twinkle twinkle blah blah blah etc.

So I work my youth away

My annual review on Friday went not as bad as expected, but I was informed that I spend too much time "typing," which is old-lady code for surfing teh intarweb. No kidding, I thought, as I checked the "check this" box and signed my name. Another year in the can at the vertical plantation.

For some reason, I associate blogging with work, so it's nigh-impossible for me to write posts at home. In fact, if I am sitting in front of my home computer and am online, it's a sign of failure on my part, because it means I'm not doing Writing. Which I haven't been doing much of anyhow.

I ran into a friend of mine on the train last night who described to me how she and another friend email each other a mandatory three pages of Writing once a week. Not for review, she added, but just as evidence that each of them is, in fact, Writing. That seems like a good idea. Except that I know how it'd work for me: I'd go about three weeks with the assignment, and then give up completely. And in my shame, I would likely stop returning emails and phonecalls from the other participants. And I might change my phone number. And start wearing a wig.

I guarantee that if I owe you an email right now it's because I've done something I'm ashamed of that I can't bear to tell you about.

There are a couple different things, but I'll come clean about one of them:

I really, really like Franz Ferdinand.

Anyhow, I don't know if any of you bothered to go to the LIC Open Studio weekend, but it was a blast and you missed out bigtime if'n you didn't. N, Russell, and I spent all Saturday afternoon at Crane St. Studios (AKA 5 Pointz). It was the Bataan Death March of Culture for us, and by the time we made it to the local watering hole, our knees were bent inward from standing on concrete for 4 hours, our brains all febrile from absorbing all of the Art (which I can pronounce only one way: Ott. This is how my family says it. The word was bandied about for many years when I was in Art School. "So you do ott, sweetie? Will you be a schoolteacher when you get done with college?" This, of course, was when I was actually *in* art school. Now that art school is a misty encaustic-and-plaster memory, they still think I'm a schoolteacher, because it's easier than telling them I'm an editor.).

Some folks dread going to open studios because they don't like direct interaction with the artists, particularly the shite ones. I enjoy talking with artists, even if it means spending ten painful minutes chatting with a man who specialized in Pet Portraits, because unlike chatting up my favorite bands after the show ("I really love your sound, man. Good call on the [insert obscure No-Wave band here] cover"), I can talk about their work with *some* semblance of intellect, having been edjumacated in it myself. (The opening query from an artist is always "Are you an artist?" Unlike bankers and stockbrokers, who say "So, what is it that you do?")

Anyhow, there were a number of artists whose work I liked very much. The ones who have a web presence are:

• Mark Brotherton


• Leoworks, from whom I bought a beautiful necklace


• Tom Snelgrove, whose site is sorta down right now


• Keith Gamache


• Jennifer Ross, whom dong resin would like


• Christine Whittaker

Also, I met my local soft-handed councilmember, with whom I posed for a "I'm looking at and appreciating ott" photo for Newsday. I hope he didn't have higher political asperations, because the documentation of our brief relationship might drag him down in the future.

Speaking of ott and politics, this is disheartening:

Federal authorities became involved on May 11, following the death of Kurtz's wife, Hope, of heart failure. Emergency personnel responding to Kurtz's home noticed the laboratory equipment the University at Buffalo art professor uses in his installations, became suspicious and notified the FBI....The equipment was to have been used at MASS MoCA to conduct simple experiments on food products to determine if they contained GMOs, genetically modified organisms. Critical Art Ensemble has staged such performative-art installations in this country and Europe to call attention to the proliferation of food-related biotechnology.

Ugh.

Peripherally related, a friend of mine and I discovered that we could both recite Jello Biafra's "Running for Mayor" from I Blow Minds For A Living nearly verbatim, twelve years after the fact. Five or six years ago I was tempted to sell my copy of this record because it seemed so dated and silly, but just like the return popularity of parachute pants and skinny ties, it's comin' round again. (Of course, that's not to say JB doesn't rankle me with his "Herald my genius, Earthlings" style, but you know, just like Tim Duncan, he's still one of the good guys. Besides: Businessmen in clownsuits? That's damned funny.)

Posted by Dana at June 15, 2004 11:40 AM