Tag Archives: holidays

A Scrinch Lurks Deep Inside

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This is a Scrinch. It combines a Scrooge and a Grinch. A Scrooge is miserly and a Grinch is miserable; both are the opposite of the Christmas spirit infusing the web and the world currently.
What does every other website have up right now? Holiday cheer, from photos to kitchen tips. What does this website have up? A Scrinch–his name is Ratter.

With the exception on one highly amusing Christmas party footage on this blog, I have not yet given it over to photos of snow angels. It’s because a little Scrinch lives in the cold cockles of my blog, doling out seriousness and stress rather than merriment. He’s the little voice crying, “Too much to do, must keep working.” He does not yet have the Christmas spirit.

So I hugged the little Scrinch and tried to squeeze him into the Christmas spirit. He cried ‘bah humbug’ and bit my nose. So I stuffed him with fruitcake, but he only burped on me. I rubbed him with mistletoe, and the little bugger sneezed on me with evil glee. ‘Hah!’, Ratter cried.

But it’s a precarious thing for a Scrinch, however unmerry, to live in a blog. I couldn’t get rid of Ratter, and I couldn’t make him feel the Christmas spirit. But I could dress him up and surround him with hearts and elves! Ratter’s been very quiet every since I gave him a present. Gifts soften the meanest little quibbles…

Happy holidays to Ratter and to all a merry Christmas Eve!

Holiday Party Footage

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Well, Reader, you missed a great time at the Art Ravel’s annual holiday party last night. All the greats were there, from Chuckie Baudelaire to that wild Mr. Oscar Wilde. Lord Byron’s lame foot hardly bothered him as he cut a rug. And then a surprise guest came, old Willie Shakespeare!

That’s when the party really got started. Everybody shook their groove things! Now it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas here at Art Ravel’s blog. Check out some of the amazing dance floor footage of the festivities here.

Hint: you really want to click on that link.

‘Tis the Season Already?: Murakami’s Overt Commercialism

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Walking to work on 57th St. in Manhattan, I cross 5th Avenue and with it, a slew of the gorgeous shop windows remind me that the holiday season is upon is. (It’s useless to protest that its not even Thanksgiving yet.) Tiffany’s glistens in a classically elegant way, while Loius Vuitton exuberantly flashes.

If you want to combine art and fashion in your luxury gift giving this year, why not get that special someone a Murakami Loius Vuitton purse. As a purse, I find it beyond tacky, but the artist behind the new and exclusive print is a marketing genius, and his flat pop art tackles Japanimation and kitsch with a flatly sardonic flair.

To the left is Murakami posing in front of some of his flower images. I first became aware of his work during his summer show at the Brooklyn Musuem of Art, where in a unusual gesture a Loius Vuitton botique was installed in the midst of the gallery space. He’s often called Japan’s Andy Warhol, and his flat and colorful images loose some of their big-eyed innocence once once you throw in nuclear disaster and a creepier side to anime figures, like the one below.

If any of you yearn for the old-fashioned days of sweaters and fruitcake, instead of neon-lit luxury goods featuring creepy anime beings, well, you’re not alone.