Marvelous Joey made a marvelous trip to D.C. this weekend. We went to the National Gallery of Art.

This is Joey looking at Jackson Pollock’s Lavender Mist:

This is Joey looking at Jasper John’s Target:

This is Joey looking at a Mark Rothko:

This is Joey inside the Alexander Calder room:

‘Effing Barnett Newman:

This is Joey looking at a Frank Stella:

This is Joey looking at an Andy Warhol, his favorite:

This is Joey looking at a Chuck Close, closely:

This is Joey looking at an Anselm Kiefer:

Following the making of this photograph, Joey turned to me and said, “Marv, I truly believe that Kiefer wonderfully expresses the psychological landscape of post-war Germany with an aplomb physicality, vis a vis a textural weight and minimal palette that when presented on such grand scale becomes pregnant with an explosive power that is matched only by its elegiac tone.”

I agreed.

Please leaf through Taschen’s latest multi-volume set on Peter Beard, enjoy it, and then pack it on your sleigh on Dec. 24. I’d very much like to have a copy. Even though you are a creation of Western/European culture and you probably skip over the Dark Continent on your Christmas Eve ride, I’m pretty sure you know about Mr. Beard (but in case you don’t, I’ve pasted some of his works after the “jump”). And I bet Bono has told you all about Africa. Its kind of a big mess right now. Even Bill Clinton thinks so. I went to Africa once, too. I saw some giraffes and some dead people. Anyway, there is something about Beard’s collages, despite mostly being made in the 60’s and 70’s, that speaks to the current situation of the world and the crisis in Africa via the collision of images of overt sexuality, mass media and mass extinction.

Merry Christmas,

Marv

P.S. When you come to my house I will have cookies and milk for you. I know you already know, but just as a reminder - my stocking is on the right side of the fireplace. I have been a good boy this year, I promise.

(more…)

I sometimes wear my cactus coat
When I fear the people around me
Are about to get all sweet and kind
And extravert all over me.
I know how to hump my shoulders
And bend my head
keep my hands in my pocket
And examine cracks in the sidewalk
I am really good at it.
Sometimes, I am too good.
My act elicits sympathy
And a kind and curious word is hurled toward me.

If I am not quick to dodge it
I can get splattered
And the kindness gets stuck in my coat
Like warm, chewed bubblegum in a metal hair brush.
It is awful, just plain awful.
So I have to be careful, really careful
If you know what I mean.

—clothes make the man—

What a throng of people in front of the White House tonight. In one moment, it felt special - a raw, emotional outpouring of thousands of young people exuberant upon their victory, jubilant in seeing that they had successfully made their mark on history and democracy. At another moment, it felt like a complete fabrication and spectacle, all of us looking around at each other wondering if the reality of the moment actually matched what we’ve come to expect from TV scripts. And then there was the threat of debauchery, that herd behavior that brings out the most base of actions - a girl is hoisted up, and for a moment, just a moment, everyone forgets that they are supposed to be celebrating a hopeful new zeitgeist in front of the People’s House and instead expects her to lift her shirt and stick out her tongue. But she doesn’t, and the random stranger next to you looks over and theres something in the air that just makes you want to hug him, or at least smile and laugh, acknowledging that whatever it is thats happening is actually something special, something real, and something worth celebrating.

Joe and I pull images for our posters from a number of sources, but there is none that I use more than Google image search. As we work on a poster, we will enter certain keywords to bring up variety of images in hopes of finding just the right - and often bizarre - picture. In doing so, we come across some really wonderful things. Today, while working on a poster for Phosphorescent, I found a site with the following text:

I once fasted for seven days straight. There was another time when I tried to run up and down the four mountains in the Aspen area. When I was 19, I spent three weeks continuously traveling - every night, for twenty-one days, I found myself in an entirely different bed. As though that wasn’t bad enough, I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d had a conversation that wasn’t in broken Spanish. 38 days without relief. Three days of altitude sickness in the Andes. 24 hours of Moab. 30 minutes under the hands of Shirlee Platjes, with fingers capable of creating the feeling of femurs snapping, muscles ripping, I want to cry but know I can’t. About the fast…there was mishap with an imitation Pop Tart on the fifth day.

