swamp tour

A late addition from my recent trip to New Orleans. I want on a boat tour of a bayou outside town. Saw gators and everything. Here are my best pictures.

Swamp Tour

new orleans cemeteries

I just posted some photos I took of two famous old New Orleans Cemeteries.

Check them out at Picasa.

what opera are you?

The Metropolitan has a clever quiz on its website that supposedly tells you what opera you're most compatible with.

I took it and got Verdi's "Il Trovatore."

Quoting: "People just don’t get you sometimes. But you’re not crazy—the world is. Just look around! Your responses are the only sane reactions to an off-kilter world. Can’t anybody else see this? Actually, Verdi did, and his masterful vision of a world gone mad, Il Trovatore, has been as misunderstood by prosaic minds as you often are."

Which is (a) scary close to the way I see myself, and (b) prompted me to buy tickets to go see trovatore the end of April. Here's to online marketing!

the ubiquity of distress

A friend just sent me a link to this post on the NY Times Blog. It's interesting and scary like most financial reporting these days. But I am particularly taken with the title...I may have to rename this (sad and forsaken) blog.

the magic of opera?

I love the lovely and lovable diva Renee Fleming. Nothing but the greatest respect for her talent. I'm sure you feel the same way; who wouldn't?

Still, without meaning to be mean about it, I have to observe that the new Met outdoor ad campaign being plastered all over the city seems to be less about the Magic of Opera, and more about the Magic of Photoshop.

I'm just sayin'.

hell in a handbasket, part ii: running out of elements

The second in a continuing series looking at the myriad ways we're doomed.

It seems global supplies of rare earth elements, like iridium and gallium, which we need to make our TVs go, are running quite low, and could be depleted by as soon as 2017.

I'm not sure this qualifies as a species-ending event, but it might force us all to (egad) read or whatever for entertainment.

shocking self discovery

Last weekend I realized, quite suddenly and with no warning or discernable transition, that I have gone from noticing and being somewhat intimidated by guys who can lift more than I can at the gym to noticing and feeling somewhat superior to guys who can’t lift as much as I can at the gym. And this indicates that I have somehow, quite unintentionally, become a jock.

I’m shocked and embarrassed by this.

*Note: not my arm. But almost.

patron of the arts

I went to the Affordable Art Fair a couple of weeks ago and, lo, bought some Art I could Afford. It is nice when things work out like that. Actually I was somewhat surprised how many pieces I liked—there was less overtly political or difficult or annoying than I was expecting. On the other hand, some pieces were a little too spendy (“affordable” is defined as anything under $10,000, which I consider ‘doable’ but not ‘affordable’).

But in the end, at almost the last booth I visited, I ran across a couple of pieces that I more than liked.

Ando Shinji is Japanese artist who makes floral prints that are modern and wildly expressive and beautiful to me. The particular piece of his I liked best, after seeing all of the ones the gallery had, was of sunflowers, but on their sides, arcing across the top of the page, facing away from the viewer. Melancholy and nearly monochrome, with lots of negative space. Very me. While this was my favorite of his pieces, I liked nearly everything of his I saw.

The other contender was by Suzanne Marshall, a New Mexico artist who makes somewhat strange and sinister and biological (or at least sciencey-looking) prints. Here’s the one I liked most; it’s called “Nascent.”

So I saw these pieces, but of course had to circle around the show a second time and see the other things that had caught my eye again, and weigh them against one another to figure out what I should buy. And in the end I came back to the Ando and the Marshall. It was extremely tough to choose.

Helpfully the gallery owner (a very nice woman) thought to suggest “why don’t you buy both and I’ll give you a discount on them?”

Which, given that I was going to buy both anyway, worked out quite well.

My new art made me entirely happy, though I’m not sure if the universe felt the same: the moment I got the pieces safely ensconced in bubble wrap and headed for the exit, the skies opened up in one of the strongest downpours I’ve seen in quite some time. So I stopped in the café and had a drink and did a crossword puzzle while the universe made up its mind.