This Blog Has Officially Gone Fishing

Tweeted this today:

Going on a social media break til after 5771/Rosh Hashanah. Reach out to me via email/ /www.stevensolo.com

Of course, I haven't used this blog in months. Social media killed it. The whole notion of documenting my responses to art and life here seemed so long-winded and archaic--and the immediacy of Twitter seemed to enbolden me to carry on in some less artificial voice. At first, at least.

This blog is a pretty solid archive/catalogue of my obsessive interests. Perhaps in 5771, post Rosh Hashanah it will make sense to continue it in this or another form.

For now, there's more than enough to last through the end of 5770.

Here's one of my first entries to go out on:

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Rant on Rebuilding my Studio

I want to be like Hokusai, who changed his name & moved to a fresh new studio & took up a new artistic identity at the same time. Instead I would buy cats (if I weren't so allergic) so that the police could find something living in my apt. among the newspaper clippings when I die here.

I am engaged in a project I call "rebuilding my studio". Once I named it, the physical difficulties all seemed to make sense. I am supposedly purging my supplies, reference material, decoration and equipment. Each category of CRAP has its own box with a LARGE BLACK MARKERED description so I can wrap my head around it. Like "DRAWING MATERIALS" "BIKE STUFF".

Considering that after 8 years of living here, I can't find the kind of erasers I use in a shelf containing boxes of bicycle supplies that I fantasized using, mixed with a kind ofpaint I used for a project 5 years ago this is probably a good idea.

Most of what I need I can fit into a decent sized backpack. What IS all this STUFF?

Anyway the "desired outcome" is "A functional studio workspace I enjoy working in with adequate and clear storage for supplies I need, archive completed work, accessible storage for related and front burner work-in-progress." (My mission statement on this motherfucker.)

This is all a delusion. At some point I will just get fed up with interior decorating my soul and just flail out and make new stuff again until I find myself backed up against the wall of all the old crap (some of which is the stuff I have been making) and, gasping for air, begin to repeat the whole activity again.

PHOTO: MICHELLE STRAUSS OHNSTAD

"Organizationally, we were committed to to a few basic principles: Treat everyone with as much respect as he deserves (and no more), Avoid people who appeal to our vanity or ambition (they always have an angle), Operate as much as possible apart from the "music scene" (which was never our stomping ground), and Take no shit from anyone in the process."

-Albini

THANKS for your support, fun ride, now back to work damnit.

Jeremy: THANKS FOR THE SHOES! They killed last night.

There's alot to be written about being a Beardie nominee, sitting in that audience waiting to hear the winners announced for hours is a roller coaster ride that I would not have missed. And, for all my skepticism about awards in general there were many moments that were meaningful. The tribute to Totonno's pizza was cool. Feeding America infomercial and the hands down best speaker of the night: Jack Arnold, who just owned the room with dry drawling wit.

Eating, like 4 pounds of octopus carpaccio and uni cuban sandwiches was cool. Minor disappointment: the Illy capsule espresso maker doesn't offer Nespresso a challenge at ALL. I want Illy to do better as they are way cooler.

Drinking at events like this is more a matter of avoiding drinking too much for me. Champagne at the Terroir afterparty was delicious, that was the real moment. (With Rocket To Russia blasting.) The Terroir afterparty was so blissfully fucked up that it's hard to imagine it being better if I were wearing a medallion with Lex Luthor on it! What would have happened if I won? A nuclear explosion on East 12th Street?

Paul Grieco, human fireball. David Flaherty, criminal mastermind.

The amazing support of all my friends was a bit overwhelming

Seeing so many people from my restaurant life was surreal. Note to self: go OUT in Boston & get to Myers and Chang already.

In retrospect, being a dark horse for the nomination suits me just fine. Kudos to The Korn Group.

The sneakers were a loaner from friend Jeremy and changed my life. They were real Nikes so they were not only sick shiny but actually bouncy and sneaker-y. Awesome.



OH, and it's Sampanthavivat!

New Nails Pt 5769

The more things change dept. This doesn't surprise or shock, it's just more piles of shit. I don't regard the Pope as a "friend". Remember:

Almost every year, Israel's two chief rabbis travel to the Vatican in order to convince the pope to return all the Jewish original writings and the Temple Menorah. Until today, the Vatican possess the greatest Jewish library in the world and especially during the Middle Ages, the church stole (or took) many Jewish original writings. The Rambam (Maimonides) may be the most famous case. When the Romans plundered the Second Temple after its destruction, they obviously took the Menorah to Rome. The question is "Where is the Menorah today?" And many people say: "In the Vatican".

Link

But occasionally I manage to work up a spark of outrage anyhow, over the fuckupness of these shits:

"Among the men reinstated Saturday was Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview last week said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers. He has also given interviews saying that the United States government staged the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan."

NYT full article.

I know, it would be preferable to resort to snark here, like, "Williamson also believes that Paul is Dead and has accused Brian Wilson of hiding the real tapes for Smile" but the evil compounded stuns me into sobriety.


Lyrics to New Nails by Mission of Burma here:

"There was once a special book
It got changed by facist crooks "

Fucking Supreme Court on a Rampage

Fuck the Supreme Court. Fuck those assholes. Fuck everyone screaming terrorism from the rooftops while restricting gun laws. Insane numbers of kids get killed by guns every year, look up the nauseating statistics, on The Children's Defense Fund site.

When 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech and five at Northern Illinois University, the public was outraged. Yet every four days we have the equivalent of a Virginia Tech tragedy that passes unnoticed. Our gun violence epidemic robs parents of their children, wastes our human potential, and drains resources from our health care system.

I know we are fucked up primates, and am often resigned to the suicidal stupidity of our race. But every once in awhile something fresh comes along to induce a fresh wave of puke.

The list of shame:
Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.