We were out at the cafe tables so we could smoke, when she walked by in her summer dress. The light material stretched over her ample body and I glanced and then went back to talking abut the band and I looked over at Tony and he was staring at her and taking a hit of smoke. He exhaled the words, “How Ya Doin?” with the smoke in her direction and she shot a quick glance at him and hurried in silken jiggle down the wet street. Tony smiled to himself and took another sip of red wine.

“You see what kind of fuckin’ humanitarian I am? You see what a great guy I am? Do you?”

“What?,” I asked.

“You see that girl who just passed by?”

“Sure I saw her… Not my type,” I informed him.

“Of course not… She’s a fat, ugly pig… dude, she’s nobody’s type…”

“I don’t know, ” I said. “You’re Italian… I thought maybe you like ’em with some meat.”

“I like ’em all ways. Noboby likes women more than me… all kinds of women tall, short, black, white… but dude, that chick’s a dog… but me? I’m such a nice guy, I call out to her… You see? I’m trying to make her feel like a man might want her… like she might be attractive too. I say hi to her just to make her feel good… make her feel like some guy wants to fuck her… WHY? Cause I’m a humanitarian. Why shouldn’t an ugly girl feel like men want her?… Make her fuckin’ night, right?… And she’s got the nerve to look at me like I’m gonna rape her, or something… Fucking bitch!”

He drank some more wine and smoked some more and fell into a bit of a funk.

“Well,” I said. “You never know. She may be smiling to herself now…like ‘I still got it motherfucka… I still got it’… you know?”

“Right dude…. She’ll probably go home and hump a pillow… she’ll cum balls…. I tell ya dude, I’m a fucking humanitarian.”

And to prove it, he bought us another round of drinks.

I could tell something was wrong by the sound. It filled the air like someone was running a dishwashing machine, a vacuum cleaner, and a hair dryer inside an unfurnished studio apartment. It sounded wrong in the damp exterior and I couldn’t tell what it was till I came out from under the tree cover and saw the flock of helicopters hanging in the air, perilously close to eachother. The chopping sounds some how harmonzing into a pure white noise. It was one of those strange occurences where you go back inside and turn on the television and there on every channel is the shot taken from the height you looked up at and you form some sort of vast triangle between seeing copters, copters seeing earth and you seeing it all come together on television. Seems two guys got burried alive and the helicopters hung over them like their souls in an out of body experience that explained to me the noise.

upside down Andrew Lenaghan

I ran into Andy painting Plein Aire at the Gowanus Canal. I hadn’t seen him in a few years and we stood out in the sun talking about the Art World and how it won’t cut a sucker an even break. He’s been making these elaborately detailed industrial scenes in the difficult and demanding open air method for as long as I’ve known him (must be going on fifteen years now)… It’s an approach that one associates more with the last turn of the century and the birth of modernity in French painting…so it’s sort of interesting to see it done during this turn of the century in the U.S. At some level, it seems out of place and he was saying how the critics won’t cut him a break because they’ve annointed one pleine aire guy (whose name escapes me) and that’s all they’ll bother to review, but despite that there seems to be a little Gowanus School developing of people painting these amazing “Valley of Ashes” views before it all turns to Condos and “quaint” waterside developement. It’s interesting how a “historical” technique puts an image into a historical context and so you can’t help but think of those early impressionist paintings with the smoke stacks in the distance beginning the industrial revolution and now Andy out there painting the end and decay of it. He’s got his funky bicycle with a trailer attached full of easel and paints and his beat up walkman and his paint covered clothes and his twisted, tan smile like some sort of anachronism, industrially documenting an American anachronism: Industry.

I told Andy he needs a gimmick… maybe he should go paint smoke stacks in China…. call it: “Complicated Air”.

Check out his work at George Adams Gallery

It was that kind of weekend; where the she half of the love story has nothing to say to the he half and has gone so far to the other side as to start calling the whole narrative a tragedy. He thinks he’ll shave his head and watch his hair grow back in gray.

drawings on empty jewelry boxes

I’m experimenting with making an animation using the pages of an old copy of Ulysees. The idea is to just draw from the top of the head straight into the consecutive pages of the book (giving about four hundred frames). I’m focusing on a Leopold type character and whatever else happens… I’m hoping I can just import the jpegs into i-movie to create a video… but maybe I’ll have to play with flash, or some other animation program… Idon’t know (any suggestion out there?)… but for the moment I’m worrying about drawing.