So i bought a ’79 Firebird Trans Am on Monday. You may recall i mentioned wanting one back in September ’08. I almost got this hot ’85 here in LA but before i went to test drive it (which i knew would mean “buy it”) i checked the San Diego and Las Vegas Craigslists and found this white ’79 with the red and orange hood bird in Vegas. Another buyer on the way so i offered more than he was asking ($4150), transferred him a deposit, and booked a one-way to Vegas with my cashier’s check in hand. (And don’t give me that “yeah right, HE said there was another buyer coming” bullshit cuz u know what, the same thing happened last September and THERE WAS another buyer coming and I didn’t get that car.)

Now, i know buying a car without seeing it is not smart, but i’m trying to make more mistakes in life, so, although I’ve been looking for a 70′s Trans Am for a year, I’ve never actually been in one, much less driven one. I just trusted that something that pretty would accommodate me well. It did. (In the olden days people were tiny but their cars were BIG, very odd.) So i drove it down the Vegas strip (is there a more perfect street to display the height of tacky American masculinity?) and valeted it at the Wynn, had a cocktail of disappointing quality (considering this WAS the Wynn), took in that lady in the lake show that happens, and left after turning my $5 into $12 at the slots (I insist on pulling the arm, pressing the button is NOT acceptable). At midnight i left for LA – I had to drive at night because the car has no air and it was 107+ during the day and not much cooler at 1am.

This whole thing began a few years ago i was at the Cheesecake factory with friends and the one straight guy was talking about cars and we all said what car we really wanted (but few of us new the names) and I said I always wanted “the one with the bird on the hood, what is that? A Thunderbird?”

“No, a Firebird.”

“Yes, one of those.”

Why? Just one of those things. You’re 7 years old playing on the lawn and you see this thing going down the street and its all fins and swoops and feathers and feathered hair and feathers from the mirror and swoops and more feathers and it’s just way cooler than any other car because it has a GIANT  STICKER on it.

So until that dinner in Beverly Hills I figured i’d never own one of these because cars cost like $30,000 or some crazy amount i could never spend on a car but the straight guy says i could probably find one that’s drivable for $5000, and this is when everything changed and i thought maybe dreams can come true. (It was suggested i just put a bird decal on my Honda hatchback – NOT AN ACCEPTABLE OPTION)

So i did some research and discovered it was the 74-78 Trans Ams that had the decals i liked the most. Yes, i did purchase a ’79 which had the more elaborate bird decal but that colorway on the white body was killer so it was all good.

And did u know that after the Firebirds with the decals came out Ford and other companies made knock-offs? I mean, not really, but sort of. Like this Ford King Cobra. You can see the thinking. “What sexy animal and WE put on a car hood? But snakes don’t have big wings like the firebird so we’ll er…ah…just make some swoopy shapes to fill up the hood sorta like the bird.”

[Pic]

Yeah, i cannot support such unoriginality. I mean those Pontiac designers had to have some balls to suggest putting a giant phoenix sticker on the hood of an already visually impressive car. (Although the first decals didn’t fly with then GM VP Bill Mitchell who upon seeing a mock up said something to the effect of “get that god damned indian blanket off the hood.”) [source article]

What’s weird to me though is how when I told people i wanted a vintage Trams Am all I’d get was “Are u crazy you can never maintain those American cars won’t hold up  you’ll get horrible gas millage you can’t park it anywhere you’ll never get parts for it what are you going to do with you other car have two cars o you’re crazy use it as you’re daily car no way are you sure you can fit in it u don’t know what you’re doing you’ll regret it.”

To which i respond, “since when did anything hot and sexy EVER involve practicality?” Leather, smoking, vinyl, high heels, fast cars, piercings, spandex, tattoos, large boobs, tans, corsets, cage fights, (feel free to add to the list). Practicality does not feature in any of these sexy things, vintage muscle cars included. If i wanted to be practical i’d get a Honda FIT. BUT A HONDA FIT IS NOT SEXY.

And now that i have this car I get the kooky other end of thinking from people, “Dude you gotta park that thing in a garage for like 30 years don’t ever drive it keep it out of the sun blah blah blah.” Why on earth would i not drive the thing i want to drive? So it’ll be worth thousands more in a decade? And then what? Sell it? No. The point was I WANT TO DRIVE THIS HOT TRANS AM. NOW. Because I’m alive NOW.

