Apparently 60 Minutes did a piece on Echelon last night. Did anyone see it? (Is that show still really popular?)

Here's a mass email from Michael Moore about the upcoming election. I never know what to think about this guy. Basically I agree with him on most issues, but like I said, I'm never sure what to think about him. Maybe I've just been brainwashed by the anti-Moore publicity campaign. Still, I think he's on target here. I saw Nader on Meet the Press this morning and I thought he sounded very reasonable. Even electable, although I know the odds aren't too good on that one. If the internet does play any role in the election, I'd have to think it would be to Nadar's benefit. Are emails (political spam?) like this going to do any good?

6 de 8 de 2000--Visrestaurant Lucius--very very visre!!-- best mussel's ever

so far so good in amsterdam
great exotic fruit markets. fresh fish dinner (i say too much butter, lkb was pleased).
sipping 1996 chambolle musigny premier cru by vogue on the house boat deck, watching the gay pride celebration and water boat parade.

buckle in. we visited this shop yesterday and there's more than the web site shows...
more later

From the micro-informative television news watchers at the Tyndall Report comes this great political story (last story on this page.)

"DOUSE THE FLAMES In Dade County Fla municipal elections, a firefighter candidate stumbled across a rule that county workers cannot hold elective office. 'If he wins the election, he loses $200,000 in retirement benefits,' warned NBC’s Kerry Sanders. Too late to take his name off the ballot, what is a candidate to do? 'He is running the ultimate negative campaign. This candidate does not want to win. He hopes he will be able to say what few would ever want to say: I’m A Loser!'"

I'll bet he wins.

Martha Rosler @ ICP & NM as per NYT :

"as of today 8/16" :More Rosler As per c.Carr @ VV

Everything is running very slow this morning. The internet traffic report is picking up a few problems (like the completely dead router at washdc1-br1.bbnplanet.net - 100% packet loss - perfect score!) At first I thought our hosts at he.net might be suffering a DoS attack, but now it looks more widespread. Be patient.

Maybe this should go in sustenance, but the NY Post has it as an art review: the Jewish Museum 's ancient alcohol show, mentioned previously in these pages. Field trip, anyone?

wallse @ 344 west 11th st--super yummy--we ate every fish starter, some we asked for another right after finishing--i heard that the chef was so impressed that he came out to who we were, i missed that cause i was out in the other room bonding with the owner--the fish main's were even better--dessert were just ok but we didnt try enough--the meat dishes smelled and look good too and overall the dishes were light on the butter and very well flavored--worth every penny!!

Dave, I thought you were supposed to be blogger point man? I have to find out about new stuff on *riothero? What's the scoop on newsblogger?

Does this constitue a post? I sat next to Drew Barrymore last night (at El Teddy's.) She was drunk. Didn't look anything like her.</gossip>

if in need of a good glass of wine in brooklyn heights go to Tinto @ 60 henry st. lots of good wine by the glass!! food needs to move a notch or two up!! they need a sherry list asap!!

A big chemical company wants to sell you an "all natural" solution to clean the chemicals off of your produce. I think this is what they mean by "synergy".

01.01.01: Art in Technological Times

Referring to the last paragraph of dratfink's 7/26, gobs of fyre, I'm a prude, I admit it, but even if I weren't wouldn't those be kinda strong words for a bestselling author of adolescent children's books? Ms. Rowling's suggestion that someday Jesus will suck the greasy cock of the devil seems, I don't know, at least a little inappropriate, a little bitter. Did her mum run off with the clergyman and leave her on the steps of the orphanage?

