Here is my latest piece for the political Web site dipdive.com. It is rather serious, for me. I warn liberals that the Barack Obama whom they fell in love with during the campaign will not be the same as the Obama who governs for the next four years. And that’s a good thing.

I shall never grow tired of Gwyneth Paltrow’s weekly e-mails on how to improve my lifestyle. I will share them with you, as long as they continue to be ridiculous, which should be forever. My comments, as usual, (are in italics and parenthesis.)

“Here are some suggestions for several interesting exhibitions to go see, possibly in a city near you. Some of them I have been to and loved. And some of them came from friends who I trust in all matters of culture. (Read: My gays.)

“I’ve also included some of my favorite websites that everyone can take a look at no matter where they live. (The Internet is wonderful. You can live in New York and visit a Web site based in, say, Philadelphia, without having to get in your car and go to Philadelphia. I didn’t know this until someone just explained it to me.) The only one that is not free is Zagat, which I have an obsession with. I literally do not go out to eat until I reference it (it’s a thing I may need to get over). (One time I could not find my Zagat and I starved for two weeks.) I love Epicurious and Chow for other foodie-related things. For off-the-beaten-track home and kitchen things, (yeah, I’m big on ”things” too; love “things”), I like the Handpicked Collection and CB2, as well as Williams-Sonoma and Divertimenti. Sometimes I window shop on Net-a-Porter or Matches when my kids are asleep. (I would never look at the Internet while my kids are awake. What if they looked at a page about Philadelphia and then were transported there by the Internet? I would never forgive myself.)

“I am also loving Jamie Oliver’s new show on Channel 4 in the U.K., Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food. You can watch the full episodes on the website. (Even if I don’t live in the U.K.? Wha-wha-what!?!)

“The absolute best thing to see at the moment is the changing leaves. I’ve just come back from a week in New York where the trees looked ablaze. (If you like blazing trees, come to L.A. this fall.) If you live in a place where the seasons change, enjoy this time of year! (It’s GOOP! Live life to its thingy-est!)”

New York City
New Museum, Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton
Until January 11, 2009
www.newmuseum.org

Guggenheim Museum, Catherine Opie: Icehouses and Surfers
Until January 7, 2009
www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/exhibition_pages/opie

Whitney Museum of American Art, Alexander Calder:
The Paris Years 1926- 1933
Until February 15, 2009
www.whitney.org/www/calder

P.S.1, Yael Bartana
Until January 19, 2009
www.ps1.org/exhibitions/view/203

Galerie Lelong, Petah Coyne
Until December 13, 2008
www.galerielelong.com

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in
Contemporary Photography
Until March 22, 2009
www.metmuseum.org/special/se_upcoming.asp

London
Tate Modern, Rothko
Until February 1, 2009
www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/markrothko

Tate Modern, Cildo Meireles
Until January 11, 2009
www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/cildomeireles

Tate Britain, Francis Bacon
Until January 4, 2009
www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/francisbacon

Ransom Contemporary Art, Katherine Bernhardt
Until November 30, 2008
www.markransom.co.uk

Madrid (when the hell is anyone normal going to be in Madrid?)
Prado Museum, Rembrandt
Until January 6, 2009
www.museodelprado.es/en/ingles/exposiciones/info/

en-el-museo/rembrandt-pintor-de-historias/
Thyssen Museum, 1914! The Avant-Garde and the Great War
Until January 11, 2009
www.museothyssen.org/thyssen/exposiciones/

WebExposiciones/2008/1914
Reina Sofia Modern Art Museum, Dissidances. Nancy Spero
Until January 5, 2009
www.museoreinasofia.es/museoreinasofia/live/exposiciones/

actuales/nancy- spero-disidanzas.html
You can also find information on the private gallery scene at
www.artemadrid.com

Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective
Until January 5, 2009
www.moca.org/museum/exhibitiondetail.php?&id=410

Honor Fraser Gallery, Tom Wesselmann
November 1 - December 20, 2008
www.honorfraser.com 

Chicago
Gage Gallery, Aftermath: War is Only Half the Story
Until January 9, 2009
www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery

Museum of Science and Industry, Smart Home: Green + Wired
Until January 4, 2009
www.msichicago.org

New Orleans
DesCours
Seven-day, annual contemporary architecture and art event
December 8-14, 2008
www.descours.us

Prospect.1 New Orleans [P.1]
Largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the U.S.
Until January 18, 2009
www.prospectneworleans.org 

NEXT WEEK
Next week we find perfect options for the very versatile, very essential part of any womans wardrobe (mine, anyway) - the little black dress. (Looking forward to it, Gwyn.)

