Holidays There Are No Cards For

It's Andy Warhol's birthday today! Happy Birthday, Andy. My favorite dead artist!

It's also 2 years since the deed in lieu of foreclosure went through on my house. Wow!

Things That Make Me Happy

Andy Warhol has a statue in NYC, finally. And it looks just like him! If she still lived in NY, Genevieve would make a pilgrimage for me.

Happy Birthday, Andy!

I wish I had time to mark Warhol's birthday properly, but check out this list of 82 things you didn't know about Andy Warhol.

Links And Comments

Cleveland Restaurants Serve Up Success: This piece is right on the money--Cleveland does have really great food and reasonably priced too. Cleveland doesn't encourage tourism based on the fact that it's a foodie joy though, which Genevieve and I have lamented for at least 5 years. Crazy art, interesting architecture, great food--does the city ever do a tourism campaign based on that? No, it's all convention center and medical mart, why will no one come? Snore.

Intelligence Squared, U.S.: I love this NPR show, because it is so seldom that you have a chance to witness actual debate in America.

A Professionally Funny Family: True fact about me: The Middletown Township Public Library had a humor section that featured multiple volumes of Bob & Ray comedy sketch transcripts. I read them all.

Emily Yoffe went to art camp in Prague, and noticed those Central/Eastern Europeans are a bitter, gloomy lot. Yes, we are.

The NY Times Paper Cuts Blog has a great feature called Living With Music, which is a double introduction to new writers and new-to you music.


Why Marlowe Is Chief Of Detectives: I think I'd like to spend a year rereading LA set noir, but as I am going to try to go up to SF for a break during the summer I will have to get in the spirit reading Hammett. Any other geographically appropriate suggestions?

Law & Order: Artistic Intent: Oh, my goodness. WANT. Don't know what I'd do with it, not appropriate, but WANT.

Warhol is back. He never really left.

I am fascinated by this actor/musician.

The Only Reason I Was I Were Back In Cleveland

It would be so easy to get to Pittsburgh to see this. I have the DVD on my buy list. I can't do a party for his birthday today, but maybe the anniversary of his death...

Happy Birthday, Andy!

Today is the 80th anniversary of Andy Warhol's birth. Check out his art here.

If this poem intrigues, take a listen to Lou Reed and John Cale's tribute album Songs for Drella, or a look at A Visit With Uncle Andy his nephew James Warhola's children's book about the down to earth weirdness of Uncle Andy, who wasn't that odd when considered the whole family. Slovaks, you know.

I like Warhol. A first class weirdo, a star pimp, and the conceptual stuff was quite out there, but at the very least you have to admit the man could draw, and his ideas were amazing. I find his cynicism refreshing, and I think he was amazingly, depressingly prescient about quite a bit of American culture.

And the whole Slovak connection. He's the only famous Slovak-American I know of.