first museam of flourescent art

Ancient Wine Artifacts on Display at New York Museum Posted: Thursday, July 27, 2000 By Jacob Gaffney The Jewish Museum, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is offering a look at the role of wine in the ancient world. Opening July 30, "Drink and Be Merry: Wine and Beer in Ancient Times" gives visitors a chance to gain insight into winemaking and drinking in early civilizations. "We wanted to take us into the new millennium with a glass of wine," said Michal Dayagi-Mendels, the curator of the exhibit, which originally opened last summer at Jerusalem's Israel Museum, where she works. "When I first started the exhibition, I knew only white wine, red wine, rosé. But the Talmud talks of 60 different types of wine; Pliny, the Roman historian, mentions 80 types; another writer mentioned 130 types; and so I have learned." The collection of wine-related artifacts shows that wine served an integral and complicated role in the lives of ancient men and women. The exhibit traces wine from its first appearance, about 8,000 years ago in the mountains of what is now Iran, to iron viticultural tools made in the 6th century B.C.E. (before the Common Era), around the time of the prophet Isaiah, up to Israeli mosaics, from 600 C.E. A rare find on display is a three-foot-long leather wine flask from the first century, which was used by Jewish rebels fighting Roman occupants. The soldiers would pour the wine from the flask into their drinking water. The alcohol would kill any harmful bacteria in the possibly contaminated water -- making the wine a true lifesaver. Even one of the Dead Sea scrolls has been rolled out for display, as the ancient Hebrew text describes the proper way to use wine in religious ceremonies. One would expect to find artifacts such as wineskins used by Jewish rebels and Hebrew scriptures at the Jewish Museum. But what about the guilded silver containers used by the Roman aristocracy or the pottery beer jugs with built-in filters that were placed in the tombs of affluent Egyptians? "Normally we don't have a statue of Dionysus in the museum," said Susan Braunstein, curator of the Jewish Museum. "But we believe the ancient period is the formative period of Jewish history. This exhibit gives us an opportunity to expand. Obviously, the use of wine is part of that importance." "Drink and Be Merry" will be shown at the Jewish Museum until Sept. 30. Admission is $8 for adults and $5.50 for students and senior citizens; children under 12 are admitted for free. # # # The Jewish Museum 1109 Fifth Ave. (entrance on 92nd Street) Hours: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., Tuesday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Friday and Saturday. (212) 423-3200 www.thejewishmuseum.org

As Malaclypse the Younger stated: "Tis an ill wind that blows no minds." (Yes, that link was basically an excuse to post the aphorism.)

Now that the major party conventions have been reduced to media events, the media are no longer interested. I'm thinking there's a message in there, somewhere. Once upon a time, the three networks all provided gavel-to-gavel coverage, suggesting that these were important events, which everyone should watch. In fact, they didn't leave you much choice. Old timers wax nostalgic about smoke filled rooms, public floor fights, and the days when things were actually decided at the conventions. Now it's all scripted in advance, and the networks treat the conventions like unpaid advertising, which is pretty much what they are. I guess PBS and cable will give you more coverage, if you really want it, but the Arianna Huffington fronted Shadow Conventions look to provide a more promising podium.

ny times pulls the plug on arts and technology column.

Having seen the show, let me give a stronger recommendation for Guido Hardt and Arthur Tsay, at 456 Gallery (456 Broadway, south of Grand, 3rd Floor). The show includes Guido's pencil drawings, which seem to elaborate on freeway off ramps, in a style that's somewhere between architectural rendering and calligraphy. One series integrates the structures with landscape settings in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Robert Smithson's work. The main thing, however, is a collaboration with Arthur Tsay, (I guess this is where the Chinese-American connection comes in). His PVC pipe sculpture serves as a speaker cabinet, which is suspended in the middle of the gallery, where it emits the electronic soundtrack for a stunning projection of psychedelic video feedback. It's a cool piece. These guys are definitely working in some areas that should be of interest to readers of these pages. The show is up till August 26; go see it.

