by Jay Caspian Kang

This happened last night, on TV. Let’s just get into it.

1:39: Pinch your pointer finger against your thumb, bend out your elbows and shake those hips.

Also known as the “gettin’ loose” move. Used by pretty much every female singer who ever sang a Motown song. Perfected by Aretha, who uses it in the following clip, at 0:16.

Old people and nostalgics might be crying foul, saying that Jacob stole that move from Aretha. But if those people would just take the time to watch all 8032451 videos of soul singers on youtube, they’d know that pinching your pointer finger to your thumb and shaking your hips is just how everyone gets loose. Ma Rainey did it. Now Jacob Lusk does it.

Also, please cross-reference: wearing-fucked-up-hats, Aretha Franklin.

1:48: Turn partly to the side, slowly punch the air.

Classic Temptations/Four Tops move. If you don’t think Jacob did that as a nod to those dudes, you probably also think that Invisible Man was an accident involving a typewriter and a bottle of gin.

Meaning, fuck you.

1:51: Jazzhands sunrise

Pretty standard move. Diana Ross did this well. Teddy Pendergrass somehow made it seem extremely dirty. Click here for an example.

2:00: Point, shimmy hips, turn to the side.

0:28 is an example of when this happens. But really, just watch this video and most of what Jacob did will reveal itself.

2:11: Palms towards the audience, arms on the up elevator.

Easily confused with the Celine Dion deodorant commercial move, but very, very different. Celine does that move to show that the world is a good place. When the palms are out, it indicates that We are all Family. One is silly optimism, the other is gritty optimism. Perfect use here to indicate that he will, indeed, be there to push you up that hill. Cause you push with your palms out….

If you go to the earlier Aretha video at 1:15, you’ll see she does a similar move, but she sort of punches at the air. This would’ve been more appropriate if the lyrics were, “I’ll be there to climb up that hill.” Or “scurry up that hill.”

2:12: Cross your wrists above your head to indicate an X and then throw your hands to the side to indicate that you’re through with this bullshit.

Used a thousand times by Mary J. Blige because she’s tired of this bullshit drama. One of the three greatest moves ever. Level of difficulty is very high, especially when performed right after the “push you up that hill” maneuver.

Lusk gets a 9.5

2:14–2:23: Standard, understated mincing around.

A sleeker version of what the Pips were always doing behind Gladys. Also, reference Tops, Four for other examples.

2:25: Cock your head slightly, get that head wobble going, lift up your eyebrows and pour out some falsetto STANK.

The quadruple axle of diva performances, and Lusk nails it. Sorry to pile on Beyonce again, but she has tried to do this move about 8000 times in her career, most notably in the “Irreplaceable” video. Give it up, B. Miley Cyrus doesn’t try to rap. Take a lesson.

2:33: Fists to hips, shimmy, square shoulders and hop.

I’m pretty sure Corky St. Clair did this at some point in Waiting for Guffman.

2:38: FIST PUMP TO GET TO THAT NOTE.

Perfectly executed again. At this point, Scott Hamilton’s head has exploded and the other girls in the skating competition are screaming incoherently into their cell phones. It’s called respect.

2:56: NO MAS!

For this to work, you really have to snap your arms, so that there isn’t a soul in the audience who doubts whether or not we’ve got the right foundation. This is actually a Britney Spears move!

2:57: I know I’m killing it, so I’m just gonna make a face and pour out some more stank. Also known as “getting stupid with it.”

This was the point when my head exploded last night. Only Etta James could really pull this off, although, to be fair to the Queen of Stank, she was much less theatrical and about 100 times cooler about it. But you know what? Being 1% as good at “getting stupid with it” as Etta James is pretty goddamn good.

She does it throughout this video. And, after I analyzed Divas, a very thoughtful commenter directed me to the following video. I watched it about 5 times a day for about a month and still revisit at least once a week. It’s the epitome of “getting stupid with it,” and if you haven’t watched it yet, direct all your thanks to a commenter named “Reappraising Stank.”

3:05: ZOMFG, WTF WAS THAT?

