See, I haven’t really paid my (figurative) dues at the station since I exercised my alumni rights and re-joined two years ago. I admit that. So when they stick me with the Country show, I get it. I’m not mad. But we do get bored. I mean, you can’t exactly kill ‘em with that format, you know? We have a broad enough knowledge and some basic views on the genre, definite respect, by all means, but Country just isn’t where we’re at. There’s a limitation to it, a certain ceiling you hit, and the cracks we make are sporadic and short. We love Hank Williams and Merle Haggard and the outlaw fringe, and we try not to slip into corny in the remaining 2 hours.

After alot of back and forth last week I finally made the firm decision to vote for Barack Obama for president of the United States. This was not an easy decision for me as I am 45 years old and have never in my life voted for a major party candidate for president. Why did I make this decision? Basically, it comes down to three factors:race, culture and a series of conversations that I had with my daughter who is incollege and expressing her political opinions quite passionately andarticulately. A little over a year agoshe sent me a link to a clip of Barack Obama, asking me what I thought. Here is the unedited response I gave to herat the time:

In Remembrance of Things Past, as we've all read, the author is able to recall events from the distant past with tremendous sensory detail after tasting a madeleine cake. In Ma Jian's Beijing Coma, a similarly monumental recall is instituted, not by an experience, but by a unique situation. Struck down by a bullet to the head, the protagonist lies comatose in bed, but, while unable to move, communicate or see, he can still think clearly. Being taken care of by his isolated mother, a retired singer, he has little to occupy his mind but memories, particularly of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in which he was one of the leaders, and at which, when the military cracked down, he was shot.

From what I’ve heard, in biennial organizer Dan Cameron’s description and in other reviews, much of the art in this city-wide exhibition will have New Orleans as its subject. This is quite a difference from other biennials, which are often just a collection of the last 2-4 years of Chelsea hits from disparate sources. Instead, this exhibit will feature work made specifically for this site, unveiling the interpretations and reflections on New Orleans of the international contemporary artist. We in the audience will see what they have to say about the place and events surrounding their art.

Out of nowhere, I’d suddenly begun to wear my hair, my unruly curls, pinned in a tight bun. At the same time, I became a fan of a peculiar shade of purple lip gloss and heavy eyeliner. I wore jeans and over-sized shirts with button-down collars, which I bought at the co-op. My uncertain style amounted to a common-law marriage of punk and preppie — but I was neither, I was just another financial-aid student fumbling my way through Yale.

The gallery at A Gathering of the TRIBES is once again staying true to its name as "3 li'l NDNs", a group exhibition, will be their next show opening November 6th. "3 li'l NDNs" features the work of emerging Native American artists Donna Charging, Courtney Leonard, and Dan Loudfoot whose artistic voices are anything but "little" in the realms of the contemporary cultural dialogues that surface in their works. The mediums featured in the gallery are as varied as the conversation where the only true link is the personal indigenous identity they choose to share.

No human spirit, all toughness aside, could withstand watching Trouble the Water without tears of empathy, followed by boiling anger, growing conviction and the commitment to respond. Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, consistently credit this feeling of good will fueled by a desire to help, as what motivated them to race to the gold coast in the aftermath of Katrina. The long time collaborators with Michael Moore had experienced a similar impetus towards action after 9/11. Turning their lens outwards on their own Brooklyn neighborhood, they made The Family Divided, a compelling short about the backlash of racism and unjust deportations which affected many American-Muslims. Determined to react artfully and effectively, Lessin and Deal, armed with their cameras found themselves in New Orleans in search of a story.

Is a Ph.D. in fine art a pre-requisite for the production of sexually offensive, hyper-color, infantile comic book styled corporate clutter? If your name is Takashi Murakami than the answer is, "yes". The self-proclaimed creator of a new art movement entitled Superflat, which refers to what Murakami has defined as the lack of distinction in Japan between high and low art, as the flat space in between. A trend he points to in traditional as well as contemporary Japanese art. According to the artist, “Japanese don't like serious art. But if I can transform cute characters into serious art, they will love my piece.”

The father is long gone to the other sidebut the raspy edge of his laughing echoes through the tunnels of her brain. She is the daughter who can't sleep without dreaming him knocking at the door of her quiet with the story he told.