Pencil in a chat with me over lunch for September 19: I'll be at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, discussing work from the permanent collection. Plan for another Friday gallery talk on September 5, when Horn of Hirsh associate curator Kristen Hileman will discuss "The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image". Both Krist/ns start at 12:30 p.m.
If my blog were a Terminator movie, we'd be some ten minutes from the credits, with G.p sandwiched in some gigantic trash compactor, seemingly dead, likely impaled, and utterly defeated. All the skin and pleather brutally stripped away, a once coolly efficient CSS engine exposed, looking like so many pirated parts dumped on a trash heap. The uncaring fires of industry reflect off a symbolic, and symbolically smashed, pair of Ray-Bans. Our cause—admittedly, a vain and rather modest one—seems in peril. Yet then: a blinking red indicator, a snare drum, two snare drums. A helpful clarification: the deus ex machina is in fact an alternative power source! Do you see that tiny techno flicker of life in that forgotten corner of your RSS reader? That's no garbled signal—that's hope for a sequel.
I've got a lot of metaphors to catch up on, so let's not waste any time switching gears. I'll spare you the tediously long story and say that I'm paying much closer attention to my domain registration now.
Hello, blog. I see that you're still here.
Readers should know that I'm no longer writing for the Washington City Paper.
The proximate cause for my dismissal was a letter to the editor, which the paper forwarded to me two weeks ago. In the letter, a reader asked for a correction with regard to something I'd written for the best-of issue. An April correction would have meant back-to-back corrections for articles I'd written. (In March, I wrote that the "Collectors Select" exhibit at Arlington Arts Center showcased the efforts of five curators. There were in fact six/seven: five collectors and one husband-and-wife collector team, all of whom I discussed in the piece.)
I stood behind what I'd written in the April issue and protested the correction. A subsequent investigation (including two interviews with persons involved in the story) conducted by editor-in-chief Erik Wemple proved me right. No correction was run.
But vindication did not change the fact of the matter: It's time that the paper and I part ways. I've enjoyed working with Mark Athitakis and Matt Borlik and my work has benefited from their editing. I won't talk out of turn so I'll just say that I'm proud of the reporting and criticism I've written on the city's visual art scene for the last two years.
No doubt, I'll continue writing about District gallery shows, primarily in art magazines. Reviews for April/May shows will hit newsstands in a couple months and I'll let you know when they pop up online. Other reporting and opinion-y stuff will appear elsewhere. So keep reading.
Southby blogging can be found here. In the first edition, I run into folks from the District as well as Dan Grant, a candidate for Congress who found some favor among some friends of mine whose word you can trust.
Tomorrow you should be reading about my exciting adventures seeing Pterodactyl, Parts & Labor, the Russian Futurists, Paper Rad, Yeasayer, and other sundry groups but alas, instead, I'm on my friend's couch watching Species because my stomach is killing me. You could read my thoughts about Species or you could check out rock photography by my pal Eric Uhlir, whose stomach would seem to be in better shape.
Species: Not That Great a Movie. —End—
I'm wondering today: How are soundtracks written? Doesn't the movie need to be shot and edited in its entirety before a composer can know what moods to match and for how long within a given scene?
I invite the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library (for which I've publicly spoken and written as a devoted advocate) to host one of these video game–based amnesty contests so as to give me a shot at winning away the double-digit penalty I owe in outstanding library fines. This platform would be just fine.
(Via JPYG)
Fubar. I'm looking into it. Apologies if you've tried to riposte.
Ram for your Mac turns out to be ridiculously cheap, so long as you're not buying it through Apple. Courtesy Yglesias, whose insight on Clinton's prospects after Iowa is well worth the cost of your click.
Last year I spent an unreasonable amount of money in Miami on cabs, often only to idle in Miami traffic, which is worse that I'd ever been lead to believe. The fairs advertise shuttles between South Beach and the Wynwood District, but I found that they never arrived. So this year i'm thinking about renting a bicycle, or, if that's not an easy option, buying some beater from a pawn shop or secondhand store, just for the week. Miami's flat, so getting around by bike should be easy—thing is, I don't remember seeing anyone actually riding a bike while I was there, so I'm wondering if a bike isn't a good prospect for some reason. Too much sand and not enough road? Too many little friends to say hello to? Anyone know?
This is a reasonable depiction of what I'm hoping to accomplish (soundtrack included).
Skipping town for Chicago this weekend to visit with Sarah & Ed. I imagine I'll see the Richard Misrach show and I might bop over to Bodybuilder & Sportsman (though I have no idea what if anything's showing since the Charles LaBelle show came down a week ago and the tough guys need to update their Web site). Ed works in a Mies building, so I'll scratch that itch. Frankly I'm kind of most excited about visiting a different H&M and doing my part to accelerate the degeneration of smaller prestige design. Boots and dogs are also on the agenda.
Off "topic", but I've decided that nothing could be more satisfying than seeing the Green Bay Packers dismantle the Patriots in the Super Bowl. It's a beautiful dream of mine.
You know, I'm going to take a little break here. I'll keep the sidebar updated with pieces that I publish, and I'll have a few in the next week I believe (and I do hope you read them), but as far as the blog is concerned I'm calling in sick and staying in. For the time being.
I'm having one of those weeks where I'm scheduling business calls for when I'm walking from one place to another. Sorry it's so slow around these parts. I've also fallen behind on personal correspondence. Bear with me!
It's clever enough that the District voting rights bill's supporters have pledged that the bill, which is being debated even as I type, will not be a slippery slope toward acquiring two senators for the District. But if we get our House representative today, is there an action plan for getting our Senators tomorrow? If the Congress proffers a vote of no support for the reading of the Constitution that says that the District shouldn't have any congressional representation, then I really don't want to spend another day without full congressional representation. There's no halfsies in Congress. I have greater respect for Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) cockblock, however informed it may be by crypto-racism and pure partisan politicking, than I do for the view that we should be happy with this bone that they throw us.
UPDATE: Cloture invoked, 57–42. Here's to not paying federal taxes.
I read yesterday's error message to the tune of The Who's "You Are Forgiven." Dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang.
"It takes a special writer to impress me one sentence and make me want to kill myself the next." —Subject line from an email, inadvertently forwarded to me with an email returning edits on a piece I'd written.
Please and thank you for e-mailing me or otherwise contacting me with your cell phone number, if you think I should have it. My old phone met its tragic demise at the bottom of a purse pool.
