“That won’t work, it will not get you far in Los Angeles. THAT is not an LA car” the art dealer prophesied, pointing at the Legman’s Ford Taurus outside a Williamsburg gallery when we announced our bailing the Big Bagel. His words were driven home each day since. From dirty stare downs at reds from blond air heads to comments from valets (this at the Beverly Hills Hotel “Are you, like, STAYING here?”) nowhere in this car nut town did we see the respect our NYP tagged HuMPT (highly mobile multi purpose Taurus) drew parked on Bronx sidewalks, sans hub caps 5-O style, across 2000 crime scenes. Over 10 years of duty, shotgun and bottle of Beam beneath our seat, the Bull which traversed the nation twice, hit all five boroughs in a single day chasing stories for a major metropolitan newspaper, braved subzero trips to Montreal, and on 9/11 barrelled down the West Side in a state trooper convoy to ground zero at 90mph, has been impounded by LAPD sanctioned tow pirates.

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We’re catching up on the blur that was the past two weeks, and cut off from the company supply cabinet as we are, that means sorting the loose scraps and cocktail napkins accounting for our meandering across LA’s cityscape. Top of the pile here is a Miller coaster with notes from last night’s opening of LA punk photos circa 1978 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery which was nothing but brilliant boozy illuminating fun. That’s because of our chat with Ruby Ray, the co-founder of San Francisco based Re/Search Mag who captured an iconic image of William Burroughs back in the day. “I had to get a lawyer to file a cease and desist. I’m living in poverty and they’re using my work” Ray told the Legman, rankled about her pic of the Naked Lunch author wielding an automatic-Walther Polizeipistole Kriminellmodell?- being ubiquitously splattered on t-shirts.

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The man who was Hipster-In-chief

Artists, idealists, genuine cultural producers just don’t mesh with the worker bee world of cover your ass/ do as little as possible without getting caught/risk management; immersed in all that square shit they are simply out of their element. Case in point: Yosi Sergant, the LA publicist who coordinated a youth-centric arts front for the Obama election campaign, attached the word “Hope” to a poster, then rewarded with a White House appointment to the National Endowment for the Arts famously fell as canon fodder to Glen Beck et al. Sergant is back in LA and for the first time since his conference call fired up right wing haters he’s spoken out in a comprehensive overview of his ascension-and getting thrown under the bus-today on
USC blog Neon Tommy.

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February 3, 2010 - Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Last night’s opening at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills was proof there is an Art World, as distinct from reality as that dimension we call the Twilight Zone. No recession specials here among the municipal scaled bronze works. And you’d never know the pawn shop on Wilshire was doing record business if you just touched down for the evening, enveloped as we were by an acre of designer duds and flowing Absolute, to see the “Black Totem” sculptures of Herb Alpert. Yes, Tijuana Brass Herb Alpert; the trumpeter, composer, arranger, songwriter, record producer, philanthropist, and vocalist is also a painter and sculptor. His dozen towering, darkly patinated bronze works arrayed across the massive gallery space are well worth seeing without the crowd.

In a continuation of what the LA Times noted as last year’s trend of art world resizing in LA, Billy Shire Fine Arts is shuttering. The Culver City gallery’s show of British artist Dave McKean’s works inspired by silent cinema opening February 13th will be the last before the gallery moves exhibitions to La Luz de Jesus. That space, entering its 24th year has been newly renovated and expanded inside WACKO, the Hollywood kitsch and pop culture emporium where, when Michael Jackson showed up, gallery goers and shoppers were forced to flee. Two weeks before his death/homicide “we got a call he was coming and we announced that there was a fire, so he could shop alone” an employee told the Legman. Jackson then left with a basket of comic book noveltygags, like candy cigarettes and a little smoking dog.      

We still don’t know what to make of LA’s Downtown Art Walk, part art school spectacle, part drunken Mardi Gras but it gets us out of Hollywood for an evening. And last night as we were going to throw in the towel and head to King Eddy joining the company of men who’ve given up on life, we stopped into ARTY Gallery to find Len(Leonardo)Aaron, 94, sitting among his ingratiating drip and splatter canvases all in very familiar looking frames. Turns out the painter is one of the founder’s of Aaron Brothers Art-Marts, California’s ubiquitous discount frame shops. He looks us over saying “you must be an artist. You have to look a little crazy to be an artist.” Most profound words we’d heard all night, so we elicited more from the man.

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First , we’re inspired by the art vandal surprisingly missing from the ubiquitous lists of the decade’s influencers, Banksy, who advised”….leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.”  Second, the Legman will never, ever under any circumstance- stone cold broke as we may be and baited by a damn coupon- touch another  McDonald’s, Burger King, or any fast food burger as they have all -with the US government’s blessing-taken to adulterating their shit sandwiches with AMMONIA.

The plan is to hit the gym then immediately begin drinking and thus hasten the end of this shit year. Not as ambitious as the new year plans of a Brooklyn gallery looking to fly the Palestinians to the moon. Jack the Pelican Presents-one of the 100 most influential galleries in the world-opens 2010 showing Larissa Sansour’s video A Space Exodus with her installation of Lego Storm Trooper evoking “Palistinauts.” This isn’t the gallery’s first foray into cultural diplomacy. A 2005 show Sleeping With the Enemy had gay Israeli artists Gil and Moti dating dozens of NYC Arab men and choosing one to seduce, with the idea that their tryst take place at the gallery. All to end Arab-Israeli hostilities.
Larissa Sansour at Jack the Pelican January 8 - February 7, 2010
Opening: Friday, Sept 8, 7-–9pm 487 Driggs Ave, bet N. 9 and N. 10

LA’s Dirty Noodle Eater got a nod from Anthony Bourdain in today’s New York Times, where in an overview of the decade we’re leaving the traveling tv chef writes “The brilliant, pioneering work of LA Weekly’s Jonathan Gold was honored with a Pulitzer Prize, the first time for a food writer — and this, surely, was a Very Important Moment…” Being ever critical implies selectivity in our book. A man who will eat any god damn thing is a novelty, not a connoisseur.

King Kong vs. Moby Dick (detail) by Michael X. Rose