… and since I’ve been fighting with the css code freely supplied by colbertnation.com for longer than it’s worth, and have yet to win, this image is just a tease. Check out the whole 6:37 min video here: Shepard Fairey’s Obama: Whose Is It?

For research for my recent olive oil primer story for amNY I went straight to the source: Steve Jenkins of Fairway Market, a self-professed “idiot savant who’s whacked out about olive oil.” His knowledge is the kind that is cultivated over time, driven by passion — and let me tell you, the man loves his olive oil.

We talked for just over 30 minutes and exchanged approximately 3,870 words, of which about 120 made it onto the page. Here are another couple hundred of my favorites: 

On good olive oil: “Really good ones are gonna have a medium brilliance and cheerfulness about them. So much personality.” 

On taste: “Everybody’s different. So maybe you want an olive oil that’s really gentle and has got some citrus-y notes and some herb to it. On the other hand, if you’re like me you’ve got to bombard your senses, you want something that’s really robust and has got some bitterness to it, black pepper to it, that’s maybe going to make your tongue tickle or make you want to cough when you taste it. I find that really enjoyable in an olive oil.” 

On splurging: “When you’ve graduated from the barrel oils, and understand how special oil can be at the barrel level, then you can say, “I had a really good week. I’m going to go buy a really special half-liter at Fairway.” And use it as a table condiment. Put it right on the table to season things that I’ve already cooked. And just rock and roll.” 

On providence, magic and health: “People don’t seem to care thatmuchanymore, about the providence and the magic about this kind of thing. We care about it. We’re trying to educate people so that they care about it. That’s what I want you to do, is talk about how magical and serious olive oil is. It’s anticarcinogenic and makes everything taste better.” 

For more Steve, check out Fairway’s blog.

“We’ve also found this strange use of Monark for a street vendor selling Mexican food [in Soho, New York City]. They used Monark for the menu and the logotype. I have no idea why a street vendor would use Monark to promote their services, because it was a typeface originally designed for a magazine. We love waiting and watching for our typefaces to pop up in the strangest places. This has got to be one of our favorites!”

My obsession with type doesn’t stem from its mathematical principles. Or the aesthetics of typeface design (serifs! spacing!). But rather in how typography is so different from the other creative arts: once a typeface is finished, the artist largely relinquishes control. 

… and it’s how they meet again that’s the interesting part: In the Print magazine article, type designer Mark Simonson talks about how he receives junk mail in Felt Tip Roman, the typeface he designed after his own handwriting. His reaction? “It doesn’t fool me for a second.”

"Sunsets," Andy Warhol (1972) (c) Brooke Alexander Editions

Tour Art Basel Miami Beach at your leisure: Artnet has taken the famed American art fair virtual. Browse works by gallery, by artist, or even by floorplan. Best of all, Artnet will add a dozen additional artworks from each gallery’s inventory to the site after the fair closes on December 8, bringing the total to more than 4,000, and the entire site will be live through February 7, 2009. So go ahead, geek out. (Palm trees, umbrella drinks and balmy subtropical weather not included.)

tzatziki prep

A few weeks ago I holed up in a friend’s kitchen for an evening and made like Martha Stewart, taste-testing a handful of common supermarket brands of Greek yogurt (or “Greek style” yogurt, as the underwhelming Trader Joe’s version claims), in the full range of milkfat available: regular, 2% and 0%.

Lo and behold, Fage, which all other brands are attempting to emulate, is rightfully still the standard-bearer. My stream-of-consciousness tasting notes for Fage Total (blog exclusive!) read as follows: “smooth, thick you can almost taste it frozen, icy; YUM. Melt in your mouth, richness, tang a final note. Vague guilty pleasure feeling of eating sour cream out of the container, but thicker! Better!”

The complete findings, along with a short interview with a local nutritionist and a pair of recipes, are out tomorrow in amNewYork: “Explore Another ‘Culture’: Go Greek.”