Unprecedented, except at middle school dances.

3:22: THE ‘R. KELLY, THIS SHIT IS OVER’ MOVE

That video is really just a five-minute string of that move over and over again. And you know what? It doesn’t just work, it reinvents R. Kelly. Pee or no pee.

Jay Caspian Kang’s debut novel, The Dead Do Not Improve, will be published by Crown in 2012.

@behrle, No need to fear our awesome power. We only use it for good, & giant stuffed panda bears.Thu Mar 24 17:08:03 via web

State Farm
StateFarm

Good news! After we expressed fear regarding their Dark Magicks, State Farm has officially promised to use their powers only for rectifying auto collisions and good stuff.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Gender Skewered With Ginger Sauce

Lunching with Clinton, I don’t mention
I’m a spy. Grease stains his tie,
another something I don’t mention —

I want to protect him like the suits
bulked out around the table. I talk
about perfume, the manufacturing of,

about which I know nothing.
My chatter doesn’t matter.
I décolleté: left breast, right:

détente. Which side to spy for?
The Cold War either/or doesn’t fit
anymore, I’ve jettisoned past

clearcut confrontation,
I’m onto using perfume to dissolve
the stain and not telling Clinton

how it’s done, let alone the sitting
president. Like a smell, they waft
me away, as if I were ordered.

Somalis Call Satellites Handmade Moons

The craft aspect isn’t the first thing you think of,
but yes, each one that’s launched is custom.

1000-year sensors on this last satellite.
It’s going to Mars, vehicle-hands in supplication.

The machine will crash-land and crab
what’s left across the planet’s face,

leaving trails. Or defacing the planet — 
your p.o.v. We walk to the end of our trail in the dark,

with just the stars and the satellites as light.
We believe roads are like skies, without end,

always one more. We walk dumbly,
expecting an orbital soughing

to land Elsewhere’s moon in our path
and we’ll cut up our hands, destroying it.

Hysterical Leg

Betrayed. Saw it off. Instead,
this plank, shimmed straight,
taught taut, all its pivots

jangled, speaks leg
to me, so foreign
I point, and the able-bodied,

white-coated natives read
only sign language’s nadir,
e.g., tears. But not for meaning.

Pain, its unfathomable appendage,
drags every step. The horizon
disappears without me.

Tylenol, that pseudo-Scandinavian,
whispers — but what does he say?
The leg goes only so far.

Weapons Grade is Terese Svoboda’s fifth book of poetry.

For more poetry, visit The Poetry Section’s vast archive. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

I think this is just what we all need in the wake of the tragic passing of Knut. It’s the circle of life! And it guides us all. Especially those of us who like bear videos.

by Abe Sauer

The partisan divide on display in Wisconsin — which is eroding the neighborliness found in small communities across the state — is also infecting the nation. The political fervor finds an America acting out an increasingly satirical reverse version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, such as in Maine, where lawmakers have removed a historical mural simply because it depicted the state’s labor history.

Meanwhile, with an election approaching on April 5, Wisconsin finds itself in an absolute fit over partisanship.

The same partisans that are pushing Attorney General JB Van Hollen to challenge the federal heath care reform bill in the courts are criticizing the lawsuits that challenge Governor Walker’s budget bill. The same partisans who blame Wisconsin’s economic woes on the last eight years of a Democratic governor also blame President Obama for America’s current economic crisis.

Walker’s supporters are scurrying to separate the upcoming state supreme court election from the partisan politic gut punch. After using no nuance whatsoever to gin up support, by characterizing union workers as thuggish tapeworms infecting the intestinal tract of society, the pro-Walker camp is insisting on absolute ideals of impartiality and nonpartisanship in the April 5th supreme court election. And so conservative incumbent David Prosser is trying desperately to pull free the lynchpin that until quite recently hitched his wagon to the Governor’s train.