So i’ve been driving it around for a few days and didn’t feel it was getting the attention it deserved so last night i took it to Jumbo’s Clown Room which is not a kind of bounce house you get for your kid’s party but a girls on poles kind of bounce house AND THEY GOT IT. I even pulled that “keep it in front” line with the valet – AND HE DID. So the bouncer and strippers on break out front were all “Oh man that car’s the shit sweet ride so hot dooood can you tip me that car  just drive it right up on stage.” And i love that it’s the single gay guy who brings the hot ride to the strip club.

And those girls have skilz. That smacking your heels together trick is hot. But it’s so wierd that you toss dollars on stage instead of slipping it in their garter – so gross to have to crawl around the stage to pick up your bills. Must be a NO TOUCHING rule or something. Anywho, i left with some straight people, one fellow, his wife, and two other ladies, and went back to their place and then he brings out his own stripper pole and puts it up in the living room. That’s how i know those girls have skills cause i couldn’t do anything on that pole. And then they made some Trader Joes mini quiches in the oven.

Richard Woods at Perry Rubenstein is very Todd Oldham.

Yayoi Kusama’s big pumpkins at Gagosian. Her infinity reflection candle chamber was in the back but NO PHOTOS PLEASE.

Mary Boone’s ceiling was most impressive.

Comme des Garcons’ runway portal to the high-priced fashion dimension.

The lawyers that used to occupy what is now Todd Oldham’s studio are still on the door.

More.

“PARTY MONSTER” Closing Party 8pm – 2808 Elm St, LA CA, 90065

We’ll have SNOW CONE COCKTAILS again – will u be there? I hope so!

Details and more at JustinJorgensen.com

From Saturday night. There will be a closing party too if you missed the opening – (probably April 3rd). There’s an interview with me in Hi Fructose about the show here. I’m exhausted. There will also be a closing party Friday April 3 8-11.

The piece is here. This is an unrelated photo of me covering my mustache with a mustache with a mustache.

I half expected this memoir about a contemporary art curator to be dry, academic, and full of art world nonsense I was supposed to accept. But given the cover photo was of the author, Marcia Tucker, on a motorcycle in the desert. How stuffy could she be? Turns out, not at all.

In 1968, during an interview for the position of curator at the Whitney, after enduring too many sexist questions, she responds with a rant about why they shouldn’t hire a woman. “…once a month I’ll go crazy and no one will be able to reason with me,…and of course I’ll get pregnant within the year so your investment in me will have been completely wasted.” Regardless, she’s hired as the museum’s first female curator.

Years later she’d start The New Museum, which is an amazing accomplishment. I can’t imagine thinking, “You know, I have no money and no property, but I want to start a major contemporary art museum in New York City.” AND THEN DO IT.

I appreciated her constant challenging and questioning the status quo of everything related to art, museums, and running a non-profit. Genius example: Asking her 10  year-old daughter to write a guide for the show “Bad Girls” a show so controversial the NEA demanded their name be taken off it.

And then, after 20 years of curating shows at one of the most well respected contemporary art museums in the world, at 60, she starts taking classes in stand up comedy, loves them, and starts performing. Show me another art curator/stand up comic. This was a woman who lived passionately. Totally sucks that she died two years ago. I hate hearing about great people who just left the party.

When it opened in the middle of the French countryside in 1990 it looked like this:

It contained a theater, a restaurant, and lots of displays of what would become Disneyland Paris.

The Robert A. M. Stern monograph Buildings says, “…when the building was new it literally stopped traffic. Once the theme park was opened, the facade was painted over and the [prefabricated buildings] were used for other purposes.”

Ah yes. I’d say so. Here it is in 2008:

More pictures of its abandoned state here.

And how the interior looked in 1990.

Being I adore abandoned sites, Disney parks, and graffiti – finding this was like early Christmas for me. Thanks to Le Parc-o-rama blog for the tip.

There’s also an unfinished/abandoned Disney resort in Florida. There’s great video of it here.

I couldn’t easily find any info about William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Dante And Virgil In Hell but I’m enjoying it!

The top image is a detail of a painting by for the Disneyland Paris Adventureland by Dan Goozee circa 1990. Below is “The Fountain of the Skull,” by Chiho Aoshima, 2007.

When I’m done it should look like this Photoshoped mock-up:

and here is the Monday afternoon reality: