Divine is returning to New York City! No, the star of John Waters movies and drag extraordinaire is not coming back from the dead. Instead, her amazing likeness, heretofore visible only to visitors of the American Visionary Art Museum in her hometown of Baltimore, will join more than 50 pieces from the permanent collection in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman from June 26-July20. Andrew Logan's sculpture of "Divine" will delight revelers on Fifth Avenue during New York City's Pride March on June 28.

On Friday, June 26, the Lower East Side Girls Club (whose organization was founded on American Visionary Art Museum's Education Goals AND have artwork on permanent display at the museum) will help celebrate the window installation with pink cupcakes and wonderful spirit for museum friends, bystanders and the media on site.

Pictured above: AVAM director Rebecca Hoffberger strikes a "Divine" pose.

The Coney Island saga continues. Even as the City's Planning Commission approves the city's plan for the mallification of Coney Island, the Mermaid Parade is readying for a day of festivities this Saturday, June. 20, that will celebrate the past and rally the troops in an effort to save Coney's future. With Harvey Keitel serving as the king of the parade, look for lots of excitement. And if you want to pitch in to Save Coney Island, here's how:

Be a Save Coney Island Volunteer at the Mermaid Parade!

WHAT: Pass out placards to mermaids and other parade revelers and gather petition signatures

WHEN: Saturday, June 20, ALL DAY, starting at 10:30 a.m. (volunteer for an hour or two or more, anytime)

WHERE: Surf Ave. in front of the Cyclone by the Coney Island History Project. A coordinator will be there to meet you and provide you with materials.

WHY: The Mermaid Parade is a great opportunity to get out our message that the City needs to fix its flawed rezoning plan for Coney Island, which would shrink Coney Island's historic amusement district and put high-rise towers right in the middle of it.

Join us at the Mermaid Parade and help us Save Coney Island!

To volunteer, contact us at volunteers@saveconeyisland.net. That way, we can exchange contact information to make sure we find each other at the event. We hope you'll join us!

Photo from brooklynvegan.com

"Kids" by MGMT is undoubtedly one of the big hit songs of recent memory. In an included statement with the release of the song's video, MGMT reveals to us that this is the first song the band ever wrote, on a cold February day in 2003. The band claims that this track has "proven to be some kind of monster with a life of its own. Both as an albatross and a plate of mac and cheese with fake bacon." That said, the video is as convoluted as the process they describe. A click on the link will also guide you to two more remarkable songs and videos from MGMT.

Rene Ricard is a living legend. Once an influential critic at Artforum championing the work of '80s artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Judy Rifka and John Ahearn in a seminal essay "The Radiant Child", he's survived years of hard times to come out the other side thanks to the support of friends and benefactors who never gave up on him. Now he's due for a resurgence, first with an upcoming show of his artwork at Half Gallery and as a poet giving readings around town. Here Liza Bear captures Ricard in his role as a poet at a recent reading.

Douglas Rushkoff is a noted author and revisionist cultural critic who brings his rigorous analytical skills and deep reading to a variety of subjects spanning the worlds of cyberspace (Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace) to business (Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business) to religion (Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism). Prolific, thoughtful and accessible, Rushkoff's been a player on the cyberspace scene almost from the beginning doling out his opinions both as a highly paid corporate consultant and as a not so highly paid columnist in PAPER magazine. His most recent tome, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back, is being excerpted online on boingboing and this video breaks down his basic argument that we are the victims of what he calls "corporatism." In an effort to jump start the bookm Rushkoff is posting an excerpt from Life Inc., every Monday morning on boingboing until the book publishes on June 2. Last week, he published the introduction. Today, the first half of Chapter One appears here

Wow! They're trying it again -- assembling 200 guitarists and bassists to participate in a historic performance. Here's the story:

"Last August, volunteer guitarists and bassists from around the world gathered in New York City to rehearse and perform composer Rhys Chatham's "A Crimson Grail", for 200 Electric Guitars (Outdoor Version) as part of Lincoln Center's Out of Doors festival. Owing to severely inclement weather and safety concerns, the performance was canceled, heartbreakingly, at the last minute. A year later, on August 8, 2009, Rhys Chatham and section leaders David Daniell, John King, Seth Olinsky and Ned Sublette will reassemble the oversized orchestra for the long-awaited world premiere of "A Crimson Grail" at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park. Closing out the night will be an exceedingly rare live set from New York City post-punk pioneers Liquid Liquid."