Like germs, partisanship can now be found wherever the paranoid happen to want to find it — even with the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl win, the one thing in the state that all Wisconsinites probably agree should be bipartisan. In February, Walker attended the event in Texas not on the state dime, but at the cost of his campaign. While the spin is that this saved the “broke” state money (the state still paid for his security), what partisans see is an opportunity for the Governor to legally fundraise and politic without accountability, while at the same time pretending to represent the Green Bay Packers and all the people of Wisconsin.

It’s become so bad that pretty much anything labeled independent or nonpartisan should pretty much be assumed to be a lie. For example, the effort in Green Bay to recall Democratic Senator David Hansen is billed as independent. On the Green Bay Tea Party website, a banner bills the recall as an “independent effort by a group of Wisconsin’s citizens.” Except, RecallDaveHansen.com, the website of the “independent” recall, shares a registration address with that of the Kewaunee County Republican Party and Party Chairman Ron Hauer, who does normal “independent” citizen things like attend the January swearing-in ceremony of Senator Ron Johnson in Washington D.C.

After Dane County judge Maryann Sumi ordered a restraining order that blocked the publishing of Walker’s bill pending a hearing, Red State noted that Sumi’s son operates a company handling political campaigns. They concluded “Clearly, both Sumi and her son are activists, which is why Sumi should be removed from the entire Wisconsin matter.”

Forget for a moment that the same Red State was mum when the Wisconsin state patrol was called in to handle Madison protesters, an organization under the control of Walker appointee Stephen Fitzgerald, the father of the two most powerful Republicans in the legislature and primary supporters of the bill. What Red State is essentially arguing here is that a parent should be held accountable for any of the work or politics of their children. Shades of Milo Radulovich.

The voices decrying Judge Sumi as an activist are the same voices saying Supreme Court Judge David Prosser is a judicial independent campaigning against an activist… even though both Sumi and Prosser were appointed to their respective court positions by the same Republican Governor, Tommy Thompson, in the same year (1998).

This insistence on impartiality despite all evidence to the contrary is most on display in the campaign of incumbent state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

In December, Prosser’s campaign released a statement declaring that “Our campaign efforts will include building an organization that will return Justice Prosser to the bench, protecting the conservative judicial majority and acting as a common sense compliment [sic] to both the new [Republican] administration and legislature.”

“I never saw that statement. I wouldn’t have written it that way.” That was Prosser’s excuse for that statement in a recent Wisconsin Public Television interview. That’s typical of the kind of statement he’s been making recently in an attempt to distance himself from the Walker administration before the election.

A day after Prosser released the “compliment” statement, he met with the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women. His schedule has seen him at Republican-only events ever since. On an interview with the Dane County GOP on a show called “Who’s Right?” the host says things like “We need you on the court… especially if this budget repair bill is coming up on the supreme court for a vote,” while Prosser winks.

In February he was the keynote speaker “on behalf of” the Outagamie County Republican Party at its annual Lincoln Day dinner. A video posted on the Rock County Republican Party Facebook Page shows Prosser at its dinner mocking his challenger about how, as a prosecutor for the Dept. of Natural Resources, she has wasted her time… charging those violating environmental regulations. Prosser said: “She’s very concerned about individuals who violate the rules on docks.” The crowd laughs. “And she wants some people not to have any docks at all!” The crowd laughs more.

There are legitimate questions about the depth of experience of challenger and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg. Kloppenburg has no judicial experience, a point Prosser’s campaign has repeatedly made. That’s how people become judges: they were previously not judges. At the time of his appointment in 1998, Prosser had only four years of any kind of official justice experience under his belt, two of them in Washington D.C.

Prosser’s dismissive, mocking posture is sadly typical. In February, responding to ethics concerns about the court by one of his challengers, Prosser said, “I think Joel has been smoking some of the stuff he wants to legalize.”

