Archive for June 19th, 2012

Not easy, being a racehorse.

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

This is:

a) Odd.

2) Makes you go “Hmmmmmmm.” when you start thinking about certain racehorses that may or may not have had a chance to win the Triple Crown.

…more than 30 horses from four states have tentatively tested positive for the substance, dermorphin, which is suspected of helping horses run faster.

Dermorphin apparently originated “from the backs of a type of South American frog” though the version of the substance currently in use is believed to be synthetic. (“There’s a lot out there, and that would be an awful lot of frogs that would have to be squeezed,” he said, adding, “There are a lot of unemployed chemists out there.”)

(“A lot of unemployed chemists out there.” I suddenly have this image of Walter White synthesizing frog juice.)

11 horse in Louisiana, 15 in Oklahoma, and six in New Mexico have allegedly tested positive. Note that there’s no evidence yet that any Triple Crown competitors may have used the substance; but also note that there’s no discussion about whether any of those horses have been tested for dermorphin.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Horses | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, obit! watch: June 19, 2012.

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

Barton Lidice Benes died on May 30th, but his obit shows up in today’s NYT.

Mr. Benes was a sculptor “who worked in materials that he called artifacts of everyday life”. For example, he did sculptures using shredded cash. He also did a series of sculptures called “Flood”, using damaged property donated by victims of the 1997 North Dakota floods.

When friends started dying of AIDS, and Mr. Benes himself tested HIV-positive, he began working in everyday materials of the epidemic — pills and capsules, intravenous tubes, HIV-infected blood and cremated human remains.

One of the interesting aspects of this obit is the detail that Mr. Benes, who lived in Greenwich Village, apparently had a close relationship with the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. NDMA exhibited his work in the 1990s, and…

…plans to build a replica of his apartment and furnish it exactly as Mr. Benes left it. Among its objects, many of them macabre, are a blackened human toe; a giant hourglass holding the mingled ashes of two of Mr. Benes’s friends, partners who died of AIDS; a gall stone removed from his friend Larry Hagman, the actor; and a stuffed giraffe’s head.

I’m curious how the relationship between Mr. Benes and NDMA developed. It just seems odd that he’d be that close to an art museum in what New Yorkers consider “flyover country”. It also seems odd that he had so much trouble exhibiting his “transgressive” art in NYC.

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