SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

tessellation, n.

1. the careful juxtaposition of shapes in a pattern; "a tessellation of hexagons"
2. the act of adorning with mosaic.


“A tom, sirs, a ginger tom and proud of it. Proud of his fine, white shirtfront that dazzles harmoniously against his orange and tangerine tessellations (oh! what a fiery suit of lights have I).”
--Angela Carter, Puss in Boots

Posted by Simone Muench at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we stood there, watching the flames, I couldn’t help feeling the warmth of satisfaction. There was only a hint of bittersweet lurking in the shadows, represented by the knowledge that I couldn’t share the beauty of my revenge. It was a small price to pay. Giant rafters burned, brick walls crumbled in on years of work. Clouds glowed ruby and pumpkin as the rain sizzled in the inferno. For once the karmic scales had tipped my way. The great wheel in the sky, which had always turned a blind eye to my need, had finally landed on my number. In front of me was regular old combustion, handed down through countless generations. Inside of me was cold fusion.
Of course, a thing of such beauty really can’t be kept private, I know that. So here it is, committed to history in the only form certain to protect me from harm. I don’t worry that it’s here in my journal - I’ve come to accept that these words will never be published and read. No matter how prolific I may be, and no matter the quality of my work, no one seems to take notice. No one except Roger, of course, but then he’s the reason this whole thing happened in the first place. It’s his fault. All of this is his fault.

This entire thing began with another fire, a truly tragic fire, a complete waste. There was nothing poetic about that blaze. The end result was merely the ruin of hundreds of beautiful artworks. Someone died. It wasn’t meaningful or metaphorical, there was no sense of justice, no one was paid back. No one deserved that fire; it was just an accident. And that thing was just a campfire compared to this inferno. This fire was seen for miles around, and required four stations to put down. This fire was epic. Mr. DeMille himself could not have done better. We watched it all from the Cortland Avenue bridge, Roger, Melanie and me. The molten pours of the Finkel foundry behind us could barely compare.

The flames changed colors in phases, as the fire worked it’s way through the building, discovering new combustibles. Green! Blue! Orangebrown! Sprinklers of silver and gold floated into the three am sky. The foundry shut down. Could it have been anything but embarrassment? Even molten steel fell short in spectacle. We were witness to all of this, the three of us. Pulled together by unseen forces with sadistic intent and little regard for our welfare. The fates are cruel. But we watched, and as we watched the river rolled by. Our reflections blended with those of the flaming Belly. Everything was recorded on the surface of the Chicago River. The river sees all. Back in October, back before all of this, I didn’t even know Roger and Melanie. I was just working away in a small sculpture studio, privately, industriously. I had made some headway, having finally gotten all those undergrad voices out of my head. Roger’s studio was on the first floor, and down the hall from mine, which may explain why I never saw him until the night of that first fire. We watched that fire together, too. Other people were there, but Melanie wasn’t one of them. We met her later. The firefighters attacked their work much differently that night, but then again, that event was over in just two hours. The October fire was small, and the building was repaired and reopened in just a couple months.

I lost everything in that fire; all my sketchbooks from undergrad, most of my cd collection, all my tools, everything. I can’t say that I lost very much new work, because there were only a half dozen finished pieces, but they were all keepers. What got lost was the thread I’d found to tug on. That fire, coupled with the deflating influence of Roger Murray, prevented me from finishing even one decent piece of art since then. Gallery interest came and went. I told myself that scheduling a show in advance of the work was a good plan to get me going again. It wasn’t.

The old studio, the pre-October studio, was a great space. Perched on the southeast corner of the second floor, bathed in light and solitary bliss. I was ten months into a 2 year lease, fully settled and moving forward. The rent was affordable, and all the neighbors worked day hours. I’d bike over after work, grabbing dinner on the way. As the potters and metalsmiths drove away I’d carry my Dollar Tacos and my bike upstairs, open up The Reader and enjoy dinner. The Metra train passes at a distance of about 35 feet. From time to time I’d make eye contact with someone on their way home. I loved that space.

I lived alone at that time. I’m alone now, too, but that’s a recent development. Mel was with me for about 4 months. Now she lives with Roger. They’re not lovers; I think Roger’s maybe gay. Who knows about him. Regardless, I’m sure that there’s nothing there. She’d never settle for someone as boring as Roger Murray.

The Ravenswood El tracks run along the west side of that building, and I used to laugh about how much louder it was than the Metra, which often hums along at three times the speed. At first I was excited about the objects I found under the El, but I got bored with the regularity of those discoveries. Spikes and formed metal plates accounted for the majority of those finds. I don’t think I ever even tried to use them. They were lost with everything else.

There is a yard on that side of the building, fenced in but accessible from the first floor studios. The track supports are masculine and aging, wearing several dozen coats of enamel, like the rings on a tree. Roger and I met in that yard, watching the October fire. The firemen made us move, but not before we got a chance to talk.

“Time for a new studio.” Said Roger Murray.

I looked at him. It was still unclear whether or not my end of the building would be affected, and the first half hour of the fire was actually kind of entertaining. I found out the hard way that it’s never entertaining when people lose everything. Satisfying, at times. Entertaining, never.

“Where are you?” He asked me.

“I’m in the corner, over there.” I said.

He nodded seriously. “I see.”

Firemen were inside the building now, pushing up the hallway. We’d see them through open doors, and refer back to the rapidly growing plume coming out of the roof. The ladder truck was providing water from above. As the smoke turned from black to grey to white it looked like this would prove to be an easy put out.

“I know a place we can share.” He said.

“Say what?”

“I know a place we can share.”

“Really. You and I.”

“You look like someone I can trust.”

“I do?”

“Sure.” He smiled. “You do need a new workspace, dontcha?”

“Yea.”

“Well, then, I’ve got the place!”

“And where’s that?”

“It’s at Cortland and Mendel, see, right on the river. Across from the foundry. It’s amazing. Really.”

I should have ignored him. Why didn’t I? Maybe it was because he seemed so harmless. It was hard to get a handle on him, but he struck me as a sunday painter, a yuppy, a guy moved by a late night re run of Lust For Life. That’s the movie Lust For Life, he film with Anthony Quinn as Gauguin and Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, not the song. Roger Murray had no clue who Iggy Pop was until he met me. He got all his good music from me.

© copyright David Roth 2006

Next week: Act 2: Working In The Belly

Posted by david roth at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On my street in the mid- sixties, about twenty-five houses with a choice of two designs curved around adjacent to a school yard; bordering a small creek that flooded in a big rain, bushes filled with black and straw berries, and the remnants of Illinois prairie. Besides being the perfect setting for a dusky game of Kick the Can, the houses on this small suburban street also provided the basements and garages for no less than four teenage rock bands.
On any given night while walking the dog, one could hear the approximations of Secret Agent Man or Louie Louie bashed out in exuberation from any one of these houses. Every once in a while, the garage next door would swing open and we kids would sprint from wherever we were playing when we heard the opening line, “My baby does the hanky panky”. It seemed like every teenager in America had a band, and we were all in love with rock and roll.

