Dear child, I understand that you’re sullen and full of ~ennui~, but if you set that veiling on fire with your cigarette, I will give you SUCH a stern lecture. And take the hat away.
Here’s the thing about Halloween: all year long if you live in America you’re under a steady assault by this right-wing traditional faux-wholesome pseudo-Christian nuclear patriot family atmosphere, and then all the sudden as the weather cools and the days shorten the country loses its marbles decking everything out in bloody corpses, demon faces, witchcraft and giant rubber bugs. Half the country thinks they’re the Addams Family for 1-3 months while a small chunk of weiners get angry that it’s “pagan” or something.
I don’t know if anyone in any other cultural environment can really understand how that feels. It’s the antithesis of the “love jesus and eagles or GIT OUT” under(over)tone American culture is usually about.
And even though it generates billions of dollars, there’s no pressure, shaming or guilting to spend money on it like there is for certain other holidays. We spend that much on Halloween just because it’s fun and we want to, rather than some unspoken (usually unspoken) rule that you must buy extravagant gifts or you’re a heathen scrooge and you don’t love your family.
and it’s when everything is themed with black and it’s totally acceptable
This is actually one of the original purposes of Halloween.
Halloween, like Mardi Gras, descends from the inversion festival. Inversion festivals were a necessary part of most highly regimented and class-divided ancient cultures, such as Rome. You spent all year keeping rigidly to your class and policing others to do the same, living a life of very public behaviors, worshipping very specifically and obeying societal laws you may not agree with and which may not be to your benefit.
But ah, then the festival time came. The rules were thrown out. Sometimes the classes were literally inverted and the nobility were forced to serve. Nothing was taboo. The macabre, the ugly, the things that violated all laws of polite society were glorified. For a period of time – often longer in proportion to how regimented your society was – you were free to do and be exactly what you wanted. You could wear a costume. You could hide from the world behind a mask. You could make all the noise you wanted and nobody would stop you because it was driving out the evil in the community (the evil often being the stress of living in a very outward-facing, regimented society).
And America, whatever anyone says, is an incredibly regimented and class-oriented society. So our lead-in to Halloween is two months long.
Halloween is one of America’s only true inversion festivals. Christmas has terribly rigid expectations and heaps of stress, Thanksgiving makes you want to kill your whole family, the fourth of July it’s too fuckin’ hot, St. Patrick’s Day is too short and it’s filled with douchebags. Memorial Day is for mourning, Labor Day you’re about to start school again. Mardi Gras is a great, very historic inversion festival, but it’s also fairly localized. Pride comes close, and is a very badly needed form of inversion festival for its participants, but it’s not universal and it also involves aspects of activism and protest which use inversion but are not part of inversion.
Halloween is it. It’s our national cut-loose party. And that’s not accidental. Halloween has been an inversion festival since before it had that name, since ancient people realized the harvest was over, the dark short days were coming, and everyone was gonna have to spend the next four months indoors trying not to murder one another.
if anyone would like to learn a couple tricks for carving pumpkins:
- dont cut out the top to scoop out the seeds, cut out the bottom instead. this way the pumpkin doesnt cave in on itself and lasts longer
- sprinkle some cinnamon inside at the top after carving. this way when you put the candle in it smells like pumpkin pie
this is the quality content I wanna see on my dash
PsychGuides.com created the Miss America Morph, which shows how the winners' body mass index has declined over time, while the average American woman's body mass index has increased of the same period.
“I think that what’s really happening there is that women in history or literature are often presented to us as sort of second-tier importance. We hear less about them, we study them less, representations of women are likely to be “less” somehow. So in the comics, I often pit them against this positioning in history, looking for justice or something like that. Finding comedy in the imbalance that is apparent to us as modern readers. Then I think they are often looking exasperated by the men around them, not because the men are bad, but because the men have always been presented to us as more important, and then in the comic, they play into that, and the woman has just had it.”
The impossible just happened. The “unelectable” socialist Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the Labour Party in the UK by a thumping majority, making him potentially the next prime minister. This earthquake was entirely unforeseen by the know-alls of political punditry, just as the equally improbable rise of Bernie Sanders in the US, another incorrigible old leftie, has amazed and baffled the American political establishment, not least Democratic front-runner (until now!) Hillary Clinton.
