a sad day

I learned yesterday that Betty Friedan died. That would be sad enough, but when I came home and mentioned it to my DH, Johnny - he had no idea who she was.

When I expressed my astonishment, he said, "Well, I don't listen to NPR all the time like you." Uhm, dude? The fuck? I knew who Betty Friedan was long before I was old enough to listen to NPR of my own volition. The fact that I'm an NPR geek has nothing to do with my knowledge and admiration of Betty Friedan. I can understand not knowing who, say, Bella Abzug or Miranda July are (not condone, mind you, but understand). But not knowing who Betty Friedan was... that's a lot more like not knowing who Susan B. Anthony or Gloria Steinem are than not knowing who, say, Pauline Kael was. (And to be clear, I cite Pauline Kael here not because her achievements were any less rockin' than Anthony's or Steinem's, but because she worked in a very specialized field and therefore it's less likely she would be known to the general public.)

What smarts even more than my husband seemingly having a surprisingly poor background in the history of the feminist movement is that he totally didn't seem to care. He was just like, "Well there are a lot of people where you don't know who they are, either." Ok, dude, sure - but the guy who, I dunno, mastered every Pink Floyd album or something? Has not had anywhere near the influence in shaping our current society that Betty Friedan did. Moreover, when you start going off about some obscure guy like that whom you love but I don't know from Jack? Usually, I'm interested to know about him - because he's important to you. At the very least, I'll feign interest until you shut up (which often takes a while). Especially if, y'know, that person just died and you seem pretty bummed about it.

[/rant]

Anyway, on top of that, this morning I learned Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis died. Awww... Grandpa Munster. Dude was a character. He ran for governor of New York State on the Green Party ticket, for pete's sake! He was like, 1000 years old! (Actually, if you check out all his obits linked on Google, some say he was 95 and others say he was 82 - odd. I wonder which is correct.) Crazy old people rule.

And, as if that weren't enough of a bummer, when I went to check out what Slate had to say about Betty Friedan (Slate editor Emily Bazelon was her cousin, I learned), I found out that one of my favorite artists, Nam June Paik, had died last week - and I was just now finding out about it. Damn. The man invented the field of video art. His pieces made you think, like any work of art should do, but they also showed a playful sense of humor sorely lacking in a lot of contemporary art (a feature which, apparently, not all his fellow artists appreciated). I also like how his videos were not just things to be watched in and of themselves, but how he placed them in their environment for maximum effect. My favorite piece of his, which I've never seen in person, is a statue of a Buddha, serenely watching a television set. What is he watching on this TV? Walk around and take a look - you'll see he's watching an image of himself, captured by a camera on top of the facing TV set. Funny, right? Yet also profound. I've only seen two Paik works in person - the "Hamlet" sculpture at the Chrysler Museum back home (a gigantic figure fashioned from televisions playing an endless loop of clips from different performances of Shakespeare's play); and one at the SF MOMA which featured a line of progressively smaller video monitors on a platform, each displaying a live feed from a camera placed at the end of the line and focused on a plain, white egg (also sitting at the end of the platform). Ok, hard to describe, but it was neat. And, I mean, think about it - did the museum staff have to go in there every day and put out a fresh egg? Did they have to fridge the egg each night at closing time? What if a patron accidentally (or intentionally) broke the egg? What then, huh? I just totally dig Nam June Paik's work, and it makes me sad that he is not alive on this planet with us anymore.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to go be sick and sad for the rest of the evening. But I will leave you with more further reading:
Betty Friedan in the Christian Science monitor
Betty in the NY Times (visit bugmenot.com for login info)
Betty in the National Women's Hall of Fame
Betty's Wikipedia entry

Al Lewis's Wikipedia entry
Grandpa's IMDB entry

Nam June Paik's Wikipedia entry
Paik's official website
If You Miss Paik Nam-june from the Korea Times