From the Kesey archives, here's an 800k .mov file of Neal Cassidy driving the bus and talking the talk.

dave heres the post review of ducasse--New Ducasse Has No Class NY Post Steve Cuozzo July 26, 2000 ALAIN DUCASSE 160 Central Park South (Essex House) (212) 247-0300 AFTER two meals at Alain Ducasse, sifting the fine points of a good tantrum, you start making a list. Exactly what is it about this $200-a-head, chutzpah-snorting restaurant that makes you boil? Is it that: * It's the most arrogantly launched eatery in the history of the world? * Its $34 pasta appetizer would embarrass the Olive Garden? * Its hilarious service rituals insult true French professionalism? None of the above, I decided. What stinks most about this place is that, like old Vegas high-roller "gourmet" rooms that substituted spectacle for substance, it denies money its meaning. Our money, that is, not theirs: They even tried padding our bill. "ADNY," as it's stamped with Trumpean pomposity on plates and silverware, is less about "the world's greatest French chef" than about franchise sprawl. Globe-girdling Alain Ducasse means to tap Manhattan's cash gusher while it lasts, and ADNY is the mediocre, often comical result. True, Ducasse has dropped his "I am in all my restaurants at once" act and begun showing his face with a vengeance on Central Park South. You might even get to meet him in the kitchen, as we did when we spotted him and conveyed our awe to the staff. But if you want a taste of the real thing, stroll down to the Waldorf's Peacock Alley, whose great chef, Laurent Gras, actually cooked at Ducasse's three-star places in Paris and Monte Carlo. Easily America's most expensive restaurant, ADNY has shocked foodies out of their summer somnelence. They're agog over its $160 prix fixe menu and $2 million re-do of the old Les Celebrites. One of its snotty shticks is to close on Saturday - a practice increasingly rare in Paris - and serve lunch only twice a week. It gloats over an alleged 2,700-name waiting list. All this baloney has had the predictable effect on easily led minds reduced to aspic by the whisper of Ducasse's name. One normally sane Web site proclaims ADNY "America's finest restaurant." Mr. Grimes warns us not to expect a Times review soon as no tables are available until November. He might try picking up the phone: The Post got two reservations last week (one for lunch and one for dinner) just by calling and asking. [See story next page.] ADNY is so full of goofy pageantry, you expect "wine goddesses" to slide down poles and give neck rubs. Take the Presentation of Knives. A waiter displays a case made of rich-smelling leather. It holds a dozen cutting implements of cruel appearance, in many sizes and shapes. The waiter: "It is the knives for the squab. You choose the one for the bones. " We choose our weapons. We nervously await a pigeon of prehistoric dimensions. The squab proves anticlimactically tiny and boneless. Or take the notorious "courtesy" stools for ladies' purses. These serve mainly to bring out one's inner klutz, and I tripped over the damn things twice. The gimmickry spills over, literally, into "baba au rhum," where you choose the rum and see it poured, and the wine list whose seal you must break. Disappointingly, they were out of the first bottle we selected. ADNY lays on the laughs early and often. How can you not cackle over menu language reminiscent of old Chinese restaurants' - pasta "with tasty bouillon," berries "with unctuous cake?" Giving you a choice of fancy pens for check-signing is a side-splitter, when the dough isn't coming out of your own pocket. I drew the line, though, when they tried to charge us $108 for foie gras served as the chef's-compliments course known as the amuse-bouche. The puzzling explanation went: "Usually, it is salmon, but one of you ordered salmon, so we had to do the foie gras, but we took it off." We also watched a table-ful of chefs de cuisine from the Four Seasons send back a bill much too high. The explanation that time? "Wrong table." Whoops. Despite replacing Les Celebrites' bad art with worse, and lightening the colors, ADNY still looks like its predecessor: a high, rectangular rug joint broken up by two ponderous columns, with rosewood walls, circular banquettes and miles of gold trim. It's one of the city's most luxurious spaces and swell to spend three or four hours in. The greeting is warm and no one is haughty. But inside, it's a blizzard of impersonal buzzing, well-meaning but unfocused. ADNY