Identity

If you weren't you, who would you be?

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society- Mark Twain

Photo by Fred Covarrubias

Utilities

The building in which I live is a nice building. Great location, quiet neighbors, but the parking sucks. The utilities are kind of funky. The renters pay for the gas and electricity, which is fine. The bill for the water, garbage, and heating goes to the landlord, who then just divides the bill by the number of apartments. And instead of charging the renters that amount, the landlord charges $100 per month. This amount does not change if you happen to begone 2 weeks out of the month. This is not fair. In our last apartment, we never paid that amount for our utilities. We are getting ripped off. And if we are paying the right amount I would like to see the bill!

Drive Through Liqour Stores

I mean, how cool is that? Does that mean people be more likely to drink while driving? I don't think so. Getting beer into your car is pretty easy otherwise. Just went to one here in Marfa, Tx. www.marfa.org El Cheapo the place is called.The one bad thing about a drive through is that you cannot see everything, so you better know what you want to buy. Tequila and Triple Sec for margaritas, tonight.

Last night went go see the local football team play in their Homecoming game. Only went to one football game when I was in highschool. I am confused about the game, it is so #$%#$ slow. Most of the game the players are just standing around. Soccer, or the real football, is a much more active game- just look at which players are in better shape. Had some nachos. Whatever the sauce is, the same lab is churning out that same orange goo. Tasty though!

After the first half of the game we went to a local art gallery, www.ballroommarfa.org, though is it local as it is not there for the locals, well the locals who are there 2 weeks of the year. One of which I might become if we ever build our place, but I hope to be here for more than 2 weeks a year. Anyways...the two crowds were very different. Clothing, ages, etc different. I wonder how many people feel equally comfortable or drawn to both settings. Both camps can learn from each other.

Road Kill

While driving out to Marfa from El Paso, I hit a couple animals. One was a rabbit and the other I think was a badger. It definitely made a larger sound that the rabbit. The rabbit ran right out in the road. Are they attracted to the light? Is it a hazing ritual for a leporidian fraternity? well anyways, neither of those animals' genes got passed on to the next generation. Unless they already mated. But it got me thinking-how come I don't feel bad when I eat a chicken or a can of tuna? Is it because I am not directly involved with the killing of the animal? It has become so sanitized, wrapped in plastic or in a can, no blood and guts? People should have to kill the meat they eat, at least once. It would make them appreciate it.

There should be meat licenses. Only after you show that you have the ability to catch/raise, kill and clean a type of meat, are you then awarded the "license" to eat that kind of meat. A license to kill, if you will.

The amount of meat eaten would just plummet. Yes, I know...one more thing to regulate and enforce. Not that I think those licenses should really exist, but people should appreciate where it comes from more.

The Pope and Islam

So the new Pope from Germany makes some bad remarks about Islam. Uses a quote in the wrong way. And then some people blow up grenades verifying his the Pope's point.

Just how stupid are those people?

Friends with Money

Don't bother to see it. waste of two hours. Can I get them back? Sex scenes but no sex. And bad acting on the part of Scott Caan not wanting to look at Jennifer Aniston during sex. R rated for pot smoking and swearing. At least it wasn't a PG-13. There are too many PG-13 movies. No one has the balls to make a real R rated movie. Everyone wants to appeal to the Wal-Mart red state crowd. Too many pg13s is another sign of how dull and spiceless we are becoming as a whole. Stay in the middle, don't stick out. Be bland, be fat white and bland. Don't really have a good time. Just try to not have a bad time.

Why are so many movies made like this? ---Oh we are all messed up and we are not really friends but everything will work out. Life is good in the end. What i want to see is a movie that is cheesy and bland for the first 75% and then everyone dies in the end. Kinda like if they took that terrible movie Steve Martin was in when he had 12 kids and have an ending where the house burns down and everyone dies. OR he loses his job and kills himself and the whole family. That would be interesting, kinda like an alternative ending in the special features on the DVD.

Trash/Art

Well, well, well...

Can't say it was a resounding success. Don't think any one noticed anything. Only had 9 people. Hoped to get 50, about 15 email responses and then 9 people. Part of the problem was meeting people in the YB garden b4 hand to get them the shirts. But people came and would do it again. Gonna wait for the next exhibit at SF MOMA. and have 20 people!

Though got to see work by Matthew Barney. Something about that guy rubs me the wrong way. Not sure what he is working on. But that video by Sam somebody, a woman from England, with the video that is of people holding still. You can see them blink and the cigarette burn. That is GOOD. I know what she is working on. Barney...he just makes shit, or has people make it for him. Where is all that plastic stuff going to be in 2 years? in 10 years? sitting in a warehouse somewhere. and what is the idea behind it all?

Hell, i'm probably just jealous...

ART/TRASH

Well, the day is finally here, and not many people have responded. I figured that a month time would be enough time for people to clear there schedules and do it. Either not enough time or people are not into the idea. Who wouldn't want to walk around the museum on a free day?

Kelly said that not many people want to be a spectacle or part of a spectacle. But that is why I sent the invite to people who i thought liked being looked at DANCERS, but not many of them responded either. I mean all it is, is walk around with a shirt on, not hard.

People walk around allday with stuff on their shirts, advertising this and that. Frikken hipsters and their vintage shirts advertising athletics programmes from the midwest in the 70s, advertising someone else's past. Guess that is what you do when you have no past worth mentioning, went to art school in the big City and spend most of their time looking for the next band/bar/cheap beer/piercing.

So got about 15 people, a FEW shy of the 50 I had hoped for. but I think 15 will still be enough for it. Who knows. now I just gotta figure out how to document it. Maybe just some photos on the sly. I mean video won't be much better.

