Half-ass TV recap: Work of Art Ep 9

For episode 9, Work of Art travels to Main Street, USA, or Cold Spring, New York, where the five remaining artists have two hours to find a portrait subject worthy of a gallery showing. The artists take a 60-mile train ride to a tiny Cold Spring, where an abundance of Caucasian subjects are waiting for their reality-TV debut. Actually, there's a lot of initial rejection and door-closing in the artists' faces during this difficult-for-the-introverted challenge.

Host China Chow livens the environment in her trench-coat dress. The weirdest thing that could ever happen on this show is if China wore something from J. Crew--or Eddie Bauer if the weather requires it. She gives everyone $200 to buy supplies in town and some clear bubble umbrellas so we can note their facial expressions of frustration as they pound the streets of rainy Cold Spring.

After coming up against a bunch of people saying no in voices reflecting an acute fear of art, everyone eventually settles on somebody to portray. Kymia finds an odd couple of antique dealers who love dolls and skull thingies and who look like an underground comic-book come to life before studio-time even commences. Dusty finds an adorably exuberant tyke who reminds him of his daughter in Arkansas. Dusty missed her first birthday by being on the show. Awwww. He asks a gaggle of children where he can buy $200 worth of candy and they dutifully point to a quaint store just down a-ways off camera. He's going to make a candy portrait because his subject likes candy. Hmmm...

Lola finds a couple of coin dealers who regale her with tales of the history of money. She buys some bills and proclaims a love of numismatics that seems somewhat genuine, given her penchant for bullshitting her way through challenges in the past. Onward! Sara strikes out a few times but then hits pay dirt with a group of firemen. She finds the world's longest-working fireman (on duty for more than sixty years) and then tries on a much-too-large uniform, for their and our amusement. She's starry-eyed at fireman-art possibility. 

Young has the funniest would-be failed attempt when he tries to pry secrets-of-the-town from the owner of a bed & breakfast. Young: Have you ever stayed in a B&B?  This woman has no secrets--only plates of muffins. He ends up on a tour of the entire hotel, making exclamations of wonder at lavender-painted rooms with their own fireplaces. Finally, he slips away and walks by...a portrait studio! As Young watches the painter work, he has a bright idea. You can almost see the light bulb go on over his head. Wait, I'll provide you with the image I have in mind. There.


Anyway, he decides to give the painter his $200 and have him paint Young's portrait in the 20 minutes left before heading back on the train. The guy is like, uh, well, (laugh), OK--why not? Cool guy. He free-brushes it, doing a decent impressionist take on Young and his "Justin-Bieber hair" while Young takes photos of the guy at work. Young's going to incorporate his portrait with his subject's portrait for two, two, TWO portraits in one! Young is very clever and Sara remarks as such when she sees him carrying his portrait down the street. She does a mental face-palm and asks why she didn't think of that. 


Riding that train, high on cocaine - actually tobacco. Hey, that would be a great challenge. I can picture mentor Simon de Pury shouting: Artists! You have 24 hours to create your next work of art while snorting buckets of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine in order to bring back the 80s art market for all of our benefit! Now, make it brrrrrillllliant! 

I have vision.


Back at the studio, everybody's workin', workin', workin' it. There's metal-hammering and cartoon illustration and candy gluing and money counterfeiting. Simon steps in and gives gentle insights. He finds Kymia's R. Crumb-like painting/illustration somewhat banal but encourages her to continue and make something of it. He likes Sara's metal-hammered fireman face and Young's portraits(s) idea. He points out to Dusty that a portrait made from M&Ms and Skittles is very similar to Dusty's earlier work with crayons (I think) and clown paint. Dusty pulls out an origami fortuneteller and decides to work with hundreds of those instead. Hmmm... 

Lola's critique is also not aces. She's got blow-ups of currency mounted statically on a a big board, and some hand-written notes and a letter to her subjects. It's the Lola mish-mash, coming together (or not). Lola wants to make a portrait without making a portrait. Well, this could be brrrrrrrilliant, or it could just be a line of bullshit. Could go either way and often does in the gallery scene.


Gallery show! There wasn't enough time for Dusty's fortune-tellers (we called them cootie-catchers back in the day) to work, so he completed his candy portrait, which is leaking on the gallery floor. Kymia's portrait is cartoonish and creepy but also sweet. She's posed her subjects in an ice-skating pose, reminiscent of their first date, as depicted on an antique music box she places beneath the painting. Sara's fireman is metallic and sculptural and mounted next to metal name-tags, "scorched" with charcoal. Young glued fragmented photos of his subject to boards that are spilling around his painted portrait. Lola's got several things going on, as usual--a big money pyramid, a shelf full of notes, the letter, and a tiny drawing or photo of her subjects, covered in wrinkled foil or silver leaf. Looks like she chickened out of her portrait-without-the-subject concept with this tiny, wrinkly concession to convention. Her piece is stagnant to me, stagnant! But selfishly I thank her for getting naked last week because it caused a spike of readership on my blog. So thank you for that, Lola.

The big surprise is that all the portrait subjects are in town from Cold Spring, checking out the artwork and won't that be awkward!? You'd think, but they seem pretty happy with the work. Dusty's subject wants to gather fallen candies. I thought Kymia's couple might be a little horrified but they love their portrait. Phew! The firemen are teary-eyed. It goes pretty well all around. Glad no one stormed out or got really drunk and trashed a work of art. That would be a Work of Art first, but certainly not a gallery-show first.

This is for the final three, so double-elimination time. There will be tears. The editors try to make us think it's close, but it's obvious who the judges want to see in the final show at the Brooklyn Art Museum. Think: Fine-Art Skills and you'll probably agree. 

They like Kymia's spooky-ooky take on her subjects, who look like actual walking cartoons, according to China, who is wearing a frothy dress made of  encapsulated quinceañera decor. Kymia wins! No money this time--sorry, Kymia. But she's off to the big art show for a chance of winning one hundred thousand dollars and she bounces up in down in jubilation. Next winner: Young! No surprises there. Kymia can definitely draw and paint and Young is full of gallery-ready ideas, even though Jerry finds his presentation, tidy and dull. And guest judge Richard Phillips thinks Young should have just thrown his painted portrait on the wall and called it a day. As if! Young agrees with him, toadying up to any ridiculous concept a judge tosses his way, knowing full well he never would have won with another artist's work on the wall. What is this--the 80s?

You know what I think? Aah, who cares. OK--I think if Young had had more time, he could have mounted his photos in various, protruding ways from the wall, surrounding the painting of himself. The photo-mounted boards are seemingly tossed about, looking slippy-sloppy, and not tidy at all. 

Now it's down to three. The judges didn't find Sara's piece cohesive. It's a portrait placed next to an almost abstract sculpture and the eye tends to flick from one to the other. But they liked her portrait, especially super-unruffled Richard Phillips, even if he thinks the metal name-tags "diminish" its scope.  You know what I think? I pretty much agree with the judges but I like Sara's work in general--let's move on.


Dusty's portrait is labeled a gimmick (kiss of death) and although the judges don't mind the candies falling to the floor and neither does Dusty, who calls it reminiscent of the fleeting nature of childhood, they're not wowed by this piece. Lola is taken to task for not fulfilling the scope of the challenge--making a portrait. She has a tearful melt-down, defending her conceptual aspects. Although she doesn't stamp her little foot in disagreement, she does whine that she really wants to be there! The judges do not take this into account. Dusty and Lola are out. Sara will go onto the final. As it should be. 

