random stuff

Here is something you will learn about in jabberous offline, the FREE zine in Runaway Comic #2.
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The same Mysterious Events that kept me from APE are keeping me from jabbering here or updating mm.net or posting new ditties. I think things will level out soon. The good news is Runaway Comic #2 is still on track and should solicit next month.

And now... random stuff...
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gaypatriot is my new favorite blog!

Being more conservative than liberal, I am at odds with my counterculture arteest friends and my Massachusetts neighbors more often than not. It's refreshing to hear these right-thinking gays talk sense about Families United and the abundance of eyeliner on male American Idol contestants. The comments are fun too. "Welcome to the world, sweetie. Life’s a bitch, and so is your attitude."
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As long as I am alienating liberals I may as well indulge my other self-destructive hobby - bashing the Art World!

I have lived in Massachusetts 16 years and stubbornly avoided paying money to go inside Mass MOCA all of that time - until last weekend. I was on an outing with Runaway Comics technical assistant Brigham Martin and he wanted to go in and check out the "Amusement Park" installation, which I had to admit sounded intriguing.

SUCKER!!! It's a bunch of old beat up carnival rides - the actual rides, tilt-a-whirl, bumper cars, etc... that's it! A gigantic dimly lit room filled with old amusement park rides. BUT - they have been ALTERED! Some are running, but slowed down to a snail's pace, so you you have to sit and stare at them to realize any movement at all. And some of them - this is the brilliant part - some are not running at all! According to MOCA "Your body enters a space of warped time, and your mind follows with dizzying speed."

OK, fine. I already know a dead amusement park is warped, but if there are those among us who have to have it shown to them in a museum, I guess MOCA is providing a service. The thing that gripes me is that the intelligentsia is spending a fortune shipping tons of steel around the world, and some of that is tax money. And even the part that is funded by private grants irks me, because there are artists slaving away at day jobs who could be paid to create art if some Fund would fund them. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most people who praise MOCA also condemn the financial divide between the Upper Class and the Rest Of Us. It just seems ironic to me. I know it has to cost a ton of money to move, store, assemble, dis-assemble, re-assemble these ridiculous gigantic installations.

I don't want to single out "Amusement Park". Because the other installations are equally gigantic and stupid.
¡ Two life-size (poorly constructed) steel and wood lion's cages containing a gigantic bone, a tin bowl and lion feces. Not just one, but two. In case you didn't get it the first time, I guess.
¡ An airplane fuselage from the airplane fuselage graveyard. This one has hundreds of dried bats attached to it and is connected to more crap I won't bother describing. Go see it if you must.
¡ A 20-ton "deteriorating" sand castle. 20 tons right there. And it's not a pretty sand castle, it looks like a Wal-Mart distribution center. I suppose this one is exciting because more parts of it crumble away every time it's shipped.
To be fair, I was impressed by this artist's gigantic snake skeleton constructed of plywood. But I don't think it's so awesome that money should be spent to ship it all over the world. Ditto the stuffed elephant and tiger. Kind of interesting, but not worth shipping. (Where is PETA on that one???)

In closing I'd like to thank Kamrooz Aram for actually painting decent works of art that are interesting to look at and do not cost a fortune to ship/store/install.

OK, that was the last $10 Mass MOCA will ever get from me, unless they get a clue and hang some Jim Woodring paintings.