Amazon Prime delivery van in West Acton. Photograph by David Hawgood, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Going Once: A Memoir of Art, Society, and Charity
by Robert Woolley
★★★☆☆
A Bygone Era in Auctioneering
January 5, 2005
I feel sorry for the people who came to him during one of Sotheby’s Antiques Roadshow–style days, for he was withering when confronted with the junk people offered him off of Aunt Tillie’s mantelpiece. He is fairly fearless when it comes to painting a portrait of himself as the ultimate New York society queen. Poor guy died of AIDS not long after this book was published, and I still find it enjoyable. It seems as though a lot of Sotheby’s secrets went to the grave with him, for he certainly knew where most of the bodies were buried. His account of the Andy Warhol estate auction is mind boggling, so you will forgive him his gaucheries and his nonstop bitchiness. Another good story is how he auctioned off (for charity) the services of David Hockney, who volunteered to paint your swimming pool, and how the film producer Lester Persky had to be shamed into bidding for what was on the face of it an incredible bargain. We all love auction stories, for they remind us that maybe someday we will find a bargain worth bragging about, whether in the world of the decorative and visual arts, or in romance, as I did when I married my present wife.
Wood Diner Birdhouse
by Meadow Creek Trading
★★★★★
And All You Have to Do Is Provide the Seed!
January 6, 2005
The Diner Birdhouse is one of those products you wish you would have thought of, for how cute is it to have a diner setup for birds that dispenses birdseed round the clock?
As the sign says outside, “Open 24 Hours”! Many fine birdhouses were available to us, but this is the one we chose. My grandmother owned an actual diner, in Jamaica, Queens, and we put this up on our pole to honor her memory and to remember all the delicious ways she served up humble people food. Comes with hand-painted medallions and accoutrements, including picnic tables lining the diner frontage, with gay red-and-white-checked picnic tablecloths for that festive summer effect. But this is one birdhouse that looks grand with snow capping its roof too. Just make sure to keep the door open for birds looking for a quick bite, or maybe just to get in out of the cold for a spell.
The things you do for these birds, after all, you do for Saint Francis, who loved his feathered friends as he loved the moon and the sun.
Check out the merry silhouettes of the customers manning the booths inside the diner, you can spot them eating right through the painted windows.
“Shakes … Hamburgers … Welcome”!
Darwin the Wizard Marionette (Created by Artist Daniel Oates)
by Bozart Toys
★★★★★
I Love This Puppet
February 9, 2005
Puppets and marionettes make even the oldest of grown-ups into children. No one knows this fact of life better than master creator Daniel Oates, the renowned artist. I bought Darwin on a whim, wanting to produce some magic spells to get myself a raise at work. I figured with all the kids bragging about how Oates’s four-string system made his marionettes impossible to tangle that even I could manage to take him out of the box. I liked what I saw and went ahead and ordered the whole lot of Oates’s magical “dolls”—all of them boasting names that begin, like his, with the letter D.
There’s a wonderful full-size puppet theater you can buy with shifting backdrops of medieval scenes. It’s a little like Shrek come to life. The lovely Princess Destiny, her fuchsia hair almost silvery in the moonlight of San Francisco, is guarded by her knight, Sir Dorric. The strange and weird oversized raven, Dave, caws out a greeting to any who come to my apartment in the Mission. Dexter the Jester will tell a few jokes and mouth some warped wisdom, like the fool in King Lear. The extravagant unicorn, Delilah, loves Princess Destiny and will often approach her to try to tease some barley sugar out of her long, elegant, fingertipped hand. As you ring the doorbell of the moat, watch out for Dunstan, the playful dragon. He’ll breathe fire all over you if you don’t watch out. In this way my medieval fantasies go unchecked, thanks to the mastery of the one and one Daniel Oates.
From Selected Amazon Reviews, to be published by Semiotext(e) this month.
Kevin Killian (1952–2019) was a San Francisco–based poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, editor, artist, and critic whose reviews appeared in Art in America, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, and elsewhere. He was a core participant in the New Narrative writing circle and coedited Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative 1977–1997 with his wife, Dodie Bellamy.