Be realistic: demand the impossible! So ran a famous slogan of the 1968 Paris uprising, and now that the impossible is indeed suddenly seeming quite realistic, it may be time to examine a radical plan recently put forward by a commentator here. Responding to Lensman’s blog on consent last month, Observer (“not minor-attracted, but hate the way you are treated”) introduced a plan he said could bring about positive change “in a few decades”, comparable to that achieved by the gay movement.
And what a plan! This is no mere sketchy outline of a few bullet points but a full-blown, detailed, 15,000-word exposition of what must be done and how to do it, set out in After the Fall: A Beginner’s Guide to Destroying Pedophobia in the 21st Century. This anonymous piece (Observer’s own?) asks how the gay movement managed to advance so far so quickly, and answers by referring to a game plan co-written by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen entitled After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s. The style of After the Fall, and no doubt After the Ball too, is very professional, as though the writer has a background in advertising or public relations. We hear about geeky concepts such as Availability Cascades, and we can be sure it’s more than just clever-sounding BS because the gay movement has been stunningly successful using the concepts and techniques described.
Just a brief, jargon-free glance at some of these tactics, though, will suffice to make it obvious what was going on and why it worked. Perhaps the most important idea, though it long preceded After the Ball, was to take control of the language: people attracted to their own sex are “gay” (friendly, light-hearted, unthreatening) rather than “homosexual” (medical condition to be cured) or “perverted” (depraved evil-doers). As for who gays are, you go for prestige figures: famous kings, writers, etc., are claimed as gay even when the claim is a bit dodgy: Shakespeare, for instance. The point is not biographical accuracy but the kudos of being associated with the “world’s greatest playwright”. And what gays do is emphatically not anal sex, with all its unfortunately messy implications. Sex is played down. The “message” is about love and relationships.
Numerous such tactics are adapted in After the Fall for application in a paedophilic context – oops, sorry, make that a kind context: homos are gay; paedos are kind. But how much, really, is genuinely adaptable? One new idea, available only right now, in the digital age, looks exciting: anonymous donations using bitcoins in order to achieve a serious level of funding for slick, highly professional advertising campaigns, not just via videos on YouTube but billboards and a mainstream media presence. Unrealistic? Not necessarily.
The biggest single defect in the plan, though, is its lack of a historical perspective. The Kirk and Madsen game plan set out in After the Ball was published in 1989 and was spectacularly successful within a couple of decades. But this was merely the endgame. What a study tightly focused on this phase ignores is that the gay struggle began much earlier, before even the travails and trials of Oscar Wilde, towards the end of the previous century. Thomas Cannon published what is said to have been the first defence of homosexuality in English as long ago as 1749, more than a hundred years before the word itself made its way into the medical literature. Jeremy Bentham, advanced the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England around 1785. Paedophilia these days is arguably at the same historical point as homosexuality was in the 18th century, when you could be hanged for buggery.
In those days it would have been suicidal to come out as a “bugger” or a “sodomite”, or even as a “pederast”, a word which could at least be said to evoke the cultured ethos of Socratic Athens. But coming out, and facing similarly extreme perils to those living two centuries ago, is precisely what After the Fall prescribes as a tactic for kind people. Indeed, it is claimed as essential: many other aspects of the overall strategy depend upon it, such as having presentable, media-friendly spokesfolk.
Regular Heretic TOC readers will not need reminding that we had an extensive discussion of this coming out theme very recently, and I do not propose to reprise it, except to say that I broadly agree with those, such as Edmund and Josh, who feel coming out in present circumstances – or at least urging others to do so – veers towards the irresponsible. After the Fall recommends the use of direct action, taking protest militantly onto the streets, just as the gays have done, to demonstrate strength by being “loud and proud”. All this would achieve at present is to demonstrate our weakness, not our strength. The numbers we could draw upon, and the support from others in alliance with us, would be pathetic. We would be crushed and seen to be crushed. Already perceived as a bunch of losers, we would merely prove the point.
This is not to say there should be no coming out. As Dissident pointed out, the recent Czech documentary Daniel’s World, was about a young man’s coming out that did not wreck his life: as with so much else, it’s not necessarily what you do but when, where and how you do it. Another example, albeit from the more propitiously radical 1970s, is that of “Roger”. I’ll stick with the first name as he may well have gone back in the closet by now, in these more difficult times. He was not shy about being a boy lover in those days, and he came across as a rounded, grounded figure who did good work for a number of radical causes. So when he spoke up for children’s rights as well, he had real credibility.