I enjoy standup comedy for two reasons. First, I love to laugh. Standup comedy, on average, returns a higher laugh-per-joke ratio than 95 percent of all television comedies. (One of the few exceptions is “CSI Miami”, a show whose producers stubbornly refuse to admit is a comedy.)

(Above: Ladies and gentlemen, the funniest man on television.)

The other reason I like standup is that occasionally a comic will say something so true that it sticks with you forever. This is what I call a universal truth.
 
Chris Rock is great at revealing universal truths. Example: “Every town has the same two malls: the one white people go to and the one white people used to go to.” George Carlin also was a master at these. Now and then an amateur comic will uncover a universal truth. This happened at my friend’s showcase. I did not catch the comic’s name – I will publish it if I can find it – but what she said stuck.

I am going to butcher her joke. Here is the paraphrased version.

“I have a boyfriend, and my friends love him, which scares me. Why do your friends never tell you your boyfriend sucks while you’re together? As soon as you break up they’re like, ‘We all knew he was a jerk.’ Where was that when I needed it? This is like going to an old age home in New Orleans today and saying, ‘Hey, there’s a big hurricane called Katrina coming.’ Only everyone in the old age home drowned three years ago during Hurricane Katrina.”

The comic introduced a universal truth: Most people would rather lie and say they like a friend’s boyfriend or girlfriend than tell the truth and say they do not. I say “most people” because there are rare souls who do not filter their thoughts before they reach their mouths. Then there is everyone else. We are cowards.

We manage our cowardice in different ways.

The outright lie
You lie right to your friend’s face.

Example: “Caroline, we all like Steve. We think he’s great.”

How you should interpret this if your friends ever say this to you: Steve must be a nice guy. There is no reason to think I have gone wrong here. Why would my friends lie?

The “If he makes you happy” gambit
Instead of lying and saying you like Steve, you turn the issue back to your friend.

Example: “If he makes you happy, Caroline, that’s all that counts.”

How you should interpret this if your friends ever say this to you: Run. Run, fast. Steve is wrong for you. I don’t have the stones to say this to your face. Just … run.

(Above: This is what Steve probably looks like. Yeah, yeah, he’s great. Photo by FreaksAnon/Flickr.)

And finally there is…

The Liz Lemon
The name is taken from an episode of “30 Rock” in which Liz was afraid to tell her friend Jenna that her play performances stank. Instead Liz pointed out the one thing she liked about the play, such as the lighting. I also call this “telling a small truth.”

“Yeah, Caroline, everyone likes Steve. What do we like about him? He looks very powerful in sleeveless shirts.”

How you should interpret this if your friends ever say this to you: Your boyfriend has virtually no value. He is a void of good. He is McDonald’s Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips, which are neither select nor premium nor chicken.

Here are sentences you will hear if your friends like your partner.

“Hang onto this one.”
Your friend does not have to say this, so it is a real sign of approval.

“Have you talked about marriage?”
In other words: “You two should talk about marriage.”

“Let me know if it doesn’t work. Just kidding.”
But really, I’m not. I will steal him from you. I’m just waiting for my opening.

What is the best way to handle this issue? I don’t know.

This is why I do not talk to my friends.

The new trailer is out.

If this movie is half as good as the graphic novel, it will be great.

There are two episodes left. I am starting a list. Please feel free to add to it.

1. Vic takes down the Mexican cartel, gets a job with the feds and continues to clean up Farmington. Seeing the error of his ways, he becomes the good cop he never gave himself a chance to be. Odds: 1,000,000-to-1

2. Claudette and Dutch take Vic down and send him to prison. Odds: 50-to-1

3. Claudette and Dutch must choose between taking down Vic, who is a murderous cop, and letting Vic take down the Mexi cartel, which, with its money and power, is even more loathsome and evil than Vic Mackey. Claudette and Dutch let Vic go. Odds: 5-to-1

4. Much like Vic did to Terry, Dutch goes Mackey and puts a bullet in Vic’s brain and gets away with it, citing self-defense, or possibly pinning the murder on Shane. This ending would keep Mackey’s philosophy alive. The only way you can get justice on the streets is to get dirty. Odds: 25-to-1

5. Vic goes rogue and works for the Mexi cartel full-time. This would explain why he currently is withholding info about the Mexi cartel’s intentions in Farmington from the feds. Odds: 75-to-1

6. Vic puts a bullet in Shane’s head. The show would start with Vic killing a team member and end with Vic killing a team member. There is a nice symmetry to that. Odds: 20-to-1

7. Shane puts a bullet in Vic’s head. The show would start with Vic killing a team member and end with Vic getting killed by a team member. There is a nice symmetry in that, too. But it assumes that Shane will outwit Vic, which is a longshot. Odds: 40-to-1

