Frank Stella's 20,000 lb. piece of space-junk for The National Gallery.

New York's Weirdest Restaurant?

Any ideas for tomorrow? I'm game. MB's out. I think I need to save my rivington street party coupons for 6/2. Bars are good on the early side, but these days they get unbearably crowded fast. Especially on Ludlow street. But if a bar it must be (not that I'd be complaining,) maybe we could try lolita, which I'll gamble is very empty until much much later. It's a new place on Broome, between Allen and Orchard.

"WHEN 71 Clinton Fresh Food took the dining world by storm in the fall of 1999, it raised the bar for modest little restaurants all over downtown. It was the "Sex, Lies and Videotape" of restaurants, a surprise low-budget hit that everyone wants to replicate. No longer is it enough to send out decent food at a decent price. Now, every little boîte with 10 tables hopes to have its own cult."

would be nice if there was a post option in the left hand column so it isnt necessary to scroll to the bottom. or else a header option. also, the spaces between post are smaller than the spaces between paragraphs inside of a post. the space between posts should be larger or at least as large.

the future is now -- extreme gaming. seems like theres a movie concept in there somewhere or maybe just a subculture. i was also thinking a dialogue between the unabomber and mcveigh would make an interesting scene. apparently they were on the same cell block and had the opportunity to talk to each other. i wouldnt imagine that those two had much freedom in prison to congregate. maybe they had group therapy together. can someone on death row get psychiatric care?

The convert line breaks to html is a nice feature I must say.

What about this computer chair setup? Strange times we live in.

Skunk Baxter, Rocket Man?

Skunk Baxter, Rocket Man?

My good friend Stephen has been lurking a bit on the site. He's the guy with the amazing place in Sayville that I sometimes mention on my page. Some of you have been there, although he and Virginia were not there at the time. She's the one who made all the cool plates that we have at Rivington St. Anyway, he might be around these parts, and while not wanting to demand he write anything, I thought I'd see if we could get a little introduction going...

How's our garden doing Stephen? I get part ownership because of those 20 minutes of work, right?

We have a plan to make a page with a webcam so anyone can check in on the weather out there (and the garden) even if you're stuck in the city working.

Wow! Thanks, Jim, for the new page. I've already moved in and shuffled the furniture around. I'm very pleased with the expanded archive feature (listing posts by subject in a clean, easy-to-use format) and the various ways to modify and create pages. Great work!

Well, this isn't going as smoothly as I would like, but no major problems. Of course there is no documentation for the new system, so I'm not sure how I expect people to know what's going on....

Anyway, here's a couple things to get everyone started:

You can log into the system at http://www.digitalmediatree.com/login

If you have forgotten or lost your new password (sorry they are not so easy to remember this time, but I think we need the added security) just type your name as it appears on the site (like "posted by: ") into the bottom field and the system will email you your password.

People who are not signed in will see the standard list of pages on the front page. If you are signed in, then you control what goes on the front page. For most people I've put the regular pages up there by default, but the idea is that you are supposed to choose what goes there.

For every page on the site that you can see, you have a "subscription" to that page. To look at your subscription just go to the page in question and click on [subscriptions]. You will see a box with all your subscription info. This tells you whether or not you can post to the page and whether or not you can create new pages underneath that page. There is then a pull down menu that controls how the system keeps track of new stuff (either just new posts, just new comments, both new posts and new comments, or nothing.) Next to that is a field where you could put in an email address. If you do, then an email will be sent to that address every time something new is posted to the page (this is dependent on how you have set tracking for that page.) And then next to that is a filed labeled "homepage". If the page in question is not part of your homepage (http://www.digitalmediatree.com) then this will be a checkbox. Checking the box will add the page to your homepage. If the page is already on your homepage, then you will see a number which represents the order that page falls in the list of pages on your homepage. Change this number to change the ordering of pages. Just change it to whatever you want and the system will reorder the other pages.

For a complete list of pages everywhere on the site, go to /index. This is the same as the [site index] link at the bottom of most pages. This page displays a list of files. After each file is an abbreviated version of your subscription info so you can see everything at once. This is the information inside []'s after each file name. The maximum information would be [P C TB/TP/TC E P] where P = posting powers, C = create new page powers, TP = track new posts OR TC = track new comments OR TB = track both, E = email updates, and P = a private page. A private page that you do not have permission for would not be listed. The /index page also lists [new posts] and [new comments] just like the homepage (and regardless of whether the page appears on your homepage.) Notice that /index can be used at any level in the filesystem, so http://www.digitalmediatree.com/jim/index will get you the directory listing at just that level.

Posting is basically the same. You don't have to put <p> or <br> tags if you keep the "convert line breaks to html" checked. Just use the return and the system will put in the html for you. I'll talk about the "summary headline" field later, but it's basically just what shows up in the "summary" area in the /archive for each page. Any page that has expired content automatically has an archive located at .../archive (like /treehouse/archive.)

