I've been listening to .ethno techno -listen quite a bit for the last week.

Last night we went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for a reception for the Paris / Brooklyn Exchange. Lots of sexy Frenchmen, plus sexy arty New Yorkers -- including Stacy Greene, Oliver Herring (can't find a good URL!), Peter Krashes, Peter Hendrick, Paul Campbell, the lovely Schroeder Romero women, Ed Winkleman, Laura Parnes, Peter Garfield, and some boy named Patric in a tight red t-shirt who supposedly has shown at D'Amelio Terras.

Speaking of D'Amelio Terras, the show by Damian Ortega earlier this year rocked! Check out "Tortilla Module".

The Guardian has a tribute to Soft Cell, in honor of the new Greatest Hits CD.

Their record label was called Some Bizarre, and there was something very bizarre about Marc Almond and Dave Ball - a short, skinny imp in bondage gear backed by a bouncer dressed like a louche bin-man.

[In 1981,] Soft Cell release a cover of an old Northern Soul record called Tainted Love, and suddenly everything in Britain goes a bit de Sade. The single goes to Number one. The imp and the bouncer appear on Top of the Pops. Mums and dads look at each other across the sofa and wonder what the hell is going on. Teenagers drop the 'head' from 'headbanging' and embark on an orgy of sex and drugs.

...

It was always OK to laugh at Soft Cell, but not in the same way as one laughed at Dollar. Soft Cell knew they were being laughed at, and their tongues were shoved firmly into their cheeks. Spandau Ballet may have put on make-up, but you always suspected they were a bunch of East End louts masquerading as shop dummies. Duran Duran were sexier, but somewhat idiotic. Depeche Mode were Home Counties squares.

But Marc Almond looked like he'd lived every sleazy, seedy line he composed. His sexuality was an extended national joke. No-one really fancied him (short, skinny, odd hair), but he just looked like he was shagging all the time.

Here's an mp3 of one of my favorite mixes of Tainted Love. Warning - it's a 9 minute, 8MB file.

We saw Monteverdi's Orfeo last night at BAM. VERY disappointing. The music was OK, but the direction (by Diane Paulus of Donkey Show fame) was terrible. The sets weren't very attractive, and except for a few exceptions the costumes were ugly.

Only one of the 3 operas in BAM's Monteverdi cycle - Il Ritorno D'Ulisse - was great. The other one (L'Incoronazione di Poppea) was also terrible. Making opera boring (cf. The Met) is a crime!

This is fabulous. They have discovered a portrait of Shakespeare's patron (and quite possibly his lover), the third Earl of Southampton, dressed as a woman.

Experts who have studied the facts now agree that the portrait is undoubtedly the earliest known image of the third Earl of Southampton - Shakespeare's patron, the 'fair youth' addressed in his sonnets - somewhere between the age of 17 and 20 and painted at exactly the time those first few sonnets were written. Suddenly, the 'gap-stopper' became 'the jewel in the crown of the Cobbe collection'. Says Alastair Laing now, in the light of Cobbe's new evidence: 'I am very happy indeed about the identification. Given the connection to Shakespeare and his sonnets, it is a very, very exciting discovery.' In the portrait by an unknown artist, dating from the early 1590s, the teenage Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, is wearing lipstick, rouge and an elaborate double earring. His long hair hangs down in very feminine tresses and his hand lies on his heart in a somewhat camp gesture.

I finally saw Lagaan tonight with the fabulous Aamir Khan. Great plot (even if you don't care for cricket) and great choreography. Just try to get an American male actor to move like that! I also liked the way they brought Sikh, Muslim and untouchable characters into the plot.

Here is a photo of the 2 male leads plus the director. The Brit is in an indie gay film called Rhythm & Blues that I would love to see.

It has me listening to one of my favorite Live365 stations, Naaye Gaane (New Songs).

We went to the White Columns benefit auction on Saturday night. We saw of number of Art World people there, notably Kathy Magnan and, most fabulous of all, Choire.

After a number of glasses of wine, I got into the spirit of the thing, and managed to purchase several items...

• Janine Gordon - a photograph of an attractive young latino man, titled "Tight Butt"


• Shawn Green - a postcard plus a book/cd-rom on motorcyclists


• Aimee Mower - a small painting made from cake decorating gels


• John F. Simon, Jr. - a work on paper from a computer plotter of a computer chip


• Frank Webster - a beautiful acrylic on canvas painting

I loved the Nancy Hwang piece, but it went for WAY MORE than I could afford - unlike the Damian Loeb piece that didn't make its reserve ha ha ha.