Radio fueled the fire. WCFL broadcast the soundtrack of my life- I would set the timer on my Sears Silvertone and lay in the dark too thrilled to fall asleep listening to the Who and I Can See for Miles or Incense and Peppermints by Strawberry Alarm Clock. Garage bands had regional hits in every part of the country. Television shows like Hullabaloo cranked it out too. I remember some show with Paul Revere and the Raiders hosting. The British Explosion of art school kids enamored by American blues tsunamied onto our shores. My Uncle Jay went off to Vietnam in 1967 and left behind his record collection and turntable. Otis Redding’s Sitting on the Dock of the Bay and Out of our Heads by the Rolling Stones were in the rotation. In fourth grade I pulled my grades up and was allowed to by my first record, Meet the Monkees. My baby-sitter’s Beatles obsession led me to my next purchase; a 45’ of Hello Goodbye which caused some true cognitive dissonance due to the flipside (I am the Walrus).

So what’s the point of my prattling on about my Wonder Years trip down memory lane? Well, to an old punk rocker like me, much of the sixties embodied everything good about music; the DIY attitudes, musicians who were fans first, and cheap or free access to the music. Maybe I’m totally wrong; I’m blogging nostalgically here, not writing my dissertation, but when there is an explosion of something new, you can’t beat the pureness of it all. For a short time it’s not about the money. But, as Ian Dury sang, it wasn’t going to just be about rock and roll.

I guess nothing can ever retain the qualities that make it great once it catches on with the masses. Money does become an issue simply because it is being generated like water pouring from an open fire hydrant. The savvy know how to siphon it, and the musician, who is usually getting a first taste, is happy just not to be thirsty anymore and doesn’t notice who is taking the biggest gulps. I imagine that the music biz as we know it today was taking shape seriously in the latter part of the Sixties: band or artist as celestial body with a complement of managers, lawyers, booking agents and accountants playing the role of sycophantic satellites. At least artists finally found ways to hang on to royalties. But the question might be asked: Did Albert Grossman make Bob Dylan or vice versa? I imagine that having Grossman manning the turnstiles at the gates of Eden ensured top dollar for the hordes that wanted a piece of his Zimmy.

It’s pretty well documented by film makers that by the end of the decade, the magic was unraveling. The monetary greed alone though (Let’s see how many people we can cram into a speedway or onto a farm) wasn’t the entire undoing of an era. Drugs in the short term proved to be inspirational to many a songwriter, but gosh, they tend to be addicting; and while the party in someone like David Crosby’s head was bound to be a colorful trip man, it tends to get a little tedious for the listener. Now, I’m hardly one to poo-poo the guitar solo, but for it to hold up, it has to also sound good when you aren’t doing drugs. And drum solos? Unless it’s John Bonham, I’d rather join a bunch of neo grunge-hippies in Grant Park beating trash can lids than listen to one. There were many talented bands (I’m up for feedback on who those bands were- I could list a dozen here- but please, not the Dead!) that could pull off a song over five minutes; after all, the Velvet Underground appeared on the scene. But that was the orchestration of madness into something sonically beautiful, not “checking yourself out in the mirror” wankery. The bottom line is that by the end of the sixties the music world was gearing up for the ego trip of the seventies in which the title of many records could have been called, “More Me”.

That said, the positives of the sixties far outweigh the negatives. I wasn’t quite old enough to live the hippie dream, but as a pre-adolescent it left indelible marks and a proclivity for women that look like Lulu’s classmates in To Sir with Love. As an era, the Sixties were simultaneously ecstatic and tragic, but strictly musically it lies as the frontrunner in my mind. The only era that comes close is the, gulp, Seventies.

Next time- The good (Gabba Gabba Hey), the bad (death disco), the ugly (satin jackets/ a&r coke fiends)

Posted by Rick Rizzo at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Born and raised in Seattle, Joshua Marie Wilkinson earned an MFA in poetry from University of Arizona and an MA in Film Studies from University College Dublin. He is the co-director, with Solan Jensen, of the forthcoming film Made a Machine by Describing the Landscape about the band Califone. Currently living in Colorado, he is completing a doctorate in literature and creative writing. His chapbook A Ghost as King of the Rabbits is available from New Michigan Press, and his book Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned Rooms is available from Pinball Publishing. Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk, his second book, will be published in April 2006 by University of Iowa Press.

Pictures Inside the Mattress Before Your Brothers Are Dead

From the field below. Two boys. 1918.
The war is almost words again. Coughing fits.
The painter Egon Schiele dies in his sleep & today is October 31st.
Perhaps snow or just the smell of snow is the only location.

Backwards. Curse of narratives. All the characters
all at once. The way bodies come out of the morning.
Out of the forest, together & apart.

A perfume like dust. Vienna.
Cigarette pong just lingers in the hotel lobby. Friday
nights I take the train in from Bratislava. I buy oranges
& water before sleep. The next morning my tiny notes scribbled
on the map of his city will guide me to Schiele’s gone rooms.

Each day you must offer yourself with words to somebody.

The cello shoulders open the song, splitting the bow immediately.
Somebody’s loft in Chicago, just your fingers on the nine keys.
You’ve slept till after one again. But the memory I make
is when you pull the sweater over your bruised ribs
from what music?

Every Angel. . .

An entire album, The Sea & the Bells, for the moment
when Neruda lifted-upon his father’s casket
& seawater gushed out.

Almost deadly birds of the soul

Like a Herzog film where workers lug the sofa upstairs
& the softly crazed king must open it
as though it were an envelope in his hands.
Call me from the middle of the night where you are.
Cradle the phone on your shoulder
as you steam open the letter.

Climb down
from the barn roof & finish the story of your chores.
Black swallows in your belly. A voice tickles your throat
from the inside, which gives the inside an outside.

There are photographs of the train station where Schiele was born.

Of the stationhouse roof in Tulln. Empire
& the wrong words for each thing I recount aloud.

Of doors opening.

Couldn’t I come home with an armful of groceries
to find you in the bathtub?

Opens. With pencils & an orchard ladder.
Stolen by the boy who prepared the house
& dragged the piano out into the grass
with ropes & his brothers.

A city is a kind of gift.
Stretch the map out onto the bed
& draw it over yourself, sleepy, like a quilt.

Used to sing to me as a child, my father
out of silliness or agitation, but I never found him
in the throes of a song the way he found his mother
on the kitchen floor breathing unconscious after grammar school.

In this picture I am tearing tiny maps out of guide books:
Trieste, Cesky Krumlov, Györ & folding them into
my pocket at the station.
A woman glances up at the light & I can see the train hissing
before I can hear it.