You can make a preview post (instead of "post now") in which case it will appear on the destination page, but only you can see it. [edit]ing the post will allow you to change it to a live ("post now") post. Next to that is another pull down for "substitution". If substitution is on then you can include, inside of double quotes, the description of any uploaded picture, and the system will put in the html for you.

Much more to come.

i know its planning a head a bit but anyone willing to confirm YAT 5/31 at 50 8th ave?? does it have to be a certain way??

"Most leading print magazines would happily send you their product for free if they had any way of knowing (and proving to advertisers) that you read it. Advertisers figure, reasonably, that folks who pay for a magazine are more likely to read it, and maybe see their ad, than those who don't. So magazines make you pay, even if it costs them more than they get from you."

miss usa (sort of) supports those denouncing the us navys bombing range in vieques. in related news, resident bush supports the use of petroleum based products in beauty pageants.

before there was jesus alou, there was jesus.

...with real cocoa!

The weather here is amazing, and the blooming trees make the landscape look as if it is covered with fireworks frozen in mid-bang.

Missing Chuck Close Discovered

May 10, 2001 (AP)

An important early painting by American photorealist painter Chuck Close, stolen from the artist's studio thirty years ago, was recently discovered in a Westchester County basement. "Harry," measuring 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide and painstakingly rendered in acrylic on canvas, is described by Museum of Modern Art curator Robert Storr as "a striking example of Close's early style." Close himself has authenticated the painting, saying, in a phone interview from his Manhattan loft, "It's Harry, all right. I feel as if I've gotten an old friend back."

Painted in 1970, "Harry" was one of the last purely photorealistic images Close produced, and one of a mere handful done in full color. The subject was Harry Ernesto, a musician and part-time model who lived near Close's studio in Soho. Close never exhibited the painting because he didn't believe the subject was "scruffy enough"; most of his paintings of the period, he says self-mockingly, featured the "bad hair and negligible fashion sense" characteristic of three decades ago. Shortly after the work was completed, it was stolen from Close's loft, in an incident described by the police as a "straightforward break-in."

"I was in the press quite a bit at the time," according to Close, who is considered one of America's most important living painters. "I guess somebody thought they might find something valuable in my studio. 'Harry' was off the stretcher and rolled up--whoever did it came in the window and left with the roll." A year after the theft, Ernesto, the model, died in a plane crash, an incident which investigators determined had no connection to the break-in.

The biggest mystery is how the roll ended up in Port Chester, NY. John McCafferty, the realtor who brought the painting to the attention of authorities, discovered it in the basement of a house that had been on the selling block for several years. "I was poking around down there," said the realtor, "and when I found this, I knew it was something major. I hadn't heard of Close, but a friend of mine told me he's a really big deal." The house has been vacant since 1996, and the last owner of record, Edna Lughner, could not be reached for comment.

Now that Close's painting has been recovered, the artist has changed his mind about the aesthetic merit of the piece. "I think it's fabulous," he said, noting that his gallery, PaceWildenstein, already has a huge list of potential buyers. Looking at it now, he says he is amazed how much it resembles images made today with a computer. "What took me weeks of patient labor can now be produced in a day or two," he says, with a trace of wistfulness. "Times have certainly changed."


"Harry," by Chuck Close

Teilhard, the Internet, Birds…
Washington Post article includes quotes from Ralph Abraham, Murry Gell-man, JP Barlow, etc.

Pass the Nebulizer this tree crud is killing me. Westchester NY has 8 to 10 times higher pollen count than usual. Armonk measured 6,790 pollen particles per cubic meter (15 to 89 is moderate, 90 to 1,500 is considered high).

YAT is upon us. Now that the weather has turned, my favorite bar - Barramundi, 147 Ludlow - has opened their garden, as well as opening their doors a little earlier. Officially they don't open until 6:00, but I've secured the O.K., for us to arrive at 5:30 tomorrow evening (thursday.) That gives us an opening half hour in the garden undisturbed, and even after that it doesn't get crowded for quite some time.

Of course I'm open to other suggestions as well.

The LA Times and NY Times recently published articles on synthespians (all-digital actors); although both would be described as "think pieces," their main purpose seems to be hyping two upcoming movies: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Simone. (By posting and mentioning those titles, I'm playing my part in the spin-cycle. Where do I pick up my check?) The LA Times piece is better, because it's more of a straight trade-mag account of the new processes and film industry responses to them. (I love that the article mentions Tron, even though I disagree that it "set back computer animation by a decade": its retro-futurist approach looks better than a lot of what's being produced now!) The NY Times piece, "Perfect Model: Gorgeous, No Complaints, Made of Pixels" by Ruth La Ferla, is more annoying, because it's hype disguised as criticism: lots of mock-profound gushing from people in the synthetic human biz, with the obligatory quote from a culture-studies prof. One concept mentioned in the LAT article is "the uncanny valley," a principle of robotics that says the more an android resembles a human, the more we focus on the minute differences between us and it. This makes sense, and would seem neatly to demolish the NYT's pitch about virtual models and actresses.