Drinks With Doug Reviews: #1
Saturday's weather: Sharp blue sky and clear cumulus clouds, dry and pleasant, mabye about 73 today.
Saturday's drink: McDonald's coffee, as it's morning and the coffee-pot has died.
Saturday's interest: the movie "Hunger", recently playing to big boffo at Cannes. Admittedly, leaning toward the IRA over the English in the Troubles. But timely, given what we have not been discussing regarding rendition, Guantanamo, and our never-ending troubles.
Drinks With Doug is, at its best moments, a chronicle of the thousand events that, together, comprise the events of a life. Or my life, specifically. Part of that life is food I make. Part of it is the work I do, the soap I use, the smell of my dog in the morning, the progress of my herbs, and the events I attend. Today I start DWD Reviews!, exclamation point included. My first stabs at thoughts on events/experiences I've had here that you can have where-ever you are. Movies, concerts, magazine articles, sex toys; it's all fair game. Except the sex toys.
Concert: "Drive - By Truckers" at DC's 930 Club, Saturday May 10.
DWD Rating: two Southern Comforts and a mess o' beers (out of five possible drinks.)
My friend DE suggested this a while back. I've been hearing D and J talk about the Drive By Truckers, and their songs, and their rock opera Southern Rock Opera for years...feeling at times a little left out of the loop of the 70's experience of southern rock concerts, weed, beer, long hair, Stars-n-Bars tees, and all the other whatnot that, I assume, accounts for the bulk of what we may call "southern culture." OK, I'm a little tight-assed Square-head; but the whole Doobie-rock thing always eluded me. Time to give it a try.
Glad I did. Although frankly, I'm not sure when I'll try it again. DBT hit the stage around 11:30pm; much too late for an old man like me. In the words of my friend D: "I love having gone out, I just hate going out." I agree. The opening act was meh, but DBT hit the stage hard and didn't let go until 1am. And that was BEFORE the encore, which lasted well into the wee hours.
At first the songs hit you in the gut - good rock!, you say. Light and dark, good riffs, swampy feel. And, looking around, I think I've never been less intimidated by a concert crowd in my life. On the other side, after a while their tunes meld one into the other. Swamp seeps into swamp, and it becomes a little bit of an endurance contest: you and the guys (and gal) actually making the music.
In the end they won my respect my sheer force (on their part) to make me like them. But they didn't win my icy northern heart.
DVD: "Primer"
DWD Rating: three gin and tonics, and a splash more of Hendricks
"Primer", henceforth referred to without quotes, is the 2004 sci-fi tech-punk mind-fuck that you'll never understand, and wish you did. The work of the intriguing Shane Carruth (he wrote, produced, directed and acted - one more than Orson Welles OR Ed Wood!), Primer charts the totally mundane discover of something shockingly new, and powerfully corrupting, in science. I'll leave it there...mostly because I don't really understand what or how or why or...well, yeah. It's pretty dense - but not in the David Lynch way of weirdness and incomprehensibility for its own sake way. In that 'I don't understand this, but it has enough coherence and internal consistency that I believe I could understand this' way.
Beyond the tech-blather and weed-hungering questions, it also charts the break-down of a very close friendship: something we've all experienced. Worth several viewings.
Concert: "X" 13X31 Tour, Wednesday May 21 at the aforementioned awesome 930 Club.
DWD Rating: four straight scotch (and whatever you can find on the floor.)
What can be said that hasn't been of X over its history? Four amazing musicians - who we know not just by name or face or style but by expression - who together welded the mayhem of LA's punk scene into lasting fierce on-your-fucking-toes musical cocaine. (Not that I know what cocaine is like. Ahem.) C, our friend G and I went, passing (now regrettably) on the Detroit-based opener The Detroit Cobras. Billy Zoom (Paxil-man), Exene (former of King Aragon!), DJ Bonebreak and the aging-but-ageless John Doe: as a set they are history. My history, American music history, our history. I can't say enough.
Event: Art-O-Matic, Friday May 23
DWD Rating: Two sloppy martinis. That's it.
