Friday, May 29, 2026
New Canal Street 2026
Walter Robinson Show @ Jeffery Deitch
Yesterday I wandered into the Walter Robinson Show at Jeffery Deitch on Wooster Street. His paintings had been up for some time. I rarely attended openings. Too many people struggling to be noticed in a crowd of attention seekers. I have never made any money or gotten laid at an art opening. At least not that I can recall. Drunk on cheao white art wine. Hell yeah.
I had some familiarity of the artist's work. His sharp flourish with the brush envikvening the studied banality of his subject; cheeseburgers and TV beauties. Garish without vulgarity. I like the more erotic, but remembered Duncan Hannah's homages to Balthus. The risk of eroticism and sin. Younger not women but girls. Unsettling. Viewing his I felt like a criminal. Not even a naughty voyeur awoke at Deitch. So happy to have seen his work without anyone in the gallery.
Walter Robinson: Let the Music Play May 2–June 6, 2026 18 Wooster Street, New York We may be known for what we do in life, or even for what we do not do, but to measure those things we do, even when we know better not to, is how we truly understand ourselves. That understanding, almost an empathy in Walter Robinson’s (1950-2025) art, is a rare wisdom. Call them guilty pleasures, simple joys or cheap thrills, their superfluous folly is not so much a lapse of judgement but a suspension of it. Perhaps all the indulgences and excesses that constitute our pleasure-economy are bad for us, dulling our wits, slackening our resolve and polluting our body, but to willfully enter this field of numbing distraction, and to stay there vigilantly alert as if before a grander sublimity, is a kind of deviant medicine. Wickedly smart yet struck with a trickster’s lunacy, Robinson channels so much of what is besetting the human condition into a contemplative sensory reverie, harnessing all that clutters our mind into a radically subversive instrument to probe our desires.
To read more please go to https://deitch.com/new-york/exhibitions/walter-robinson-let-the-music-play
White House White Trash
White trash is a derogatory term used by the middle class to describe whites from the other side of the tracks. No one protests this appelation, as if this group of poor whites are spared any consideration of humanity. They jiz poor like everyone else and their ignorance is no worst than anyone else devoted to cat memes on the internet. Hillary called them deplorable for their belief is racism and fascism and support of Donald Trump. Hillary learned in 2016 they thought nothing of her too.
They still kinda despicables, but even them are losing patience with theOrange Messia with his War of Iran. Telling his follwers that We have to stop Iran, as Zion has decided to seize over 70% of Gaza, occupy Lebanon to the Litani River, and allow the Isreali settlers to kick all Palestinians from the West Bank.
There is no stopping his madness or depravity. This morbidly gross dictator has partially destroyed the White House and the ground with plans for a luxury ballroom and a MMA fighting pit. A disgrace, yet people I know buy his bullshit. The inhumanity and I predict there will be no midterm election. He will declared Emergency Powers to rule from his cocaine bedroom.
Everyone upon hearing this say he won't do that.
Obviousle they haven,'t been paying attention. <>
May 30 1992 - Bangkok - Journal
Two mornings ago I was making an overseas call at the phone booth in the Malaysia Hotel. A young bearded man entered the lobby with two young ladies. I had last seen Dice in Kathmandu 1990 after a ten-day trek to Lantang Glacier. Upon departure westward to Europe I had told Dice, if he was ever in Bangkok, then he should stay at the Malaysia Hotel and there was a good chance, if the Hawaiian did I might be there in May. Dice was a no show in 1991, but here he was now and upon seeing me he called out, "Pascha."
My Oriental pseudonym.
Dice was just in from Nepal and a long night at the go-go bars. He was having breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, which offered a restorative American breakfast. The girls were very happy. Thais are always hubgry.
"Then sleep. I'm sending these girls home. They have probably had enough of me. I'll see you later."
We rendezvoused that afternoon at Kenny's Bar on Soi Si Bamphen. We drank Singhas that day, which was my 40th birthday.
After a few beers at Kenny's we told some girls we would be back after dinner and wandered over to the Chandrphen Restaurant, a top-notched Chinese chicken restaurant across from the Lumpini Muay Thai boxing stadium, where we finished off a bottle of small bottle of Mekong whiskey. The waiters invited us to a comedy club. I was drunk enough to allow myself to be dragged on stage by a troop of improvisers. They mocked me, but I grabbed the mike. I have no idea what I said, but I thought it was funny the Thai audience laughed at the farang fool.
