so a few days ago i got that can’t 7″ in the mail from belgium, this morning my own neighbor brian oakerly swings by when no one’s really awake to agitate the dog and drop off the new the body 7″. on one side is a cover of “cop killer” by body count. on the other, a cover of “dead cop” by MDC. zut alors!
crap. i just wrote up another long post and the damn thing froze up. well, that hasn’t happened in a while but when it does it sure can rub. let’s see what we remember here…
ok, what i forgot to mention before is that last night there was indeed that hot sauce party, which, despite the non-appearance of the guy from the shampoo store, was fun. i didn’t make a hot sauce for the competition, as i don’t like really spicy food because it gives me the hiccups almost instantly. but i did make a ginger beer and that turned into trouble of an entirely different persuasion and order of magnitude. it seems that when penny leslie was writing up the recipe for me, he played a bit the fool, in that he thought me for some reason in possession of a modicum of common sense. so when a thinking sort would have refrigerated the mixture so as to stop the fermentation process between the time when bubbles first emerge and the time when the drink becomes absolutely ghastly, nice young ladies such as yours truly keep storing the bastard in a paper bag on the counter. at the party a coterie of bad-taste-likers formed and me and psibs decided to finish (with help from jean) the bottle. gentle reader, it is hardly my wont to offend your temperate person, so forgive me when i say that before long i was indeed “in the land”. but don’t think of it as me being wasted– think of it as my being poisoned. all i wanted to make was a delicious soda, all i intended to drink was a foul-tasting concoction, and i was well on my way to pickafightadonia* before noticing that the beige liquid i had been drinking was having unforseen effects. tolerably poisoned, mind you, and self poisoned, but poisoned nonetheless. as far as drinking partners go, one could do far worse and possibly none better than jean and psibs, especially considering that none of us are much the drinker, but all of us pigheaded enough to get into fun trouble and keep the ball rolling. other items of note include the presence of jenine’s mom carmen, who dispensed filipino recipes all night to a rapt mike t, and the presence of melissa number one, who got a devilock haircut on the lawn. number one, when we parted ways this afternoon you seemed down on the haircut, but it’s seriously really great.
unrelated note: brian chapman i owe you a dollar.
tonight there was an art show at a mildly seedy downtown bar (the safari lounge). curating the show was brian chippendale, but maybe curating isn’t really the word as it was open to all to contribute, with no one turned away, in a salon style. i got the notice a few days ago and me and mt and merrydeath all contributed to making a “ringold st. tigerzz” corner. well, my contribution was a drawing of ll cool j that i ripped out of my sketchbook, but i’d like to think that i made up for the casual nature of the piece by pricing it at $60, then writing “seriously, $60!”. lots of people showed stuff and every piece had its own particular charm and i didn’t see any biters. ben jones was there and i got to take a quick look at the new paperrad book and it looks awesome. it’s huge, about the same size as a five-subject notebook, with a wide variety of paper stocks.
i really enjoyed brian’s paintings, which i feel i never really got the chance to ogle before (which chance i took tonight). i had seen posters she had made that were big sheets of different body parts- torsos, arms, legs, and heads, with select props, all at the same sizes. in many of her paintings, she cuts these out and pastes them in different configurations onto a homemade paper mache canvas, putting the pieces together to form different action figure-ish characters. it’s especially great considering the “preliminary” pieces (the silk-screened posters) were show flyers that, when she initially printed them, she just handed out, so anyone could make their own chippendale painting if they wanted to. it made me happy- she’s got a real good attitude about art stuff.
oh, kevin and leonardr both linked to this regender internet filter, so i switched out the gendered pronouns in this post. also, i’m going to attempt a full switch to indiscriminatly using “gal” and “lady”, as replacements for the commonly gender neutral “guy” and “dude”. why not, right? also, if you’re in the mood for internet filters, be sure and see leonardr’s excellent eater of meaning.
discrete entries:
sandalwood in them. yum! later we went back and invited him to a party.