Too late do I realize that the guy who tried to steal my bike was hoping to do me a favor. Last night, riding home from the Townhouse Tavs, I fell off my bike and broke a rib. The longer version is whinier and more embarrassing, so I'd do better to keep that to myself. (Maybe I will share it on a vlog and finally realize this descent into utter ridiculousness that I find myself pursuing as of late.)
I walked away from the accident wary, as I'd felt a ping in my side, but convinced I was find because I didn't feel any pain. I even rode the rest of the five or so blocks home. Only this morning did I realize I walked away scathed after all: my leg was a horror show, and moving was not so much an option. On the bright side, I haven't been coughing, which is good news, because coughing is supposed to provoke a miserable cycle of violence (coughing, pain, more coughing, more pain); but putting on my pants this morning took approximately 45 minutes. As I was walking home from the hospital I pulled something out of my pocket, and a five-dollar bill fell out and fluttered to the ground. I stared at it longingly, but let it go in the end: apparently, I will pay $5 to not endure the pain of bending down.
Now, writing about art is less lucrative than you've been led to believe all these years. No one covers my benefits—national health care really can't come too soon for the long-suffering freelance members of the creative class—so, a while back, I bought a modest catastrophic coverage policy. In fact, I was shamed into doing so, perhaps inadvertently, by a (liberal) friend who said it was irresponsible and also unfair to go out in this trapeze of a world and expect society to catch me when I fall. But of course, the class of catastrophes that my insurance will consider (without the benefit of a ludicrous premium) is quite queer. I imagine that were my bike-oriented demise to put a dent in someone else's property, some ebenezer at insurance HQ would reluctantly issue a check to cover a fraction of his damages. I've always been a miser, but I'll pay $5 to spare myself extra pain; my insurance company won't pay a damned dime to help alleviate the cost of this injury. I'm not blegging, only moaning.
To add insult to injury, the bike is fine. Topanga leans there against the wall in smug self satisfaction, as if she played no part in this casualty.
On puns: Originally I was going to go with a Pavement reference (as that's what pounded me)—maybe touch on "Transport Is Arranged," the inspiration for the title of this very blog. But I must tip my hat to Amanda for the choice pun she let me steal.
On helmets: Bell helmets are both stylish and reliable. May I recommend one in matte black? I may, and I will.
On hospitals: Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes,
I think it frets the saints in heaven to seeWell. No worry of that at Howard University Hospital this morning, let me tell you, friend.
How many desolate creatures on the earth
Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship
And social comfort, in a hospital.
On drinking: I'm the sort who meets a really agreeable guy out at a bar and likes to cement the new friendship with way too many terrible shots. Agreeable guys, being so agreeable, will always respond in kind and with enthusiasm. There has to be a better expression of mutual admiration than the kamikaze.
On pity parties: Oh, I'll let you tell me.
I'm making my way over to Baltimore today for Artscape. Full report here by Monday. Holla at me if you're going.
Off to New York for a few days. When I went up last month, I scheduled a whirlwind daytrip and ran into a bunch of frustrations: such-and-such gallery was installing, so-and-so's gallery wasn't in fact opening until Thursday, summer hours, and so on. Why didn't anyone tell me that the MoMA is closed on Tuesdays? This time around, I'm swearing I'll get some work done.
So I have at least a good dozen ideas for things to write here, and some shows to discuss (and some shows to discuss that are now closed), but I'm much shorter on time than I thought I'd be at this point into the summer. This is good thing, as I was half worried that my freelance career might come to an end when I starved to death for lack of work.
I might post some things if I get any writing done on the bus ride awesome stealth jet trip up there. Otherwise, you should look around for writing this week in the City Paper, Express, and Onion.
Here's a note: I think I don't like Brooklyn, or rather the parts of Williamsburg I've had the good fortune to visit and stay in when I've been up there. If it's on a grid, I can't tell. There doesn't seem to be any way to get from north burrough to south, and some of the young hip kid activities that take place in McLaren Park are hopelessly, appalling, unforgivably twee.
On the other hand, it's not a far jog from there to this place, which might be my favorite restaurant.
If I've lent you a book, you may return it this summer without shame or late fee. There are some holes on my bookcase and I can't remember in every instance what used to fill them, so here's a post to jog your memory about that book you borrowed that one time that we've both since forgotten about.
Full posts RSS feed? Voila. If you'd rather sample a few words before you commit to reading a full post, lesser RSS feeds are available on the sidebar under "Syndicate".
I've been in New York for a few days and failed to note here that Artkrush mentioned G.p in its issue about the art blogosphere. Reading over it makes me feel first appreciation, and then guilt for drafting a post about the long offseason that awaits the Dallas Mavericks. Well, if Mark Cuban can get away with writing nothing about his team's humiliating defeat on his blog, I can too.
I've been keeping a wary eye on the pet food recall situation; to date, Wreck's favorite food—well, okay, not his favorite food, which is tortilla chips: the little guy really loves his tortilla chips—hasn't made an appearance. Cold comfort, though, as I watched Wreck get sick over and over tonight. I don't think he's ever been so ill. Hours later, now, he seems okay, asleep on his ratty dog pillow and twitching and woofing in that muffled dog-dream pitch, actually, as I write. With the dog there's no holding the hair back or suggesting some Vitamin Water; he's certainly no good for help cleaning up, and the best I can hope for, as I'm following him all around with paper towels, is that I don't ruffle him too hard when he looks at me with that look of total incomprehension over what his body's doing to itself, and in so doing make him puke pathetic all over again.
He's not quite done, I think, but it's too late for me to be too productive or noisy. In the interest of passing the time:
Oh, and have we ever talked about what an amazing literary convention the radio is for this show? All these folks associated with high-school football, tuning in as they drive to AM talk radio about the high-school football team.
A couple of Superpixel programs have made my life easier, and you might like them, too. Resize is an easy, free program for resizing image files—perfect for the Mac-based art & photo blogger in your life. Put is an absurdly handy little FTP client; use it when you want to jog a file (like an mp3) to your site without a lot of to-do. Put is strictly for uploading files, but that's just what you want in a quickee transfer. It's free, too.
The Boston Globe has the scoop. I'm doing my part to boost the Google presence of this critical exposé.
Mims's "This Is Why I'm Hot," explained graphically. I do so love a good Venn diagram.
It's about time for a redesign around here, no?
. . . is that, for reasons that passeth understanding, she runs her hairdryer every 20 minutes or so.