AOM is a somewhat yearly event that I fully support. Heck, I leap up and down at. Hurrah! Art-O-Matic!
It's an un-judged, non-judgemental collection of DC artists' work - often taking over abandoned office buildings and/or intimidating neighborhoods to display the creative output of our area.
No tsk-tsks. No smug chin-scrubbing. No art talk.
It's sappy and sassy and dirty and goofy and provocative in every way creation should be (see previous post!) Walk one floor or eight. Stare or breeze. Laugh - please - and mull. Be yourself.
Art-O-Matic. Why didn't I thing of this?
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
It's The Arts
Monday's weather: 60's and dry, partly sunny like September, and rather windy (like me.)
Monday's drink: Not having one, but if I were, I think I'd fancy a White Peach Bellini. Fizzylicious.
Monday's adage: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." (from Al Gore's 2008 commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University.)
This last weekend was chockablock with art in my hood. Art-O-Matic continues apace (C, D F and I will be going this coming Friday) and the now-empty jumpin' Jesus church that occupied a former garage at 14 and T has been converted into an 'edgy' downtowny-artist gallery that Transformer has occupied for the time. It was also Mid-City Artists' weekend whatnot to boot, with two of my neighbors exhibiting. I didn't get out to experience a single one of them, natch.
I did experience, side-note-wise, the new Harris Teeter store up at Kalorama and 18th, the one in the old roller rink. And I feel confident I can state for the record that it is the gayest grocery store, ever, in all of existence. Quite a statement I admit, but empirically true.
Back to art. The weekend, and the work of my friend J*who writes for The Art Newspaper set my mind to art recently. I've always had an uncomplicated relation with much of it. And generally speaking, I prefer more than less, perhaps mostly because I don't expect much from much of art. Not at least on our shared cultural level. The personal: well that's altogether another issue.
Art-O-Matic is a great example. Floor after floor of...what is that? Who did this? WHAT is that supposed to be? Lots of questions cast into the air for us to play with. The questions - the playfullness of it all - and not worrying about answering them is, for me, very stimulating. But then rarely I happen on something that is not playful at all. No predicting what it is or where I'll find it. But it's a something that...not that it demands attention, for I willingly give it. It's something that seeks somehow to come into me and fill me.
I know the language is a little fruity here, so let me try an analogy. Faith is a mutli-level experience for me. Most of it - the theological questions, the existential wandering, the poking about in that cloud of ideas apart from the quantifiable - is for me just fun. The more questions the better: I wish lots of people were asking lots more questions publicly, inviting the rest of us to trade answers back and forth, free from the weight of whether we're getting it right. Like those rainbow beach-balls that get popped from one to another at bad outdoor concerts. It just bumbles along, no direction, free from direction, existing just for us to bop it to someone else, something fun that we share and joins us together.
But then there's the personal layer. Wholly other than the diverting ponderments about abstractions, these are the deep questions of what my life's work is and should be, how I engage with those I love, and whether I allow my spirit - the spirit - to fill me as it should or if I fight it and keep it from its - and my - work. These are the rare moments I open to the fuzzy pink cloud of theology so that it can pour into me - to what end, who knows.
These are profound and scary moments, but at the essence of life. "Sitting with spirit," I refer to it with my shrink. So it is with art. There's a great jumbly mess of ART floating around in which I am perfectly comfortable moving through. It's just fun, and meant to be swatted up to someone else. But there are - rarely - works that I open to and try to come to live with as they fill me. Perhaps I'll share one or two of these in posts to come.
But not now. Life, Gordon Ramsey, and C all call me away from the dread blog. And none too soon.
*I have to give a shout-out to the work the J does, and the better thoughts he has on art that often don't make it to print. The Art biz - meaning the incredibly high-priced, stratospheric world "real" artists inhabit, opposed to those doing good work living down on this plane with us mortals - has become, I perceive, a sham: little else than oddities put out by no-talent ego cases with mendacious sales pitches, work that exists solely to be commoditized where "value" means exactly and only the price it fetches at auction. People who adopt the surface and trappings of real art before them but have nothing to say or, more charitably, little interest in conversing. I won't characterize J's thoughts on this, adding only when I say these things to him, he has a good chuckle. While you're at it, check out the Art Newspaper. Read it for a month, and write back what you learned about the arts world.