Each painting begins. The limb of some schoolboy or prostitute,
an unsmiling patron, two girls, your lover Wally, you or your wife.

An elderly woman with the body of a nun
boards the train before Budapest,
sits across from me come from Ljubljana
& crosses herself as it lumbers out of the station.

Eight months over the Slovak-Austrian border on evening
& Saturday morning trains.
Toppled buildings upright. Rain.
When there’s a figure there’s a landscape.
The opposite is true also.
Border guards with little pencils & weather in the trees.
As she steps off the trolley her dress hem catches on the jamb & tears.
Wally has red wrists. Around her eyes are red too.
She carries gouache sketches of herself
to the cafes for Egon. Split is the name of the town in Dalmatia.
Empire of Dusk.
Pressburg, Budapest & Trieste. Yellow sputter
& hiss of boxcars unhinging ball sockets. Steel.

Somehow swallows nest in the creosote eaves,
flit-scatter, fall back and return.
Vienna, Paris & your mother’s dead town, Little Krumau.
You sleep where the train sleeps. Muddy thickets,
wasp hives & flapping laundry lines.

Sketching trains on the stationhouse roof after supper.
Charcoal for the engine plumes—Umbrella,
did you bring me here?

Posted by Simone Muench at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Posted by Joel Dorn at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you read Rick Rizzo's last article in sharkforum, you'll notice that Rick and I, offhandedly, began a verbal dialog on the music business at the shark's lair a couple of weeks ago. We decided that we'd both begin a series of stories on the music business to see if we could un-earth some clues into its, and more selfishly, my own future.
Rick has taken a historical approach, Historia de la Musica Rock Pt.1 to see if he can excavate some facts from the past in hopes that it can help to define its present day off spring.

Being that I am a self-serving narcissistic bastard, I've taken the low road of recounting my own personal history and thoughts, realizing that if all else fails, at least I'll have something to read while I'm jerking-off in front of my gold-plated mirror. Here is my first entry:

Last week I wrote a song, recorded it with my band, and posted it on the Reel To Reel Records digital download site, as I've done every week for this past year. The difference this time around was that it marked the finish of my yearlong journey, 52 REASONS.

A year ago, I signed on to record 52 songs in 52 weeks and put them up for sale and/or subscription on the Internet. My reasons for this were largely based on my frustrations with the recording industry I've been dealing with for the past 25 years. I was tired of waiting for a record to come out after completion.

This was a way to reach an audience immediately, literally a day or so after completing each song. As an artistic endeavor, it couldn't have been more exhilarating. However, as a substitute for the "old guard" hard goods of our trade, i.e. cds and records, it became a much harder sell, as well as not having anything to sell at gigs on the road. Merchandise is the life's blood of any tour these days. Without it, you might as well stay home.

So at this present time, at the last page of the last chapter of my odyssey, I can only wonder what my next step will be. What music business am I stepping back into? Should I go shopping for a new label as I've always done? I've been through the wringer with small labels over the years.

Here's an example: It took, in one instance, three years of wheeling and waiting for one of my cd's to hit the streets. When I finally got the cd's in my hot little hands, the label asked me to wait a month or so to get their distribution and promotion in order. Six months later the label folded.

Here's another: After finally finding an American record deal for my album with poet Gregory Corso, two weeks before the release, the label experienced a crushing 30,000 unit return from their distributor with a bill attached. Needless to say, the label and I limped out of the gate.

This last example is the freshest one: I licensed my last album, "Napoleon" with Texas Music Group, a small conglomerate of past and present regional indie labels that specialized in singer-songwriter sort of artists. One of the selling points to signing with them was their distributor, Rykodisc. I thought That due to their largely non-pop roster over the years, that they would be conscious of the "mom-and-pops" and music chains around the country more suitable for an independent artist. I even put up the buck's for radio, a South By Southwest appearance, and a trip down to perform at the Rykodisc convention in New Orleans. What I got back was the same "bottom line" approach to distribution that I would have gotten at any of the big boys. Their distribution was all about getting them out the doors. This meant that a large percentage of my product went into Best Buy and Wal-mart stores across the country. Have you ever tried to find an indie release at a Best Buy?

As a test, I went into one near my house about a month or so after my release to see if I could find one of my cd's. The store register said that there were 10 in stock. It took myself, and three Best Buy employees 45 minutes to find just one of my releases. Who knows where the rest were? I'm sure that they'll turn up when it comes time to return them. The other, more promising retail distribution Rykodisc employed with was the Coalition of Independent Music Stores or "CIMS" as it is commonly known in the biz. This is a group of "mom and pop" stores and smaller chains that have banded together to try and get a little market share in the music retail world. They comprise around 70 stores in 24 states across America, for the most part in smaller townships and cities. (None in Chicago or New York) Stores like these back in the 80's and early 90's, were the bread and butter of obscure touring bands like mine. This, of course was at a time when there were at least 200 or more of these types of stores around the country. Places where in-store performances were always lucrative and gratifying. (Remember Periscope in Champaign?) But the record store as a gathering place for the most part is dead, and the small record store is a dying breed or at least branded so by everyone you talk to about it.

The other place the "Napoleon" cd went was iTunes. This was a first of the digital retail for me as well as the label I was on. We were both excited about this and very interested in the outcome. What we found was that as my radio airplay around the country increased, the down load of the single increased with it. But only the single. One wonders if those same people who downloaded the song actually went out and bought or ordered the entire album? Hard to know for sure. This is the question that labels and artists are asking themselves around the country. Can we really survive on a non-hard goods music industry? As an indie artist who sells fifty percent of his music off the stage, I would have to say, no, although believe me, I see the download world as the only and inevitable wave of the future out there. But, I've just spent the last year releasing a song a week exclusively on the Internet for an entire year and although promising, it don't pay the bills. Not by a long shot.

Almost everyone I know who downloads music off of iTunes is ordering songs from their old record collection. Stuff or artists they're already familiar with or old obscure songs they remember from their past. Occasionally, they'll pick up a new song they've heard on the radio. I've yet to meet someone who downloads whole albums except for a certain shut-in friend of mine. (Hint: He has sharp teeth and fins.) iTunes is the only one making big bucks off of their service. It's a volume business if there ever was one. Songs for less than a candy bar.

I think the only chance for downloadable music to become a boon for recording artists and the industry is for the cd to become obsolete, as did cassettes and vinyl. If you can't get you're favorite music on cds anymore, you're apt to join the digital revolution. The music industry just can't handle two formats.

I'm told by a music insider, that the dirty little secret at Apple is that the windfall of downloads from all the sales of Nanos and iPods they expected over the Christmas season never happened. Again, folks are loading up songs from their collections. Is it possible to break a new artist from iTunes? Not yet.