Back from Texas, feeling better after food poisoning (!), still reeling from the brackets-breaking loss to the dread Trojans, but ready to return these weathered, leathery hands to the soily business of writing about art.
We here at G.p headquarters have taken it upon ourselves to solve the spine-tingling case of the secret valentines. Preliminary findings follow.
Exhibit A: Valentines
File photographs of the valentines may be viewed via this link.*
Exhibit B: Princesses
Presumed to be pawns in the game of a master puppeteer. Characters with known records in related crimes are not being ruled out, but as intra-animated criminal activity falls under federal jurisdiction, they are excluded for the purposes of this report.
Exhibit C: Maryland
In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore in the Irish House of Lords, fresh from his failure further north with Newfoundland's Avalon colony, applied to Charles I for a new royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. George Calvert died in 1632, but a charter was granted to his son, Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, later that year. Today, the State of Maryland is the second most wealthy state in the United States, with a median household income of $61,592. Maryland possesses a great variety of topography, hence its nickname: "America in Miniature." The state bird, the Baltimore Oriole, can be seen throughout the state and is a source of much pride for Marylanders. The Chesapeake Bay provides the state with its huge cash crop of blue crabs, and the southern and eastern portion of Maryland is warm enough to support a tobacco cash crop.
Another fact: Each mystery valentine was postmarked "Southern Maryland".
Figure 1: Victims
A Venn diagram depicting the social relations within the network of valentine recipients ("the victims") (click to enlarge). Catherine, who received the largest share of valentines, holds a central social position within the victims network.
A review of this network—including RSS analysis and IM interviews—has revealed at least five potential valentine senders ("the suspects"): Matt F—, Rob G—dsp—d, Kan/shka, the Nabob, and Drew McD—.
More information on these individuals is provided in Figure 2 and the following section.
Figure 2: Suspects
Figure 2 provides a detail of Figure 1 with suspects superimposed over their corresponding intersections within the victims network. Please consult Figure 1 for clarification of the network. NOTE: Everyone in the network unions with Catherine.**
Additional analysis has revealed a prime suspect, one who intersects with every element in the network.
Figure 3: Prime Suspect
Every suspect is innocent until proven guilty, Governess—but that's one mighty convenient alibi.
* Yglesias has concluded that a suspected copycat crime is in fact an unrelated incident.
** Huh-huh-huh
Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished guests, Spencer, fellow citizens: As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, my iPod's nowhere to be found, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet, it's my birthday. (Applause.)
Every year, by law and by custom, we meet on this day to consider my birth. It's pretty awesome, when you think about it, my being born. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead. Thanks again for crowding into the dining room—can y'all hear in the back? (Applause.)
In all these days of promise and days of reckoning, we can be confident. In a whirlwind of change and hope and peril, my hearing is sure, my eyesight is firm, and my back is strong, for up to 12 consecutive hours a day. (Applause.)
Hey, you, jerks in the robes, you up front—the f? You're too good to clap? Someone let those pie-throwing protesters in here. (Applause.) Mm, pie—everybody loves pie.
In the coming day, there will be efforts to join me to see helicoprion skeletons at the National Geographic Museum, take me to the Wizards–Suns game, and buy me beers at the Tavs. I applaud all these efforts. (Applause.) Apparently, you do too.
Some might call this a good record; actually, I would, too. Pretty, pretty good. Tonight I ask for the House and Senate to join me in thanking friends and family for making the last year fun and to wish for an even better one at 27. And so long as I have the attention of the House and Senate, some representation in your august bodies would be appreciated. Also, Hillary Clinton must be stopped. (Roaring applause.)
Thanks for the well wishes! (Applause.)
Thanks, good day. (Applause.)
Seriously, y'all get out of my dining room. (Applause.)
I come to you with glad news from the front lines of the great war. For even as I speak does the tide turn in our favor, as the squirrel has been cast out into darkness, and the Heart of Dupont beats again with pride, and renewed vigor.
Verily did I go do battle with the squirrel, it is true. His beady black eyes shewn with wrath, and armed as I was with a broken broom and one of the Express boutique bags that line the floor of the fair lady's lair where the squirrel had taken residence, the outcome was uncertain. Briefly I hesitated before I entered the lair, remembering to don the Hoodie of Bevo—to think about the match's outcome had I not!, for several times did the creature reach for my extremities (though not that extremity), to gnash at them with his razor fangs or claw them with his . . . uh, claws, and once even lunging and landing for a spell on my head seriously like in my hair y'all.
Brave Spencer did second my effort, ready with mighty oven mitt to stand as the West's last best defence should my mission fail. Wettham Saiselgy did consider the matter with great philosphye, no doubt while listening to crystal-clear indie pop from Montreal on his kick-ass new speakers. And lo! was one of the mightiest of our number deceived! Taken in by the dark visions of the squirrel, fearless Wreck, Killer of Rats, turned in confusion on the Lady Catherine. (She was really cool about this and I was and still am so very sorry and glad that she's an understanding roommate and Wreck's so grounded.)
So the battle raged across all four square feet of Catherine's lair, with advantage changing hands e'er between the both of us; and for long did the squirrel evade my sight by taking refuge under the Lady's Helm of Wahoowah. Nearly did I give the animal the tools to bring about his escape, perhaps even victory (I shudder to think), since in my haste to acquire my armor I forgot to close the door again to my lair, which is down the hall (we have four lairs on the top floor), giving the squirrel an avenue of escape when I had chased him from the Lady's realm. Nevertheless, having screamed like a girl only twice, I did capture the squirrel and eject him to the outer darkness. Devil take him!
Heading back to the District. Flights and shuttles won't leave me much time to mess around on the webs, so keep yourself occupied with this Artnet year-end market report. Wow:
. . . 2,800 new auction records were set in the fine-art auctions of October and November 2006. Of these new records, 72 were over $1 million. In May 2006, 45 of the new record prices were for $1 million or more.It might yet take an act of god to curb the art market; of course, the catastrophic crashes of the dollar and global climate are both nigh, so we may yet see the day. It will be known that twilight of Western civilization featured a strong arts bubble, at least. Some artists are even prepared for it.
Anyway, the Artnet writer alleges that a weak dollar draws buyers from Europe even as the imbalanced domestic economy continues to create extravagant wealth (and new collectors). I'm curious about the dollar's role in the focus on American artists today. Project for the new year: Systematize art history (a la Moretti) by plotting plastic-arts trends against regional affluences and global currency dynamics. If other projects don't take precedence.
