• Things you need to know: In Carthage, Missouri, there is a Precious Moments Chapel. And I’m supremely jealous that Chris Albert has been there.
• Mitt Romney was a Soc.
• How Yahoo killed Flickr. (Kottke.)
• Because art made from Google Street View has been beat to death: I’m currently at work on a series of images drawn entirely from TripAdvisor.
• California’s resale royalties act is struck down on the basis that one state’s law cannot govern commerce in another state. (@KellyCrowWSJ.)
• On the new Barnes Foundation: Roberta Smith likes. Christopher Knight, not so much.
• Culture is Collage: Jonathan Lethem’s very interesting 2007 essay in Harper’s explores that very fine line between inspiration and appropriation and the cultural limitations of copyright.
• Related: Joanne McNeil interviews Lethem for Rhizome, in which the author discusses books as physical objects, as well as the issue of appropriation.
• Even more related: Federal judges hear oral arguments in Richard Prince’s appeal of the Cariou v. Prince copyright case. My favorite bit is the defense being used by Prince’s lawyers: “The works’ value and originality, they posited, was proved by the sky-high market for the works.” Thank goodness I wasn’t in the courtroom or I may have been ejected for audibly snort-laughing.
• Pictures by the Prague secret police. (@thebookslut.)
• “We can expect art booms whenever income inequality rises quickly.” Will Brand at Art Fag City has put together an all kinds of essential quote guide that examines the idea of art as investment.
• Related: A talk on income inequality is too hot for TED.
• Think gentrification is light-speed in Brooklyn? Try China.
• Hot Authors. Seriously.
• Narchitecture, Serbian edition: Because nothing says “arms dealer” like a gilded bidet. Not to mention fur and a gun. (Hyperallergic Labs.)
• For the typography nerds: a video game in which you shoot down serifed fonts.
• A brief history of John Baldessari, as told by Tom Waits.

Am late on sooooo many things right now — this is one of them. I managed to catch the exhibit of Rammellzee’s so-called ‘Letter Racers’ at Suzanne Geiss before it closed late last month. And all I gotta say is: daaaaaaaaang. The man knew his way around his materials. Those high-tech looking toys you see flying in formation are actually beautifully assembled bits of junk: umbrella handles, cheap plastic watch bands, broken milk crates, Bic pens and bottle caps. (And lots of dust.)

For a good backgrounder on where these pieces emerged from, check out this NYT piece. And if you get a chance to see his work in person (no matter how small the show), do not miss it.

• Brian Droitcour has been reviewing galleries on Yelp and it’s fucking hilarious. And I’m burning with jealousy that I didn’t think of this first.
• Pundit tracker. They should have this for art writers. I’m sure I’d be toast.
• Alan Turing and his tragic end: A stunning Radiolab piece about the man who conceived of computers.
• A couple of weeks back I was reading Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner and publicly wondered on Twitter why so much contemporary American fiction is peopled by adolescent man-children. @tejalrao responded with this excellent essay.
• Nuanced bit on Thomas Kinkade versus the Art Industry, by Doug Harvey. (Even if the white type on black background seems designed to leave you half blind.)
• An informative wrap-up on a couple of panels at New York Law School about the boundary between appropriation and plagiarism.
• Speaking of which, a fascinating sidebar related to copyright: who owns the text of our laws?
• Welcome to my new timesuck: the ICAA and the MFAH in Houston have put all kinds of tasty Latin American art documents online. (@tylergreendc.)
• Wish I was going to be in Peru in time to see this: A group of artists is going to be painting murals at Cerro de Pasco, a polluted, high-altitude town that sits alongside an open-pit mine producing zinc and silver. The mining company is trying to relocate the city (which has more than 100,000 residents) so that it can expand its operations.
• Speaking of which: the organizers of the Cerro de Pasco event should invite Elliot Urcuhuaranga. His stuff is beautiful.
• Restoration Hardware goes graffiti. (@notrobwalker.)
• Helpful tip for the art media: If you want to get the press office at the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art to actually return your calls, tell them you want to do a spread on Jeffrey Deitch’s house.
• Exit Art and its final show. I’m gonna miss this scrappy space. (Hyperallergic.)
• Saving brutalism: not so easy.
• 20 arts institutions on Tumblr.
• On biophony, the sound of all living organisms.
• Sort of related: Cage on Cage — Nicolas does John. (Thank you, Will Brand.)

A man and a woman kiss. They drown each other in flattery. They tell each other that they’re “the one.” They say no one understands. This may sound like the purplest of purple prose scenarios. (And it is.) But it’s actually a live performance that employs the transcript of a Sarah Palin interview by Glenn Beck as its script. Instead of Beck and Palin in the lead roles, however, it’s a couple of young lovers. The words may be the same, but the actions aren’t. It’s grody-fascinating to watch.

For the performance piece, I Feel Your Pain, Liz Magic Laser created more than a dozen theatrical shorts out of television news transcripts (staged as part of the Performa festival last year). Steve Kroft’s 60 Minutes interview with Barack Obama in the wake of the Osama Bin Laden assassination becomes a clubby conversation between two bros sipping soda. It was literally nauseating to watch. Not because the actors were bad. Quite the contrary. The performances are all strong (and Annie Fox, shown above, is particularly riveting to watch). It’s all just a reminder of the uncomfortably cozy relationship between politicians and some members of the media.

For a few pieces, like the ones mentioned above, Laser employs a single interview as script. For others, she weaves together similar language from several Q&As into one cohesive story. Interviews and speeches by Mary Landrieu, Christine O’Donnell and George W. Bush are spliced together into a single work that addresses culpability. It is a riveting work of political theater. Literally. (Though I could have done without the mime-clown character — I mean, why???? — that Laser introduces in a few of the pieces.)

You can catch video of the project at the Derek Eller Gallery through this Saturday, April 21. If you’re a political or media junkie, this represents an intriguing, outrage-inducing intersection. Find the screening times here. And yes, it’s worth it to sit through them all…

I’ll admit it: I often glaze over when I enter the Met’s Egyptian galleries, which are full of monumental everything covered in stiff hieroglyphics. But a new exhibit devoted to works created prior to the consolidation of pharaonic power in Egypt is mind-blowing for the humble scale of the pieces (many of which could fit in the palm of a hand) and their charming spontanaeity. Not to mention that some of these works are totally effin’ cute: those early Egyptians sure knew how to carve dogs.

The best part is that this show isn’t in the over-trampled Egyptian wing, but in the Lehman Gallery, at the rear of the museum. (That awful space that looks like a 1980s cruise ship atrium.) Which means it’s nice and quiet — making this just the right kinda show for a 420 chill.

The Dawn of Egyptian Art is up through August 10 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

(All photos by C-M.)