our studio is flooded out so we’re hunkered down at nprevs’ drinking strong coffee in the kitchen while he conference calls. yesterday was pretttttttttttttttttttttty nuts– a few days of hell-hard rain and the river overflowed over the bridge and into the street, surrounding the building on all sides with mill-river water. mill-river water, FYI, is the kind that burns. not something you want near a membrane. we got home from our weekly chess date to find the whole place hardly navigable but get-into-able, electricityless and bugging out. the basement water is chest high– when i got home CF was down there in a kayak looking for valuable stored items (which all, miraculously, floated by him just like that). totally bonkers and traditionally mind blowing. there’s some pictures of a trash-besieged BJ alley on mickey z’s NSFW tumbla.

got a bunch of tapes yesterday form a friend who’s divesting. a few real gems selected behind the cut…

(more…)

this ruled so hard the last time this happened. not to be missed!

Hello Everybody!

Manton Avenue Project has a new series of plays. For those who don’t know, Manton Avenue Project produces plays written by elementary school kids, cast with some of the best local adult actors!

Best Theater IN PROVIDENCE. COME OUT!

YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!
the empowerment plays
March 26-28, 2010
created in partnership with The Hive Archive
in honor of Women’s History Month

The latest production of our PLAYMAKING program
featuring the work of a brand spankin’ new group of MAP Kids!

Performance Dates
Friday, March 267th at 7pm
Saturday, March 27th at 7pm
Sunday, March 28th at 3pm

The Media and Arts Center
at Met Public
325 Public Street
Providence, RI 02905

miamians- come check out this tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite art show i’m. opens april 10th without me (i’ll be at mocca).

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

as you may have noticed, the site was down for a few days. what you didn’t know is that it was due to an injection of quasi-malicious code, aka U BEEN HACKED. best choice in first page of image search results for “u been hacked”, above.

one thing that a layperson might not understand about being hacked is that being hacked as (basically) a nobody is very different from being hacked for political reasons. it is also way more futuristic. for one thing, i was not targeted by a person or group for any reason, i was hacked by what can best be called a thing- a program that crawls through the web looking for specific vulnerabilites, then capitalizes on those vulnerbilities. in my instance, the vulnerability was a security hole in an older version of wordpress, the blogging software that i use. this program (hereafter referred to as a spider) found this hole, came in, and messed around. it also installed numerous backdoors so that, even if i update the software into a current secure version (which i did weeks ago), it will still be able to gain entry (which it did, days ago).

another way that this victim-ambivalent spider is more futuristic is in its goal- once installed on the computer, the spider didn’t steal or destroy any information, or tag its or its creator’s name somewhere, or do any “human invader” actions- it injected advertising onto the site. presumably, some of this advertising was paid for, and that’s where money, and with it a motive, finally comes in. BUT just as one member of a firing squad is unknowingly armed with a blank, a decent amount of the ads, i think, were unsolicited. in this way the advertisers can’t be held at fault. and how do i know they were unsolicited? some of them were links to random wikipedia entries. some of them were links to different parts of my own website.

if this all seems too preposterous, it gets even crazier when i tell you that the ads were invisible. i think they were up for a while, but i never saw them, and most likely you never saw them either. looking at the code, it’s possible that they were only triggered from certain locations, but more likely, the ads were only there to fool other (benevolent) spiders (who work to index the web for search engine companies), in an effort to make it seem like i was linking to them, and as such to boost their page rank in the reputation economy. to further fool the spiders, the links were surrounded and interspersed with randomly-generated text that appeared to use fantasy slash fiction as a seed bed.

so to sum up: my website was being used as a staging ground for an ongoing battle between benevolent robots and mercenary spiders. the spiders were hired/created by a rogue advertising agency or cluster of agencies to make it seem like i was writing sexy wizard bodice-rippers as a form of heart-felt recommendation of this person’s online pharmaceutical distro, that person’s day care company in ontario, and a miscellany of wikipedia pages. or to put it another way, U BEEN HACKED!

back on track now, i think. let me know if you still see anything suspicious.