At the Walworth County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner, Prosser raised the specter of Jesse Jackson, and, in typical fashion, mocked him by addressing the crowd “My brothers and sisters…”

Prosser’s scorn for what is essentially a prosecutor doing her job is stunning, considering Prosser’s own history as a prosecutor. In 2008, Prosser was forced to recuse himself from a case involving sexually abused minors and the Catholic Church because, while serving as district attorney of Outagamie County in 1979, Prosser had refused to prosecute a Green Bay priest accused of sexually molesting two brothers. His reasoning? It would have been too hard on the boys. (In 2004 the priest, then 81, was imprisoned after abusing an unknown further number of children.) In 2008, the victim told the Journal Sentinel, “[Prosser] said it would be too embarrassing for a kid my age and said what jury would believe a kid testifying against a priest? Then he said, what really makes it bad is that [the priest’s] brother, Joe, sang on the Lawrence Welk show and everybody watched that back then.”

So which former district attorney would you rather have on the high court bench: the anal retentive prosecutor charging people with extending their lake docks two feet longer than allowed by the law or the guy who doesn’t prosecute a child molester because the priest’s brother was once on the Lawrence Welk Show?

Last week, emails leaked in which it was revealed that Prosser had, in addition to saying he would destroy her, called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a “bitch.” Prosser had good reason to question the motivations behind the timing of the leaked emails, but he did not deny his behavior. In fact, his she-made-me-do-it justification at times tilted scarily near “she deserved it.”

After calling the chief justice a “bitch,” Prosser went on Wisconsin Public Television to say, no kidding, that his most satisfying case was one which involved “a victory for a young woman who had been sexually harassed in the workplace.”

Despite Prosser’s complete lack of compunction about insulting others, he himself is extremely sensitive to insult. During a recent debate he made a long point of getting to the bottom of whether or not a comment posted to a challenger’s Facebook page by some unknown user referred to him as a “turd.”

Prosser is the first to admit that his background is far from impartial. In the interview with WPT, he admitted, “I have the most partisan background of any member of the court,” adding, “so when I became a member of the court I wanted to leave that behind and be known as a truly impartial justice.” In all of his recent speaking engagements, Prosser has addressed his past years of stringent partisanship in this fashion, declaring that, essentially, when he was appointed to the high court he just gave up his prior belief system — as if a career as a Republican lawmaker was just a substance abuse problem from which he recovered.

That’s funny, because in 1990, after Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Patricia McMahon ruled that a law placing a 60-day waiting period on welfare was unconstitutional, then-Minority Leader Prosser, who also happened to be sponsor of that portion of the law, accused Judge McMahon of judicial bias… because she had years earlier worked with the plaintiffs, Legal Action of Wisconsin.

This level of the respect for the impartiality of the judicial system was standard for Prosser before he himself became part of it and began pitching himself as impartial. As with the McMahon case, if a ruling didn’t go Prosser’s way, he wouldn’t submit a legal argument for his case, but instead would raise accusations of bias. For example, also in 1990, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled to uphold a campaign finance law that limited campaign contributions, then Rep. Prosser called the court “tainted,” saying, “I question whether there was an impartial hearing.”

Prosser was a right wing fundamentalist before right wing fundamentalism was what America had for breakfast with its Corn Flakes. In 1996, as assembly speaker, Prosser shepherded a bill through the legislature that would have required a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion. Beside maybe being unconstitutional, the bill’s exemption for cases of rape and incest required a two hour wait — and only if a criminal complaint had been filed. Except, such a report is only issued by a district attorney and can take weeks to file, basically nullifying the bill’s rape and incest exemption. Prosser’s response to reporters’ questions about the legal knot? “It was just a mistake.”

This circumventing of the legal right to abortion was a good compliment to the lawmaker’s earlier support for an age-old “blue law” that made adultery a Class A misdemeanor. In 1989, he reasoned that adultery “is very likely to jeopardize the future of the marriage, to humiliate the non-offending spouse, to take away money from the family unit or lead to abortion.” Get that? A sitting state supreme court judge argued that adultery equals abortion.

Few have noted that Walker and Prosser served together in the legislature for three years as part of the Republican majority.

Prosser now will not directly answer specific questions about his beliefs on the grounds that he doesn’t want to prejudge a case. That’s fine: his beliefs on all of the most important kinds of cases are already part of the public record. For example, in 1994 he said that, yes, he did support the death penalty.

