mike taylor’s website is up in a workable state, and looks awesome. or rather, it looks transparent and the pictures look awesome, which is better. there’s only one obscured self-portrait and it’s taken in the HBML bathroom. MTMTMTMTMT, our favorite pizza chef and bouncer, leaves notions of facehood to other more sussable mike taylors.

today’s silk screening day went really really good, thanks to everyone that came out! our rent money is secured, i’m feeling good. mickey z showed up gunning for new intern mickey DM, who was not on premises, and good thing because i think a highlander thing was going to go down, and mickey z can sure swing a letter opener, or to be more precise, she has that zest for mess that will always separate the devoured from the satiated. or so i have gleaned. in any event, nothing went down and the day was effrotless until it really sunk in that i had not eaten nearly enough and i lost all social grace. ok, not all but some. enough.

it’s labor day weekend. tomorrow is somehow two more days, even though it’s really all the same to me.

i’m on another episode of the snow ghost community show, discussing my opinions on art (and everything) in worcester. i’ll cut you to the end, where i say something i think about a lot in a way i’ve never said before: “anything can grow in a garden– who cares?”. also i call everyone with pretentions of being a fine artist in worcester “a chump”. it’ll be great when that bites me in the ass. i’m trying to not look at the camera dead-on, in keeping with my decision to be 3/4 as much as possible.

today i went to the beach, which was great, but i didn’t eat all day and then at 7:30 got really really grouchy. earlier i passed to will and danielle the meme “D.W-P.O.M.F-B.”, a weird mishearing so psychologically damaging i can’t even write it on the internet.

september looks like it may be money month for me, with lots of small scams (aka jobs) for me to run– chiefly silk screening at RISD and the start on the street street fair. there’s more but i don’t want to ruin it. anyway, also bumping this [next] month is a big installation at the new as220 “mercantile block” space in providence. and this is big, like 20 foot ceilings, nigh-unlimited floor space. since it’s a really great opportunity for me, i’m doing that thing i like to do- something i’ve never done and have no skills at and haven’t really thought out supergreat. tentative title “my life 08″. oh, and i got the ask on the virtue of a couple snappy mass emails, nothing else. this is good, but “nothing else”? why not do the unthinkable and just write letters all day? no more nothing! anyway i’m trying to get two weeks off from my troubles to work on the bastard on site, but that may be unfeasible. but it would be fun, and as close to a vacation as i’ll ever get, it seems.

last night it was a little chilly, and get dark earlier than i had expected. today i realized that it was going to get really cold again, and in not a very long time. i’m strategizing for what will surely be, without adequate strategy, a really really rough winter.

here are my current best plans:

and

a piece of the post-birthday blues and on top of everything, it’s hot out, like, will-evaporatingly hot. yesterday i think it was the low air quality ssomeone heard about on the news that gave me an all-day headache because it wasn’t not eating or not drinking enough water or not taking a little nap or not talking to my friends or not being outside or not drinking enough coffee or not wearing a lemon yellow t-shirt. there was a show last night but i had to excuse myself to not be in a throbbing environment and take some advil and watch a marx brothers movie. it was nice.

lots of talk and thought in the past few days on the character of zeppo, who just might’ve been as they say, “the funniest one in real life”, in a way that didn’t translate to screen. also, zeppo as the bridge between the three primaries and the rest of the world, or as interpreter, but in any event, zeppo, despite all his qualities, being outside the magic. i guess there isn’t really much to say, i guess the question is: is there a lesson?

dag, it is hot outside! what’s up with that?

kar trouble was right– my problem of the past few days, of fogginess and sluggishness and crabbiness and whatnot, was by and large hydration. late this afternoon commenced the drinking of many tap waters and the return of the feeling “OK”.

