'Yes, darling, my boss said I'm due for a raise any day now…'

In a poll conducted in 2007, CBS asked nearly 1,000 people to define their socioeconomic status. Of those polled, only two percent said they were upper class, and only seven percent defined themselves as “lower class.” This means that over 90 percent of people polled felt they belonged in another category: the middle class. 
 
So it seems that a majority of us are in the same boat. But it is a shrinking boat, with shoddy workmanship, possibly made in China by cyborgs. According to David Autor, an economist at MIT and the author of the report The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market says the job market has been changing over the past couple of decades. There are now more high-wage jobs and low-wage jobs, but the middle-income set is vanishing.  There are many reasons for it–the fact that many middle-income jobs can now be done by robots, for one–but the end result is the same. There are high-earners and low earners, and an increasingly gaping chasm in between. 

 You may have heard this before, likely from the swarm of elected officials who claim to be guardians of the middle class. There is a reason politicians tout themselves as defenders of the middle class; it is a nebulously defined group to which most of us assign ourselves (as evidenced in the poll mentioned above).  And the goal of this massive majority is an ideal: The American Dream. It is the vague yet vaunted aspiration of the middle class. The question, of course, is: what does it mean? 
 
When asking questions of such gravity, it makes sense to consult the preeminent repository of questionable minutiae: Wikipedia. According to the Wiki, the American Dream is a “national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success.” The idea, then, is that if you work hard enough, you can succeed in America.  

Love, tranquility and income prosperity…

Is this where you still see yourself ending up?

A fair question to ask, then: is that American Dream dead, and the middle class along with it?    
 
Well, it seems we’re almost split in half on that question. Half of us believe that it is still alive, while just under half believe it isn’t. And it is no shock that you’ll get different answers from different groups of people. Higher incomes believe, lower incomes are less likely to believe. 
 
And the ones in the middle? Guess they are a little harder to find these days. 

What happened to the dream?

Michael Lyons Wier (right) with Michael Sellinger (left) painting by Chris Cosnowski

If the measure of an art exhibition is the degree to which it gains maximum exposure for its artists, then the opening of the Here & Now Exhibition at Lyons Wier Gallery was a resounding success. On a cold Saturday evening, the gathered crowd in this small west Chelsea space was spilling into the streets. The stragglers outside stood next to the garbage piles that had still not been gathered by the trash man (a result of the recent snowpocalypse). There appeared to be another gallery event on this otherwise quiet section of street–so there were many freezing aesthetes milling about amongst the trash heaps, looking for some art to admire. 
 

Sin-Ying Ho- Dream of Hope.

Inside the Lyons Wier, those assembled were clustered tightly in a barely-moving nebula around the a piece in the center of the room—a nearly six-foot porcelain vase by Sin-Ying Ho entitled “In a Dream of Hope.” It was intricately painted in blue-and-white design, with strips of it removed to reveal lists of stock prices from the New York Stock Exchange, Nikkei and others. On each of the walls, paintings of varying sizes and vastly different subjects stared back—Martin Wittfooth’s provocative Bacchus (the titular god played by an seemingly impassive baboon drinking motor oil) and the woman in Tim Okamura’s Work Shirt wore a paint-stained flannel shirt, a large Afro (the texture of which jumped off the canvas), and a stoic look. With several excuse-me’s and some awkward maneuvering, I slowly made me way around the room while sipping cold Budweiser from a can.  

Melodie Provenzano & Jerry Saltz

Today is National Hot Dog Day. What better way to celebrate it than to offer an exorbitantly-priced, unnecessarily-elaborate hot dog?

In an impressive display of unbridled culinary hubris, Serendipity 3 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is now offering the “Haute Dog”: an attempt at the most delicious—and most expensive—hot dog ever.

This luxe frankfurter will be grilled in white truffle oil and placed in pretzel bread bun amidst medallions of foie gras, caramelized Vidalia onions, heirloom tomato ketchup and Dijon mustard.

It will be considerably more decadent than your average cylindrical meat product. The price for such extravagance? 69 dollars. American.

Apparently this latest foray in gastro-audacity (see also: the World’s Most Expensive Sundae) is an attempt to draw the business of some of its more famous patrons. “Cher is a regular who always gets the regular foot-long,” said Joe Calderone, publicist for Serendipity 3. “Now we will offer her the most expensive one.” (Note: Though this is unconfirmed, this may in fact be the first time in history that a hot dog has had a media consultant.)

So Cher will have her new favorite hot dog, and the rest of us will be stuck with plebian eats. Eh. I’ll stick with the Chihuahua dog at Crif Dogs, anyway. It contains all three necessary qualities of the ultimate hot dog: 1) Hyper-caloric, 2) eminently affordable, and 3) wrapped in bacon.

Because everybody loves bacon. Especially Canadians.

As the signature, skull-numbing drone of the vuvuzela fades, and Spain collectively nurses its massive hangover after days of rioja-swilling glee, we are all left to wonder: what next?

For a month, we all watched as the world’s best players played its most popular game on the world’s biggest stage… it supplied us with a steady stream of entertainment (and a steadily growing admiration for Paul, the clairvoyant octopus who correctly predicted 100% of matches). In this country, we took an uncharacteristically keen interest in the event–from Team USA’s unlikely tie with England (when was the last time a tie engendered so much national pride?) to the swell of joy expressed after Landon Donovan’s goal, we were united in our full-throated support of our team.