Maybe the album is on its way out. This kind of saddens me. I've never liked greatest hits records. They lose all sense of a place in time. I've read some great books over the years. Some chapters run a little slower than others. If I lend a book to friend of mine, I don't rip out the slow parts to help streamline the experience. This, I fear, is what is happening to the album.

There is an inherent sense of impatience connected to the Internet. We can see its influence in magazines and newspapers today. Shorter stories, less pictures. Information cut and pasted together without source or style. You've seen it out there. One hopes that this does not spill into the way we listen to and enjoy music. Maybe it already has.

For now, it is consumer technology that has taken the center stage and become the world's rock star. Each new piece of gear has its moment in the sun, and its cheaper "Mercy Beat" offshoots. A must-have single that will inevitably be blown out of the water when its sleeker, "New!!! Improved!!!" sibling comes along to kill it in its sleep. The big difference in this comparison is that I'm pretty sure that in twenty years, there won't be a treasured rediscovering of the ipod. Today's hardware is neither ornate nor beautiful. Just a shitty storage space busting at its seams that must be replaced every season. And, for that matter, digital music still sounds like shit, as apposed to the old analog stuff. We've just gotten used to it.

I'm starting to realize why Rick decided to write his article in three parts!

Anyway folks, "I'm down at the crossroads," trying to figure out my next move, as I'm sure the rest of you out there in the music world are. In the coming weeks, Mr. Rizzo and I will be posting stories on a wide range of topics related to the past, present and most importantly, future of the music business. I'll be interviewing various people from around the industry to try and shed some light on the ever-changing and fucked-up biz that we musicians live in.

More importantly, though, Sharkforum is a blog in which the readers can, and should participate in. Rick and I more than welcome any help and/or insights from you out there into this feature that we've begun. Since this story affects us all, we should all participate in it. I call on all you recording artists and music biz types out there to throw down with us in hopes that it can help define the problems and possible solutions to this new and ever changing music business. In other words: Dig in, and maybe we can find a way to dig out. Dig?

Posted by Nicholas Tremulis at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was looking at photographs the other day and decided that the only description I could give to the image of a young woman who appeared in some of them was that she looked like a milkmaid. Now I grew up on a farm, and it can be accurately said that I once was a milkmaid, as one of my chores was milking the goats (my brothers milked the cows, although I did that more challenging task occasionally it wasn’t a daily chore). Unlike probably 99.9% of the American native-born population, I know what it is like to sit on a low stool, thighs spread and knees popped up at an angle while the feet are pulled underneath, close to the stool, to allow that certain necessary cantilever to the body in order to reach over and access the udder with the arms at the proper angle perpendicular to the body.

I know the indescribable comfort of placing your human cheek on the hairy flank of an ungulate, and the meditative rhythm of squeezing the teats (only two of them on a goat) to stimulate milk flow. I know the smell of the milk as it hits the air (steaming at cold temperatures, of course), the dry smell of the straw in the milkstall, the grassy-earthy-mammal scent of the goat herself. And the joy of watching the she-goat’s kids (yes, usually two of them) as they await the return of their mother, who, as she is a milkgoat and bred to such purpose, was usually more than happy to have some of her bounty diverted for human consumption. Yet I don’t really look anything like a milkmaid.


I never particularly had that outdoorsy, sturdy look about me that one associates with milkmaids. Nor that broad, placid face that speaks of close knowledge of the bovine. And my hair isn’t the right color, having never had, even before it turned white, any cast whatsoever of honey about it. But as soon as I described this image to myself this way, I realized it was likely that no one else would know what I was talking about, really, for although the term milkmaid really did fit her, because this woman did not have her hair in braids nor was she wearing a dirndl — the stereotypical image of a milkmaid — this term is one with almost no cultural currency. Unless, of course, there’s some video game out there of which I am unaware and in which the leading character is not a tomb raider, but a milkmaid.

In fact, I fear most Americans probably don’t even know what a dirndl is, unless they watched the 20th Winter Olympics from Torino — the opening ceremonies, to be exact. Not even I, growing up a very German part of the country in the 1960s, really knew what an authentic dirndl was, but because the dirndl skirt became, inexplicably, a popular fashion towards the end of that decade and into the 1970s, I was familiar with the basic concept.

As I used the term “milkmaid” to describe the appearance of this young woman to myself and must confess used it disparagingly, because, as with most words that name appearances or professional attributes, they can be employed variously to show admiration or disdain (like “shark” to mean Great-White-like or “shark” to mean lawyer-like), I realized there was nothing I could do to restore the subtle, rich meaning of this term, except perhaps write a really brilliant poem* that would crystallize the word’s image and so capture its every nuance that even for the reader who grew up watching the Brady Bunch (where Marsha in fact wore dirndl skirts) or the reader with the even greater remove of having grown up listening to 50 Cent, the term would blaze to life. Otherwise I could only mourn the passing of yet another image-term from our culture.

This gets me back to the Olympics. I love the Olympics. Especially the winter games. I am not athletic particularly, nor do I generally follow sports, except, of course, for baseball. Yet I look forward to the Olympics, especially the winter games, and I have in my mind the images and the terms they have displayed over the years, especially from the various opening ceremonies. The Olympics historically have been a huge repository of image-terms at the same time as they generate or popularize new ones (e.g. the “method-air” from this year’s games). Yet apparently very few Americans chose to watch the Olympics this time around, preferring to know who was booted out of the competition on either “American Idol” or in an extreme irony, “Dancing with the Stars.” (This brings immediately to mind, of course, the high concept of “Skiing with [or Biathloning with, or Skeletoning with] the Olympians,” wherein Julia Mancuso, wearing her trademark handmade tiara, would instruct a non-skiing, aging minor celebrity, say Bud Cort (“Harold and Maude”), through the ‘ins and outs of giant slalom’ (can’t you just hear the spokes-announcer lovingly mouthing that phrase) and compete against Janica Kostelic, Croatian downhill gold-medal holder, teamed with say, former steroid freak Mark McGwire….)

Armed now with both my milkmaid and Olympic moments, I thought, Could it be that all the image-terms and all the cultural symbolism displayed at the opening ceremonies, as part of the Olympic tradition, and inherent to the various games themselves are also fast-fading? Can it be true that we are no longer as a people interested in watching the athletes getting misty-eyed at the raising of their flags as they stand on the medals podium? And the lone child in national costume singing her country’s anthem in the midst of a huge stadium, is she no longer a poignant symbol of the eternal hopes of humankind? Might she as well, ditching the dirndl, skip the Olympics and take her act to the next “European Idol” regional competition?

Maybe I shouldn’t be so bereft of hope. Maybe Peter Webber’ll direct a sequel to “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” called “The Milkmaid”….



More later,

Lynne





*And the poem certainly wouldn’t be this one:

Behold the milkmaid all awash,

good maid, may I have a little nosh….

What, your nutrients are borrowed all?

Nothing’s behind your unscaled wall?

