Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Depression is depressing: Smile, and help rename the new, improved 21st Century Hooverville: Contest Update

Businessweek reported that in October there were 40 invitations on Evite for Depression parties -- no details as to whether, like the old "Harlem Rent Parties" of the '30s whether guests were expected to help pay the month's mortgage to keep the hosts from becoming homeless...which brings us back to our month-long contest for a new Bush era name for the Hooverville. Details and prizes below. Meanwhile, some other depressing facts from Businessweek about the new Depression: Netflix reports a 10% rise in rentals of The Grapes of Wrath, while unemployment statistics rise to 6.5% (not counting the underemployed). And today the Chinese government, taking a page from FDR, announced a stimulus package of over $500 billion. Bush?  MIA, just like he was in the National Guard.

Too bad that Proposition R, the ballot measure in San Francisco to rename the local water treatment facility "The George W. Bush Sewage Treatment Plant" failed to pass. But you still have a chance to give Dubya an enduring memorial by renaming the Hooverville for his incompetent leadership. Entries accepted through Thanksgiving (tho today, the day after the election, feels like Thanksgiving to me). Details follow:

In the 1930s, as the Depression threw millions out of work — and foreclosures threw thousands of families out of their homes — shantytowns sprung up all over the country, makeshift shacks and sheds thrown together from discarded wood and packing material to house the newly homeless in vacant lots, public parks, wherever they were tolerated. Sometimes they weren't tolerated and the police acted to hide the problem in the name of cleaning up the neighborhood. Right. Well. This is a familiar story in New York City.

These shantytowns were called Hoovervilles, after the president who presided over the worst financial disaster in American history — until Dubya's deregulation led to our current ongoing crisis. Above you can see the Hooverville that sprang up in Central Park. But there were local Hoovervilles all over the country. You can actually download an excellent presentation on the subject for Oklahoma schoolkids at Oklahoma Council on Economic Education site.

This brings us to an art installation in Madison Square Park created by Tadashi Kawamata, and paid for by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Shacks, "tree huts" have been built and installed as art. Reminiscent of treehouses I knew as a kid, my first response on seeing one was delight. Then, as I looked around and saw them in several trees, all I could think was that the money spent on this so-called art could have been given to Habitat for Humanity, which actually makes houses for people. But then, the board of the Conservancy all probably have so much money, for them this is simply play. I think it is in extremely bad taste. Of course, for some already living on the street, these are better digs than what they've got and are in move in condition. I supposed they're guarded at night just so that won't happen.

What is worse, I think it is an unintended harbinger of what is to come in our public parks none too soon. Except that they probably should be renamed for Dubya. Or maybe Greenspan. So this brings us to the contest: What do you think the new Hoovervilles should be called? 

I'll pick 3 winners for first, second and third prizes. To be awarded the day after Thanksgiving. What are the prizes?

First Prize: $100 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name, and a copy of the B52s CD Cosmic Thing. Why that CD? Loveshack, baby.

Second Prize: $50 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name, and a copy of the B52s CD Funplex. Why? Cause it's a revolution I can dance to.

Third Prize: $25 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name. No CD. Wish I had put my 401k in CDs. Don't you?

Oh yeah, I'm the judge! So my family can't enter.

I remember the first time I saw art work by Joe Brainard

I was standing in a store on Spring St. in Manhattan called Untitled that sold art post cards. Some time in the mid 70s I went there and bought several dozen — 10 of which I laid out on my bed with the intention of creating a narrative from the images and then writing a little chapter of the story on the back of each to mail to a boyfriend who was away at college in Bennington. One of the postcards I didn't use was the one above, which was a limited edition postcard created by Joe Brainard. I didn't even know who he was or that he was an artist and a poet.

Around the same time, I started reading poetry by the New York School after coming across some poems from the group in Mouth of The Dragon. And it led me to Brainard's memoir, I Remember.... This hypnotically beautiful mantra of memories moved me greatly. It didn't shy away from his queer life and loves, juxtaposing the most soul stirring moments with the absolutely everyday — all related in a way that spoke to all the senses. What is so amazing is that this poem has become the template for teachers in schools around the country for teaching children how to write poetry (minus the racier bits).