8. Claudette, who is ill, puts a bullet in Vic’s head. She only has a few months/years left to live, she figures, so why not? What good will her remaining days be if she can’t bring Vic to justice? Odds: 10-to-1

9. Lt. Kavanaugh (Forest Whitaker), driven mad, returns from Vic’s past and blows him away. Odds: 200-to-1

10. In order to secure his mayoral election, Aceveda must rely on Vic to do his dirty work once again and in return Vic gets his old job back at The Barn, running another strike team. Thus proving my theory: On the gritty streets of Los Angeles, Vic Mackey is the ultimate survivor. Odds: 7-to-1

Thanks to reader Kelly S. for this story about a giant Lego man that washed up on a beach in Brighton, England. Had I been one of these kids, this easily would have been the greatest day of my childhood. According to The Telegraph:

The Lego man is 6ft tall in red, yellow and green. It is presumed to have washed up on the beach, but whether it has come from a cargo ship or from across the Channel is not clear.

Brighton resident Gerry Turner, 34, said: “It’s very odd. God knows how it got here but people are saying it’s from Holland because it’s got some Dutch writing on it. It must have fallen off a boat of something. The kids love it.”

How did the Lego man wind up at sea? He might be part of a clever marketing campaign for the Lego man’s 30th anniversary. It also is possible he fell off a ship. (Lego is headquartered in Denmark.) Or maybe, just maybe, he knew too fucking much.

(Photo by ronbrinkmann/Flickr.)

First, I would like to congratulate Barack Obama for running a smart, well-organized campaign. He had a message and he stuck to it. Obama reminds me of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. He studied harder than his opponents. He engaged in some light cheating. He forced the other guy to play his game. John McCain reminds me of the coach of my Cleveland Browns, Romeo Crennel. He was disorganized. He was always behind. He flipped a coin on major decisions.
 
For non-sports fans, Obama was Kanye West on the Glow in the Dark Tour, a spectacle of light and sound. McCain was The Little River Band showing up two hours late to the Marion County Popcorn Festival.

X … X… X

Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal captured the narrative of the campaign better than anyone. I am now a fan. She is a conservative, but she gave Obama credit when credit was due and was not afraid to call out McCain and Sarah Palin. Noonan is thoughtful and gracious. I enjoyed what she wrote about Tina Fey after the “30 Rock” star appeared as Palin on “Saturday Night Live.”

“To spoof someone well takes talent, but to utterly nail a political figure while not brutalizing him takes a real gift, and amounts almost to a public service. After all, to capture someone is a kind of tribute: it concedes he is real, vivid, worthy of note. We are not as a nation manufacturing trust all that well, or competence, or leadership. But some things we do well, and one is comedy. Fey plays characters who are sour, stressed and who, on ‘30 Rock,’ live in a world that is cynical, provisional and shallow. But to observe life so closely takes a kind of love.”

Every word of that is true.

X … X … X

A certain other columnist did not do too badly either when he predicted Obama would win in his April 13, 2008 column Speech! Speech! Speech!

X … X … X

I have failed to elect the winner in all four presidential elections in which I have been eligible to vote. This streak dates back to my junior year of college in 1996, when I was still a member of the Republican Party and voted for Bob Dole. (I am now an independent.)

True Bob Dole story about Bob Dole: I dressed as Dole for Halloween in 1996. It was a move born of pure laziness. I was like, “Hey, I have a blue suit. Hey, I have a pen I can hold. Hey! I have a costume!” Another true story: We had a party at our house – Halloween is huge at Ohio University – and during the party the doorknob to the bathroom broke off while I was inside. This happened as my friends were leaving to go Uptown. I had two choices. I could sit in the bathroom all night and miss the party of the year. Or I could climb through the eight-inch vertical gap in the window above the toilet. For any Bobcat, this is a no-brainer. Everyone behind my house witnessed, probably for the only time in history, an inebriated Bob Dole climbing sideways through bathroom window of a ramshackle house.

(Above: Bob Dole doesn’t like climbing out of bathroom windows. Bob Dole prefers egressing through doors! Photo by Visit Hillsborough/Flickr.)

X … X … X

I am glad this election has increased Anderson Cooper’s fame. The CNN star needs to be on television all of the time so that I can enjoy more moments like the ones below.

I get the feeling that if Cooper had not worked his way up at CNN, he would have wound up as the local commentator on the NBC affiliate in Buffalo who is given one minute on the 11 o’clock news to inveigh against “those loudmouths at city hall” and “all this newfangled technology” and “the damn potholes on Niagara Street.” I wish the guy continued success, but I also hope his career tanks, just so this actually happens.