After the Fall, however, is a fundamentally flawed plan. But that does not mean it is entirely without merit. One of its strongest aspects is identifying issues slightly at a tangent to hard-to-sell paedophilia, but which aim to address people’s feelings rather than their opinions. All successful advocates know that if you can tap into an emotional response, opinions will follow: the heart follows the head, not the other way around. Rational arguments fall on deaf ears unless there is some deeper connection to what we feel. The plan identifies our cultural heritage of sexual shame and guilt, expressed through obsessive body covering, as all-important. In the age of internet porn there is a tendency to think we are all (well, the guys among us at least) totally cool about seeing genitals and sexual action. But the collective feeling that porn is not OK finds revealingly vehement expression in the view that such things are absolutely not to be seen by kids.
After the Fall sees the encouragement of naturism as a great way to counteract such feelings: “Normalization of the genitalia (aka naturism) and sex-positivity are inextricably linked. We think penises and vaginas are weird because we don’t see them enough in normal settings, on normal people…. Once we begin to see them as normal parts of the body, we will naturally ask why we feel children cannot give others permission to touch there and nowhere else.”
As the plan astutely perceives, this approach is capable of promoting nudity in safely non-sexual ways: naturism can be about enjoying the sunshine and a sense of bodily freedom. It is about doing all sorts of ordinary things with no clothes on, and notjust – or perhaps not at all – about sex. And naturism is very much for kids as well as grown-ups. Continental Europe already has a great naturist tradition that goes unacknowledged in After the Fall, which is very oriented towards addressing American cultural hang-ups. But the message needs vigorous reinforcement and development globally, including in Europe. Note that all of us except those who have unwisely come out, are well placed both to enjoy naturism ourselves and safely propagandise for it.
The other really good part of After the Fall is about the language we should use, especially the kind word. Let’s go for it, starting right now. I already did, actually, when I was interviewed by mad, man-hating lesbian feminist extremist Julie Bindel earlier this year, an improbable encounter I mentioned in passing in a comment here a couple of months back. She had asked if she could interview me for the Sunday Times. I emailed back saying she was the last person on earth I would want to be interviewed by. But like the scary heavy dyke she is, she wasn’t too troubled by my lack of consent: she just kept on harassing me until I gave in!
I tell a lie. Although there is no shifting her crazy anti-male prejudice, she did at least quote me fairly and accurately, as well as being surprisingly good company over dinner. Her piece was not, alas, accepted by the Sunday Times, but it has now turned up in the September issue of the right-wing cultural and political periodical Standpoint. Anyway, here is what she quoted from me:
“I would have quite liked [to be labelled as] ‘kindly’ because ‘kindly’ . . . relates to the Dutch and German kinder — children. So yes, being intimate, but also being nice with it. I would say that if someone had sexual relations which were in the realm of what I called earlier the ‘kindly’ sort then that would not be abusive. Although these days one has to be careful because anything you do, no matter how kindly it is, it’s always subject to trauma later on — secondary trauma as a result of society’s hysteria over the whole thing.”
So, I like kindly. But kind is better, I must admit: a very straightforward monosyllable, easily seen as analogous with gay.
Finally, while we’re on the subject of language, the author of After the Fall would surely chide me for calling this blog Heretic TOC. Whereas he wisely emphasises going with the grain, where possible, identifying with majority sentiments rather than setting oneself against them, being labelled a heretic could hardly be more counterproductive. Sure, it draws fellow heretics here, so we can talk among ourselves, but arguably this language defines us as outcasts and bad guys. It’s a bit off message.
But then again, so are Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. They have been saying the same “wrong things” for decades, sticking to their principles and fighting for what they believe rather than slavishly following the opinion polls and focus groups. And now, suddenly and unexpectedly, they find they are being respected for it. They are seen as authentic.
I wouldn’t mind a bit of that sort of reputation, even if it is only for me to be judged authentically odd, as seems likely! So, it may not be in the After the Fall plan, but I don’t think I’ll be changing the name of Heretic TOC anytime soon!
MY FRIEND WAS NO MURDERER: OFFICIAL
I had a very welcome email yesterday from James Gillespie of the Sunday Times, letting me know he intends to use some information I gave him after he approached me last month in connection with the so-called Westminster VIP paedophilia scandal.
Gillespie has long been sceptical of the crazy murder claims made by “Nick” and “Darren” via Exaggero (sorry, Exaro) News, and nonsense about Edward Heath and others mentioned in Heretic TOC last time. I have seen several of his excellent reports.
