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From Curbed: New Willliamsburg Condos to Offer Free Oil?
Related, from Bad Advice: "Luxury Condos" or Toxic Death Dump?
Some funny writing about an unfunny topic: unscrupulous real estate developers building on environmentally suspect sites and then lying about it to buyers and renters. The New York metro area feels as lawless as the Wild West when it comes to property issues. Unlimited freedom to screw up: as when the guy next door dug down ten feet to add a basement apartment to his building and collapsed my downstairs neighbor's back yard.
Three Kings, 1999. George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze drive an open jeep around Iraq after the end of the First Gulf War, looking for a cache of Saddam's gold bullion. Wacky adventures ensue before the men become sensitized to the plight of the Shiites, who are attempting an uprising against Hussein's still-dominant forces.
Four Kings, 2009. Sequel to Three Kings. Soldiers leave the Green Zone in a self-armored Hummer during the Second Gulf War, looking for a cache of weapons left over from the Saddam years. Three die when their vehicle strikes an improvised explosive device; George Clooney loses an arm and a leg in the blast. The film deals with his painful recovery and his eventual radicalization into a staunch political foe of the "Bush regime." No wacky adventures are had.
More linkage you need (the New Net Art):
All of the phony names from spam emails Joel Holmberg has received this month as a rockyou textpix slideshow. Not sure which makes you want to drill a hole in your own head more--the thought of all that spam or the endless cheerful banality of "rockyou"'s personalized animated graphics.
Audio clip: hear George W. Bush, president of the United States, use the words "peeance" and "freeance" in a sentence (as adjectives, apparently). Not really net art, but worth putting in to flout conceptual purity.
Almost as depressing as the rockyou slideshow: Stock footage from Getty Images that is pulled up with the search request "artist looking at camera" (found by Guthrie Lonergan--who has a great nose for postModern anomie).
Updated: backgrounds are now transparent so the discs are round against a colored background--finally figured out how to do that this morning--takes a long time with the clumsy tools I'm using.
Update 2: fixed bad image tag--OK now, bloglines?
Not to be out-pr'ed by warmonger and torture bill endorser John McCain, "America's mayor" Rudy Giuliani today announced an "exploratory committee" for a 2008 presidential run. While he may have given Americans the brave-face-for-the-TV-cameras they needed on 9/11/01 while Bush was retreating into the Midwest, let's just say here once again that people in New York hate Giuliani. During his tenure as mayor he's remembered as a finger wagging control freak with a terrible record dealing with minorities. His "bravery" on 9/11 was damage control after his mistake in locating his 15 million dollar "command bunker" high up in 7 World Trade Center. Then, after leaving office, he milked the tragedy for personal financial gain as an expensive "security expert." Blogger Steve Gilliard thinks his dallying with mistresses and ties to corrupt individuals like Bernard Kerik will keep him from a successful run--sure hope so, he's a creep, not a "hero."
Found a couple of Dopplereffekt YouTube vids on this page: "Scientist" (without vocals) and "Satellites." Lots of grim laboratory visuals in the first one. This is Detroit electro--really great stuff.
Types of Artists
This list applies to all creative people but is especially geared to visual artists. I wish critics and art historians paid more heed to these distinctions.
1. Only one good piece in them. This type stumbles onto a work of genius despite general artistic inactivity. Provides valid material for shows such as Jim Shaw's "Thrift Store Paintings," as well as Google Images.
2. Comes charging out of school and then disappears. Probably the majority of artists are in this category.
3. Works privately entire life. For example, Henry Darger, a posthumous sensation.
4. Works publicly entire life--badly. Probably the second largest category. It includes: art professors who need a show every year to maintain credibility or academic standing, artists from category 2 who are canonized before they would otherwise disappear, human steamrollers whose egos will not let them be anything less than financially successful, or some combination of the above.
5. Works publicly entire life--well. Probably the smallest category, the self motivated artist who keeps it fresh through good times and bad, gallery and no gallery, and also engages other artists as well as the surrounding culture.
Most artists who read this will say they are in Category 5. This list is aimed not at you so much as the professional trainspotters who never seem to take these differences into account, resulting in bad survey shows and meaningless constructions of art history.
