The Last McQueen @3:55 PM
The last collection by Alexander McQueen showed today, privately, and the slideshow is really worth a look. That this is a gorgeous and sentimental occasion does not make him any less of a complete asshole as well. 28
The Annotated White House Flickr Feed, with Ana Marie Cox and Jason Linkins: A Message To You, Salahi @4:30 PM
Our President: so busy! So photographed! And here are Air America's Ana Marie Cox and the Huffington Post's Eat the Press editor Jason Linkins to trawl the documentary evidence of our White House in action. READ MORE 15
Here are some images of the planets in our solar system that are more recent than may be familiar with! The one above is Saturn! I wanted to do Uranus, because that joke never gets old, but the picture was kind of eh. 12
The Pittsburgh G20 Photo Gallery: Starbucks, Bus Haters, Buddha, Jesus, Arctic Foxes, Children Ready To Die @12:00 PM
Beautiful downtown Pittsburgh is preparing for the G20 onslaught in every way imaginable. We will also get to see, unfortunately, how the protests on the left are as scattershot and inchoate as this summer's town hall protests have been from the right. This here, for instance, is the kind of sophisticated commentary about Sarah Palin, arctic wolves, or foxes, or whatever, and also international super-prisons hat is actually coherent when you are high but makes you look like a huge moronic spaz in public while you are coming down. READ MORE 23
Mary Heilmann, Hep Cat @10:35 AM
Mary Heilmann, 70 next year, is the woman painter that women painters between the ages of 33 and 53 talk about, because her career is what is maybe waiting for you, if you are lucky, when you are no longer a hot young thing. (There oughta be a name for that: the long, empty middle age of the lady art career when you are ignored for being of a boring age, between young 'n' sexy and old 'n' noble.) That makes this picture from her studio, from this excerpt from a new book documenting artists' studios, all the more interesting, as she has the musical tastes of a hot retro young Williamsburg thing! Kraftwerk! New York Dolls! Who knew. Hot. 8
Pictures! Midtown Full of Pole Dancers! @12:33 PM
In a promotion for "The Ultimate Pole Dance Competition" to be held in New York City this October (WHY?), there are pole dancers, working bicycle carted-poles, circling midtown Manhattan today. Our secret midtown squirrel correspondent for pole-dancing sends us these shocking photos! (What follows is safe for work.) READ MORE 26
A Primer for the Coastal Elite: What Do The Tea Party Folks Want? @2:07 PM
Those who watched and mocked the national Tea Parties back in April would find a different bunch of tea partiers today. The truly lunatic fringe of opportunists is now largely gone. But owing to the froth kicked up months ago, the movement's name, "Tea Party," still has currency and momentum, so why not use it? It's a branding conundrum the United Negro College Fund surely appreciates. A day after one of North Dakota's largest-ever tea parties, at the courthouse in Grand Forks, the only thing I can say with certainty about the movement is that it's mostly about making funny signs and producing lots of unintentional irony. And anger. Plentiful, seething, soul-rooted and only vaguely-focused anger. And maybe racism. But not really that much racism! READ MORE 63
Gay and Straight Men Who Love Bags @3:10 PM
Oh, so, some of the guys in this slideshow of men with man-purses are straight and some are gay! But I'll leave it to you to interpret all the incredibly subtle factors that help you judge which are which. 24
Who Makes The Yahtzees? @1:55 PM
You may recall Fortunate Teens Party With Morrissey, 1994, artist Derek Erdman's imagining of an unlikely incident with the miserablist pop sensation. The folks at Insound are offering two exclusive further works from Erdman: Three Quarters of Joy Division Win Big at OTB, above, and Mark E Smith Writes 417 Royalty Cheques Every Year. When we finally sell this website for a shit ton of money, I am so commissioning Pete Shelley Angrily Destroys A Fruit Machine While A Bemused Howard DeVoto Reads Camus. 11
The Hollywood Walk of Fame, During the Michael Jackson Funeral @10:00 AM
It's rare that a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard nourishes your faith in humanity. But yesterday, the Day That Pop Died, was nothing special. I was expecting a cataclysmic scene torn from The Day of the Locust: a mob of ordinary folk, gathered as if at a movie premiere, turning violent, trampling each other just to look at stars. Or, you know, dead stars. Or the idea of stars. Carnage, brought on by boredom and disappointment, and backlit by military-strength spotlights. But it was really just like any other day in Hollywood. READ MORE 2
Matthew Barney? Or Smurfy Flash Mob? @1:01 PM
They are indeed spookily similar: last month's world's largest assembly of people dressed as Smurfs in Wales and Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle. 6
Nine Photos Of The High Line @10:20 AM
The High Line park, ten years in the making, officially opened yesterday. What's striking on the High Line, apart from its delightfully uneven poured walkways (the arguments and code-wrangling there must have been!) and benches on wheels, is what you can see not on but from the narrow strip of railway. It presents an idealized, bizarre version of New York City, a west side skyline you haven't seen before. Disorienting! Where are we? READ MORE 16
Some Light Gay Pornography For Your Afternoon! @1:40 PM
Here is a terrifying and not-really-safe-for-work pictorial project about two gay guys in harnesses on a picnic! I don't know, it is dirty and there are Pepperidge Farm cookies, and was made by the collaborative duo of Julien and Stéphane, two 24-year-olds. ART APPRECIATION. 11
The pictures are adorable, though. @11:02 AM
Look! The next pandemic starts here! 4
I Keep Mine Hidden @4:20 PM
I was gonna save this for my Shift Memo tonight, but time got away from me and I need to run off for a bit. I do have a life outside of this website, you know. Anyway, it's artist Derek Erdman's Fortunate Teens Party With Morrissey, 1994. You can learn more about it here. Okay, you're in Choire's hands now. If that dude one-ups me with another Shift Memo I will be very irate. Anyway, enjoy! 9
