Moon Man!

The MTV Video Music Awards show at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn tomorrow night is probably as far out as you can get and still have the strength to swim home.  The Barclay Center, as I’ve mentioned before, is one ugly mofo but the centerpiece fabricated for the show is a 60-foot erection called Moon Man which was dreamed up by Brian Donnelly (otherwise known as KAWS) and is radically fitting for its environment.  Monumental and tasteless, it truly makes me laugh.  Truck on you rock or rollers!  (Am I out of it or what?)

Hard act to follow...

In live theater it is almost a given that both plays and musicals need a first-act closer that will get a (perhaps reluctant) audience back into its seats after intermission.  If it is boffo enough the ploy usually works.  When it’s out of this world there is nothing like it.  The best example of this (for me) was the Broadway production of "Sunday in the Park with George," Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical production based upon Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago and is justifiably revered by one and all.  The finale of the first act of the musical brings to life this painting with a full-throttle, full-throated ensemble rendering of the title song that is so beautiful it tears your heart to pieces and blubbering is not unheard of from some audience members.  Personally, I’m lucky that my tears run silently.
 
A similar reaction occurred last weekend at the Saturday night performance of “Once,” the 2012 Tony Award winning musical that still survives on Broadway.  I don’t know why I missed it in its first year but at least I can finally say the pleasure is all mine, even if belated.  Others will have different reactions, of course, but for me there are 2.5 zowie moments during the course of the play and the finale of the first act is one of “those” moments you wait for in the theater.  It’s a song named “Gold” and it is about love and loss and missed chances and it is so beautiful the memory of it makes me tear up as I sit here with itchy feet from the skeeters I currently have to deal with in the backyard.  "Once" won eight Tony Awards and I think it probably deserved every one of them (I didn't see any of the other nominees) and that first act finale is truly a killer-diller.

Santa in Dutch

In June of last year I blogged a little item about a giant, inflated ketchup bottle, designed by the American artist Paul McCarthy, that was part of an outdoor art exhibit in City Hall Park in Manhattan.  It was cool and funny and I liked it a lot.
 

Yesterday, for some inexplicable reason I was perusing a study of public art in Rotterdam and stumbled across this large bronze statue which is called “Santa Claus” and I learned that it was designed as site-specific and commissioned by the city of Rotterdam and it was by the very same Paul McCarthy of that ketchup bottle fame.  Its installation caused an uproar among the citizens of Rotterdam (and The Netherlands in general) and it got moved from place to place but it looks like everybody has calmed down and it is back in the plaza for which it was designed and the furor has subsided.  It goes to show that when you get used to something it just becomes part of the furniture.
 
That’s some Christmas tree you’ve got there Mr. Claus.  Interpretation of what’s art and what’s not is always with us, hey what?

Moth Attack

A couple of weeks ago I was in full bore stroll over in Prospect Park and saw a bunch of folks under a tree, looking up into its branches.  There were even a couple of young men standing on a bench to get a closer look at whatever it was.  Of further interest was the number of camera phones in play.  Of course, being human, I had to take a look and this photo is the result (forwarded to me by one of the kind observers).  It’s a Luna moth in full flame.  With a modicum of research I found they are not uncommon at this time of year but, hey, I was glad to be in its presence.  I also found out there is even a “National Moth Week” at the end of July.
 
The only clunker is when one of the dudes on the bench decided he wanted to see if it was alive and threw a stick at it.  He got what he wanted and it flitted away.  And so did we; with mixed feelings:  love the moth, murder the dude.