This week: Continental European Bureau Czar Mark Staff Brandl roams the Basel Art Fair 2009 with guest co-host Peter Noser, gallerist, curator and artist. They comment primarily on the "main fair," but also cursorily on Scope, Volta, the Solos Show, die Liste (and look forward to a Bridge addition next year). Additional walk-on voices include Maya LaLive d'Epinay, Martin Kraft, Alex Meszmer, many others, and a few seconds of Olga Stefan. Mark managed to wipe-out some excellent comments, or record them so poorly that they were unusable. Ce la technologie. A quick but comprehensive look at the "real" Basel, the most important international art fair, the Queen yet also Great Whore of Babylon. I made some multiples especially for the fair including pins and my T-shirt. They all bore the Latin phrase "Abite in Malam crucem, artis nundinae!", signed Marcus Scipio Incendiolus. Or, roughly in English, "Screw Art Fairs!" In German, as appropriate for Basel, that's "Zum Teufel mit Kunstmessen!"

This week, Brian and Patricia talk with artist Desirée Holman about TV sitcoms, life-like baby dolls, and Dungeons & Dragons in her Oakland Home. Desirée Holman was recently awarded the 2008 SECA award by the San Francisco Modern Museum of Art, and is a currently a resident artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

This week (the) Amanda Browder and Tom talk with curator Manon Slome about the "No Longer Empty" series of exhibitions. Manon is one of the curators of this year long series of shows, each of which inhabits an abandoned New York City store front for one month. Along the way the three talk about the dismal state of affairs in Ol' New York and how we can make lemonade out of these lemons.

Manon Slome (PhD) is an independent curator working in New York City. From 2002 to June 2008 she was the Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York since its inception in 2002. During that time, she has curated and overseen a program of some forty exhibitions, symposia and museum publications as well as monographs and scholarly essays. Ms. Slome became highly involved with the Israeli art scene during her research for the exhibition, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on”, (2005) and has followed and researched the Israeli scene for the last 3 years. Prior to the CAM, Ms. Slome worked as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum for 7 years and was a holder of a Helena Rubestein curatorial fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study program. She is currently working on a book, The Aesthetics of Terror.

This week, Duncan and Richard talk to Deb Sokolow! We talk about Deb's work, drug lords, Rocky, the merits of Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone's painting, Oliver North, how many people on the Bad at Sports staff have actually smoked crack, serial killers, meth labs, Jerry Saltz, Gary Busey, art school, and more, more, more! This is a great interview.

As a special bonus Geoffrey Todd Smith preps panels with a roller (that is the odd sound you hear in the background) and chimes in occasionally off mic!

Shamelessly lifted blurb: Deb Sokolow has been steadily inking her way into the hearts and minds of Chicago's art world. Since graduating from the School of the Art Institute in 2004, she has shown at 40000, Gallery 400 and Polvo, and had a solo show in the MCA's 12 x 12 series. Her whimsical drawings analyze pop-culture phenomena, such as the movie Rocky, office culture and Americans' fear of terrorism, and mix the aesthetics of children's books, diary writing, New Yorker-style cartoons and personal sketching.