Finally I was thrown off the stage gently. Todd said, "You're natural ham."
We were late for the rendezvous at Kenny's and rode a tuktuk over to Patpong. Despite being my birthday I wasn't in the mood for whoring. Maybe Bangkok's wild fun doesn't glitter as wickedly coming from Indonesia, instead of New York. Maybe it's all part my monastic onanism. I had passed through Bangkok three times this trip without bar-fining a single Go-go girl. The old age truck has hit me so hard.
40 and overweight. I don't know how many more years I've got to go. Decades I hope.
No pension plan. No retirement cabin. All I have two written books, a script, thirty or so journals, an East Village apartment, and a crapped out Yamaha 650 on the sidewalk outside on the East 20th Street sidewalk, unless someone had stolen it in my absence.
Of course I also had my fading good looks and by the time I reach California I'm going to be in tip top shape ready for the conquest of the modern world of the West.
As I packed to check out of the Malaysia Hotel, I listened to Velvet Underground on a cassette player. NOTHING AT ALL. I won't be coming back here until next year after working at the Diamond District from September to January. Any possibility of my earning any cash from writing was probably decades away. My typing sucks and my spelling is worse.
Two days ago I had gone down the Victory Square. Hundreds of thousands of young people had been protesting for weeks against the military rule for weeks without any violence. The hometown troops would not shoot their neighbors friends and family. The generals brought in troops from the country. They called the demonstrators communists and gave the order to shoot to kill and the soldiers from Isaan did just that, killing hundreds of their countrymen to prevent democracy. But nightlife in Bangkok stayed the same bastard under the harsh rule of High Society over Low Society.
Today Bangkok remains under martial law.
I'm catching a bus to the South island of Koh Phi Phi. 14 hours overnight.
I wonder when I'll into into Dice again.
Thursday, May 28, 2026
Happy Birthday JFK
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29.
We shared the same birthday.
Along with the comedian Bob Hope.
And Sherpa Tenzing, the Nepali Sherpa mountaineer, who climbed Everest with illary.
In 1453 the Ottoman Turks stormed the walls of Constantinople.
I had nothing to do with that blow to Christendom.
Peace and Love.
Reno Nevada Blackjack May 29, 1974
In 1974 my 21st birthday was spent driving across Nevada with Andy, a pot-smoking pianist, and Carole, a blonde co-ed heading to the West Coast. We had made good time in the rent-away station wagon up to this point and I decided to celebrate my coming of age by gambling at every desert town along I-80. Elko, Winnemucca, Lovelock, and Sparks were generous to my cause. I was up about $1000 from playing blackjack or 21. It was a simple game and I had a good head for numbers as would anyone who had been a math major in college.
Sunset fell over Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World. The first bright lights since Denver. I picked out Harrah’s as my next victim. Before entering the casino I handed Andy my traveling money and $500.
“Don’t give me this no matter what.” I had seen gambling movies. No one came out on top. Carole shook her head. “What’s wrong?”
“If you’re going to play, then play. Never fix a limit.” Carole was a junior at a girl’s college outside Boston. She was studying business. Her advice sounded dangerous.
“I’ll leave the money with Andy.”
I sat at a blackjack table. The dealer was kind. I was up another $500 and felt like I could kill the bank for another $1000. Andy asked me to call it a night.
“We can crash in the Sierras.”
“Another ten minutes and I’ll buy us hotel rooms.” I couldn’t lose and tapped a passing cocktail waitress. She was tall and wearing a very short dress. I ordered a Jack and Coke. My favorite drink. I had several more. I recall something about threatening Andy for money and then nothing until I woke up along the Truckee River. The ground was no soft hotel bed and my hang-over not a crown of victory. Carole and Andy were standing over my resting place.
“Did I lose everything?”
“Everything but the car.” Carole wore an expression of pity. It wasn’t until we reached Sacramento that Andy returned my traveling stake. All my birthday winnings had reverted to the casino. There are no winners and I’ve avoided casinos ever since that day, having learned that blackjack doesn’t mix with Jack and Coke.
It’s a lesson that stays with me. I might not have scored good grades, but I was a good student and Reno was an even better teacher. It was a lesson I only needed to learn once.