Sara's initial reaction to her win? "WAAAAAAAAH!" China, delivering the good and bad news, cries beautifully during this scene. She's truly a work of art. When I cry my face looks like someone threw a russet potato at it, really hard.


Dusty is mad. He feels he deserves to win. Dusty--you made a portrait out of Skittles! Even kitsch-portraitist Jason Mercier, who spends untold weeks on his crazed celebrity-portraits-made-from-their-junk, cannot get high-art gallery cred going. He's labeled a gimmick artist by snooty dealers. Dusty's nice-guy demeanor and ability to put things together in a clean, sharp way will probably get him some art attention. Plus he will now see his wife and daughter again. Bonus.

Lola breaks down in sobs. Even if she had an interesting idea, the outcome was a let-down. There had to be some skill in evidence for this round and she comes off as a second-year art student. Judge Jerry Saltz does not agree. His blog laments his caving in and ousting Lola due to emotional fireman-presence during the show. Well, whatever. Maybe Lola should become a writer--she seems to like writing more than art. Maybe she can bring back the lost art of letter-writing and save the post office at the same time.

I have vision.

And now for this week's Work of Art inspired work of art. I was thinking that if Dusty had had more time in Cold Spring, he could have worked with his subject a bit more and maybe he would have gone with a different kind of photo of her. Instead of the bright, shiny "camera-face" that kids tend to make when getting their photo taken (except for those anxious kids who think their souls are being stolen), he might have gone with a more natural pose. 

Those natural kid poses tend to be the most charming and memorable. He also might have delved deeper and found out she likes salamanders or fossils--kids like all kinds of stuff besides candy. Anyway, I took some photo portraits of Jackson this summer and today put them together in a "mood cube." Typically, I am a lazy artist who will go with a photo 90% of the time (apologies for the raw edges--I was hurrying). 

Let's roll the cube and see what mood Jackson is in:

Heh.

Next week: The whole enchilada. And Kymia is worried. Again.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! Chrimbus Special

What Am I Gonna Get?!

I have to admit that this sort of thing is in line with how I process much of marketing on television. I'm glad someone is out there channeling the infomercial madness in some shiny, sparkly, musical way.

Anyone up for a tickle off?

Something to think about.

Good for some laughs, for sure.

Order now!

Thanks to Rich Juzwiak for the tip-off in A Weird Christmas Canon.

Half-ass TV recap: Work of Art Ep 8

It's time to SELL OUT on Work of Art, Episode 8. More than usual, that is. The artists are herded to Tribeca where they're confronted by those tables that people pull out for office-party events, topped with cash boxes lined up just so. Kymia doesn't like the look of those cash boxes and how right she is!

This challenge will require teams of two artists to make art to sell on the street, which they will then translate to fine art for a gallery show afterward. The team with the most sales will win $30,000 and will gain immunity from being eliminated. They have five hours to conceive of, shop for, and make the street art, then one hour to alter that art for a gallery show. This makes for A VERY BAD CHALLENGE. And we're about to see some shitty, half-ass, thoughtless art. But Bravo doesn't care because Lola gets naked.

And so they begin. Sara J. picks Young to be on her team because Young is a winner, at least on this show. He's going to make colorful happy-face underpants in honor of his pert butt, as well as humorous Sharpie drawings on canvas--damn the consequences come gallery-show time. Sara will make pen-and-ink washes and figurative sketches since she's done that a lot and has even sold some on the street before. Go with your strengths, Sara--smart move.

Team Kymia and Dusty plot their course. Dusty's making T-shirts and signs with an outline-map of America surrounding a surveillance camera because he's noticed a lot of them in the city and, "We're always being watched in this country." No, Dusty, no! I mentioned in a past recap that US maps and flags do not tend to win art contests. If only he could have read my blog before this challenge--I could have helped.

Kymia's making postcards that will support an artist (herself!) because postcards and mail in general are so popular these days. Actually, mail art has a long and underground history and if she had chosen to go this route, she might have come up with something subversive and darkly humorous, like "Save The U.S. Mail, Mail this Postcard," or some such thing. Instead she stencils "Support Art" or something equally dull and the results are not going to save herself or the mail. She switches gears and decides to sell her signature in the hopes of making it big one day, while trading for her customers' signatures, for a gallery-show display. As mentor Simon De Pury would say, "Good lllllluck, KYMIA!"

Team Sarah K. and Lola are toiling at paper cut-out feather headdresses (for that "hipster, Native-American look," explains Sarah, to politically correct groans across the nation), boob-stencil T-shirts, and a naked photo of Lola emblazoned with her darkest secrets across the front. Bravo's censorship regulations are put to the full test. Naked Lola getting her picture took by Sarah is strategically blurred, but her full-frontal photo is not. Something for everyone.

Sidewalk sale! There is much hawking of wares on the streets of Tribeca. People are kind of going for Young's underpants but they really like Sara J.'s line drawings and she sells out, then has a Plan B--she'll draw and paint quick portraits for ten bucks a pop. Her portraits are great--squiggly and personable with just enough oddness to be interesting but not insulting. She's raking it in! Simon's visit has him rrrreally liking one of her nudes, exposing a backside and vulva, but I think he refrains from buying it so she'll have something to show at gallery time.

Dusty sells shirts and Kymia trades in signatures. Simon doesn't find either of their products compelling, causing Kymia to Totally Stress Out, but we're moving on to the wild-and-free tabletop of Lola and Sarah. Sarah is wearing a construction-paper feather head-dress and a T-shirt with a lopsided rendition of boobs on it. Kymia notes that she looks like a crackhead. A very colorful one.

Lola is selling large and small self-portraits and also individual secrets, including a 25-cent one that she whispers to a 3-year-old, making her cry. Toddlers don't have too many secrets so maybe conceptually, this was hard for the baby to absorb. Lola is very good at selling herself and admits that she's excited about it as well. One guy buys her portrait for $100. ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! What recession? Lola offers hugs and doe-eyed glances for a price as well. What a challenge this is--I think I may be sick.

Finally, this uncomfortable-to-watch whoring of themselves ends and everyone's back in the studio, trying to make sense of it all. Lola has it easy--just mount that portrait and you're golden. Except that everyone gets to see her life-sized nakedness. "She's just selling herself," says Kymia, who got naked for an environmental cause back in the Pop-art challenge. It's not selling out if it's for the environment! And we are all nature's children, by the way, some of us with mustache hair that must be plucked, as Lola notes on her portrait of secrets.

Some of the other artists struggle to come to terms with having one hour to make their street art gallery ready. Young paints a depiction of underpants on canvas, rather than face the prospect of actually having to hang underpants on the gallery wall somehow. This will come back to bite him--right in his pert, firm buttocks. Dusty similarly doesn't want to hang T-shirts up, like some salesman in the Macy's boyswear department, so he makes a road sign instead. Sarah K. is frantically snipping away at paper feathers, thinking they might look like male genitalia if she cuts and pastes them just so. She'll have a female and male representation with feather headdresses to depict...lameness. I'm getting tired so I'll try and wrap up.

Gallery show! Dusty's surveillance cam is mistaken for a toner cartridge and a burrito in a mailbox. That can't be good and the judges take him to task for a.) showing another map of the U.S., and b.) not being able to draw a surveillance camera to their liking.

