"Live a bourgeoisie life and do the rest in your art."

I found this quote written in my own hand buried behind the pile of snacks in my "drawer of shame" at work. I barely recall writing it down and am certain I am not the author of it.

The Savitsky Museum

I've got a thing for Russian art. I am not going to pretend for a minute that I know much about it, or art in general. However, something about Russian art makes me weak in the knees. It is possible that my Ukranian great-grandmother's genetic influence is responsible, given my brother shares my obsession as well. The Hermitage would our mecca, however I just read about this:

"The Savitsky Art Museum, Nukus, is the ridiculous to the Taj Mahal’s sublime. If you get to Nukus in the semi-autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan, you will almost certainly be the only person you know who has. It is the most depressing and ugly place in the world; a rotting Stalinist excrescence built in the uncared-for nether-regions of the old Soviet Empire. It's a place that even in the old USSR was a forgettable, unimportant backwater, and it was precisely because no-one came here or cared about Nukus that one of the great art collections was built here by a remarkable archaeologist, who quietly saved the work of underground and officially degenerate artists. From the 1930s to the 1970s, he bought and was given artists’ entire portfolios. It is a remarkable and humbling collection, thousands upon thousands of paintings, drawings and sculptures produced in the face of great danger. The most moving examples come from the Gulag. Together this crammed and desperately under-funded gallery is a memorial to the power of culture, a candle of artistic resistance. The quality of the work varies hugely, from the great to the chronically derivative, but that’s not the point. Altogether they have a unique power."

-AA Gill

Know Your Asshole Footprint

I just came across this social-service feature in October's issue of Vanity Fair:

Regrettable, some American are simply not aware of how large an asshole footprint they leave on the planet. Here, Vanity Fair offers a questionnaire that will help such individuals determine the size and breadth of their footprint. If you answer "yes" to four or more of the questions for your age group, it is incumbent upon you to take urgent measures to reduce your asshole footprint.

1. Do you leave vitriolic comments in the "Comments" sections of blogs and web sites, even if you're commenting on something innocuous, such as an old Linkin Park video?

2. Are you convinced that it's only a matter of time before the world recognizes you as the next Andy Sambery?

3. Is your name Skylar, Taylor, Cat, Bryce, Morgan, Brandon, Braden, Hayden, Jaden or Brianna?

4. Do you work in an office with a Foosball or Ping-Pong table?

5. Do you run a T-shirt company that specializes in flimsy apparel that runs small and whose designs are essentially appropriations of old advertising and TV logos from the 1960 and 70s?

6. Before you go out bicycling, do you first change into a skintight spandex shirt with a gaudy pattern recalling a 1990s screen saver?

7. Do you refer to having young children as "doing the parent thing."

8. If you do indeed have young children, have you launched a blog, or, worse, a video blog, about raising them?

9. When you are being photgraphed, do you flash gang signs?

10. Have you or anyone in your close circle of friends written a roman a' clef about being a rich soicalite, working in publishing, working in film bonking the help, or any combination of the aforementioned circumstances?

Temptation by New Order

Cafe Mozart

Like most things from the West, Japan's relationship to coffee is extremely complicated. To judge by advertisements of a depressed and exhausted Tommy Lee Jones backed up against a wall and cajoled into holding a can of "Boss" coffee and the iconic jar of "Creap" coffee creamer in every staffroom, it would be easy to assume that Japan's approach to coffee consumption is as twisted and misguided as the seaweed-corn-mayonaise-hotdog pizza from our neighborhood Dominos.




Unlike Korea or China, there are no "tea houses" for socializing on this island, no one brings their ipod or homework to a tea cermoney. Drinking matcha is a solitary and silent experience. In other words, for the coffee house experience in Sendai, you have to suck up your misgivings about corporate ethics and go inside a Starbucks.
Unless you know about Cafe Mozart, which makes Seattle's collection of self conscious hipster cafes look as authentic and pretentious as a Leonard Cohen cover sung by on American Idol.

Marni

Marni is brilliant. The luxe Italian bohemian's answer to the slick sexed up vamps from houses like Gucci or Versace. Their earthy weird pieces make my heart beat a little faster. If aliens wore jewelry, it would look something like this. If Fellini dreamed about necklaces, they would like something like this.

Harajuku Bead Shop

Casey and I spent the last weekend in Tokyo. On a mission to find Milkfed in Harajuku, I stumbled across this amazing jewelry supply shop. Out front was fake moose whose antlers were dripping in chains and jewels and I promptly abandoned my search and got lost in front of a wall of swarovski crystals. The girls who worked there were eager and sweet, taking off their own jewelry to show me how they made it and giving me advice despite our language barrier. I am now obsessed and have spent the better part of the day fantasizing about the necklaces I am going to construct once I get home.