yesterday i got a package in the mail from delerium tremens that had the new can’t 7″ in it and a bunch of pins and stickers. sweet! can’t is my favorite band right now (a “band”, despite being only one person) and the music always sends chills up my spine. dennis’ artwork is usually lots of zits and fart jokes and people getting stabbed in the eye, but for the 7″ it’s a handsome portrait of jessica (the lady who is can’t) in the woods looking suspicious– totally perfect. also good lately: the weather that enables me to wear long sleeve shirts, going to the beach at night and getting lost in the dunes and running on the beach in the wrong direction but then finding the fire, my internet savior erik hopp.
ps- i like zits and fart jokes and people getting stabbed in the eye.
there was this tribe of people in eastern europe somewhere that lived for like, 120 years, and people did studies of how they lived, and nothing they did wasn’t duplicated by other groups of nomadic shepards with conventional life spans EXCEPT that they were always walking on steep rocky terrain. this is what i tell myself when i get down to the first floor and realize i left something in my room on the third floor about a hundred times a day.
went to worcester this weekend for some silk screening stuff, and found a party at Talk To You Later’s. it was really fun, many heads were there, including some western mass heads and some boston heads. trish and driscoll both made mix cds that kept skipping, but i was into it and i wasn’t alone. “everybody wants to rule the world” was skipping like crazy and i was dancing like crazy and kevin shouted out something that sounded like “find a way!” and that made me really happy. find a way to dance to the cd skipping? find a way to rule the world? i asked him and it turns out he said something completely different but who cares. mattz made a tape and put “a special surprise” for me on it. when surfin’ bird played i thought that was it, but no, it was my other favorite anthemic song– GISM “endless blockades for the pussyfooter”. aaaaand he put the song on twice. in a row. and people danced all the way through both! so the reasons tapes are better than mix cds are: 1, tapes can’t skip; 2, if you make a really bold choice on a tape, there’s no getting around it– you can’t chicken out and jump to the next track. other party items of note are putting lots of clothespins on the face with little andrew and inhaling a bunch of pepper with flip and sneezing a lot.
slept over at nick’s new place and it’s reall sweet– right near downtown and when we woke up we walked to the common and ate cereal in the middle of the latin american festival. downhill battle is looking for office space to rent in worcester, and if we can find something with a storefront, me and penny are going to get to run that not self-sustainable store we always wanted. any leads please email me and i’ll forward them on to nghk relevent. this would be amazing and not to break providence hearts but i’d move back to worcester faster than you could say “jackie robinson”.
and to be fair, last night i got pumped on providence because work/death played at okie street (in the street) and scott played in a large paper bag that he blew fire out of and the bag was on fire and he was in it. bzzzzt!
i’m back from cat sitting in brooklyn. i didn’t accomplish many things i set out to do- i didn’t draw that comic book (although i did draw), i didn’t hang out with bent sceptyr or the curtin brothers, i didn’t meet eileen wu, and i didn’t go to the metropolitan museum of art. i also didn’t see gorilla biscuits, flipper, or that carmen miranda movie showing at the film forum. but no tears for spilt milk i guess. oh, the last two days in town i saw will’s band dracula zombie usa, and then went to susie and jack’s art opening at giant robot. susie gave me a ride home the next day and we listened to a lemony snicket book-on-tape.
i got home to providence and mike and arwen were getting ready to go out to the pan-asian market to get lunch fixins so i went too. after some perusing he says to me “i’ve got all i need for lunch, now i just need a snack for the walk home”. “say no more” i says, “let’s go halvesies on this jar of pickled ginger.”. he looks at me and firmly says, “no. that’s not fun.”. “it’s worcester fun” i tell him and he agrees, and i get, for the first time since my move, very homesick for worcester. in providence, people do things because they produce pleasing results. in worcester, it’s like you’re always fighting to survive, and fun is proving that you can survive with the worst set of constraints you can put on. in worcester, taking something you like, pickling it, and eating too much of it is a go-to move. i’m sorry, maybe it’s stupid, but i’m sad.