And now he has sent me a PDF of his latest, which informs us that the police have at last admitted they no longer believe “Darren’s” claim that my friend the late Peter Righton was a murderer. Their investigation has accordingly been dropped [“Police drop ‘VIP sex murder ring’ inquiry”, James Gillespie, Sunday Times, 13 September 2015]. Gillespie’s report is behind a paywall online, but his story was picked up by the Daily Mail. The first big breakthrough against these dodgy Exaggero witnesses was also in the Mail recently. This was a front-page lead saying the VIP scandal shows signs of “unravelling”, with the police finally getting cold feet over the lack of evidence to back up the claims of star fantasist “Nick”.
Sanity at last!
MORE ABOUT ROBIN
Another email, received a couple of days ago from Robin Sharpe’s daughter Katherine.
“I’m glad you are posting something on your blog,” she wrote, “That would make him happy. Thank you for doing that.”
In a tribute to her father, whose death was recently reported here (under “Sad news from Canada”), she says that as a child he instilled in her a love of camping, nature, architecture and art. As an adult, though, she had unsurprisingly found it difficult to deal with the high profile controversy he generated, or the “fallout”, as she calls it.
“Maintaining a relationship with my dad has been an exercise in compartmentalisation I would say. You box up and set aside what you cannot agree on, and try to work out the rest.”
Sounds very sensible; and I’d say she seems to have done a pretty good job.
The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is like TiVo. You don't "get it" until you get it. It's a plain looking white sponge that looks like a chunk of cheap mattress foam.
Crimes of the Art is a weekly survey of artless criminals’ cultural misdeeds. Crimes are rated on a highly subjective scale from one “Scream” emoji — the equivalent of a vandal tagging the exterior of a local history museum in a remote part of the US — to five “Scream” emojis — the equivalent of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist.
Art Dome Dinged
Edmonton’s “Talus Dome,” a mound-like public sculpture by the Ball-Nogues Studio, was attacked by one or morevandals who left about a dozen of the artwork’s almost 1,000 reflective balls dented. “There are different ways to make a point and free expression is one thing but damaging a public asset including a piece of public art is just disappointing behavior,” Mayor Don Iveson told the Edmonton Times. “I’d give that person a talking to if I found them.”
Verdict: Mayor Iveson’s threat to give the vandal(s) “a talking to” is the most comically Canadian thing I’ve heard in weeks.
Dealer in Deep Over Purloined Picassos
Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier is under investigation in Paris for allegedly having withheld the fact that he stole two Pablo Picasso works from the artist’s stepdaughter when he sold them to a Russian collector in 2013. The billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev paid €27 million (~$30.4 million) for the two gouache paintings, “Tête de femme. Profil” (“Woman’s head. Profile”) and “Espangole à l’éventail” (“Spanish woman with a fan”) — which is also the sum at which Bouvier’s bail has been set.
Verdict: Apparently stealing paintings is OK, but lying about it to a Russian oligarch is a step too far.
Franz West Archive Sues Gagosian
The Vienna-based Archiv Franz West has filed a copyright lawsuit against Gagosian over the gallery’s new exhibition of furniture designed by the late Austrian sculptor. In its lawsuit the nonprofit called the objects in the exhibition “unauthorized” and “essentially, an imitation,” alleging that their display and sale will damage the artist’s reputation.
Verdict: Here’s hoping the Archiv Franz West is holding out for a furniture licensing deal with Ikea.
Art Dealer Delt Indictment
Longtime Atlanta gallerist Bill Lowe has been indicted in Georgia’s Fulton County on charges of racketeering and criminal theft after he allegedly withheld more than $300,000 in proceeds of sales from the artists whose works he was selling. The Atlanta police’s Major Fraud Unit raided Lowe’s eponymous gallery in 2013.
Verdict: Further evidence in support of the old adage that “contemporary art is a racket.”
Two life-size steel sculptures of stick-like figures created by Antony Gormley for Western Australia’s remote Lake Ballard have gone missing, and all that’s left of a third are its feet. Locals have suggested that the installation, titled “Inside Australia” and valued at £6 million (~$9.2 million) may have been damaged when a truck driver became stuck in the muddy salt lake and used one of the sculptures to winch his vehicle free.
Verdict: One of contemporary public sculpture’s most under-appreciated strengths is its ability to free vehicles from muddy swamps.
