A few of years ago, art galleries in Chelsea decided that Thursday would be the official night for opening receptions. Maybe they all got together and made a pledge, maybe all the gallerists’ biorhythms got synched-up do to their close proximity, maybe they all just wanted to get away for the weekend. But whatever the reason was, it’s now official—Thursday is the night. Bad news for me, because I almost always teach on Thursday nights and find myself constantly bummed that I was unable to attend so-and-so’s opening.

But I was able to go to some openings a few weeks ago and here is what they looked like:

Most of the galleries pictured run along 27th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues—that’s the cool place for galleries to be these days.

One of the galleries pictured is John Connelly Presents. John Connelly Presents has a real thing for Grolsch:

They serve Grolsch Beer at all their openings. I find myself desperate for a Grolsch every time I’ve set foot into JCP. It’s madness. And it’s not even a particularly good beer. But what it lacks in taste, it makes up for in design—the very satisfying metal and ceramic clasping cap makes drinking a delight. And I’m sure I crave it so much because the people at John Connelly love to hoard over their Grolsch, passing it out to a few chosen people at irregular intervals.

But last time I was at John Connelly Presents I was able to get a Grolsch.

I own a pair of ESS Heil amt-1 speakers.

You heard me right.

Back in the early 70’s my speakers represented the pinnacle of audio technology. Thirty-five years ago, long-haired Audio Dorks stood around classy showrooms and salivated over the bell-like clarity of my “Air Motion Transformer” tweeter technology.

Three years ago, Kaveri and I were given these cool speakers from a friend of ours—originally a hand-me-down from his audiophile dad. We were thrilled.

And so we treated them very poorly—allowing our frisky cats to use the speakers as scratching posts and tear the thick material that covers them to shreds. And pretty soon the speakers looked like shit.

So about 2 weeks ago, I decided to recover them with this cool fabric I bought at Mood, the fabric store made famous by reality television.

Now the speakers look like this:

I am crafty.

“Welcome to My Study,” the strange little show that Dyna and I threw together for last month’s Channel 102 screening has enjoyed a surprisingly long after-life after being killed by the audience.

It became a sleeper hit, of sorts and among its fans were the Big Honkin’ production team—creators of the current 102 show, “The Defenders of Stan.”

So it was flattering (and kind of baffling) when those guys invited Dyna and me down to DC to meticulously recreate “Welcome to My Study” as part of a show they were doing for a big broadcasting company. Their show is about the behind-the-scenes goings-on at a cable access station. “Welcome to my Study” is one of the shows on that station and Dyna and I play Mitchell and Michele, the strange brother and sister creative team behind “Welcome to my Study.” So we got to act like weirdos for several hours and got paid for it.

The Big Honkin’ guys have access to a big sound stage and were able to make a great version of the original “Welcome to my Study” set that looked like this:

In fact I kind of prefer it to the original set.

She’s coming over for dinner. I’m braising lamb.

“Braising? In Summer?”
“Yes.”

The Lamb Lady at the farmers market said, “braise it.” She also said the lamb was “slaughtered yesterday.”

Speaking of slaughtering lambs, it was strange stumbling upon a bunch of fake Goyard handbags hanging in the Canal street shops. As the gays and socialites will tell you, Goyard is a luxury French handbag company. And I used to work for them. Actually, I didn’t really work for them, so much as I was contracted out by Barney’s to monogram their bags.

—Staggeringly expensive bags made by a company that prided themselves on their exclusivity. I remember the salespeople at Barneys saying to customers, “unlike Louis Vuitton you will never see a Goyard knockoff sold on Canal Street.”

Yes you will. Here you go, public:

Back in the day there were art bars—the Cedar Tavern, Max’s Kansas City, Fanelli’s—but I’d be hard pressed to name a bar in New York these days where artists rub elbows (The Pencil Factory?) Also, artists don’t punch each other in the face anymore, which I suppose is sort of a mixed blessing—no one wants a punch to the face but I bet it would be fun to see an artist just punch a critic in the face at a bar. But if you put yourself in severe debt going to grad school, there’s the legitimate worry that you might ruin your career if you punched someone important. Best not to punch, really. Also, the philosophical stakes in the art world just don’t seem high enough these days to warrant a punch.

But even though there’s no real art bar in New York, there’s a comedy bar and that bar is the Peter McManus Café. It has delightful green booths. It has crazy old ladies. It has cops and other middle-aged men with moustaches. And then it has a bunch of young comedians.

It’s not as lame as it sounds.

I’m there every Tuesday night.