yesterday was decadent, sitting in meredith’s ACed apt., watching degrassi high: the next generation with her and her (my) friend all day, taking a break only to buy underwear (this is absolutely true) and make popcorn with pepper on it. at night we went to a place called “the cake shop” to see my preschool friend chris’ band no omega, plus meredith’s roomate’s band meneguar, and matt from true north’s other band, asshole parade. periphery! you know what kind of a place new york is? it’s the kind of place that would have a bar called “the cake shop” that DOESN’T HAVE ANY CAKES. on the subway home i took the right train the wrong way for a loooooong time and had to wait alone at a spooky elevated train stop for a good while. also somewhere between there and the apartment i lost that metro card sarah had let me use! and i found out this morning after i had packed my bag with sandwiches, ready for a fun day at free museums. grrr! it looks like i’m headed back to providence on sunday with susie gharamani. because the ride is free and in good company and i have very little money for timely buses.
CORRECTION: according to “t”, the cake shop does have cakes, albeit of the cup variety. my b, “t”.
today i had some nice kale for breakfast and got right on the subway to the whitney museum. i’m really low on money for the rest of my stay here, ergo i can’t afford museum entry fees, so i just asked a nice lady on the street outside the museum if i could have her entry sticker and when she figured out why i wanted it she was thrilled. the museum was good and i ran into jim drain in the robert smithson room. jim said he really really liked smithson more and more, but i only liked his dumb stuff– the stuff with funny naked people, the stuff with bright colors, you know– dumb. there was a big exhibit on new fake-scientific abstraction that had matthew ritchie and a little text piece by ben marcus, and i like both those guys. also there was a painting of a clown by edward hopper that is really “the tops” regarding clown paintings, and a great picture by my friend from the worcester art museum, arthur g dove, and some stuff by that guy ad reinhart, whose attitude i really like. after that i went to li’l dice’s restaurant (on 12th, between a & b) and had some lemonade and iced tea and collard greens and even a half of a beer that she poured for someone else but was “too foamy” and then a half a glass of cola and after the taste of the beer the cola was like pure syrup, it was delicious and i’m happy i only drank a half a glass each of the last two. we made plans to watch degrassi junior high and buy underwear and there was one other thing but i forgot it already. willy shakes, these plans usurped our previous plans to go to the beach, but i feel ok with this because they were really your plans with your girlfriend and your other friend and his girlfriend, which plans i was tagging along for, and i can’t help but feel and maybe this is childish like i would’ve been a fifth wheel.
let’s see, other plans… my preschool friend’s band (“no omega”) is playing tomorrow night at some hopefully basement-like space with asshole parade and meneguar, on friday dracula zombie usa are playing somewhere (and hopefully i can get guestlisted), jack long and susie gharamani have an art opening at the giant robot store on saturday, and this sunday, hopefully i’ll have made my $10 neccessary dollars to go see the cobra woman / the gang’s all here doublefeature at the film forum. how’m i gonna do it? i’m working on stuff to sell to cinders, this nice gallery where a nice guy i met works. i can’t do consignment, only outright buying. i’ve got to make really good stuff. i’ve got to get to work.
incidentally no work yet on the project i had for myself- that vitamin wolf comic book i talked so much about. i guess that’s just how these things go sometimes. i wish i could just not talk about something until it’s all the way done. oh, but i’m such a gossip, that’d never work.
i had an absolutely gorgeous day today in coney island. it was cloudy and cool, me and near death went to the photobooth twice and the horror hole once. what really blew me away was all the hand painted signs everywhere, all of which were gorgeous and awesome, some of which were straight up weird. to make things weirder, there were signatures and styles i recognized, like rita ackermann, gary panter, os gemeos, swoon, justin green (?) and dearraindrop (???). as DL would say, wh-wh-wh-wha? i got home and looked it up and found the dreamland artists group, a group of artists that painted tons of signs around coney island for free for the past two years. here’s a nytimes article on the matter (requires free registration) and here’s a more “art review” review from some art website. the best signs (which are really incredible) are not shown on the site. and the sings that are just the regular signs are also really amazing. the carousel for example, has beautiful airbrushed horses with saddles in themes like “mom” “dad” “zeus” “conquistador” and “aztec warrior”. coney island is great. the ghost hole rules for crappy rubber horror props attached to moving sticks. my time cat-sitting in brooklyn has been, thus far, bonkers.