It's Time You And I Had A Little Sit-Down.

I'm a little disappointed in you. I had hoped for something more from you. Not much more, but yes, I expected just a little bit more from you.

Yes, YOU! Stop glancing over your shoulder! If you have any doubt about who I am talking to in here, it's YOU! Oh, did you think nothing was ever going to be expected of you? Are you like this with everybody? Mute, nonparticipatory, and quasi-anonymous?

Are you even there? I know you are, but I only know that through a third party.

You're just so quiet. So opaque. It feels chilly in here, and one-sided. I don't even get spammed in here.

Who are you?

Look, don't worry. I swear I won't be clingy. This isn't one of those confessional blogs where if within 24 hours no one responds with two of my best characteristics I will have to be peeled off the floor and deposited in Bellevue. If I wanted a blog like that, I'd be on livejournal doling out friend access like it was my last handful of Vicodins.

But absolutely, by all means, if you are stopping by here and you wish to tell me anything at all about yourself, about your hopes, dreams, fears, as they relate to bloggystyle, please do so.

It appears that I've been a fool for thinking it could have been different. I'm listening to Patsy Cline now until somebody says something, and stops teasing and torturing me.

"'Art' 'Review'": Rauschenberg: Pretentious Failure Or Heroic Nutjob?

I just caught the show at the Met, Richard Rauschenberg: Combines, a series of hybrid paintings/sculptures. It's like stuff glued on stuff with paint. "Combines" not only describes the type of works but is also a good title because it vaguely evokes farm equipment.*

There were recurring objects. There were precipitous wooden planks, there were birds or parts of birds, shirt cuffs, and things dead or incarcerated. Mostly, there was junk.

So much junk, glued this way and that. It made me think my grandmother could have done it! What a way that could have been for her to pass the time! She was a depressed packrat living in Maine with the tv on all the time. She had loads and loads of junk, in the house, in the shed that she built out of the other junk. She could have glued it on canvas with paint to make herself feel better!

But I don't know if that's what was going on with Rauschenberg. I haven't bothered to research him yet, so I have no idea. And that is what is tricky about needing to know more about art before evaluating it. Because now it seems to matter. I didn't really like it much. It seemed to me to be awkwardly arranged, ungainly junk clusters. But someone else could see it entirely differently.

Verdict: If Rauschenberg was some hick doing it for therapy, I support him. If he was a pretentious fuck trying to do something new, he failed. Except now I'm thinking I like him just for making me think of my grandmother.

My date said that it seemed to be aiming for the macabre, but missed. He gets five points, for using "macabre"; Rauschenberg zero, for not achieving it.

*I don't know anything about visual art, and I kind of like it that way. I can invent reasons why it happened, and I can go with my gut. This in turn creates an art form blending ignorance with pedantry, which I'm told equals bullshitting.

Two Kinds Of People In This World.

We can each be classified as one of the following:

Those who think Amelie is just the most enchanting French flick.

Or those who think it is a shockingly vomitaceous bile-pile.

I'm sorry, Friends Who Like Amelie. I know who you are. I've read your Myspace and Friendster profiles. When I read that you liked Amelie, I froze, caught as I often am between disbelief and disdain. I briefly wondered if you might be a cyborg and I hadn't known it all this time.

Please let me know if you're just a cyborg.

Amelie is an insult to life itself. Life is dirty, you saucer-eyed kewpie! Not polished to a fairy-tale glimmer, with you skipping around Paris like a benovolent scheming imp. Paris wasn't meant to be used that way!

Amelie, you are vacuum-packed and sexless!

This is a movie en Paris? What a long, sad road we've traveled from Brando's backdoor butter.