The Fame Game

The virtual infamy of Wikipedia.

A A A Comments (3) By Adam Cayton-Holland Thursday, May 3 2007

A young lady I met out on the town a few weeks ago recently called and said the following: "I'm sorry to have to ask you this, but are you gay?"

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Now, I understand fully that I am obsessive-compulsive and anal and that these tendencies often manifest themselves in exceptional grooming/off-the-chain interior design, but that does not mean I'm gay. Bi-curious when drunk, maybe, but notgay.

"Why do you ask?" I inquired.

"Well, I googled you and..."

She did not need to finish her sentence, because I knew immediately what had transpired. One of my hater-ass friends who just can't cope with my weekend-sports-guy level of local celebrity had fucked with my Wikipedia page. Again.

When my little sister pointed out a few months ago that I had a Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Adam_Cayton-Holland), I was floored. I know that anyone can make his own page, but I hadn't done that. Instead, some weirdo in cyber-land had made one for me, no doubt prior to two-fisting handfuls of Funyuns, then returning to blogging about kiddie porn. Oddly, this weirdo had done a great job with my Wikipedia page, keeping it succinct and to the point: Adam Cayton-Holland is a humor columnist and stand-up comedian in Denver, the entry read, then listed a few of my stories and noted that I appear frequently at the Comedy Works. Bully for me, right? But my friends could not leave well enough alone. First, my good buddy Brett decided to add a few facts about Adam Cayton-Holland's good buddy, Brett. I very politely informed Brett that while I found his web musings amusing, I genuinely enjoyed the simplicity of my Wikipedia page and would appreciate it if he would be so kind as to delete his work and leave my online encyclopedia entry be. Brett complied, but the word was out: Adam doesn't like it when you fuck with his page. To my friends, that's as good as a green light.

"There has been some controversy due to Cayton-Holland's recent arrest on molestation charges," was the next quip.

Then someone decided to rant about Los Comicos Super Hilariosos, my monthly comedy show: "The event was thrown into controversy last year after one comedian began masturbating on stage as part of his act. According to police reports, the audience was calm until the comedian then lit a cigarette on stage, causing a violent reaction from onlookers. Three were injured in the ensuing melee, including local newscaster Ernie Bjorkman, who was rushed to Denver Health and treated for head lacerations."

Aren't my friends just too hilarious? When I get big, my life will be nothing like the show Entourage, because I am leaving these fuckers the fuck behind.

And then came this: "Cayton-Holland, a long-time Denver resident, has lived with his partner, Stephen, and their two prize winning show-dogs, for the last three years."

Har-de-har-har. Now girls who googled me thought I was gay. Hilarious. Still, I kept pretty cool about people messing with my page, because it only affected me. But then it came to my attention that someone has been hating on Cayton-Holland in direct relation to East High School.

You can hate on me, players, but you keep East High School out of your motherfucking mouth.

Wikipedia East High School. Go ahead, do it. Now scroll down to the "notable alumni" portion of the page. Who appears right beneath Beat icon Neal Cassady? That's right: Adam Cayton-Holland, writer at Westword, sandwiched between Cassady and my boy Don Cheadle. But poke around a bit further and you will find that someone has had the audacity to "challenge" my status as a notable alumni, and that Wikipedia's editors are taking this challenge seriously. My anonymous challenger apparently feels that I don't belong in the rarefied company of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Harold Lloyd, three members of Earth, Wind & Fire and Pam Grier.

To this person, I say: How dare you? Not treating me as the famous Angel that I am is not only an insult to me, it's an insult to every Angel to ever pimp-limp through East's halls. I did not get slammed into lockers at East for three years to be treated like this. Let me ask you, would a not-notable alum go out for a drink with Dealin' Doug? Would a not-notable alum get booked to do a two-nighter comedy show in, oh, gee, I don't know, Gillette, Wyoming? That's a paid road gig. And how about the time I appeared on Channel 4 at 6 a.m. to discuss a Westwordprank where we pretended we were the cast of The Real World: Denver? Let's add this up: Drink with mega-celebrity + paid to appear on stage + TV time = fame. Scratch that: mega-fame.

Now that the matter's settled, I must confess that it feels good to possess this insane amount of fame. You know what it feels like? It feels like I'm gonna live forever. In a way, it feels like I'm gonna learn how to fly. High.

And it certainly doesn't feel gay.

