new year’s day is black coffee and pink sauerkraut for however purpose (ML says it’s “too keep your butt clean”). god bless!

i had a cool new year’s eve which was actually a classic hell but turned on a dime in fresh company and once in gear steered a pleasant path. hell to fakie! the previously-faithful big parties fell through, leaving everyone scrambling in pitiable confusion. when we rolled up early (11:30?) to the providence event at the dingy cavernous warehouse with huge tarp billowing over the open windows in the very very cold, we were the only ones there except the party orgs, who noised on the PA way in the background. mike t, you would’ve been so awesomely bummed. like, stabbingly bummed, but you were in florida urinating in a hot tub with heirs to b-grade fortunes (probably). queenie, (you know, queenie) was flabbergasted, THIS SUCKS, and waving around her party heels like DO YOU HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THIS IS A SYMBOL OF?. then group dynamics of moving three cars of folks to nebulous spots, finally landing at an amazingly nothing potluck where everyone already there sat in the background watching tv (!?) while one dude (at one point, jbruce) riffed SO CASUAL on an electric guitar in a middle room. we (which was ~20 people, all old friends from worcester) were just happy to be warm, we counted down, drank champagne etc in the kitchen, in the firmly stagnating present. i hesitate on preprogrammed moments– i mean, who counts down to an epiphany? still it would’ve been better if we were at, i don’t know, a store 24, or an ATM enclosure, anything with an air of possibility. from the pedestrian kitchen to little pancakes where thankfully i met up with CRASH LA GEM, and for an ageless period, clung, as one would to an old rugged cross, and was similarly emboldened. we’re pen pals, recently, and to be sure it’s a funny age to be pen pals in, with other forms of communication so ubiquitous and mcluhanly engaged with personhood. i mean, there’s an undeniable victorian romance to the physical letter, but also, when you’re dialed into it, it supercedes other forms. which is to say, you can’t just call a pen pal and ask what’s new, because you owe them a fucking actual letter. also, because it’s a letter, and there’s no (or way less) format restrictions, the tendency is to go bonkers with it and make everything a damn pinhead puzzlebox. plus with a pen and a paper i can’t put my words down in a way that makes any sense– all you’ll ever get from me is staccato missives and noodley drawings. so it was nice to sit down and really bend ears and have actual immediate less-measured responses like “oh my!”. listen, this is what i’m saying: it’s nice to not just have an abstraction you throw weird rocks at. which is like, duh. so a special hello and thank you for inhabiting a cone with me. and don’t worry– even though pen-paldom is to some extent a fool’s game, it’s just TOO tempting to try and mark a fool’s game back on itself. expect a bag.

back to the night, and being “into the night”– gin was the beverage, which i sipped in tiny tiny amounts from a tall thin bullet-stopping flask, with a spout as big as a pencil eraser. i don’t drink as much as yoni gordon, steinbeck-motivated, says i should. but i enjoy enjoying and i keep liquor around for toasting, for appeasing spirits, for medicinal purposes, and other reasons that all mean the same thing pretty much anyway. i like food when it tastes good– liquor i like for different, more encoded and magical reasons. gin and milk was that valentines day i was out of sorts, and as a magic potion, it did the job– i got sad and angry and delighted and confused and terrified and ecstatic right when i needed it, the signifiers to the concoction being “milk and gin” by the capris and “yellow coat” by screamin’ jay hawkins. gin and juice of course is snoop. but just gin? to me gin’s quality is thinness, but rather than the thinness of a person, who you might say is wasting away to nothingness, gin is an asymptotal thinness that resolves to nothing only at infinity, and this only as a way to wrap your brain around the concept. it is infra-mince, like the infinitely sharp knife that is so sharp it does not cut anything, just finds the spaces between a thing and itself. or the act of passing through a door that is itself closing: infra mince. these are my feelings on gin, and the time i had, placebo-indulgent and avoiding value judgements and the trite puffery of the droll boozer, was: gabby, gliding in and out of situations; at rest, in motion, with a vector of movement that was isotropic. not for everyone nor at all times, but last night: OK.

