Homemade hot sauce, 'Old Man' animation, new Bird

This will probably be my last artRecs for a few weeks -- Thursday morning I set off for roughly three full weeks of travel. I've tapered off the writing a bit, but a new piece was published on the Art House America blog since my last post:

• The Gradual Knitter

In other news, Image journal has announced the lineup for next year's Glen Workshops. Hard to believe it's already time to register again!

:: Sandy's impact ::
Though the storm hasn't yet produced any art I'm aware of, it's unfortunately taken a great deal from some artists and galleries who stored work in low-lying areas.

Some of Mako's works, seen in a basement drawer in the
Dillon gallery, October 2011

• Mako Fujimura reported via Twitter that the Dillon Gallery, which had some of his work, was under 12' of water and "there were significant amount of works destroyed, including the most recent Elm Grace." When I was there last October, I so remember going down to Dillon's basement with an assistant, who opened several drawers to show me some of the letter paintings from Mako Four Gospels project. Other Chelsea galleries also lost a lot of work, Business Week reports. The New York Times also reports on the galleries' losses: Where Creations Faced Destruction.
• On the music front, a small but respected record label housed in Redhook, Brooklyn, lost a lot of equipment and files, which weren't covered by any flood insurance (due to the landlord's refusal).

I'll keep you posted as I hear more, especially about any benefits or other efforts to help East Coast artists recover.

:: film & television ::

• Meet the Press interviews Stephen Colbert about politics, satire and his new book. Though I don't usually expect much substance from television (vs. print), the conversation about the Colbert segment goes into some interesting analysis of satirists' current role in exposing hypocrisy, especially in the political process.
• Letterman did the Late Show without an audience at least part of last week -- the night of the storm and the day after, which included a last-minute guest appearance by Andrew Bird. I still need to watch more than the Bird part of these, but I always think Dave nears his best under zany circumstances.
  
• A couple weeks back, I shared the "Gangnam Style" video with its frequently parodied horse dance, but this piece offers a different, richer take -- how it both reflects and mocks a fascination with Western culture, while sharing Koreans' sense of social connection with the West. 
• Via Brainpickings, here's a hand-drawn stop-motion animation of the The Old Man and the Sea. Pretty cool.
  

:: tunes ::

• If I gave awards for top aural delight of the last couple weeks, it might go to the Cody ChesnuTT album stream on NPR's first listen. If you don't know his name, he has a great soulful sound that's somewhere between Marvin Gaye and Cee Lo Green, but also pushes beyond them. His album came out last Tuesday, but so far they haven't pulled the album stream. My favorite track: Under the Spell of the Handout.
• Paste reviews Andrew Bird's new EP, Hands of Glory.
• Lately I've been trying to buy my CDs from the neighborhood record shop, Down Home Music, which also happens to be a real gem. I assume the staff know far more about music than I ever could, so I enjoyed a slight satisfaction the other day when I picked up an order that had come in -- Bill Fay's Life is People -- and was asked who he is. I told the guy what little I knew, which is that I've seen him mentioned by NPR Music and Christianity Today but almost nowhere else. I'm just starting to listen to the album, but so far my favorite song is the still the first one I heard, "Never Ending Happening," which NPR featured in its summer music preview. Already I get the sense this is a very rich album. Listen for yourself on the Paste site (they have a full-album stream in the video player at the article's end).
  
• Folks weren't supposed to shoot it, of course, but one attendee got footage from the recent, intimate show the Rolling Stones performed in Paris.
• Robert Cray gives NPR a tiny desk concert.
• Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward -- a.k.a., She & Him -- cover "Stars Fell on Alabama" in this video karaoke session. 
• Calexico performs "Splitter," a breakup song off their new album Algiers, which came out last month. 
• Taking inspiration, perhaps, from Bob Dylan, Cee Lo Green has a Christmas album due out this year. "All I Need is Love" features the Muppets. Really.

:: visual art ::

• Manipulated photography before Photoshop: WSJ takes a look at the show up at New York's MOMA.
• Depicting our fears as monsters: the New York Times commissioned a short series of works by visual artists. I'm not sure which was more compelling -- the concept or the execution.
• America for Beginners -- Or the Forgetful. The NYT's Lens blog looks at a new book by photographer Arthur Grace, which apparently features a lot of pictures he forgot he took. I didn't have time to see all of them, but his style reminds me of some of the early street photographers like Robert Frank.
  

:: reading/food for thought ::

• As I've probably mentioned before, I really love what little of Dave Hickey's writing I've read, especially one essay in his book Air Guitar. However, I've also retained a lot of his thesis in the shorter volume The Invisible Dragon -- and there aren't many books I read that long ago that I could still summarize. All that to say, I therefore perked up when I saw his name come through my Twitter feed ... in an announcement that he has supposedly quit the art world. The piece that followed was an interesting look at the current state of the fine art world.
  