And one of the many pictures of the author that accompanied the story:

Here are four illustrations to be published in a devotional book by my friend, Paul Kelly, based on scripture meditations from the book of Proverbs. Each week starts with a collage, as every week should.

this is a poem by my friend ben. i like it a lot and i love him.

the man who sat beside me on the metro tonight smelled like he had shit himself. being pinned in the already too-small seat betwixt said smelly fellow and the left window only intensified my already full-hearted resentment toward being forced to ride the train tonight. usually at that moment i am weaving in and out of traffic, pedaling and hanging on for dear life in the pursuit to feel alive, via bicycle. but that freedom was taken from me by a petty thief tuesday. my bicycle is gone, and my livelihood lessened. on the bright side, though: at i least dont go around offending people because i smell like i shit myself. life could be worse.

I believe that the black cat that crossed my path halfway down 6th street just now was about 12 hrs tardy. Had he been prompt, perhaps I would have had some inclination of what to expect of the day. I did not tell him he was tardy, though. I did not, in fact, say anything at all. I’m actually surprised that I am even talking to you now. Not that I’m really “talking,” but you understand what I mean.

Two blocks before Mr. Blackie a large 4-door station wagon stopped too far forward in the intersection, effectively blocking the crosswalk and I was tempted to open the back door and slide through the back seat while saying, “Hi, how do you do? I’m fine thanks, just passing through to cross the street. Have a nice day, bye bye.”

I rode the #34 bus home from work today. It smelled like pee. Strangely, the bus stopped to pick up a handicapped woman at the same place it stopped yesterday to pick up a handicapped woman. The two women were different, but i wonder if they ever try to get on the same bus at the same intersection on the same day and have to play the polite game of who is going to ride and who is going to wait for the next one because they both cant fit. There are plenty of busses on this route, though, and whoever won out on being the nicer would find that the #32 or #34 or #36 would come along in the next 15 or 20 minutes, maybe a lot sooner, and really whats 15 or 20 minutes in the whole grand scheme of things?

The #34 bus terminates at Southern Ave, but I’ve never been there. I can take the #32 and #36 home from work, too. They terminate at Friendship Heights and Naylor Road, but I can’t remember which one goes where. I’ve never been to either place and have no reason for ever doing so. I cant decide how I feel about those places, those termination points. Some days I believe that they might as well not even exist; on other days they exist in my mind as wonderfully mysterious places, magical places with quaint architecture and different climates and unique cultures.

Southern Ave would be lined with cypress trees and have fried chicken joints or baptist churches on every corner. The whole place would smell of azalea and the sidewalks would be in danger of disappearing because everything would be covered in kudzu.

In Friendship Heights theres always a rainbow in the sky and the sun has a smiley face and kids run around with balloons and kites and everyone is always kind enough to give you directions if your lost and no one is ever, ever lonely.

i find it wonderfully tragic and beautiful that the end of the bus line is both literally and figuratively the last place anyone would want to go.

Usually, THOSE SNOTTY NOSED KIDS AT PITCHFORK know how to ruin a record or taint a concert memory with cynical slashes of post graduate smarmy bullshit reviews, but this time they got it right. Last night’s Sufjan Stevens show at the Kennedy Center was as its described in the review - a journey. Beginning at 3am last Saturday morning to the curtain’s close last night, the show seemed to be more about itself as an event, a spectacle even, than simply a concert. Bloggers have been blogging for days about the enormous line that snaked around the Kennedy Center in the cold. The free tickets given away that morning were scalped online for ridiculous prices. Target gave away red champagne in the lobby. EVERYONE showed up in their favorite thrift store hipster duds - skinny ties, skinny jeans, layers on layers on layers of “I’m part freak folker, part indie rocker, part twee, part emo cuz i have a studded belt but look, i look like i dont care but really this ensemble cost 300 bucks and weeks of time and effort to put together” fashions. And then the music. Oh, it was beautiful. The guy at P’fork describes it well, so read his and I wont have to repeat it. What struck me halfway through the show was (and yes, this is the part where I start with the “I knew him way before you did” bullshit) just how amazingly far this whole gig has come for Sufjan over recent years. The last time I saw him play was in Atlanta in 2003 to about 30 people. All he carried on stage was a banjo and a poster with a hand drawn illustrated map of Michigan. Last night there was an orchestra, a grand piano, lights and spectacle and 3000 people. Whats wonderful is that, at a risk of sounding cliche, in both settings the music moves my spirit in a way that is pure and powerful and lovely.

Here are some pictures from the line. Pictures from the show are on P’fork.

This was the line.

This is me and Erin trying to stay warm. I am hooded.