Monday's weather: 60's and dry, partly sunny like September, and rather windy (like me.)
Monday's drink: Not having one, but if I were, I think I'd fancy a White Peach Bellini. Fizzylicious.
Monday's adage: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." (from Al Gore's 2008 commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University.)
This last weekend was chockablock with art in my hood. Art-O-Matic continues apace (C, D F and I will be going this coming Friday) and the now-empty jumpin' Jesus church that occupied a former garage at 14 and T has been converted into an 'edgy' downtowny-artist gallery that Transformer has occupied for the time. It was also Mid-City Artists' weekend whatnot to boot, with two of my neighbors exhibiting. I didn't get out to experience a single one of them, natch.
I did experience, side-note-wise, the new Harris Teeter store up at Kalorama and 18th, the one in the old roller rink. And I feel confident I can state for the record that it is the gayest grocery store, ever, in all of existence. Quite a statement I admit, but empirically true.
Back to art. The weekend, and the work of my friend J*who writes for The Art Newspaper set my mind to art recently. I've always had an uncomplicated relation with much of it. And generally speaking, I prefer more than less, perhaps mostly because I don't expect much from much of art. Not at least on our shared cultural level. The personal: well that's altogether another issue.
Art-O-Matic is a great example. Floor after floor of...what is that? Who did this? WHAT is that supposed to be? Lots of questions cast into the air for us to play with. The questions - the playfullness of it all - and not worrying about answering them is, for me, very stimulating. But then rarely I happen on something that is not playful at all. No predicting what it is or where I'll find it. But it's a something that...not that it demands attention, for I willingly give it. It's something that seeks somehow to come into me and fill me.
I know the language is a little fruity here, so let me try an analogy. Faith is a mutli-level experience for me. Most of it - the theological questions, the existential wandering, the poking about in that cloud of ideas apart from the quantifiable - is for me just fun. The more questions the better: I wish lots of people were asking lots more questions publicly, inviting the rest of us to trade answers back and forth, free from the weight of whether we're getting it right. Like those rainbow beach-balls that get popped from one to another at bad outdoor concerts. It just bumbles along, no direction, free from direction, existing just for us to bop it to someone else, something fun that we share and joins us together.
But then there's the personal layer. Wholly other than the diverting ponderments about abstractions, these are the deep questions of what my life's work is and should be, how I engage with those I love, and whether I allow my spirit - the spirit - to fill me as it should or if I fight it and keep it from its - and my - work. These are the rare moments I open to the fuzzy pink cloud of theology so that it can pour into me - to what end, who knows.
These are profound and scary moments, but at the essence of life. "Sitting with spirit," I refer to it with my shrink. So it is with art. There's a great jumbly mess of ART floating around in which I am perfectly comfortable moving through. It's just fun, and meant to be swatted up to someone else. But there are - rarely - works that I open to and try to come to live with as they fill me. Perhaps I'll share one or two of these in posts to come.
But not now. Life, Gordon Ramsey, and C all call me away from the dread blog. And none too soon.
*I have to give a shout-out to the work the J does, and the better thoughts he has on art that often don't make it to print. The Art biz - meaning the incredibly high-priced, stratospheric world "real" artists inhabit, opposed to those doing good work living down on this plane with us mortals - has become, I perceive, a sham: little else than oddities put out by no-talent ego cases with mendacious sales pitches, work that exists solely to be commoditized where "value" means exactly and only the price it fetches at auction. People who adopt the surface and trappings of real art before them but have nothing to say or, more charitably, little interest in conversing. I won't characterize J's thoughts on this, adding only when I say these things to him, he has a good chuckle. While you're at it, check out the Art Newspaper. Read it for a month, and write back what you learned about the arts world.
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