Young is chewed out for painting underpants instead of showing underpants. Guest judge Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn is especially incensed that he would only deem them worthy of judging paintings instead of underpants. For God's sakes, Young--show her your happy underpants!

Sara gets a good critique. The judges want to see more of her portraits and host China Chow wishes she had been at the sale to get her portrait done. That would be a stressful sitting since China seems to be a judge this season. Sara sold a boat-load of sketches, putting their team in the lead and winning the $30,000. Nice work if you can get it, Young! Sara carried his underpanted ass on this one.

Lola is also a judge fave. When Jerry Saltz and Bill Powers first see her nude form upon the gallery wall, their eyes pop out of their sockets while their tongues lap the floor and sweat tears burst from their heads and old-fashioned car horns blow. Then they spring to their feet, jumping, clapping and wolf-whistling in approval. In reality, Jerry's eyebrows raise to the point where he has a temporary face-lift. Everyone digs Lola's secrets (Simon is especially and adorably appreciative of the pubic-hair aspect), but I'm here to tell you that back in the 90s, Secret Antiperspirant had an early-era Internet contest where you could submit a secret to their site and I think the winner got a life-time supply of antiperspirant or something. Also, Lola's piece reminds me of that OMD song, "Secret," and that's not necessarily good.



Lola is out of luck because the prize goes to the highest sellers, not the best work of art. It sucks to sell out and not even get the cash in the end.

Kymia squeaks by with her array of signature-postcards. Jerry likes all the individuality on display, but they're kind of stale-looking on my TV. I guess people do have nice handwriting in the close-ups. I wish she could have put some art in there but I'm biased because I like mail art.

Oh boy, Sarah K. is in big trouble with her piece, which is sad. Even she knows it's sad and that's too bad, because Sarah is the most affable reality-show contestant I've seen in a long time. She's downright jolly. But despite her near-win in last week's Fiat 500 challenge, she's been petering out challenge after challenge and this is her last hurrah, which is more like a bad grade-school project with naughty bits stenciled on. Even the naughty bits don't look naughty. They look kind of cruddy.

The artists only had a few hours to throw this together and mostly it shows. That's no way to treat art, Bravo producers! Give the audience some decent art. Colorful underpants don't count!

And now for the Work of Art-inspired artwork of the recap. You know those caricature-drawing guys at street festivals and amusement parks? I pretended to be one of those guys and did a "portrait" of Team Sara and Young. I commend Sara for her on-the-spot portraits she made during this challenge. It's going to take a lot of practice before I can even attempt such a thing and even then, I think I'd have more success (depending on how you label "success") attempting to be one of those caricature guys.



Next week: Double elimination Americana art--and China wears a trench jacket.

Best of Facebook Today

It's easy to put down Facebook--a big, wide target to finger-point at about what's wrong with modern social interaction. But sometimes Facebook comes alive with fantastic links to wondrous media. Media I wouldn't be privy to without the eyes and ears and tastes of my Facebook friends. Twitter is like this too, but my Twitter feed is mostly all media and fewer friends. These Facebook picks are coming from people I mostly know and socialize with in "real life" so it's more personal.

What's happening, Facebook friends?

The Javanese gamelan ensemble, Sekar-Melati, covers Gang of Four's "Not Great Men." Why? We don't know, making it even better.


Thanks for sharing, Steve Connell and J Neo Marvin.


"It's Time," shared by filmmaker and professor, Ray. A message from GetUp!


This is some effective visual storytelling right here.


Also from Ray: The Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun" played on old tech equipment.


List of "instruments" here.


Over on my other FB site, full of musicians and DJs, many I have yet to meet, there is much musical sharing.

Peter shares Little Richard in Scuba Party (1967). Swinging!




Another from Peter: Howlin' Wolf doing "Don't Laugh at Me," featuring the late Hubert Sumlin on lead guitar.




Al's pick: The Flamin' Groovies' "Slow Death" live in 1972.



Another from Al: "Chain of Fools" - my favorite Aretha song.



Thanks, Facebook friends.

Half-ass TV recap: Work of Art Ep 7

Whoo! Work of Art Episode 7 La Dolce Arte is a Fiat 500 car-commercial auto-parts sculpture competition! And the winner will receive $25,000! WOW--that's like working on a real commercial, kids. So now the artists are all in a tizzy because it's down to what, six artists? Big money's involved (again) and nothing lets the creativity flow like the automobile industry combined with a nationally televised promotion and a big, fat cash prize.

Don't choke now!

Well, mostly they choked, and who could blame them? It was not an easy challenge. Anyone who's attempted to build a three-dimensional construction in one day with auto parts (two of the artists don't know how to drive and another, Michelle, was in a hit-and-run accident while riding her bike) will sympathize. Sculpture, unless you have a particularly spatially inclined brain with an aptitude for engineering, is very, very difficult to pull off. Throw in some weirdly shaped metal parts and well, it's daunting, no doubt. But this is also a recipe for something potentially unique and surprising and Sara J. manages to rise to the challenge.

Wait--first Dusty has to wear Young's short-shorts because he won/lost a bet that if they won the last challenge (and $30,000 that went with it), he'd do so. Prance, Dusty, prance! I will say that both Young and Dusty have nice legs. What are the odds of that?

Everyone is shown a beautifully laid out disassembled Fiat 500, its parts in fanciful arrays across the gallery floor. Impressive--these modern vehicles. Someday cars will be made out of steel-reinforced plastic pods that can hover on a cushion of air, but for now the internal combustion engine is what they get.

Fifteen minutes of scrambling for anything they can grab (it's like "Supermarket Sweep"!) and they're off to the studio where they'll have 24 hours and one hour the next morning to complete a piece featuring at least one auto part. It's a puzzler but Sara J. gets down to ripping out a car seat and gathering its foam stuffing. Kymia finds the key to the car and immediately wants to grind it down into shavings of stardust for a galaxy-diorama. Kymia: I've moved so many times and had so many house keys made and I'm here to tell you: key shavings do not resemble star dust in any way, shape or form. They're dull shards of metal that are best swept away. She'll find out.

Young builds a robot (yawn). Sarah K. is thinking about her dad who worked in the auto industry. She skins two car seats and mounts them on canvas for a kind of Rorschach test double portrait. Michelle is building a hanging guy whose organs are all showing and made out of gears, and bolts and balloon intestines. He's going to be licking a car window because he has a fetish. Ha ha! This will be good. WE THINK.

While Kymia mounts her shavings in wax and attempts to build a wee box to house them in, Dusty decides to do a face mask and embed it in a steering wheel in remembrance of a bad childhood car accident. Surely Fiat will be impressed. Dusty's mask preparation is like something out of a Three Stooges short, with Kymia forgetting to help him out of his mask as he lies on the floor, covered in goo from forehead to beard, trying to shout, "MMMMMM! HMMM MMMM!" Finally she runs over and peels it off to reveal: inverted Dusty.

Lola has no idea what to do. But she's working away as usual on several ideas anyway. There are pots of steaming crystal-making solutions and ancient-artifact metal plates and a glass painting and eventually a big sketch she traces from a photo of herself. Kymia is all like, "I freehand draw, like an artist. She traces, which is cheating!" But lots of artists trace, especially when working big and in a hurry. I have no beef with tracing as long as the outcome works. Lola scribbles a bunch of thought blurbs on top of her portrait because Jerry said a couple episodes back that he liked that. She covers a car door with foil and talks about being a good witch. Hoo boy.

