art world. “This is not just an add-on,” he said. “We’re interested in a very central connection to the art that’s being made today.”

On a recent visit to the costume repository, Ms. Day took a reporter on a tour of what seemed like miles of racks, organized with labels like “choir, monk, robes, liturgical” and “matador” and “shepherdess” and “peasant, colorful” and “peasant, distressed.” (“Distressed peasant” became a comic catchphrase for Ms. Day and everyone working with her over the last two months in New Jersey. “You’d ask somebody how they felt,” she said. “And if it was a bad day, they’d say, ‘Distressed peasant.’ ”)

As they worked, eventually using 22 miles of fishing line to create the sculptures, she and her helpers would often listen to opera — Maria Callas’s “Habanera” from “Carmen,” for example — but also to other operatically powerful women like Wendy O. Williams and Diamanda Galás.

For a sculptor whose raw material is clothing, Ms. Day said there were days, even in the dark and sometimes frigid costume building, when she felt as if she were in heaven. “This is couture,” she said, pointing out the intricate, tiny beadwork on a dress, details that would probably be lost even to operagoers in the first row. “There are no glue guns with these clothes, no Bedazzlers. These are all hand-stitched. It’s an art form.” Partly because of this, many of the costumes have remained more or less intact, unlike, say, the exploded replica of Marilyn Monroe’s famous white halter dress in “Bombshell,” Ms. Day’s piece in the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

In an essay she wrote to accompany this exhibition, she says that “what helped me in imagining new forms for these costumes was all the evidence of life that I found inside them: multiple alterations, perspiration stains, dirt from dragging frilly petticoats across the stage so many miles, makeup smudged around the collars and layers of tags sewn inside showing their provenance: the characters, the productions, the stages they’d played.”

“I wanted to reanimate those lives,” she added, “and give them a future form in the promenade.”

Besides the pieces based on costumes of particular characters, she also created one that showcased only hats, another for women’s outlandish undergarments like hoops and panniers and another for men’s accouterments like tricorn hats, codpieces and dickeys. “The guys are such peacocks in so many of the productions,” Ms. Day said.

Walking around the Koch Theater’s promenade last week as riggers hoisted her creations into the air, she passed beneath the Don Giovanni sculpture, and a visitor remarked on the crotchless pink bloomers visible under the crinoline skirt.

“I asked about bloomers, and the costume people said that if they were worn, they’d be like that, so that the wearer of all this complicated clothing could sit on the chamber pot without getting completely undressed,” she said, smiling. “I just wanted to be as authentic as possible.”

“For my next pieces,” she added, “I’d really like to do something just about all the underwear. It’s so amazing.”

So True

2009-10-21T07:43:00.003-04:00

Marshall Ramsey, The Clarion-Ledger

Ken Catalino

Cameron Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen

Gay Marriage

2009-10-20T07:54:00.002-04:00

A new Irish commercial from Marriage Equality calling for the support of civil marriages for gays and lesbians. Its always nice to put the shoe on the other foot and to walk in someone's shoes to see how it feels. Similar to an earlier commercial from Let California Ring.

Marvellous

2009-10-19T17:33:00.003-04:00

Joe La Placa and Mike Platt the talent behind All Visual Arts presents a new show The Age of the Marvellous in London, England. At the center sits Polly Morgan's beautiful At the Beginning.

Potential?

2009-10-19T08:18:00.001-04:00

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

1 down, 10 to go...

2009-10-18T08:03:00.005-04:00

On Friday T was off for the day so we decided to tackle painting one room in the house. We began with the back bedroom which is one of the smallest rooms in the house and it was one of the first colours that solidified in my head. The room gets a lot of western light and changes in tone and colour throughout the day. Trying to keep as much light as possible, as the room has some intentional (and unintentional) odd shapes and ceilings, I choose Himalayan Mist, a light blue from Pittsburgh Paints discovered at our local paint store, Exclusive Paints on College Street. We didn't want to move my bed and trunk again, so we moved everything into the centre of the room, tapped down the floors and the walls and tackled the room. We began with the many angled ceiling and were pleased to discover how quickly a lick of paint transformed the room. The previous owner at one point had a track lighting fixture on the ceiling that had left its mark and the ceiling paint made it all disappear. We then painted the walls with 2 coats waiting impatiently for everything to dry.

On Friday night D&Z invited us to explore a costume shop looking for costumes for Halloween. We drove up to Dufferin and Dupont to check out Theatrix Costume House. It was fun to wade through everything in a shop that was packed to the rafters with costumes, masks and accessories. We spent more time there than expected and in the end we all were becoming testy with hunger. We stopped at the Indian Rice Factory but were turned away because we didn't have a reservation and instead drove down to Bloor Street West for a nice, simple dinner at J-Time a sushi standby.

On Saturday after our foray to Kensington we tackled the trim in the bedroom and quickly finished off the room. Its always hard not to rip off the paint tape right away to see how everything looks so we went for a long walk north through Forest Hill to Eglington and Yonge to check out some of the new stuff at Restoration Hardware. After painting the room the existing bedding is too dark (it is a deep burgandy with gold accents) and I have been coveting Restoration Hardware's new Italian Cypress Paisley bedding sets. I just wasn't sure which set would be most appropriate (at least in my dreams) and I wanted to see them in the store. In the end the blue set would be the most appropriate with the new light colours in the room. We returned home to reveal the room and were impressed by the new colour. It made the room feel so fresh, light and new. Although we were both exhausted we dressed the room, finally hanging the new bi-fold shuttered doors finishing the room and pulling it all together.