That placid face is but made of stone?

That honey hair fore’er your own?

Your arms so strong but never to grip

that except the bovine’s tip?

© 2006 Lynne Warren all rights reserved.

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The Swamp: the Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise
by Michael Grunwald 450 pp. $27.00
Simon and Schuster

It is timely, in its way, this harrowingly academic study of the history of Florida and its battle with its extraordinary natural makeup. A most unlikely book, indeed, to catch this writer's fancy, as I am neither tree-hugger nor Southern History buff. Nevertheless, this history of the Sunshine State is lively and surprising from beginning to end. From Ponce de Leon's arrival, through the various homicidal campaigns against the native Indians in the Andrew Jackson years, Grunwald (a writer at the Washington Post) provides ample prologue for a book that ends up being about something else entirely. Grunwald's (and Florida's) story is essentially about Man Against Nature; the bulk of this volume sets about documenting in painstaking detail the various attempts to tame the Everglades. The pendulum of progress swings from dominance to submission and from development to reclamation until the state (the most astounding example in history of high-speed capitalist modernization) reaches a sort of grudging stalemate with Mother Nature.

Not many people realize that South Florida was nearly uninhabitable until around the time of WW I. The southern half of the state was outback long after the West had been Won. South Florida suffered so many boom and bust cycles in such a short time (due to land speculation, mostly) that homesteading or farming there came to seem like a ride on one of that rural state's carnival ferris wheels amidst the sucker's midway of the con game the land market so closely resembled. The men like Disston and Flagler and Broward had, this book indicates, the very best of intentions. But the various Florida development schemes inevitably resembled just that -- schemes. The drainage projects went uncompleted or botched. The market imploded, the land was ruined, but the economy continued to percolate even as the fish began to float dead to the surface of every river, stream, bay and lake. The farmers and fishermen complained and the efforts to drain the Everglades grew in cost by thousands of percentage points. The drainage was so costly and counterproductive that reclamation became a preferred strategy and the engineering efforts of more than 100 years were abandoned, acknowledged as misguided, and readied for razing. The Army Corps of Engineers got involved, trying to correct the mistakes of previous pioneers/engineers. The Corps bollixed things even worse by forging ahead with the Central & South Florida drainage project -- a hard-fought political victory which had initially been a triumph for those who saw Everglades drainage as a win-win situation for both the citizenry and the business community in south Florida. These grab-ass land speculation orgies are indeed instrumental to the development of nations such as ours. It's why we are doing so well (comparatively). Excepting Henry Flager's developments at Palm Beach and elsewhere (leading all the way down to Key West), hugging the Atlantic coastline for dear life, Florida was a hard row to hoe, a difficult place to settle, a final frontier for all but the few southern native American bands too stubborn to leave. The Seminoles and the Miccosukees were the only ones sufficiently recalcitrant to accept the hardships of the Glades and refuse to join the so-called Trail of Tears (wherein all southern Indian tribes were forced west into the Oklahoma territories), essentially telling the post-Civil War State Department to go fuck itself, "we are staying here."

What makes this book so wonderfully odd and timely is this: The world's top hydrolic engineers met recently in Rotterdam (in Holland, a country that knows something about water mangement) to brainstorm about intelligent ways of rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. It has been said that water will be the oil of the 21st century. "The Swamp" makes clear that mankind's ability to control the flow and usage of water has always been a defining characteristic, if something of a losing battle. In fact, as this book makes clear, the history of man's efforts to control and direct water IS the history of man. The experience of south Florida's efforts is both awe-inspiring and cautionary. Today, ironically, the great engineering struggles in the region are struggles to ERASE the previous hundred years of human meddling.

The pendulum swinging in this historical chronicle is both long and heavy. Today the pendulum swings toward "reclamation" of the Everglades, but throughout the past century, the pendulum pointed toward "reclamation" of the land -- an effort to tame the glades and render them safe for sustained agriculture. Are we reclaiming something when we render it habitable to Man or when we return it to its original Natural state? Such are the positively Orwellian usages of words tailored to shifting political imperatives in the Everglades saga.

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adventurer? Dick Proenneke



Upon visiting the studio space of Chris Roberts some month ago, I was confronted with nature. It forced itself upon the cold steel, wet concrete, and cheep plaster of Chris' work environment. Small log cabins had been constructed from fallen branches found around his Humboldt Park residence. They were lit from inside, casting erie and compelling shadows across his walls.

Saturday night he will be presenting those constructions, along with performative elements, video projections, and installation art at ArtLedge, a small space located just off the Western blue line train station.

“To see game you must move a little and look a lot. What first appears to be a branch turns into that big caribou bull up there on the benches...
I wonder what he thinks about? Is his brain just a blank as he lies there blinking in the sun and chewing his cud? I wonder if he feels as I do, that this small part of the world is enough to think about?”

–Dick Proenneke

Cabin Fever
Chris Roberts


February 25 – March 4, 2005
Opening reception: Saturday February 25 – 7-11pm

artLedge is pleased to present Chris Roberts’ Cabin Fever. Mr Roberts will
be challenging the spirit of Dick Proenneke, a man who lived contently for
30 years in a log cabin he built in the Alaskan wilderness. Through video,
performance and installation, Roberts will be addressing the restless
confinement and its psychological effect experienced during the reclusive
winter season. The opening night of the exhibition will be celebrated with
a homemade chili cook-off.

artLedge
1638 N. Western #3
Chicago, IL 60647
artLedge@yahoo.com

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A Rainy Friday

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Shelter at 3636 South Iron

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I was invited last spring to join what seemed to me to be an outrageously prestigious jury of architects, planners, graphic designers and architecture curators led by Pritzker Prize winning architect Thom Mayne (so why did they want me? was my first response) to award prizes in a project that the Chicago Architectural Club was realizing with the cooperation of Mayor Daley and the Cultural Commissioner. It involved soliciting ideas for the creative reuse of the City of Chicago’s many water tanks — a fascinating project aimed at raising awareness of this fast-disappearing aspect of the urban roofscape (check it out here). The jury convened in October, I think, but that’s not the point. The point is as part of looking at the over 180 entries, all of which were very, very interesting indeed, proposing wind generation, wi-fi hotspots, planters, purple martin houses, and so on, the word “graywater” kept cropping up.

Now it wasn’t as if I had never heard this term. Among my many magazine subscriptions there is the libertarian journal Reason (which seems to cover the arts more cogently than many magazines I know) and I think I’d first encountered the term in these pages. And then, as these things tend to do, it popped up all over, even on my City of Chicago water bill which exhorted me to detach my downspout and use the rainwater to nourish my street-level garden (done); start a rooftop garden (done); and send in $287.36 by the 15th of the month (done). Now I don’t want to get completely hung up on the actual term; what was more important is that is was the type of term that seemed to just suddenly spring up, with no real point of origin (unlike many art world terms where authors strenuously vie for the honors of deriving an “ism”) and suddenly people in the know seemed to be tossing it off effortlessly, and you, the complacent listener, nod your head all the while realizing you are not really sure what it means.