will told me as we were gathering to leave that the writing on the page (this page) was getting gooder but also half-weirding him out. he also chided me for saying “trajectory” too much in conversation, even though that’s what i’m trying to cultivate: good habits and boss trajectories. MJ interviewed me in re: new year’s wishes, i told her my line: i don’t make wishes, i make decisions. BOOSH.

oh, and the good news of a few pops ago has been notarized: this march i’m being flown out to belgium by the antwerp museum of modern art to show a film and give a lecture on my life, and buy all the LIO LPs. i will also play some shows around. EU ballers check in.

ok, so the update over the phone thing doesn’t work ssuper super great, but what do you want for nothing? the past week has been really good, lots of thinly-velied and sometimes veiled not at all requests from me to other people that they make dinner for me and also i stay at their house, WHICH IS COOL. that was providence. return to worcester on the saturday and immediately jumped into the big mystery band show, which ruled. there was an auction that i was the auctioneer for, to raise money for HBML, and that was splendid also– lots of people donated skills and services like cranio-sacral massages and time in a recording studio and a piggyback to anywhere, and then i fast-talked and lots of people bid in a mild frenzy, pretty ideal. as is the custom, all the bands were great and many of them had people that had never been in bands before, and you could see them realizing that their own creative instincts were valid. the audience was lots of people. the second show of the summer is this friday, at the go go, it’s gonna rip.

ssunday i hung out with my sister, my brurinlaw, and my niece. sheryl-ann, if you’re out in oak-land reading this, you’ll be pleassed i’m sure to see the photoevidence of this on the photo blog. the day was fun and the baby is great, and me and the brurinlaw talked more about the flash game idea i had, DONKEY COMMAND.

the installation thing i’m doing, the grand opening got pushed back to the 26th or 27th, which frees me up to do tons of get-ready stuff for the big start on the street streetfest this sunday, plus the boston zine fair this saturday. as it turns out, i’m playing music at the start in the street thing, which is fine but really just one more thing to stress about, but it’ll be fun, plus i’m getting paid, which is good, because i have to move out of where i’m now living at, and into a more expensive place.

me and mickey DM are meeting tomorrow to put the layout down of the new broadsheet magazine, previously called RHODODENDRON FESTIVAL, now i think to be called NEW PARIS GAZETTE, or something like that. tonight until late, finishing writing everything.

fujichia: when it rains, it pours.
fujichia: it’s always raining something.

other quick news:
• the new empty mountain site looks hecka tite bro…
• robot finds kitten, the video game that was the sole entrant to a contest i created 10 years ago has been included as a minigame in a recent PSP release. more news here. also, RFK came preloaded on dave paquette’s mp3 player.
• peter sibley reps a paris of the eighties tshirt in the group shot for the software project he’s been working on, which (the software) is nuts, which was recently launched into outer space for some reason.

i’ve been getting up early lately and tearing the day, it rules. next step is getting up really early and napping at noon, then if things continue apace, edisoning the now-summer bliss into 4 hour daylets. there’s me, white-out nail polish & lichentstein halter, blasting sideways the knee of the inviolable present.

yesterday i rode past the new hanover theatre to discover an event in progress that i was invited to last week and forgot what day it was on. that event was of course the womag best of 2008 awards, for which HBML got first runner up (aka first loser) “best antique sstore”, which is weird. i told people to vote us “best gift shop” (which i think is accurate) but i think all those votes got thrown away because as was only revealed after the fact, they threw away any ballot with less than 15 topics voted for, and any ballot in which the same thing got listed for everything, which is bogus because i feel like we’re also obviously also the best clothing store, hair salon, cosmetic surgeon, and insurance agency. c’est la vie. anyway the event was weird, i didn’t really know anyone and i was a sure sore thumb in pressed slacksville, but there was some free food i caught: weird tapas and some cannolis (from “wholly cannoli”, which as i’ve noted earlier also serves non cannolli items unfortunately). cash bar with no tap water, so i just got a cup with free ice– “i’ll just wait” i told the barkeep. we didn’t get a plaque or anything, but i’m happy i went– seeing the inside of the theatre was kind of interesting, and i don’t anticipate having another oppurtunity to go in there. it seriously doesn’t look any better than it did when it was a movie theatre and me and eric bennett got caught sneaking into rumble in the bronx for the fourth time.

