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Wednesday , May 14, 2008
RIP Robert Rauschenberg
Last night, I was in a really rotten mood and watching a twenty-four hour news channel. I find that when I am feeling intensely angry at life for being so consistently unfair, the most reasonable coping tactic is to channel my rage into an over-the-top parody of spite and indignation. On this particular occasion, I did so by feigning profound horror and revulsion at every single item that popped up on the news ticker. Actor James Garner suffers minor stroke, a headline read. "OH MY GOD," I yelled, "THAT IS SO HORRIBLY TRAGIC. WHAT THE HELL. LIFE IS EVIL THIS IS A TRAVESTY!" punctuating my routine with some fake sobs.
After ten or twelve rounds of unsubtle though hilarious pantomime, good old life threw me quite the case of "Boy Who Cried Wolf" syndrome when the crawler announced, "Artist Robert Rauschenberg dies at age 82," and I gasped, genuinely upset by that slice of news. In actuality, it is in no way tragic or even sad that Robert Rauschenberg died. Eighty-two is a pretty respectable age to live to, and he certainly aced life compared to the vast majority of human beings. But Rauschie and I go back a long way, so it hit harder than it might've otherwise.
I spent three years of my life interning and/or working at a nonprofit arts organization that Rauschie founded in 1963 with two other mid-century art world heavy-hitters, Jasper Johns and John Cage. The absolute best part of that legendarily killer job was the fact that the door to our office was not only a functioning door, but also a Rauschenberg sculpture constructed from cardboard boxes and mailers. It was beautiful, and scrappily so. Opening a door that was also a one of a kind Rauscenberg certainly added an element of flutter and intrigue to one of the most boring and unexceptional actions of all life. It was hard not to think about what a very lucky girl I was when opening the Rauschie door, even though I lived in constant fear of tripping into it, ruining it forever and being $500,000 in debt to Jasper Johns.
Anyway, everybody and their brother loves Robert Rauschenberg. He's a real artist's artist- you could never look at a Rauschenberg and boringly ask, "Why is this art?"; more than most, it just obviously is. His work is aesthetically awesome in a way that would be as appealing to a four-year-old as it would be to a gutter-punk or my grandmother, but simultaneously cerebral enough to get Clement Greenberg all in a dither over it. He'll be remembered forever, so goody goodbye to you, sweet Rauschie.
Oh, and look what a darling little chicken wing he was in his youth!
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by Laura in In Memoriam
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Monday , March 24, 2008
RIP Neil Aspinall Neil Aspinall died. I don't know very much about Neil Aspinall as a person. All I really know about him is that he was buddy-buddy with the Beatles since they were practically babies, hung around in their inner circle for years, ran Apple Records, and has a strong fondness for berets. I know this last detail because he is one of the commentators on The Beatles Anthology and is wearing a beret in almost every single scene except for one, where he is wearing a fedora. This is depressing news for Beatles fans across the world because it reminds us that the Beatles are not immortal, as they should be, and that one day even Sir Paul will die! Which seems hard to believe, but logic dictates that it must be true. One of my favorite things I've ever read is this telegram that the Beatles' press officer, Derek Taylor, wrote to Neil Aspinall at some point during the late sixties: I found some lost marijuana and mixed it with Nepalese hashish, I then rolled a joint and smoked it and went into the garden and put up 50 yards of fencing and acquired a headache which took over the entire front half of my head. I took two codeine and rolled another joint and smoked it. At that point Joan reminded me that you called to find out what was happening. After giving the matter some thought I decided I didn't know what was happening, so i didn't call you. I know will you And I'm sure he did. 
understand.
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by Laura in In Memoriam
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Tuesday , January 22, 2008
R.I.P. Heath Ledger I'm really sad about Heath Ledger: He's become one of my favorites over the last year or so, partly because of his performances in I'm Not There and the little-seen Candy. But my most adored of his movies will always be Catherine Hardwicke's Lords of Dogtown, something I got super-obsessed with a little while back because I'm secretly 14-years-old. I love it for the skating and surfing and the Stooges/Deep Purple/Cher soundtrack, and for Venice and all the Z-Boy cameos and Emile Hirsch's dreamy hair, but Heath as Skip Engblom is really the heart and soul of the movie. He's got that mouth full of false teeth and the stoner-surfer wardrobe, always smoking and drinking gooey blender drinks and spouting weirdo street poetry. And he also looks great on a skateboard, as evidenced below. I wanted to post either the part when Heath is singing "Maggie May" at the back of the Zephyr shop or the party scene when he's dancing around to Funkadelic's "Super Stupid," but this (slightly out-of-sync) clip also nicely showcases his irresistibly goofball role in the film:
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by Liz in In Memoriam
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