Which leads me into the real subject of this posting, the year’s end issue of Artforum (2005 In Review see this). A little known fact about me is that as part of my duties as a curator at MCA, I supervise the library, a small, noncirculating resource designed largely for the use of the staff. I approve the list of subscriptions, and I handle the magazines and work with a superb volunteer, Melissa, to catalogue them into our system. But I rarely open the magazines, even after they are displayed on a really wonderful wooden display stand awaiting the next month’s issue to arrive.

Artforum of course is amongst the publications we subscribe to. And if there is any magazine it were to be said I crack the least, it is Artforum. How can I explain this? I’m a contemporary art curator. Don’t I need to keep up with this publication, if anything at all? What am I doing listening to AM talk radio and not perusing the pages of Artforum? But then in defense of myself, I think, but I never really read Artforum dating way back to the 1970s, when John Coplans was editor. Who does really? Aren’t people rather proud of the fact that they don’t read Artforum? Isn’t it actually paradoxically ‘cool’ not to read Artforum? It’s not like I don’t read any of the art magazines. I mean, I read ArtNews, which lists “passages” of colleagues, quite a reason to open the magazine. And Art in America, with its always gorgeous layouts and genteel style? — well, I needn’t be so defensive. But come on, this blog is called Sharkforum. Doesn’t that mean I have a special duty to keep up with its putative namesake?

And then I think, well maybe people are proud of the fact that they don’t really read Artforum, but at least they look at the pictures. I don’t even look at the pictures. So as part of my New Year’s resolution to be a more thoughtful person, I thought, I’ll look at Artforum. And so I did. With mounting panic I realized I am totally out of touch. The December issue of Artforum had a year-end round-up of films.When did that happen? Well, okay, but I hardly recognized any of the titles never mind had I seen a single one of the films listed. And a year-end round-up of music? By another crew of writers whose names I don’t recognize (Dennis Cooper, Stephen Vitiello, Christoph Cox, Susie Ibarra, and Debra Singer. Well, I recognize Debra Singer…). Gee whiz, I’m completely out of touch…I’d certainly never heard of most of the musical groups, either).

I’m not even mentioning the top ten lists, which reassuringly were by writers whom I mostly recognized, but they listed not just art exhibitions and events, but things I wasn’t even sure of what they were….books? street performances? concerts? poetry readings?

And what is this article “Biopolitics: Between Abu Ghraib and Terri Schiavo” by Slavoj Žižek? Now really starting to panic, I sought out further information, and learned that this article was part of a triad in which the ‘art of 2005’ was placed in the context of a broader visual culture. Okay, I guess I can accept that art should be examined in a broader visual culture. But Žižek’s article, according to an editor’s note, “draws on Giogio Agamben’s (who?) theory of the homo sacer (what?), the 1999 movie "Double Jeopardy," (now this is a Hollywood movie, isn’t it?) and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human, (what, he’s hip to cite again?) to examine “biopolitics.” (What’s this mean? Oh, I guess I have to read the article….)

According to this editor’s note, Žižek “finds disturbing affinities between the fates of Terri Schiavo and the prisoners tortured by American forces as part of the war on terror, offering these phenomena (phenomena? what phenomena? Terri Schiavo’s medical care and the pain and suffering of the tortured? What???..yeah, I guess I need to read the article…) as ‘two extremes of America’s regard for human rights.’”

Okay…a naïve question here…but is it about art? Am I not perusing Artforum? Or perhaps Artforum should be renamed “CulturalWorkersforum.” Or “LiberalThoughtforum.” But I am calmed in my panic of complete and utter insecurity about my intellect, capabilities, and inherent hipness to realize that just like in the articles that are ostensively about art, I can’t understand this gobbledygook either. A sample of Mr. Žižek’s prose: “If the classic exercise of power lay in the threat made operative precisely by way of never actualizing itself, by way of remaining a threatening gesture…[author’s italics and ellipsis] with the war on terror, the invisible threat causes the incessant actualization not of itself but of the measures against itself.” What???!

And I’d bet if I read the Year In Review issue cover to cover, I’d find the word “graywater.” It certainly seems some sort of cultural buzzword. It has even gotten to the point that high school students in their science classes are assigned the design and construction of graywater recovery systems, which seems to mean putting layers of sand, charcoal and gravel in some sort of bucket and pouring the graywater through it. This leads me to believe that graywater is easily obtainable, if even high school students are assigned to handle it, and that it isn’t going to sicken them, as of course our society wouldn’t allow such flagrant disregard for our youth’s health.

So, finally, I looked up the definition of graywater:

Water generated by household processes such as washing dishes, laundry and bathing. Graywater is distinct from wastewater that has been contaminated with toilet waste or kitchen garbage, which is known as blackwater. Graywater typically breaks down faster than blackwater and has much less nitrogen and phosphorous. However, all graywater must be assumed to have some blackwater-type components, including pathogens of various sorts. For more on this, click here.

Whoops, I guess I was wrong about our culture’s flagrant disregard for the health of our youth. I bet I wouldn’t have made that mistake if I’d read Slavoj Žižek’s Artforum article “Biopolitics: Between Abu Ghraib and Terri Schiavo.”

More later,

Lynne

Illustration of graywater system from the website of the Center of the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE) Graywater Reuse project, a project funded by the Enhanced Productivity Program at the Jordanian Ministry of Planning.

See also “A Field Guide to Aquatic Phenomenon,” that answers the question “Why is water different colors?”

Posted by Lynne Warren at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

internecine, adj.

1. Of or relating to struggle within a nation, organization, or group.
2. Mutually destructive; ruinous or fatal to both sides.
3. Characterized by bloodshed or carnage.


“What is it internecine that is locked,
By very fierceness into a quiescence
Within the rage? We shall not know till it burst
Out of corrosion into new florescence.”

--D.H. Lawrence, “Debacle”

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More Blogs by Simone Muench | EMail Simone

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Posted by Simone Muench at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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A flag vital alongside Colonel McCormick's edifice.

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Symbol amid signage.

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Orthodoxy.

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Trafficking.

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Weathered.

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Winded.

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Sodium vapor silk.

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Hints of the desert.




Four of these images were taken at Burger Kings; one of a McDonald's.

Posted by Ray Pride at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t know if the paint fumes are getting to you art world people, but I’m happy to be removed from the drama. As a veteran of the music biz, it’s all familiar; the decision makers with no spines or vision, the talent-less hacks, the system that rewards mediocrity. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Actually, I feel somewhat blessed. Sure, my band eleventh dream day saw all the ugliness that the music business had to offer, but we survived intact, we lived to tell. I was discussing the state of the music world with my pal Nick. We’re at another crossroads because of the technology; some are waiting for the real devil to please stand up so they can cut a deal, but I’m just as confused as usual. Nick seems pretty anxious about it all, but compared to me he’s got a lot more eggs in his basket, and heck, I have to watch my cholesterol anyway.

