R Moses; the 2 Rs; ripping; he's only just asking for some ice cream

They’re pushing Robert Moses like crazy these days. There’s a three-part exhibit around NYC, and there’s much discussing of whether the man was the antichrist or the second coming. Few people think he was anywhere in between. Much is made whether the festivities will or won’t include Robert Caro, given that Caro’s gorilla-in-the-room is of the antichrist persuasion. (The Caro Moses book—the gorilla—has been on the recommended list over at the right since the list began, of course. It’s one of the best biographies ever written.) If you have any interest in 20th century architectural modernism, you’ve got to get yourself into Manhattan, my chou-fleur. I’m thinking the Museum of the City of New York as the prime spot. Of course, if you paddle out to Queens you get to also see the refurbished NYC diorama plus all the great World’s Fair displays. Hell, see all three exhibits. It won’t hurt you.

Pajamas Wexler has sent me an offering for the Young Galoot reading list, which I’ll add today. It’s about Theodore Roosevelt and jungle exploration and the like. TR is another one of those very interesting people I like knowing about; for some reason we’ve done a whole scad of TR books at my day job and I feel quite intimate with old Teedie and Alice and company. Of course, while I find TR interesting, I find remote cousin FDR way up on the interest par with folks like TJ: I can read about him endlessly because he’s so complicated and interesting and, dare I say it, historically essential. You can get your mind around TR, but FDR keeps flying from one cortex to the other like a renegade jumping bean. I like that in an icon.

A note to Mac users: Why didn’t you tell me about Handbrake, you dogs? The old MegaPod is now ingesting the history of Broadway (I mean that literally, as a rip takes half a day), and will soon add all manner of other documentary stuff I’ve been meaning to watch but never get around to. Now I can never get around to it on my iPod. This is a major technological advance.

I was reading about Munch last night. The gist was that the old Norseman was, in a word, a really lousy painter. There was a suggestion that his Dutch contemporary, old One-Ear, wasn’t such a great draftsman either. Thoughts like that add a whole new Mad-Magazine wrinkle to art analysis. I mean, maybe Pollack was just…sloppy. Maybe all those Smithson piles of dirt and glass and rocks are actually just piles of dirt and glass and rocks. Maybe Andy was just working on spec for Brillo and suggesting that they’d make more money if their boxes were bigger. Whatever. (Andy and Brillo is an important subject. We’ll get around to that soon enough.) Meanwhile, this weekend we all congregate at Newark at their new school, which I gather is a dandy. I’m looking forward to it. The MHL is probably in its own venue, but I gather it’s immediately nearby. The last MHL of the year… We all breathe a collective sigh of relief.