WONEN IN DE AMSTERDAMSE SCHOOL

The JL Hotel Nu 76 Jan Luijkenstraat is so cute and bodacious I don´t ever want to leave my ultra comfy homomoderne room with a giant deepdish bath tub.  Went to the Museum to look at the modern art and design exhibition which was lovely.

Cute dimunitive and delicate program producer Henri Sandrant of Belgium gave me a VIP guest pass for all the museums on the square.  The line for the Van Gogh Museum was too long but luckily there are some pristine Van Goghs in the Stedelijk.  The Stedelijk was filled with lots of humpster specimens floating about and low key security guards who don´t get in your way as you view the art on display.  After a few hours in the museum I stopped off at a little platz café and had a most delish lemon muffin and capucino served by a tall juicered Dutch youthquaker lad who was very flirty and that sent me into high orbit.

Back in my spacious hotel room I decided to just vegetate in front of the TV watching some MTV reality show called Catskills,Catnip or Catfisch starring a cutesy skinny Prince of Judea.  As I don’t have a TV and only watch  the telly when I am in hotels I had never seen this program before.  They were showing a marathon of episodes so I was able to catch up on the premise that solves the social media delimnas of 20something aged youngsters desperate for love at any cost.  I am so glad I reside far from the madding crowd of these tissues.  Also watched a teen comedy called Faking It starring a muscular boy with the most kissable pillow lips, and a makeover/under show with a black hostess who had questionable style herself.  Its funny how the poor guests looked better before she started to tweak them.

My new BFF Yumi Maes a gorgeous undergrad intern at the Stedelijk took such good care of me, and I feel like I´ve known Yumi for ages, though I am old enuf to be her great grandmother.

On my first day in Hamsterdam Yumi and Henri took me to the Stedelijk Museum Restaurant that is in the shape of a large bathtub Lusatania.  I gorged on drinks and snacks as we went over specifics for my lecturina/performance.  I am feeling unusually relaxed and not my normal flustery manic self.  Wasn´t expecting the curatorial team to all be so young and pretty.  I am certainly the elderstateswoman of intermedia arts & sciences of the 21st century.

Back in my hotel room where I´ve started growing roots I write letters while watching the news switching back and forth from dull BBC to even duller CNN. My big bed has the perfect hard mattress with a million pillows to get lost in.  I make the mistake of taking a long hot steam bath which puts me right to sleep.

Saturday was my free day to explore Hamsterdam which I did in earnest.  Lots of perfect people watching and oogling of young strapping men playing soccer in the park or just riding around on their bicycles commando style.  Got up the nerve to stalk a few fit lads keeping a respectable distance.
Sungay morning bright eyed and bushytailed ate a splendid comp breakfast in the hotel dining room.  Yumi came to fetch me at noon to escort the doll to the museum for prep and tech writer.  My technician is a young skater thrasher looking dude named Barry who is very fresh faced with a round fat bottom and big feet---just my type.  I think I freaked him out a bit with my John Wayne Gacy glare.

Barry sets the auditorium all awash in pink gels ala Josephine Baker that I requested  and looks amazing.  My performance begins at 3:30pm and I am shocked to see the Museum Auditorium packed to the brim----SRO with young and old a variety of races, and even infants and small kinder—talk about a diverse crowd I seem to attract.  This is my first time performing in a Netherlander Institution.  Back in the 1980s I did receive lots of orders for my zine Fertile La Toyah Jackson  but that was over 30 years ago so I wasn’t expecting to be on the radar in this country.

Henri finds for me a muscular, handsome German blondine named Florian to sit on the stage with me helping up and down from the podium and being my performative security detail/personal ninja warrior protetor.  Florian handles his duties with splendor and was a great eye candy treat for me and the audience.

I wound up being on stage for over two hours and afterwards engaged in a lively Q&A with no one showboating.  The celebutants in attendance included: Ingrid Jejina, an Amsterdam based artist, Demna Gvasalia the artistic director of the House of Balenciaga, Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd sitting right in the front row smiling lovingly at me with that beautiful gigantic nose of his, weenage pop starlet Charlie Puth with a posse of cute Glee club looking puppies, Bulgarian tennis champ Grigor Dimitrov with Count Nikolai von Bismarck the 28 year old socialite that is known for collecting the work of obscure artist types like me, Anne Syefer, Christian Friedrick, Ferry de Jong, head curator of Stedelijk Bart van de Heide, Phillip Gufler, Raphaela Vogel, Vivian Ziherl, Krist Gruijthuijsen the new Dutch director of Berlins KW Contemporary Art Museum, local dragster Snorella (Micha Schneijckerberg) and multidisciplinary artist and photog Maxime C. Duvall aka: Martin C. DeWaal who I originally thought was Caitlin Jenner as I wasn´t wearing my eyeglasses on stage.

I adored the food at Café Schiller, the olde fashion wood paneled brasserie where I was taken for my artist dinner.  I was starving so getting some comfort food in this lovely Edwardian boite from 1913 was perfect for me.  Wanted to hang out all evening with everyone but I was just too nackered so Yumi ushered me back to my hotel for some righteous boogie slumberland. Special shoutout thanx to Yumi, Henri, Lucy, Bart, Barry, The Spring Performance Fetival Crew, hot Florian, Love Camel, Vicky Baum and Uli Ziemons for all their help in getting me to Hamst.  Of course I didn’t want to leave the Netherlands but because I will be teaching in Linz Austria at the Kunst Universität I had to move on to the next project.

Before I left for Hammy the great Nanna Heidenreich and Marcus Ruff did a tag team dinner at Nannotchka´s Bergmann Str compound that was mindblowing with flavours and acted as my lil farewell to Berlin.

Earlier in the week I was having meetings with a slew of visiting curators including Olga Rozenblum the lovesexy personable young French curator of Treize Gallery.  We had a nice girlish time together at the Akademy de Kunst in the Tiergarten.

Those of you in my olde hometown of LA in Cali please check out the large scale solo exhibition of one of my art children the beautiful and talented Karen Lofgren aka Kara Hunger.  Her exhibit Other Relevant Experiences at Royal Projects Contemporary Art 432 Alameda Street in Downtown LA opens Saturday April 2nd from 4-7:30pm and runs through May 15th.