The Wit of the Staircase

Best Ever Kate Moss Photo Set

By great young photographer Ryan McGinley.

Link: Kate Moss by Ryan McGinley - tinyvices.com.

Thanks to Ben for the link.

Sicko! (Give 'Em Hell Harvey!)

Harvey Weinstein says the United States is trying to seize Michael Moore's new film on the U.S. Healthcare industry. Entitled Sicko, the film is premiering at Cannes this week.

"According to Weinstein, the US Treasury's moves meant 'we had to fly the movie to another country'- he would not say to where. 'Let the secret service find that out - though this is the same country that thought there were weapons of mass destruction, so they'll never find it.' He added that he feared that if the film were impounded, there might be attempts to cut some footage, in particular the last 20 minutes, which related to a trip to Cuba. This, said Weinstein, 'would not be good.'

In March, Moore travelled to the Caribbean island with a group of emergency workers from New York's Ground Zero to see whether they would receive better care under the Castro regime than they had under George Bush. He had applied for permission to travel in October 2006 and received no reply.

In a letter dated May 2, the treasury department notified Moore that it was investigating him for unlicensed travel to Cuba, or, as the missive put it, engaging in 'travel-related transactions involving Cuba'."

Link: US government trying to seize new Michael Moore film, says producer | Features | Guardian Unlimited Film.

Oh, Good Morning

The members of the Los Angeles Lunar Society are resting this a.m. after several enthusiastic evenings of New York nightlife. I'll be posting again around midday. [Fluffs pillow] Now if you'll excuse us....

Mean As Hell

"I don't know her name or when this photo was taken. Family lore says that she was mean as hell, though, and that she carried a .45 on her hip until the day she died. She was Irish and Choctaw. When her son, my grandfather, killed a white man in self defense and was being hunted she had the white side of her family hide him until she could get enough cash together to sneak him up north."

Link: Vintage Photographs.

Stories Read In Childhood

"The stories we read in childhood have a potency that cannot be destroyed, not even by the nostalgia which is normally the most powerful disinfectant known to man."

--Dennis Potter in New Statesman, 10 November 1972

Via: Professor Hex.

Above, Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid saves her drowning sailor.

Napoleon's Penis, Lincoln's Bloodstains

"THE owner of Napoleon’s penis died last Thursday in Englewood, N.J. John K. Lattimer, who’d been a Columbia University professor and a collector of military (and some macabre) relics, also possessed Lincoln’s blood-stained collar and Hermann Göring’s cyanide ampoule. But the penis, which supposedly had been severed by a priest who administered last rites to Napoleon and overstepped clerical boundaries, stood out (sorry) from the professor’s collection of medieval armor, Civil War rifles and Hitler drawings."

Link: Collect-Me-Nots - New York Times

Jerry Saltz And Roberta Smith, The Toast Of Vichy France

One of our more urbane friends arrived at Castle Wit the other night to share a snifter with us, and also the news that some Quisling had been spraying crumbs at a Rothschild-financed art world dinner table to the tune of New York Times art critic Roberta Smith and her creepy microcephalic critic husband Jerry Saltz having the art world "locked up."

Now "locking things up" would be a strange ambition for a contemporary art critic anywhere, except of course occupied New York City in 2007. The odd and continuing saga of their vampirish interest in promoting the careers of masochistically available female art students aside, their perhaps unwitting but nonetheless enthusiastic recent participation in an actual Right Wing CIA op in the art world (see "Trouble with Gaskell" below) points to an even deeper engagement with invisible systems of manipulation and control that even we of Wit ever suspected.

That Jerry Saltz recently took a job at New York magazine--the only magazine that can manage to make the most exciting city in the world seem like Seattle--may be the clue that finally reveals the mysterious longevity of the hateful duo as the result of a Bush White House-financed Black Op.

We of Wit were completely prepared to finger them here as the charmless bureacratic tools of Operation Mockingbird, but alas, the creepy twosome have never evidenced any loyalty to anything other than their own zombie-like continuation past their Totally Awesome Eighties expiration dates.

Therefore, in the interest of liberty, the Wit Of The Staircase War Council invites all gallerists and artists (it's too late for curators, we're afraid) to snub, ignore, insult, refuse review illustrations to, and otherwise hinder each of the operatives until they and their reactionary influence are driven from our midst.

Do it for yourself, do it for the kids, do it to free things up and not lock them down.

Down with Smith and Saltz. U.S.A. Out Of N.Y.C.!!

Link: Operation Mockingbird - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The More I Looked, The More I Saw: Freemasonic Patterns Discovered In Glasgow Necropolis

"Conspiracy theorists see them everywhere, from the paintings of Da Vinci to the humble dollar bill. Real or imagined, the symbols of Freemasonry through the ages have beguiled and tantalised.

Now their biggest secret may have been exposed in the heart of Scotland's biggest city...."

Link: The Herald : News: HEADLINE NEWS.

Flickr Nosebleed Photo Stream

Link: bleeding nose on Flickr - Photo Sharing!.

Wit Of The Staircase, 3AM

When you are here, bring back your light towards the inside.
Enlighten the surroundings.
Open your hands and refuse nothing.

--Fuyo Dokai

Link: whiskey river.