According to Wikipedia, the rooftop of the Stephansdom in Vienna contains over 230,000 tiles.

Some days we wish we could count every single one.

*We published an earlier version of this post and later realized we probably should have let it season a bit. Oh well, too late!

Recently we learned from US Magazine that “[a] few weeks after signing the lease on a $60 million Long Island mansion, [Angelina Jolie], 33, was spotted checking out a nice building in Manhattan’s uptown Washington Heights neighborhood Tuesday afternoon.”

It makes us wonder how it came about that she would consider Washington Heights for even a second.

Did Angelina wake up one morning and say: I want to live in the most ruined and barely functional neighborhood in New York City, with sweeping views of the Hudson and the George Washington Bridge, which has been my favorite bridge in the world since I first saw it as a child driving from ___ to ____ in the back seat of my ____’s car?

Or perhaps she’s going to be starring in a movie about the drug trade and wants to understand what it’s like to roll up and down Broadway in a massive SUV with blackened windows, laughing at the cops and expressing surprise/dismay at all the “white fggts” starting to move into the neighborhood.

Or maybe she’s a fan of The Gay Recluse!? (<3 u, Angie!)

Whether she moves in or not, we were struck less by the implausibility of it than a certain longing to see what would happen if she did.

Does she know that Washington Heights is a metaphorical and literal graveyard of shipwrecks and resignation, from which most of us who are lucky or unlucky enough to end up here can never hope to escape?

Maybe she will be the one to change this collective destiny:  maybe Angelina could live here for a few seconds and then leave forever, having taken in her share of the beauty — both architectural and geographic — yet remain unscathed by the ghosts of longing and torment with which the rest of us are so familiar.  After all, as US Magazine breathlessly informs us: Angelina “has owned or rented properties in three different countries in the past year alone.”

Or maybe this is too much to ask, even of her; maybe she looked out the window and was disturbingly entranced by the clouds gathering over her beloved bridge, at which point she instructed her driver to take her away from this place as quickly as possible, knowing that if she stayed any longer, she would never be able to leave.

[Thanks to Bennett for sending us the US Magazine article.]

Through the fourth part of 2666, Roberto Bolano’s epic treatment of many things, we were extremely forgiving of the many tangents and digressions that permeate the work; not only were we impressed by the obvious genius of the writer, but we marveled at his ability to seamlessly move between the lyrical, the clinical, the suspenseful, the psychological, the satirical and the philosophical.  Although we had a few complaints — the pervasively unredeemed homophobia, the fact that many and possibly all of the characters felt like constructs of ideas as opposed to living entities — we never lost patience with Bolaño; his world was lush and full of compelling contradictions, we wanted to know more about the hundreds of murders in his fictional city of Santa Teresa and how the mysterious German author from the first part — Benno von Archimboldi — would or would not figure into them.

Sadly however, the fifth part doesn’t deliver much more than extreme tedium, to the point where we begin to question our initial love for the book as a whole. Language that once seemed magical now comes off as indulgent and often masturbatory (not coincidentally a tired theme here), every plot twist feels like a chiche, and worst of all, the more we learn about the decreasingly mysterious author — Archimboldi — the less we care about him. Although we see a few characters from the earlier parts, there is no sense of evolution or really any insight (from a reading perspective) into why this part could not have come first or second or third.

Ultimately, the problem can be traced back to the structure of the book; in the first four parts, the tension builds and builds as Bolaño teases and hints at the mystery — and in some cases — conspiracy surrounding the deaths of the women in Mexico. No matter where he goes, we want to know more! But when he leaves this electric setting for the mundane upbringing — albeit with a liberal sprinkling of exceedingly wooden symbols, e.g., as a child, he preferred to remain underwater — of Archimboldi, we feel deflated and long for the mystery and strength of the previous parts.

In a few pages at the end of the book that practically weep with a sense of obligation, Bolano “ties things up,” but again we are past wanting to confirm what has become obvious and mundane.

