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Grey Goose bar by Pure Sang, Brussels, Belgium « archiDE.

Interior Design by Tobias Rehberger.

http://www.jeanpaulgaultier.com/

via PRIVATE.

It’s where I’m staying now. Built in 1908 as a lodging house for sailors, it later housed survivors from the Titanic (who held a memorial here). The standard room is 50 sq ft (as they were when they were built) @ $100 a night with shared bathrooms. Larger rooms are available. The location is great – on the water – 2 blocks from the high line park. Great bar and restaurant in the building. And free wifi. AND it’s creepy and chic.

UPDATE: Now with more dead people. Just 7 months ago a tenant died in (probably) the room next to mine. Hard to tell in the photo if it’s 542 or 342. I would think 342 because they’re be more likely to book the lower  floor rooms first – and it was October, the off season when this happened. That would explain why the area around my door, 340, REEKED of air fresheners.

Although I’ve been described as animated, I am not a cartoon. Yet over the years I’ve seen and sympathized with the struggle of the inked and painted – every day, finding yourself drawn into another situation: Your robot maid malfunctions, your pet dinosaur runs away, an evil wizard is out to eat you. Your relationships don’t grow, your waist won’t shrink, and it seems you’re always wearing the same thing. You feel stuck in a rut and powerless over your own life.

Now what if I said rearranging your furniture will change all that?

Sound crazy?  Well, say hello to the new ancient Chinese art of feng shui.

This is the introduction to a book I pitched that will likely never get made so I’m putting some of the pages here. The concept was obvious – apply feng shui principles to fictitious 2-D environments = funny. And i thought it’d be fun to render modern cartoon characters’ homes in an old Chinese woodblock print style.

But there’s always more going on. My other book, Obscene Interiors, makes fun of the decorating found in online male personal ads – but it’s really about how current ideas of masculinity are in contrast to the entire concept of decorating, and how men struggle with this. (I won’t digress into queer theory here.) Point being – i like my projects’ core to contain a significant issue or concept, which is then presented in an entertaining and appealing format as a means to reach a larger audience. I could have kept Obscene Interiors as just a series of images shown in a gallery – which I did – but it’s audience would have been incredibly limited. By adding the captions and making it entertaining, it became a book that would be seen and enjoyed by thousands of people, without diluting the underlying message. Also, people really do need help decorating.

With Feng Shui for the Cartoon Home, the deeper idea was to consider how when one feels lack of control over their life/world they often turn to supernatural beliefs that offer some explanation – or idea of control – over their destiny. I don’t mean to explain the joke but, if the Simpsons say, used feng shui to fix their problems, and it worked – well – then the show would cease to exist because it wouldn’t be entertaining. (And we’d all be putting a plant in that corner there and getting a raise.)

Anyhoo – this book was pitched to all the publishers that I thought were the best match for it and they all passed. Which I find really lame because it’s a cute book and if SEVEN books on feng shui for cats can get published…   I could have kept pitching this until eventually someone somewhere printed it, but really, I get bored. And I have like a million other ideas I’d rather mover forward on. That’s the weird thing about being creative and getting older – is realizing you will never get to produce all your ideas – not even a fraction of them – so you have to get very selective with what you’re going to spend your time on. This can drive people crazy when they see me walk away from what they see as a perfectly good, profitable idea.

But also, i hate being a salesman. Especially when I’m selling my own product. Self promoters gross me out. I’d rather focus on making the product than selling it. So if you’re not into what i’ve got I don’t push it. I’m into projects where people call ME and say omg we have to do this thing – because those are the projects that always happen.

Very “this is the piece that’ll get me into art school.” Drag queens standing on a black shard. Sharks (a metaphor?). And a primitive Basquiat-inspired demon figure. Shit like this plays well in a crowded BFA portfolio review meeting – “This one’s got the passion, he just needs to focus.” – but after you’re accepted you don’t know what to do with it, and lord knows your parents don’t want it, so you stick it on your wall in a desperate attempt to deny it’s true fate: the thrift store. And it’s there a couple kids will find it and have a great “omg look at this” moment, maybe snap a pic on their cell phone, and then go to lunch without buying it.

Art like this is only acceptable to display if your mother painted it, and that’s what you see when you look at it. Because the rest of us see the most boring and overused image ever. Flowers in an old-world windowsill. And it’s horribly composed and poorly rendered (as this scene so frequently is). But again, if mom painted it it’s great and warm and u can keep it.

I bought this exact same print on a family trip to Laguna Beach when i was 15 or so. I didn’t care about the joke: “Sitting duck” har har. I just liked the chill nature of the duck. I needed any image supporting relaxation to be on my walls at that time.

I really try to be supportive of people being creative. But sometimes it’s really REALLY hard. I mean you have no idea how badly i want to put quotation marks around “creative” here.

Blurry squiggle flowers in a penis vase is a new way to combine two common subjects and secure a purchase from a gay buyer.

Great example of the piece that didn’t get you into art school.  You hang it on your wall in a sour grapes victory. Who needs art school anyway. Theory just turns you gay. I like colors. Immago paint my walls yellow.

20 years later you think about the suckers still paying off their CalArts loans while they work at a brand licensing firm and insisting finding ways to put Dora the Explorer on a toothbrush is “still being creative you know.” You might be working as a bar back and considering charging guys to watch you jack off online but u know that’s still better than Sallie Mae having a $50,000 grip on your ass into middle age. OMG this has nothing to do with what i’m supposed to be talking about. What’s happened to me. I’ve become an LA Weekly film critic.