Buddy can you spare $50 million?

With apologies to J.D., I can't help but be excited about the prospect of owning my very own Mark Rothko original.

The prize item in Sotheby's New York sale of contemporary art on May 15th is by Mark Rothko, a Latvian-born, American abstract expressionist. David Rockefeller picked up the painting, titled White Centre, for around $10,000 in 1960, and it hung in his outer office when he was chairman of the Chase Manhattan bank. The painting is described by Oliver Barker of Sotheby’s, with barely a trace of exaggeration, as "a masterpiece".

The top price fetched by a Rothko to date is about $22 million. But experts of the hoity and/or toity expect White Centre to go for upwards of $45 million. In fact, rumor has it that Sotheby's has guaranteed Rockefeller a cool $40 million at a minimum.

So basically, all I have to do is come up with about $50 million to get my grubby little hands on this modern masterpiece (I figure I'll need a few extra million for bribes and other incidentals).

I'm coming up a little short so far. I've got about 12 bucks. So anyone want to loan me $49,999,988?

tagged: Mark Rothko, art, White Centre, Rockefeller, Sotheby's, auction, culture

Nelson update: New Yorker review

The New Yorker has posted a review of the controversial Bloch Building, the new addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, designed by Stephen Holl.

Despite local criticism of the project, the reviewer gives the work high praise indeed:

As it turns out, the building, which will open in June, is not just Holl’s finest by far but also one of the best museums of the last generation. Its boldness is no surprise, but, in addition, it is laudably functional, with a clear layout, handsome and logically designed galleries, and a suffusion of natural light. Furthermore, Holl’s five glass structures, punctuating the hill, don’t mock the old building as you might expect; they dance before it and engage it.

The addition is set to open in about a month, and I for one am pretty excited. I had an opportunity to tour the addition as it was being constructed.

The New Yorker review has a pretty good slide show of the structure. You can also view lots of pictures of the project that I previously posted here.

Hat tip to Dan at Gone Mild for finding the article.

tagged: Steven Holl, Nelson Atkins, art, architecture, Kansas City, museum

YouTube Tuesday: Next month on ABC

The TV networks have a knack of cancelling the shows I like and making more of the crap I can't stand.

For example, new shows like the excellent The Black Donnellys, Six Degrees and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip have been canned while I'll be forced to avoid more of the simple-minded Deal or No Deal clones, so-called reality programs or lame stand-up comic based family sitcoms.

It's like the networks want me to use the DVR and Bittorrent to get decent programing.

Anyway, the one bright spot is this pilot episode for an upcoming ABC sitcom: Haunted Lesbian Sorority.



tagged: TV, Haunted Lesbian Sorority, The Black Donnellys, Six Degrees, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, television, pop culture, humor

Right on target

The hot topic of conversation in the KC blogiverse today is yesterday's 3-death massacre at Ward Parkway Mall.

My good friend Xavier Onassis is taking a particularly rough comments beating for his point of view:

I think we should limit gun ownership to one narrowly defined hunting rifle per adult and round up and confiscate everything else.

He's suffering the usual slings and arrows of the slack-jawed knuckle-draggers who think the constitutionally guaranteed right to own firearms guarantees them the right to own firearms.

Well I'd just like to come to XO's defense on this one.

He's right. Just because the constitution says we should have something, doesn't mean that we really should. After all, what do we know. We elect people to congress and White Houses to tell us what we need so that we don't have to think about it.

XO make a valid point that, since we've given up so many of our other constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, we should give up this one as well. Who needs rights anyway? Isn't our society advancing to a point where we can rely on the Morlocks to provide for us at the relatively low expense of sending them one or two of our Eloi now and then?

No, I'm with Xavier on this one. In fact, I think his ideas don't go far enough.

Sure, restricting the types of guns people can own is good. Absolutely we need to have government troops round up and confiscate all non-approved firearms. But that's only the beginning.

As a next step, we need to create a government registry of all people who want to own a firearm, or have views sympathetic to firearm owners. As XO points out, these kinds of people are obviously mentally defective. So they do need to be tracked and controlled.

We should probably designate certain areas within each city for these people to live and, for the safety of the public at large, restrict their movements from these areas.

To be doubly safe, we should make sure all of us right-thinking, non-insane non-gun-owners know when we're dealing with a "gun nut" by requiring them to wear some kind of insignia that identifies them as the sub-humans they really are. I'm thinking a red and white target, or perhaps a six-pointed star or something.

Anyway, I'm sure there a more ideas out there to help us come to a final solution on the gun owners problem. Maybe since gun owners like to hunt in the woods, we can send them all camping. Of course we would have to fence in the camps to make sure innocent people don't stray into these concentrations of gun owners. But it could work.

It's clear that after the last few weeks, we have to do something.

tagged: Kansas City, shooting, Ward Parkway Mall, gun control, eloi, morlock, constitution, rights

And now for something completely different...

