the anxious words of a man stuck in a race he no longer cares for:

Suffice it to say we all lead very different lives and use one another's 

differences as a sounding board for our own trials and tribulations. 

Despite the differences, however, I think we can all agree that this stage

in life is one marked by the attempted reconciliation of our youthful 

aspirations and the ever encroaching economic realities which are 

impossible to ignore. I resent the fact that ours is the first generation 

ever to suffer the humbling dual indignities of almost having ones cake 

and almost eating it too. Admittedly an injustice born of affluence and 

excess but a situation that has too few "winners" and depressingly 

numerous "losers" - or shall we say silver and bronze medalists. Perhaps

my winner-takes-all capitalist surroundings are beginning to make their 

presence felt. 

- Korpisto trying to make sense of it all in the gmail diaries (pre-market 

crash) 

tyler.mordy@

i'm currently in the midst of a re-read of Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida, not having read it in 3 or 4 years.  so there i was yesterday, reading of studiums and punctums when what should an innocent turn of the page reveal but a cartoon penis pasted to the page with a yellow post-it note.  "a cartoon penis?" you might find yourself asking rather dumbfoundedly; yes a cartoon penis.  it provided me with such a genuinely heartfelt laugh from the bottom of my belly.  you see, in the rarified world of hedge funds - from which i was cast in the dying days of 2008 - childlike, base humor was more often than not the lingua franca amongst overpaid and unhappy peons, such that we were.  the penis depicted above would most likely have found its way into the pages of my book via one of several colleagues who, working late into the night in London whilst covering the US markets, took advantage of my momentary departure from the desk and hastily left me the usual surprise for such lapses in judgement: a penis.  in fact, i can go one step further and lay claim to knowing the exact culprit's identity based on the curve of the shaft and the crudeness of the urethra.  when one has drawn hundreds if not thousands of such appendicular caricatures the artist's style becomes no less personal, and therefore incriminating, than a fingerprint.  my naming of names at this point would obviously serve no purpose so i'll leave it at that.  as a funny and related side-note, however, there was another colleague (a very polite and kind man - never one to lower himself to the point of drawing cartoon appendages) who was once upon a time shopping for a new TV with his wife at John Lewis.  when this unfortunate soul went to pay for his new TV the clerk at the cash register handed him back his credit card with an odd look on his face: "Sir, your signature doesn't appear to match that on your card."  what do you suppose had replaced his name on the signature strip of the credit card?  a cartoon penis of course.  aren't you glad the world's finances are in the hands of such accomplished practical jokesters?

"I could not accede to that notion which is so convenient when we want to talk history, culture, aesthetics - that notion known as an artist's style."

Roland Barthes

Camera Lucida

through the invitation of a friend, i had the pleasurable surprise of experiencing the crazy world of El Gato Viejo (it should be noted that although "gato" generally means cat in spanish, it's also a slang term for hooker). this multi-use space was essentially an old train station in BA's Retiro neighborhood prior to being decommissioned and subsequently requisitioned by a certain eccentric by the name of Carlos Regazzoni into his workshop/atelier.  it's now morphed into a multi-artist space involving predominantly Regazzoni's welded scuptures, along with paintings, various jazz or funk bands, and a smattering of farm animals (don't ask).  bottom line: go check it out - a truly original space you won't see listed in the pages of TimeOut.

one of this year's winning entries in the Petrobas Prize for the Visual Arts involves three hired actors reading in rotation the entire 3,366 pages of Marx's Das Kapital

seen at this year's arteBA, the subverted icon of icons - made from coca-cola caps (pop cultural regression at its best/worst?)

there's a palermo for every day of the week it seems.  the funniest i have yet to hear is palermo queens - i shit you not.  if anyone knows of others i would love to hear them.

for the record - and to the best of my knowledge - the term "chorizo-fest" is my own small contribution to the spanglish language and i selflessly encourage one and all to flavor their conversations with it where & whenever deemed fit (and perhaps even when not strictly suitable).

so hard to spot the Parr

Centro Cultural Recoleta

"They just keep doing the same things," I said.

"Well, what else can they do?  We all just keep doing the same things."

She had a point there.

Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood

ode to Flavin

"If history - as appears to be the case - is just another literary genre, why take away from it the imagination, the foolishness, the indiscretion, the exaggeration, and the defeat that are the raw material without which literature is inconceivable?"

Tomás Eloy Martínez

Santa Evita

The only duty we have toward history is to rewrite it.

Oscar Wilde

what's the secret?