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Dallas, 1982 (They Live), scan of a black and white photo. I stood at one end of a University Park strip center and took a roll of pictures with a telephoto lens. One thing that strikes me about this image now is how huge the cars are. Also, remember antennas? Geez. I thought they were streaks on the scan at first. This looks like a documentary photo from the '60s to me. Very strange time warp.
My Dream (I promise this won't be a habit.)
Last night I dreamed I was a Japanese salaryman, living by myself in a large two story house, and all the light bulbs kept failing. As soon as I screwed one in it would short out, and I was starting to get scared. I went upstairs to see if I could find some part of the house with light, and found a duplicate of myself lying face down on some nail-studded boards, awkwardly trying to wield a hammer. I've never dreamed of myself as Japanese before; the vibe here was distinctly Tetsuo the Iron Man meets Waiting for Godot. Weird. After I woke up, I got online and ordered a VHS copy of Tetsuo, but mostly because I want to own Greg Nickson's incomparable "Drum Struck" video, which is on the Fox/Lorber tape (the dream reminded me I've been meaning to do this).
I have been thinking a lot about going to Japan, though. One thing I want to do is visit the west coast (Akita or Yamagata) so I can eat hatahata. I found out about this from an episode of Patlabor: Mobile Police, where Captain Gotoh dispatches Izumi and Shinohara to Sakata (in Yamagata) for a mission and asks them to bring back a package of these fish as a souvenir, or "miyage." (see Anime Companion Supplement). "Where's my hatahata?" becomes a running joke in the show. At the end the crew has boiled his hatahata in a soup-pot and appears to be eating without him. I do not get the ending of that episode.
Oswald Rising, 1988, oil on canvas, 66" X 47". When I lived in Dallas, "the city that killed Kennedy" AKA "the city of hate," I participated in a university gallery show coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the assassination. I made this painting for the show, whoops, sorry, to express my deep feelings about an event that changed America. It was reproduced in the Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star Telegram and Art Papers. On the 40th anniversary I find it amazing that webloggers like Steve Gilliard still buy the "lone nut" theory (scroll down to "Conspiracy Theories" on 11/21/03). Even if you don't believe all the evidence pointing towards a second shooter on the Grassy Knoll, the idea that a sleazy mob wannabe like Jack Ruby would suddenly get an attack of morality and kill Oswald out of "revenge" just stretches credulity. I'm with Gore Vidal that the shooting of the President with his wife in the car, in full view of everyone, was "classic Palermo style"--that is, a mob hit. Help from crazy anti-Castro Cubans and rogue CIA agents shouldn't be ruled out either. Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK is valuable not for its theory--that the military industrial complex whacked Kennedy because he was going to end the Vietnam War--but rather for its careful laying out of the many reasons the lone gunman hypothesis makes no sense.