Art's evolutionary purpose

As seems to be a recent trend, another human characteristic is theoretically explained via evolutionary psychology. Can it be that appreciation and creation of fine arts are part of natural and sexual selection? Denis Dutton's new book, The Art Instinct, says yes. Mr. Dutton argues that as arts appear in every human society, this universal behavior must have roots in our origins.

Creativity would have helped our ancestors endure hostile conditions, while storytelling taught them to comprehend consequences of actions, thus increasing chances of survival. Additionally, creativity in speech and actions helped both males and females attract and retain a mate, leading to survival "not just of the physically strongest but of the cleverest, wittiest and wisest."

Finally, a resolution that combines arts and sciences, and makes logical sense. I'm sure that our man Jackson would've produced subsequent artistic offspring, if not for his affinity for driving under the influence.

A Bike Pimp Don't Hibernate, Motherfucker.

The Technocolored Bike Pimp was out in all his splendor near Poets' Walk in Central Park the other day, scoping out the the people trying to dance on roller skates on a brisk, late winter day. 

A good 30 folks were still out there as the light began to fade quickly. I asked the guy if he took his Pimp Bike on the subway, and he was none too pleased. The dark side of his pimp demeanor started to show itself, but he seemed to realize that he didn't need that part of the personality anymore, and suppressed the urge to 'beat that ho down.' Like "Hey, you're not a Real Pimp anymore, Calvin. You're a Bike Pimp. You don't need to do shit to make your ends -- just ride your Pimp-Ass Bike around the park, and white people will pay to take a picture with you." 

Incidentally, the last time I was up here was probably November, when I came on another Sunday around the same time of day, and the skaterdancers had already started to disperse. I walked past a guy and he looked at me and asked, "You shopping?" I didn't have shopping bags or anything. I thought that was a bit odd. 

A Prison Tale, by Brickface Bill

So I was in the kitchen pulling slop duty one day, and just before we opened the doors for lunch this one skinhead dude tried to run up on Fishgut Frank, so I smacked that fool on his kneecap with a frying pan, and he fell down and started screaming. But then Pretty Mo ran over and whacked me in the teeth with a steel ladle! 

I was like, "Damn, Pretty Mo, you broke my teeth! I thought we were cool." And he was like, "Nope."

And that's how my front teeth got chipped. 

Bring Out Ya Dead (skeet skeet)

We just realized that in an uncanny convergence of wholly uncharacteristic immaturity, we've managed to use the words "Balls" and "Titties" in back-to-back post titles. Rather than keeping with the trend, we'll "grow up" and make fun of the tagline of Crank 2 for ripping off Monthy Python:



This Statham guy was great as an unknown in Lock, Stock and has made nothing but abysmal casting choices ever since (see: The Transporter Pts. 1-6). People apparently watch his movies, though, which is sobering but by no means surprising. This tagline, however, leads one to suspect that perhaps he's making a leap into self-deprecating irony (a la Ahnold in Last Action Hero), which wouldn't make sense because while he's certainly become typecast, he's still not, you know, all that famous. Which is to say it's too soon to mock the caricature he'd have to think he's become.

All that aside, Amy Smart's gaptooth is tailormade for skeet-skeet target practice fantasies, which is probably why she only gets roles in films 13-year-old boys pay to see. 

There, a splooge reference. Happy now?

New game: "Smash yourself in the balls and die"

Egad, this just cannot not be funny. On occasion, an insatiable Internet addiction does pay off...

A Tale of Twin Titties in Two Cities

In the life of every man and lesbian, regardless of education level or mental capacity, there will inevitably come a day when you find yourself chuckling at (or attracted to) inanimate objects that look like boobs. Municipal engineers apparently like to fuck with us on this one. 

There's this ode to 1970s cement and silicone off a bland stretch of SoCal I-5:

San Onofre (Calif.) Nuclear Generating Station

And then there's this:

Greenpoint (Brooklyn) Sewage Refinery Plant

A tad less blatant in design than the nuclear duo, the sludge digester knockers are topped with what appears to be some kind of NASA-designed, high-volume breast pump. As you can see, the pump's operators have a nice view of the Empire State Building along with a not-so-nice view of the adjacent Smelly-Ass Newtown Creek, proud host of an oil spill that was three times the size of the Exxon Valdez one. Is this the first time a city has added extensive cosmetic touches to a sewage plant? No idea. But it received applause from a few architectural critics when it opened in 2007. "Community leaders" actually held a lighting ceremony, replete with intensely monotone speech-reading, for the thing. 

I still say the San Onofre ones look healthier. In any case, we should look at the existence of both sets of luscious hooters/essential utilities as yet another testament to the coasts' cultural superiority over the flyover states (you really think these make it out of the planning stage in Bumfuck, Oklahoma???). It's also another opportunity for Fox News to point out that we're rapidly devolving into Europeans. 

