Ecstasy 
Monday, February 20, 2006, 08:47 PM - Art

I snuck in just under the wire this weekend to see the Ecstasy installation show at LA MOCA. My favorites were a simple curtain of strobe-lit water (the only part of the show that actually looked like vision on E), the noise of the LSD crystal fountain, and the impercetably shifting enormous wall in one gallery. There were remarkable huge obsessive pencil crazy person imagined-world drawings, and a lovely green grid LED light installation. I wish I could have gone with Jeff; for all the hiply transgressive vibe of the show, there was (for me) not enough explicit dialogue about the impact of drugs in our perception or our culture- maybe best was the simple documentation of one artist's 6 (?) day regimented drug-by-drug week in Amsterdam. There was nothing that I could read as political except for the play-doh commentary on big pharma- kind of astonishing given the current drug laws' power in shaping our society and their disastrous enforcement. A grand total of one of the many X dealers I've known has ever been prosecuted. How can that show have evolved without someone commenting on who can and can't get away with altering perception? I'm not totally down with Terence McKenna (and btw where did all the mushroom art come from? what about good old fashioned CHEMICAL psychedelia?) but I do think the drive to alter one's mind is part of being human and central to the understanding of consciousness. It's sad how even that most internal experience and our artistic representations of it are circumscribed/determined by class and race and all the disconnects/discriminations of contemporary life.
LA SRL SF 
Monday, January 23, 2006, 03:10 PM - Travels, Technology, Art

Despite my best efforts to begin transforming into a Silverlake post-urban LA denizen, the most interesting event I attended this weekend was a small Saturday night SF-proud SRL performance in the parking lot at the end of the row of Chinatown galleries. There's something about the immolation of a vomiting dragon/dinosaur head backed by the roar of an airhorn hovercraft that's just sublime. Makes me think that maybe I'll fit right in in LA, after all. Picture is taken from our latecomers' perch in the garage across the street- perhaps a lifetime of parking structure art spectation awaits me in the Southland?
Mike Kelley at Gagosian 
Friday, December 30, 2005, 07:14 PM - Travels, Art

I had a blast at this show in Chelsea. LA artist who searches out really strange extracurricular activity photos from yearbooks, recreates them and extrapolates short videos and installations. There are maybe 35 of them running in seemingly random sequence in the gallery, beautifully sideshow-esque and cacophonic. He and many 1970s high school students is/were apparently fascinated by vampires, but my favorite piece was the operatic performance by the chick in the bedazzled 'Fresno' overalls, on the porch of a weirdly modernist representation of a farmhouse. Great fun....
Mamacita 
Thursday, November 3, 2005, 01:05 PM - Food, Art
No, not the dead one. Last night failing (once again) to gain entry to the hallowed halls of A16 after Hannah's opening , we convinced the hostess at Mamacita (new, on Chestnut) that we were so friendly we should get in on their soft opening 'friends and family' dinner. Having a dissolute handsome Marina boy explain to me how authentic their dishes were was really entertaining, but things were quite delicious. Best were the vaguely Thai chilaquiles, the mahi mahi ceviche ceviche, the pomegranate margaritas, and of course it's hard to go wrong with carnitas tacos.
Hannah Henry still and moving pictures

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