desperately needs a ringmaster like Le Cirque's Sirio Maccioni or Le Perigord's Georges Briquet to lay on the dazzle. ADNY's floor crew could do with a master of any kind. No one seemed in charge of the table. One fellow insisted, with Regis' "final answer" gravity, that I choose dessert at the exact moment a second man was pouring me wine to taste. At dinner, we had to ask three times for bread; the tough mini-baguettes and salty brioches were a letdown after a 40-minute wait. They're quick to whisk away your napkin when you leave the table, but need reminding to replace it on your return. Asked to explain the gynecologically suggestive (and useless) implement supplied with certain dishes, the best the crew could offer was "asparagus tongs" - although there was no asparagus on the table. "Is the Arizona beef a house specialty?" we wondered. "No." Our man did not elaborate. What the hell is Arizona beef, which Ducasse calls "astonishing?" In fact, his comments on what he's up to in New York sound patronizing. "What I discover on each of my visits to the United States gives rise to much more than simple curiosity," he has said. "In San Francisco, I tasted the best preserved apricots of my life." Thanks, dude. ADNY's chef of record is Didier Elena, Ducasse's "accomplice" of 12 years. (Boy, do these guys need a translator.) The place has been open a month, but they don't seem to have the hang of the fiber optically smart kitchen, anchored by a 3,000-pound Molteni stove and bristling with gizmos like built-in woks that can boil water in 7 seconds. Lunch (the $160 tasting menu), enjoyable enough, fell shy of brilliant. Dinner (a la carte) was bad enough to disappoint had it cost $300 for three, much less $600 - and some dishes were outright debacles. The menu is middle-of-the-road classic, with a nod to "Mediterranean" influences and lip service to the Great American Bounty. Don't expect a cavalcade of the "luxury" ingredients foie gras, truffles and caviar. In high summer, most everything had a wintery aspect; even "tomatoes: a cocktail of tastes" looked dour on the plate. Some sauces were acidically harsh, others lacked their alleged themes and oversalting was rampant. Two "signature" dishes, lifted from Ducasse's places in Paris and Monte Carlo, were remarkably dull. Indifferent breading was no help to spongy, $74 veal sweetbreads in their own juice. Worse, spaghettini "al dente" ($34) with olive oil and sauteed vegetables - a sticky lump in a small bowl - was as congealed as bad Chinese takeout, drenched in a puddle of "crushed black truffles" oddly without taste. Far better was "delicate velouté of sweet peas, their pods and radish greens," poured at the table, with two breaded crab fingers. But $28 for pea soup? Santa Barbara spotted prawns "in a chaud-froid, citrus fondue" ($42) were plump, sweet and nicely aspic-glazed - but near-inedible citric ooze stole over the dish like a plague. So did shrill "peppered vinegars reduction" encircling "wild" salmon ($62) that was both mealy and bland. The best a la carte dish was seaweed-steamed halibut filet ($68), a firm slab atop lovely green herb sauce and accessorized with "sea urchin cappuccino" and Asian-scented greens. The tasting menu at lunch, when there were empty tables, showed signs of life. That tomato "cocktail" came with marvelous tomato sorbet that reminds you it is, after all, a fruit. Promiscuous laying-on of butter bailed out a blurry swirl of farfalle with ham and vegetables. Filet of sole, in the shape of a tube, might have been a tube of butter, so drenched was the fish - but it afforded pleasure with cranberry beans and delectable crawfish. Best was the squab - a pristine sliver that was simplicity itself. It was topped with "thighs in pastilla," an earthy game-and-spice mix in a cigarette-shaped phyllo crust of Moroccan inspiration, and black truffle-foie gras red wine reduction that, for once, delivered the goods. Camembert was chilled enough to have been refrigerated. Pastry director Frederic Robert's desserts ($22), like a warm glazed feuillantine served with almond ice cream atop apricot compote, were winners. A trolley laid on fun goodies like lollipops and cookies that took forever to be served. Once during lunch, I remarked to my colleague on how late it was getting. "You can't rush mediocrity," he observed. Maybe not, but they sure could discount it 40 percent. Thanks to ADNY, everyone else can raise their entree prices $10 and boast, "See how much cheaper we are than Ducasse?"

