Category: Columns

  • The Paintings Have Been Drinking (Not Me)

    Travel back with me, if you will for just a moment, to those happy, halcyon days of the year 2001. Oh, what a time to be a young American artist it was! The world waited breathlessly for the final bombshell in Matthew Barney’s Cremaster film cycle to drop (spoiler: Gary Gilmore did it!), and your…

  • What! No Oliver?

    Some years ago I was stranded at Minneapolis-St Paul airport for 24 hours on route from Portland, Oregon back to the UK.  Unfortunately, and admittedly completely unfairly — as I did not see anything of the Twin Cities themselves — I acquired a distinctly jaundiced view of the area, assaulted as I was by the…

  • Let’s Pity-Party!

    A girlfriend of mine just suffered a pretty bad breakup. So I did what I could. I took her out for the Colleen Kruse Pity Party (patent pending). A proper Pity Party begins with the sixty-minute Walk/Cry. I have found that it is best not to talk at all during the Walk/Cry. An hour of…

  • Scratch That One Off

    I love a to-do list. In fact, I am such a master at list-making I can make lists of my lists. I can subdivide errands, chores, and activities ad infinitum. Sometimes I go numerically, by order of importance to my day. For example: 1. Work out 2. Breakfast 3. Phone calls Other times, I mix…

  • White Wine for Men

    It is a pity there’s no reason to believe King Arthur actually existed. True, there was a sixth-century monk called Gildas The Wise who penned a wordy jeremiad that mentions a battle at a place called Mount Badon where the Celtic remnant of Roman Britain stemmed the tsunami of Anglo-Saxon invasion. It is also true…

  • Spaghetti Red and a Seductive Nose

    "Don’t you find," he said, "that there’s a funny taste of chicken coops in Rhone wines? Especially Beaucastel." "Chicken coops?" Was he pulling my leg? "Even the great wines, you know, have a whiff of chicken coops. It’s well known." I offered him a glass of the Beaucastel. I tasted it again, now frantically looking…