So busy there's only time to make lists of said busy-ness
CHRISTOPHER: Why did I build you a new blog if you’re never going to post on it?
ME: blah blah blah busy doing stuff blah blah blah lalalaaaaa
CHRISTOPHER: I can’t understand what you are saying. You're talking too fast.
Here, slowly, are the above blah blah’s (re: what I’ve been doing instead of writing here)
1. Reading student work (my students kick ass).
2. Getting engaged (which involves lots of dinners and parties and space-cadetedness)
3. Christopher’s birthday
A. Dave & Busters
CHRISTOPHER: (four months before his birthday) What are we doing for my birthday?
ME: I haven’t thought that far ahead.
HIM: I totally wouldn’t mind if we went to Dave & Busters. Here’s the link. You can kill zombies, and race kayaks on the Hydro Thunder, and die in an electric chair, and win all sorts of tickets playing ski ball and you can turn those tickets in for fantastic prizes!
In the end, the eight of us got very, very drunk, and gave away some two thousand amassed ski-ball tickets to a seven-year-old kid whose facial expression communicated that we’d made not only his night, but his entire childhood a worthwhile venture.
B. Spamalot
My man done loves his Monty Python. He’s the guy who will sit at the bar and recite the entire script of Holy Grail (especially the part with the French guards on the other side of the wall). So we went, and it was wonderful. I’ll only give away one little part: the Knights who say Ni, who then become the Knights who no longer say Ni and instead say, "Ekky-ekky-ekky-ekky-z'Bang, zoom-Boing, z'nourrrwringmm," THEN become the Knights who sing, “It’s hard out here for a pimp.”
4. 2nd Story (last Saturday was so sold out I couldn’t move. It was awesome).
5. Getting ready for this.
6. And this.
7. Painted Mz. Lacey’s house for Rebuilding Together.
8. Went to D’nell Larson’s opening at the Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery
I’ve been a fan of D’nell’s work for years, ever since I saw her piece 100 Miles For You at Gallery 312. One hundred miles of curling ribbon. The girl CURLED a hundred miles of curling ribbon. I remember first seeing this thing—(seemingly) just a pile of ribbon on the floor—and then reading the title and getting it. She physically went a hundred miles for someone, sitting there, sliding ribbon between scissor-blades. That was one of the first moments I understood the necessity of process in visual art: how the way the art was created was just as meaningful, if not more so, than the final product.
9. Got addicted to Twin Peaks (remember, I didn’t have TV growing up. So I missed that whole bandwagon and do not—DO NOT—tell me who killed Laura Palmer)
10. Went to see that movie that I’m not going to admit in print I paid money for.
11. My mother came to town, which was awesome.
12. Dia and Jessica came to town, which was also awesome.
13. Did I mention that I’m reading a lot of student work?
14. And 2nd Story, did I say 2nd Story? There’s three more days: you can check it out Wednesday night, when I’ll be reading about technology with The Dollar Store’s Jonathon Messinger, or Saturday, when I’ll be reading with Lord of the YumYum, or Sunday, when I’ll be reading with Scotty Karate. Get yourself some tickets, people, the weekends are almost sold out already.