Photo: Courtesy Judah Friedlander / NYmag.com

In an interview with Flavorwire earlier this month, Judah Friedlander, the trucker hat-wearing dude on 30 Rock and host of the recent charitable Bad Art Auction, set the record straight on the subjective nature of taste and art: 

“… for the record, I don’t call bad art “bad art”, I call it “amazing art”. Because by calling it “bad”, you’re basing your description of it on another institution’s criteria of what makes art good or bad (a museum’s or gallery’s or art critic’s opinion).

I’ve been collecting art for over 20 years. And I really think the bad art that I collect is amazing. It interests me. If art doesn’t interest me, I THEN think it’s bad.” 

To which I say, “touché.” Or, alternately, “you go, boy.”

Friedlander gets my props because in less than 80 words he summed up a legit philosophical position on looking at art — and by extension how one thinks about “art”  (the big one) — in real, straightforward words.

Because to engage with a piece of art really is that simple: You either like it, or you don’t. Sure, sussing out that whole “why” thing to your response can get complicated, but that’s the beauty of “art” (the big one). First and foremost it’s about having a visceral experience that stimulates a very personal response for which there is no wrong answer. 

(For the sale price of the combable forest made from yarn, and other details on the images above, go here.)

“… [John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago] was describing the ballet of the train station. But his description could just as easily have applied to the Internet. Think about it: Serendipitous encounters between people who know each other well, sort of well, and not at all. People of every type, and with every type of agenda, trying to meet up with others who share that same agenda. An environment that’s alive at all hours, populated by all types, and is, most of the time, pretty safe. What he was saying, really, was that New York had become the Web. Or perhaps more, even: that New York was the Web before the Web was the Web, characterized by the same free-flowing interaction, 24/7 rhythms, subgroups, and demimondes.”

Which isn’t to say that she hasn’t done her homework (she has), or that the piece doesn’t have it’s merits (it does), or that New Yorkers couldn’t use a little bit (or a big bit) of a hug right now (the do), whether they admit it or not (they don’t).

But if this comparison between a thronging, buzzing, chaotic cityscape and a humming network of fiber optic cables works, how is it not applicable to a dozen or more great cities around the world? Or the great cities of history, for that matter? 

Arriving at this climactic final assertion after passing through such touchy-feeley pit-stops as a visit with a sociologist who reassures us that friends are as important as family — “home of Friends, after all,” Senior quips in a parenthetical aside — I leave the piece with a conclusion of my own. Sadly, it’s the latest instance of New York centricism/egoism gone unchecked.

“Pulse Park” is a series of 200 individual white light beams lasering across the central oval grass lawn, and they pulsate. Cool effect, yes, but here’s the catch: At the south side of the lawn you have the option to register your own pulse and become a part of the installation. You can grip a pair of handlebars afixed to a podium-height steel rod for 10-15 seconds (the handlebars are not unlike those on stairmasters and eliptical machines), and once your pulse is calculated, all the lights of “Pulse Park” go dark, and a single beam of light rhythmically pulses to the rate of your pulse for a few beats, solo. Then the rest of the park lights up, pulsating to the rate of 199 previous heartbeats measured.

Rendering courtesy of Madison Square Park Conservancy

 Sure it looks a scosh different from the official rendering, but victory of “Pulse Point” was that Lozano-Hemmer managed to visually demonstrate the anonymous connectedness that is fundamental to the experience of living here: Of riding a crowded subway car and seeing, processing, the faces of your fellow passengers without knowing who they are; of never being alone amongst strangers; of the essential fact that we are all human with unique stories, and a unique heartbeat. 

To stand in the middle of the park with the light beams pulsing in discordant harmony, well, it was worth the trek.

Check out GettoGloss’s blog for over-the-shoulder photos of artists at work and the models in action, like these ones here. There are also some great shots of people watching people (see “behind the looking glass (part 2)“). Unless GhettoGloss makes plans to bring these little beauties east, this may be the most we be see of “Bronx Zoo” from afar. For now. 

Through December 1.