• I'm not a huge fan of books by and about celebrities, but Dwight Garner's review of The Richard Burton Diaries is enticing.
• Purists are probably shuddering at this, but some guy figured out how to make a plastic guitar with 3D printing or something.
  

:: food ::

• I've been cutting back on cooking a tad, pre-trip, but recently I made a quarter batch of this hot sauce recipe, using regular serrano chilis. It makes about of pint of the condiment, which turns out beautifully if you roast the peppers first. This is an easy recipe for occasional cooks, too -- after roasting the peppers in the oven (split them in half, brush lightly with oil, then roast at 400 until they start to char), you basically blend them up with a few other things. I found it kept several months in the fridge.
• When I get to Chicago, I hope to visit a bar called the Aviary, which apparently makes a pretty wild hot chocolate. I plan to try Tasting Table's recipe for reproducing it once I get back, though I'll have to make my first ever purchase of tobacco.

Peacock show, new Andrew Bird, the origins of the 'albatross' idiom

Only one new article since last time, but I just posted a reminiscence of Les Paul, for one of the items below. That sort of counts, right? The new, new post:

• The Scent of Hope (guest post on prayer for the blog of my friend Micha Boyett)

:: events ::

• If you've been too busy to make it to Litquake, take heart: you can still catch an afternoon's worth of East Bay events tomorrow, thanks to the Berkeley Ramble. View the full Saturday schedule for all locations here.
• Charlie Peacock plays Hotel Utah Thursday (Oct. 18). If you haven't heard him before, he's worth making time for.

:: tunes ::

• Among other probably un-hip music styles, I've long had a fondness for gypsy swing, as popularized by Django Reinhardt. Not surprisingly then, I enjoyed every track on this look at Django's legacy, which includes a song from the (local) Hot Club of San Francisco. Django even played a part in my brief meeting with Les Paul, early on in my New York Days. I'd gone to hear a Mark O'Connor show, thanks to a free ticket from a friend, but when I heard that Les was there that night, I had to go say hello afterward. I confess, I wasn't quite sure why I knew he was sort of a big deal (that fact I googled later), but we actually had a nice, brief chat that was utterly free of the worshipful fan/celebrity dynamic I so despise. A class act, he was.
  
• Andrew Bird covers Townes Van Zandt's "If You Needed Me" from his new album Hands of Glory  So, so love the direction he takes on this song. I always love his forays into the Americana catalog.
  
• Philip reports on Buddy Miller's recent set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and reflects on Christian liturgy.
• If you like the new Avett Brothers CD, check out this song-by-song video commentary on The Carpenter.
• Jack Black has a new video out for the song "I'm Shakin'" off his recent album Blunderbuss (via Paste). 
• Paste has a stream of Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard's new solo album, which features at least one Aimee Mann guest vocal, if my ears don't deceive me. 
• Morrissey does the Colbert Report (via Paste). I haven't actually watched this yet, but it's said to be very funny. I wish I could share a good recollection of the Morrissey show I once saw at the Apollo, but that's a story for another time.
• I'm not sure I've ever viewed or shared footage/reporting from Al Jazeera before, but this story and 47-minute video on Mongolian rappers looks pretty interesting. 
  

:: visual art ::

• This is on my to-read list, but a new website seeks to map the world of visual art.

:: reading ::

• This piece on Americans' increasing fondness for Britishisms was a right spiffing read, and gave me hope I might yet start dropping some latter-day phrases from Wodehouse into the mix, without causing complete confusion.
• Stray remarks can lead down the most interesting alleys. The other day I was discussing my brother's birthday with my mom, and remarked that an afghan I began for him quite some time ago was a real "albatross." After she joked about seeing a bird fluttering near me, we discussed the phrase, I turning to my dictionary of idioms (yes, I have one), which cited a Samuel Coleridge poem as the origin of the phrase. Sharing this on Twitter later, a discussion of memorizing poetry commenced, which prompted John Wilson to share this piece on poetry memorization as a physical act. I've thought for a while now that I might like to memorize Dana Gioia's "Summer Storm," so I could always have it at the ready for quoting when I wanted. Maybe this is just the push I needed to do it.
  

:: food ::

• Inside the wooly world of buffalo mozzarella: apparently, getting authentic milk is more difficult than it seems. (I will say, though, that living in New York all but cured me of using anything besides the buffalo version except in the odd baked pasta dish called for grated mozz.)
  
• Last weekend, Berkeley Bowl's excellent bargain bin had bags of dill of scallions. Naturally I couldn't resist, which led to the problem of how to use three whole bunches of dill, when most recipes call for a mere tablespoon or two of the herb. Part of the solution was trying the dill variation of this Mark Bittman lentil soup, which proved exceedingly delicious. I even forced samples on coworkers several days later, and they all agreed it was delicious. With a leek substituted for the onion, it was surprisingly hearty, too.
• What I'd really like to make this weekend, though, is a batch of ginger liqueur. Yum.