I forgot to mention another artist we liked at the Scope Art show (see this): Paul Mullins from Lyons Wier Gallery.

Recommendation!

Go see The Sandman at Target Margin. David Herskovits and his merry team have done a great job with this Opera-meets-Downtown-Theatre work, with music by Tom Cabaniss. It’s in a cool little opera house-like theatre in the East Village. Check out the review in this week’s Time Out NY. I think it’s a better review than this one in the Village Voice.

As part of the Nancy Hwang birthday extravaganza, I saw Episode II: Attack of the Clones last night. Ugh — it was worse than I expected. Natalie Portman‘s a trooper for trying to act like this was a “real movie with acting” while saying some of the worst lines in movie history. It made the 3 good ones (now known as Episodes 4-6) look like Shakespeare. My friend Anees was right – it was like Star Wars Porn — all the stuff you like to see, over and over and over. All money shots, all the time!

Whenever there were “plot” interludes, such as the scenes of the budding romance between Natalie and whoever that guy is, the audience snickered until we got back to the light sabers and special effects.

I miss Princess Leia.

On Sunday we went to brunch – which one was the mother? – at The Park with our friend Brownie, followed by a visit to Scope Art at the Gershwin Hotel. No celebrities were spotted at The Park. The food wasn’t bad, and is surprisingly cheap at brunch/lunch time. If service is going to be that bad, shouldn’t all of the waiters look like models? (They don’t.)

Scope Art was great fun! Sort of like the Gramercy Art Fair at the beginning — nicely low key. There were a number of interesting out of town galleries — without websites to link! I was pleased by the amount of drawing and painting on display. It’s not dead!

There’s a very interesting gallery in Cleveland of all places called Shaheen showing people ranging from Roe Ethridge to Blake Rayne.

Others things of note: Stuart Hawkins from Priska Juschka and a show called “Amenities” curated by Pascal Spengemann — an entire room of works by artists replacing or working with the objects in the room — a painting in the Gideon Bible (Ben Potter), toilet paper of handmade paper from utility bills (Missy Bly), and casts of vacuumings from the hotel (Corin Hewitt).

I’ve been having some computer issues for the last week, so this is a big catch-up post.

On Saturday we went to some galleries in Chelsea. Highlights:

• Brian Coleman and Molly Smith at LFL Gallery — Molly’s gouache and ink works on paper are especially beautiful.
• Katarzyna Kozyra at Postmasters — pretty Polish boys in videos
• Polly Apfelbaum and Beatriz Milhazes at D’Amelio Terras
• David Reed at Max Protech — hmm… www.maxprotech.com takes me to some kind of hydraulics company
• Jim Hodges at CRG — Wow! One of the best shows I’ve seen in Chelsea in a while
• John F. Simon, Jr. at Sandra Gering

More to follow about Scope Art, etc.

Here’s a disturbing but interesting 13 minute video by Christoph Draeger, Reynold Reynolds, and Gary Breslin. It stars Guy Richard Smit. The premise: the final newscast of MSNBC.