friday i had so much fun that all-day saturday i had a fun hangover. and no drinking (except a few sips of champagne), just lots of fun, which caused me, the next day, to be a little bit slow and a teeny bit bummed and just generally “the next day”.

the day (friday) started off pretty bogue, messing up a silkscreen over and over, as noted earlier. then i met up with my western mass connection and drove to the store, went to donkey dog nuts and got coffee, and from there everything pretty much took off. josh’s show was (and is) really great, and he made a gorgeous zine / catalog, with lots of drawings from the show and lots of other stuff too. really really awesome. at one point we got really hungry and wanted quan yin, so we just called up and ordered “three good meals”, which worked out pretty good, despite QY being closed, and our call getting rerouted to the buddha hut (which as mentioned is inferior for all applications that don’t involve sketched-out parents). good turnout at the show, and mariah pariah brought a silver tray of cookies, regular and girl scout (thanks mariah!). after closing, my northampton pals drove home to see black pus, grey skull, and fat worm of error (which was in josh’s house). i wanted to go but i would have had no ride home, so i opted out. donny said the show went good and the boredoms were in the crowd, which is pretty epic, and i feel a mild pang for having missed it, the boredoms being my favorite band for a period of three years (and grey skull being awesome). nonetheless i feel i made the right move, going instead to the punk show– apeshit, CFL, dungeoneers and more at the wheelchair.

at past shows at the wheelchair, as perhaps astute readers may have gleaned, i felt like quite the sore thumb, being as a matter of course older (for the most part), soberer (with some exceptions), and not in the perceived uniform. ok, so this is pretty much all in my mind, but friday, while i sure didn’t blend or melt, i realized that sometimes a salad only has one or two croutons, and no part is not not-part-of-the-salad. RITE? so i got my head in the proper place, and as the night went on, i felt more and more in heaven, or rather, on the earth of shared creation: ML completely shredding the ramp with a wig on the whole night; me, dancing hard in a fred astaire vein hand in hand with a beautiful rogue ginger rogers, buffeted in waves of soggy t-shirts and greasy moptops. at one point the afore-mentioned champagne bottle rolled off a ramp and stood spinning on it’s side in a crowd that immediately formed a circle. the bottle slowly slowed and stopped, two sweaty lads embraced. i always cry at weddings.

ON DANCING:
i was at dinner with my mother not a month ago, talking about the sort of shows i go to and the show my aunt’s neighbor went to at the palladium where his jaw got broken. i made the case that violent dancing can be a display of aggression, and an extension of fighting, or it can be a display of affection, and an extension of hugging, and i only attend instances of the latter. this is a good way to frame it if the discussion ever comes up, but there are times (and they are the best times) when crazy dancing- fast, reckless, with equal parts abandon and trust- is neither display nor extension, but everything rolled up at once. we’re careening into flowing robes territory now, but you know: times when you realize you’re not just in the world, you are the world. on that mississippi john hurt album that pars likes (and that i like) there’s a great song about dancing crazy, and he sing/says: “i’ll be there and you’ll be there, and i’ll meet you in the soup, and we’ll get all mixed up”. that’s it!

ALSO:
apeshit played an impromptu set and even though we don’t really know each other so good it was great to see circle pat again. pat will mosh at a single dropped hat– when he sees a mike & ike on the ground, or when he finds out that a small pizza is $2 on tuesday, and it’s tuesday.

