GOODBYE GUMBY

ART CLOKEY RIP

late one night on sundance, they aired a documentary on clokey. i was never a gumby fan & didn't become one when eddie murphy scored on snl w/his impersonation. i was never interested enough to look into the guy behind the work & it turns out, he was an interesting guy. his work on stop-action animation was ground-breaking. his story lines were always based in a personal ethics. he was interested in eastern religions. he ran around w/the west coast hipsters of the 50s & 60s. he was a druggie. as the film makes clear, he was quite a guy. it also makes clear just how painstaking & intricate his art is.


here's his sfchron obit.

here's the link to info about the doc.

J.R.R. TOLKIEN b JANUARY 3 1892

i'm pretty sure lynn persuaded me to read the trilogy. i mean, she got me eating vegetables & that was no mean feat. i suspect that lynn might have gotten me to do most anything. in the grand scheme of things, i imagine that this was nothing compared to what i was trying to get her to do.

i remember assuring her about gandalf's death. i knew no one could kill off a great character like that. his battle w/the balrog & subsequent re-birth clued me into to how good this story was going to be.

this was way back when.

i was convinced that my marvel comics heroes couldn't be brought to the big screen & i was pretty sure you couldn't do this story either. technology marches onward & it won't be long before someone figures out how to do gibson's neuromancer.

primarily, tolkien created an extraordinary thing: a world, many worlds in fact, that remains absolutely believable & totally relevant to our own.

he also knew, deep down, the horrific costs of war. any war. any time.

TOP 2009 ALBUMS LAST PART

THE BLUEPRINT 3---JAY-Z
there were lots of big expansive albums from this side of the street this year: raekwon, kanye, 50cent, timbaland, juvenile but none had the exhilaration that this song carried. it makes me want to be there in nyc & i don't like that city at all. i'm pretty sure it has to do w/alicia keys but who cares. it's easy to get tired of jay-z's braggadocio. how many times do we have to hear he's the new sinatra? still, ms keys elevates this anthem to incredible heights & jay-z throws down some great rhymes & the rhythm shoots for the stars & hits them as far as i'm concerned.

POTATO HOLE---BOOKER T.
personally, i'm waiting for the payoff from the truckers for their various tutorials they've undertaken since their wunderkind, jason isbell, was cut loose. they've been the foundation now for TWO great muscle shoals flavored albums &, really?, can we ever get enough of booker t? this kind of american instrumental music does NOT get any better than this.

ROBERT SMITHSON b JANUARY 2 1938

"Words and rocks contain a language that follows a syntax of splits and ruptures. Look at any word long enough and you will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void. This discomforting language of fragmentation offers no easy gestalt solution; the certainties of didactic discourse are hurled into the erosion of the poetic principle."

i argued for a long time that picasso & duchamp owned the early 20th century & that pollock & warhol owned that last half. however, i've always been open to arguments that smithson & matta-clark are the key to the last half of the 20th century or maybe the gateways to the 21st.

on one of my driving trips across america(i've made five), i drove out to his great work, the spiral jetty. it wasn't easy or particularly negotiable but when i got out there, i didn't SEE anything, even when i was where i was supposed to be. the various forces of nature had submerged the construct.

now, it may stem from me being from the gulf coast where nothing remains the same but i didn't feel cheated. i knew the damned thing was out there. i knew that it had become an element in the natural progression of things. oddly, i had a feeling it would return. it did too. sometime during the early 2000s, the jetty came to the surface again.

i don't think we're done w/what these artists had to give us. their refusal of the museum & "connoisseur" art, their commitment to construction, & their acknowledgement of natural process is significant beyond the fundamental appeal of their art.

directions to the jetty.

ALFRED STEIGLITZ b. JANUARY 1 1864

he was present at the creation of the great 20th century art form, photography. he had a great photographic eye & an especially prescient eye for modern art. the variety of techniques evident in his large body of work is encyclopedic.

J.D. SALINGER b. JANUARY 1 1919

silently, salinger turns 91 today.

before the silence, he gave us quite a bit.

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose."

GOOD LUCK NEW YEARS DAY FOOD

HOPPIN' JOHN W/ANDOUILLE SAUSAGE(traditionally served in the south on new years day for good luck: supposedly you'd have as many good days in the coming year as peas you ate).




MEXICAN RED POSOLE W/TRADITIONAL GARNISHES(RADISH, AVOCADO, CABBAGE, & COJITA QUESO).
another traditional new years day dish from our friends south of the border.