Koen VanMechelen loves chickens. Live chickens, stuffed chickens, videos of chickens, paintings made with egg tempera. Saturday night at Conner Contemporary, VanMechelen’s “Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (DC)” opens; it’ll run to Dec. 31. According to the press release, the Belgian artist is “systematically crossing all breeds of chickens to create a world-mongrel chicken.”

The tenets of the Advanced Theory are clear. The genius of Advanced artists has evolved past the point of ordinary people’s understanding. Advanced artists wear sunglasses indoors. They favor leather jackets. They insist on putting their pictures on the covers of their albums. And when they make ostensibly baffling decisions or pronouncements (often involving musical theater), it is not a joke. Except when it is an Advanced joke, and we don’t have room to get into that here.

Dave Smalley is the most Advanced man to come out of the ’80s hardcore scene.
Read More “The Advancement of Dave Smalley” »

Ann Powers, meet Ann Powers.

Ann Powers, you were the subject of a good profile by Ylan Q. Mui in the Oct. 11 Washington Post Magazine. Your real name is Jayne Lytel, and you chose your blogger handle by mashing together your middle name and your grandmother’s maiden name.

Ann Powers, you are the rock critic for the Los Angeles Times, a writer so prized by your employer that you have kept your job despite having recently relocated to Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Read More “UPDATED: Post Profile Brings Up Touchy Subject: What Claim Do Writers Have on Their Bylines?” »

Washington psychiatrist Alen Salerian is no stranger to the visual arts. His mother, Kristin Saleri, was a painter of some note in his native Turkey, and two years ago he got into a dustup with his landlord about a statuary garden he placed in front of his Friendship Heights office. Saleri died in 2006; Salerian told City Paper’s Jessica Gould at the time that the garden was a tribute to her.

Her death also helped trigger Salerian’s most recent artistic impulse, the more than 100 paintings he’s done about President Kennedy. That, and the death of Salerian’s friend Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor who was assassinated in early 2007.

“I’m not a painter,” Salerian says in the offices of the Washington Center for Psychiatry, where his paintings adorn most of the public surfaces—the foyer, the reception desk, two reception rooms. There are 38 paintings on view here, and Salerian has plans for an exhibit of his complete JFK oeuvre at a different venue to coincide with the 46th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22. “I do Kennedy research. I began investigating his life, and the discoveries I made profoundly affected me and depressed me,” he says.

Read More “Alen Salerian’s JFK Paintings” »

1) America is very, very special. How special? Did you know that we INVENTED national parks? In Europe, people who want to go camping have to bring the duke a fattened calf first, and even then they may be flogged for the enjoyment of some court dandy before they get to set up their Coleman stove.

2) Parks are the very essence of democracy. Somehow.

3) Parks are good for your soul, and our commitment to preserving them makes us way more democratic and special than Europeans.

4) John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt were in love.

Points 1-3 are made about 12 times per hour by people with denim shirts and beards. Point 4 I just kinda read between the lines a little.

For the most part, the requirements for the Corcoran College of Art & Design’s 2009 All-Alumni Exhibition seemed reasonable to Chris Combs. You had to be an alum, obviously, you could submit work from only the last three years, and you had to be a current member of the school’s alumni association. Combs, who graduated in 2006 and like all Corc grads got a free year of membership in the alumni association, e-mailed Shahdeh Ammadi, the school’s alumni relationship officer, to make sure he understood the terms correctly—if he didn’t pay $40 to re-up, he couldn’t have his work juried by guest judge George Hemphill?

“Hello Chris,” Ammadi replied. “The exhibition is open to all alumni, meaning all mediums. The alumni association membership is a stipulation this year. The membership fee is $40 and includes a package of wonderful benefits.”

Wonderful? That’s too modest! Those benefits include:
Read More “Corcoran Grads Must Pay Alumni Association Dues to Be Considered for Alumni Exhibition” »

Pour a little out for Mary Travers this morning; the Peter, Paul and Mary member died yesterday at 72. (Worst headline: “Mary Travers is Gone. Puff! Just Like That.”)

Peter, Paul and Mommy, the group’s first children’s album, was the first album I really loved. My favorite song was the first one, “The Marvelous Toy.” So I thought last night that I would listen to some of its songs.

Big mistake!
Read More “Mary Travers Is Dead. Also: Folk Music Is Painful to Revisit” »

And by buying Thriller off iTunes last week, I am! I so am!

It will be sadder next paycheck when I buy Off the Wall and hope my wife doesn’t notice. But for now, success! Blanket, this one is for you.

One of the Post’s best blogs reminds us that Farrah Fawcett wasn’t the only person whose demise was blocked out by Michael Jackson’s—Sky Saxon, singer of the Seeds, died last Thursday as well. I’ll say—the publicist who emailed me on June 15 about a garage-rock tour featuring Love, the Electric Prunes, and Saxon, hasn’t uttered a peep about Saxon’s death. (Though considering that Arthur Lee, Love’s singer, died three years ago, that may not impact plans much.)

Here’s Saxon and the Seeds doing their best-known song, “Pushin’ Too Hard.” He’s on bass and singing.

And here’s how things ended up.

Express‘ Christopher Porter talks with Misery Index, a Baltimore/Silver Spring metal band, about their love of the Caps. My favorite parts–1) a street heckler yells “Capitals suck” and guitarist Sparky Voyles fires back, “Just because the Blues made the playoffs, jackass, doesn’t mean anything”; 2) how many metal dudes speak fondly about focus groups?