So what I thought I’d do here in these shark infested waters is take a long hard look at the music world; what’s good, what’s bad, what’s ugly, where we’re going, where we’ve been. I’m going to take it in parts, by decades, because I’ve got a short attention span. So, here we go. It seems like yesterday……..

Historia de la musica rock as it pertains to me- part one: The Fifties

Caroline Kennedy and I were both born in the Sputnik year, 1957. I was named for Ricky Nelson. Jack Kerouac was staying up all night. The hits in 1957:

Elvis- All Shook Up

Jerry Lee Lewis- Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On

Chuck Berry- School Days

Buddy Holly- Peggy Sue

The Diamonds- Little Darling

I don’t remember anything; my parents didn’t listen to much rock ‘n roll. According to them, my mom used to love Johnny Ray who would croon and cry and made the girls cry and swoon, and my dad sang along with Sinatra in the kitchen. I did find a pile of cracking 78s in a trunk once that included Bill Haley and the Comets and a very cool singer named Al Hibbard; they did love music. You can see what was good about the fifties- talent, talent, and more unbelievable talent. There was however, plenty wrong. For one, racism meant that black artists would never gain the fame or money of white artists. Joe Turner wrote Shake, Rattle, and Roll; Bill Haley made the money. Big Mama Thornton wrote Hound Dog; Elvis made the money. The industry marched out Pat Boone to placate nervous parents. Alan Freed’s rock n roll television show was yanked off the air because Frankie Lyman danced with a white girl. Freed was on the payola take. The labels gave the singer a little money up front, but took the profits that poured in. Artists had to hit the road every night, and felt rich because they had the fancy cars and screaming girls, but they did not own their songs. In the meantime the seeds were being sown for the sixties; those young Brits were paying attention. I was dirtying my diapers. Next: The Sixties/ garage music (yay) the drum solo (nay) I buy my first record.

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From the superstar status, the voracious appetites for just about anything and everything, to the mad adulation of hordes of fans screaming our names, (ELVIS! HELP! SHARK!) all the way to starring in a string of bad movies, the similarities between The King and The Cadillac Of All That Has Come to Mean Fish, are all too striking. Who knew when Mr. Benchley first approached me about starring in this silly little beach thing of a film called of all things, 'Jaws,' that indeed, a star was being born.

Little has been written of the tensions and clashes of personalities on location during the making of what would become known to the world as, Jaws –particularly between Peter and myself: I wasn’t happy with the name Jaws and wanted it changed. When Viva Los Farallons met with a deafening silence I then suggested Fun In Acapulco as a nice, fun in the sun kind of thing…. …think about it! Wouldn’t you have rather seen me in some glamorous local, chewing up the scenery and a bunch of sexy girls in bikinis rather than that freaked out sheriff dude with the bad sunglasses and Richard Dreyfus (whatever happened to him anyway?) never mind that stupid old smelly coot of a fisherman Quint trying to talk like a pirate and all those crummy little bridge and tunnel brats that deserved to be thrown to the sharks? Haha! Just kidding! I wouldn’t do that to a bunch of nice friendly fish!

Worst of all was my stunt double –that unconvincing, completely bogus looking rubber shark they used whenever there were other actors in the water…what? Do you people actually think every time I see one of you all I want to do is eat you? Are you all really that full of yourselves? Because I’m not…just joking!…don’t start screaming shark! To tell you the truth, the first time I saw that thing I thought they just wanted a shark that actually did more closely resemble The King on quaaludes after a few late night feeding frenzies at the local Memphis Dunkin Doughnut outlet. I forget who I’m discussing silly me! Of course The King ordered in!

Can I tell you how mortified I was with that ridiculous ending? What self respecting great white shark would swim around with an air tank sticking out of his mouth like some fishy Clint Eastwood wannabe with one of those cheap cigarillos he always chomps on right before he kills a lot of people…I wondered who’s thinking this stuff up? Some film company executive comes on location, sees me swimming in pools of blood, and thinks, ‘this is too terrifying’ what if this isn’t blood but a nice marinara puree, that everything ends well, and that rather than people being eaten by some 5,000 pound great white shark with coal black eyes, a vast array of serrated teeth, who has worked up quite an appetite slogging his way through this potboiler of a crap film, we can make this into the first ocean going spaghetti western! Well then, why Jaws?... Why not, Pale Swimmer?...or, A Mouthful Of Surfers?...

Every time I swam on that set I thought to myself, ‘what a dump.’

As for the book, even as a hack writer, Peter Benchley sucked! Spielberg himself said after reading it he was rooting for me! (Though I fail to understand why he wouldn’t do so under any circumstance-) still, the only good thing about that pulp fiction was The Shark! And that movie…with that pretentious, only in Hollywood soundtrack…does anyone in their right mind actually think we sharks swim around humming a few bars of that tone deaf rot before dining?…Peter Benchley died the other day; let’s get on with our lives and face it! The only thing that saved that wretched piece of (can you even call it writing?) that he made millions off of, was ………my star power and charismatic self!……To hell with Benchley! Without me, he was nothing! Not that I’m bitter or anything………

Le Grand Requin du' Blanc

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Patty Seyburn has published two books of poems: Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998) which won the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award for 2000. Her poems have recently been anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006) and Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine Editions, 2006). She grew up in Detroit, earned a BS and MS in Journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and Literature from the University of Houston. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Southern California.

"change of clothes? The very clothes of change!"

i.
The train, a flume of white satin, flares
from an empire waist-bust of bead pearl-arms
bare as the wait is long restless, days dissipate in seamless
collusion and the tulle slip sighs as the dress fastens:
hip rib breast. So am I immanent:
possessing possessed.

ii.
Hardened to marble,
the Kore Venus Juno carved and garbed to last
a millennium or three. Identities defined by prop gown hair-Rome's
empresses
known for nose style and the rare appellation,
"Maconiana Severiana," scripted in those
popular triangles. Inscription
gives her the edge over
other girls goddesses
virtual ciphers
(stones in their eyes pilfered)
few symbols left to decipher. Only their images
remain-or less-Severiana's container adorned with Ariadne Bacchus-
revelry unrestrained except by the myth
of fixity.

iii.
How perplexed my people
were then-one God with many sects
fused only by assemblage of holy texts, temple
soon to fall to Rome-rejecting the once future messianic elect.
Nonetheless, they'd survive sans avatar idols nymphs
numerous as stars confined
to constellation-firmamental scars
of love war metamorphosis-changing
of the spiritual guard: girl to tree willow rain spider cow nightingale
before they knew-before it was true-that you can't
change anyone unless she wants to change.
Success evades ultimatum's duress.

iv.
The mathematics of marriage
a mess-two to one to two-are we now
part or whole? I bought this dress that sways slightly
to impress my image on the eye of an August late afternoon
slated for a provident daymoon that shows its face no sooner than
Bach's third Brandenburg regales the room.
As for these vows
impugned for their naivety-did you
assume me unaware of human failings cruelties
tendered mended unpent vented repented unrepented? I intend
them to last as long as Getty's statues crypts busts.