I did nothing to provoke it one way or the either, but the site's back up. May it always be.
I'm spending the day writing and putting things back in orbit, but over the course of the week I'll post about the fairs here. No tan, but Miami was outstanding nevertheless. The fairs were more conservative than I'd been led to expect, and the high-profile galleries brought as much blue-chip 60s art as new work by younger artists. I saw more Albers and Rauschenberg than I've seen anywhere. I'll also note here for the record that Artforum has the best brownies, period.
At least a couple of us are thankful for Charles for hosting Thanksgiving again for the area Tex-pats. The Cowboys lost the game this year, so Chaz will be serving some gloat, but also generous helpings of turkey, casseroles, fixins, and booze. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.
Do me a favor? Leave a comment to test the all-new, terribly annoying, Turing test–enabled, comment spam–blocking plugin, will you? Here, let's do a poll. The focus of the new Democratic legislative majority should be:
Comments are off for now. I'm under a huge spam attack, and I can't tweak Movable Type's trojan horse intuitive spam-lookup system to both prevent this spammer's comments and permit mine and yours. (You see, the spam comment that wasn't blocked then becomes "trusted," and the lookup system gives me no way to ban e-mail addresses, usernames, or links or otherwise reconsider its decision to trust this 'bot.) I've given Movable Type a lot of money in the past in hopes of getting immediate and personalized support and fixing these problems—other people using Movable Type 3.2 don't seem to have them—and while they showed me how to clean out the tens of thousands of lines in the database, this is only a bandaid and it's super annoying. What I'm saying here is: Don't give Movable Type your money. Use Typepad or Wordpress instead.
It's not like I even get that many comments, but still, every one is a precious little gift to me. E-mail me for now; I'll probably install one of those annoying Turing tests or search for some other solution.
Back on after a week of technical difficulties. See, even though spam doesn't show up in the comments, it still shows appears in my database tables, hogging disc space. When I go over my limit, my host grounds me, but deleting the lines from the database (tens of thousands of them) wasn't doing the trick this time around. Many thanks to Becks for encouraging to stand up to my host and demand my SQL insert rights! It's an Election Day miracle.
Speaking of, and I don't know anything about anything, I'm on the books for a pickup of 23 House seats, 5 Senate seats, and 7 governors. (Chris Bell, I'm afraid, won't be one of them.) If we do win back the Senate today, I think it's important for the Democratic Party to honor appeals to not bog down the legislature in investigations & prosecutions and, instead, skip straight to the executions. The NRCC ought to be the first against the walls. To the polls, and the gallows beyond!
The New York Observer goes off the record with my roommate Spack and discusses his termination from TNR. Apparently, no one bothered to tell him that starting a blog is very 2003, but he went and did it anyway and turns out to be a total pro. He was d00ced within the week!
Also new but not really new to the nabe: Catherine and Tommy each have blogs (again). I should hope that they don't lose their jobs, too, but if Catherine does, it will mean that everyone in our happy home laptops it from the house and area cafes. Speaking of desktop publishing, I'll have more fascinating content on this site soon, but having lost a week to the flu and various personal crises I need to resume billable work first.
I forget that this blog isn't merely a web screen that I occasionally complain at, but also something a few people read. It's a surprise when, in real life (IRL), people say something like, "I was going to invite you to the baseball game [or whatever], but then, I read your blog; sorry about your news." And on the other hand, it's sometimes easy to forget that posting something on a vanity site doesn't count as conversation, especially with friends who don't read these things. Okay. Point being, thanks for kind wishes and thoughts, all. (And take me out to the ball game!) Should anything come up, I'll update.
I really appreciate that a number of you thought to forward to me information on the Andy Warhol Foundation writer's grant program, which of course I've been considering. After some thought over the weekend—well, after some thought, and after some late deliberations with the prospective publisher—I decided to sit out the first application round. I'm going to buff up my proposal, consider some other angles and research, and apply on the next go-round.
I find myself in the awkward position of admitting, too, that I'm concerned about taking on too many future obligations just right this minute. (Too many more than the projects I'm already working on, that is.) As it happens, this month has witnessed a downturn in both my parents' health. Recently, my mom began experiencing complications from a surgery she had several years ago to address a spinal injury; those complications mean more surgeries. My dad has apparently developed kidney problems very suddenly.
This isn't a hiatus announcement—I'll be around, though the foreseeable future may find me writing from Dallas for some stretches, and I don't think that would jibe with the proposal I had in mind. Maybe, though, it was overcautious of me to not apply if I couldn't commit. Mostly I say all this to explain that, rightly or wrongly, I decided I wasn't prepared to think about committing to my proposal. Plus, other reasons. So thanks to those of you who gave me advice—I appreciate 'cha—and don't steal my ideas while I'm mulling them over.
We got a house! We got a house! The long national nightmare is over, and Yglesias and I won't be homeless after all. It's got the ugliest goddamned floors you've ever seen—they're a color that might generously be termed "seafoam green," and it's impossible to say what, exactly, they're made of—but they're our goddamned floors, goddamnit. The place is near 13th and Florida NW, which the owner hilariously advertised as being in "Dupont Circle." The Seafoam House on Dupont!
Pardon me while I do the Snoopy dance.
If in an idle moment you've ever wondered what domestic life must be like for me and MY, here's a hint. I leave it to commenters to determine who plays whom. It must be said that I'm exceedingly drunk just now and that serious stuff is forthcoming. Happy weekend, all!
"Grammer.police" is listed as the Eponym blog of the day! I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I'll note that the fine admins at Eponym correctly keyed this blog's punctuated title. My favorite eponym construction: the Waldorf salad. Although the source of the name is apocryphal, the leading theories each point to Waldorfs—albeit different ones:
It was first created in 1896 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York by Oscar Tschirky who was the maitre d'hotel. (An alternative theory is that it was created by the Waldorf Lunch System, an early 20th C. lunchroom chain- starting in the 1920's the company logo was an apple.)It's also great for being the tastiest salad. I sometimes make one using baby spinach but typically stick to a lettuce and arugula mix. Some might say it's too liberal a stretch for a salad bearing the Waldorf brand, but I favor a lemon vinaigrette over the traditional mayo-based dressing. (It's the apples and walnuts that distinguish a salad as a Waldorf.)
I'm hoping that my first day as a full-time freelancer doesn't set the tone for the foreseeable future, since it seems to involve a lot of walking around the neighborhood looking for the dog, who escaped from the backyard at some point this morning. I figured on sweating a lot over, say, paying double FICA on the quarterly tax schedule that is mandatory for freelancers, not because the sun is crowding my 'do. So the jury's still out on my change in careers. And anyway, what does the dog do while Yglesias and I are at the office?