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nanou 05/10/2007 4:42:00 PM

The purist may look askance but Olaf Van Cleef does not really care. The carping critic may wonder what's going on and the trained painter may cringe at the veritable mixing of artistic metaphors but the delightful outcome is precisely what Van Cleef is all about. Fundamentally, a jeweller with a passion for the chic in quite the classical sense; then a brand ambassador for Cartier, Paris; third � and much later in life � a painter expressing the turbulence of his soul in an emotional outburst of complex colours; Van Cleef in his fourth incarnation is a jeweller and painter morphed into one with his crystal-studded performance, the `Bejewelled Fireflies', which opened in Kolkata's Galerie La Mere recently, under the aegis of the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture. Having overcome the impact of the initial encounter with what may be called a typically Olaf-ish genre of art, one cannot but take a second look and a closer third look into the vivacious world of sparking colours that contains such inexplicable strains of black and grey. Van Cleef is pouring out his turmoil-filled soul into his external world, which he has immersed in the most striking hues: the turquoise blue against the magenta or the bright yellow or the pale green against the ink blue and the golden brown. The added dimension in this kaleidoscope comes in the shape of tiny bits of Austrian crystals embedded into the art or, in possibly the lighter moments, minuscule strips of chocolate wrapping pasted daintily alongside strips of delicately drawn bamboo. The French expert Ghislain Mollet-Vieville had suggested that Van Cleef bring his jewel craft into his paintings and even as the `classical Olaf' was hesitating, "friend David quietly poured some diamond chips on his work. The effect was stunning". Van Cleef had realised that the jewelled touch would be well worth the effort. Into this luminescent world enters the black: in herringbones, through serpentines, crosses or even via the deformed Swastika. Many in Van Cleef's family have fallen prey to the Swastika's evil regime but the symbol in the Indian context brings solace to the soul of the painter who has never ceased to grieve for the death of his dearly beloved on the one hand and for the death of simplicity or innocence in the `cultured' world around him. It is similar to the solace that the City of Joy, Kolkata, provides him with � drawing him for biannual visits, inspiring his art, enlightening his mind "with the sheer depth of its culture" and "invigorating" him with the "throbbing of its heartbeat", which Van Cleef can feel even in distant Paris. There he paints through the night, like a man possessed, placing his colours in mosaics or in a labyrinth of lines wending their way around circles, triangles, rectangles. "Kolkata peeps out from unexpected corners" of his art: a Krishna-Gopi sequence in a possibly Rajasthan painting with a miniature Howrah Bridge conspicuous through the archway of a palace or the Royal Bengal Tiger placing itself majestically in the midst of another. What sets the Bejewelled Fireflies apart from his earlier works is the deliberate care with which "every emotion has been made distinct;" every dot that Van Cleef "places on paper is a separate identity, conveying something significant" and his paintings are replete with them. They are striking because of the sheer contrast of the white on black � the artist using his "half a micron felt tipped pen under magnifying glasses to ensure that no dot touches another". Whether the overall picture is one riot of colour or a mass of confusion reaching out for a world of comprehension possibly depends on the viewer but it does not fail to raise questions. Save a few paintings that are clearly self portrayals: a bemused young Van Cleef contemplating his beloved grandmother or a young French boy seeing an elephant for the first time in India and then envisioning a grand entry into this land of palaces and fountains as a caparisoned pachyderm in the company of two younger members of the species, which convey wonderment, others are poignant even in their splendour. There are the monarchs, the fish, the weeping women by the well, the batiked fabric or the timeless clock. Most are fenced by spotted lines of black and white; sorrow and joy. Elephants are very central to Van Cleef's current series: the dancing twins with their crystal-studded cloaks or the majestic shape framed against the equilateral arch of a maharaja's abode. It is not just the physical presence of the jewels that give the paintings an embossed look; it is the Moulins Papier d'Arches paper, "pure cotton, produced by a company of 1492 vintage". Van Cleef has found in this a material that has a mind of its own: "making a very special contribution to the painting as it soaks up the colours". For some artists it may have been nightmarish but Van Cleef has found a way of making the paper cooperate with his fingers, which choose to do a bit of calligraphy now, or again some delicate stone placement or even engaging in some careless dabbing of paint on paper, and then, when the fingers want to shock deliberately they just pick up chocolate paper, snipping it into infinitesimal bits to be scattered over the easel; carefully carelessly. Van Cleef does not know what he will paint; his soul takes over as he devotes about a 100 hours to each work. Bejewelled Fireflies is more than special because it is a tribute to the city that Van Cleef loves more than any other: its spirit encompassed by the Howrah Bridge that connects everyone and everything "without any sense of stratification; like a soul that is set free". It is this sense of freedom that Van Cleef is seeking ; freedom from the complexities of his mind that snatch his sleep over endless nights; freedom to lose himself in his world of jewels and gems; and in the colour of crushed lapis lazuli or simple sindur that adorns the forehead of the Indian woman.
Claudette 05/06/2007 10:30:00 AM

I understand how you feel, someone fucked with one of my blogs. they hacked into it and got rid of all my personal photos and comments and everything. He changed the whole thing and made it look like a terrorist site. It had devil heads and headstones all over it and a poll for who loves Osama and said I kill americans and eat babies and all kinds of bullshit on all my pages while at the same time, saying he loves me and wants to be my friend written across the top of the pages. While it was not exactly a personal attack, as in your case, it may as well have been, and it was not funny. I was so pissed. But I have slowly redone all of it.
herenow 05/03/2007 10:44:00 PM

Yep, I knew it!!! go find a nice gal or when drunk find a nice boytoy and get laid regularly.