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.

Shit, I Don't Like Penmanship Anymore.

I'm only writing in this because I like typing now much better than longhand.

I like typing now much better than longhand.

I didn't say I liked that fact.

So I'm not posting to post, but only to write a private journal entry. I believe those belong in ink in books. Because when am I going to go back and read my blog entries? Well, how often do I go back and read my paper journals? Aside from when I'm reconstructing my life's timeline like it was freaking Ancient Egypt.

What is safer, apocalypse-wise, paper or the Internet? That's silly. If there is an apocalypse, it all goes, but we don't know what will go first. I'm betting on paper lasting longer.* The Internet will be gone before my personal possessions. Unless there is a terrorist attack.

Anyway, I don't care about that. Really, it just bothers my slight OCD that journaling is now bifurcated. It's too messy to have my diary in different places. It also bothers me that I just used "journal" as a verb. Well, a gerund, actually. I had been really against that usage. I'll try to keep up the fight.

Sometimes I start to crack, grammar-wise.

"_______-wise" is a horrible construction, so horrible that it may be used to excess for effect. If you use it unselfconsciously, sorry. No offense. Besides, I just did the same thing.

If all I had was a paper journal, I wouldn't have written this entry.

*I need to follow up on this. There is a market where people make money betting on exactly stuff like this. Betting on future possible events like what will be destroyed first in the apocalypse. It's all legal and stuff, too. I kid you fucking not. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Why I Want To Be A Star, And A Plug For An Expired Event.

Isabelle Huppert, hot French actress of a certain age, was the subject of a photography show. She is a) ravishingly beautiful and b) old enough to be a great-grandmother in Maine. I am sure the purveyors of beauty secrets bury her in an avalanche of freebies to help her preserve her hotness.

This brings us to the reason I want to be a star. I don't have the time or the resources to find the best products. I want to make it in showbiz just enough to help my anti-aging efforts. When you are a celebrity, spa people start coming out of the woodwork.

I'll bet Isabelle Huppert complains about all the free products and spa people that clutter her hot French life.

Hangin' With The Conspiracy Theorists.

I went to the most incredible party the other night. I hung out with all my new best friends, the conspiracy theorists.

The party was held in a former squat in the East Village, one of the six squats that was squatted so industriously, safely, and passionately that it won special legal squat status and was not senselessly destroyed by Giuliani's wrecking ball.

It was nice to see that squatters can live as well as rich people. The capacious former squat was lovingly appointed with a piano, a giant stained glass disc, an aquarium, pretty cabinetry, and more. The party was appointed with many intelligent, well-dressed, well-spoken apocalypse enthusiasts.

It's kind of racy to be enjoying cocktails and munchies in an attractive, well-lighted environment while catching snippets of possibly foreign-accented conversation, such as:

"Where you gonna be when the shit hits the fan? You got a plan?"

"Well, it's not like they haven't framed me and put me in Rikers before."

"I'm thinking about Canada, or Hungary. How can I get a passport?"

DVDs debunking 9/11 were traded. Emails were collected to facilitate arranging protests at city hall. The powers-that-be will be taken down, or we will exile ourselves somewhere. Heavy-duty.

I'm leery of hanging with conspiracy theorists not because I think they're full of it, but because I think if I learn what they know I will have no choice but to become one of them. And then I would have to commit to the overthrow of the government. And I'm just so busy already. Their parties are great, though. I'll keep going to those.

I Was Totally Wrong About Jamiroquai.

I've done some research, and everything I thought about Jamiroquai is wrong. In the most completely humiliating ways!

First, it is a band, not a dude. Second, they are British (why ??? did I think they/he were/was French?!). Third, Jamiroquai is derived I guess from lead singer Jay Kay's name and Iroquois, a Native American tribe whose philosophy he "identifies" with. Yes, those were quotation marks of derision.

Thanks for so thoroughly showing me up, Jamiroquai. I hate you more than ever.

Just kidding. I'm so, so sorry I completely wasn't paying attention to what you are all about. To prove it I might illegally download some of your music.

Sordid Confession.

I don't like Jamiroquai.

Zut alors!

That's right! Je n'aime pas Jamiroquai.

How could I not? He seems to be this beneficent, munchkin-like, totally cutesy French dude with all these positive, practically celestial lyrics and easygoing grooves!

During Freshman year of college, I pretended to dislike, perhaps loathe, Prince, because everyone around me was in a frenzy over him, and my roommate screamed at me, "Wait a minute, you don't like Prince?! What is the matter with you?!" Lots of eyebrows, open mouths, and shrieking. I couldn't stand to go with that tide. A few years later I got to enjoy him away from all of those bitches.

This is not the case with Jamiroquai. I am not trying to go against the monstrous, crushing, Jamiroquai tide. All his songs sound alike to me. I don't understand his name, and if he made it up, I think he did a bad job. I will give it to him, however, in that I think he occupies a niche of one. There is nothing else like Jamiroquai, thank god.

I might have just heard the "track" that will make me change my mind, and that makes sense, because when I get this contemptuous of something it's usually when I'm about to come around.

"Wife Swap" Trounces "Trading Spouses."

After regrettably-scant research, I conclude that, next to its wife/mother-forced-to-live-with-hostile-strangers rival, the robust and in-depth Wife Swap, Trading Spouses is but a flaccid, flimsy impostor. But still riveting.

Aegean Orgy.

Pulverize some tomatoes and calamata olives using a mortar and pestle. Stir in some crumbled feta and broken shards of Suzy's Sesame Salted Flatbread. A Mediterranean taco salad, if you will. Best if eaten while you are in a reclining position, togaed, and watching Rome.