In any case, the blog is back. The database needed a month off, but all systems are go now. Tell your friends! Test the comments! Enjoy a Krackel! I'll get back to you after I find the Wreckage.
I've run into some wicked luck flying this year, but yesterday's experience takes the cake. I arrived only to find that my flight home from Chicago was canceled due to rain. Despite the fact that Chicago sees months of snow and even massive blizzards every year, a steady drizzle was enough to throw O'Hare off its game. (Now, if they'd blamed the Cubs, I'd've believed that.) I secured a ticket home this morning, but decided to try my luck flying standby before I shuttled to the hotel. Naturally, while I passed through security, the woman who checked my boarding pass marked it with a curious "P," which might stand for "pester," since I was hauled out of line for special security precautions. At which time the airline discovered a lighter in my pocket that the standard security gate failed to detect—a sign they read as a Plot Against America, rather than incompetence of a kind with canceling all outbound flights to the eastern seaboard at the first sign of April showers. (This post is brought to you by Midway Airport Co.)
But I skated through on that standy flight last night, which was delicious; many passengers didn't make it onto the flight, and Schadenfreude is the best compensation an airline can deliver. Anyway, you know you've got a severe puntuality problem when your friends aren't surprised that your flight returns late. Back in the District now and looking forward to writing about Nova. In the meantime, check in with Icono-Dan, who's back to blogging (and is a helluva nice guy IRL to boot).
Anyone receive any postcards yet? I uploaded pictures from Istanbul to Flickr, if you're interested in seeing them. Using my pedestrian point-and-click and foregoing both technical training and Photoshop software, I achieve results of a piece with recent themes advanced by the new German photographers, had they been struck or otherwise greatly confounded before shooting.
Unfortunately, Flickr abruptly restricted my alloted monthly bandwidth before I was able to completely upload my pictures. (That's called an F-stop.) So I have only images from the big three tourist destinations: Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque (pictured), and Topkapi Palace.
MT just chewed up a thousand words on "Dada." Mother of pearl! Given the subject, I think I'm going to, I don't know, smack someone with a mackerel. Shorter version, while I rewrite: the best moment in the show was when a U of Maryland student yelled out, "That concept is dope!"
Anyone know how I can make MT display Alt + [keystrokes] coded characters (e.g., accents, em dashes)? MT 3.2 seems to <3 the &whatever; command characters, but I'm used to doing it the other way and don't want to learn a new trick. Where I usually find an em dash by typing Alt + 0151, now I get —. It just won't do.
Thought I would have time for more writing today, but I have a last-minute errand or two to run before I take a combo of planes, trains, and automobiles to get to Baltimore airport. Then some flying, a layover at the Tate Modern, some more flying, Istanbul, lather, rinse, repeat.
But!
If you e-mail your address to me, I'll send you a postcard. No joshin. If it's not too Internet-y weird for you to get a postcard from some guy who has demonstrated that he can use a modem, a 3" by 4" piece of Turkish printed cardstock could be yours. Meatosphere friends, too; I don't know where y'all live.
JL is rappin bout Istanbul, which reminds me: I'm going there! Tomorrow! (Holy shit, tomorrow!) I hope you won't fret over the absence of exciting housekeeping posts while I take a weeklong furlough from dot-policing.
I'm feeling like old Yves about my predeparture to-do list—lots of packing left and probably a little panicking, too. This is my first trip abroad since Moscow in 2003, but moreover, it's the first expedition I've taken that wasn't preceded by a college-level art history or language course. I think I've taken the right steps to educate myself, but only yesterday I discovered there is an entire class of regional mythological creature of which I was previously unaware: daevas! Let's Go: Pandaemonium is silent on this score.
Dearth of knowledge aside, I'm terribly excited. In great detail I just told the local deli cashier, who's never given me any real indication that he understands English, about my ongoing negotiations with Volkan the Hotelier, who frankly doesn't want my business if he thinks I'm paying tourist-season rates once the calendar flips to March 1. Anyway, I'm dusting off my Byzantine texts (heh) and will see some of Turkey's contemporary stuff, but I'm there to spend a week on the Bosphorus with my lady. See you back here in a week.
UPDATE: Of course! Can't forget to mention that I'm adding to my global funny hat collection. The top model I already own; the bottom will soon be mine.
The update went off nearly without a hitch, though for a nail-biting moment there I expected to lose all my archives. The old MT installation was so buggy that I couldn't import/export a complete entries backup file, so I spent a while copying out old posts mentioned in artists' CVs. But it worked! I haven't tricked out all the templates yet, so a few pages (the search results, for example) still look wonky.
Comments are up! Try them out! Lurker amnesty, whatever!
Also added a simple banner to the top of the page. I'm grateful for the designs a couple readers sent me in response to a post a week or two ago, and I'm keeping them in mind. For the moment, I like the clean look for spring. The hope is that it isn't making your monitors tilt or anything. Special thanks to David for all his Photoshop help over the weekend.
Just upgraded to Movable Type 3.2. Comments aren't working yet, but I'm still under the hood.
Yet another thing that's broken on this blog! Every once in a while you write something that you consider great, something that changes everything or sheds new light or brings new thoughts to bear, and you can't help but see that (0) and think, Well, fuck me.
At some point in the distant past I think I introduced a fatal CGI element that virtually disabled my MT Blacklist and completely disabled my ability to rebuild my archives; that's why, if you click on a permalink, archive, or category-based view of a post, you won't find the streamlined, recently updated blogroll that you currently see to your left.
No face, no comments, no posts! I'm upgrading to MT 3.2 in the hopes of alleviating, well, my wallet of the $30 I plan to pay a pro to do it right.
Not a Pye recipe from which Ben Wolfson would shy:
Pyes of mutton or beif must be fyne mynced and ceasoned wyth pepper and salte, and a lyttle saffron to coloure it, suet or marrow a good quantite, a lyttle vyneger, prumes, greate raysins and dates, take the fattest of the broathe of powdred beyfe, and yf you wyll have paest royall, take butter and yolkes of egges and so tempre the flowre to make the paeste.What else I have to say on cockery concerns l'affaire Finch, but I've spent the day learning about Hansen's disease, which is a little draining. Still cases every year in the USA! Please—friends, loved ones—try to avoid the leprosy. If for no other reason, it's sure to greatly annoy your Valentine.