What a handsome man he was. I first saw a photo of him at a retrospective of his  work  that traveled the country — I happened to see it at a museum in Berkeley. Recently a book was published of his artwork that centered around a popular 20th Century comic character, Nancy. If you don't know his work, go take a look at his website. You'll be surprised to discover just how much of his work informed everything that came after him — and how much of his work inspired Warhol. I actually think Brainard was the wittier and more accomplished artist — Warhol was just more of a merchant and showman than Brainard was interested in being.  If you like what you see of JB's work, you should also check out the site of his friend and sometime companion, Kenward Elmslie.

Plasticized Bodies, Advertising and the Illegal Trade in Organs

JWT in Shanghai is running some ads to convince the Chinese to donate organs, with a campaign for the Red Cross that shows organs with bodies inside

Am I on drugs or is there something really bizarre and disturbing about an organ donation campaign running in a country where prisoners have their organs removed (sometimes before execution) for sale?

The ad above, one of several, is supposed to be lungs though it looks like kidneys to me (does it remind you of the humans in pods in The Matrix?).  Others show livers and hearts. And it is true that is a shortage of organs for transplant. Only 50 to 60 kidneys are replaced a year in Hong Kong while the waiting list for transplants numbers around 500. But according to Human Rights Watch/Asia, about 2 to 3 thousand organs a year are cut from the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners. This is state sponsored theft (and desecration). I guess the ad campaign is encouraging private citizens to get a piece of the action, since transplant services are readily available to high ranking Party officials and cash-paying foreigners. Of course, there are those unfortunates who have their organs stolen. I seem to recall reading a science fiction novel about this in the 60s. Anyone recall what that might have been?

Here in New York City we have not avoided this controversy. Last year, 20/20 reported that the plasticized bodies in the extremely popular Bodies exhibit at the South Street Seaport were executed Chinese prisoners. The German doctor who invented the process that used to put these human bodies being put on display around the world, says he has stopped using bodies from China because some of them shows signs of torture. The exhibit in NYC now offers refunds after a lawsuit by the state attorney general.

I don’t know how much Chinese citizens know about the Bodies exhibit, but it certainly isn’t news on the street in Shanghai that there’s an illegal traffic in stolen organs. So what they must think when they see these ads? And what was the team at JWT thinking?

Oh yes, the images are striking, and you have to look at them. True. And that’s the first job of advertising — to get you to stop and pay attention. But this doesn’t go on to persuade me of anything other than being certain not to accept drinks from strangers in a Shanghai bar.

That's the advertising exec speaking. Now let's hear from the Jewish Buddhist. One of the many meditations taught by the Buddha was the charnel ground meditation — one was supposed to sit amidst the burned and decomposing bodies to meditate on the impermanence of one's own body. In the Buddha's time, there were places where the remains were left to decompose or be eaten by wild animals. Because there are no charnel grounds in New York City — or much anywhere anymore — Buddhist monks have been going to the Bodies exhibit to take on this meditation. Certainly seeing these bodies is a powerful experience of the fragility and impermanence of our physical nature.

However the Jew in me recoils at this practice — and at the exhibit. Just as a living person is the image of the Divine, so to the remains, which should have its integrity, at least until it naturally decomposes. This very reaction is interesting though. The Buddhist in me says this is about attachment to the body. So I'm going to have to sit with this. Perhaps I will use the JWT ads as a meditation mandala on this subject.

The Interrobang: Americans Are Torturing Prisoners At Gitmo?!?!

No, the interrobang is not a new style of violent interrogation akin to waterboarding. It is a punctuation mark created by a real Mad Man, advertising executive Martin K. Speckter in 1962. A combination of the question mark and exclamation point, it is used at the end of a sentence to convey astonishment, disbelief or to ask a rhetorical question.

The word itself comes from a combination of the printer’s jargon for the question mark “the interrogation point” and the exclamation point — the “bang.” Unfortunately, the use of an interrobang at the end of the question in the headline is appropriate, since the fact that we are torturing prisoners is astonishing, unbelievable, and unfortunately true as Jane Mayer's appalling book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” proves beyond a doubt. Perhaps we will read a headline that ends with an interrobang someday that says "Bush Administration Officials Arrested For War Crimes!?"

Speckter's new punctuation mark never caught on, even though Specter used it in ads his agency created for accounts like The Wall Street Journal. Seems much more appropriate to use for a tabloid though.

It actually appeared on a typewriter (not however the Hermes model used by Douglas Adams that is currently up for auction) in the 60s. It was on a Remington that I’d like to add to my collection of Empires, Royals, Olivettis, Hammonds, Olivers, Smiths and Franklins. (Yes, I am afflicted with the collecting bug, and as a writer, typewriters speak to me.

