AND WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU WERE TWENTY? (D37-39)

Cocktail party success, turns out all the dudes loved Poland's number one girly drink, Zubrowka and apple juice. "Wow, where does that awesome cinnamon flavor come from?"

Football madness makes me wish I could be that happy about anything, ever. But I am just so pleased with myself when I at my most cynical and jaded! Perhaps I should have waited until I was out of the impressionable years of my early adolescence to dive into Kafka and Dostoyevski.

I really like these songs right now:

 



Also miss bank's got a new one, and where were you when you were twenty?

DAY TWENTY - INTERESTING THINGS. THREE OF THEM.

1. What do you think...if you were going to make a big deal out of opening a collection of galleries to celebrate the beauty of Islamic and Middle Eastern Art, keeping in mind that the many diverse styles of art the galleries were built to present have long been overshadowed by "European" art which is more widely "understood" and appreciated in the good US of A, how would you celebrate its opening?  Would it be by finding a slightly odd Turkish pianist who first plays peices by European composers before then presenting his own compsitions which, with names such as "Four Dances of Nasreddin Hodja" and "Istanbul Album", are sufficiently Turkish to count?

The Met thought so, but your answer might be a bit different. That's the beauty of this world, so many different opinions.

Don't get me wrong - I loved listening to Say's music and watching him play in the video below and his other work available on youtube, especially as he pounds away while also manipulating the piano strings with his other hand.





2. Lots of press lately about scientists with a lot more political credibility than Timothy Leary who think drugs such as MDMA and psilocybin (the fun part of mushrooms) should be used to treat all sorts of things from anxiety in terminally-ill patients to shitty marriages to alcoholism. Think of all that wasted potential.

3. Turkey wine tip: wine jelly, for the class of wines that aren't even good enough to mull.

DAY SEVENTEEN - BERLIN CRAM SESSION

Leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning, so very little work can get done, as clearly I need to spend as much time as possible on the internet looking at artists somehow associated with Germany so I can launch an intelligent argument about why officemate should accompany me to art museums.

So many fascinating artists coming out of Germany, and of course Berlin!  Everyone may have already known, but sometimes I'm a bit slow, and learning more details is good.

First up in George Grosz...associated with the Dada and New Objectivity movements in Berlin (who can say no to that?)...fumbling around I found quite a few I really liked, including these portraits of author/poet Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925 and 1927):

   

And then there's Otto Dix, Grosz's pal in New Objectivism...which really makes me want to be a part of something politically alternative and artistic, but alas here I am, instead writing from the trenches of economic development. But Dix...the office's security software seems to think he is a pornographer. Do you think that Sonic Wall just doesn't know art when they see it?  Or are they concerned about the latent potential of the long-passed Dadaist movement to rise once again and destroy everything upon which Sonic Wall has built its empire?!

      

Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926) and Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berman (1925).


Dörte Clara Wolff, a young Jewish woman, decided to try her hand at art and design at age 16, calling herself "Dodo." She eventually produced drawings and paintings, working for a satirical publication titled ULK. In her complicated personal life, she ditched a lawyer for a Jungian, and upon seeking out the expertise of Jung's mistress regarding her tumultuous second marriage, she followed her advice to try out a therapeutic ménage à trois. She emigrated to London in 1936, and her work has only been recently "re-discovered," as they say, with an exhibit currently running at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin to honor her life and work. HT to the officemate: Dodo has no English language wikipedia page!

       

DAY SEVENTEEN - KIDS IN VIDEO

Three recent music videos starring mostly children.  Some much more talented with others.

"Sixteen Saltines" - Jack White (You'll have to click through to watch this one)

tUnE-yArDs - "My Country"





"Shady Love" - Scissor Sisters and "Krystal Pepsy" [=Azealia Banks]