54 Dunkin' Donuts

There are now 54 Dunkin' Donuts locations within a 5 mile radius of my home. The red pin is for my cardiologist's office.

Dia Beacon

Robert Ryman painting @ Dia Beacon with some random dude.

When I tell people about my visit to Dia Beacon, I am sure to include an amusing anecdote about how I was not sure I was looking at the art or the wall. Because it was so minimalistic.

This I can add to my list of anecdotes I can rely on to fall flat. It is also a totally dishonest about how I feel about art and it plays to the preconceptions I have about other people's ideas about art. I naturally assume people don't like that crap because who does?

But really, you have to say something, right? When you are talking to people? You can't just say, "we went to the museum." And if you enthuse you sound like an idiot too. "We went to the museum and saw the Flavins and it was fantastic!" Nobody wants to talk to that guy.

Well, it turns out tons of people like minimalism. The museum was packed on a beautiful autumn Saturday morning. And I like it too.

Hold Steady / Minutemen

The Hold Steady perform the Minutemen's "History Lesson Pt. 11" in 2008.

What if you encourage your fans to start their own band and your disciples start the Hold Steady?

I like the Hold Steady but am set on edge by their endless celebration/lament of the good old days. The typical Hold Steady song is a story of carousing and rehab set against a musical backdrop that ranges from Thin Lizzy to Bruce Springsteen. I am not surprised by their choice of the Minutemen's little ballad of nostalgic self-deprecation. The history of punk rock is best understood as a personal history of those who experienced it as a first hand fact in their lives. The music and fashion means little without the shared experience of punk rock as a community of outcasts.

Seeing the Hold Steady involves standing in a sea of people in their late twenties to their early forties raising their drinks and partying, egged on by beer saluting of the band. It ain't no punk show. It's a remembrance of a mythical punk show of the past. Are they celebration their own history of dissolution?

At best, the Hold Steady is about survival. You made it through your difficult years. Hoist a beer and give yourself a pat on the back.

Big Bear Bear

Big Bear Bear

New Big Bear Bear items in the shop.

Lincoln Caverns

This door leads to the cave.

Imagine all the things you could be right now if Lincoln Caverns was your mother.

The discovery of both of these caverns was remarkable. The first cavern was discovered in 1931 by road workers dynamiting a hill to build a highway. Pushing a stick of dynamite into a hole drilled in a rock face, they were surprised when the stick fell through the hole. Rather than proceed with caution, they dropped a lit stick of dynamite in and blew the side off a large hillside cavern. The blast revealed a quaint little cave, easily traversed in a half an hour. Opened by the land's owner as "Hi-Way-May" Caverns, the property was soon sold to as Myron Dunleavy, a small time vaudeville, circus and amusement park operator. Dunleavy saw the potential of a roadside attraction that was more than "roadside", it was practically part of the road.

The second cave's 1941 discovery was even darker. Sixteen years old and experiencing the sort of frustration that could not yet be slaked by punk rock and heavy petting, neither of which had yet been invented, teenage caveman Myron Dunleavy Jr., the son of Lincoln Cavern's owner, starts digging into the hills above the original cave. After two solid years of shoveling out a sinkhole, he uncovers the second cavern at the site, naming it "Whispering Rocks". Two years of digging a sinkhole. At age sixteen. And then spending the rest of one's life marketing the hole he had dug into the ground. I heard the rocks whispering "get away while you still can."

Charles Mingus's "All the Things You Could Be by Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother" shows the opposite end of the burdens of lineage. In his radical reworking of the standard "All The Things That You Are", Mingus propels his jazz combo out to the fringes.

Charles Mingus - All the Things You Could Be by Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother

Star Wars, Nothing But Star Wars

R2D2 trashcan

My son is finally getting to see Star Wars. As his 6th birthday present. Star Wars, the movie. Uh, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, as he will always know it? Which is the proper entrance, but is not his entrance into the Star Wars property. Primed by the Star Wars Legos video games and various toys and the school yard misinformation, my child already knows the Death Star explodes. He knows Anakin grows up to be Darth Vader. He sees Luke as a one-handed gimp of a hero. As soon as he hears Lord Vader intone "Luke, I am your Father" it is game over. I understand no one's entrée to the world of Star Wars can be as pure as those of us who were blessed with experiencing the original movie as an pure childhood event, miraculously untarnished by the promotional campaign. I will refer to us as the First Generation. Unlike the clarity we experienced, the new entrant is faced with a tangled web of storyline tangled beyond recognition.

Star is now entered into as a multi-generational, multi-threaded morass of characters and events scattered upon an vague time line. This is the way the Star Wars generation entered other adventures, including Star Trek and Lost in Space. But TV shows are ahistorical. There is simply a creation myth and an endless series of repeated adventures, all ending back in the spaceship. History never occurs, nothing ever really happens. Episodes can be viewed in any order and nothing changes. Star Wars is historic and needs to be viewed in sequence.

The biggest loss in all this mess is the primacy of Han Solo is overshadowed by Anakin/Vader, Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, the characters who endure all the episodes. Han Solo is the decisive character in Star Wars. He is the only one who is capable of independent thought and who can choose his own destiny. All those around him are compelled by their character, their upbringing, their temperaments to choose good or evil. Han is conflicted. He values both self preservation and grudgingly the good of all. He has to balance these two impulses, which is the root of the conflict of man and society. He is also a shoot first, ask questions later badass, or at least he was until Lucas has Greedo shoot first in Star Wars.

First Generation Star Wars fans of the male persuasion had to choose: Han or Luke. Cool guy or good boy. Fonzie or Richie. That is the choice that has been taken away from the youth.

Rockhill Trolley Museum, PA

Rio #1875 built by CTC (Companhia de Transportes Coletivos), Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in situ Rockhill, PA

Is it exotic to be ferried through the center of rural Rockhill, Pennsylvania in a lovingly restored 1912 Brazilian open sided trolley car running along a track previously only serving a pig iron factory? Is it displacing to ride said trolley from an old railway station, through backyards, past a factory floor plan, along side a creek, ending at a state highway, a route no trolley would ever take. On a trolley that would never have run there.

Because no one here seems to blink an eye. For all the cultural noise about placing treasures from foreign lands in context, nothing seems to better than good old stupidifyingly unexplained contrast. When someone says historically accurate or local materials, yawn and scratch at the ground with your foot. What would be worse than riding a trolley on its actual route? Where is the charm of the unfamiliar? Where is the electric jolt of the unfamiliar intruding on the tedious realities of the familiar?
So why all the words on the walls, museums? Why all the "didactics" as my professor used to say? Isn't everything a little out of context anyway? The only art in museums that is "in context" would be the art made for museums. If we are looking at the plundered treasure of an ancient civilization from strong off lands, why not just label it "pirate booty" and leave it at that. Those who care will figure out what it once was and the rest will not be puzzled by what it is.


Robert Smithson cunningly pointed out the displacing effect of museums with his mirror and displaced object works in the late 1960's. This is a piece made for a museum, that incorparates the museum, shows the obects in the museum, includes the viewer in the reflection.

Robert Smithson. (American, 1938-1973). Corner Mirror with Coral. 1969. Mirrors and coral