American Madness

How to articulate this? Increasingly, I’m experiencing this problem of knowing so much about people I don’t know that I feel like I do know them. It’s worse than celebrity stalking because the people aren’t really celebrities. Why do I need to know so much about a couple of famous-in-blogland bloggers? But I do. So if I met them it would be odd for me, because I’d be up to speed, and does one pretend not to be? Or does one just jump in? It’s a similar problem to Googling one’s date (definitely not advisable).

But it’s an entirely different type of weirdness to wake up and discover that the rest of the world now knows someone you know. Because how does one react to that? There can be a sort of jealousy in the same way one is upset when a favorite but obscure band is no longer obscure. There’s an entirely undeserved sense of ownership, but that’s not exactly the right word, and the feeling that there’s been a type of theft, which is related to an equally undeserved sense of pride (I found it first!). But when these feelings relate to a person they are obviously different than losing a restaurant or a hidden vacation spot to the unwashed masses.

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So, even though it is called Pop Art, where the pop strands for popular, quite a bit of it still has not found its place in mainstream society. In fact a lot of developing pop art has not found a place in popular culture (which leads to the question, “is it still pop art?”). That is why it is nice to see one of the bigger names in pop art getting recognition in what could be considered one of the biggest popular culture crossover venues around.

Jeff Koons has been making pop art for close to 20 years now. Some of his best known work is taking inflatable toys, and then creating metal sculptures out of them, maintaining the appearance of being inflated, but with a permanence that can only be obtained from casting in metal.

In an odd twist, Koons’ iconic Rabbit sculpture of an inflatable rabbit made of highly polished stainless steel has been turned into a balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Yes, you read that correctly: Koon’ steel sculpture of an inflatable rabbit was turned into an inflatable balloon. Someone somewhere is having a great laugh over this

Some consider Charles Bukowski one of the greatest American authors of the the 20th century. In his 30 some odd years of writing he produced somewhere in the range of 100 books, including stories and poetry.

An article from LA Weekly discusses part of the legacy Bukowski left behind: Mostly his writing was about being down and out in and around LA. He also did a great deal of his writing in a little “bungalow” in LA. That same bungalow complex is not up for sale and will probably end up being torn down if not for the efforts of Richard Schave and Lauren Everett. They are working on getting the location recognized as a landmark, the home of Charles Bukowski, maybe even turned into a writers colony in the heart of Hollywood. The current owners have different ideas. They want to see the place purchased and torn down, they figure it is the perfect spot for new condos or a nice fast food restaurant.

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Slow day, eh? Everyone’s already in holiday mode.

I went on a LOOOOONG lunch today and got to talking with a new friend about the follies shows we put on (most recently I posted about the Bloomberg parody video and Gawker picked up on it, too).

She asked how long it took me to write the song parodies we do each year. This year I think I spent a total of five hours, maybe less (for five songs).

But the longest I’ve ever spent on a single song was getting the concept of the housing bubble to work to the tune of O, Fortuna from Carmina Burana. Not that you care, but here were the lyrics to that.

Staccato bursts of words (versus multi-syllable words) are definitely harder to replicate with modern English than one would think.

Wish I had the video of this. It was pretty well done. At the end, we had a journalist come out wielding a huge drum and crashing head first through a cardboard brick “house.”

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Forbes just published an article: America’s Most Obese Cities.

Unfortunately the news in this article isn’t that surprising. Americans tend to be obese, shocking. This obesity is caused, at least in part, by eating poorly and being lazy. Did I mention how shocked I was by this information. High poverty rates also tend to add to obesity which seems counter intuitive (don’t the poor have less to spend on food?) until you consider that fast food restaurants are usually highly concentrated in less affluent neighborhoods.

Though they list 20 cities in the article we’ll only list the top 5 here: (more…)

Okay, well maybe not pregnant… Apparently the NY Times is all up in arms over the “discovery” of the conditions under which NYC manhole covers are made in India. A photo on the cover of the times (and right there to the right) shows bare foot, bare-chested, Indian men working in iron foundries producing New York’s manhole covers.

The article questions the safety conditions under which these guys are working. No protective clothes, no eye wear, and yes, no shoes even. Con Edison officials, the folks purchasing the manhole covers said they were surprised by the lack of safety precautions and said they take them very seriously. The foundry, which forges the manhole covers out of molten iron, claims to have had no accidents, though other officials say that a lot of the accidents go unreported. (more…)

The New Museum is re-opening its doors to the public very shortly. In fact it opens to the public on Saturday. If you live in New York you may have seen some of the banners proclaiming its arrival or some of the posters that have been plastered up all over the place.

One of the more innovative ads they have placed announcing their arrival is a cross-over ad in conjunction with Calvin Klein. Although seemingly odd bed-fellows the two have come together in an ad that is a little out of the ordinary. Over the course of the week the Calvin Klein ad on Houston and Lafayette (a jump ad that covers the entire side of a 5 or 6 story building) looked like it had been attacked by pink splatter paint. On the first day pink paint appeared to be dripping down from the top of the ad. On day two the paint had “dripped” down covering most of the ad and then finally there was the “reveal” last night when the rest of the new ad went up- dripped pink paint outlining the shape of the New Museum with the text announcing the museums opening in December on the Bowery.

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As we enter the holiday season folks are opening their wallets for many reasons, usually to buy a gift for some one. well here is an idea, give the gift of charity… I know it sounds hokey and all, but this really is the time of year when folks consider giving to charities and good causes.

There are the typical players like Oxfam, UNICEF, Sierra Club and of course, the Salvation Army. Then there are some new projects working on raising money or doing good.

DonorsChoice allows you to donate money to fund the needs of public schools. You can even look for what public schools in your area need and provide a donation to help fund those specific items.

Heifer International is a growing organization that, based on your donation, gives livestock to families in need, allowing them to produce their own eggs or milk. They’ve also expanded their initiatives and have a full online catalogue for you to search through and decide which gift is right for you.

If you still want to give (or give as a gift), but none of those seem right for you check out Charity Watch, a site set up by the American Institute of Philanthropy which gives various charities grades based on a whole set of criteria.

One of my favorite parts of this years Financial Follies: a tour of the Bloomberg, Inc. newsroom. Actually, most of the video is pretty hokey, but I do like the part towards the end when they say the modernist helix-like string of lights is a representation of Mike Bloomberg’s DNA.

The Follies are put on annually in November by the New York Financial Writers’ Association. This year, I was tasked with writing a lot of the songs for the live numbers, but (unfortunately) had no hand in the video production, which turned out to be a great addition to the show. That honor went to Myron Kandel, a founder of CNN, and to funnyman Peter Phelan, in association with various news organizations, such as Bloomberg.

Although I am not a paranoid shut-in, afraid to step out my door, positive that imminent disaster waits around every corner, this is the website that could definitely turn me into one. So, before you go and check it out, be forewarned: This is not for people who fear disaster.

The Global Incident Map is just that, a map that charts the latest “Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activities.” This could include anything that could even be remotely considered “suspicious” including false alarms, as they raise fear and terror levels.

Click on any of the events on the map, each with its own icon to display the type of event (a little explosion for bomb threats, little trains for railway threats, little planes for airports, etc…) and you will discover what caused the little alert to show up, ranging from “Brooklyn-bound subway service on the 6 line was disrupted between 125th and 42nd streets due to a police investigation at the 77th street station” to “A suicide bomb on the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday killed six schoolchildren and wounded three Italians working on a project to build a bridge.” (more…)