Well, since my last epinw blogging I turned 40 and before that, the day before, to be très specific, John Lennon's birthday happened.
There was an ultra-fab party tossed in my honor and held at Big Orbit Gallery on John's b-day. While I was talking to some guests I began noting that the artwork on the walls was made by Yours Truly. I looked all around the white walls. All me. It was shocking, a gigantic surprise, a retrospective of sorts. And, as I described to members of Janet Reno Fan Club last night over dinner, like being in a room with several of one's past lovers. Intense. Self-reflexive. And so much more.
To the party I wore a Peach Berserk dress from TO, given to me by an MIA older friend, Marilyn. I have my theory that this very dress is what got the ol' divorce ball rolling in her life: her husband Mark HATED that dress, forbade her to ever wear it again and she presented it to me in a shopping bag, bolero jacket and crinolines and backup dress all in there. What does it look like? An upside down psychedelic phantasmagoric yet somewhat vintage tulip.
During my hungover condition on the 10th, thee 40th b-day day, I had to drive out to my niece's grammar school with cake and soda and cups and the like. Why? Because I did same for nephew on his b-day, my niece and I share a b-day and her mom/my sister forgot to make cupcakes and my niece said That's OK, mom, Auntie will come to school... Auntie always saves the day.
With that kind of familial pressure I loaded me and my champagne-soaked brain into the Forester and trundled off to discover that the school had no idea that I was showing up, DMB shirt on and shopping bags in hands.
The office lady had to speak to the principal and this is where the story gets really interesting, how it illustrates my truest, authority-hating self.
I had to go into the principal's office and stand before him, seated at his desk. A fat and bald man wearing a cheap shirt who had apparently been doing nothing in his office. There was the overarching vibe of non-productivity in that office.
At one point I minorly snapped and said Look, I'm a really busy person. I just drove 45 minutes out here, am I going to get into my niece's classroom... or not? While he blopped off to see the office lady in her office area to give my sister a call I called her myself on her cell phone. Hi. The school doesn't know I am here, I said very very loudly. Mr. Fatso Principal came back into his office, where I was standing and talking. It's OK, go ahead, down the hall to the left, room 111.
For the love of Educational Gods, I didn't have a blanket and rope in my hands. What the fuck? They let teens with guns into schools and not aunts with cake.
For the record I dig being 40. It means being ever-more the real.
If you don't understand this you are too young to know.
I rest my middle-aged ass. I mean case.
Love.

"Lethal injection is now the dominant way Americans are executed. It is used in all 38 states that have the death penalty except Nebraska, which uses electrocution. In 10 states, prisoners may choose between lethal injection and a second method, including hanging, firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas."
- New York Times, 10/7/03, Adam Liptak story on how the fangled drugs hide suffering

Fucking firing squad?
But, this being a democracy and all, you do have a buffet of endgame choices post-last meal.
Give me Ol' Sparky
and give me Mort.
I am hardly willing to march with Susan Sarandon & Co. but do find the above one of the most abhorrent American things.
If pro-death penaltiers were regulars on the Middling City protest scene I would stop my car and verbally abuse them much like I do at anti-choicers in front of WomenServices on Main Street.
Thanks, NYT, for this evening's blog rant.
Justice Love.

Saw the historical epic Luther with Laura tonight, it starring Joseph Fiennes who at moments looks very much like my pal Justin, who called me moments ago in a tipsy condition as he wandered down a Brooklyn street.
So in the midst of the Luther cinematic experience I'm trying out my new analytical gradstudent skills (Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: "While facing the camera he [the screen actor] knows that ultimately he wil face the public, the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach." whew, there's some real gradhood for your perusal and edification. You're welcome.), transposing this Luther's story to that of MLutherK, Jr - that lusty nun at the end becomes Coretta Scott King and the men in geometric hats and capes straight out of the Catholic Church costume department represent the KKK and other American Apartheidists and civil rights marchers are peasants et al on Luther's team.

As I finally read the article that Pam sent me, concerned about me always, now I am terrified of eating tuna fish. Mercury. Memory. Mercury. Memory. What was I writing?
Love.