ALSO:
as i was leaving, getting my stuff, which i stashed behind a moldy loveseat, the meaty fellow displaced by actions said “get a load of this nerd”. well the girls he was trying to build himself up to were none other than those excellent warhol-looking teens and they sure tore in– “that’s jacob- he runs HBML and he rules etc.”. well, you could have knocked me over with a feather! i set out alone into the night, with big lazy snow sparsely falling, singing, almost keeping pace with a train gliding silently towards the yard.

weird snow bursts notwithstanding, it’s spring sure enough. oh, also the auction of the shop got delayed until may 1, so i figure we’re set for at least the summer through.

last night i ate yellow sandwiches and watched jurassic park with diamond and company, and 15 years later the effects still look cool / you don’t see the effects (on the movie). today lunch at the quan yin with American League was delightful and then we went to building 19 and i bought a gift copy of that ed ruscha book i love, “they called her styrene”. ok, i looked it up and couldn’t find anything definitive, but the title painting was made in 1977, x ray spex started in 1976, so it’s possible, but i feel not super likely but who knows. or, who cares enough to investigate. i also got a price guide of golden age comics, and cut off the top three inches, the only part i want, with a band saw. pretty satisfying. now i’m cleaning up, trying to sort through boxes marked “MISC”, and ironing 200 21″ squares.

readers of mcsweeney’s internet tendency may find something amusing on today’s front page. not surprisingly, they didn’t go with my original copy, which was really quite bang zip pow. also not suprisingly, they used the catchier but archaic and not preferred name. AS IF i’m complaining. lauren, thanks for hooking it up!!

this is pretty epic: warhol draws a penis on the moon. or i should say “warhol draws a penis, knowing full well that his drawing will be shipped to the moon and remain there effectively forever”. pictured above, the chip which was glommed onto the leg of a lunar module left behind by apollo 12 astronauts. other artists featured on the “moon museum” include robert rauschenberg, david novros, forrest “frosty” myers, claes oldenburg, and john chamberlain.

today anna told me “you use the word ‘rules’ alot.”. i told her “everything rules.” and i stand by that statement. everything is governed by everything else. no other way.

i’m applying for another grant and it’s driving me batty. of course it’s the last minute! what other time would it be? this grant is orders of magnitude larger than the previous one (which i didn’t get, but which was not pocket change) and is project based, and as far as projects, i only ever think $300 big. my mode is going to be “pay my rent while i ‘work on’ [x]” which people really say with a straight face to other people, who then say “OK”. i know, i know, but come on. but also, i know.

tomorrow is a silk screen day at the store. bring a dark-colored garment and $5, and we will silk screen a drawing of an angler fish onto it and then where the bioluminescent lure is, a real, glowing LED that you cannot remove or turn off. this is from 2 to 5PM.

the dirt pals are going to be in a (the) hugge feminist art retrospective at PS1 next month, because someone over there thought they were a “performance troupe”. my theory is that this is a direct result of their yearly fancy-dress christmas photo-cards. anyway the DP invited me to contribute to their program (which is to say, to the book they are making in concert with the performance). i am PSYCHED. i’m supposed to be playing a show with ghost mice the night of the big performance, i think i’m going to ANKLE IT. because it’s 2008 and i’m STACKING IT UP.

today was february 29th, which i built up to be monumental in my brain but nothing came of it especially. i guess psychologically it’s not like the repeated or lost hour of daylight savings, it’s just like, oh, also, this. i went on a walk, i bought batteries, i wrote this in my notebook: MARE GINS NERVE, INFRA ELLE ATOM, BEATDOWN LEADS, CADRE ADAGE, GIRTHS CLUNG, STAR EYE KEENER, GLIB SCANS, STAYS ON ARIA, UNSAID INSECURE, URIEL OILTANKERS, PETER IV SYNAPSE, GAZETTE LARCENY, ALEXANDRA EUBIE, BORES IN ON KRONA, SKIP OUT ON EBON, CREE LEAPYEAR.

first, i should mention the drive down and back, a heroic 28 hours. obviously i cannot drive so MT did the whole thing, and splendidly. we left rhode island at 2:30pm, borrowing mikey hotsauce’s cool newish station wagon. on the way down we stopped at a waffle house somewhere in south carolina and at rad librarian travis fristoe’s place in gainesville, then heave ho to miami where we met up with jim drain at his and naomi’s studio, got some burritos, and crashed out at their cool condo. the whole miami fine art / condominium living scene is totally weird but i quickly got over it enough to function.

