The Digest. 01.22.09.

Broken egg. (Photo courtesy of The Old Gold.)

• “Former French President Chirac hospitalized after being mauled by his clinically depressed poodle.” Sounds like somebody needs the Dog Whisperer… Just saying. (Thank you, Todd.)
• New L.A. ordinance wants to treat murals as commercial signage. Isn’t this supposed to be arts month in L.A.? What the hell is this?
• Palestinian-born artist gets unusual wall-text at SFMOMA.
• Culture Grrl thoughtfully opines against the idea of a culture czar in one and two parts. I gotta say, I’m with her. It may seem like a good idea now, especially since everyone is wearing their Barack-colored glasses, but what will it mean if another George W. Bush-type figure comes into power? Spooky.
• Wired has a great profile of MDM Props, the London company that makes product for famous artsy types such as the Chapman Bros., Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor.
• When art falls apart. (Arts Journal.)
• More babies in art.
• Christie’s buyout packages offer an extra week’s pay to executives that agree to not work for Sotheby’s for a year. An extra week? GMAFB.
• Advice from Jim Jarmusch. (Eyebeam reBlog.)
• Yes Pecan! A new flavor from Ben & Jerry’s.
• Rebooting the White House. What will it take for Obama to rewire the gummint?
• Today’s Graff: Pose, Revok and Rime. (What You Write.)
• Speaking of Thom Mayne and Morphosis, here are shots of his Cooper Union building, coming together in NYC.
• Pre-fab paper house weighs 1,700 pounds and costs $5,000. (Eyebeam reBlog.)
• One museum expansion that seems to be, miracle of miracles, moving ahead: Toyo Ito’s Berkeley Art Museum.
• Architectural pancakes.
• If Barack Obama were a building, what building would he be? You can answer the question here.
• Your moment of cock crowing. (laurel43.)