And typographers include it with some fonts. It’s even available on many computers. On a Mac, four different versions can be found in the wingdings 2 font. Simply hit the ` ~ key, the ] } key, the 6 ^ key, or the - _ key and you'll be able to add this unusual punctuation to your documents.

I have to say, I don’t like the use of it in advertising. It’s kind of cheap, like the star burst, which is hated by creatives and loved by clients everywhere. In fact, a rather amusing ad was posted today to adsoftheworld by an agency in Columbia that addressed just this issue of the star burst. You can see it below — it adds to my collection of print ads that use a toilet as the location of the action.

However, I do think the interrobang works well in comic books, and one typographer has created a variation of the interrobang for the Fritz font that I like very much, seen at right. And I do think the more traditional(!) interrobang works well in a tabloid. Both are less formal venues. Which brings me to this venue: while the interrobang exists in some Unicode fonts, I can’t seem to be able to use it here except as a graphic. Too bad.

Then there is the symbol that appears almost entirely on the web: the copyright question mark. I have yet to determine its proper use though. Unlike copyleft, which offers up the usage of the material for non-profit use with proper attribution, I assume the copyright question mark is used when a web publisher uses material of uncertain copyright status, and wishes to make that known.

So what would a copyright interrobang mean?

Size Queens And Patriots

On the 4th of July, the NY Times reported on the peculiar phenomenon of giant American flags at sporting events. On I95 there is a huge American flag that is tattered and brown that flies over a car dealership. It is so big the wind has to be pretty strong for it to wave. The Times quoted one manufacturer:

"'People go ape when they see it,' said Jim Alexander, a retired Coast Guard commander who runs Superflag, the company that basically invented the industry and once held the world record for the largest flag, which temporarily hung on the Hoover Dam. It was 255 by 505 feet"

Go ape. That is a telling phrase. Lose one's humanity. Behave like an animal. It's no surprise many of these flags are displayed at football games or NASCAR events.

Don't get me wrong. I love this country. But I continue to be appalled at people who put more importance on the symbols and little to no importance on the ideals (or for that matter the Constitution or Bill of Rights).

All this seemed even weirder when I was visiting my old friend John in Providence the weekend they held their Pride Celebration. Knitting Nation, a group founded by a RISD prof, Liz Collins, brought together dozens of knitters to create the country's largest rainbow flag. John and I wandered down to Waterplace Park to watch the people at their machines go at it like a looking-glass version of a New England Mill.

Each colored segment was unrolled on a knoll and sewn to the others as the segments kept coming out of the machines. As this went on, different people read letters, web postings, articles and memoirs of what this symbol meant to them. Love it or hate it. Listening to all those voices was fascinating.

Of course, I don't think Jim Alexander and the NASCAR patriots would take too kindly to knowing that a queer flag was bigger than his. Then again, perhaps this is their misdirected and sublimated size queen thinking. I just want to know who's making all the flag poles.

Sunday Morning Cartoon: Jollity Farm

Long before the now iconic Simpson's opening sequence with Homer heading home from the nuclear power plant, pulling out the  radioactive rod that fell down his shirt and throwing into the street there was a cartoon called Jollity Farm, set to the music of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

The band was a dadaist musical version of Monty Python (whose members they worked with on a British children's show in the mid '60s). And Jollity Farm is an upbeat number that seems perfect for kids — all the animals on farm make their appropriate sounds — not unlike Old McDonald Had A Farm. Except that in the cartoon, well, there is the rather unfortunate effect for the animals of living next to a nuclear power plant.

The cartoon begins innocently enough, with the music and the motions on screen reminiscent of so many cartoons from the '30s where it seemed all of nature was dancing to a jazzy rhythm. The kind of music you hear on Don Byron's Bug Music, his marvelous tribute the to music of Raymond Scott, some of whose music you have heard in Warner Brothers cartoons. If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, go right now and listen to Powerhouse. You'll know it in a second, but it wasn't written for a cartoon. Scott was a serious Jazz composer. It just works well in so many cartoons. But I digress — except to note that many of the Bonzos were also originally serious Jazz musicians who also channeled the English music hall tradition.

Watching this cartoon you can see the influence of Warner Brothers, Disney and Scott. And you can see how it may have influenced Matt Groening. And you should wander over to youtube and take a look at all the Bonzo's songs. One of my favorites is their absolutely insane Sound of Music.