. . . later in the day. On some I'm really pressing against the sell-by date, so apologies for that. In the meantime, have some laughs at the expense of an Aggie. And to this citizen journalist, an honorary Longhorn for the day, I say: hook 'em.
You may have noticed that my giant face has disappeared from the top of your monitor. Do not adjust, and don't panic!, but that's permanent. It's a distressing surprise that this comes as a relief—I was planning to change it up, anyway. Do I not enjoy staring at my head? That can't be right.
Anyway, I don't have Photoshop (or Photoshop skillz) but if one of you has the time to throw together a simple banner, will you e-mail me? In the meantime, I'm going to try to jigger something up with this B-grade paint program, but outlook: not so good on that.
UPDATE: Thanks for the generous response! I'm a little busy right now to sort through these great offers, but you'll hear from me soon.
Either here or in Texas between now and January 9. Posting will be absolutely out of control! Go on, get out of here, go place with your little cousins or something.
Nothing to jolt the blogger to post like stepping off a Metro elevator in suburban Maryland at 9 a.m. to find yourself face to face with a portly man dressed as Spider-Man. I was the only person going up, he the only one going down—so no, I can't say for sure that I wasn't simply still asleep.
. . . or under the influence of the dread Mysterio!?
Anyway—imagine the fellow below, but in costume not paint, and 2x along the horizontal axis,
That's right! pr0n! I hope all of you are reading this at 9 a.m.
and less nude. No explanation was forthcoming as we traded places, and really, at 9 a.m., I'm not sure whether it would have been courteous or abusive for him to offer one.
I had reason to write the word "snowglobes" earlier today, and caught myself writing "snowblogs." An ominous sign, but not nearly as bad as the Asian bird flu that I have contracted.
Hey, the ol' G.p just turned the corner with 200,000 hits. Cool, thanks!
RELATED: I sent an e-mail to my Web hosting company nearly 2 months ago. Today I got a response that began, "Dear 6878265." Seriously! That's not dehumanizing—that's enrobotinating.
All of a sudden, this place is pretty spare. Let's see what we can do about that.
Truth be told I've been doing a lot of writing about the latest political currents over at Begging To Differ, concerning disasters natural and man-made. I'll touch on that here too; at the moment, like everyone else, I'm feeling taxed by the supercharged debate following the national trauma. But I'm also thrilled about the start of the gallery season. That's what I'll be focusing on throughout the weekend (that and Longhorn football).
A quick note and suggestion: I'm impressed by all the hardcore efforts by so many art bloggers to galvanize and direct support to buttress artists and museums hit by hurricane Katrina. If you are giving through these channels or others, remember to ask your employer to what extent they're willing to match your dollar. You're working for some real jerk-offs if the answer's less than 1:1!
A few days' furlough while I see Sue off to (the nation of) Georgia, where she'll start her Fulbright. Asdf. Jkl;.
Here's my question—if I were to delete the "TrackBack (0)" feature (see it there, below the post?) from my index template, would that prevent spambots from flooding me with spam? You'll notice, if you're in the comments screen (i.e., the individual entry archives), that TrackBacks can still be seen from that screen and that the TB link appears there. So would my help or no? Frankly, I'm inclined to delete the feature altogether.
Incidentally, one bot that spams me constantly gives an address that ends in blogspot.com. Like a-b.blogspot.com, c-d.blogspot.com. So is this the work of a prankster or Blogger's competition?
. . . but also sick, unf, with a throat ailment that makes Tom Waits sound like Betty Boop. I got a fair bit of writing done while I was gone, which I'll clean up and post while I'm under quarantine this weekend.
While I have this thing open, many thanks to those of you who do your Amazon shopping through those spots on the left-hand sidebar. From the small take I pick up from each transaction, I inch ever closer to purchasing a Celestron Biological Microscope 4050. As the man once said, it will be mine.
Over the next few days I'll be driving through various parts of the Lone Star State, so you won't see much of me around here—I'll be back next Thursday. For those of you who are reading from the District, there are a couple of should-not-miss events you should fit into your calendar:
Y'all keep the Internets warm while I'm away.
Spent an hour or so under the hood of G.p last night, and now the site doesn't work in IE. The comment form no longer has any fields for entering personal information (your name, e-mail, and so on). So . . . get Firefox? Because I can't figure out what's going on.
Next batter?
My intrepid laptop Jonas has returned! Receptionist, who handles deliveries: "How come you're always getting these boxes?" I'm not holding my breath that I won't be sending it out again before the G5 comes along . . . because I would be dead.
On a different note: trackbacks. I probably exterminate at min 300 trackback spam a day, and because I'm running this blog on the cheap, the MT Blacklist tool I use invariably times out as soon as it begins�meaning that 1) the process takes a lot longer than it should and 2) the posts don't rebuild, so the spam remains in some purgatorial state until I rebuild (thereby shuttling them all to hell). Which takes more time and also invariably times out before the entire site is rebuilt.
I managed to more or less eliminate comment spam by changing the name of the comment directory (by "I managed," of course, I mean, "I managed to pester my roommate's visiting guest with so many questions that he eventually did it for me, all the while muttering something about 'what kind of man can't use secure shells' or something"). Would that do the trick for trackback spam, and if so, can I ask you a few questions? Or: Is there a plugin that will close the trackback functionality on posts after a few days? I would eliminate the trackback function altogether, but if I'm going to get under the hood of the blog, might as well see if there's a way to fix it.
Monday, June 13
I think I can safely say that my laptop's going to fine. Browsed a Mac support forum and symptoms point to a logic board failure. Bad news is that my 3-year insurance plan expired last month. Good news (under the circumstances) is that my laptop falls within a range of iBooks for which Apple issued a recall. Telephoned Apple; turns out that the recall also has an expiration (3 years from date of purchase). Made the cut with only 1 day to spare.
So that's a relief. Still a little freaked by the way my laptop was behaving, tho. Sort of expected the problem to be something . . . worse.
Tuesday, June 14
Can't get the hang of this "right-click." Probably could be worse. Actually, I think that staring at this monitor is giving me a headache, so maybe it can. Nothing that happy hour can't fix I think.
Happy birthday, Jonas! (That's my laptop, and according to all these warranties, today's his birthday.) Come back so I can post some reviews.
Wednesday, June 15
God this headache is getting worse. Killing my appetite, nothing sounds good. Weirdly steak tartar sounds fantastic but that's not exaclty chicken-noodle soup.