On the field… and off, of course. There was the aforementioned Mr. Donovan’s alleged love child–the announcement of which was impeccably timed for maximum tabloid effect. And the discovery of Clint Dempsey as an aspiring freestyler.

But of course, we can’t even come close to the devotion felt towards soccer in other parts of the world. Every member of the Spanish team will be treated as a hero for the rest of their lives? And there is a special agony in the Netherlands’ defeat: a Dutch porn star had promised oral sex to all of her Twitter followers had her homeland in fact won the final match.

This kind of stuff just doesn’t happen every day.

So now what?

An X ray of Marylon Monroe's rib cage.

Some people have a lot of money. And some people have a fascination with memorabilia. And at the Venn-intersection of the two, absurdity reigns.

Examples of which were on display recently at auctions. The first was the purchase of Marilyn Monroe’s chest x-ray for $45,000. Putting aside the fact that this money could have put a deserving student through college (or at least into a nicely-equipped Land Rover), this stretches the notion of a “valuable” item. Ms. Monroe did not create this; she probably didn’t even like having it done. And there is nothing about this x-ray that is different from any other human female with ample cleavage. The winning bidder has essentially purchased a 50 year old picture of a human ribcage. And not even in color.

And then there was the more considerable outlay of $190,000 for a beaded glove worn by Michael Jackson. I realize that the value is not in the item itself (though Swarovskis aren’t cheap), but what it represents…otherwise I would be out buying cheap gloves & a Bedazzler right now. But logic would seem to dictate that a glove—however sparkly and iconic—would fetch slightly less than 100 times the per capita GDP of Cambodia. At the same auction, a lock of Elvis Presley’s hair went for $20,000… which would have made his cranium one of the more valuable pieces of real estate in the history of mankind.

And yet amidst the extravagance, a little sanity alights. As some with disposable income clamor to grab gloves, hair and snapshots of chest cavities, Warren Buffet pledges to give almost all of his wealth away. Good man. I would totally buy one of his gloves.

Apple has now sold over a million iPads, and

With such influence comes power, and sometimes that power is wielded in strange ways.  In matters of the heart. Occasionally, in matters of the nipple.

There is, for example, the new dating site purely for Apple lovers. The site, called Cupidtino (a clever wink at Cupertino, site of Apple’s headquarters), aims to connect “Machearts” and other iPhiles.  Where once potential matches were predicated on such deal-breakers as religion and desire to have children, we have added a new criterion: Operating System. The site essentially separates the Macs from the plebian PCs – ostensibly matching people up as the first step in creating another generation of avid Apple consumers.  I expect that the site will do quite well. I also expect lame double-entendres to be rampant (“hardware” and “port” may be among the euphemistic onslaught).

It’s clear that, perhaps more than any other brand, Apple has made technology sexy. And yet, interestingly, the company appears only marginally comfortable with sex.

The iPad has been noted as the potential savior of a newspaper industry in precipitous decline. Yet access to this wunderpad requires certain sacrifices. It was reported that the German newspaper Bild (as well as other European media outlets) are upset because iPads will not carry their content as-is. The reason?  Nipples. European media is famously less puritanical compared to its American counterparts, and many newspapers have no problem with nudity. Apple, however, has a policy against tawdry content—even fashion magazines must remove any trace of errant nipple exposure. Yet according to a report in Business Insider, the policy isn’t the same across the board.

For small, independent sites, the policy mandates no ‘overtly sexual content’. More established brands like Playboy and Sports Illustrated may have sexual content, but no nudity. Still others, like Netflix, may stream R-rated movies to your iPad. So it seems that Apple’s aversion to sex is elastic, and accommodations are meted out according to the size of a content provider’s, ahem, assets.

Hey, Apple may be sexy. But it isn’t stupid.

Mamma Andersson- 'Pigeon House.'- 2010.

Shared interests can bring a family together. When those interests also happen to be passions—and livelihoods—that togetherness takes on a whole other dimension.

Such is the case with husband-and-wife artists Mamma Andersson and Jockum Nordström, two Swedes who are now exhibiting their art together for the first time with Who is Sleeping on my Pillow. The exhibition (running through June 12) kicked off on Thursday with an event at the David Zwirner Gallery, and a small army of aesthetes descended upon the Chelsea space to see the spousal showcase.

The rooms at Zwirner had an ethereal quality. The starkly white walls brightened by the lamps and skylights high above made the room seem luminous. People of all types—from a bearded guy in his twenties holding a skateboard to a sixty-ish woman in a leopard print coat holding a tiny dog—were strewn throughout the room conversing or considering the artwork. Having noticed a garbage can brimming with iced Rolling Rock, I grabbed one and began my exploration of the work on display.

Though the two were exhibiting together, each had a set of their own rooms. Andersson’s art generally focuses on simple indoor settings—a kitchen sink, a cloak room—and ordinary outdoor ones with a tinge of underlying strangeness. The titular piece was a figure that appears on the floor, surrounded by magazines and comics, in what appears to be blissful napping state (but without a pillow, or, in fact, a noticeable head). My personal favorite was Pigeon House, an enigmatic view of three different people sitting at a table that begged a slew of head-tilting questions.

Mamma Anderson- Untitled 2009.

Anderson.- 'Emo.' -2010.