In Memory of Ed Eisenberg: Activist, Artist, Member of Gay Youth in the 70s

Today is the 10th anniversary of the death of the artist/activist Edward Eisenberg. He was not only a member of Gay Youth in the 1970s, but also the Gay Activists Alliance.

He went on to become a  core member of the artist's collective, REPOhistory,  a multi-ethnic group of visual and performance artists, writers, filmmakers, and historians, founded in New York City in 1989. The group took its name from the concept of "repossessing history." Its purpose was to retrieve, relocate and document absent historical narratives at specific sites in New York City, through public installations, performances, educational activities, printed matter and other visual media. REPOhistory sought to question how history is constructed and insert the stories of peoples and events which have been omitted. Their work addressed historical issues of colonialism, race, gender, and class in a context relevant to current histories.

REPOhistory operated as an artist/scholar cooperative through 6 major public projects and many smaller events. Believing the arts essential to shaping a collective cultural identity and the relationship between art, culture and society to be confused, it instigated a questioning of the culture of the 1980s and the early 1990s.

One of Ed's projects was called Groundworks — a city-wide street-stencil project protesting nuclear battleships on Staten Island that noted in each street-stencil the exact distance from these nuclear warships. He was also involved in art projects the documented and protested the ongoing gentrification of the Lower East Side.

When Ed first came to Gay Youth he was rather reserved and shy. A nice Jewish boy who eventually became very politically involved. He grew a beard of rabbinic proportion, and tied his long hair back in a flowing pony tail. He leafleted colleges and high schools with GY and always spoke to the need for a broader awareness of issues beyond the lgbt community. He was also deadpan funny. He was one of the members who was at our reunion in 1994, one of the few who was still politically active.

As I light a yahrtzeit candle in his memory, I will remember to keep his fire alive.

Music I Can Read

I remember studying music theory with my old piano teacher Mr. Gates back in Brooklyn in the early 60s. I practiced scales. I played simplified classical pieces. The Marines Hymn. Yes, Mr. Gates was rather conservative. He didn't like it if when he asked, "How is your mother?" I would reply, "She..." He felt that I should say "Mother is fine, thank you." So I don't think he would approve of this piece of music, written by the Fluxus artist, Dick Higgins, called Ten Ways of Looking At A Bird.

And while I haven't sat at a piano since the mid-90s this is a piece I would love to play.

What, if any, relation this has to the eerie Wallace Stevens poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird, I can't imagine. But the similarity of names calls forth this resonance. So I invite anyone who might have an idea what relationship there might be, to write about it below.

Today's the day the Teddy Bears barf their picnic

If you go into the woods today, you're in for a big surprise. As one of the many avid readers of Boing Boing, I was happy to see they noted an exhibit at the Foley Gallery here in New York City of Kent Rogowski's photographs of Teddy Bears turned inside out. As soon as I saw the photograph leading the exhibit I thought of an ad campaign by one of my favorite agencies, Rethink, of Canada. In particular, I love their advertising philosophy quiz for prospective clients.

The Rethink campaign (on view at Ads of the World) is for an amusement park, and features stuffed animals — turtles, pigs, puppies, monkeys — barfing up their stuffing after riding the roller coaster and other wild rides. When you see Rogowski's photos, with the stuffing in the bears' mouths, and the Rethink campaign, you can see another example of advertising inspired by art. Or another example of the simultaneity of creative ideas in our culture. Of course, if any of these stuffed creatures had been invited to the Teddy Bears' picnic, they wouldn't have needed to go to an amusement park in the first place.

If you go down to the woods today
        You're sure of a big surprise.
        If you go down to the woods today
        You'd better go in disguise.

For ev'ry bear that ever there was
        Will gather there for certain, because
        Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

     Ev'ry teddy bear who's been  good
        Is sure of a treat today.
        There's lots of marvelous   
         things to eat
        And wonderful games to play.

Beneath the trees where nobody sees
        They'll hide and seek as long as they please
        Cause that's the way the teddy bears have their picnic.

And for those of you who wonder what those bears are doing frolicking beneath the trees where nobody sees, I suggest you ask the bears at Element while their having their regular XXL picnic.

Queer Artist: Ralph Hall

I wrote about Ralph below in the post about his "fagzine" Divas of Sheridan Square. His artwork graced many alternative publications post-Stonewall. But because today is the anniversary of the uprising, I wanted to post something of his which bears the slogan: Our Stonewall Nation Lives. May we never forget the lessons of Stonewall — one of which is that often it is those who are the despised in a society, even the despised within queer society, who know and speak the truth