not that the past few were without merit– yesterday when i finally left the house me and baby bear went and got some technical pizzas ($2 smalls on tuesday), then walked around elm park looking at the new public sculpture installation, all of which is pretty great, and boy are we kicking ourselves for each talking ourselves out of it when the email arrived. boo us! my favorite piece was the small garden of enormous, striated buttplugs. also good was the three burned wooden obelisks crawling with all color of tiny insect, and the far-away listening tube for spying on park bench mashers and playground bullies. en route we saw jon “the prince of worcester” shirley, and all together we set up our own sculpture in the park, which was an artificial christmas tree we found on the sidewalk in a box. jon was on his way to look for the huge turtle that lives in the pond, and then he did look for it, and then he found it, and it was great– maybe three feet from nose to tail, with a head as big as a flatiron. we also saw several turtles of a more manageable size, and ducks, and a heron, and those fish that eat your spit when you spit in the water (you know, stupid fish). drove in with nik and jose lynn to providence, for that show at the stairwell, which was fun but as implied above, i was pretty out of it. eli keszler played solo drum set with bells and bowed cymbals, totally awesome and inspiring, as it was the last time. the other bands were on tour together, and it was a good tite jazz band called “other people do the killing”, and then that same band but with a singer, which was called “puttin’ on the ritz”. it helped that it was a beautiful night outside with fresh salad on a sidewalk table, but this second act really cleared the room, and even i eventually left– not offensive or actionable, just one joke that isn’t funny anymore over and over again, the joke being “inept lounge singer”. pretty miserable really, but the band, i thought, was great. i played not great, messing up a lot and to some degree “just getting it over with”, but there were times i forgot who and where i was and what i was doing and why, and how i got there, and that made it all worthwhile. again, super out of it, feeling better now.

yesterday it was so beautiful and today it’s even more beautiful still, weatherwise. i’ve been eating a lot- miso soup, spinach sandwiches, broccoli and tempeh with ginger, green tea. yesterday i did that thing i like to do– hang out for a long time on street corners with amazing looking people. in this instance it was two women who looked like spiders from mars, to use a loaded term. i’ve been setting up my new room, which is going great. tomorrow i’m going to get paint, not because i especially dislike the current color (a sort of peach) but because i need to ruin things.

well, today was valentine’s day and it was actually pretty nice. i tried to replicate the “hanging out with ML” formula that worked so good last year (two years ago?) but everyone at his house has been sick at five sick dogs, so i stayed the hell away from him and his, as i have a big weekend and can’t afford to be, well, weakened. so instead of lunch-eating i stopped by the shop to deliver the records i got on tuesday and found two really nice letters waiting for me! one of the letters was anonymous and the only “message” it contained was “D J, H V D!”. there wasn’t even a postmark on the envelope (due to a non-standard arrangement of stamps). anyway if you’re out there, “T Y!”.

sheryl ann got home from denmark yesterday and brought lots of weird mostly salty candy, so last night me and snowflake and carolyn and nik perry went over her house and ate a mess of it. needless to say, today i’m dealing with the ramifications, which is to say, feeling bummmmmmmmed out. but i ate some nice things, took some vitamins, wrote some new songs and halfway recorded them, listened to records, and watched “my neighbor totoro”, which is just about the most adorable movie i’ve ever seen and quite refreshing.

it’s MLK day, happy MLK everyone, and remember:

In 1999, Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, along with the rest of King’s family, won a wrongful death civil trial against Loyd Jowers and “other unknown co-conspirators”. Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King’s assassination. The jury of six whites and six blacks found Jowers guilty and that “governmental agencies were parties” to the assassination plot.

link

i was thinking about jenine and thinking about exercising and then i found this and then i started exercising and i’ll see jenine in a few days. wait until i play a show and it sounds exactly like that first song. you sad sacks don’t even know how close i am to accomplishing this.

last night was the wag 20th anniversary at jumpin’ joe’s dance club. i don’t need to tell you it was weird, but here i go anyway- it was weird. jumpin’ joe’s is an all-purpose dance club on the eighth floor of a factory building on grafton st, right next to (and just overlooking) the freeway. my understanding is that they have all sorts of events there- swing dancing, reggaeton, singles nights, whatever. there was some weirdness when one of the dudes that hangs out there regularly (?) told one of the harsher dudes to turn down, but that was more funny than anything else. the show started at noon (!) but i got there at a sensible 6:30. there was a free buffet which included crab sandwiches, cranberry sauce, and a huge tray of deviled eggs. totally weird.

so anyway i got there just in time to see industrial sonic echo, which i’ve gone through phases of liking and disliking, but now i’m at the point where i just have to like it. well, this time i liked it a lot because j-me johnston (ostensibly the main force behind all of it) was super wasted, and spent the whole time skulking about their elaborate set-up, turning tvs on and off, telling the other dudes to shush, rearranging various orbs, and eventually peacing out to leave the other dudes to plod along until he got on the PA to announce the next band. it was like watching a band break up, which sucks, but it also kind of rules, to see someone come to a realization and then act upon it at the most dramatic moment. immediately following was bob jordan and ratobasher, total freewheeling improv. the night was so casual that it wasn’t obvious they were playing– until they really got into it, it just seemed like they were soundchecking. but it was good– bob playing acoustic instruments, nathan recording, looping, and processing them through a tabletop full of effects. after them was a bunch of stuff i wasn’t super into, then negative time (josh and greg greg), then greg greg solo closed out the night.

