Dan Abrams — friend, Yale classmate, aspiring screenwriter, and all-around A+ member of society — passed away just recently.  He took with him a particular brand of inscrutable, infectious, incredible humor that our lives will not know again.

The news spread via a Facebook memorial page that’s being crafted in Dan’s memory.  Bad news now arrives digitally, asynchronously, impersonally, but that does not change the senseless gravity or raw humanity that it so cruelly inflicts.  

Too much, not enough, too soon, too late.  Dan will be missed.  

(Photo by Isaac Klausner.)

Zaha Hadid’s “pod” container for the Chanel Mobile Art exhibit generated well-deserved hype for a sinewy tour of contemporary artists’ takes on the luxury retailer’s iconic bag.  I managed to take it in on the exhibition’s final day in the States.  It moves to Moscow next.

Best parts were the pod itself, the gravelly Jeanne Moreau’s come-hither narration, the fun house gimmick of parting curtains and climbing stairs, and experiencing the exhibits in assembly line fashion (visitors were spaced out at 30 second intervals which made for moments of solitude and crowd throughout the tour).

As for the exhibits, some were cool, some I could dismiss.  Overall the whole thing read as simultaneously obsessed with luxury status but also aware of the industry’s blind shallowness.  Mobile Art was both self-righteous and self-loathing, occupying an uncomfortable midpoint between sneering consumerism and aesthetic idealism.