The genesis: I’ve been thinking about live blogging as a form for some months (years?), and I’ve been thinking about food for my entire life. Live blogging. Food. Food. Live blogging. Food. mmm … 

There was, of course, a lot of other miscellany in between, but in the interest of (my) attention span, let’s fast forward to the realization that the only live blogging events I’ve ever been interested in are about food or food-related events — i.e. Gawker’s live blogging of the opening of the Whole Foods on Houston and Bowery, or the first live-blogged restaurant review by a real critic. So tonight I decided, let’s order some take-out and do this thing:

WHAT: Bacon cheeseburger, medium rare, to-go

WHERE: Veselka Restaurant, 144 2nd Avenue at E. 9th Street, 212.228.9682 

WHY: It’s been named the best, or among of the best, burgers in New York City by such burger aficionados as Josh Ozersky, editor of The Feedbag (see RSS at right) also formerly of NY Mag’s Grub Street blog, and also Nick Solares of Beef Aficionado, who also blogs for A Hamburger Today.

8:07 p. Order from the take-out register at Veselka. Scan the side options (fries/home fries/potato salad) and opt for the later. 

8:08 p. Misread the sides, doh! To order some starch is apparently “deluxe”, aka an extra $1.75. I reorder burger solo. Fork over $10.02. 

8:14 p. I walk out the door, briskly. I’m always wary about taking burgers to-go, nothing’s worse than a cold burger/damp soggy bun/cheese that has melted and then re-solidified into some oozing awkward shape.

8:20 p. Home. Tear into the white paper bag that I’ve been catching bacony-cheesey wiffs of from all the way home. First thought: holy shit that’s big. (Insert wry dirty joke here, I did.) Nearly fills the entire girth space of the circular to-go container. 

8:25 p. inspection

8:21 p. First inspection of burger. Holy shit that’s big (yes, again). Huh. No L/T/O. Well I guess that’s how Velseka rolls. Doctor up with a pair of ketchup packets. First bite. … Executive decision: A burger this big needs a little roughage. Dive into fridge for lettuce mix, bit of red onion. Ahhh much better.

8:25 p. WTF, I haven’t even made a dent. Good burger though, passes inspection. Wide, evenly formed patty. Nibbling at the meat around the sides to taste “just” the beef. Nice char. A bun that can take care of business. Pink inside, yum.

8:30 p. Still haven’t made a dent. Wondering if I’m going to be able to manhandle (womanhandle?) this burger or if it’s going to get the best of me. Damn I need a beer.

8:30:20 p. Ahh … the satisfaction of random cold fridge beer (tonight there’s left over Sapporo).

8:36 p. Halfway through and feeling confident. So impressed with this bun.

8:39 p. 2/3rds down. Ready for a bite of this tasty new green pickle … Ahh yeah that’s exactly what it is. Fresh and green, just a smidge sweet, crunchy. Now back to the Burger Beast.

8:40 p. Mmm. Pickle really cuts the bacon taste. Palate cleanser?

8:42 p. Surveying the landscape: 2/3s beer (started late), 1/3 pickle spear, last quarter of burger. Slowing down. Whew. Staring contest. Distracting myself with “live blogging.” In the name of reportage, right? Swig of beer. I can do this.

8:46 p. Two-and-a-half bites to go. I don’t really need to eat all of this, but I’m going to, on principle. Question: Who could finish this, plus fries/home fries/potato salad?

8:48 p. final bite

8:48 p. Photo shoot of my last bite. (see adjacent). Damn I manhandled (womanhandled?) that shit.

8:51 p. Finished it with the pickle, which gave a surprising lightness to the last bite. Or maybe that was my stomach’s ego swelling with (burger) pride. …

8:52 p. Realization: my fingers smell like greasy burger. Should I be spreading this love all over my keyboard?

9:00 p. Conclusion: Full but satisfied. Fries or some sort of potato would have put me over the edge. Would I do it again? Yes, because it’s in my ‘hood. But Kielbasa is still King. If/when I move out of the range of convenience, I’ll be coming back to Veselka for that fine seared piece of sausage meat … love ya.