ssome notes:

• ML liked these two harsh noise dudes, pretty much just because they were skinheads.
• the floors were hardwood and pretty clean- me and ml and spato and vaula van sspent a long time sliding around on our butts.
• there was a cash bar and i bought a shirley temple for $2, which sucks, and i forgot the shirley temple trick, which is that you get someone who’s drinking a lot to order one for you and the bartender will assume you’re their driver and give you one for free.
• i don’t like a lot of that music because it’s all keyboard drums and i like sample drums, and it doesn’t have what i like about noise, which is openness, interpretation, and catharsis. it’s more like house, but with too much stuff going on.
• greg greg is still the best, and still destroys everyone else in the genre because he has personality and emotion.
  

also

• it’s snowing in worcester. but it’s not just snowing, it’s also icey out, which is scary.
• i got a little money from a crafts fair the other day so i ordered the spirulina and the full-spectrum light bulbs i need for my health.
• i’ve been playing music every day, and not even songs, just hollering and yelling and funny laptop sinewave stuff.
• i’ve been drinking coffee maybe every third day, and i feel like i’m finally in adult world. which is to say, now when i’m walking around at night, drug dealers and prostitutes pitch their lines at me, whereas before they would look right through me, as though i were a ghost or lizard.
• my new place (which is no longer new) is apparently warm enough.

twice already i’ve tried to open a new tab (flower-t) but accidently hit refresh (flower-r) and lost everything. pretty annoying but perseverence is the x of the n of life.

did my standard ablusions of going for a walk, eating lots of leafy greens, shaving with a new razor (and casually bloodletting the way one does), cutting my hair real short, writing a little bit, making a to-do list, getting out the warm clothes, and talking on the phone a little bit. now i just need to listen to music and see my friends, so hey friends, how about remembering that i exist?

the new room isn’t perfect or even halfway to OK, in fact at the present state it’s barely adequate but i’ve already started spraypainting the walls and putting tiny towns and sentinels on every available ledge. anyway who waits on perfection waits forever.

i recently downloaded the whole cremaster cycle– is anyone other than jon knapp down for this? maybe as a three day thing- #s 1 & 2, then 3, then 4 & 5 (#3 is 3 hours long). i would like to do a short presentation beforehand and no discussion afterwards. drop me a line if you’re in.

the king st block party mentioned earlier was totally totally awesome and inspiring with lots of free food, a loud party DJ interspersed with talent show acts, and everybody hard repping and being respected. hard workers at the artichoke food co-op, stone soup, toxic soil busters, food not bombs, EPOCA, and other groups were all out, and everyone was in the mood to talk about what are you doing and why are you doing it and how can i be a part of it. and not just collegiate jerkloafs- full community– totally everyone, from scampering homeschoolers to toothless hard-lifers that still like popsicles and puppet shows. total vision of harmony. it was a hot summer day again, everyone was radiant. i was in heaven. a woman sang plena, to the accompaniment of just guiro and tambourines. she had a microphone but really didn’t need it. small girls in huge dresses danced on stage. i was in heaven.

tonight was a full moon and i got bitten by a dog, which is also cool.

i fixed the images on all the white vinegar scans, so now hopefully they’ll all load faster and look better. i went to three different supermarkets. i cashed in $90 worth of change. i ate a candy bar from canada. i’m sleepy. at the last supermarket i went to tonight there was a baby in a shopping cart and her and her dad were singing “hey baybay” “hey baybay” over and over again, like in the “hey baybay” song. everyone in line was pretty psyched.

the recording of the commentary for the corleone DVD went pretty good. it was me and ML and MT, and MT was shit-talking lots of people in the video, which made me and ML nervous. i feel like we all said some pretty dumb shit that someone at some point in the near future is going to call us on, but at the same time, who even listens to commentary tracks? no one, right? AJ and lee recorded their parts right before us and left soda and cookies in the room, which ruled. also there was a cat that could say hello. oh, and all the videos were good but the one for snake apartment is really really gross (which is good). i thought my video was gross, but this one is way grosser, way to go brian.

i’m starting to get my finances in order and i’m ordering spirulina online because proper nutrition helps me think better. don’t worry jenine, the air is still thick with the fetid odor of stupid website ideas, but i can’t say exactly when the launch of the newest (and easily the dumbest) will be– i’ve got to stack the cheddar a little higher first, and also melissa #1 is coming to visit in a few days.