an email i received today from my friend bowman:

from the desk of Bowman H, wordsmith, rapper, ideationist, on-line movie review reviewer, ghostwriter, dog artist assistant, navy seal trainer, cheese lover, PERFORMANCE ARTIST:

Just wanted to let you know that I will be participating in a large scale art event this week, Thursday­Sunday at Judson House in New York City. It is a celebration of the history and legacy of Judson House, which is scheduled to be demolished in August. I will be part of a performance installation coordinated by Diane Dwyer.

Details about the event appear in the official press release, pasted below. For more information, see the website www.members.tripod/peculiarworks Hope to see you there.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Karen Greco (212) 695-7400

PECULIAR WORKS PROJECT

Presents

THE JUDSON HOUSE PROJECT

A Celebration of the History and Legacy of Judson House Before the Wrecking Ball Strikes! Four Days Only! Thursday, July 27 - Sunday, July 30! New York, New York  June 26, 2000 - Peculiar Works Project presents THEJUDSON HOUSE PROJECT, a celebration of the history and legacy of Judson House, for one weekend only, Thursday, July 27 - Sunday, July 30. Judson House is located at 237 Thompson Street (at the corner of West 3rd Street). Tours begin every half-hour, from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM (for a total of 7 tours per evening). Tours run approximately 90 minutes each. Tickets are $15. Reservations are required for the tour and can be made by calling (212) 529-3626 ext. 4. Throughout its history, Judson Church has been a breeding ground for social and cultural action. Since the turn of the 19th Century, they have sponsored a number of health and social service organizations, all of which have been based in Judson House. In the late 1950s, Judson House expanded its community services to include providing a home for experimental artists of all disciplines. The first site of the New York City "Happenings" of the 1960s, its ground-breaking Judson Gallery, Dance Theatre and Poet's Theatre were an integral part of the early Off Off Broadway contemporary dance and performance art movements. Avant-garde legends such as Claes Oldenberg, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Yvonne Ranier, Trisha Brown, Robert Rauschenberg, and Maria Irene Fornes worked or lived at Judson House. In 1999, Judson Memorial Church made the difficult decision to sell this historic house to New York University. The building is scheduled for demolition in August.

Peculiar Works Project, the brainchild behind Big Art in Small Spaces, is honoring this legendary mecca for avant- artists with THE JUDSON HOUSE PROJECT, a multi-disciplinary art and performance event. Consisting of nine performance and installation works in different spaces throughout Judson House, the audience is taken on a tour throughout the installations, with linking vignettes between each piece. Commissioning new artists from the fields of theater, dance, performance and installation art, THE JUDSON HOUSE PROJECT creates contemporary responses to the heritage of Judson and the groundbreaking work that took place there. The themes encompass references to Judson artists and their work as well as reflections on the social and political history of Judson House. The Sunday evening performance will be followed by a blowout party, appropriately called "The Wrecking Ball." The artists who will be participating in this one-time-only event are: Chris Burney; Laurel Jay Carpenter; Yanira Castro; Nancy S. Chu; S.M. Dale; Steven Dean; Diane Dwyer; Funkopolis (Tim Brown, Shannon Maddox and Gabriel Shanks); and Renee Philippi.

Peculiar Works Project, now in its seventh season, generates original performance that is accessible and fun for a diverse audience. Challenging the conventions of medium, structure and process in an alternative theatre context, Peculiar Works Project encourages collaboration, experimentation and a rebel spirit in emerging artists by providing them with the tools and opportunities necessary to grow throughout the creative process. Performing in non-traditional spaces, they have taken their work directly into NYC communities by presenting site-specific productions in landmark buildings, gutted storefronts and other peculiar sites in the Village, Soho, TriBeCa, the Lower East Side and, most recently, cyber-space. They have presented projects in conjunction with the Lincoln Center Theater Directors' Lab, Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre, HERE, Dixon Place, Judson Church, Nada, Downtown Arts Festival, CHARAS/El Bohio Cultural and Community Center, Greenwich House Music School and The Culture Project, among others.

THE JUDSON HOUSE PROJECT is funded in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the arts, and with private funds from The Peg Santvoord Foundation; The Nancy Quinn Fund for Emerging Theatres; and The Katherine Dalglish Foundation.