I really hope they send Jonas back before the weekend. It's too quiet without iTunes, and there's something unnatural about Windows.
Thursday
Rash, head going to explode. Fever. Scratch, scratch. I looked in the mirror, I don't look so good. Vvvvery hungry, don't want bad food. Want tasty food. No right-click. Want . . . brains.
But that's not right! But it feels right. . . .
Friuuuhhhr
uhhh . . . Jooo-naaas. . . .
Bit Sue before work, sorry, bit again, sorry. tasty-tasty. uhhhr, maybe she has Jooo-nnass. She won't tell me but she not sayin much now! Joonaasss . . . guess I'll eat some brains all weekend
I've been retained by the Smithsonian Institution for a blog project about which you'll be hearing more in the near future. For now the details are nearly that scant, so this isn't so much an announcement as an announcement that the announcement is forthcoming. It's going to be neat, and I'll tell you more soon.
MORE: Or less, rather—it's going to take some time for the project to come to fruition. I'm sure I jumped the gun by mentioning it at all; a lot of people from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (the branch developing the project) are and have been working on it, and there will be some inhouse work before anything goes live.
I'm sorry to report that, yet again, my laptop's petered out on me. Cross your fingers with me that the June expiration of my insurance plan can be interpreted as the end of June. I should create an Effing Computer category for as often as I have to post a miserable note that the blogging will be slow until my computer is repaired.
Not here, or not yet anyway—I have a number of reviews in the draft queue that need just a bit more polish, and I hope to get them up soon. Blogging is very good for being freeform, but I like for the reviews to be formal. Over the weekend, definitely, if not before then.
That was one frightening vacation in the meatosphere—I seem to have caught a cold and developed a repetitive stress injury in my left wrist during the move, Wreck keeps trying to run away from the new house, and I realized the extent to which my possessions and lifestyle mark me as yuppie scum (very much so, thanks). LiveJournal fodder notwithstanding, it was a productive break; my sincere thanks to Dan and JL for keeping the pilot's seat warm while I was away. The idea was to get you hooked for free and then make you work that mouse for it. I imagine I'll revisit a few things each of them said.
Anyway, nothing's more tedious than reading about where an author stands vis-à-vis his vanity Web site, so we'll see if we can't get some less meta vanity content up in the very near future.
Guest blogger: JL of Modern Kicks
Dan's being a good sport regarding my jokes about his drinking habits, so you all should know that he initially said he was too busy to take on the guest blogger position and only relented when I begged him to. So I'm very grateful he's posting and and you all should check out his strong coverage of the Chicago art fairs linked to below. As for "Family Guy", I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't care for it, but I can understand how anything seems funny after the second forty of St. Ides.
I've got a couple posts to come once I've settled back in, and then we're expecting Kriston to be back tomorrow.
Guest blogger: Dan of Iconoduel
Contrary to vicious rumors circulating around certain corners of the internets, I have not in fact crawled off into a bottle of Olde English 800 or Mad Dog 20/20.
For those interested in what I have been up to, although I don't really plan on cross-posting what little I've put up so far (and, if I can't get anything more than such rundowns up before Kriston gets through with his own bender very scientific research, I may not be cross-posting anything at all), you can go here and here for brief rundowns from Art Chicago and Chicago Contemporary & Classic respectively.
While I'm around these parts, though, I should probably take a moment to insist how dreadfully wrong JL is on the topic of Family Guy (though I'll certainly grant him the virtues of Greg the Bunny). I missed last night's premier for dinner (habanero ribs) and some Bach (Johann Sebastian and Wilhelm Friedemann), but it had to have been sweet. As for the gratuitous dig at Star Wars, I'd have to imagine JL would change his tune as soon as he beheld the wicked awesome LED light saber spoon that I found in my box of Frosted Flakes this morning.
VROWMM! (sp?)
(Collect all three.)
Guest blogger: Dan of Iconoduel
Hello and howdy from the Third Coast.
As you are no doubt aware, earlier today Kriston, in what seems to have been a moment of rather poor judgment, handed off the keys to yours truly and an East Coast compatriot, one JL (ex-Miguel Sánchez) of Modern Kicks. But you know as much already...
I hail from a little joint I call Iconoduel, where I muse mostly on matters artistical, often managing to spit out upwards of 5 or 6 posts a month. You might consider mine the blogging equivalent of a slow hand. With this guest-blogging stint here, however, and a veritable maelstrom of art-related doings ready to hit Chicago within a matter of a few days, I'd say I'm going to have to up the production a tad this week. So we'll see how that goes, eh?
Anyways, and since I haven't said so explicitly yet, a big thank you to Kriston for the willingness to let me in. My agenda here at Grammar.police is simple: far from 'raising the bar,' I hope mostly to limit the damage. And I will do my best to not turn Kriston's place into a mere repository for gratuitous Simpsons references, though I won't make any promises I'm not certain to keep.
To bust my G.p cherry here I'd like to pick up on a fantastic little gem that Caryn Coleman brings to us at abLA: Deep Thoughts with Agnostic Front's Vinnie Stigma.
Caryn enthuses about Vinnie's views on the artistic merits of photography, and I join her, though his words lose much in transcription:
Vinnie: You know, a lot of photographers... You know, "Art!" I'm not buying that. You know, I just don't... I can't get... Calm down there, Mr. Artistic!
Dare anyone ask what Vinnie really thought of Matthew Barney?
"Go back to Boise, Idaho, or wherever the hell you come from."
Guest Blogger: JL of Modern Kicks
As he mentioned below, Kriston has asked me and Dan to help fill in while he’s away from G.p., and I’m very happy to do so. An introduction may be in order – mercifully brief, as there’s little to say. I write at Modern Kicks on a range of topics, but mostly art and music. I’m in my late thirties and have no accomplishments of note. Prior to having an office and a website, I did graduate study in the humanities at Brown. Think of me as Josh Marshall, except unsuccessful.
Anyway, let’s get to business: what’s the state of play in the Social Security privatization fight? Nah, just kidding. You know where to go for that stuff. I’d rather pursue something started over at MK during the weekend. Via the Mystic Knights of the Mau Mau, I came across this fine .mp3 blog of the New Orleans sound. Earl King’s “Trick Bag”, one of the songs currently featured, rules. Not only for the funk-ay snare drums, as the writer points out, but the unfailing swing of the shaker on the backbeat. Hard to keep still while listening to that. Anyway, more problematic is the Meters’ track now at the top of the page. I thought it sounded like the soundtrack to a porn film. A commentator at MK demurred, saying the problem was porn soundtracks ripped off the Meters and others. Perhaps; but I still think the link is closer than that person wished to acknowledge, and that inventing this particular aesthetic niche was not something to be proud of. Listen and decide.
