I grow weary of Gladys..

Looks like 1163 Morning Glory Circle is certainly going to be a busy place from now on. That’s right, nosey neighbor Gladys Kravitz has a new job, Government Informant.

Oh! Sporadic updates for the next two weeks, projects I must complete, remember, sporadic can be exciting, think sporadic, think spontaneous, think surprise, think freelance, think cash, think love, think food, think rent, think…I’ll stop now.

Out of work/school early, finally, a clear blue summer day, 75f (24c). Grabbing my cut-offs riding over to the beach to lay on the rocks. I’ll take in some sun, watch boys, the big city looming in the distance-resting on the perimeter of the rat race. I’m hungry for something cool and light, perhaps I’ll stop for some hummus and cucumber tomato salad at the middle eastern grocery. I grab a paperback, I’m out the door, back pack and some pocket change…

Short attention span, stop reading now. Corporate Americonskifreudenshaf cooks the books. Corporate responsibility my ass. The Pledge of Allegiance will now end with ‘Hail Satan’. Does post modernism need a PR agent and even worse yet, a rebuttal. Is there a gay basis for Nietzsche’s ideas, or would you rather just surf some hot porn…notice: no link given. What’s with all the art from the lost and found? Can you please send me all the answers to these blind items? Oh and another thing, won’t you download the new St. Etienne.

A twinkiless gotham? Nahhh never! In the seventies, villains weren’t as deadly as they are now. All it took to be evil back then was a pair of bellbottoms with matching turtleneck and headband. Maybe an afro, maybe just some panties and a cape. One or two of them thought just being ugly would bring the world to its knees, and most times it almost worked. But there was one thing those evil bastards never counted on. Our heroes carry fruit pies. Fruit pies that they’ll throw to you if you’ve been hoarding food or stealing national monuments. Fruit pies that are not only filled with delicious real fruit filling, but filled with the sweet taste of poetic justice. Seanbaby has compiled an interesting display of Hostess Snack Cake Ads featuring Super-heroes.

‘Modern history invites nostalgia because it is increasingly about the lived experiences of work and leisure that people can identify with directly…No sooner has that happened than the displaced music, clothes, style or look can become a candidate for nostalgia. Fashions and styles are not discarded but stored, ready to be re-used.

Thrifting ain’t what it used to be, blame ‘Antiques Roadshow‘ and ‘Ebay’, those kooky treasures (polyester shirts, herb albert albums, bakelite dinnerware etc) are getting harder and harder to find. If you are so inclined venture down Lorain Ave. for a little shopping, this is definitely the hot spot for those retro-fabulous items. Cleveland is cheap hun, shop now. Two stores of note, specializing in modern mid century designs are:

Boom 7741 Lorain Ave/Cleveland/216.631.6088
Featuring modern and Scandinavian furniture and decorative arts, pottery, enamelware, paintings and other such oddities. A bit pricey, would bitch and dicker the price down a bit, shop owner looks like she’s been sucking on a lemon too long, needs to loosen up, drop the attitude, but a nice array of wares. Drop the acetate business cards, serve coffee. Like your glasses. Need that couch. Best bet, go for the vintage table cloths and antique dumbbells upstairs. A short jog up and across the street is the Eamsey inspired…

Modern House 7924 Lorain Ave/Cleveland/216.651.3040
Modern classics, retro, vintage and some not so vintage but just plain fabulous and odd. Huge selection of Russell Wright. Posters and paintings are over-priced but lamps, ashtrays and tableware are reasonable. Bargain with the owners, make them work for it a bit, drop the dated house music ladies, again serve coffee, smile, talk, walk the runway. Best bet, the retro men’s housecoats, not sure if they are authentic but stylish anyway-I plan to go bowling in mine. Call for hours