"What the tiger, along with a four- to five-foot reptile called a caiman, was doing inside a cluttered apartment in the Drew Hamilton Houses at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 141st Street remained a mystery yesterday. In a news conference at the scene, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the police became involved in the case on Wednesday when the apartment's resident, Antoine Yates, called to say he had been bitten by a pit bull. When the police went to investigate, Mr. Kelly said, Mr. Yates met them in the lobby. He went to Harlem Hospital with bites on an arm and a leg. On Thursday, the police got an anonymous tip saying a wild animal was somewhere in the city. On Friday, another call directed them to the exact address. On Friday night, the police found no one home, but talked to a neighbor who complained of large amounts of urine and a strong smell coming through the ceiling, Mr. Kelly said. The neighbor said her daughter had seen the tiger. Yesterday, the tiger's existence was confirmed. after a hole was cut in the apartment door."

First the Siegried and Roy tiger debacle yesterday, now this situation.
Coincidence? I think not.

Had a full-tilt art day this day what with being one of a group of featured artists at a benefit for Burchfield-Penney Art Center and think I sold one of the 13 Conflagration steel silkscreens. I gave one to Liz (sneaking it into her home during a party and installing it myself) and I don't know if I can bear to part with another. It's a syndrome following creating one-of-a-kind pieces.
After the BPAC benefit did another Penney-related, art activity: delivering work to rep myself for an upcoming show of Charles Rand Penney's massive art holdings. As a prop to us the gallery co-conspirators are having each of us sell/show more more more.
A new slogan to put in your car's tailpipe and smoke it:
MAKE EVERY DAY AN ART DAY.
So, at the art cocktail-fueled (read: turbo-powered) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, enjoying SCOTCH and a smattering of mixer, I was approached by several who wondered just what in hell has happened to my photo column WhatHasHappened. One person, a scholarly type who digs on gin, asked thee question and then complimented me on a piece I wrote for a mag about a Middling City landmark. Then he said Well, with your expertise and all and connections to the university I wondered if you might come by the building where I work and look at it and give your opinion about its architectural style.
This was one of those beautiful moments that my life seems to gather like hued pearls washing up on an autumn beach on a windswept night after a slight white wine buzz: a moment when Yours Truly is confronted with a slight dose of Surrealism and maintains composure.
He's explaining the building in great detail, inside and out.
Finally I said, in my most authoritative tone, the one which sort of propels me outside my self to regard myself somewhat incredulously, Well, I'll come by and take a look at it and tell you what I think.
What I think. Here's what I think. Lots. But I am more interested in snooping about the mysterious third floor he mentioned more than anything. Then maybe, if I get busted snooping, I'll mutter things like Ionic... Doric and some Late-Gothic flourishes over the obviously Sullivanesque Moorish touches of stately Republic lines, just to throw them off my course.
Actually now I'm on the prowl for a rickety old stage, with musty velvet curtain, for my video sequences.
During the man in the snippet's ramblings I was transported back to my days as a temp at an arch firm, when I'd eat a sandwich or something in the en plain air boardroom while paging my crumby fingers through catalogues of arch suppliers and other building-related bric-a-brac. How one time I thought I'd follow along that crafty path.
Moving, along.
Last night I told Kate (of Kate and Tom, The Apple Maker, fame) Well, Kate, you know you've had a good party when you end up with a two-foot skid mark across your hardwood floor.
I won't even ask you to guess who created said skid mark. Or to what internationally-renowned rock and roll band it happened. Or how many brazen femme dancers happened to be around in a circle when said skid mark occurred.
Most memorable, to date, post-party artifact of a party thrown by Yours Truly:
(in the famed Richmond Avenue house, where I was den mom and cruise director)
(a mere moment of many of that home's untold, screenplay-worthy tales)
From the basement, packed with oddities left behind by several, including the wacked Viet Nam Vet landlord, Ralph, I procured some antique lamp parts, including stands. One after-party-morning I discovered that one of my guests had lost a still-buttoned shirt cuff around a lamp stand.
The End.
Love.