But to be fair, what important sources other than New Orleans funk can we find behind (so to speak) the music in old porn movies? I’m just trying to raise the tone of discourse here. It’s possible that these people might be able to add more to our knowledge, if we could speak to them. This site argues we should look to Italian film music, which sounds plausible. I must admit I was surprised to learn that legendary soul drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie once lent his skins to a flick; but it’s always the ones you don’t suspect. It seems to me that the key to the style found in the Meters’ song is the extended, cheesy riff jam. And that organ.
Anyway, a big thanks to Kriston letting me post here. I’ll try to come up with some better content as the week goes on. One last thing: Grammar police enforcement will be relaxed for the duration of my time here. I lack Kriston’s sure command of the niceties of language. You may assume that any and all howlers remain because I was either too drunk or too lazy to remove them. Your choice.
An ultimate combo of workplace frenzy and moving from U Street (admittedly, to nearby V Street) has me all tied up—so, faithful readers, I'm taking a siesta. Frankly, I should be able to juggle those obligations with the blog. But add to those considerations the fact that Susan has assigned the two of us a demanding regimen of (at least) one margarita a day in her pursuit of a true Texas frozen margarita—variable by variable, she's advancing toward a concoction appropriate to Cinco de Mayo in this unhospitable environment, where rentable frozen M machines are neither plentiful nor cheap. With stern and gritty resolve, I will get drunk answer the call of science.
Good for you, then, that JL of Modern Kicks and Dan of Iconoduel have answered my call—both are top shelf. They'll be holding the place down until the beginning of May. Here's hoping that they don't raise the bar so high that I can't pass muster when I return.
Reports are streaming in from G.p correspondents across the land: Apparently this blog made CNN this evening. Neat! I just tuned in, and I see that Lou Dobbs is extolling the high cost of immigration. He's excluding the $7 billion in Social Security taxes that immigrants pay into the system but generally don't withdraw, but who am I to say—I'm drinking a Dos Equis! I'm part of the problem! But it's so tasty.
So anyway, if you catch the spot, let me know what they said. If there were some way to snag a clip of that, I'd like to be able to send something to my mom to prove that I haven't wasted my life since college. Unless they were saying, you know, "this guy's full of shit." (My dad's all-too-typical response to the news: "For what? Most-wanted list?") If you're reading because you heard about these crazy weblogs on CNN—a fine news channel, by the by—be sure to check out the fantastic assortment of links to your left. And it's incumbent on me to hype the art blogs in particular; these are some of the finest of a really strong online art community.
It's as good an opportunity as any to mention that April means one year of blogging here. Taken with the blogspot year, that's two years of blog action. A few weeks back the site eclipsed 100,000 unique visitors, and it's added a cool 10 big ones to that in short time. Ha ha, suckers! But no, thanks, really, especially to the people who link to and comment on this site.
I put in all sorts of spam safeguards over the weekend, and while I was tinkering in my Web site's garage, I decided to reshelve all the links to the left. Visit them and be amazed and also let me know if any of the links don't work. Not quite done with everything, so now's the time to whine about how your link has been mislabeled and no one understands your unique position in the universe.
Those of you who are seeing this site through the lens of Firefox will notice a horrifying, blunt red border around the Beck album thumbnail. I can't make it go away. If someone can take a look at the div class below that governs the section and tell me what might be doing that (or what might prevent it), I'd appreciate it. Is there a span code I can add? I don't seem to have this problem in Safari, mind you.
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't sweat it—neither do I. CSS makes me curse like my grandfather.)
.side {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#333;
font-size:x-small;
font-weight:normal;
background-image: url(blah blah blah spacer blah);
line-height:140%;
padding:2px;
}
I feel so exposed.
I'm playing around with the new MyBlogLog tool, which allows you to track which links are most popular among your blog readers, and it appears that the most popular links at G.p by far right now are, hmm, Susan and Catherine. Neck and neck, too. While that catfight ensues, let's see how they do against . . . Nazi loot intrigue at the MoMA! Or this adorable sock monkey!
I'm taking a hiatus—time to catch up on some books. Cheers, and I'll be back next Monday.
All apologies for the lack of material—I wasn't able to access the admin site all day. Then I came home to find that the DSL wasn't working. Now the information superhighway is up but my landline isn't, and seeing as I'm one of 4 North Americans without a cell phone, I'm hoping against a total blackout. Note that President Bush's State of the Union address begins in 15 minutes, then ask yourself: Who doesn't want Kriston's voice to be heard?
. . . but don't answer that.
UPDATE: Has anyone seen my keys?
If my lack of posts hasn't made it obvious, I'm quite busy with work. Plus President Bush is waging a Tet offensive of an inauguration on the District, and it's putting me in a bad mood. The Metro is clogged, there are weirdos everywhere, there are military helicopters everywhere, and—worst of all—it's snowy. I don't know how he pulled that off, but I imagine that somehow the District was forced to foot the bill.
But check in tomorrow—good stuff is coming.
So, remember when I said that I had mono? Some of you might remember—some of you even expressed heartfelt get-wells. Well, see, now, ha ha! this is really amusing, but I got the official test results* back from my doctor, and while I have had mono in the past, I don't have it currently, or at least did not at the time of the test. Doc was unable to identify significant stocks of viruses of mono disease. Still, you have to recognize that in the post-Susan's mono era, you can't wait untilthe VMD are identified—in the form of a global epidemic—to take pre-emptive action. After all, we know that I've had mono in the past, and all the doctor can say with certainty is that he couldn't find VMD. Regardless, I feel liberated now, so we're closing the investigation with resolute-ness and credibility intact—but most importantly, a newfound respect for freedom.
* Urgency of said test results somewhat mitigated by the fact that I partied all weekend.
Over the week I'll be posting a few reviews: Kelly Towles's "Underdog" at Adamson, Ian Whitmore's "Mirror Mirror" at Fusebox, and Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. I met up with both of two of the three at Whitmore's opening last night, which followed a dance dance revolution at Chez Zunta and preceeded even more dancing at the Bluestate party at the Black Cat.
I can hyperlink my entire weekend, but the hangovers—those are special. Those are for me alone.
