the greatest black cherry soda?

I love obscure sodas from small companies. Black cherry soda was a special treat in my family.
Recently, I did a study to find the best black cherry soda. To qualify, it had to be from a small company, bottled in glass, contain real cherry, and taste good.

I also gave special preference to local companies. You see the winner above, Boylan's black cherry soda, with one of its buddies, Boylan's seltzer. Boylan's is bottled in New Jersey.

Rauschenberg and other scapegoats

Peter and I went to see the Rauschenberg exhibit when it was in New York. I mainly knew him from this work, Monogram.

Monogram confronts us with all the animals who have been used up by the machine of our society, in one way or another.

Or, as David Lynch put it:



This was made for the 2000 New York City "Cow Parade." NYC refused it, after having invited Lynch to participate.

At what other time would you see cows on parade except the line for the slaughterhouse?

Works like Monogram and Eat my Fear may not be beautiful, but they have grandeur and moral power. And those are aesthetic qualities, too.

Fear isn't of the same caliber as Monogram. It is more specific, less universal, and too close to propaganda. But I like the raw anger of it, the boldness, and the humor.



Though madly Christian, Holman Hunt created a universal image when he painted Scapegoat. This is as much Cain as Christ; it is everyone who has been outside the sanction and protection of the group.

(In the Old Testament, the sins of the community are ritually transferred to the scapegoat, which is then pushed out into the wilderness to die.)

Holman Hunt is the least-loved pre-Raphealite-- but he is the only one of the original brotherhood who stuck to the principles of the group. I don't always like his personality, but I like tenacity, and his fidelity to his ideals.

Hunt's scapegoat is a nightmare hallucination of the isolation and vulnerability that results from ostracism.

Which brings me back to Rauschenberg, who recently suffered the indignity of having his sexuality forced through the rubber tire of post-mortem straight-washing, as often occurs in the mainstream press.

Modern Art Notes has a good article exploring this.

Simeon Solomon self-portrait

On the eve of our trip to Chicago I did a little research and found that a self-portrait drawing by the only queer pre-Raphealite resides at the Art Institute.

We were too late to get an appointment to see it and pay homage to Simeon Solomon.

Mika - Love Today - live at Coachella 2007 (okeastron)

I discovered Mika by listening to the London Times Sounds podcast, which may be a good way to learn about new music--though it isn't interesting at all if you already know the artist. Pete Pahides is a terrible interviewer. I suspect that's the point, though-- the Times Sounds Podcast is really a sort of postmodern, Colbert Report style joke on fatuous interviewers...

Anyway, I love this song by Mika.

obama

Well, I'm officially obsessed.



I promised myself I wouldn't check his poll numbers this weekend.



But I failed.

thoughts

It's been a while since I've been at this blog--work has been really intense and demanding--and I've been working Really Hard at my writing.

For the first time in my life I am seriously submitting work to magazines. I am writing short fiction very, I guess the word is intentionally. I am more and more writing as a professional, not a quirky amateur.

I have 3 stories I am waiting to hear a response on. Just got a very nice personal rejection note.

I'm taking a playwriting class, ten weeks, first session is tomorrow. I want to write about the medieval period, maybe it's too ambitious. I studied a bit of that in college-- am I biting off more than I can chew?

DREAM OPERATOR

David Byrne's 1986 film True Stories is absurd and satirical-- but there's more to it than that. It's sad and haunting too-- and genuinely fond of its subjects.

In this scene, a woman-- Kay Culver-- sings a song to accompany a fashion show. She has petrified hair and Fox News makeup, and wears a prim Nancy Reagan dress that is way too old for her. Still, she can carry a tune, and her voice is sweet. Her song, Dream Operator has a catchy melody; the lyrics are pretty-- if in a candied, Thomas Kinkade kind of way. "Shopping is a feeling," Kay says rapturously. Later she sings "Let the children do the shopping." Kay's song builds to a climax that is both grandiose and authentically grand.

When I drive through landscapes of strip malls and McMansions, I find these places artificial and horrific. But there's a stark, surreal beauty to them too-- and to the people who live there, those places are home sweet home; the Culvers are entitled to no less. If ecosystems must be spoiled to green their lawns, animals tortured to fill their refrigerators, and soldiers killed to keep them free, they can accept and even defend that.

Why shouldn't the Kay Culvers of this world have their dreams? It's likely too difficult for them to face the fact that their lives are wasteful and destructive-- unfair to expect them to concede that animals and the poor pay the price for their luxuries. A revolutionary hates all Culvers, and doesn't mind killing them-- but a reformer has to find a way to talk to them-- and a saint or an artist must love them. The artist's task is hard, but the saint's is harder. It's easier to love in fiction. With no pretensions to sainthood, I can love Kay Culver from afar.