I spotted this on my lunch break today:

A contemporary, street-level sequel to Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased De Kooning Drawing“… or is tape just that much cheaper than paint?
Either way, I love it.

(And yes, I have already submitted this to There, I Fixed It.)

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My roommate found this flyer on a trip to Milwaukee last week. It’s just so spectacular — I have no idea where it comes from or what it means. It doesn’t even seem to be referring to a specific location. But man, I love just THINKING about what kind of a crowd this things draws. There’s nothing like the idea of a bar full of drunk furries to get the imagination going.

If anyone can shed any light on this, please let me know in the comments section.

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If you’re in the middle of an existential crisis, this video by artist Jon Rafman of the Kool-Aid Man meandering through various user-created realms of Second Life might be just the thing to shake you out of it. Or conversely, if your life is boring as hell and you need a little existential crisis up in your bizness, this might get that process kick-started. Really, I’m pretty sure it can work either way.

While the video queues up — and it’s kind of a long one — you should know that after some zen-like gliding through various naturescapes and running through empty cities (and engaging in a robot battle) Kool-Aid Man gets raw (NSFW) at about 7:50, right after he does some tai chi with a couple of refugees from a Renaissance Faire. So, fair warning.

If you’d rather get a more Cliff’s Notes version of the Kool-Aid Man’s shenanigans in Second Life, you can click on the image below (or here) to go to a slide show (also periodically NSFW) wherein Kool-Aid Man:
- Visits faux-NYC, climbing the Empire State Building and dangling from the Statue of Liberty’s face
- Poses as one of the melting clocks inside Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory
- Makes his way through ancient city ruins, haunted underground caverns, and a desert harem
- Charters a steampunk submarine at some vaguely Mediterranian port, and is smilingly abducted by a UFO
- Spies on a tattooed couple having sex in a shower stall that has been inexplicably built in the middle of a jungle, and then dances with a white fox-man in bondage gear at a gay furry club
..and much more.

(click for slideshow)

Now, in case you haven’t gone through Jon Rafman’s site and discovered this for yourself, the video and slideshow are actually promotional materials for Jon’s project where he gives tours of Second Life with a Kool-Aid Man avatar.  And last we heard — meaning as of this posting, it still says so on Jon’s site — you can schedule your very own Kool-Aid Man tour of Second Life by emailing koolaidmaninsecondlife [at] gmail [dot] com.

(That is, if you have any kind of inclination to use, or working knowledge of how to use, Second Life. Which I do not. I created an avatar two years ago, and I’m pretty sure he’s still hovering uselessly in the air above a desert island where I left him.)

Tip o’ the hat: Art Fag City posted about this project a while back, and it’s been stuck in my brainpan ever since.

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My grandmother’s real name is Helen, but everyone in my family calls her Daro. It’s one of the first words I ever said, apparently — I just pointed at her and yelled it out and it stuck, simple as that.

Daro is 95 years old. She lied about her age her whole life until she turned 90, and then she started telling EVERYBODY. She’s a relentless self-promoter, a tireless artist, creator, and outsider poet. And man, she’s full of wisdom that she does not mind sharing at all.

Here’s some classic wisdom she shared with me when I visited her over Labor Day weekend:

We were sitting at the dinner table eating a home-cooked meal. Sort of. She proudly announced to me “I never use the oven anymore, Jeffrey. I just do everything up here in the microwave now, and it’s great!” We had some microwaved vegetable soup with a salad of romaine leaves covered with canned pears, and canned peaches. “Try some of the dressing I invented just tonight, Jeffrey,” she told me, all excited. “I came up with it myself. It’s mayonnaise with pineapple juice mixed in!”
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I live a couple blocks away from the Brooklyn base of the Williamsburg Bridge. Walking over it never gets old. Whenever I have friends visiting from out of town, I always take them on a walk over into the Lower East Side. It’s completely free and the views are so classic, so stimulating. I love how the graffiti on the bridge grows like barnacles, flourishing, dying and getting painted right over. The light’s always perfect from one angle or another, and I always see something that just blows my mind into a million crinkly pieces.

Danielle and Ezra are two of my favorite friends, and when they were here this weekend the bridge delivered. I got this shot on my iPhone — something about the blurriness of the low-budget image sensor really adds to the beauty for me.

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My father’s mother was named Juanita Kay Simmermon, but everyone I ever met just called her Gran. She won a beauty pageant when she was in high school in Fort Myers, Florida, back before the roads were all paved and the swamps were drained. She knew Thomas Edison, Henry ford and Harvey Firestone – all their winter homes were in Fort Myers and I think she used to play cards with them.

That’s how I prefer to remember it, anyway.

Gran died last week. She was ninety-seven years old. My Dad and I went out to see her in her nursing home in South Bend, Indiana a few weeks ago, and I’m really glad I did. I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was a complete party, seeing my grandmother lying in a hospital bed suffering. But I’m really glad that I was able to visit and lift her spirits, maybe give her her last burst of joy.

I wasn’t able to make it to her memorial service, which was held this morning. I wrote the following words to be read in my absence:
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