Ely Kim's theory of danceability

BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

Lamest. Rock band. Ever.

As we approach St. Patrick's Day, my thoughts can't help but wander to all things Irish, including one of Ireland's most famous musical exports (second only to the Riverdancers).... U2. I have recently concluded something very significant about U2, though: they are the least cool rock band in the history of rock bands. There are so many contributing factors to their squareness; let me count them here:

1) Bono's characteristic pink sunglasses

2) their guitarist goes by The Edge (is he a cartoon superhero?)

3) Bono's self-consciousness about being short, and always insisting on being in the foreground of photos (urban legend? I think not, because he really is always in the foreground)

4) they play seemingly every global charity gig, and always speak so smugly about how charitable they are (yeah, it's great, but so is humility)

5) overall lame stage presence

6) terrible styling (where are the likes of Steven Tyler's scarves when you need them?)

7) they called their 1993 album Zooropa

8) Bono recently complained that “Music has become tap water, a utility, where for me it’s a sacred thing, so I’m a little offended by illegal downloading," but concluded that "artists like me are overpaid and over nourished." (Contradictor says what?)

Needless to say, I am not a fan. Well, I liked their early albums, but then they had to go and be all lame, and ruin the music for me. How is it that they've been so successful (winning 22 Grammy's-more than any other band), when they're clearly high school band geeks who got a lucky break oh so many years ago? Bono can never begin to compare to a Mick Jagger or a Patti Smith. I say, boycott the new album and the new-new album, about which I've just heard (supposedly coming out later this year)! The new ones just sound like more of the same anyways. Until Bono and company can learn how to be proper rock stars and inspire generations of future rockers with better posturing and style, I cannot get behind them.

Happy St. Patrick's Day anyhow. Here's to us all drinking so much green beer that we have no problem enduring the numerous U2 songs we're bound to be subjected to tonight!

Three Months and Counting...

Only three months till los Puertoriqueños regresan a Manhattan. Their homeland decided to play the 50 real states in baseball today to celebrate the occasion. 

And on another note necessitating an under-appreciated accent mark, the Norwegian electroband Röyksopp is dominating iPod playlists in certain circles. Like, say, ours. We're 92 percent certain that they collaborate with The Knife but couldn't confirm this in a very thorough 17-second Google investigation. 

East River on a Sunday afternoon

Things Are Happening

A mixed bag of stale Lenny for your ass:

a.) In a reprisal of the Tupac-Biggie war of the mid-1990s, the president and the army chief of Guinea-Bissau seem to have offed each other via proxy assassination. As luck would have it, this appears to leave a guy named Carlos Gomes Junior in "a relatively strong position" to assume power. So the Colombian coke smugglers who have chosen to use G-B as a rest stop on their road trip to Amy Winehouse's nostrils apparently may have a guy in power who can speak their language (and hopefully help out if they ever need to reclaim 600 kilos of confiscated product).

b.) People are really overreacting to the news about Martha Stewart's stupid dead dog. For all their fluff and bearish good looks, chows are vicious fuckers.

c.) Chris Daly is pushing new tenants rights laws, landlords are "shocked," The Gav is apprehensive. Also, the Warriors are bad and some media execs are apparently as evil/oblivious as finance execs.

I am the Walrus (goo goo goo joob)

Walking into Dave Muller's current show, Iamthewalrus, at Blum & Poe is comparable to entering a friend's apartment for the first time and forming an impression of them based upon their possessions. Mr. Muller has revealed much about his personal history and interests in this, his most autobiographical (according to Tim Blum), and sixth solo exhibition at the gallery. Upon entering the space, the viewer is compelled to closely examine simple line drawings depicting the four Beatles as nesting dolls. Beside these is a black and white portrait of John Lennon, neatly framed, with two googly eyes affixed to the glass above Mr. Lennon's signature round glasses. Next, in the larger of two rooms, we see the core of this show, a series of large framed paintings, each split evenly down the center and depicting two subjects. On several, there is a natural depiction, like a puffer fish, an oak leaf, or river rocks, contrasted against a masterwork reference, like a replica Pollock splatter abstraction. But consistently the two subjects share the divided canvas evenly, denoting their equal comparative values. They resemble domino pieces, seemingly hung to randomly match the subjects end to end. One painting even enters the viewers' space, and lies flat on the floor in a corner, an extension of the matching dominoes on the walls above it.
In the next room, the viewer encounters two black and white portraits of homes. These are apparently the childhood abodes of Mr. Muller, in San Francisco. Their proximity to each other on the wall combined with their focused viewpoint almost make them resemble strange faces more than buildings. Mr. Muller makes several other references to his youth, toys, and music throughout the show, providing a subtly childlike perspective on the simple but beautifully executed subject matter.