Medieval Moneys Burgled in Edinburgh
Three medieval coins dating from 1555, 1601, and 1604 were stolen from the Kingdom of the Scots gallery at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The theft may have happened during a recent strike, when the museum remained open with a skeleton staff, leading some to blame the institution’s management for putting its collection at risk.
Verdict: With inflation, those coins must be worth thousands!
Antiquities Thieves Make Off with Mosaic
Two men were arrested after allegedly dismantling and stealing a Byzantine-era mosaic from the floor of a 6th-century church in northern Israel. The two suspects face up to five years in prison.
Verdict: Stealing entire floors is ambitious, top-tier antiquities thief stuff. Next time start small.
Freiberg Sculpture Fried
A large public sculpture by artist Reiner Maria Matysik on the University of Freiburg’s campus was badly damaged by a fire, and police suspect it was arson. The artist is still deciding whether to repair the large polyester and resin sculpture, titled “Augenloss” (“Eyeless”), or leave it in its damaged state.
I want to highlight one story I mentioned in my Dissent piece through a full blog post. Mining companies operate internationally largely as bad actors, seeking maximum exploitation at the lowest cost to achieve the highest profit. When they can bribe officials or ignore local law, that makes it all the better. This is true of American, British, Australian, and especially Canadian mining companies. In nations like El Salvador, Romania, Papua New Guinea, and Mexico, citizens fight back but often unsuccessfully. The lack of good jobs makes that fight all the harder as even the low wages combined with the long-term ecological denigration are still worth it to lots of poor people. But often the damage is just too much for citizens to take. And that’s what is happening in Zambia:
The communities of Hippo Pool, Kakosa, Shimulala and Hellen say the Mushishima stream and the Kafue have become rivers of acid.
Hundreds of villagers who claim copper mining operations in the area have poisoned their water source and destroyed farmland are taking Zambia’s biggest copper mine, Vedanta Resources Plc, to court.
Leaked documents, that the BBC has seen, appear to show that Vedanta Resources – through its Zambian based Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) – have been spilling sulphuric acid and other toxic chemicals into the water sources.
A whistle-blower, who worked for 15 years with KCM, alleges that since Vedanta bought the mine in 2004, corners have been cut to save the costs of running operations.
“I see an environmental catastrophe coming our way,” said the source, who asked not to be named. “The lives of the people will be shattered.
“I decided to speak out because I could no longer be part of the destruction any more because the next generation will not have kind words for us,”
Konkola Copper Mine (KCM) denied in a statement to the BBC that it had failed to maintain critical equipment adequately or that heavy spillages and massive leakages occurred due to degraded equipment and leaking pumps and pipes.
KCM went on to say that it has spent $530m (£350m) to improve the environmental performance of its operations. This includes replacing slurry waste pipelines to the pollution control dam and putting in a new smelter, which it says captures 99.7% of sulphur emissions.
There’s little reason to believe the company here, as the reporter notes. The pollution is everywhere and it is sensual to the eyes, nose, and tongue.
Many years ago — actually about a quarter of a century ago — I had applied for the job of Student Ombudsperson at the University of Chicago. The job of the Ombudsperson was to help students navigate the bureaucracy of the university, and to help them get their concerns heard when the usual channels weren’t working. It was a job where I got to problem-solve and advocate for people, and that appealed to me.
One part of the process for being considered for the job was an interview with a selection committee, which featured members of the faculty, administration and student body, who asked me (and presumably the other candidates) questions and offered hypothetical issues to resolve. It was during one of the hypotheticals, the details of which are not especially important, that I was confronted with a hypothetical student who simply wouldn’t be happy with any outcome. So, like this:
Q: A student comes with “X” problem. How would you resolve it?
A: I would do “Y”, and here’s why [explain why].
Q: Okay, but they’re not happy with that solution. What do you do then?
A: Then I would try “Z,” and here’s why [explain why].
Q: Okay, but they’re still not happy. Now what?
A: Well, then let’s try “Q,” because [explain why].
Q: They’re still not happy.
A: Fine, I would try “K,” because [explain why].
“Okay,” my interviewer then said, “But they’re still not happy with your solution or your efforts. What do you do then?”
“I give them a quarter to call someone who cares,” I said. “Because at that point it’s clear they’re more interested in being upset than anything else, and I have other work to do.”
Yes, I actually did say that (or something very close to it; it was 25 years ago and I didn’t record it).
And yes, I got the job.