Everyone knows a Lola. That waify, sex-kittenish, manic-pixie arty girl who knows lots of guys but has few or no girl friends. But generally these artists seem to get along and are supportive of each other, so Bravo production gives her a lot of camera time to make it seem like evil is afoot. Really, frustration is afoot as Kymia's box thing is falling apart and Dusty hates his steering wheel-face, and mentor Simon de Pury shoots down Michelle's goof-tastic balloon-intestine window-licker guy, saying it's better suited for the child-inspired challenge. She becomes self-doubting and starts working on a droopy paper grill sculpture beneath the car's real grill, making a "happy-sad" car. Wuh-oh, this is not good.

Gallery show! Sara J.'s piece, Backfire, consists of a muffler, mounted diagonally from the ground, belching out an array of floral-looking foam parts that point jaggedly every which way. I can't help thinking that it's a fine-art ode to flatulence, but even so, it's really good. Almost poetic in form and an interesting mix of metal with known and unknown materials combined as a new-found object. Since she's mainly an illustrator (and a good one), this is a lovely surprise. Sarah K.'s skinned car seats on canvas are also good--making an object that's bold and recognizable but weirdly abstract at the same time. They're in the top.

Dusty scrapped his steering-wheel-of-pain and instead uses an well-known preschool-teacher technique, enlarged. He puts the lettering, "going to work," "going home" on each car tire and rolls them across paper like giant ink stampers. The paper is hung behind a stack of tires for a statement on the banality of commuting. It's a nice rejoinder to car commercials, which always make driving so exciting, subversive and sexy. Most people have Dusty's experience with the Daily Commute and here it is. I think if he had had more time and painted some abstract colors behind the stamped statements, that would have been more eye-popping and would have made the tire tracks that more obtrusive. But that's just me.

Young's robot is well-made but doesn't say anything about cars, machinery or even robots--since it can't move or do anything useful or entertaining. He calls it "Trophy" and cruises through this one. He and Dusty are safe. At least Dusty still has his eyelashes and brows. Win!

Bottom three: Kymia's diorama, Key to the Universe burns its lightbulb out during the show and looks like a shadowy world of nothing. Lola's paper, crystallized metal and pretentiously titled glass installation is confusing and says nothing as well. Saddest of all is Michelle's car grills, which are cartoonish but not cartoonish enough to please the judges. She had started to make a new piece one hour before the show, smearing her hands, face and finger-written words on frosted glass to portray the steamier side of parking a car, but nixed that piece when the other artists convinced her to use the bright red, pop-eyed grill. She really choked. If she had only stuck with her intestinal guy! Simon de Pury has strrrruck agaaaain! I love that guy but sometimes he freaks the artists out with his charmingly polite put-downs of their works-in-progress.

The judges get the how-could-you-do-this-us? edit, coming across as harsh and well, overly judgmental. I mean, they only had a day, judges! Anyway, Kymia's safe because she's done good work in the past and won a challenge already. Although Jerry Saltz accuses her of "over-building" her project as she's done before. We never heard that criticism until now so we don't know which works he's referring to. The editors went in this direction to make Jerry look harsh. Lola is safe but not without Bill Powers sternly admonishing her to not bring them the same old shit every week because, "we don't want to have this conversation again." You were all praising her for words and lines on paper before and now you're against it--bad parenting, Bill.

Bill also chastises Michelle, saying you can't just put googly eyes on something and have it work. Oh, but I disagree! Sadly, Michelle is out, although I must say, her paper-craftiness combined with her determination to subvert that craftiness through sexual and scatological subject matter, was probably destined for an offing anyway. According to Jerry's blog, Jerry had a conniption fit over this outcome and there was much ranting and raving on his part, but eventually he had to agree: this was a sad, sad Fiat. And then, of course, she's called upon to explain herself, having been in an auto accident (which she's already addressed); how could she have made such an impersonal piece?

Guest judge Liz Cohen has photographed herself in bikinis while working on automobiles, so this episode pretty much had something for everyone. Just no more Michelle. No more fetish paper-craft! No more poop art! I will miss Michelle.

And now for the Work of Art inspiration piece of the week. Sorry--no sculptural work--I have limited space and auto parts. Judges and Internet commenters alike all chimed in after this episode, saying, "Michelle should have stuck with the window-licking body-part guy!" and "Michelle should have gone with her sexy fogged-up window idea!" I tried to combine all her concepts in one go here with my own unique spin, of course.

Do I win the $25,000?

Next week: Selling art on the street and, you knew it would come to this (congratulations Bravo producers), Lola gets naked!

She-Demonic Films That Demand to be Remade

Hollywood struggles to compete with today's media glut, frantically grasping at 3D anything, features based on Saturday-morning cartoons, comic-book superheroes no one cares about (Thor?)--even going so far as to put Adam Sandler in a dress and calling her Jill. Pathetic!

Hollywood, I got your back. These classic frightmare films are begging for remakes. Just don't take my golden ideas from me without compensation. All are copyright-protected by a personal lawyer friend who is not afraid to spend my money in a court of law!

She Demons (1958) - I think this would be a great remake starring sock puppets. The Muppets are back. Team America with its cast of marionettes is a cult classic. Sock puppets are due! And they can look evil when unraveled just right, especially while wearing a Nazi armband.




The Astounding She Monster (1957) - This one's got it all: a radioactive alien woman in a skin-tight bodysuit, urban bootleggers hiding out in a cabin in the woods, and very frightened forest creatures. I'm thinking: Disney musical 3D animation remake. With penguins. Make sure there's penguins. Miley Cyrus would be great in the role of the She Monster voice. Especially while smoking the legal substance, salvia.




The She-Creature (1956) - Lindsay Lohan, look no further for your come-back role. Lots of screaming and love triangles and some kind of monster with deely-bobbers on its head--this has got it all AND THEN SOME. Actually it looks kind of tame, so I'd add CGI elements such as brain-sucking leeches that morph into robots that blow up stuff. Miley Cyrus can be the voice of the leeches. I've got big plans for Miley Cyrus as you can tell.




Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) - The 50-foot woman is the role of a lifetime and Courtney Love needs a career boost. Coincidence? No, just forward-thinking on my part. Who is better equipped to be bigger than life, to fill the screen with rage and destruction? There will be no audition. Ms. Love, you have the part. I'll tell you who isn't cut out for this kind of dramatic role, Daryl Hannah.




Village of the Giants (1965) - Some kid-genius's scientific formula has caused the village teen-agers to grow to monstrous proportions. Wearing homemade bikinis, they're compelled to go-go dance in slow motion in front of the horrified townspeople, like some kind of demented episode of American Bandstand! I'm thinking: Shia LaBeouf, Rumer Willis, Peaches Geldorf, some of the cast of "Gossip Girl," and Miley Cyrus would be perfect for this remake. I'd throw some penguins in there as well. Maybe they're lab penguins, who sing and dance after ingesting some of the formula. I don't know--the creative possibilities are mind-boggling. As is most of life.

Crap for Christmas

Look everyone, let's just skip ahead to Christmas. Thanksgiving is a foregone conclusion at this point. Thanksgiving was last celebrated during its proper season, probably back in the early 90s. Since then, it gets glossed over between end-of-summer sale season, back-to-school fall specials, Halloween party essentials clearance racks, and wait, what was I saying? Oh, Thanksgiving. It involves food, and maybe a chafing dish and a table runner, so from a marketing standpoint--doesn't count for much.

You gotta get some crap for Christmas. Friends and family and the country's entire economic well-being are counting on you! Recession got you down? About to lose your job, your home? I'm sure there's something affordable you can buy for others--Jesus would want you to. I've scoured the capitalist globe looking for the ultimate in gift-giving items. Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit, unwrapping presents on December 25th will be the ultimate in Christian celebratory values. Don't hesitate to run up the credit card. Within six months you'll be close to paying it off, just in time for next year's gift-giving seasonal rush!

Forever Lazy® is not only the greatest head-to-toe fleece zipper-wear available, it's also the best-named product on this list. Not just forever, not just lazy, but FOREVER LAZY. It encompasses everything we desire at this point in our nation's history. Toasty, shapeless, human beanbag-chair fashion. The zipper flap in the back is handy in case you manage to get up off your ass to relieve yourself. Otherwise--just go in the Forever Lazy®. It's completely machine-washable.




Are you ultra-modest and tired of showing your hands to an indifferent world? Perhaps Handerpants is the product for you. This commercial give YOU all the necessary info on underpants for your HANDS.




Remote-Control Zombie and Remote-Control Lederhosen. These would make a lovely centerpiece for your holiday dinner table. When conversation lulls or turns to uncomfortable topics like RELIGION, break these out. Sure to get a laugh. As in: Ha haaaaaah!




You have hair, birds have feathers--how to combine the two?! With Snap-On Feathers™, of course, you dope! Simply snap on Snap-On Feathers™ and you will instantly have feathers in your hair! Don't miss out on this hot new trend! At your next party, guys will be pummeling each other, tripping over the furniture, trying to get to you and your feathered hair. Goddammit. You think I'm making this up, but I am deadly serious.




Now that you've made your list, I'm going to provide you with the theme music from Magnum P.I. to get you in the mood for shopping mayhem! Shop Shop Shop! Don't stop! Don't think! And don't forget the Scotch® brand adhesive tape!




But wait, there's still Thanksgiving to get through. What are you going to wear? I need help to get myself together on this occasion--how about you? Perhaps this will help. Stick with it--good stuff.

Fifi LaRue - Hamster of Great Renown

We lost our hamster today. She had been sick for a few weeks and a visit to the vet was costly and medicinal but ultimately for naught. Her suffering has ended and now she is running in the giant hamster ball in the sky. In my dreams, her ball opens up and she is free, free to do the thing she wanted to do her entire lifetime with us: run under the couch. Au revoir, Fifi.

Half-ass TV recap: Work of Art Ep 6

Street Dealers episode! Get your street art! The artists are teamed up in twos by spray-painting host China Chow's paper-mâché-like nesting-doll dress with matching colors. It makes sense at the time but I'm not going to go into details--I'm half-ass as you know. Sucklord sprays on some neon-green nipples and even mentor Simon de Pury jumps in with his spray can, and we're off!

A long brick building in Brooklyn is offered up to the four teams who have 30 minutes or something like that to come up with an idea and did they go shopping? I can't recall. Anyway, it sounds, as usual, impossible. They work all day in the studio and get to tackle their walls starting at 6 P.M. and going until 3 A.M. Plus one morning for touch-ups! This is not a show for art slackers, so kudos to casting for finding these hard-working types.

Team Sarah and Sucklord are having a one-sided flirtation going. Guess who's doing the aggressive flirting? The sequestered, sleep- and information-deprived artists have needs. But Sarah is not focusing on that right now. Right now, she's coming up with some city-as-labyrinth concept and Sucklord nods enthusiastically, promising to build some 3D elements that will be glued on the building. This does not sound good.

Team Dusty and Young are having a tough time collaborating. "We're different," says Dusty. Young notes that Dusty's good at building stuff, so they set out to make some staircases that will serve as an interactive component. Young likes to get everyone involved. Meanwhile, they'll have to think of some art to go with the staircases. That's an unusual approach to street art.

Over at team Sara and Kymia, they focus on their family-immigrant backgrounds. Kymia's family is Iranian-American and Sarah's, Filipino-Canadian. They hone in on an uprooted family tree, getting pulled along by an alien-like businessman from a bureaucratic world. This is a traditional muralist approach, political but also personal. They get to sketching and both are talented illustrators, so we'll see what they come up with together.

Meanwhile, team Lola and Michelle are giggling and whispering and drawing a lot of tiger-striped penises. Lola wants to use the cut-outs of the building to make "windows" into some neighborly debauchery that viewers can peek in on. Michelle is on board and lots of erect penises ensue. To Bravo's credit, there are lots of close-ups of said penises, and I suppose everyone in standards and practices have basically thrown up their hands, shrugging off any censorship boundaries at this point. What the hell! It's art! High-fives--with a tiger penis!

Lola is given the "arrested-development brat" edit this time around. She and Michelle make Kymia cry when they ignore her pleas for the use of a scanner. Tiger-penis bitches! Lola opines that Kymia and Sara's piece is so "serious" and art doesn't have to be heavy and morose. It can be light and fun. True. But making someone cry is not everyone's definition of fun. Lola calls Kymia a worry-wart who needs to lighten up. Tee hee, says Lola as she recounts how she used to glitter-bomb subway cars when she was 14 and how her mom taught her to be "brash" by cutting into long lines throughout childhood. Now her mom looks like an asshole too. Nice work if you can get it, editors.

Young ruefully notes that all the teams seem to be beavering away while he and Dusty can only saw and hammer without a concept to work on. Later, in the penthouse of purgatory and coffee, they realize that Young lost his father around the same time that Dusty became a father. A concept is born. Self-portraits and discussion bubbles will get people talking (and chalking) about this universal life and death experience. During judging, Jerry will proclaim it "The Circle of Life." Bingo--Young is really good at this show.

Everyone out on the street! Sucklord glues little sticks together that will pop out of Sarah's black and white maze. Although it rains, the sticks hold forth and he adds some painted rats and cheese to, I don't know, give the thing some life I suppose. This is one flat, uninteresting plan of action, despite the 3D qualities.

Lola and Michelle have printed giant stickers of their illustrations (they really did need those scanners) and are pasting and painting away. "Whoa, this is a really big wall," notes Michelle. True--mural-making is daunting. Their work looks like a perverse squiggle-sketch party and would probably make for an exciting Exotic Erotic Ball of some sort. Not so sure about how "street" it is. They've also included cut-outs of accessories, alcohol and more penises, so viewers can join in on the sticker fun.

Kymia and Sara get to work on their gigantic uprooted tree and creepy-guy. They paint REALLY BIG, not using color so much as ghostly shading. It's a good use of the very wide, not-so-high brick wall. It's not an easy shape to compose in. Dusty and Young's piece also uses the space well. Their profiles say, "I recently lost my father / I recently became a father / How does it feel to become/lose a parent?" The center bubble concludes, "It changes you." Although mentor Simon de Pury doesn't find the audience-participation aspect necessary. Young knows his stuff and stairs and sticks of chalk are in place.

Show time! Everyone out in the street. People are indeed interacting with the Young/Dusty wall and it gets all good and chalked up. Judges make a note of that. Lola and Michelle decide it's OK to tag not only their own work with their debauched stickers, but Lola encourages others to tag the other artworks as well. "It's a part of street art," she explains. Yes, but this is commissioned, judged work. In San Francisco, a city of zillions of murals, people who tag good artwork are generally considered assholes who cause more work for the artists, who have to pay and put in the hours to clean up their walls. One tag leads to many more and a good mural can be completely defaced within a couple of weeks. So anyway, Lola is shown putting grounded-out cigarettes and penis illustrations on Kymia's and Sara's uprooting guy, causing Kymia to sigh and peel them off while worrying about their paint application before judging time. There you have it: a microcosm of the street process within 30 seconds. Nice work, editors.