It’s the same feeling we get watching a teevee series — the X-Files is a particularly apt example in this regard — that reaches its peak in a shadowy but compelling aura of mystery, but one we realize has passed as it soldiers on in mediocrity for several more seasons before finally being killed off.

Perhaps Bolaño should have ended 2666 after the fourth part, when our interest was at its height and we burned with questions burned about its outcome; as it turned out, this last part gained nothing and cost much, so that we ultimately close the cover with a sense of disappointment. We still strongly recommend that everyone read this novel, but with the understanding that sometimes questions are better posed than answered.

The 2666 Review Roundup:
The Part About the Critics
The Part About Amalfitano
The Part About Fate
The Part About the Crimes

Photographer Dino Dinco sent us an announcement for his art opening on Wednesday night, and — hey! — if we were in San Francisco, we’d totally go. Dinco’s show (click here for gallery info) includes shots of the desolate “cruising trails” in L.A. (somewhat ironically located near the police academy); we ponder the haunted light and the unkempt litter-strewn paths, where — like so much in the gay world — the overgrown bushes and weeds offer both danger and maybe a few seconds of salvation for those desperate enough to seek it.

On certain days, we are made aware that capitalism is a vast, raging sea on which we are helplessly adrift.

It’s not that this is exactly news; to the contrary, we have always known this, much the way the earth is round and the sun is many millions of miles away. But when we were younger — before we spent so many years on these turbulent waters — we didn’t understand the true expanse of this sea, and how one day it would threaten to swallow us up in its infinite depths.

Nor in our youth did we understand that picking the right boat would matter so much; that those others we mocked for being slow or stolid or inelegant would be the same ones toward which we would look with such longing in a storm, when it was no longer possible to board them.

We remember how beautiful our first boat locked on the dock — with its “wooden beams and dovetail joints,” the way its sails seemed to be woven with golden thread — and how quickly it sank as soon as we lost sight of the shore.

And how we swam to the point of exhaustion until, on the verge of drowning, we finally managed to crawl up on a second boat, which though not as striking as any we had ever imagined sailing, at least seemed to offer a certain stability for which we were grateful; it was old but sturdy on the water, and populated by seasoned hands who assured us that this vessel had crossed the ocean for hundreds of years and could expect to do the same for hundreds more.

But who could have anticipated the storms with which this boat would be confronted? Everyone felt seasick from the onslaught of the waves — each a mountain on an endless, mutating range — which never ceased to crash over the decks and rip holes in the sails. During any respite, we discussed the idea of designing something new — more buoyant and fleet — but our time was spent plugging holes below and mending the sails. Everyone looked at each other and shrugged: it was understood that a disaster was imminent, but what choice did we have but to make our way forward as best we could?

But the sea was not content to let us muddle along, and in fact — as if driven by vengeance — made a point to break our masts and blow us off course into even more unfamiliar waters, where nothing seemed to work; to catch even the most common fish was a strain, and all of our lines went slack.

Did you ever see that teevee movie in the seventies, when the ship sank and it gradually became apparent that not everyone would be allowed to remain on the lifeboat, and that some would have to be sacrificed for the good of the whole? And how everyone looked at each other with terror and understanding, knowing that they would have to implement this plan? Did you see that movie on teevee? And were you also terrified when the old married couple volunteered to be cast adrift, clinging to one another with their tired fingers? And then a single lady who was probably a lesbian because even back then everyone knew that gays were worth less than other people? And did you cry when they sent the dog overboard, because how could a dog ever understand that it wasn’t just going for a lil swim?

We never realized that this horrible movie could be a metaphor for so much.

And that one day we would be on a sinking lifeboat, living in terror at the idea of being cast off and feeling guilt for remaining behind (because we’re gay and always feel inherently less valuable).

Or that our dreams for a hundred nights running would be filled with nothing but stillness and snow.

In the United States — except for the rare exception — there is a well-documented dearth of hot gay statues.

