Bukkake at the Shelburne

"Creme Brûlée" by Ivan Alifan (photograph by Hallie Cohen)

“Deserted” (2016) and “Crème Brûlée"(2015) are his and her paintings that are part of "Sweet Tooth: The Art of Dessert" exhibit at the Shelburne Museum, just down the road from Burlington. Both are what in the porn world is known as Bukkake which are facial cum shots employing icing and whip cream imagery with almost classical sexual nuance. There’s nothing new to making an alluring body delicious. Here is what the Russian artist Ivan Alifan has to says about his works: “To have a painting that can exist as an alluring object and shift into an eroticized figure disarms and naturalizes the modern gaze, decriminalizing sex in art. Whether the individual sexualizes the figure, or becomes embarrassed and nervous, by the mere suggestion, this is all a process which occurs independently from the painting, breaking down barriers in the different modes in which the body can exist in social spheres and contemporary art.” When you think about it, it all makes a lot of sense, but then again as Freud putatively said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

The News of Waterbury, VT

Remember Bulle Ogier who played the staring role in the La Salamandre (1971). Alain Tanner directed the John Berger script about a character who has been accused of shooting her uncle and who works in a sausage factory. The sausage factory itself has become a popular metaphor. You’ll never eat the sausage if you go to the factory where it was made. In other words,  “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” You might remember back to the film and the two characters in the narrative, the journalist and the poet who're commissioned to write a screenplay about the mysterious woman at the center of the action the next time you visit the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory in Waterbury, Vermont.  Considering it’s ubiquity Ben and Jerry’s is less an ice cream than a utility and so visiting the factory is one way to get a bird’s eye view of the way many Americans live, at least in terms of how their consumption of ice cream is concerned. Even in the middle of winter the place is packed. In the popular movie, which won an Academy Award, the idea was to determine whether or not a crime had been committed. By visiting Ben and Jerry’s you may get some insight into the origin of your sweet tooth.

The Talk of Milford, CT

If you’re having car problems on 95 and you’re in the Milford area around exit 40, you may want to stop at Dr. Nick’s where they will test drive your vehicle and take a look under the body for no charge. But beware they don’t deal with tires. For that you’ll have to take six minute drive to Firestone. Both Dr. Nick’s and Firestone have nice waiting areas by the way, where you meet people. At Dr. Nick's a truck driver had set up camp while waiting for the fuel pump to be replaced on his Chevy. His father hailed from Rumford, Maine near the White Mountains of New Hampshire and had some French Canadian blood. At Firestone, there was an evangelical preacher who was asking his Siri for the definition of the word “sheaf” from Leviticus. The impresario at Firestone was a bearded chap who looked like a mullah and whose brother-in-law had made money on stock called Nvidia which profits on gaming and AMD, the chip maker. Shades of the Coen Brothers were also apparent in a hyperactive little girl who tripped her mother and whose chainsmoking grandmother didn't put up a fight when her credit card was declared invalid. Within an hour you’re "on the road again" to quote Willy Nelson, taking 91 through Hartford, Springfield to parts unknown.

The Final Solution: Anything Goes

Jack Ruby (c. 1960)

Will Stormy Daniels get any bookings in Puerto Rico after the damage done by her cohort Maria? With a name like that she’s bound to blow into town—just as false rumors about FEMA appear to be bowing out ("A FEMA Error Drove Fears That Food and Water Aid to Puerto Rico Was Ending. It's Not," NYT, 1/31/18). Kierkegaard said “subjectivity is truth.” Is that the equivalent of fake news?  In this era of alternate universes where solipsism has become a political philosophy literally anything can happen. You may not believe the things that you read in the paper or see on TV, but look at it this way, in the infinity of time and space, there’s a mathematical probability that a monkey sitting at a typewriter could eke out the works of Shakespeare or at least the great tragedies, Hamlet, Lear and Othello. So as Cole Porter wrote Anything Goes. But the chances of Stormy Daniels making an appearance in San Juan are actually not even in the realm of false news or alternative universes. Remember Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by the owner of a strip club by the name of Jack Ruby? It doesn’t get any more surreal than that. 

Smiles of a Summer Night

Smiles of a Summer Night is Bergman’s Broadway musical replete with romance and music and self-conscious theatricality. It’s not surprising that it was the inspiration for Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Like Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be the movie, recently revived as part of Film Forum's centennial Bergman retrospective, begins on stage where a magnificent beauty Desiree Armfeldt (Eva Dahlbeck) casts her spell and continues by citing the great works of theater from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Strindberg’s A Dream Play, along with a touch of Lermontov, Goethe's Werther and especially the famous line from Faust  “Die ewig weibliche zeiht uns hinan,” which could easily be the film's credo. But though you will recognize all the familiar Bergman imagery including the cuckoo clock with its haunting carved figures, it barely holds a candle to his more profound works like The Silence, Winter Light and Through a Glass Darkly.  Yes, Bergman is the twentieth century Shakespeare, but he was simply more adept at tragedy than comedy. Smiles of a Summer Night is Bergman light, but the artifice barely contains a character like Fredrik Egerman played by the great Gunnar Bjornstrand whose persona cries out for more than simple comic relief.

Why Are People So Annoying?

Why is everyone so annoying? Dante’s Inferno is constructed with the First Circle occupied by those who have done the least serious offenses and the Ninth by the sinners who are condemned to endure the most perfidious punishments throughout eternity. So let’s deal with a putative Ninth Circle of offenders? Their crimes are usually failures of self-conception. They have no idea how utterly foolish, mediocre and worthless their lives have been and maintain that they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s very hard to be with these folks because they find themselves desirable and attractive when in fact they're repulsive and ugly both inside and out. Only a step or two further down the ladder say in the middle of Hell are those who have committed crimes of exaggeration. You’ve undoubtedly met people who claim they've studied martial arts when they took two senior citizens self-defense classes at their local Y. Not much better than the ones who have a distorted sense of their self-worth are those who're actually successful in everything they do. No sooner do they join the senior citizens self-defense class than they find out they have a penchant for hitting people and go on to win geriatric mixed martial arts tournaments, wailing at all comers in their cages. Someone could do a great service to mankind if this group were simply executed one by one instead of having to waste tax payers' money by being boiled in oil. There isn’t time to go through the list of every objectionable soul, particularly since everyone is obnoxious in his or her own manner. So let’s skip down to the First Circle, composed of those who barely qualify for admission to hell. This group is composed of your average Joe, your grown up version of Alice and Jerry, from the children’s primer, the ones who answer, “I can't complain,” when you ask how they are. The best way to handle someone who makes a trite and irritating statement like this is to give them something to complain about.