"I know Arianna doesn’t like it. But I like taupe."

Obama stands up to his critics in the press.

"Andre Jones and Richard Wise have a 700-gallon trank suspended from the ceiling of their West Village town house apartment."

"The filled tank weighs more than 6,000 pounds and has cost the couple some $200,000 in equipment and service."

How much would it cost to get rid of it? Because that's the calculation I'd do if I were buying that place.

Oh, here's the next picture. Caption:

Mr. Jones, left, and Mr. Wise sitting next to their suspended fish tank. "At night, we sit in the living room and sort of get lost in it, instead of the television set," Mr. Jones said of the tank.

I love the tagged-on  phrase "of the tank." Like there was ambiguity before. You might have thought they got lost in their living room. And I love the implication that this home Sea World makes them superior to peons who watch actual television. Because... why would that be? You can get a big flat screen TV and play a DVD of fish swimming. It looks pretty much like that fish tank these guys have. And you'll have at least $180,000 left to buy 60+ years of cable service.

Then there's this couple, the Wilzigs, who have an aquarium with a lighting device that allows them to choose any of 64 colors to reflect off the colorless fish inside. Posing with his wife on a white settee, Mr. Wilzig said:

"The whole essence of the house was to be push-button color-changing. The apotheosis of that was to take the fish themselves and have them be swimming in whatever color you want."

I was going to say this article should be blogged over at Stuff White People Like, and then I thought about how the Wilzigs, when they had their white friends over, could use their push buttons to make them any color they want. Come on! That would be the apotheosis.

(By the way, Mr. Wilzig looks like a character in one of Eric Bogosian's performance pieces.)

ADDED: "Trank"?

IN THE COMMENTS: Sixty Grit said, "There was a line in BttF2 about 'tranks' and other drug users. Or maybe they spelled it 'tranqs.' Do not know. But I think it is a city thing." Found!

(The police car arrives. The signs outside say "Hilldale - The Address Of Success" but have been altered to say "The Address Of Suckers". The car lands outside a house and the officers open the door.)

Reese: Hilldale. Nothing but a breeding ground for tranqs, lobos and zipheads.

Foley: Yeah, they ought to tear this whole place down.

(The officers press Jennifer's thumb to a panel next to the front door, and it opens.)

Voice: (v.o) Welcome home Jennifer.

(Jennifer is beginning to wake up.)

Jennifer: What?

Reese: You got a little tranked, but I think you can walk.

Well, it makes sense. The fish are presented as tranquilizers. So get a fish tank and get tanked. But that's so lowly. In NYC now, you can get a fish trank and get tranked!

Colors that affected us recently.

There was that acorn that made you want to repaint biggest room in the house...



There was this...



... which made me fantasize that I was a contestant on "Project Runway" and the challenge was to design a dress it inspired...

And this...



... which made me think of the old days when I painted with real paint on canvas. What was that red? Alizarin?

I was asked to explain why I've made so many of my Tea Party photographs black and white.

The subject came up in the comments to this morning's post, which had 3 black and white photographs. Let me post a few more, and then I'll give my answer.















So, what am I doing with black and white? I'll copy my raw musing from the comments at this morning's post:

Why black and white?

I experiment, tweaking each picture in different ways. Sometimes I like what black and white does.

When does that happen?

1. When the color elements are random or distracting or loud or inconsistent with the mood/theme of the picture.

2. When the shapes and forms are good and you want to give them maximum prominence.

3. Sometimes cutting out the color seems to unify everything.

4. Cutting out the color can give the picture a timeless or historical look or a profundity that works.

I'm drawn to black and white in these pictures as a way of eliminating the casual "picnic" feeling and making things seem more serious and significant.

By the way, my Tea Party pictures are notably neutral. I'm not promoting or criticizing these people with my photographs. I'm observing them and presenting them for what they are. I hope you appreciate that.

That's written more roughly than what I put on the front page here generally. I hope you understand.

Here's an interesting comparison between black and white and color: black & white and color. It makes a big difference, doesn't it?

A Tea Party composition, reframed and recolorized...

... with an emphasis on the color red.



(Here's the wider view in black and white.)

At the Paint-Your-Window Café...

... there's a colorful edge.

The color of the year.

It's turquoise:

All right, then. It's going to be like that.

What if hippies had money... and good taste?

A photo-walk around Madison's East Side got me thinking. There's a hippie aesthetic, but it's not well-developed enough, and there isn't enough money to run with it, which could be a disaster if there isn't good taste — and it's hard to have good taste and hippie taste at the same time.

But when it all comes together, it's really cool:





Wouldn't it be fabulous if, taking this house as the exemplar...



...the whole neighborhood could bloom with hippie aesthetic?

(I have no idea whether the people who did this to their house are actually hippies or how they would verbalize their aesthetic, but whoever they are, I salute them.)

"He looked so cute with his purple skin and bright yellow hair."

Well, that's sweet, from the octo-grandma, but everything else she has to say is .... harrowing.