F... very F

Gawker yesterday published this pic of an apparently illegal billboard. It's kind of funny. Funny as in "Really? Nobody knew it was there?"

We are living the nightmare

Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger

By MARC LACEY

Global food prices are spiraling out of reach, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.

This is the homepage link to a story in Friday's New York Times. Throughout the planet, there are groups of people so fucking hungry, that they are about to topple their governments because of that.

This really is the nightmare.

on Slate

Gore Vidal once said that you should never pass up an opportunity to have sex or go on television, but that was before AIDS. And cable.

Historia

I L N Y

Si alguien necesita una excusa para venir a Nueva York, tengo dos:

Cai Guo-Qiang

Olafur Eliasson

La de Cai es la exposición más impresionante que vi hasta ahora.

De la introducción: "Drawing freely from ancient mythology, military history, Taoist cosmology, extraterrestrial observations, Maoist revolutionary tactics, Buddhist philosophy, gunpowder-related technology, Chinese medicine, and methods of terrorist violence, Cai’s art is a form of social energy, constantly mutable, linking what he refers to as “the seen and unseen worlds.” This retrospective presents the full spectrum of the artist’s protean, multimedia art in all its conceptual complexity."

Empezó hace poco y se acaba el 28 de mayo.

Alguien me dijo que casi se vomita en la expo de Olafur Eliasson en San Francisco, que es donde se origina la que van a presentar el MoMA y PS1. Vómito inducido por mezclas de colores... eso lo tengo que ver.

La de acá es más grande, y no solo estará en Manhattan y Queens sino en la bahía de Nueva York, con cuatro cascadas artificiales gigantes.

"Eliasson will also present The New York City Waterfalls, a temporary monumental public art project ... consisting of four man-made waterfalls at sites within the New York Harbor. The installation will insert nature into the urban cityscape and will add a striking element to New York City’s iconic skyline."

La exposición es de Abril 20 al 30 de junio. Las cascadas van de julio a octubre.

New York, anyone?

Reflexión sin contexto

El problema real no está en si el embajador Carlos Medellín conocía o no el contenido o el lenguaje de las obras que se exponían en Desplazados. Pensar que él habría podido evitar el escándalo si hubiera conocido la obra de Wilson Díaz es darle la opción de censurar a priori.

Tres tristes tigres

Piedad Córdoba: La actitud que la senadora liberal parece tener en las conversaciones con los jefes de las Farc, evidenciada en las fotos que han aparecido en los medios, casi descalifica su papel de mediadora.

Hugo Chávez: Nada mejor para sus enemigos que el presidente venezolano se pare -o se siente- detrás de un micrófono en un escenario internacional. Cada vez que abre la boca se afirma más como una caricatura de sí mismo. Exigirle a Zapatero excusas por lo que haga o no haga Aznar es como gritarle a la cara a Pastrana que Samper es un corrupto. Y esperar una disculpa.

El rey Juan Carlos: Su salida de casillas durante la cumbre Iberoamericana deja en claro que el renacimiento del movimiento antimonárquico en España lo tiene muy preocupado. Zapatero no necesitaba de su ayuda para controlar a Chávez.

Chicago

My girlfriend C and I were staying for two weeks in Chicago, a city none of us had visited before, and had a quite busy schedule. She had made all sorts of plans, and was always in charge of the day’s itinerary after carefully consulting the Timeout Chicago guide. Everything was going great.

The only plan I had organized was a half-baked club outing, for which –among other reasons, one of them being a lovely little bar called Matchbox- C had previously forged an ID. It was half-baked because I did not really know the name of this place or what kind of music they would play, or if we would even like it at all.

Days went by and I couldn’t seem to find the name of the place, so I could not google it, get the address and also read some review that would let us know if we would actually enjoy going there.

C and I were staying in a two-bedroom graduate student apartment near the University of Chicago that was lent to me by a former girlfriend. (Yes, I know, very civilized.) Two nights before her scheduled departure –C was leaving for Canada one day before I flew back to New York, where we would meet a week later- I finally came up with the name of the place. Sonotech was quite far from our apartment.

We took the 173 bus we always took to the loop and then the blue subway line. We got off at the Chicago stop and walked in the wrong direction for a little while. (In this trip she noticed I could read street names from a longer distance than she did and decided to get her eyes checked. Now she wears lenses and I must say she looks pretty damn good.)

Our side of the street was a little dark ahead, so when we got back to Milwaukee I thought it would be better to walk on the other side. While we stood on the curb waiting for a light to change, still some five blocks from Sonotech, a taxi almost run us over. The passenger window opened and the driver yelled asking how to get to Bishop. C and I looked at each other in a little disbelief, since someone had asked us for the only street we actually knew how to find. (The place was on Chicago and Bishop.) “You have to turn around. It is that way,” I said pointing west.

One of the passengers asked if I was sure and I said yes. He insisted, but changed his question. “You see, we are trying to find a place called Sonotech.”