The Onion News Network takes a look at the cultural impact of the Segway on this, the six-year anniversary of it's arrival:


In The Know: Life Before The Segway

tagged: humor, Segway, The Onion, parody, satire, video, culture

How cool is this

I've previously posted how much I love writing/sketching in my Moleskine. It's old-school bohemian groovyness is just good for the soul.

Now thanks to this guy I can transfer that goodness to my computers with a hard disk enclosure.

Check out the slide show here.

via engadget

tagged: Moleskine, digital, technology, engadget, gadget

FWD: You do the math

A buddy of mine sent me this in a forwarded email.

I'm not sure who the original author is, but it's hard to argue with this analysis. If you know who wrote this originally, let me know.

I was riding to work yesterday when I observed a female driver, who cut right in front of a pickup truck, causing the driver to drive onto the shoulder to avoid hitting her.

This evidently angered the driver enough that he hung his arm out is window
and gave the woman the finger.

"Man, that guy is stupid," I thought to myself. I ALWAYS smile nicely and
wave in a sheepish manner whenever a female does anything to me in traffic,
and here's why:

I drive 48 miles each way every day to work.

That's 96 miles each day.

Of these, 16 miles each way is bumper-to-bumper.

Most of the bumper-to-bumper is on an 8 lane highway.

There are 7 cars every 40 feet for 32 miles.

That works out to 982 cars every mile, or 31,424 cars.

Even though the rest of the 32 miles is not bumper-to-bumper, I figure I pass at least another 4000 cars.

That brings the number to something like 36,000 cars that I pass every day.

Statistically, females drive half of these.

That's 18,000 women drivers!

In any given group of females, 1 in 28 has PMS.

That's 642.

According to Cosmopolitan, 70% describe their love life as dissatisfying or unrewarding.

That's 449.

According to the National Institute of Health, 22% of all females have seriously considered suicide or homicide.

That's 98.

And 34% describe men as their biggest problem.

That's 33.

According to the National Rifle Association, 5% of all females carry weapons and this number is increasing.

That means that EVERY SINGLE DAY, I drive past at least one female that has
a lousy love life, thinks men are her biggest problem, has seriously considered suicide or homicide, has PMS, and is armed.

Give her the finger? I don't think so

tagged: humor, women, drivers, cosmopolitan, National Rifle Association, the finger, road rage

I ask myself the same question

It's ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand (or at least it was when it was today there).

This day obviously has more meaning for the Aussies and Kiwis than to a Yank like myself, but it always makes me think of the famous and excellent song And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle.

In my opinion this is one of the best war songs written. Definitely not a jingoistic, rah-rah patriot song, but not quite a preachy protest song either.

Just a song that makes us to ask serious and important questions of ourselves.

This version is performed by the Clancy Brothers.



My brother in-law Nick will be home this weekend from Iraq for some much deserved shore leave. It will be great to see him again.

tagged: Australia, New Zealand, And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, Anzac Day, war, Eric Bogle, Clancy Brothers

Get rich or die tryin'

So I caught this article about a UK guy who bet some bookies 10 years ago that he could live to be 100 years old. He won $50 grand yesterday when he celebrated his 100th birthday.

I can see some pros and cons to this.

The pros of course are that the dude is still alive and $50k richer. The con is, how much fun can a 100-year-old have with $50,000. I mean c'mon, he's 100 freakin' years old.

So for this to work for me, I would have to bet on someone else living to be 100. After all, I want my $50 large now, not 70 years from now. And the only guy I know who's even close to 100 years old is Xavier Onassis. He might have a shot at making it, too. Hell, he already quit smoking.

The other option is my favorite geezer Larry Moore. I'm not sure how old he is, but by the looks of him he can't be too far from the century mark. And I hear that there are a lot of preservatives in all of that makeup and hair "product". Plus, everyone knows that the annoying people are always the ones who tend to stick around the longest.

Anyway, I'm calling the bookies tonight to find out what kind of odds I can get. Want in on the action?

tagged: age wager, Alec Holden, Larry Moore, 100, get rich, UK, bet, bookie

YouTube Tuesday: I was so much older then

Lately, seeing the kids dressed up on the Plaza in their fine formal clothes, impressing each other for their respective proms, has reminded me of my high-school and college years.

Staying out late, crashing my dad's car, getting away with things (and getting caught, oops), hangin' out with friends -- the future was too far away to worry about at the time.

Unfortunately, a lot of people (myself included) don't appreciate those times when they are happening. It takes 20 years, several jobs, the stress of a mortgage, family responsibility and a "spare tire" to show how good we had it back then.

That's how it is for a lot of people. But not for budding video editor Tom Keliinoi, whose YouTube submission shows that he and his friends are seizing the day.

The people in this video are complete strangers to me, yet I see myself and my friends 20 years ago in every face. Where has the time gone?

Nice job Tom.

tagged: movie, YouTube, video, high school, nostalgia, carpe diem