Here’s the thing: I believe that we owe our fellow human beings a certain amount of compassion and courtesy and respect, and to listen to their complaints and grievances. We should ask ourselves whether those complaints and grievances are valid, and whether we can help — and in some cases, ask whether we are the author of those grievances, and if so what we can do to resolve them.
But I also believe that after a certain point, it may become obvious that some people just want to complain, or to be angry, or to be an asshole, or whatever, and that nothing a reasonable person can do will ever make those people happy or satisfied. So you give them a quarter, metaphorically or otherwise, and tell them to call someone who cares. Because you have other things to do. And then you go on doing those things you need to do.
They won’t be happy, but then they were never going to be happy, and it’s not your responsibility to fix their problem — “their problem” not being whatever specific complaint or grievance they might have, but a worldview that requires them to always have a complaint or grievance, and/or to believe that the root of that complaint is somehow about you. That’s something for therapy, perhaps, not for you, or anyone else who isn’t getting paid by the session.
You should be a kind and compassionate person to others when they have a problem or grievance. You should also know when it’s a problem you can’t solve, and also, when the person doesn’t actually want the problem to be solved. It’s neither kind nor compassionate to them or to you to keep being involved after that point. And to be sure, after you’ve given them their quarter, they will likely complain that you are a terrible person, and/or part of a conspiracy to keep them down, and so on and so forth. That’s their karma, not yours.
I was and am pretty proud of my time as Student Ombudsperson at the University of Chicago. I ended up helping a good number of people, and making sure that the students could get their voices heard. But I never forgot that part of the reason I got the job is because they knew I knew where to draw a line. It was a useful skill in that job. It continues to be useful to me today.
Mosaic by Xenobia Bailey in New York City’s new 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)
It only took a day after Sunday’s opening for a candy bar wrapper to lodge beneath the new wooden bench of the 34th Street-Hudson Yards platform, and vague stains to appear on the station’s light granite floor tiles. Still, the dominant feeling of New York City’s first new subway station since 1989 is that of newness, and the fulfillment of an eight-year wait and $2.4 billion in funding. Soon it will be just another purple-colored point on the MTA map, now curving the 7 line 1.5 miles beyond Times Square. For a brief time, it’s all gleaming steel and fresh fluorescent lights.
34th Street–Hudson Yards on the MTA map (click to enlarge)
The MTA anticipates the new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue will eventually be the “busiest single station in New York City.” This is in part due to the huge luxury development rising at the end of the High Line, overlooking the Hudson River. It’s definitely an area of the city that was cut off from the subway, but the scrapped second station at 41st Street and Tenth Avenue once part of the project would arguably have supported a more underserved neighborhood.
Cranes tower by the glass station entrance designed by Toshiko Mori Architects as a sort of utilitarian take on Hector Guimard’s Art Nouveau Paris Metro entrance, with the Hudson Park & Boulevard landscaping of benches and plants winding alongside. Below, burrowed 125 feet into the Manhattan earth to dodge existing underground infrastructure like Amtrak, the Eigth Avenue line, and the Lincoln Tunnel, is the multi-level, climate-controlled station designed by Dattner Architects. Two levels of escalators (the longest in the city), and an Italian-designed inclined elevator, enable the descent into the column-free arched concourse and platform, which evoke the DC Metro although, alas, without the brutalism.
Outside entrance to the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station, with Hudson Yards construction in the background
The two lower levels of the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
The platform for the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
Like the Fulton Center complex opened last year with its gaping white oculus, the 34th Street-Hudson Yards favors a sterile futuristic aesthetic with long illuminated tunnels that would have been ready settings for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The white and metal palette is enlivened by two huge mosaics designed by Xenobia Bailey called “Funktional Vibrations,” both commissioned by MTA Arts & Design. It’s unfortunate some of their vibrant tiles weren’t allowed to creep onto the sleek concourse and platform, although the two pieces are stunning above the first bank of escalators and the information booth and ticket machines. True, they might not have much to do with the area’s former industrial history and waterfront setting, but she is an established figure in the New York art world and it’s exciting to see her intricate crochet work inspired by African-American patterns transformed into this huge, colorful mosaic mural built by Miotto Mosaic Art Studio.
The work with its overlaid circular patterns against blue feels as futuristic as the station itself, but with a warmth that’s missing in the greater architecture. Each of the city’s 496 stations is after all a portal for people’s lives and homes, and after the newness fades and the first dark gum globs stick forever to the tiles, they become daily personal spaces for the city. Whether this will be the city’s major hub in a few years remains to be seen, although what it seems to be inviting in more than anything is the passive modernism of the Hudson Yards construction around it.