Occasionally you’ll see a statue and think, “hmm, he’s a lil gay.” (Or she, obv.)

Or: “Why is that guy’s head between that other guy’s legs? It’s not that gay, but — ha ha — we should send a pic to The Gay Recluse.”

And then you go on your way, and perhaps in a year or so — assuming you don’t leave the country — you might spot another statue or piece of public artwork that could be described as gay, with a mix of earnestness and irony that is a hallmark of internet discourse.

Hi ladies! Did you know that the final season of “The L-Word” premieres this Sunday?

Whoa, Daddy!

Let’s just say that in terms of hot gay statuary, Vienna operates on a completely different level than any U.S. city.

It’s not like this was unexpected, of course.

And at first, we didn’t think too much about it.

After all, our primary purpose in coming to Vienna was not to obsess about hot gay statues.

Hey buddy, nice package! (Was Johann Strauss the “David Beckham” of 19th century Vienna?)

Here’s a gay in Vienna “playing straight,” just like today’s biggest stars in Hollywood.

While almost every statue in Vienna was exceedingly gay, not all were equally hot!

At night, there was a phantasmagoric quality to the statues, that made many seem NSFW.

We wouldn’t call this “man-baby” hot, would you?

This guy just won’t take “no” for an answer!

Some required more than one shot to capture exactly what was going on.

It’s not hard to figure out what happened here!

Oddly, as time passed, we became less innured to their presence, which was not what we had expected.

We began to consider the mindset of those who commissioned such work, and why they were so interested in “hot dads.”

We resented the puritanical tendencies of our own country, which for hundreds of years has made even the most innocuous statues NSFW.

We considered the drudgery of our own commute in New York City, and how we never see a hot-gay statue without making a special trip to Audubon Terrace.

Hey girlfriends! What do you mean you haven’t seen Milk yet!?

We wondered: why does our contemplation of this statue offer us so much more pleasure than any of the tedious shots of “real-life” models we see every day on all the mainstream gay sites?

Translation: Every one of these guys is smokin’ hot.

Translation: Workers unite (for a hot gay revolution)!

Vienna’s hot gay statuary is obv not limited to the neoclassical.

The more we looked, the more statues we saw; many of them contained features — and more incredibly, expressions — we found genuinely attractive, so that our posture of ironic disdain began to feel limiting.

Overwhelmed, we questioned the movement toward abstraction that occurred 500 years ago, when Pablo Picasso first heard Franz Liszt and was inspired to create a reality teevee show on Bravo.

We could not completely shed this irony, however.

Just your average fountain statue in Vienna.

As so often happens when we lose ourselves the past, we felt an intoxicating mix of suffocation and exhilaration.

It seemed miraculous to us that the roof of the Parliament could feature a lineup of NSFW men.

By this point, our resistance had completely eroded.

Seemingly every alcove was inhabited by a hot gay statue.

We felt as if our hatred of the present — not only the time in which we live, but the tedious, mass-produced nature of our surroundings — had been validated.

But in the next second, we felt deflated and beaten.

We arrived at Gonzagagasse, the street where our friend John had grown up.

And thought about how he must have felt as a child, walking past these hot gay dads every day.

Until the Nazis came to power and he had to flee to the United States.

Where he too would always remember life in Vienna with an irreconcilable mix of hatred and longing.

The Hot Gay Statue round-up:

• Rules and Guidelines
• Dan Savage Endorsement
• Washington Heights (New York City)
• Washington, DC
• The London Eye Clarifies an Important Issue
• Florence (Italy)
• The Park Avenue Amory (Upper East Side/NYC)
• Murray Hill (New York City)
• Madrid (Spain)
• Los Angeles
• Philadelphia
• The London Eye: “In Your Face”
• The J-Man Inspires
• George Washington
• Georgia (Republic of)
• New Orleans
• Columbus Circle (New York City)
• Two Davids (Florence)
• Franco Harris Statue (Pittsburgh)
• London Firefighters and Other Heroes
• Columbus Circle Mall (New York City)
• Miami
• Paris
• Grand Central Station (New York City)
• Albany, New York
• Chicago
• Albany, New York (Hot Gay Statute)
• The Metropolitan Museum (New York City)
• University of Southern California (Los Angeles)
• More Getty Villa (Los Angeles)
• Union Station Centurions (Washington, DC)
• Hot Gay Ladies in Washington Heights (New York City)
• Honolulu
• Stockholm
• Florence (Italy) II

One thing that never seems to change in Paris: the booksellers — les bouquinistes – that line the banks of the Seine.