But, my God, it’s taking so long to complete this last “Sexual Intercourse; American Style.”

I’m throwing a party when it’s over. You’re all invited.

The first draft of the spec script was finished a couple of weeks ago (agents: that’s how fast/funny I am). Thanks for the suggestions.

Here is a picture of me and my smokin’ hot girlfriend, Kaveri:

For the past couple of days I’ve been trying to write a 30 Rock spec script. Everyone I know—as if directed by some mystical force—has recently decided to write a spec script and rather than feeling left is the dust, I’ve decided to try my hand at it too.

It turns out that writing a spec script is kind of hard. I’m a little lost. I feel as though I can “write funny”— I can access funny specifics, I can write funny banter, I can make cute references.

But what I can’t seem to do is come up with a plot to hang the funny on.

What’s the story going to be about? What actually happens in the show? What’s the plot? Seriously, someone give me some ideas. Does anyone watch 30 Rock?

I am taking suggestions.

Before making my recently-canceled show on channel102.net, I had taken one “Intro to Filmmaking” course in graduate school. So I don’t know much of anything about filmmaking.

But I’ve started to think about it a good deal—how you put a movie together. The rinky-dink operation of “Sexual Intercourse: American Style” was nothing like how real movies are made, but the basic language of filmmaking—lighting, shot selection, editing patterns—were things I thought about and it was fun to think about them. I hope to make more stuff like that, more video stuff. Maybe a short movie. Maybe.

So entertain my pretensions for a bit—I’m going to talk about what I’ve learned after making SIAS.

I’ve learned that I have to pay attention to movies. When I started with the show, I described it to Jamey Shafer as “’The Ice Storm ‘ meets ‘Three’s Company’” but really I was thinking of Wes Anderson—movies like “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tennenbaums”—their mix of drama and comedy, the way they don’t seem located in a specific period of time. But also about how they are put together—the shots, the editing. But I didn’t really go back and look at his movies—I just had them in my mind. It’s better to actually watch a scene and try to pick it apart.

A scene like this:
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It’s interesting to look at where an edit comes and why. Most directors try to make the edits as smooth as possible—editing on a movement or when an actor looks in a particular direction or at an appropriate shift in focus, overlapping the sound of the second shot to smooth the transition. But Wes Anderson movies often have these terrific awkward edits, like at 2:31, when Richie moves over to Margot—a normal director would start Richie’s movement in the first shot and then have that movement continue on the edit as he sits down next to Margot. Instead, we have Richie sitting still for the first shot and then moving to sit down in the second shot. The edit comes at a pivotal point in the drama—when Richie confesses his love for Margot—so the edit acts as a “restaging” device, forcing us to acknowledge a shift in the narrative, from the small-talk to love-talk. Great.

Also. Wes Anderson is known for these very “framed-up” shots—shots where the plane of the camera is parallel to the plane of the back wall and actors are dead center (Dyna sent me an article about the history of this shot). It’s a very deliberate, presentational way of staging a shot and I’m a big fan. In the scene above, this type of set-up is used when we first see Margot in the tent and when we see the close up of the record player, on Richie’s second close up, on Richie and Margot sitting together and then lying in bed together. And then when Margot kisses Richie’s hand and with Richie’s final medium shot. Aside from its Brechtian quality these shots also help to frame the key moments in the narrative (deliberately framing the narrative might be Brechtian too, but don’t really know anything about Brecht).

So this is what I learned from paying attention to the filmmaker I was trying to rip off.

And this is what I came up with:

So I’m sure by now you’re all aware of this game that’s going around—this game where you’re “tagged” to reveal 5 things about yourself that no one knows.

Thank you, Rob Lathan.

Here are my 5:

1. I once walked into a stranger’s hotel room in Moscow and fell asleep in their bed.

2. Ten years ago, I wrote and recorded an earnest homosexual rock ballad. I am straight.

3. After moving to New York—and in a period of personal crisis—I burst out crying at a rooftop barbeque after being scolded by a friend for cutting the hamburger line. Heaving sobs, I fell off a roof-ladder, slashed my chin open and landed in the emergency room.

4. In 1991 I bought 3 pairs of unusually-colored jeans (red, brown, mint-green). I put them in a dresser drawer. They remained there for 2 years until I finally threw them out.

5. I spent several nights in Rome hurling enormous 2-liter wine bottles out the widow of a friend’s apartment, attempting to clear the busy street below and land the bottles in the Tiber River.

Now, I thinking about tagging the marvelous Trevor de Clerq and Gabriella.