Wry On The Rocks

     It’s been 35 years since I was in the Mary Boone gallery in New York City, but I was pleased to read in the Times today that she is still a premier promoter of sham in the world of “modern art.”  I thought it impossible to top her promotion of Julian Schnabel, creator of some of the ugliest “art” ever to disgrace a wall, but she has.

     Her latest exhibit features a giant pile of salt which “artist” Terence Koh slowly circles on his knees for 8 hours.  This is the same guy that uses his own (hopefully) semen  to create paintings, covers his own (again,hopefully) excrement with gold leaf ( didn’t Damien Hirst tradmark that sort of thing) and set a blinding light on a tripod in an empty gallery at the Whitney.

     The fact that Mr. Koh is not laughed out of town simply proves that the New York and London art circles are governed by sycophantic critics too myopic to recognize the emperor has no clothes.  Ms. Boone must laugh all the way to the bank.

     The Boston MBTA in looking for a sub-contractor to help in the construction of 20 new commuter rail locomotives has awarded a contract to those wonderful folks who brought us the big dig…Parsons Brinckerhoff.  Despite several billion dollars of overruns, death of a driver from a faulty ceiling and a 400 million dollar settlement for poor oversight of the project, PB was awarded an 8.7 million dollar contract for the new MBTA project.

     In a separate announcement it was disclosed that the MBTA had also awarded a 20.3 million dollar contract to Toyota to oversee the engineering of the locomotives brake system.

     I don’t think Donald Trump should be waiting for any invitation to the next Feminist event.  The Donald made a strong bid for the divorced men’s vote at the annual conference of the Conservative Political Action Committee this week.  During his speech he outlined several personal views that seemed to contradict his positions just a few years ago.  For example, he now claims to be an anti-abortionist supporter as opposed to his former pro-life stance.

     When confronted with this contradiction, his spokesperson lawyer dismissed any problem this might cause by stating that, “People change their position all the time, the way the change their wives.”

     Does this mean that if he goes back to being a pro-lifer, he has to re-marry his former wife?  And which one??

     Just when I thought that Tuula Paajanen came up with the most obvious “duh” statement of the year, here comes Melanie Dove of the Harvard School of Public Health.  Ms. Dove was the lead author in their study of the effects of cigarette smoke on young children.

     After an arduous study of over 11,000 children in the US, Ms. Dove’s report concluded that children who live in non-smoking homes are much less likely to experience second-hand smoke than those children in homes where parents smoked. 

    At what point, I have to ask, did the researchers realize that this might not be quite as useful information as they had hoped.  Did they think maybe another 11,000 children might lead to a different conclusion??

Best sub-headline of the Boston Globe this week…”Obama’s aunt is granted asylum…critics contend politics played role in decision!”   Do you think??

Neither the President or his spokesperson had any comment on the decision in favor of his aunt, Zeituni Onyango, who has been living illegally in the US since 2000.