Life: The Best Of 2007...

The New York Times and Radar Magazine both asked me to compile a list of 2007 Best Of's for the new year (yeah, both! it was so weird. I was like, I've got my own blog I don't need you, thanks so much).

So here's what I wrote anyway, for free, because I believe that your job should be what you would do anyway if you weren't getting paid. And I'm not getting paid to do this, and it's not my job, so it all works out for everyone in the end.


Best Movie(s):
The Savages
Flannel Pajamas

Best Book:
Man Walks Into A Room, Nicole Krauss

Best Song:
Kill To Know, Amy Miles

Best Pet:
Sesame (RIP)
& the ball will roll no longer

Best City:
Florence

Best Bubby:
Bubby

Best Restaurant:
Aqua Due

Best Website:
Blurb.com

Best Magic Marker:
Sharpie, ultra fine point

Best Artist:
Alex Webb

Best Way To Locate Your Birth Mother:
Maury Povitch

Best Catch Phrase:
"Move it to the top"
(aka: "Put it on your queue")

Best Use Of My Time:
Not this

Best Answer I gave someone who asked me how it's possible for me to meet people if I don't do online dating:
"Serendipitously"

Best Use Of Mother Nature:
Full moons

Best Line:
"I'm really busy and I don't know what I'm doing with my life."

Best Name for a Restaurant:
The Bourgeois Pig

Best Airline:
British Airways


Add your own in the comments below.

News: Guess the story

"Information is not private because no one knows it; it is private because the knowing is limited and controlled," argues Danah Boyd, an anthropologist and social-networking expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

Art: Street Dancing

Street Dance from Robin Cantrell on Vimeo.

Events: Art Openings

You know that scene in Strangers With Candy when Jerry tells her friend that he reminds her of a monkey. And he gets insulted. And she says, "But why? Monkeys are hilarious!"

That's what ran through my mind last night when I was at the opening of The New Museum (of Contemporary Art -- but if you have to ask, you don't deserve to know) at 235 Bowery Street.

To make the directions simple, just take the N/R/W to Prince Street, and walk all the way away from Broadway up Prince Street, until you get to the end of options. And there in front of you, will be a big metallic building, like square blocks piled precariously on top of one another, with a big neon rainbow sign that says, "HELL, YES!" on the front. It brings the phrase, "don't worry, you can't miss it" into a whole new light. Plus, the only reason I'm telling you how to get there is because you don't even want to know how lost I got getting there. But that's the story of my life now, isn't it? Hell, yes.

By the time I reached the 7th floor of this museum, I was leaving a voice mail for my sister, saying, "This is the raddest museum I have ever been to."

Well, first I should tell you what happened before I reached the museum. A friend was having a show in the Garden State, and I stopped by her opening first. She does ceramics, and she was showing with a pastel artist and a photographer. Can pastel ever catch a break? I don't think so. It's the bedazzle of the art world. No matter how hard you shine it, it's still a rhinestone. Once I was in someone's house in Ohio, and she had framed pastels on her walls. They matched her couches. Intentionally.

The ceramics were wonderful. I love her work. Brilliant, sensitive, delicate, mysterious. Different. Definitely different.

The photography was OK, and the subject matter reminded me of quaint little thrift stores I used to frequent in my upstate NY days. But I felt like the artist never stopped saying, "This is sooo quaint" with her photographs, and so it didn't really impress me. Like, she was photographing for the sake of capturing someone else's things, but not really as a way of making her own statement. It was like her photographs were saying, "Look how the snow falls on the edges of this wooden wheel that is propped against the farmhouse." Instead of, I don't know, something else. There was little room for, interpretation, I guess you could say.

OK, moving onward. I eventually made it downtown and found myself at this little opening (all the mirrors outside caught my eye) at this big name gallery which is actually a very little space. The show was called, and let me see if I can spell this right, Nude Anthropometries Descending A Staircase. On Crosby Street.

Every inch of every wall was filled up with big paper, little canvases, note cards, and whatever. The art seemed like commentary, reactions to something, impressions of something. I don't know. I don't know what was going on there. They served a great vodka pomegranate drink upstairs though, and that put a smile on my face.

Some conversations I overheard (inspired by the art, I presume. I hope):

• "I wish you had a hoof instead of an arm."
• "This work is reminiscent of..."
• "Eva Mendes once called me drunk."

No, really, I enjoyed it. Total fun. Total energy. Lots of happy people, most as colorful as the art, staring at the art, trying to look like they got it. Or not even trying. Just enjoying it. It was full bodied, reminded me of art school days, vibrant. If I were a cynic, I would write something harsh and judgmental with big words to show you how smart I am, but I'm not. So I won't. I think art is hilarious, especially on nights like this. Who knows what we're creating, why we're creating it, why we're celebrating it. But I tip my hat to those who make it happen, and keep trying. It's hard to be original these days. It's hard to impress and make a dent in this world, beat up already as it is. But yay! for those who give it a go.

