My first vision of Patti Smith is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. She’s a few feet from me on a dark stage in a club, long lost in addled memory. I can see her now in my minds eye …slow motion… then faster than life, then a strobe light vision in a white T-shirt. Bottles are being thrown at the stage and she’s barking and bellowing at the combat-booted crowd. She leers and screams, threatening them into a frenzy of punk madness. I became conscious in that world of geek bands like the Dead Boys, The Heartbreakers and The Ramones, where being sedated or lost or misplaced was the anthem. Patti Smith was saying something different to me that night.

● Condom makers decide to get into the extra-small water balloon business, make extra small condoms for 12-year old boys. [The Awl] ● Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter may be Tim Burton’s next project; Fran Leibowitz may be Martin Scorsese’s. [GNews, Playlist] ● Schnabel, Johns, Murakami, Koons, Hirst, Kapoor and Marden are the wealthiest living artists. [Art Info] ● Mercedes Benz commercials about to make you start tearing off your clothes in search of a tall, dark, handsome jerk, as Mad Men’s Jon Hamm signs on to do the car company's voiceover work. [NYTimes]

Jeff Koons isn't shy. He’s the neo-pop artist responsible for towering (forty-three feet!) flower puppies, planting “scandalous objects” on the lawn of Versailles and most infamously, a life-size shrine to the King of Pop and his favorite primate. Koons’ is also the guy behind some of the strangest eroticized art of our time, as well as some of the most comically received. The artist’s latest project? Creating the next BMW Art Car, an undertaking that Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney, among others, have also committed to. What does Koons have in store for us? We can only guess. Some stand-out Art Cars and a few of Koons’ most “inspiring” works after the jump.

If the best thing about Milk is Gus Van Sant's direction, and the second best is how he defies Hollywood reality and transforms Sean Penn into a lovable underdog, then this development has to be in the top five (just beneath Emile Hirsch's turn as the original hipster hooker). Apparently making a cameo in this Oscar shoo-in is none other than art titan Jeff Koons. It's hardly ephemeral, as the lobster shiller enjoys veritable minutes of screentime. Furthermore, he's even listed as part of the cast, portraying the future San Francisco mayor. Insert poor metaphor about Milk and lobster bisque here.

Would Louis XIV find it amusing to see Jeff Koons’ hanging "Lobster," otherwise known as inflatable beach toy, suspended in of one of his salons? Maybe. He was, after all, a revered sponsor of the arts. Appropriate? Jean-Jacques Aillagon, President of the Château de Versailles, which hosts the American artist’s selected works, seems to think so. “Koons’ “Pop Baroque” aesthetic is in line with the palace’s Baroque style,” Aillagon has said. His support for the project was so deep that Aillagon committed an unprecedented 2 million euros for the event.

Superseding all extant classifications of art when he first broke through, Jeff Koons inspired the creation of neo-pop art, which has since inspired artists like Takashi Murakami. Factor in a spurned ex-wife in the form of Italian porn star La Cicciolina suing him for child support and his status as one of art's most well-paid prodigies, and you have all the trappings of an art-world celebrity.

For the next three nights, the cyber-Gods over at Google are hosting an art event in New York's Meatpacking District to celebrate their new iGoogle application. Google commissioned over 70 artists—Jeff Koons, Philippe Starck, and Diane Von Furstenberg among them—to design their own unique iGoogle themes, which will be presented "in a very unique way" throughout the Gansevoort Plaza. (We tried to Google what "unique" really means in relation to the Google event, but our computer had a stroke.) The installation gets underway tonight at 8-ish p.m.

When we aren't waiting with breath that is bated for updates to Lindsay "Ronson" Lohan's probably fake Facebook profile, we sometimes like to gawk at art. On display to the public, starting today, is "Jeff Koons on the Roof" at the Met. Featuring three large-scale installations—most notable among them, Balloon Dog (Yellow), pictured left—the 10,000 square-foot rooftop space is the perfect place to showcase playful works by the iconic American artist. Koons's work will be on display until mid-October (LiLo's wall probably won't be).

Attention all art aficionados! New York City is no longer the center of the art world! At least not from May 31 to September 21! We’ll stop yelling! Calling New York ‘no longer the center of the art world’ might be a tad harsh, but we don’t want to detract from the major exhibit landed by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, between the dates mentioned above. Jeff Koons, y’all. The provocative artist will be bringing his works—many of them iconic—to the museum’s halls in what will be the largest Koons exhibition in 15 years. The show will include his famous sculptures metal Rabbit (left), Balloon Dog, and Hanging Heart. Koons worked closely with the MCA to select the pieces, which will include the staged-sex photos and sculptures he made with his porn star ex-wife, Ilona Maller.