Sunday, November 30, 2008
Liz Smith NY Post -- OH, I really don't want to write the fol lowing item, but it's happening, so who am I to quibble? The hottest thing going in the fairly supine and dormant book publishing world is the ongoing question of the memoir, autobiography, or what have you yet to come from Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin. The governor is said to now be seeking a hot, hot, hot agent to handle the onslaught of proposals asking her to write her own story in her own way. Rumor has it she could get $7 million for such a book if she could produce same! (I didn't know anybody could get $7 million for anything anymore, unless they ask Uncle Sam.) What could Sarah Palin, age 44, write of a life still so young? Anything she damn well wants to write. The public, it seems, is just waiting to lap it all up like that finger-lickin' moose stew.
Roger Ebert The Chicago Sun Times Nov 26 2008 -- A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out. The lengthening toll of former film critics acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip. The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it. It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement. One of the TV celeb shows has announced it will cover the Obama family as "a Hollywood story." I want to smash something against a wall. The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out. The news is still big. It's the newspapers that got small.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Educational Complex
Mike Kelley -- From the response I was getting from my works with stuffed animals and crafts materials - people went on about how the work was about child abuse. What was my problem? Had I been abused? Was I a pedophile? I didnt understand what they were talking about. But when I did a bit of research, I discovered how culturally omnipresent this infatuation with child abuse was. Since everybody seemed to be so interested in my personal biography, I thought I should make some overtly biographical work - pseudo-biographical work. Thats when I decided to build the educational complex - the model for every school I ever attended. I was thinking of it specifically in relation to the McMartin Preschool child-abuse scandal. I would leave out all the parts of the schools I could not remember and the areas would be filled with recovered "repressed" memories - which would be personal fantasies.
Mike Kelley -- From the response I was getting from my works with stuffed animals and crafts materials - people went on about how the work was about child abuse. What was my problem? Had I been abused? Was I a pedophile? I didnt understand what they were talking about. But when I did a bit of research, I discovered how culturally omnipresent this infatuation with child abuse was. Since everybody seemed to be so interested in my personal biography, I thought I should make some overtly biographical work - pseudo-biographical work. Thats when I decided to build the educational complex - the model for every school I ever attended. I was thinking of it specifically in relation to the McMartin Preschool child-abuse scandal. I would leave out all the parts of the schools I could not remember and the areas would be filled with recovered "repressed" memories - which would be personal fantasies.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
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