Mosaic by Xenobia Bailey over the entrance escalator to the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
Mosaic by Xenobia Bailey
Mosaic by Xenobia Bailey in the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
Number for the station alongside the tracks
The platform for the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
The platform for the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
Exit from the escalator to the tracks in the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
Riding the escalator up from the tracks
Landscaping and seating by the elevator down to the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station
If you are like most Americans, you have no idea who Kathleen Parker is. But if you remember her at all, it's probably because once upon a time she said a mean thing about Sarah Palin. And when that happened...
...Ms. Parker, you might remember, achieved brief fame outside the wingnut Thunderdome a few years ago when, after an entire career spent lobbing red meat to violently insane bitey-bitey Conservative zombies, was suddenly and hilariously shocked!shocked! to discover after a less-than-supporting column about Sarah Palin that her readers were not just violently insane bitey-bitey Conservative zombies, but violently insane bitey-bitey Conservative zombies who super-duper luuurved them some Sarah Palin:
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should "off" myself. ... After 20 years of column writing, I’m familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just angry, but vicious and threatening
Happily, Ms. Parker recovered from her brief collision with reality and has managed by dint of sheer, batshit talking point repetition to slither back into the good graces of violently insane bitey-bitey Conservative zombie crowd with verbal junk food...
Well, Ms. Parker has once again fallen out of love with the bitey-bitey Conservative zombie crowd whose existence has paid for her hearth and home for lo these many years. In fact she is so concerned with their hijinx and shenanigans and monkeyshines and whatnot that she wrote an entire column for an American newspaper today expressing her worry that if their hijinx and shenanigans and monkeyshines (and whatnot!) goes on too much longer, "rational conservatism" may eventually be in big trouble!
Kathleen Parker: Cretins and squirrel heads
...
Why would any candidate align himself with the sort of ignorance that prompts someone to carry a sign comparing the U.S. Supreme Court to the Islamic State? Because stupid sells, apparently. But party members and candidates who understand the distinctions in this and other instances have a duty to challenge erroneous representations when they are made, not with bland dispassion but with outrage equal to the offense. Otherwise, they are complicit in the eventual demise of rational conservatism.
Imagine a carrion beetle. Now imagine that carrion beetle taking a break from its dinner long enough to write a column for the Washington Post explaining that the corpse on which it has been supping for decades isn't really a corpse at all. In fact, it's still alive and kicking, but if someone doesn't Take Steps pretty soon, maybe one day in the distant future, that corpse really will be dead, dead, dead!
And what'll we have for dinner then, huh?
After which the carrion beetle toddles back to the dining room for the second course.
Sorry, Ms. Parker, but "rational conservatism" wouldn't 'voom' if you put 4,000 volts through it.
Edmonton’s “Talus Dome,” a mound-like public sculpture by the Ball-Nogues Studio, was attacked by one or more vandals who left about a dozen of the artwork’s almost 1,000 reflective balls dented. “There are different ways to make a point and free expression is one thing but damaging a public asset including a piece of public art is just disappointing behavior,” Mayor Don Iveson told the Edmonton Times. “I’d give that person a talking to if I found them.”
Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier is under investigation in Paris for allegedly having withheld the fact that he stole two Pablo Picasso works from the artist’s stepdaughter when he sold them to a Russian collector in 2013. The billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev paid €27 million (~$30.4 million) for the two gouache paintings, “Tête de femme. Profil” (“Woman’s head. Profile”) and “Espangole à l’éventail” (“Spanish woman with a fan”) — which is also the sum at which Bouvier’s bail has been set.
The Vienna-based Archiv Franz West has filed a copyright lawsuit against Gagosian over the gallery’s new exhibition of furniture designed by the late Austrian sculptor. In its lawsuit the nonprofit called the objects in the exhibition “unauthorized” and “essentially, an imitation,” alleging that their display and sale will damage the artist’s reputation.
Two life-size steel sculptures of stick-like figures created by Antony Gormley for Western Australia’s remote Lake Ballard have gone missing, and all that’s left of a third are its feet. Locals have suggested that the installation, titled “Inside Australia” and valued at £6 million (~$9.2 million) may have been damaged when a truck driver became stuck in the muddy salt lake and used one of the sculptures to winch his vehicle free.
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