THE LIFE VICARIOUS

We won't recall how we'll be spending our Labor Day weekend.

We're a total geek. One of our favorite late night entertainments was coming home from work at Room4Dessert at 4am and staying up til dawn reading through the DOJ document dumps about the Alberto Gonzales US Attorney firings then posting whatever we found in the comments on Talking Points Memo. It was amazing to find something first, raw data, and not only take part in journalism but doing something, in some small form, to contribute to the betterment of our nation.

So it's with great pleasure we'll be going to Philadelphia this weekend to see The Gonzales Cantata, our first opera of the fall season, premiering at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The show runs Friday through Sunday only and all tickets are $20 which leaves us with plenty of money to eat at Stephen Starr's new Squareburger.

Related:
I was told there'd be yellow cake. (06/05/08)

Kehinde Wiley for the New York Post.

New York's Vulture blog has a nice slideshow of the paintings in artist Kehinde Wiley's new book, Black Light, and our favorite may be the homage to the New York Post. While so many of the paintings feature subjects in easily recognizable pieces (well, to us) of Alife, Billionaire Boys Club, Crooks & Castles, our favorite is the classic New York Post inspired sweatshirt from aNYthing pictured above.

We wonder if Rupert Murdoch buys up these works - and not just Wiley's but Dash Snow's come-stained Posts as well - or is at least proud his papers make it to the level of high art. And it also makes us wonder why newspapers don't collaborate, not with artists, but designers to help save themselves

KAWS channels Kehinde Wiley for Michael Jackson tribute.

On top is a KAWS portrait of Michael Jackson from the new issue of Interview. We love KAWS and the white glove tribute is an ideal fit for the King of Pop but there's just something about this that's so Kehinde Wiley (bottom) we don't know why they didn't ask him instead.

The Last Days of Disco with cocktails at MoMA beforehand...

...is of course a riff on The Last Days of Disco With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, the novel sequel to Whit Stillman's last film. It's also our way of telling you it's being screened as part of the next MoMA Poprally on August 5th. The film will be preceded by a cocktail party and proceeded by a Q&A with Stillman and his underused leading man, Chris Eigeman. And tickets are only $8.

RIP Dash Snow.

It took a lot of talent to know nobody cares if you come on the Daily News.

Live more than vicariously through Jersey City culture.

Bayonne to shake Cablevision, get Comcast, Time Warner like Jersey City? (DHD)
Kanye West's book co-written, inspired by a Jersey City author. (NJ.com)
New Museum of Jersey City industrialization show proves worth a trip. (NYT)

All the food porn from the Banksy vs. Bristol Museum show.

(Just about how every NYC food blog heralds each new midtown food truck.)

Over the 100+ works in the new Banksy exhibition, Banksy vs. Bristol Museum, we found about 15% of them involve food and drink. Since Eat Me Daily already posted on the topic, we thought we'd bring you the full foodie highlights of the show. Among the highlights, cockroaches feasting on still lifes, revisted works from the Village Pet Shop and Charcoal Grill, a Muslim woman in provocative kitchenwear, a gay bishop offering lollipops, a Greek goddess stumbling home after last call, the now infamous burnt out ice cream truck, and children saluting a Tesco bag like a flag.

KAWS listage. Segment reairing on CBS Sunday Morning today.

On the off-chance you're finding our site for the first time after seeing it in the updated KAWS segment on CBS Sunday Morning earlier today - read the story behind our role in said segment here - we thought we'd make it easy for you to find all our past posts on the artist in one place, after the jump.

Like KAWS, Banksy makes shit happen in 2009.

It was just this past year Banksy started to play with his food opening The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill in the West Village. There fish sticks swam, hot dogs were kept warm under heat lamps and chicken nuggets sidled up to a trough of dipping sauce revealing the origins of what we eat. Now? It looks like he's highlighting where it ends up. KAWS did this earlier in the year with the release of his Warm Regards popsicle, vinyl soft serve poop on a stick, based on his 2004 mural, but as pictured above Banksy will take this one step further as he's known to do.

What lies beneath The Smile?

Yesterday we discovered what lies beneath The Smile - the new mixed-use cafe boutique at 26 Bond Street - as we visited Scott Campbell (laboring, left) there in the basement at the new Manhattan branch of Saved Tattoo. Over our time spent under the needle topics ranged from Dan Barber to Tom Waits, mega yachts in Monaco to 19th Century whaling ships but all the best parts are just too good to give up; we're not about to repeat a word of it. If you want to hear those stories, you should suffer yourself, the conversation such a pleasant distraction you won't feel a thing. We'll only say this: He's responsible for the nicest anecdote about Marc Jacobs we've heard maybe ever. And despite his love for tattooing lettering and his talent for laser etching, he's actually not responsible for the custom engraved Laguiole cutlery diners enjoy upstairs.

Need more? Our tattoo's origin and a look inside the cafe's forbidden basement after the jump.