In numerous interviews and at debates, Prosser has invited potential voters to review his judicial record. But on Prosser’s own campaign site, the only judicial achievement he openly highlights is a ruling (made rightly) against former Democratic Governor Doyle. The “Judicial Record” section of Prosser’s own campaign site is still “under construction” — a dozen days before the election.

When Prosser was appointed to the court in 1998, he had not served one minute as a judge. When Prosser was appointed, he had not even served as a organ of any courtroom in 20 years. Prosser served as the Outagamie district attorney from only 1977 and 1978. Prior to that, he served two years as an adviser in the Dept. of Justice. Prosser was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1979 and never again served in any justice capacity whatsoever. After leaving elected government in 1996, Prosser made judgments for the Wisconsin Tax Appeals Commission, a state agency that resolves taxpayer disputes with the state, but he was not a judge. This means Prosser’s official entire justice system experience consist of just the two years.

Prosser is now warning that out of state money is flooding in to support his opponent.

Following the huge pooch-screw judicial elections in 2007 and 2008, in which more than ten million dollars came in from God-knows-where for seats on the court, a new campaign finance scheme promotes public funding. For three candidates, the new finance law grants $100,000 for the primary and $300,000 for those advancing to the general election. If candidates with private funding spend heavily against publicly-funded candidates, the law supplies more money. As Prosser has pointed out, it’s a law of best intentions that provides zero incentives to not accept public funding.

Until Walker’s shenanigans launched the supreme court election into the spotlight, Prosser was trouncing his opponents in outside party spending. For example, during the primary election — when all publicly-funded candidates had $100,000 to spend — Prosser benefited from $408,000 worth of supporting ads bought by the Club for Growth. That spending by the organization (founded by the Koch brothers) alone accounted for 69 percent of all TV ad spending during the primary. What’s more, the Brennan Center for Justice notes: “Club for Growth paid an average of about $400 for each of its ads, while Winnig paid less than $200 per ad, and Kloppenburg less than $150 per ad — indicating that Club for Growth’s ads were disproportionately placed in larger markets or during programming with larger audiences than the ads placed by Prosser’s challengers.”

The Club for Growth’s Prosser ads proclaimed that the man who let a known child molester go free instead of embarrass a Laurence Welk Show performer has “helped keep dangerous criminals behind bars.”

Spending by the Club for Growth did not trigger matching amounts for Prosser’s publicly-funded challengers, because it was very careful not to use the trigger words “support, “vote for,” or “elect.” (It did not go unnoticed that the Club for Growth’s Prosser ad was not dissimilar to a 2008 Club for Growth ad supporting conservative supreme court judge Michael Gableman, which hinted at the misinformation campaign regarding Gableman’s challenger. Eventually Gableman was accused of violating the state’s judicial ethics code, a charge from which he was eventually released after a deadlocked state supreme court decision — in which, surprise, Prosser sided with Gableman.)

There’s also money from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a Chamber of Commerce lobbying organization that heavily funded the Walker campaign. Sensing Prosser’s campaign suddenly in danger, it has opened its significantly thick wallet to spend in support of Prosser. (The new Koch Industries head lobbyist has previously been a lobbyist for WMC.) Prosser was also a guest of honor in March 2010, along Walker, at a Tea Party event sponsored by Americans for Prosperity.

Kloppenburg herself has suddenly seen a lot of financial support from outside groups as well. In a March 22nd fundraising email to members, the WMC warned of “The Greater Wisconsin Committee” purchasing millions of dollars of TV time to attack Prosser. The WMC letter called the committee “a union front group,” while the Wall Street Journal called it a “liberal front group.” Both descriptions are largely true.

In the end, any candidate who truly believes in his or her heart that today’s Wisconsin Supreme Court is a fully impartial body, devoid of politics, probably does not lay claim to the perceptive mental powers required to sit on the state’s most challenging court.

The whole election is a turd sandwich, and Wisconsin is being forced to take a bite. No matter how you chew, it tastes the same. Prosser’s campaign itself has summed it up better than anyone. A February 9th email to Wispolitics subscribers quoted Brian Nemoir, Prosser’s campaign manager, saying “This election is about a 4–3 commonsense conservative majority vs. a 3–4 liberal majority, and nothing more.”