Then, onward, buzzed from the pomegranate, into the night air once more. I reached the aforementioned neon HELL, YES! and was happy to step in from the freezing night air. To celebrate their opening, the New Museum was opening their doors for free, for 30 hours, this weekend. The space is pretty fun and original as far as museums go. It's open, vast, and electric. I won't bore with you a play-by-play of everything I saw (gotta see it to believe it, as they say) but it involved the following:

• Candy
• Cardboard
• Flash animation
• Tim Allen's Disney movie, The Shaggy Dog

Overheard:

• "I think that's real mattress!"
  
• "102 dollars, please."
  
• "I'm sorry, there's no eating allowed on this floor, even though I know they gave you food on the other floor."
  
• "That was really funny. You have to watch it from the beginning."
  
• "How do you get out of here?"

I really do think this is a great museum, and I'm psyched I got to see it as a newborn. Some crazy stuff is going to go down there, I'm sure.

On the subway back up town, I came across an Asian man sitting in a corner, constructing complicated portraits of people with nothing but an origami-sized piece of paper and a scissor. It was unbelievable, and he drew a large crowd as people gathered round to watch him cut and snip his way through a piece of black paper ("in only 2 minutes!"). For a mere $8, he would cut your self-portrait, snowflake style, magically forming a total likeness of your face ("Smile! You must smile!"), which he then signed and placed inside a pre-cut beautiful matte. I mean, it was astonishing, and beautiful. The young guy standing next to me was getting his portrait done, and the result was complete before the L pulled into the station. It was more than a keepsake. It was just as valuable as any of that "art" I saw earlier in those fancy shmancy name dropping gallery spaces.

I can't complain. I can't really criticize any of this. It's all a form of eyeball exercise, taking the time to see what other people are creating and birthing. Who are we to judge so quickly and mock their mysterious reasons for fame. Who are we to say, "I paid $20 for what??" when we exit these big museums and small galleries and drink their vodka. Especially when it was all free.

LINKS:

• Jonathan Shorr Gallery
• The New Museum
• I googled everywhere for the origami subway man, but found nothing.

Movie: Angels In America

I hope you don't hate me for putting it this way, but Angels In America, as a film, is as monumentally defining of a epidemic as Schindler's List was. I know I'm about 5 years late in discovering this film, but I don't care if takes someone 80 years to see it, eventually we should all be an audience to this work of art. It's sheer brilliance.

I should change the name of this blog to the Official Justin Kirk Fan club, because if I loved him before, I bow to him now. His craft is tremendous. It stared with Flannel Pajamas, then Puccini For Beginners and now I'm a Weeds addict, all because of him. Plus, Mary Louise Parker shows up in Angels with him in some beautiful scenes, and in Weeds too.

Angels also stars Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Emma Thompson. Plus a lot of other names you'll want to start IMDBing as soon as the credits start rolling. Including Jeffrey Wright and Ben Shenkman. It's based on a play by Tony Kushner, and directed by Mike Nichols. It was originally on HBO and sweeped the awards seasons in 2003. It's about AIDS and relationships, and gayness in America, and religion, and family. It's total brilliance, captivating, unforgettable. Really, it's rare I think that a film can make that much of a difference in the world today. Everything has a shelf-life, you know? But this film. THIS film.

Everyone should see this.
Move it to top of your queue today.

Camera: Leica Mini Digital Camera

I.Want.This.Immediately.

How bad do I want this? If I were a kid, and I was walking with my mom in the mall, and I pointed to that camera and cried out, "Buy! Buy! Buy!" and she said, "No, you have enough stuff already," then I would proceed to slump on to the floor and throw a fit until she caved and got me what I wanted. But of course, my mom would never cave. So I'd start babysitting, get a paper route, and save every penny I found in the corners of the couch until I could buy it myself. That's how we rolled in my house.

Leica Mini Digital Camera
Available Online Only!
Free Shipping!
$225.00!

Hear that Santa?? Hanukkah Harry? Tooth Fairy?

• 5.0 Megapixel
• 1/3-scale reproduction of the iconic Leica rangefinder.
• Features include: 5.0 Megapixel resolution; 4X digital zoom; Video mode, which captures motion in AVI format; a 1.5" TFT/LCD display at the rear; 32MB of internal memory; an SD card slot to expand your memory up to a whopping 8GB; USB interface with included cable; compatibility with Minox's Classic Camera series flash; rechargeable long-life Li-Ion battery.
• Comes complete with a leather camera strap and a classy wooden display box.
• Mac and PC compatible

Here's the funny part...
Apparently, you can only buy it online at... Urban Outfitters.