wednesday we woke up and went to the gallery (which is the front quarter of naomi and jim’s studio) and spent most of the day taking down mike’s installation. the gallery/studio is great– it’s in this totally weird mall where miami chill-out jungle music bumps 24/7, and at least a third of every storefront is empty so that the building owner can display his art collection (which is an investment in cred upping). i think they barter for rent with their own artworks, but this wasn’t clear. as i may have said before, jim and naomi are big-name artists, and i like what they do, but i still don’t understand how they get over, unless the whole fine arts world boils down to a few eccentric multimillionaires, which i suspect it does. while i was there they received a commission to make pieces for an “artists only” party to be held during art basel, which as you know is “the most important art show on the American continent and a cultural and social highlight of the Americas”. it’s commissioned works, so they get paid without the works ever selling– naomi wanted jim to make a couch for their condo. i told him to make a year’s worth of groceries. hey, i was just riffin’.

that night we got pizza at a place in this pedestrian mall and watched people. the pizza was pretty good- huge square slabs about 1/4 the size of a conventional large, which were then cut into nine pieces. it was boutique style, meaning there were a bunch of pizzas already made, and you selected from which pizza you wanted a slice, then they heat it up for you. they didn’t have plain, which i think is a strike against– i got the plainest they had, which was spinach and bleu cheese. it was good. the really weird thing about the pizza place is that every set of toppings was like an entire salad– pine nuts, cucumbers, barbeque chicken, stuff like that. two different styles had hard boiled eggs. two! eating pizza and pointing out funny-looking people put me at ease and i had a way way better time than if we had gone to a fancy party or upscale bar or society art opening. also i got the feeling that jim was happy to have some real goons to dirtbag around with. after a while we went off to a condo that a friend of mike’s lives in, to try and use the hot tub– we couldn’t get it to turn on so we just dangled our feet in it and talked shit for a while. the condo was called, no lie, “nirvana”, but i guess everyone was already way over making nirvana jokes because i was the only one. the air mattress i was sleeping on had a hole in it but i think this is something more mattresses should have- i went to sleep super comfy, when i deserved comfort; i woke up on the floor, when i needed a reminder of an uncaring world.

the next day we got up and got breakfast and cuban coffee at a restaurant with huge square plates that are more like cafeteria trays. this was a place of big eaters. the coffee (which i now drink occassionally) was really strong and really really sweet, and comes with ten paper thimbles to drink out of, the idea being that one cut supplies the whole job site. me and MT each drank one obviously. just like that the return trip began and we went back up to northern florda to stay a night with mike’s folks, which i enjoyed. i love seeing trees from which apples don’t fall far, and ma and pa taylor were just this sort, telling jokes, cooking egg rolls, and being catty. we all watched a comedy movie with a hilariously long and awkward sex scene, it was cool. the next day we stopped in gainesville to see mike’s brother dan taylor, then hauled, in the fashion we were accustomed, towards home. all in all i had a great time, me and mike t are still friends, and now i owe jim a bunch of cool toys and comics for the cool toys and comics he gave me.

oh, i got my grant application in the other day, it’s not perfect but i did it.

yeah, so yesterday was my birthday. i got my wish and got to go to a tornadoes game with some folks, and it was really really fun– rowdy and yelling and carrying on in the fashion of baseball game attendees since the dawn of time. we got an equal amount of enthusiasm and hatred from the people around us who did or didn’t appreciate our spirit, which just points out that most people don’t know how to interact with things anymore. the weirdest/best part of the game, for me, was goofing off with the mascot, “twister“, who then recognized me (?) and said through his huge sports-mascot mask “don’t you run that junk shop on pleasant st.?”. we saw him later out of costume (i have never met this man before in my life) and he told us to keep being really rowdy, which made me realize that we were being (as stated earlier) entirely appropriate for our surroundings, even if we were catching a lot of glares from haters. PLAY BALL!

oh, here’s the wikipedia entry on the original worcester tornado, which killed 94 people in 1953. uh… “One victim reportedly perished when suction from the tornado ripped open his chest due to rapid lung expansion.”. also “Baseball-size hail was reported in a score of communities affected by the Worcester supercell.”.