And if Prosser goes down as a result of a referendum on Walker, it will hardly be some great victory for democracy. Many who vote for JoAnne Kloppenburg will know nothing about her beyond the fact that she is not David Prosser.

A final review of the behavior of all involved leaves only one conclusion: If candidates for the court, incumbent or otherwise, are only going to pay lip service to impartiality and nonpartisanship, why should the electorate be expected to act any differently?

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

The apparent leak of Toy, a “lost” 2001 record by David Bowie, has inspired the folks at Flavorpill to consider ten musical works that disappeared due to artistic whim or creative differences. It’s a very solid list, but any such elucidation will naturally fail to be fully comprehensive. Here are five other records that might have been, but never were.

Michael Stipe — Guilty: Concurrent to his bandmates’ recording with Warren Zevon for the Hindu Love Gods album, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe spent months in the studio attempting “a modern reinterpretation” of this 1980 Barbra Streisand classic. “I’ve always thought that [Guilty songwriter] Barry [Gibb] and I have a lot in common, lyrically,” Stipe told Rolling Stone. After weeks of emotionally-draining performances — Stipe allegedly spent six hours crying on the studio floor while trying to make “Woman in Love” sound “more like Can” — Stipe pulled the plug on the project. “I got to the point where I just kept thinking to myself, I’m gonna lose my religion with this album.” All tapes were destroyed, meaning we will never hear the supposedly astounding duet Stipe performed with Jody Watley on “What Kind of Fool.”

Shaquille O’Neal — ShaqolO.G.: The follow-up to 1993’s Shaq Diesel was supposed to be a gritty, hardcore rap record inspired by Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), but production was halted when everyone involved admitted to each other that they felt a little embarrassed by the whole thing.

Frank Sinatra — I’ve Got Better Music Coming Out Of My Ass, You Rancid Redneck: Enraged by the success of Elvis Presley, this aborted mid-fifties concept had Sinatra performing 10 of The King’s most popular early tracks. Sinatra sang every song note-perfectly, but followed up each with a foul-mouthed monologue that included lines like, “You call that music? This is what you stupid broads like?” and “That’s how you sing a song, you no-talent hick.” Ironically, Sinatra later came around on Elvis, having him on his television program and recording material associated with the singer in a more respectful fashion. Even more ironically, Coming Out Of My Ass was briefly released in a heavily-edited form on Reprise Records, with only the tirades and none of the music making it to the album. Retitled Sinatra Mouths Off, the record quickly disappeared, and the only few copies extant can mostly be found in dusty boxes in the basement of Italian social clubs.

Brian Eno — Music for Headbanging: Eno himself later disavowed this project, claiming it was the result of too much Montrachet and a misprinted set of Oblique Strategies cards, but anyone who has heard the one surviving track, an ambient version of Anthrax side-project S.O.D.’s “Pre-Menstrual Princess Blues,” is bound to wish he had seen it through.

U2 — All That You Can’t Leave Behind: While pleased with the commercial success of All That You Can’t Leave Behind, members of U2 were troubled by a certain school of critical assessment that claimed the band had decided to play it safe after the disappointment that was Pop. “You want to see ‘playing it safe’?” a visibly angry Adam Clayton asked MTV News. “The next thing we do is going to be the most avant-garde move any popular band has ever pulled off.” U2’s plan was to record a note-for-note version of Behind and straight-facedly issue it as a completely new album. The label was less enthusiastic, and after several heated discussions the group compromised, making a few minor tweaks to the record and releasing it under the title How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Purists still claim that the original second version of Behind is the greatest work in the band’s catalog, but the few who have heard it also frequently get it confused with No Line on the Horizon.

just named my new macbookpro ‘Innovator’,,, i’ve got a feeling she & i are going to be making some magic over this next year,,,Tue Mar 15 00:00:06 via web

jesh de rox
JeshdeRox

In case you missed it, “spiritual explorer, experiential photographer” Jesh de Rox — also a “multi-award-winning Canadian wedding photographer” — blew up the normally quiet photo world online, merely by offering a one-day, one-on-one session of tutelage. For $20,000. Discounted to $16,500! The fall-out is fun. More fun: his website is my nominee for the most astounding flash website of all time. (After Melanie Griffith’s, I guess. WARNING: AUDIO! And Inspirational Thoughts!)

