Robert Wilson's Watermill Center Gala 2010: Paradiso

All the usual suspects were there---like jackthedripper, tryviolence, and bitchy michell.



The actress Sharon Stone functioned as an auctioneer. She got a flying insect caught up under her dress, which led to much shimmying and shaking. A lesbian photographer eventually had to get up in there with her hand to get it out. False flag?



This fellow's name was Clive, or Rodney, or Blaine. That's it---it was Blaine something or other.



I love to photograph Bill Cunningham of the New York Times for some obscure reason.



It had to have been the hottest evening of the year. Everybody simply melted, which made me feel I was in good company.

Well, the publicity ban was broken in a blockade end run. The Nubian Princess was outed in the New York Times as being the lovely Pamela Harris of Southampton. And yours truly can be spotted in a crowd scene at number 20. I being one of only two gentlemen who dared to wear shorts.

Kindra Arnesen, of Venice, Louisiana, at the Gulf Emergency Summit

"That's my coon-ass."

As somebody who spent many years in the trenches of local town-hall government, speaking before various governing bodies whose main job was to sit patiently and tolerate the abuse we amateur foot-soldier pawns heaped upon them, which is the facade behind which a failed American democracy hides the truth of an ascendant American fascism, I can identify with Ms. Arnesen, and appreciate the skill with which she has done her job in double crossing BP's co-opting of her activism. Her message is terrifying. It is worth a 16-minute viewing.

Eva Cassidy Updated

Eva Cassidy - Live at Blues Alley, 45:53


Eva Cassidy singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' Superb.

Eva Cassidy - Somewhere Over The Rainbow, 5:30


Eva Cassidy - God Bless The Child (solo), 5:18


Eva Cassidy - What a Wonderful World, 5:30


Eva Cassidy - You Take My Breath Away (HQ), 5:39


Eva Cassidy singing 'Fields of Gold', 5:01


Eva Cassidy singing 'Autumn Leaves', 6:38


'Time After Time', 4:11


'Danny Boy' OMG, 3:44


'Imagine', 4:36


A most beautiful version of 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters', 4:12


'Yesterday', 3:10



'Early One Morning', 2:20



Eva Cassidy-Stormy Monday, 5:46





72VIDEOS

Best Eva Cassidy playlist

by Elelith1980,

5:08, Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold,

3:55, Eva Cassidy-Songbird,

View full playlist (72 videos)

Dennis Hopper and Tony Shafrazi: Get Well Soon Dennis

In response to an article in the New York Times on April 7, Madman, Perhaps; Survivor, Definitely, by Manohla Dargis, about the life and career of Dennis Hopper, I realized I had failed to keep a promise I made to the art dealer Tony Shafrazi when I was at a museum opening back in January.

I had taken the only pictures of a moment Tony designed to send a message of love and support to a very ill Hopper, and I'd forgotten to email Tony the results for him to send along to Dennis as I had promised.

Back in the sixties, Hopper had taken a famous photograph of Roy Lichtenstein sitting on the floor beside some of his iconic paintings, a photograph which was blown up into a wall graphic that served as the introduction to the exposition. Tony, along with a couple of other friends from back in the day, wrote on the back of an art poster, "To Dennis, get back on your feet," and posed with it with their thumbs up.

I

I am very glad that Dennis Hopper is still with us, and apparently doing well. His career was an absolute uniquety---and the very definition of a well-rounded artist, in my humble opinion.

I don't know much about Tony Shafrazi's career, except that as a young man in 1974, he spray painted the words "Kill Lies All" on Picasso's Guernica at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The vandalism was cleaned off within a day, according to the New York Times, so perhaps he was more interested in the publicity then the sentiment, but he was a striking looking vandal nonetheless.

If I tried a stunt like that today in order to publicize my work, I'd be sitting in the Navy Brig in Charleston, South Carolina undergoing sensory deprivation torture, which is what it feels like most of the time here anyway, for an under-appreciated 9/11 truth questling such as myself. But I'll take the moral of Dennis Hopper's uncompromising world view to heart, and let it provide me with some sustenance. I also hope he stumbles upon this little message of love and support from his friends on the internets.