I Knew a Real Estate Boom, and This, Lereah, is No Real Estate Boom

Everyone knows industry shills are gonna be industry shills (and sometimes, as Jon Stewart observed the other day, industry shills are gonna pose as cable news channels), but this is excessive: A preeminent 'authority' -- the head cheese of the National Association of Realtors at the time -- actually penned a book under this name in 2005: 

Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?: Why Home Values and Other Real Estate Investments Will Climb through the End of the Decade -- and How to Profit from Them

Aside from winning the prize for Longest Subtitle That's Really Two Sentences in One and In Hindsight Doesn't Make Any Sense, David Lereah gets our vote for Dumbest Pictorial Metaphor on a Book Cover: You see, the home is rising, which not unlike climbing, which represents an increase in the home's worth. Just like it says in the Longest Subtitle! But the family that owns the house is looking as if maybe they'd like to go inside their home now, please, because little Tina has to pee and Norman's missing the Jets game. But if it falls back to the ground, it'll smash into pieces and maybe kill Tina and/or Norman! So either Tina's gonna pee her pants and Norman's gonna miss the game or someone's getting impaled by a splintered 2x4. Then there's the possibility that Lereah meant it the other way -- that the family's missing out on this so-called "boom," likewise represented by the soaring value of the home they didn't buy. It's somewhat unclear, but I'm guessing he meant the latter.  

Either way, that shit's gonna break apart when it falls back down to the ground and the family will either be irate or relieved or impaled, and someone should sue Lereah anyway for putting that house up there and for writing such a poorly named and misleading book in the first place. 

Balloons Kill Turtles and Acid Trips

If you, like us, viewed the 1980s through the colored lenses of blissful youth--eyes shielded, that is, from Iran-Contra, Wall Street and Menudo--some visionary probably gathered your entire elementary school in the big kids' yard to release balloons into the air at some point. With notes reading "Hello this is Tom I like Will Clark" and "Hi my cat's name is Barf what is your's (sic)?" attached, the rising multicolored cloud caught a westerly and drifted out of sight, headed for Europe or Russia or the Nation of Africa, you were sure. More likely they landed in Modesto or Syracuse, were swept into storm drains and channeled into rivers that led to the ocean, where they suffocated that sea turtle you found dead and bloated on the beach two weeks later--you know, the one that still screams at you in your sleep and sits in your rocking chair asking judgmental questions during bad acid trips. 

The point is that even at a public school filled with children of reformed hippies in an environmentally prescient city like San Francisco, we went willy-nilly with the balloons. Kids in Missouri are probably still doing it. Meanwhile, in Brazil and Oregon, people are putting balloons to good use. I mean, if you must loose all that rubber on some unsuspecting sap/sea creature in a far-off land/sea, at least have the balls to put your money where your mouth is. RIP, Reverend Adelir.

39 Years Later

Fun game! Guess which of these Greenwich Village townhouses exploded exactly 39 years ago today...

a.) The one that looks different than all the others; or

b.) One of the others

Answer: a! The building with the funky-angled protruding living room...

    

Yes, that's the one...     

                    

A few members of the Weathermen (l/k/a the Weather Underground) mishandled some nails and dynamite and...yeah, kablooie. According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, it took nine days of body part collection to determine that three people had died in the blast. Two others survived and escaped arrest, with one remaining on the lam for more than a decade before getting pinched for pulling an armored car heist with Tupac's stepdad.

Behind the wall, punk thrived

I just returned home from a screening of the documentary Flustern & SCHREIEN (Whisper & SHOUT) at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. First of all, accolades to the Hammer for consistently providing great, FREE, programming to the public. Second, this film totally rules. Released in 1988, it follows several East German bands and their adoring fans, as they tour the country. What struck me most, aside from the fabulous German New Wave and punk soundtrack, was the attitude of the young people interviewed. All of them had these really marvelously positive outlooks on their lives and what they wanted to achieve, despite the fact that they had already received government-assigned jobs (like chimney-sweep), and were living in a completely isolated land. It was truly amazing to juxtapose their words against the fact that the wall came down only a year later.

The bands themselves (Silly, Feeling B, Chicoree, Sandow, and more) were required to have government-issued certifications to play concerts. To obtain one, according to the guy who introduced the film, the bands would have to submit lyrics and perform for the state. Obviously, these groups had to master the use of poetic and subversive language to get their rebellious message out to their audiences, while appeasing the state and maintaining their certs.

Overall, a must-see, for the music, for the amazing punk attitude of all the kids featured, and for the radical threads rocked by all!

DumboWall - A Year in Retrospect

Winter 2007-08:

Winter 2008-09: