MAINEGLORIOUS

This weekend all involved rushed off to Peaks Island near the coast of Maine for a quick vacation, much needed. Pennie pulled some strings with a distant relative to gain access to a beautiful little bayside cottage so we could look onto the Atlantic and act out New England cliches one after the other. Seafood, clam chowder, cable knit sweaters and brightly colored shorts, leisure, whiskey, contemplative gazing. It was a good time to escape, for on Sunday, Pennie and pretty baby Brian had to run back to Brandeis University to collect their masters degrees in cultural production and accept awards for saving the Rose Museum. Pennie holed herself away for a while at one point to draft a speech marking the occasion. It was beautiful and made me proud.

Maine represents a silvery mystery in the American psyche. It would take half a lifetime to determine or articulate exactly what that mystery entails, which I haven't lived yet, so I'll leave it to the future or I'll point to something like Marsden Hartley's late seascapes to reveal it for you. I thought maybe if I looked under my bed, I'd find a pentagram drawn in chalk on the floorboard. Its a strange place, steeped in local lore, populated by bizarre working people whose expressed demeanor are weathered similarly to surf-battled rock face. Cliche? yes. Hand me my LL Bean slicker.

cocktail hour







ahoy!









slept beneath slanted ceilings



a fort!



ferrying back to the continent

LOUCHE LIFE

We went over to Ellen's yesterday to have a nice picnic on the roof. Jamie leisurely stirred the sangria while I gave a sleepy wave and discussed lifestyle options extensively. Bottle after bottle of vinho verde, BLT's and a buffet of every salad variety imaginable led to this, very pre-Summer rooftop look. If you'll notice the bottoms of my feet, they're giving you pure Depression-era poverty, channeling Dorothea Lange's best work for the Farm Security Administration.

When times are tough, it is essential to ruthlessly make fun of everything, to solve real problems using aesthetic solutions, to emphasize the glamor of being broke and hungry, to take a style cue from Ms. Lange. It should get you about as far as you'd ever want to go in life. That is, to middle age, just before everything pretty much gives out.

poverty feet

SUMMER TURNS A LOOKBOOK

Active style inspirations for Summer 2010, leading off as always with Michael Clark photographed by David Bailey, 1985, looking like the freshest thing that was ever borne:

Blue Curry/Isaac Julien




Scott Grieger





Krista White, ANTM 14
















Marie-Guillemine Benoist/Kobe Bryant

IS IT HAPPENING

I was in New York again for a brief second this weekend to attend my beautiful sister Katherine's college graduation yesterday. She really is one of the top three most beautiful women I've ever met. She's moving to California in like three weeks, which makes me very happy and a little sad but mostly happy that our most peculiar family is soon to be bi-coastal. It was a short, celebratory visit with family, followed by several pitchers of Margaritas with my boys in Brooklyn before I had to hightail it back to Massachusetts. Margaritas enjoyed somewhere on a Williamsburg patio:





Now its back to work work work. As the studio calls my name louder and louder there can be no other priority. My gut and my heart remind me in unison that there is more work to be done. There are more pictures to fulfill. There is more desire to illustrate. There are more bodies and dreams to locate using my two favorite dimensions, length and width. I've got no time for depth.

Everyone call your mother today. She loves you and you love her.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY COLLEEN

On Tuesday night another rousing Nu Life with D'hana and Rizzla at zuzu. It was also Colleen's birthday, their promoter. Happy 17th birthday, Colleen! It was also star wars day.

HAPPY COLLEEN (right) with Cecilia (left)

MIT/DAS RACIST/COLUMBIA/FISHER LANDAU

This weekend was all Ivy League, all the time, brought to you by MIT and Columbia University. Whatevah. I went over on Saturday night to the annual steer roast rager at MIT's Senior House, which is like a huge co-ed fra-rority(?). Whatevah real wavy. The party is somewhat infamous because chemistry nerds can invent their own boutique psychedelic drugs, and they do. Locals unaccustomed to these new substances sneak in, take these drugs and then freaking die or come close, acting terrible and then complain about it. Wild!

Anyway, I was there because Brian was DJing for Das Racist. Beautiful. Fun. They were followed by Big Digits, who I love seeing out at bars, but so rarely see perform.

a babe in the green room



Das Racist on the MIT Senior House



"ONLY LIFE CAN KILL YOU"







OK but honestly, this shit eclipsed everything else on Saturday and I still want to talk about it. In between bands, the CUTEST nerdy babes came out in these flannel get-ups and very matter-of-factly announced that 20 years ago that day, their favorite band Nirvana performed on those very steps in pouring rain. As tribute, they performed this interpretive babe dance to "Lithium." I fucking LOVED it because they meant it, and it was totally shallow, but also absolutely straight-faced and seemed as intentionally momentous as so much bad art tries to be. The difference being, of course, that this is a party, not some shmuck's art project, and being about the party it could also be frank, sharing frivolity and histrionic nonsense.

I mean, they love Nirvana, get it? Let's take drugs.



Max



Ike



Big Digits



TD

SUNDAY: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MFA THESIS EXHIBITION @ FISHER LANDAU CENTER:

Yesterday I went down to New York with Ellen to see our friend Sam Ekwurtzel's thesis show. If you are in NYC, get to Fisher Landau in Long Island City and see it. Quiet confrontations with objects of the world, awful and awe inspiring simultaneously. Situations presented that I stumble across and murmur unto myself, "fuck. everything is eternal and thus, eternally fucked." When he's doing his best, I feel both overwhelmed and incredibly light. Sam's material adventures perform these mysteries with minimal, at times severe, seductive derring-do.



11:34



clock rolls at the same speed and in the opposite direction as the moving treadmill, thus remaining in the center. The clock keeps accurate time.



the two-monitor video

Later:



beautydude Matthew at after party, Larry Lawrence

Sam's sweet dream