If you're like me, you're checking your mailbox every day for an invitation to the inauguration. This inauguration will be historic. I've been shopping for the right clothes. Believe it or not, I don't own a suit, but I have some nice jackets and ties, and I can probably pull something together. I'd hate to find myself doing jello shooters with Barack and Michelle and suddenly realize I'm dressed like an extra from "Rent." Actually, they probably wouldn't mind. They seem cool. Not like the last bunch. I just hope my invitation arrives in in time.
The President and First Lady: Those ballroom dance lessons came in handy.
Looking sharp: JFK and Jackie arrive at the Kennedy inauguration, 1960
Here's the Spin Magazine guide to inauguration concerts--from Springsteen to Jay-Z--HERE
"Judith Beheading Holofernes," by Caravaggio, 1599
We usually look at art in nearly church-like settings--hushed, respectful museums and galleries--but some of the greatest artists were far from polite. In fact, some were outright thugs--Caravaggio springs to mind, painting brilliantly between drunken brawls and swordfights, finally fleeing Rome to escape murder charges with a price on his head. It would be hard to imagine the brooding master thriving in our current art scene, chatting up suburbanites over cheese platters on First Thursday. You just know someone would get skewered.
"Caravaggio," from Simon Schama's BBC series, Power of Art
Other artists had their battles on canvas. They didn't paint to pacify us with beauty, but to strong-arm us into seeing the world in a new way. In the last century, Pablo Picasso punched us in the nose and rearranged our faces. Henri Matisse did the same thing, albeit more gently, lyrically, with a few brushstrokes or paper cut-outs.
"Bull Skull, Fruit, and Pitcher," by Pablo Picasso, 1939
To some, "The Fight of the Century" will always be Ali vs. Frazier at the Garden in 1971, and to others the Kennedy/Nixon presidential debate, or maybe Hemingway walloping F. Scott Fitzgerald outside Les Deux Magots. Some say it was a battle of the bands, when the Stones followed James Brown on the TAMI Show, or when the Clash opened for the Who in 1980. My vote would be the clash between the two best artists of the twentieth century, Picasso and Matisse, who shook hands and came out painting.
Picasso and Matisse were the heavyweights, the undisputed masters of modern art. In 2003, their lifelong dialog was celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art. In this clip, Charlie Rose discusses the "Matisse Picasso" show with the MoMa curators, Kirk Varnedoe and John Elderfield.
Newly discovered documents thrill conspiracy buffs. November 22, 1963. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated while riding in a Dallas motorcade. That much we know. The rest is uncertain, in spite of countless exhaustive investigations, including the official 888-page report of the Warren Commission. A single shooter? A conspiracy? Theories abound, and counter-theories. Don DeLillo encapsulated them in Libra, a literary "fiction" about a conspiracy of Cuban exiles, mobsters, and CIA spooks -- all with axes to grind, all trigger-happy -- who use "blank slate" Oswald as the perfect patsy.
(warning:film clip contains violence)
What's new? A batch of papers was just discovered in a forgotten Dallas courtroom safe that purports to be a transcript of a conversation between nightclub owner Jack Ruby and alleged lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The conversation supposedly took place October 4, 1963, at Ruby's strip joint, the Carousel Club, more than a month before the assassination. In the papers, the two discuss the mob's plans to kill Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who had cracked down on the mob. From the transcript: Oswald: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him. Ruby: How is that? Oswald: I can shoot his brother.
Is this a "what-if" scenario? A speculation, a play, some kind of brain-storming, or the transcript of an actual conversation between the two? According to ABC News, "official records from Ruby's trial, a gun holster that probably belonged to Ruby or Oswald and personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial, also were found inside the safe."
Oswald: I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning.
Oswald in police custody. Lone assassin or patsy? Whatever the case may be, two days after the Kennedy assassination, Jack Ruby shot Oswald during his transfer to the County Jail, while surrounded by Dallas cops. End of story.
Ruby killing Oswald. Read the ABC report here. The Associated Press report here.
The President and First Lady: Those ballroom dance lessons came in handy. 
Looking sharp: JFK and Jackie arrive at the Kennedy inauguration, 1960