"As with last year, Lincoln Center and Wordless Music are conducting an open call for volunteer guitarists and bassists to join the orchestra for this world premiere performance conducted by the composer. Information about how musicians can apply by June 15 can be found at www.lincolncenter.org/wordlessmusic."

Photograph by Craig S. McKibben

Perennial PAPER favorite Anna Sui is coming to a Target near you. After launching its Designer Collaborations series with Alexander McQueen, the trendy retailer has tapped the trendy designer to produce a collection that goes on sale in September. Sui told WWD that she took inspiration from the four main characters of Gossip Girl for her collection. Which is perfect. They were undoubtedly inspired by Sui and now Sui's inspired by them. via Vogue.uk

Don't you wish you could walk out the door and have wifi readily available for free? Efforts to wire cities have for the most part failed and unless the government comes up with the funding I don't see tech companies lining up to do the job. Well, there's another way to accomplish the same thing. If everyone took the passwords off their wifi, we'd have a free, citywide wireless network. Sound like a good idea? Then head on over to Eyebeam to help make it happen! Eyebeam is a great organization doing cutting edge work in the digital space. They love art and tech and bringing it all together to make this world a better place. Its Open Cultures Research Group is holding a workshop in which participants are trained -- and then train others -- to open up a wifi network so that it is free, accessible, and secure for others while maintaining your bandwidth. This week, participants will work together on developing a "script" for spreading the knowledge in order to convert skeptical friends, family, and neighbors into open wireless ambassadors. For more info go to shareyourwifi.org

Eyebeam
540 W. 21st St.
Saturday, May 2
3-6 p.m.
Free and open to the public

The drive to customize and make something your own runs deep. Just take a look at this portfolio of Mexicans who have personalized their face masks. Thanks to Facebook friend LaRon Batchelor for the link.

One of the great things about living in New York City, Manhattan to be specific, is being able to stumble upon some amazing talent performing in the streets. I recently ran into the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble in Union Square and fell in love with the music and the vibe of this nine-piece group, made up of a drummer and eight sons of Chicago jazz musician Phil Cohran on horns. They've been around for awhile moving from the street to studio, but catching them on the fly here and there is the best way to go.

Wikipedia says "Originally from Chicago, the brothers started as a street ensemble before recording in 2004. They have performed with Mos Def and recorded with Erykah Badu and Maxwell."

If anything were deserving of documentation, it would be the story told in American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art. The long-awaited documentary about the history and resurgence of the American Rock Poster, is scheduled to premiere June 20th in San Francisco as part of The Rock Poster Society's "Rock Art By The Bay" event. What's ironic here is that while album art covers have gone the way of the dodo bird in favor of digital downloads, there's been a tremendous resurgence in the art form thanks to websites and bands commissioning posters for their shows. Enjoy the preview and find out a lot more at americanartifact

With Facebook now a ubiquitous force in our lives, it is important for us to be up to speed on the the dos and don'ts of Facebook-ism. Check out this important primer.

P.S. Thanks to my Facebook friends for turning me on to this.

Once upon a time Madonna was fun. She used to hang out with cool people like Keith Haring and perform for her fans at places like the Paradise Garage. Thanks to Erik Pagan who tipped me off to this video shot 25 years ago in May, 1984, the same year that we launched PAPER.

Mark Kostabi calls himself the World's Greatest Con Artist and who's to argue. Con Artist, a docu directed by Michael Sladek is slated to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, an event that will surely give Kostabi another 15 minutes to let the world know that he's really a game show host who lets others paint his pictures save for a signature he dashes off at the end. He's been laying claim to this title for more than 25 years to anyone who would listen and to all who tuned in to his cable show -- whose latest incarnation is called Name That Painting. The format is simple: a Kostabi art work is presented to a panel of judges who then compete to name the piece and to win the $50 Kostabi doles out to the name he likes best. Senior Editor Carlo McCormick recently invited Kostabi to be the guest artist in Paper magazine's April issue. McCromick is a frequent panelist on Kostabi's show. Kostabi also happens to be an art star in Rome, where he has a home. So the con game goes on. And we love it!