My fingers are getting sore from typing, so I'll wrap up. Young/Dusty and Kymia/Sara are in the top. Young and Dusty win and I forgot to mention, the winners get $30,000. Young is so on a roll. Dusty, being an elementary-school art teacher, can't wait to get his hands on some cold, hard cash. Awww. Kymia and Sara are praised for their big figures. Both teams used their personal stories to collaborate well with each other. Team-mural challenge, accomplished.

In the loser corner, Sucklord pretty much knows his goose is cooked. This is fourth time in the bottom and how many chances can he get? Lola and Michelle's piece is deemed shallow and juvenile, although in judge Jerry Saltz' entertaining blog, he says it was his favorite, being lively and perverse. Here, he's not given the positive reviews-edit. And the general consensus is that their piece fails to draw people in, therefore landing flat as a voyeuristic concept. Is it judge Bill Powers who notes that their cigarette-smoking tiger figures look like Lola and Michelle throwing a party that no one came to? Harsh!

Predictably, Sarah and Sucklord are dragged over the coals for their flat, boring piece. Sucklord especially is found wanting, having given in to Sarah's concept without adding anything substantial to the table. I guess the judges expected him to provide urban mythological creatures of the labyrinth or something. But c'mon--the guy is known for designing wee action figures. He's no muralist. Most of us aren't. But he takes the blame, like the Sucklord that he is, and graciously is tossed off the show. Oh, Sucklord! We hardly knew ye! "The force was not with him," says Jerry. Oh, Jerry, if you really wanted to put The Sucklord down, you would have said something along the lines of, "We were hoping for 'Empire Strikes Back' but instead got 'Phantom Menace'" Ouch!

Next week: Oh no--automobile art.

I couldn't make any street art this time around for the WOA inspiration segment of the recap. Plus it's rainy today. So I'll leave you with some San Francisco street scenes and murals from the Mission District that I took this summer. Ya'll need to visit San Francisco and go on a mural tour, yes you do.

She Mob is back

Perhaps you never realized She Mob went away. No matter. She Mob, the band, is back. We started rehearsing again with a new member a few months ago and played a short set with some new songs at the Annual Murder Ballads show at the Starry Plough. And so, from the ashes of mid-90s mid-life crisis, we arise to fill the world with our anti-love songs. People used to ask us 15 years ago why we started a punk-pop band in our 30s and we basically had no answer other than we enjoy it. Do what you enjoy--that's the She Mob way.

She Mob was named after the movie. We actually read the synopsis, named the band, and THEN saw the movie. And it's a bona fide classic. Snippet:


This is really early She Mob from the first album, "Cancel the Wedding." Does anybody even take Prozac anymore? It goes by other names/brands now I suppose.


From the third album, "Not In My World"--Wet Kitten!


I had to leave the band for a while when my son was born. It carried on. Live 2008 show at the Starry Plough with many guest stars in attendance.


Through every incarnation of the band, Joy Sue Hutchinson wears a fine wig onstage, anchoring us with her enthusiasm, talent and fun-building skills.


Who's in She Mob lately?
Suki O'Kane
Joy Sue Hutchinson
Karry Walker
Captive Wild Woman
Alan Korn (on hiatus--he'll be back)

She Mob CDs for sale at CDBaby
Listen to She Mob on MySpace while it still lives
Be our Facebook friend!

Half-ass TV recap: Work of Art, Ep 5

That's right! Work of Art, Ep 5: Ripped from the Headlines! Simon de Pury cheerfully awakens the remaining artists at the ungodly hour of 5:30 A.M. to take a trip to the New York Times printing plant in Queens. This show is very cruel. They're artists, not farm animals. But with minimal grumbling, the sleepy, rumpled creatives ooh and ahh at the rapidly moving newspaper whirlwind all around them.

The artists have ten minutes to pick a headline that will inspire their works of art. All artworks must contain The Times to meet the challenge requirements. Using it as a drop-cloth doesn't count. Kymia is worried because she never reads the paper. Lola wants to win because her mother forced her to read the front page of The Times every Saturday instead of watching cartoons. I can barely get my kid to read at all, unless it's the history of the Titanic, which as "a fan of maritime disasters," is all he'll read about lately. Maybe we can ease him in--start with "Sunday Styles" and take it from there.

Everyone scrambles for headlines except for The Sucklord, who decides to park himself in a corner and simply read the paper. He finds a BP oil-spill story and calls it a day. The rest are flailing about with papers flying in frantic abandon. I hope they got pancakes afterwards. The winner of this challenge will get $20,000 and the winning art will be installed in the lobby of the New York Times building. Wowee wow wow!

They have a day plus a few hours to complete the task (not bad for $20,000 worth of work), so they get to scrambling/creating. Sarah is cutting strips of words, signifying madness, based on a story about a depressed writer. Michelle illustrates all the terrible bruises she sustained from an hit-and-run car/bicycle accident the year before. She's been touched by a story about insurance claims made by victims of crimes. Kymia found a story about the Long Island serial killer and she's structuring a life-sized coffin full of plaster, newspapers and body parts. Kymia--the New York Times won't go for that in their lobby! She's an artist all right.

The Sucklord struggles, starting out with a representation of an actual newspaper page, with cut-outs painted blue, that he'll spill "oil" from. It could work, but mentor Simon de Pury has other ideas. He encourages Sucklord to not be so literal, since that's been a problem with all his work so far, along with using too many Star Wars figurines. Sucklord trashes everything and starts building stacks of money, dripping with "oil" and covered with NY Times paper bands, because, he attempts to claim, the Times did not cover the story thoroughly enough, so they're compliant. Sucklord! That's not going in the Times' lobby either!

Young wants to pay tribute to then-incarcerated artist Ai Weiwei, which on one hand, is a good-will effort, since Ai Weiwei was a political prisoner in China at the time of production and no one knew what the outcome of his imprisonment would be. On the other hand: brilliant headline, Young! The judges, who were all probably wondering where Ai Weiwei was at that moment, will be pleased. He attempts bleaching the paper to instill the notion of censorship but the words are still visible so his alternate plan is tied-up stacks of black-painted newspapers with "Where is Ai Weiwei?" headlines. Now THIS will go in the NY Times lobby, indeed.

Dusty's dark silhouettes of depressed Americans across a crumpled-paper covered U.S. map and Lola's drawing based on photos of Libyan freedom fighters with inadequate weaponry are in the top three with Young's Ai Weiwei stacks. Young wins. Dusty is visibly crushed not to get the $20,000. He was hoping to have another child with Mrs. Dusty back home. But Young will be using the money to help his mom travel to Korea. And she has cancer. So, you know--it's good. Lola's back story isn't as compelling, but I think her drawing and slightly sardonic, distancing hand-written captions should have won. Perhaps if she hadn't included the unexceptional Times-wrapped tools leaning against the wall beneath her illustration, she might have won. Except the contest called for newspaper to be included, so Catch-22. Dusty's work was good, but I've noticed that map-art tends to get passed over in prize-winning situations. Too literal, perhaps, but I thought he made good on his "Darkening Mood in America" headline.

