After 12 Groceries and Package Take Away at the Window

fig a. performance draft for, Empty Praise and Dry Drunks part1

Up in the corner there's a plastic video camera with a wire that feeds into the drywall behind it. But it stops behind the yellow cigarello display. Underneath the Canadian whiskey there's a video feed playing on a black TV. The tubes make every clear image on it fizzle with the power of electric snow. The feed is from a box set called, Mirror Mirror. It features an unlicensed Wegman still from '72 on it's front. The second disk is behind-the-scenes footage. It's labeled in fat Sharpie, MAKING OF DISC #1.
Mirror Mirror was shot in HiDef and then doctored down in the studio. There are 12 vignettes on disc one but the DVD player can't loop them. Instead it goes through them one at a time, switching between each of the retail settings with an audible click once it's finished. First there's the ubiquitous furniture store, then the uninspired car showroom, and so on. When all of them have played then the machine's logo bounces around on the screen, boop, boop.

MIRROR MIRROR Disc1:
1.) We admit that we are purposeless (13:00)
2.) A purpose greater than ourselves (13:00)
3.) We'll turn our will over (13:00)
4.) We can make a fearless moral inventory (13:00)
5.) Admit our wrongs (13:00)
6.) We're ready for our purpose to remove our defects (13:00)
7.) Ask that our purpose remove our shortcomings (13:00)
8.) Make a list of those we've harmed, and amend these ills (13:00)
9.) Make direct amends wherever possible (13:00)
10.) Continue taking inventory (13:00)
11.) Improve our conscious contact with this purpose (13:00)
12.) Have an awakening as the result of these steps (13:00)

So stop me if you've heard this one. There's a guy that walks into a liquor store, right... It's a cold and rainy night at the end of October. Things are said, things that can't be unsaid. These things will later be reenacted in tight circles and talked about with counselors for years to come. Vigils will be held in neon lit parking lots everywhere and somebody's baby will learn to cry in the streets by candle light. So let's hold the surprise for later. I'll buy the first round and you can tell me all about your sponsor.

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Not the Willem DeKooning Retrospective (Not Even Close)

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