There are obviously some interesting things to unpack in a video for a dirty rap song comparing aspects of female anatomy to comestible products and also featuring its black rapper selling watermelons on the side of the road. (There’s a collection of short anthropomorphic promotional videos for the video, too.) But I’ll leave the semiotic analysis to others. I mostly like the follow-the-bouncing-ball lyric treatment, which reminds me of Ms. Pac-man, and the nicely-filmed depiction of the agricultural industry’s process. With some nice dance moves. I also like how D. Willz is careful to buckle his seatbelt when he gets behind the wheel of his truck — something you don’t see so often in music videos. Safety first.

“A Chinese farmer claims that one of his sheep has given birth to a puppy dog.”

by Andrew Piccone

Tell me about your job.

I’m responsible for 25,000 objects that were made in the West, that is, European and American. The earliest objects we have are medieval ones from the 14th century and we go up until tomorrow, as I like to say; it’s very much an ongoing collection. I’m responsible for interpreting the objects, doing research on them, and then to display the objects, working with a lot of different people in the museum: conservators, designers, all of the art handlers. You have to coordinate with a whole team of people in order to put objects on display. Even though we have so many, only about 15% are on display. They live in storage, which always makes me sad, because people don’t get to see what we have. The objects are owned by the board of trustees, but it’s in public trust, it’s a public collection. I think the most fun part of my job is acquiring new objects. We acquire objects through purchase, and through coaxing people to donate them. Although sometimes very generous people will step forward and offer things. And so we buy both old objects to fill in the historical story, and we try to buy new objects, figuring out what is going to be deemed important down the line. Right now we are showing a new installation through the end of May called “Thinking Big,” and it is 45 relatively recent acquisitions that the decorative arts department has made. They are all 20th-century objects, and they were all acquired in the last ten years. Periodically, it’s really interesting to show the public the sorts of things we’ve been buying, but to my amazement we’ve acquired over 600 objects in the last ten years that are from the 20th century. This is just 45 of those 600. Contemporary items are real crowd pleasers, and it’s very interesting for me because it’s some of the most important and interesting things we’ve acquired and its great to see the new shape of the collection.

What brought you to where you are now?

I somehow always knew what I wanted to do. When I was a small child I knew I either wanted to run an antique store or teach about history. I always had a sense of wanting to be around old things. I guess I didn’t think about working in a museum until I was in high school when I realized this was the sort of job I wanted. I’m from New York, and growing up we went to museums all the time. Although the funny story is I didn’t come to the Brooklyn Museum until I was at Princeton in graduate school. They took us on a field trip here and I remember asking my mother why we never came to the Brooklyn Museum, it’s such a fabulous place. And she just said to me, ‘Oh, back then nice people didn’t go to Brooklyn.’ She has since been proved wrong. I’ve been here almost 25 years.

How have you seen Brooklyn change firsthand in the last couple of decades?

Well, everyone knows the demographics have changed. I think that the new, younger people of Brooklyn see this very much as their museum. Of course in the early part of the 20th century, before the Depression, when Brooklyn was still expanding a great deal, this was a very lively place, a center for the community. I think the Depression really devastated Brooklyn, and then people started to move away. After World War II, it was the great flight to the suburbs, and that hurt Brooklyn a great deal. In the last 20 years there has been a real return, and a sense that this is Brooklyn’s museum. Though, there are a tremendous amount of foreign visitors who come here. Foreign visitors come here, they open up their guidebooks, and the Metropolitan Museum gets four stars and the Brooklyn Museum gets three stars, and if they’re here for a while they’ll come here.