Down in the bottom dregs are Bayeté with some mis-matched golden doors and shiny lettering representing a Dreamgirls review (I think). The door knobs don't match up becuase he painted the wrong side of one of the doors. His lack of carpentry skills at first seems purposeful to the judges but then guest judge Adam McEwen points out that Bayeté's explanation for his work makes it even worse. Originally it was supposed to be some doorway leading to heaven or something. Sad. Sarah's weird leaning cut-out words are deemed meaningless of content. The Sucklord is called to task for his transparent lack of anything going on with his piece. It's like a would-be politically Goth window display from a nonprofit arts foundation in a former appliance-repair shop. Not that I would have seen anything like that while living in pre-dot-com boom San Francisco for 25 years...

Bayeté is out--not bad for a guy who should have lost in the first round with his awful identity art (also featuring money--don't use money or maps, artists!). He seems like a nice guy. Good luck to you, Bayeté! The Sucklord lives for another day!

Next week: Lola gets the "cat-fight edit" by making Kymia cry and then meowing and holding her hand up like a claw. I'd be careful, Lola. Kymia makes serial-killer art, you know.

Today's inspirational work from Work of Art is a tribute to James Van Doren, co-inventor of Vans footwear. His obituary ran in last Sunday's Times. Along with his brother, he engineered a specialized rubber that, along with a diamond-shaped sole pattern, would help sailors stick to the decks of their boats. Subsequently skateboarders in Southern California discovered that Vans helped keep them from falling off their boards. When Sean Penn, playing Spicoli, wore the checkerboard slip-ons in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," a cultural shift in footwear took place. Condolences to James Van Doren's family and friends. I love how he helped accidentally create a fashion/sports trend.

I own a fine pair of Vans that I bought specifically to play drums in (drummers feet gotta stick to the pedals). But I find that they really are rad for scootering too, when I brought Jackson's scooter to school the other day. The big, flat Vans soul acts like a paddle along the sidewalk. Oil-pastel rubbings of my big Vans.

Close-up featuring a mini-portrait of James Van Doren.

Future Fashion of Yesterday--Today!

One of the pleasures of sci-fi films is noting the speculation of the look of future societies, always a reflection of the time at production. If you were watching sci-fi in the 1960s, you learned that people of our time were to be decked out in bubble hats, mini-dresses and jumpsuits while walking down pristine white corridors toward brightly lit chambers full of blinking room-sized computers. No one thought that technology might be getting smaller and smaller. Or that we'd all be emulating sloppy 70s wear. Well, except for Woody Allen in "Sleeper," who envisioned an autodidactic U.S. full of junk-food-eating consciousness-raising lay-abouts.





Today we will explore fashion predictors of the distant past and their vision for our present look of today. Brought to you by Exit to Tomorrow by Andrew Garn, Paola Antonelli, Udo Kultermann and Stephen Van Dyke--a collaborative effort on Universe Press that covers the architecture, design and fashion of World's Fairs from 1933 to 2005. (I found this book at Half Price Books--a full-color futuristic steal!).

The first thing you need to know, is that in 1939, designer Walter Dorwin Teague saw ladies of 2000 wearing see-through clothes, due to "universal air conditioning and better bodies." Makes sense to me! Must have been an anomaly though--not everyone lives in a warm climate, Walter Dorwin Teague. And what about formal wear?



Look no further! Designer Henry Dreyfuss not only envisioned a see-through evening-gown future, but predicted that women would want to dress as dolls, complete with personal fan/compact at their disposal. I'm beginning to think the World's Fair was kind of an excuse for soft-porn wishful thinking. Prove me wrong!



Oh, OK. So menswear is not see-through. Not at all, despite central air and "better bodies." This guy has an antennae-snatching radio hat and his socks are disposable. I'm getting turned on all right.



Through the magic of YouTube and today's high-speed Internet connections, we can watch these future visions in action in the short film "Clothing of the Future, the Year 2000."



I hope you found that inspiring. Let's take a look at future outerwear of 1939's World's Fair. What's in store for us? Heat-generating coat-linings? Emergency shelter supplies in a secret pocket?

No, it's see-through! I imagine Harvey Gibson, chairman of the board of the New York World's Fair, was saying something along the lines of, "Your futuristic underpants are simply divine, Miss!" And so they are!



Montreal's '67 World's Fair would have us matching our clothing to nearby architecture. Ooh, I'd hate to be standing next to the former AAA building in San Francisco when this trend comes into play.



Jump ahead to the 1970 Osaka World's Fair. What's the fashion story? Looks like head-to-toe metallics are in! And buildings are laughing. Still waiting for these trends to fully kick in.



We've bypassed the year 2000. What are we going to wear? According to Japan's 2005 World's Fair, nobody cares because the future belongs to sexy mini-skirted, go-go boots-wearing robots in support pantyhose. Maybe there's still time to revive the see-through gown phenomenon before the robots completely take over.

Kid Art, get yer kid art here

Yup, I'm posting my kid's art. Why? Because it's so exuberant. If you don't agree, then you may be in a coma. If you're feeling comatose, perhaps some kid art will help. Jackson's going through a phase where he hates everything he draws upon completion. It's tough because he truly is a great artist (as most kids are), and his personality always comes through no matter what he's drawing, And because I love his personality so much, I love his art so much as well. But I'd love it anyway. Maybe you will too.





If you have a kid who refuses to make art, get some Mr. Sketch scented watercolor markers. They smell like blueberries and cinnamon and such and they make kids want to draw. The colors are rich too, although Jackson reports that the felt-tips themselves are "a little scratchy."

Freaked-out adults who don't want their children sniffing pens--I understand. I'm always catching Jackson trying to smell chemically packed drawing supplies, such as Sharpies and dry-erase markers. That's bad. But I guess we'll use it as a teaching moment and hope the brain damage is minimal.

I once made a Disney Pirates of the Caribbean model kit (Dead Man's Raft) with my friend Pam, and once she broke out her brother's airplane glue, it was all over for us. Much stomach-cramping laughter and rolling around on the carpet of their empty living room ensued before we realized that we were totally high on fumes. Actually we didn't realize that until years later. Sometimes kids are just high on life and it's hard to tell the difference.

Anyway, why was their living room empty? Because back in my day, many of our neighbors couldn't afford to furnish all the rooms in their newly built suburban tract homes. And rather than go into credit-card debt, they simply waited a few years to buy the necessary couches, chairs, window treatments and coffee tables. These empty spaces were excellent areas for kids to have slumber parties, play hours of Monopoly, or accidentally inhale glue. Quite a difference from today's home-owner attitude of, "We'll have to gut and update the entire house upon moving in." How did I get on this tangent? Art: it brings out the social critic in me.

Half-ass TV recap: Work of Art Season Two-fer, Ep 3 and 4

I couldn't bring myself to review Work of Art two weeks ago, hot on the heels of too many Work of Art recaps already. This is the problem of being the sole writer around here. Sometimes there's too much recapping to do and not enough time to do it in. And...nobody cares.

So without further ado, here's a very brief rundown of Episode 3: Make it Pop. As you might surmise, the young artists are instructed to create a piece based on pop art. They are led into a warehouse by a trail of shiny tin cans where they find host China Chow dressed in blue-munchkin finery with ascending buttons down her front. There's also a Campbell's Soup Can portrait by Andy Warhol, looking fiiiine, next to mentor Simon de Pury. Unfortunately the cans, portrait, and China's dress will be the most compelling works of art in the entire episode, so c'mon along with me as we relive the moment. (China Chow as a giant hamster in her cute munchkin dress next to a Warhol is my pop-art contribution.)