It's no secret that we hold Mister Cartoon in the highest regard. He's a fan of PAPER as well, he's told me. The mutual admiration society has brought Mister Cartoon out to our L.A. Project. For our event in November, he brought along about a dozen or so cars that he and his crew paint, customize and turn into works of art that stop traffic wherever they go. We had a long conversation about how messed up Detroit was and how it lost its edge mostly because of its design, he said. Not surprising from one our foremost artists who has taken his work from the streets to cars to the body (tattoos) to fashion and more recently to the movies, where his own story will eventually get told. Well, it's one things to be famous all over the world. It's another to get recognition in your own backyard. That too has arrived for the soulful Cartoon with this profile in the LA Times.

Photos by Cali Dewitt

Return to Babylon is some crazy hybrid of a new film. Silent and shot with a player piano soundtrack and directed by Alex Monty Canawati, Return to Babylon strings together a slew of Hollywood scandals circa the 1920s featuring Clara Bow (Jennifer Tilly), fiery Mexican film star Lupe Verez (Maria Conchita Alonso) and husband Johnny "Tarzan" Weissmuller, ill-fated Virginia Rappe (Ione Skye), rapist-murderer Fatty Arbuckle, Gloria Swanson (Debi Mazar), Ramon Navarro (Phillip Bloch), Josephine Baker (Rolonda Watts), Rudolph Valentino (Alex Monty Canawati). Tippi Hedren is also along for the ride.

Am listening to the new Iggy Pop album Préliminaires. Iggy sounds like all his children -- Nick Cave and Tom Waits, for example -- rolled into one with a bit of Serge Gainsbourg thrown in. It's my favorite of his solo albums -- nothing can touch The Stooges -- but what's really weird is that Préliminaires, which means “foreplay” in French, is score music inspired by Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel The Possibility of an Island. Who knew Iggy was a francophile! In this video Iggy explains it all. For more information check out iggypoppreliminaires.com

Here's what Amazon has to say about the book. Gives you an idea of why this appeals to him.

Like the New Age camp of The Elementary Particles and the Thai sex tourist hotels of Platform, Houellebecq's latest novel has a self-enclosed setting: the shifting sites at which the Elohimites, a UFO/cloning cult, hold their seminars. Daniel, a shock jock famous for such slogans as "We prefer the Palestinian orgy sluts," narrates what turns out to be his life story. Early on, Daniel's partner, Isabel, leaves him after her breasts begin to droop and she gains some pounds. Then Daniel, following a catastrophic love affair with nubile Spaniard Esther, gets interested in the Elohim, gets close to the "prophet" and witnesses an event that catapults the group into the center of world history. Daniel's part in this converges with his jealousy of Esther. Meanwhile, the West is going to hell in a handbasket, and the Elohim idea of substituting cloning and suicide for reproduction and old age is catching on. Everything ends frighteningly (unless you like clones) and satisfactorily (if you take a cynical enough view). Houellebecq has never written better, yet this novel seems stuck in the groove—clunky mini-essays, gonzo porn digressions—first etched by his earlier novels.

Full disclosure: Indie film icon and perennial Cannes darling Jim Jarmusch is a friend so I come to his films with some ambivalence. Sometimes you love the man but not the work. In the case of his newest work The Limits of Control I'm glad to say I can love them both. As in all his films, we embark on a journey we know not where or why. Along the way, we are treated to discourses and ruminations on the nature of art, music, film and more. A tribute to the French nouvelle vague, The Limits of Control stars Isaach De Bankole as a laconic hit man others are constantly talking to. Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Gael Garcia Bernal make cameos, but Paz De La Huerta's bare nakedness makes her the film's breakout star. Beautifully rendered by cinematographer Christopher Doyle, The Limits of Control is an existential thriller where the action takes place as much in the mind of the beholder as on the screen. A smart film for people who like to think. I hope that's you. Out in May.

I don't like Oprah Winfrey hitching her star to Rihanna's tragedy. We know she's Oprah and she cares deeply about people, but why go so tabloid. Oprah strives to take the high road, but times are tough and I guess she believes that you gotta go for the numbers to survive. I'm feeling the same way about the Huffington Post which now posts topless photos of Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Simpson back in her Daisy Dukes to complement the steady diet of politics and finance.

Prince must be twittering. Get a load of this message that just arrived in my in box:

Message from Prince to his Fans (3/9/09):

“Purple Electricity

Calling all Purpleheadz: ready 2 get plugged in?

From the 24th on, there will b a slew of NPG-related events happening around electric LAlaland.. we don't want 2 give away all the details yet, but b prepared 2 get yo groove on, numerous ways 4 numerous days. We know $ is tite but the adventures will b worth ur while! Stay 2ned 2 this outtaspacestation.”