Zip Lining the Forest Canopy in Costa Rica

My first YouTube video! OMFG!

Taken by my Jaco Beach "work-out" buddy Erick. Here he is landing on the platform from the previous run.

Barnetta Carter

May, 1974. Junior/Senior prom. I was the junior and she was the senior. She had her first drink that night. What a good girl she was.

R.I.P. March 2010. Dead from complications of diabetes.

I remember she was insulin dependent back then; never planned to wed, as having children was deemed too risky.

Barnetta was a gifted actress who taught at Herbert Berghof in New York for many years. More recently, she ran a summer stock theater near Rochester. She had been declining for several years, becoming more agitated with her developing dementia. I had no contact with her through this period as the thought of it was almost too much to bear.

She had a devoted companion, David, who was with her until the end, along with her three siblings, who were also at her bedside. Her funeral is Saturday in Nashville, and I'll be there, along with many others flying in to honor her as the great star she was.

P.S. She made that dress! That's the way it was done back in the day!


Addendum:

Some pictures taken at 87th Street during a visit Kent made to New York in April 1984. This is how I will always remember her---and she would be happy with these pictures too.

Barnetta and her love, John Avril.

John, Barnetta, Kent, Michael Fields, Rolf Scholander [?] and John Dunn

Me and Barnetta

Kent, Barnetta and I

Rolf, Michael and Zoe Walker, who replaced Nell Carter in Ain't Misbehavin' within her first six months in New York.

Everett Sims

1920-2002

Italy Without Simon

It just wasn't the same. Not that anything in the temperature-inverted city of Milano reminded me of my recent trip to Rome and her surrounding hills. Even the Duomo seemed a spaceship apart.

But having been cut adrift by Mr. Simon Shack---at the behest of some duck named donald---I had to find my way somehow through the cruel, lonely streets of an unfamiliar Italian city. Simon and I had talked about his bringing his crew up to join us for several days of shows and fetes and galas. Alas, it was all for naught, as Simon chose to withdraw his affection from me. If it were a test Simon, you failed.

In the absence of his warm embrace, I even got to the point of socializing with rightist politicians, such as Letizia Brichetto-Arnaboldi Moratti, the mayor of Milan. She was kind to me! And I returned the favor! Any port in a storm, I say!

(She ran as a candidate for Mayor of Milan in the 2006 municipal election, winning the election with over 52% of the votes. She is a businesswoman who worked in insurance and telecommunications, is married to the oil magnate Gianmarco Moratti, brother of Massimo Moratti. Between 1994 and 1996 she was president of the Italian state television company RAI. In 1999-2000 she was responsible for the growth of Rupert Murdoch's group in Europe. From 2001 to 2006 she was Education Minister in the second and third Berlusconi cabinet.)

And I'd even dine with Berlusconi if he'd have me! The food is better! (With apologies to Christina.) So, when it's time for heads to roll, I'll be happy sitting with the friendly fascists of Italy, and not the loathsome duckian liberals of Scandinavia!

We went to a mad party at the house of rich modern-art collectors named Orsi---who collected bears too, out the kazoo. Let me just say, their food was fabulous!

Their collection of memento-mori was also most impressive.

There were more galas then you could shack a stick at---and if I meant shake I would have said it.

At the big dinner at the Triennale Design Museum, on one side, I sat next to Pepi Marchetti Franchi, who recently opened Larry Gagosian's gallery in Rome...

and on the other side, I sat next to an old friend, Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, the widow of Leo. It must not have been easy adjusting to a marriage with an over 50-year age difference between the partners. When people mistakenly asked if she was Leo's daughter, she would say, "oh no, Leo's daughter is 68!"

Oh well, the spy business is fraught with soured relationships and broken love affairs I'm learning. But, if I ever got the chance to say I'm sorry to Simon, I would, because---I am. I'd even apologize to that old duck guy. Till then, I just have to pumpitout, I guess.