Cutting to the chase: Young Sun wins with his billboard-inspired "Prop 8" interactive piece. He leaves the back available with Sharpies so gallery patrons can write their opinions on Prop 8. This is a brilliant move because the winner of this challenge will get their work published in Entertainment Weekly and because he purposely doesn't put his opinion on the piece (although, as a gay man, we can surmise), he makes sure that the Prop 8 application is big and bold and reprintable.

Kymia is in second place with a close-up photo of her boobs as backdrop for a bottle of dirty water. It's sex and advertising and pollution, all in one. She laments she wishes she had known that the winning work of art would be in a national magazine, before she started photographing herself naked. And not surprisingly, she is not the winner. But if you want to see lots of shots of Kymia's boobs, this is the episode for you. Although Bravo could not bring itself to air Michelle's wooden-dowel sculpture of an erect penis the week before, boobs are no problem. Censorship: it's complex.

Double-elimination losers are Jazz-Minh with her failed attempt at Britney Spears celebrity self-portraiture, and Leon, whose glassy American Flag covered in corporate logos, fails to personalize his pop-art experience. The judges would rather Jazz-Minh had simply used a photo of her "bite me" lip tattoo. At the San Francisco Art Institute, I saw art like that practically every day. Leon's idea is tired but the judges manage not to yawn. Judge Bill Powers wants to know why Leon, as a deaf person, didn't address the added communication component of Facebook, since he threw the logo in there. What the what?

Dusty and Michelle are also in the bottom with a fast-food garbage can of shame and too-derivative Coke-can Warhol homage, respectively. China asks why Dusty didn't use bright, poppy colors on his "How Could You" bin and he and all of us in the audience must then spend a wasted moment, trying to imagine a colorful trash container for a moment. Nope--that didn't work either. I wonder if he'd had a couple of trays, mustard stains and more caustic message on the door flap, such as "Garbage In Garbage Out," would that have made it "pop"? Probably people would have thrown their trash in it and that would have at least kept the gallery clean.

So, pop art is pretty much a snore-fest. Asking a disparate group of young artists to create a work of pop is a lousy proposition if none of them work in the medium already. It's one of those movements that worked for a handful of people and puzzled most everyone else, who eventually jumped on the bandwagon, then jumped off again. Only Sucklord, who deals in mass-produced toy art, has much of a background in pop, and his consumer products based on Charlie Sheen rants, were probably dated even as the show taped. Are you all hipster attitude without the hipster cred, Sucklord? We shall see.

No point in complaining though. People get really mad at this show and its so-far sub par art masterpieces. They swear on Internet recap blogs never to watch again, but to them I say this: go pound sand. I doubt most people could have aced this challenge to a successful degree. Pop does best as a festering obsession, not as a day-and-a-half challenge. It was too open-ended to truly inspire. Although, as you can see, my kid was making Coke-inspired designs before he was two years old. We used to find these curved soda-can line-ups going all the way down our hall, with Cokes leading to Sprites leading to Mountain Dews as you walked throughout the house. We had him assessed and doctors assured us he's fine, just focused, I guess.

That brings us to Episode 4: Back to School. Now this is a successful challenge. A bunch of kids are in the studio, hanging around their precocious kid art when the contestants are led in. Shock and awe follow as each artists confronts an underage kid artist. The challenge: make a work of art based on the kid art, but make it gallery ready. The winning piece will be auctioned by mentor Simon de Pury with proceeds going to a city art program. Whoo! Kid art!

Confronted by earnest, imaginative little people, the artists are galvanized into action. Sarah makes a clever shadowbox whose figures dance around with the aid of a hidden light and fan. As in all the previous weeks, she's deemed safe so we barely get to see her work or story or anything. Her biggest narrative thread is laughing hysterically at Young, who's jumping around in front of a camera in his underwear (based on his portfolio, he does this quite a bit), to prep for his birdman piece, based on a colorful bird mobile. He's safe.

Sucklord is touchingly hopeful that his tree-sculpture of secret worlds piece will live up to his artist's tree drawing. It doesn't. It starts out well, but ends up a last-minute mess. He tried. Judge Jerry Saltz promises to go "medievel" on Sucklord if he finds him working with Star Wars figurines again. What a strange battle that would be. Sucklord mentally crosses off George Lucas figures from his roster of toy muses.

Lola is spooked by mentor Simon de Pury's criticism of her doodly flower/mountain drawing, and she ends up making an even bigger mess than Sucklord. Flowery, scribbles over flower photos. Somehow she's safe. Also spooked by a de Pury brow furrow during mentor-time, Michelle alters her swan with bloody poked-out eyeballs paper sculpture (based on a simple drawing of eyes) to a very weird, fairy-tale-like sculpture of an ogre-like creature, peeking out from some kind of greenery shapes. She's so odd. I like her ability to fold paper many times over.

Dusty is on top with an interactive door-hinged wall hanging that acts as a visual biography of his young artist. Dusty can really build stuff. I admire that. And he's a fifth-grade art teacher, so he taps into child art immediately. But he doesn't win. Kymia clinches with a detailed pen-and-ink portrait of a dead girl on a beach, covered in birds (I think that's what it is--hard to see and impossible to read on the Bravo site, probably due to copyright issues), with a little carrot sticking out of her mouth. What? You had to be there. Her young artist gave her a still life of a carrot on a beach and Kymia kept probing until her artist gave up a crazy imaginative story about the girl who ate everything in sight and died. That was clever of Kymia, who had so little to work with initially. She can obviously draw extremely well. Kudos.

Bottom three: Sara has a major emotional breakdown as she recounts her parents' divorce when she was ten years old. She nearly forgets her young artist's exuberant, large-scale word-stamped color piece (with its emphasis on her favorite word, "Chocolate"), and goes for a tiny triptych, outlining the affair, "divorse," and subsequent love child that followed. The judges are visibly disturbed by her crying jag during critique. Judge Bill Powers suggests they bypass the content of her art and go for the style instead. That was a good idea. Guest judge and executive producer of the show, Sarah Jessica Parker, wonders why Sara didn't just make a piece of art based on the ten-year-old she wishes she could have been. That is such an actressy way of looking at things, isn't it?

Tewz is called on the floor for his crumbly concrete "GROW" letters with green plant-like shoots sticking through the cracks. He wants to show how living things manage to thrive, even in city concrete, but the judges are like, "eh." Sucklord gives an impassioned speech, saying Tewz's work has balls. But the judges are all, "Naaah." Maybe if he had made a concrete sculpture, rather than those literal "GROW" letters, the judges would have thought his work had balls. He only had a drawing of a radish on a sidewalk to work from. That must have been tough. Jerry Saltz calls him on his lack of imagination and that's that. No more Tewz.

And now for this week's Work-of-Art-inspiration artwork. I made this last year with an unfinished drawing my kid had discarded. I painted it and added his handwriting, using primitive transfer techniques, and here 'tis. I find it inspiring, though why, I can't say. I think because I helped him like something he had tossed, by simply adding to it until it became something new. When he saw the finished work he said, "I didn't know I could draw that well."


Next week: What could be more inspirational? That's right, newspapers!

Stephen Colbert delves deep into Occupy Wall Street

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Good-naturedly making mince-meat of demonstrators and their earnest hand signals.