You mentioned the Met. Are they your museum ‘rivals,’ so to speak?

That’s a complicated story. In Europe the museum systems are really centralized. In France, there is the Louvre; since it’s a small country that is the one, main central museum. However, the United States is so enormous there are important museums all over the country: Chicago, LA, Dallas, and in between. The reason why the Brooklyn Museum is here is because when it was founded Brooklyn was a separate city. Chalk it up to civic pride and everything — they wanted a separate museum. After the end of the 19th century, when all the boroughs combined, I think that the potential of the Brooklyn Museum was diminished a little bit. If it were in any other city it would be the principal cultural attraction. But in New York the museum firmament is so dense. The collections here are really world class. I suppose the Egyptian collection is the most famous on an international scale, but the American decorative arts is really as good as anywhere else. It’s a bit different from the Met’s collection. The Met always says that they’re a museum of masterpieces. At the Brooklyn Museum we always collect a bit further down the food chain. We indeed have masterpieces, but we also have objects that were used by the upper middle class. It’s a much more diverse collection in that way. In some ways it’s more representative of the vast middle class that developed here.

What is your favorite piece in the collection?

Even though I’m in charge of this enormous historical period, I suppose I’m most interested in the period after the Civil War, up to the present. That is when the United States developed the identity that we all recognize today. It was a very exciting time. There was a great deal of immigration. It’s a period where the United States became the principal world power. It was a great center of industry, invention, innovation. I’m most interested in that sense of the growing modernity which developed. The core of the collection here is a group of period rooms, the earliest is a Dutch Colonial house from the late 17th century and the last one is an Art Deco room from a Park Avenue apartment from 1930. We have a very exotic parlor from about 1880 from a house that was on 54th street and it’s decorated in the aesthetic movement style and it was the American view of a Moorish smoking room. It’s very exotic and very dense, pattern on pattern, color on color. It’s a very extravagant room. Even though it’s a whole room, that as an object is my favorite in the collection.

How is the Brooklyn Museum, and the industry in general doing in 2011?

I think all museums are feeling really pressed at the moment. Americans and New Yorkers in particular are incredibly generous. In Europe the museums are supported almost completely by the government, private giving is nowhere near as important as it is here. There’s just not a tradition really of that kind of public giving. Museums here rely on government money, but also private money. The curious situation here is that the City of New York owns the building, and they pay for the upkeep and running the building, the maintenance staff and the guards are all city employees. The professional staff, such as myself, are not city employees, but employed by the board of trustees. Every year the city cuts back the amount of money it gives to Brooklyn, and that’s a serious problem. Corporate funding gets cut back during tough times, and private giving gets cut back too, people feel nervous and insecure. The charitable dollar is one of the first things that goes. It’s still a very difficult moment. The corporate sponsors are only very slowly coming back, but they are. What’s interesting is that private donors didn’t stop giving, but gave at a lower level.

I see you have a Dr. Spock cut-out in your office; are you a Trekkie?

I’ve been a Trekkie from the very beginning. I’ll still watch reruns, I can recite dialogue. My favorite series was “The Next Generation.” I’m completely devoted to the early series, but by the time “The Next Generation” started, the special effects were better, the acting was better, it was just better. I enjoyed the reboot of the film series from a few years ago. I thought it was really enjoyable and well done and really convincing.

If you could have one other job, what would it be?

Oh, hmm, well I do have another job, actually. In addition to being curator I also teach at Cooper-Hewitt’s masters program in decorative arts. I enjoy teaching a great deal. I always say jokingly, when else do I get to hear my favorite person talk for two hours? It is performing; it is a bit of an ego trip. But it’s also a more serious way to pass on what one knows, and what one has learned. It keeps me more active in the field and the contact with the younger people in the field is very exciting. If I could have another career, well, I played violin growing up. I suppose I would have pursued music if I hadn’t pursued art history. I’m very happy with the path I did take. I have lots of acquaintances who are at the point where they are nearing retirement, and I can’t imagine retiring. I’m doing what I like to do, so why retire?

Andrew Piccone is a photographer in New York.