Guerilla poster art + the chaos of the crowd + worldwide dissemination via the Internet = Gum Election 2008.

Since mid-October, when this ingenious project went live on WordPress, these posters have shown up as far abroad as Sydney, Sao Paulo, and Duesseldorf, Germany, gummed up by passersby. Check out Gum Election’s blog for live results—and the occasional subversive message. 

Now that’s my kind of poll.

courtesy geekologie.com

Between the hours of 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. it’s as if the children from Where The Wild Things Are (with a couple trick-or-treaters from The Nightmare Before Christmas thrown in for good measure) take over the city, then after sundown the big kids shut down Sixth Avenue for the Halloween Parade, arguably the best in the country, and then, and then … and then somehow the sun’s up. It’s the closest the real world gets to Burning Man.

So paging through my Google Reader today I was thrilled to come across these costumes. First, geekologie’s post, “Eff It, I’m Going As an IPhone” (click the link for a dozen other photos), and secondly, L.A. artist Jubilee A. Horn’s interpretation of Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama poster, courtesy Eyeteeth blog. Until next year … 

courtesy eyeteeth.blogspot.com

For months the author blatantly attempted to raise red flags at airports across the country, carrying any number of questionable or prohibited items, including: “Al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls (really). … pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in my front pocket), bottles of Fiji Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters.” 

The whole thing is laced with the blackest—and bleakest—sort of humor, and is just begging to be adapted into a short film. Not unlike Catch-22 or even the Cohen brothers most recent film, Burn After Reading (other than the fact that Goldberg’s account is nonfiction), “The Things He Carried” is a classic critique of big bureaucracy and our culture of fear. And an entirely vindicating read for anyone who’s ever rolled their eyes at the ridiculousness of 3 o.z. bottles in quart-sized bags.

i see you (green frog at Bronx zoo)

The things they say: “Eww look at that one, he’s sniffing the other’s poo!” (a child at the warthog exhibit at the Bronx Zoo). “Is that real?” (an elderly woman approaches the rabbit display at the Village Petstore with some trepidation.) “It is!” (she concludes).

The things they do: The whistles, the clucking noises, the ridiculous postures, energy expended, all to momentarily capture the passive gaze of some animal. (An exception was a gorilla at the Bronx Zoo who sat next to the glass, bemusedly inspecting us, sticking her tongue or putting her hand flush up against the glass over where a child’s hand pressed against the glass from the other side). And then there’s the faux hunting, donning camouflage or safari gear (an excess of pockets, tan and olive tones) and crouching low behind bushes so as to not disturb the wildlife, but get the best shot (as in photograph) of “nature in action.”

fish sticks swimming at the Village Petstore

At the Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill, people watching is as explicitly a part of the installation as any of Banksy’s animals. Looking in at the window displays from the street you see people inside, hovering over the same displays, taking photos and pointing, gesturing. Inside, looking out, you watch the faces studying the leopard window, searching for any signs of recognition that all is not as it seems. Peer into the fishbowl and you may see a moony, watery face also studying the swimming fish sticks—or you. A black and white television over the register is a live feed of people outside watching the CCTV monitor tending to its baby monitors (another one of the window displays). 

All of which is to say: Was it ever really about the animals?

What does the Bronx Zoo, the Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill, a Banksy installation in Greenwich Village, and an actual pet shop with sweet pups in the window have in common? 

Well, yes, they all have animals—albeit exotic, domestic, and “other.” But that’s not the thought that kept knocking around in my head, while tracking down the giraffes, the gorillas and the big bears at the zoo, or while marveling at the ingeniousness of the Banksy installation, or while cooing over puppies tumbling around in shredded paper strips. The shocking realization was how we observers (myself not excluded) expect, demand even, some sort of performance from the animals. To happen upon a zebra grazing in a non-African-looking environment is startling.