Need some Bond glasses with video cameras in them or something like that. How about an eye patch that is really a camera?

pina bausch and Yerba Buena

Dropped off a proposal for a show at Yerba Buena. I do not have a rejection letter yet from Yerba Buena, so that will be a nice addition for my file! But it is a great piece. Not very dancy, but who dances anymore? Ha ha ha ha. pushing, sweat and shattering glass, what more do you need?

Also just went to pina bausch's web site.
http://www.pina-bausch.de/auditions.htm

I liked what was written about workshops etc. No ambiguity there. Nice and clean. Kinda like a rock, no questions how to deal with it. Wish I had more of that in me.

Have you seen "Breakfast at Tiffany's"? Watched part of it and was surprised about Mickey Rooney's character.

Toast

aarrggh beware the deadly blogosphere. Bow down before its might!

Everynow and then you see a list of the most visited blogs, which then get more hits, kind of a perpetual feedback. There should also be lists of the least visited blogs. Maybe then someone who is faithfully cranking away at their blog, posting posting posting will then get some recognition. Also could have a list of the blogs that are visited the average amount of times.

Maybe these alternative lists would churn the waters as it were...

toast is done...time for cold toast.

gym

When in Munich on Sunday, we went to a climbing gym there, run by the German Alpine Club. great gym really tall and mostly lead climbing. But the coolest part was that there was no waiver to sign, no test. Just go in and climb. I guess if you hurt yourself, it's your own damn fault. plus the landing there is just a concrete floor, no pebbles, no foam, just concrete. There were routes outside also. Wish there were a gym like that back home.

Why are so there many waivers in the "land of the free"?

Is that just a symptom of a slow erosion of our rights in general?-right to a fair wage, right to healthcare, right to a freely elected government

or are one man's rights another man's privileges?

Yesterday went to Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. Which I think the Disneyland castle was modeled after. We walked up to the castle and found out there was a 2 hour wait to get in for the tour. People had large tickets with the time of their tour on it. Once their tour time was on, they got in line after walking through the turnstiles. Totally Disneyfied.

Disney got the idea from King Ludwig's castle, which now has to manage crowds in the same way.

Is it a bad piece or just not your aesthetic?

Just saw a dance show in SF. Good thing it was short as it was not very interesting. This is not to say that the dancers weren't any good. The dancers were well rehearsed and knew what they were doing, hit their cues, legs were high etc.

But nothing original in any of the pieces, no questions or investigations. Eventhough I did not like the show I am still glad I went. It is good to see what other work is being created in one's artistic community. Too often I have heard dancers in the Bay Area say that they are tired of going to shows because they do not see anything they like.

The point isn't to just see stuff you like. If that were the case, stay home and wait for your next NetFlix selection to show up. The point is to see as much as possible to challenge and define your own aesthetic. You might even get a small nugget from a piece that inspires you in a new direction. The point is too see as much as possible so then you can complain that no one is doing anything good. ha ha ha

Final Friends

Just watched the last friends episode.

What a dumb ending. quite uninteresting. no catch, no surprise, no change.
could have had deformed baby, plane crash, avian flu...

SFADI

Why is so much dance impro just bad theater?

B-Day, August 6th

Kinda like D-Day except for it involves a big H, so maybe it should be H-Day, as in Hydrogen Bomb over Hiroshima.

I remember a few birthdays ago I was taking some summer school classes at Cal and heard a protest march about the Bomb being dropped on August 6th. I've got enough problems with birthdays, and then people protesting. Oh woe is me....

Wonder if anyone was born on August 6th 1945, if anyone was giving birth when the bomb hit....

Random Random Random

Yesterday Kelly and I were walking around Lake Merritt. I looked down in the water and saw a two things I would never imagine sitting near each other on the shells near the edge of the lake.

One was an egg, a regular chicken egg (though maybe it was a duck egg or an egg of some other fowl denizen of the Lake. The second object was a mini disco ball about the size of a tennis ball.

an egg and a disco ball...go figure

how did they get there? were they placed there together? What are the chances? Could you ever thought of that combo?

Random Random Random

Honestly

Just was driving back from the airport this morning, or was it afternoon. Anyways, heard an author on the radio, A.M. Holmes I think the name was. She was being interviewed on that show on NPR hosted by Linda Hunt. The author kept beginning sentences with "Honestly..." or "I have to honestly say..."

If she needs to use the word honestly so many times, is she telling thre truth when she does not use it? It's kinda like grocery stores that have healthfood sections. What is the rest of the food then?

digital replacement

Recently I have been seeing more and more people listening to music playing on their cellphones. The sound quality is horrible, but there they are walking along listening to it anyways.

It must be music they have heard before and the badly reproduced digital version of it triggers a memory of the song they know. So in some sense the song they are hearing is in their head not the one coming out of the tiny cellphone speaker.

References is all we have nowadays. Digital music leaving out all the nuances of analog. Protein powder, Cliff Bars and vitamins replacing the complete nutrition humans used to eat. All the anitoxidants etc. continually being "discovered" which were there all along in a balanced diet.

Kinda like pornography. A stimulation that triggers a larger inate response within the human animal. Not the real thing but a reference to it. How much more removed from real experiences and expression are we going to get? To what extent does this reach in our collective psyche? To other people dying (IRAQ). It has definitely infiltrated the food chain. People, myself included, have no appreciation for where MEAT comes from.

It is all so sanitized.

CI class

Hmm....revelation today-you can do what you want but how people respond determines the outcome. If I try to slide but my partner goes with the impulse it is not a slide but a static point moving through space.

You can't always get what you want...Like a CA$H grant, or a residency...

If not me, who? If not, now when?

blog blogbloggg bbbblog bloog blogblllog bblloogg.