Art @ South Street Seaport

South Street Seaport, a tourist destination in Lower Manhattan, is admittedly a Disneyland eyesore, but beyond the scores of family restaurants and retail (chain) clothing shops, visitors can find pockets of art worth seeing.

@SEAPORT, located at 133 Beekman, is formerly the Liz Claiborne store and has recently been transformed into a unique, two-story gallery space. It currently houses Human Resources, a multimedia exhibition held as part of LMCC's Out of Site series. The show features the work of 13 LMCC resident artists who, through their art, reflect on human interactions and respond to working in downtown Manhattan. The pieces range from photography to interactive media and unexpected forms of projected video. A lunchroom table, reminiscent of the kind we all sat on in grade school, sits in the center of the main floor.

New Yorkers should consider making the trek to Lower Manhattan to view this show and help promote art in this sometimes artless area. Tourists who are pressed for time can skip the overpriced Bodies exhibition across the street.

@SEAPORT
133 Beekman Street at Front Street
Through Feb. 3, 2008

Election Results

Jim Rice got robbed today - losing out in the latest Hall of Fame ballot by just 16 votes. 2009 is his last chance before being sent off to the Veterans Committee. For the record, he hit a lot of HR's, here he is hitting his 199th and 200th home runs at Fenway in 1988. Among his many career accomplishments, Rice batted .298 for his career, hit 382 home runs, and grappled with the Green Monster in left field day after day. In the late 70s he almost strung together three straight seasons with 40-plus homers. Plus, he wore a cooler mustache than just about anybody. Next year baseball writers must do the right thing.

Our Place in Cairo

An excited phone call this week from one of our longtime sources in Portland, Maine alerted us to an item in in the latest issue of The New Yorker, which we couldn't miss - a poem entitled Cairo, N.Y. It was a delightful surprise to the Am/Mex team, who owns a house in the said little town located on the northernmost side of the Catskills. Read on...

Cairo, N.Y.

by Cornelius Eady

The town near our house
Isn’t fancy, but it is ripe.
At present, it is still on
The wrong side of
The Hudson River,

But there’s potential.
What happened
In Woodstock,
What happened
In Red Hook,
What’s happening
In Catskill,

Could easily
Happen here.

Our streets are sad
In the way our bodies
Are sad as we
Dream of our
Beautiful selves,

Floating, light,
Light-filled,
Transcendent.

How could anyone
Have missed or
Overlooked us,

Even with our
Bad haircuts,
Our paunchy clothes,
Our gin-mill
Mouths?

One day
Some car drives by
And the rich folk
Who hunt for
Cut-rate rubies
Slow down,

And here we are,
They think,
All ready to be
Scrubbed.

Solidarity Beards?

It was a hirsute late night return for Conan and Dave. The popular wisdom is that Conan, Leno and Kimmel were "forced" back to work by their employers (while Letterman's production company Worldwide Pants inked its own side deal). Am/Mex finds that hard to believe, but if so, why can't the AMPTP force the TV and screenwriters back to work? Stupid question, right? So again, why would the WGA sign a side deal to benefit just a dozen writers? Please comment and for now we'll skip over the serious stuff and instead direct you to the funniest thing "written and produced" so far during the strike - watch Stir Crazy, inspired by the movie The Shining.