Where’s the set? What about the children, I mused, is seeing the zebra here, like this, going to mislead them to thinking that zebras roam free in the wilds of upstate New York, when they see a like habitat? Elsewhere, crowds clustered around a gorilla sitting against the glass. She sat there, bemusedly inspecting us (with a little too much self awareness, I thought), sticking her tongue out, occasionally putting her hand flush up against the glass over where a child’s hand pressed against the glass from the other side.

At the Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill, the “pets,” per se, are putting on a show—they’re acting human. A chimp watches animal shows on television, surrounded with the litter of humanrecreation (beer bottle, pizza box, empty box of cigarettes). A rabbit files her (nails?) in front of her vanity. Other pets astonish us in their surreality: a mustard-swathed hot dog sipping water, the mother hen who watches over her brood of chicken nuggets, fish sticks swimming in a fish bowl. We cheer, we applaud the performance.

how much is that doggie ...

Let’s face it, how do we pick a pet? Whichever kitten or puppy in the window (or animal shelter, or in a friend’s garage, or in a box outside the grocery store) most appeals to us. Watching the pups squirm and yip and tumble all over each other in the pet shop window, I was struck yet again how powerful a force pathos is. A good show pulls at our heartstrings. In the case of the pet shop terriers, a good show, a strong evocation of pathos, may be the difference between a life of pampering and luxury and soon being labeled as “on sale.” And for those who profit on the pups, their performance is a difference of $900 on their balance sheet.

monster an' me

Look at this face. Is it not cheek-pinchably cute? Don’t you just want to feed him some sushi? He’s one of three awesome monsters skulking around DUMBO these days as a part of Kylin O’Brien’s Monster Project, where monsters drawn by school kids (Maya, age 5, imagined this one) are blown up many, many times and pasted up on buildings around the city — at least, that’s the goal. So far there are just these three. 

Monsters were a reoccurring theme this year at the annual Art Under the Bridge Festival in DUMBO. Elsewhere I recall monster finger puppets shaking their skinny, gelatin-y limbs at me from collage-on-wood-panel works at one of the open studios at 20 Jay Street (“rawrr come in and drink some wine,” was how I interpreted it). There were others. 

… which, without going too off topic, brings me to the existential monster crisis. It’s a serious issue these days in the monster community. When did it begin? With Puff the Magic Dragon? Pete’s Dragon? Cookie Monster (come on, cookies)? “Where The Wild Things Are” (incidentally a new Spike Jonze/David Eggers film set for release October 2009)? Anyhow, these days it’s nearly impossible for a monster to aspire to Grendel proportions, or even the maiden-eating ferocity of those in the original Brothers Grimm stories. Monsters are progressively becoming less terrifying, even afraid of humans, so-ugly-they’re-cute plush toys (check out the Ugly Dolls).

These days “monster” is more convincingly used to personify particularly terrifying human beings: i.e. “[blank] is such a monster.” Fill in [blank] with your choice of world leader, serial killer, cultish religious figure, etc. 

No wonder monsters are looking ever more cuddly. What is a monster to do?

The Institute For Figuring Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, with urchins by Christine Wertheim and sea slug by Marianne Midelburg. Photo © The Institute For Figuring (by Alyssa Gorelick)

A simple question, the pulling at a loose string, plus the faith of one excellent editor, has resulted in One Live Stitch, a globetrotting piece out this month in the Brooklyn Rail that explores the evolution of crochet — or, more precisely, how such scientific and mathematic principles as evolution, taxonomy and hyperbolic geometry have recently inspired crochet works. Do you see the photos adjacent?

a thread starfish in the field. Photo © Anita Bruce.

This stuff is amazing.Read the story via the link above or grab the PDF here: 0908_bkrail_onelivestitch.

“I struggle to find evidence of beauty in contemporary art. If I go to an exhibition I pretend to understand, like many others. But, honestly, I don’t understand.”

The article continues, “The comments follow a number of attacks on modern architecture by ministers including Bondi and the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that has left the arts world aghast.”

How now, modernist cow?