These are the ones who operate out of those green metal boxes that sit atop the balustrade. Obviously this could never exist in the United States; the boxes would be pried or sawed open, filled with gasoline, the contents incinerated and the video posted on YouTube. (There would be lawsuits, tho.)

In Paris, we always loved strolling past the dealers and their wares, carefully considering what we wanted to buy: old maps, postcards, rare editions of forgotten books, drawings of fish and birds, comic books — typically racist/sexist in the “old school” manner — and more!

But in the end, we could never bring ourselves to buy anything. It was less a suspicion that we would probably buy a fake than something about the vision in front of us that made it feel precarious, as if it were a dream that we might puncture by reaching through.

Or maybe it’s a fear that if we entered such a world, even for a few minutes, we might not have the will to ever leave; we would slowly evaporate and our ghost would walk the banks of the Seine until it was covered by the sea, and even then we would haunt the bottom of the ocean for an eternity, rummaging through the detritus of another lost civilization.

While in Vienna, we visited the Secession Building. According to Wikipedia: “The Vienna Secession was founded on 3 April 1897 by artists Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Max Kurzweil, Otto Wagner, and others…In 1898, the group’s exhibition house was built in the vicinity of Karlsplatz…Secession artists were concerned, above all else, with exploring the possibilities of art outside the confines of academic tradition. They hoped to create a new style that owed nothing to historical influence.”

Looking at this, we thought of our own garden walls and how boring they are in comparison. Now every time we look at them, we’re going to wish they were covered with the same little leaf indentations as the Secession Building.

The fonts were already mod in 1898!

For years at work, we had always dreamed of painting our office walls with designs and patterns; we were sure this would make us much more “productive.” Before we visited the Secession Building, we were never sure of the exactly what this would look like.

What if we said to our boss: do you think we could allocate some of our marketing $$ to gold paint and stencils? (Maybe if we worked at Google circa 2k6.)

Did the world always seem so prohibitively expensive? For example, it cost us $_____ just to enclose our garden with cinder block walls faced with stucco. Of course we wish we had more $$ to fritter away on useless but beautiful things like this, but don’t you h8 when you’re watching teevee and Suze Orman comes on and starts yelling at some five-year old to start saving?

“To every age its art, to art its freedom.”

We would like to tell all children to spend $$$ on their own secession building, before they’re too old and it’s too late.

We got together a few months ago with a group of our fellow artists and built our secession building under the George Washington Bridge overpass, because that was the only place we could get for under $700/sf. We too hoped to create a new style that owed nothing to historical influence. Do you think ours will last until 2108, and tourists will take shots for their blogs?

“To every age its art, to art its freedom.”

Prospective imperialists take note!

Today you may rule the world.

Tomorrow — just like the rest of us — you will have heartburn.

It’s difficult to write about a city of the past without succumbing to nostalgia, given the grandeur of the dead monuments that have survived and the (philosophical) certainty that no time is worse to be alive than the present.

Some friends of ours came down from Berlin for a few days and booked a room in this cheap hotel just off the horrifyingly neon/commercialized Kärntner Straße. We laughed at the kitschy glass brick in the hallway outside of their room, but were nevertheless pleased to be away from all of the horrible merchandise on the street outside.

When we returned a few hours later, the sun had set and the wall was black; we felt a mix of relief and remorse knowing that we would almost certainly never see it lit up again.