“I have been to Hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful.”

Anne says that people in Portsmouth are more comfortable really being themselves, really being eccentric, than the people where she grew up in Mississippi. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can see why she said that. I’m pretty sure she said that when we were scouting, right before our shoot. Ronnie Richards had just taught us how to set a snare trap for a fox. When we pulled up he came out into the driveway and hustled us into his little trapping hut, where he was smoking a pipe and burning wood in a stove. Outside on the picnic table there was a frozen beaver body lying fully intact with its skins off and its four little teeth sticking out.

The rest of Liza’s post about Circus School, one of her recent film projects, is up at the Wexner Center’s blog. This is the first in an ongoing series.

Actually my make-up was wind-swept and tear-stained already after being WHIPPED FROM PILLAR TO POST (OMG -What do you think that aphorism is referencing?) by that asshole Jack Frost when I was walking home from my shrink appointment, but DON’T EXPECT COMPLETE TRUTH in this blog and if you’ve got a problem with run-on sentences SCRAM while you have the chance because I may be a big fan of Joan Didion but I AIN’T HER. Got it?

Update: The blog has migrated to justinbond.com.

Installation view of Chris Larson’s Pause (The Dukes of Hazzard ’69 Charger and Ted Kaczynski’s Montana Refuge), 2004

Links to recent reviews: a Mel Brooks biography and Don Rickles’ memoir in the New York Times Book Review; Rebecca Solnit’s essay collection, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, in Bookforum‘s summer issue; and Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero in the latest Time Out New York.

Debbie Harry and the Muppets

• Little Annie (aka Annie Anxiety aka Annie Bandez) and friends will be at Mo Pitkins every Saturday in December.
• Visual AIDS hosts a preview party for World AIDS Day tomorrow, Dec. 1, followed by the Postcards from the Edge benefit on Dec. 2 and 3: “the most exciting and affordable way to build a collection of work by internationally renowned artists, as well as young and emerging artists, all works are sold on a first-come, first-served basis.”
• Liza Johnson interviews Dana Spiotta at The Believer.
• Robert Altman roundup at The High Hat. (via Maud Newton)
• Adele Horne‘s The Tailenders is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.

Could’ve been the train delays or the general late-night stupor, but it wasn’t long before I swore I could see the screaming pope in the water stains above the Brooklyn-bound F platform at the Broadway-Lafayette station.

Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Francis Bacon

Norman Paris’s installation consisted of multiple Michael Jordans leaping and reaching and stretching to intercept “Fat Man” bombs dropping from the ceiling. To have heroes. To be saved. Over the past week, I’ve been thinking about those half-size basketball stars jumping and soaring and the exuberant hope they offered. And I’ve been thinking about the despairing fact of these two numbers: There were 24 bombs. But only 23 Michael Jordans.

Hurricane Disaster Relief: American Red Cross

Photos by James G. Mundie