And if-and if this plan goes wrong,
I want to know it when-not before-dress
returns to worm, only hem's memory grazing the floor,
my form refashioned as dust.

Posted by Simone Muench at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is the text of my CAA speech, for those interested who nevertheless cannot attend the annual conference in Boston next week.

As my contribution to our discussion of "Gallery/Museum Comics," I am presenting my own work, which is a "mongrel" combination of installation, painting and comics, and am discussing it in relationship to the definition of comics (sequentiality, word and image, closure, iconosequentiality, etc.), the influence and confluence of comics and fine art, as well as viewers' relationship to the works from the perspectives of both "high" and "low" art --- furthermore, how this art arises from my own personal experiences and background. For the full text of my speech, unfortunately without the slide images click here. Images will be added to the web page in the weeks following the conference.

I'm also hoping to blog-report on a few of the other occurrences and papers at this conference when I return to Europe from Boston. Talk to you then!

Posted by Mark Staff Brandl at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Andrea Bauer at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Having grown up in LA I have a soft spot for cars. The right ride could take you through a variety of traumas, ranging from earthquake aftershocks to a stylist who just made your hair too blonde and too straight. For me, that ride had to be vintage. You can keep your GPS and fuel-injected blah blah, blah. I’ll take a 1965 Rambler over a 2006 anything. Form over function all the way down Interstate 405. That was my motto at least, until my most recent trip to LA.
I was walking through LA’s Chinatown on a balmy winter night last month with my oldest and dearest gal-pal, Katie, who had something to tell me. I could tell by her face it was big. . . a new boyfriend, maybe a new baby? Imagine my surprise when she walked to the curb and introduced me to her latest acquisition, a perfectly restored 1983 300SD Mercedes. I was thrilled by my friend’s aesthetic sensibility, from the sharp maroon paint job to the impeccable stock interior; this stylish ride oozed a dignified decadence that preceded the year of its design by decades. Not only that, but Katie, the mother of two boys and an ideal candidate for soccer motherhood, opted against buying the practical minivan or fuel-efficient hatchback, instead she drove headfirst into the world of impractical choices.

Owning this diesel dinosaur is clearly an act of rebellion. But as I admired the exquisite lines of the dashboard, Katie laid the real bombshell on me. “It runs on vegetable oil.” At first I ignored her comment. It seemed preposterous. Then she told me that she gets the fuel gratis from the guy who converted its diesel engine into one that runs on vegetable oil. That’s any kind of oil… corn oil, soy oil or the oil that Burger King used all day for deep-frying. That’s when I realized that she was not making this up.

My sense of déjà vu was growing. Suddenly I flashed back to April 20th, 1970, the very first Earth Day. I was a grammar school kid who took academics and fashion seriously and planned to become a go-go boot-wearing dermatologist, but on this day the promise of a smog-free future was the main thing that stuck in my mind. My teacher, who made “ecology’ the vocabulary word for the day, also gave me the impression that all that pink goo in the LA air would be gone by the time I reached junior high. Thanks to Buckminster Fuller, we’d all drive electric cars and factories would be solar powered. But by the time I reached voting age I was sadly disabused of this fantasy.

A moment later, Katie’s declaration of satisfaction at “sticking it to the oil man” snapped me back to reality. The image of running Dick Cheney and his corpulent cronies over and out of Washington with a fleet of vegetable powered Mercedes was satisfying indeed, but it also illuminated a dilemma. Since moving to NYC I have basked in the self-satisfaction of not contributing to “America’s addiction to oil.” I get around via public transit and hoof it whenever possible. But honestly, my car-less state is a result of my economic state. If I got a raise or sold a few more paintings, I’d be back in the market for an automobile tomorrow - one that was designed at least twenty years before gas hit two dollars per gallon. I’d want to drive a fuel-guzzling dinosaur, but how to reconcile this dream with running Dick out of Washington? How do I drive a masterpiece of automotive design and still pay homage to that over-the-top eco freedom fighter sentenced to jail for torching a fleet of Hummers? The vegetable oil powered Mercedes Benz is the answer.

As the subtle perfume of deep fried food wafted through the interior of the Benz, Katie answered some of my practical questions. She even took me over to LoveCraft Biofuels in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, where her Benz was converted from a diesel dependent engine to one that runs on either vegetable oil or diesel fuel. To my inexperienced eye the facilities looked like a regular garage except cleaner. And there were a large number of pre-1985 model diesel powered Mercedes including a spectacular ’65 Mercedes bus awaiting conversion. Apparently these older diesel cars are easier to convert than current computerized models or cars with gasoline engines. For a more detailed description of the conversion process check the LoveCraft Biofuels website, which provides plenty of useful information in a clear, concise manner.

I was thoroughly impressed by the economics and practicality of driving this ecologically sound vehicle. Katie only paid $700 for her conversion. While she sometimes buys soybean oil at Costco for about $2.50 per gallon, she can also pick up used vegetable oil for free from restaurants that normally have to pay to dispose of it. The used oil must be filtered, but that process is simple and relatively painless, especially as gasoline edges up to three dollars per gallon.

It should be noted that there is a minor downside to this. Vegetable oil tends to coagulate in cold weather (as does diesel fuel). This isn’t a big problem in the warmer states, but in the Northeast one might need to add a can of Heet or an anti-coagulant to keep the engine running smoothly. Just talk to your friendly LoveCraft experts about cold weather driving.

The vegetable powered engine is a true revelation. While the automotive industry may be slow to catch on, the term “convertible” is taking on a new meaning to those in the know. The market for early model diesel cars is escalating and the demand for conversions is keeping the LoveCraft people busy. I hope to be among their customers soon, but given the latest news from Texas, I’ll be waiting for a sunny day to fulfill my fantasy of running the Vice President over in style. If my vegetable oil powered Mercedes Benz stalls I could end up with a face full of bird-shot.

Posted by Marilyn Cvitanic at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

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Weather's gone mad but I'll settle for spring's warmer inconsistency and contrasts: warm air, cool raindrops.

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When there's a gorgeous storm, I miss having a back porch.

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Rainy streets merit caution.

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Because the clouds do what clouds do.

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Tall buildings stand.

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Yet weather takes its toll.

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Spring's breeze blows the bad local air a little further west.

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[More photos here.]

Posted by Ray Pride at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)