X … X … X

This election has added two new terms to my vocabulary. The first is “to go Biden.” A person goes Biden when he says crazy things without acknowledging that any crazy things are being said. An example: “My dad totally went Biden on me yesterday. He said I haven’t been walking the dog like I promised to. I was like, ‘Dad, I’m 28. Lucky has been dead for eleven years.’ And he goes, ‘Who wants pizza!?!’”
 
The second one is “to go Palin.” A person goes Palin when they talk to other people as if they are a character from “Our Town.” Here is an example: “Please pass the butter, dear. Because it’s the passin’ of the butter and the butterin’ of the corn that makes the chewin’ and the eatin’ of the corn so darn delectable, doggone it.” (WINK!)

X … X … X

Good luck, Barack Obama. You have a lot of tough days ahead. Whatever happens, please do not go all Biden on us. That job is taken.

Below is the trailer from The Hunger, which features “the cruel elegance of David Bowie” and “the open sensuality of Susan Sarandon.” 

Shudder.

I just got back from voting. My polling place is inside a resident’s garage on a suburban street in the San Fernando Valley. I arrived around 9:30 AM and the place was humming with activity, but not crowded. I only had to wait about a minute to vote. 

I overheard one of the poll workers say that Tony Danza and Scott Baio also vote at my polling station. Of course, this made my morning. It was everything I could do not to turn to the poll worker and say, “You know, as Danza votes, so votes Scott Baio. Then once you’ve locked in the Baio vote, the Willie Aames vote falls nicely into place.”

Men are aroused by everything. Our libido responds to the naked human form, explicit photographs, explicit videos, audio, randy gramophone recordings, the act of waking up in the morning, silk boxers, slight breezes and two of anything round that are near each other. This includes pineapples, croquet balls and naval mines.
 
Now you can add a chromatic color to the never-ending list of things that embiggen the male libido.
 
Researchers have published a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that concludes that the color red leads men to view women as more attractive and sexually desirable. According to a Los Angeles Times blog:

“Researchers at the University of Rochester conducted five psychological experiments to assess how color can affect how men view a woman’s attractiveness. In one study, the men were shown photographs of women framed by a border of either red or white. The men tended to find the women more attractive when they appeared in the red frame. In another study, the men were shown pictures of women wearing red followed by pictures of the same women wearing another color. When wearing red, the women were more likely to score an invitation to the prom and to be treated to a more expensive date.”

This is one of those studies where you read it and go, “Hey, interesting stuff, but I think we already knew that.” True, but I do not think we know how well we already knew that. This is knowledge that was already there, but you did not know, you just suspected. It is like when you buy fries from Burger King. You know that sometimes an onion ring might fall in the fry box accidentally. This study is like peering into the fry box and seeing that the bonus onion ring is not hypothetical. The onion ring is real.

We all know the color red, as it pertains to what the researchers like to call “the mating game,” is useful. But did you realize how often the color red appears in the mating game? Off the top of my head – and please feel free to add more – I can think of red roses, red lipstick, red nail polish, red wine, red boxes of chocolates, red wrapped gifts, red bra, red panties, red teddy and to a lesser extent, steak, (the most sexual of all red meats), lobster, (the most sexual of all red crustaceans), and Red Roof Inn, (the most sexual of all freeway-adjacent hotels). You can add to this list red-light districts, red hearts on Valentine’s Day and lit cigarettes.

If you accept this research as true, it opens up a world of interpretations.

- Bull fighting is the perfect metaphor for sex.

- President Clinton was so attracted to Monica Lewinsky not even her blue dress could deter him.

- There is a reason our government is hell-bent on going to Mars. Our little blue-and-green planet is hot for some red-planet action.

(Above: Mars. What planet can say no to that? Photo by Gonzopowers/Flickr.)

Why are men attracted to the color red?

The researchers concluded, “Our findings confirm what many women have long suspected and claimed – that men act like animals in the sexual realm. As much as men might like to think that they respond to women in a thoughtful, sophisticated manner, it appears that at least to some degree, their preferences and predilections are, in a word, primitive.”

Considering how quickly male legs thump when we see two naval mines next to each other, it is hard to argue with that theory. I will add these two thoughts.

1. Many of the best parts of women – and you know what they are – tend to be red/pink. A red dress reminds men of the rest of the redness and pinkness underneath.

2. My second thought, which I will add to my Caveman Theory, is that red is the color of fire, blood and the heart. All three of these things are warm, pulsating and life-giving. They are good. On a subconscious level, when a man sees a woman in red he sees a good thing wrapped inside a good thing, like a fry lodged inside a bonus onion ring.