Not so much deeper as wider, a time before video killed the radio star, MTV, the web, cams, reality television, interactivity, plug n play the technology of the everyday embedded deep inside. I have this metropolis jerkin’ back and forth, the mechanisms like replicas for a personal diorama. The freeze dried Cleveland Museum of Art thaws momentarily to present ‘Into the Light-the Projected Image in American Art, 1964-1977′ Originally curated by the Whitney, the show traces the origin, of the video, 16mm film, artist/fashion video, monitors and wall sized banks of televisions that seem to be embedded into the psyche. Conceptual performance happening, pseudoscientific measurement, documentation, methodology art as research under a microscope, art as surveillance. Many of the installations have not been seen since their original showings and are a whirring retropolis of gallery and image, grainy jumping formats of film border on nostalgia-this is the abandoned future. The technology is so hopeful, innocent in fact, and perhaps all too secretly ushered into our popular culture, where the remote is replaced by the familiar. Yoko Ono’s video piece ‘Sky’ is an omen/hilight of a super surveillance culture (ebay auction of SKY and FLUXUS). Andy Warhol’s dual format/split screen ‘Lupe‘ features a dazed Edie Sedgwick playing Latina movie star Lupe Velez, who committed suicide in the early 1940s. Warhol as ever, is irreverent, confusing and often hilarious. Many of the pieces, become percussive, like Paul Sharits ‘Shutter Interface’ and Dennis Openheim’s ‘Echo’. Trance like tedium gains momentum then falters as viewer dips in and out of artistic statements wary of being a captive audience. 10 years is, 20, even 30 is an infancy in the art world. The early science is fascinating but what of the continuum, where has the future gone?

Steven McDonald of Red+Kross (as mentioned earlier, one of my favorite bands) is now playing bass with the White Stripes, sort of, here is his brilliant 8 part performance piece on reddkross.com. Oh and check out the trailer to his Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, a film that shaped my adult life.

Making his initial name as a prominent scenester during the heady days of the early-’70s New York punk club scene, Wayne County later gained additional renown as perhaps rock’s most prominent transsexual performer, billing herself as Jayne County following her return to the U.S. from Berlin in 1980. Born Wayne Rogers in Dallas, GA (near Atlanta) in approximately 1947, Wayne County assumed his stage name for a production of the Jackie Curtis play Femme Fatale. County acted in several Andy Warhol-associated theater pieces and from there became the regular DJ at the legendary club Max’s Kansas City. County found it difficult to find American labels interested in his trashy, campy, New York Dolls-influenced brand of rock & roll, so he relocated to London just as that city’s punk movement was beginning to gather momentum. He found a home on the Safari label with a new band, the Electric Chairs, and issued his debut album � also called The Electric Chairs � in 1978. Further albums included Storm the Gates of Heaven and Things Your Mother Never Told You, both from 1979. County’s autobiography ‘Man Enough To Be a Woman’ is part Hedwig, part hillbilly boy gone glam punk princess-riveting!

Begin odd bits: The giant heliopsis is in bloom and it looks like a creature from ‘Mars Attacks’, feel free to scrawl ‘Surrender Dorothy’ all over the screen. Thank you for the seriously cool postcard, and yes, I will take it ‘al fresco’, if that’s what you’re offering. Is chaos the natural order of things? The new Pro-Keds really are my new favorite shoes. Thanks, I’m now hooked on Tokyo Suckerpunch, Hokkaido Popsicle, Giant Robot magazine and Pancrase. David Weeks of Butter, is a looker, he and Lindsey make super cool items. Quigit is more useful than you’ll ever know. End odd bits.

In a stressful time it’s hard to be patriotic without being solemn. But at least half the reason one loves this country is that it’s a playful, quite nutty place, teeming with ridiculous notions and silly pronouncements…For every Brooks Brothers, a Marx brother. Whose predictions are heeded more attentively � Alan Greenspan’s or Punxsatawney Phil’s? Since we are a fairly orderly society, we create our anarchies elsewhere…

Little anarchies like Blogs, Rib Cook Offs, Dear Abbey, Bubblegum, Rock n’ Roll, Streaking, Spam, Pro Wrestling, The Virtual Toilet Paper Museum?! Jerry Springer, and many many more.

Compare Uncle Sam’s stern demeanor to his bizarre outfit, and you’ll see what I mean. America the beautiful is composed of grand principles and a continuous, if faltering, search for a more noble expression of being. America The Whimsical by Roger Rosenblatt in todays OP-ED section of the NYTimes.

A cold glass of water heatwave it’s hard to concentrate while everything radiates pull the drapes and darken the room put on a little Coltrane to stop the sentences from breaking in ha…lf