Category Archives: Thoughts @ Large

Thinking large while on an art safari in the Asphalt Jungle:

• What a difference in energy level, mountains vs city.  It is invigorating watching all the mostly young and smartly dressed men and women stride purposefully along New York’s numbered streets to whatever apparently-important destination awaits them.  As a whole, they do not look like joyless urbanites.  They seem to wear many shades of black.

• I had to recalibrate my lunchtime menu orders while we were in the city.  I kept getting twice the food I expected, no doubt a reflection of the modestly-sized sandwiches they serve in restaurants back home.  In New York City, they want to put meat on your bones.  In the mountain south, the emphasis is on carbs in your belly, one burrito at a time.

• This was my first visit to the Museum of Modern Art.  I have contemporary tastes, so I thought I would eat this place up like creme caramel.  Instead, I was surprised how quickly I tired of the high-concept installations and canvas after canvas with idiosyncratic splashes of color.  Don’t get me wrong, I like abstract art and would like to make more of it myself.  But my brother-in-law Robert was right: conceptual art makes your brain labor in a way that Cezanne does not.

• Speaking of Cezanne, he paints fruit as ruddy red radioactive treasures, stolen from the Garden of Eden and set aside to ripen in his Bowl of Knowledge.  It is too bad that Cezanne did not serve as God’s Creative Director, as it would have made for a more vibrant and interesting world all around.

• Funny how after your fourth or fifth cab ride in Manhattan, you begin to get used to the sudden stops, swerves and three lanes of traffic that merge into one at a moment’s notice.  The accident-free flow of cars seems to follow the same law of nature that governs how water cascades over the rocks in a river, carrying along fallen leaves and water skimmers without damaging them.  The cab drivers sense the flow and go with it.

• Nice that you no longer have to fumble for cash in New York cabs, as they now accept debit and credit cards.  The new problem is figuring out the right way to swipe the card through the reader as the driver waits and waits for you to wade through the technology standing between him, his payment and his next fare.

• Regretfully, I didn’t take one artsy photograph in New York.  Next time, maybe.

• Refrigerators that start to make noise never get quieter.

• This article by Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, about athletes who visit sick or disadvantaged children, reminds me what I liked about Pittsburgh, what I now miss.

• It is not simple nostalgia to think back to the days when children used to go out and play.  In some parallel universe, they still do, and those kids are no doubt in better social and physical condition than ours.  Even if six or seven million of them are named Bleen.

• The Occupy Movement decries income disparity but I question its tactics and targets.  Income disparity exists because we feed into it, not just when we buy or sell stock, but every time we go see a blockbuster movie or sporting event, every time we buy designer clothes and, yes, every time we pay our outrageous cable or satellite bill.  These are the actions that put our money in the hands of the superstars and behemoths.  We made the monster, and it will take a sweeping change in our own values to bring it down.

• I make homeopathic martinis, adding just two or three drops of a fruit-flavored vodka where other bartenders would use vermouth.  Plenty of flavor.  Remember who told you.

• Irony is what Americans use to avoid making strong, direct statements.  I am fortunate to have known a British couple who do not use irony — interacting with them was like being plunged into a sea of black coffee with colorful swirls, disorienting in a positive way for a stubbornly ironic American.  Happy Christmas, Guy and Catharine.

• Artists do and say and create things, boldly, without embarrassment.  Rarely do I.  Merry Christmas, Lester.

• According to dictionary.com,  a manifesto is “a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives.”  If I were to call this blog a manifesto, maybe someone at the FBI would start reading it.  It would be one more reader than I have now.

• It is a lot less work to have an idea than to execute one.  Execution is a pain in the ass.

• My wife just bought some red wine glasses whose globes shimmy like water balloons when you attempt to wash them.  It is only a matter of time.

• The NYU Medical Center says that your sinuses produce over a quart of mucus per day.  In an average person’s lifetime, that works out to be 163 barrels of snot.  It’s a good thing we have throats.

• Important things happen that never show up on Facebook.  Maybe by definition.

• The film “Baseball’s Last Hero: The Roberto Clemente Story” is now in pre-production, scheduled to be released in 2012.  I took a look at the starting lineup — I mean, the cast — and was disappointed to see that Bob Prince, the Voice of the Pirates in the Clemente era, will not be portrayed in the film.  How could you not include Prince?

• I use the word that a lot, incorrectly a tenth of the time, superfluously a third of the time.

• Are flying insects attracted to your ears, or are they the only ones you hear coming?

• If Mark Twain didn’t say, “Ain’t worth a teaspoon of hummingbird pee,” he should have.