day 2 of julius caesar went a lot smoother, and being more comfortable with my lines i could sink in a little deeper and wiggle around a bit more, throwing some things to the wind and planting other things in the ground to water and tend. in preparation for the play i (duh) read the play, and took notes, and thought long and hard, and this i did more than anything (i mean, more than writing, rehearsing, costuming, wrangling, pyrotechnics etc.). and since this production is a creative one, aka interpretive, aka occasionally abstract, i feel like preparatory studies have put me at an advantage as far as actually enjoying it. i’m worried that people who maybe haven’t read the play since high school if at all will be left in the lurch. anyway i’m really enjoying it (it being the show itself, and not my experience doing the show, which i’m also enjoying). each act is very different from each other one and the cumulative effect is, i think wonderful- there’s a clowny first act, a modern dance (which is to say, shoeless) second, a trapeze act with flapping comedy dicks and actual pinatas for the third, a straight read of the fifth by presumably genuine method actors (which is great but a bit of a bummer during off time, as who wants to hang out with a needy calculating blowhard like cassius? not even brutus, seemingly), and an abstract, contemplative fifth with a completely horizontal time structure (which is to say everything at once for the same amount of time). and then of course there’s me in the inbetween times as essentially the crypt keeper, adding so much perspective on everything that it all just gets pulled back to a single dot. good crowd, good mix, great order, “ab ovo usque ad mala”.

anyway, be home in a few days. if you’re going to this and you see me in the subway, let’s talk and be friends, but let’s not you blow up my spot.

oh, and here’s an article about the play from a local rag, which may or may not be of interest: here.

pictured above, the t-shirts i regrettably didn’t have time to make.

as originally proposed, the first show of julius caesar was last night, and went pretty well except that part of my role as narrator / guardian involves meeting the audience in a train station and walking them to the space, and as anyone who knows me IN REAL LIFE could tell you, my map skills are… curious? lacking? selective? what i’m saying is, we, meaning a group of 120 people plus me in corpse paint, got lost. but in the words of the immortal bard, “it’s cool”.

my part is pretty good, because i wrote it good, with lots of good spiels and a comedy smoking routine (NB: i only smoke in a comedy setting, or after a birth (cigars) or during a delivery (cigarettes, waiting room)). also in a funny twist, my decision to pronounce “pompey” as “POMP ee” rather than “pomp AYY” has been ratified by metrical analysis. AYYYYYYYY!

philadelphia seems nice although mostly i just get ready for the play, or walk around chinatown looking for vietnamese coffee, or eat breakfast, or be asleep. probably going to cough up the $14 to go to the art museum, where there’s a big picasso in paris exhibit, and they have that great cy twombly’s the odyssey room, and more to the point, that’s where they got those duchamps. i feel like seeing “the originals” is more than a bit of a farce in duchamp’s case, but also, what am i gonna not go? i’m right here.

the play is going good, and the first show is tomorrow by hook or by crook or hopefully by neither but anyway by somehow. tickets still available i think.

my role as “the crypt keeper” has been changed. now, i have become death. which, i learned earlier, is not something mothers like to hear on the telephone but what do you want form me, the weather or the news?

my recent dreams have been pleasant and satisfying, simultaneously dreamlike and ultramundane, with the satisfaction of someone who is at least making a decision. last night someone complemented me on my handwriting. the night before i did a crossword puzzle and for no reason decided to half-erase all the words afterwards. the night before i was playing gin rummy with very ambiguous cards. also there was a desert in rib-form. can someone work on this for me? curved cakes wrapped around some sort of thick handle, goopy.

“tell a dream, lose a reader”. anyway i’m stressing out about this caesar thing and preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty much wasting time. listening to tapes.

i’m at the coffee shop in worcester, eating cold pizza and hot coffee, preparing for next week’s turn in julius caesar. one problem i’m having is that when i see “brutus” i think “bluto”, of popeye fame, who was officially “brutus” from 1960 to 1962.

wikipedia presents us with these further distinctions between the characters of bluto and brutus:

• Brutus is obese rather than muscular
• Bluto was often portrayed as a fellow sailor who also sought to win the heart of Olive Oyl, Brutus was portrayed as a generic villain, or bank robber, who showed no romantic interest in Olive.
• On December 28, 2008 and April 5, 2009, the Popeye comic strip added Bluto in the capacity of twin brother of Brutus.

in short, while neither of them are
honorable men”, bluto is a hair moreso, brutus rather less.

this year for lent i’m giving up movies made after 1965. it’s been going pretty good and people have been amenable, switching plans to fit my restriction, or not and i just do something else, who cares? queenie hates it because that’s one of her methods of being involved in things, but how can you hate anything that results in an easter morning date, queenie and me, to watch “mommie dearest” (1981)?

remember years go when i had totally totally no money and made a deal with myself that as soon as i got out of the red i would get a package of english muffins and sonic youth’s “murry street” cd? and i got really psyched thinking about it for so long? and only the muffins held up to that degree of expectation/scrutiny? sort of having that situation with the movie “silence of the lambs” which like i said i’m not allowed to watch right now. i’m certainly inventing things into it in absentia, but at least i know that i already like it.

also, purtle is giving up swearing, which is going hilariously- a lot of this: “…that’s fucked up. SHIT, i said ‘fuck’! FUCK! SHhhhhhhhhaaaaaaahhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”