Saturday November 13 was FEAST. We worked extra hard to make this a great event, I think it was, but I was mega wound up during. I was very anxious and could not relax… Anyhow I think it was great, and lots of other people said so. We went for beers after, but I was so exhausted and hoarse from talking that I wasn’t up to it and wound up feeling pretty sick the whole next week. The other reason I was feeling stressed is that I was waiting to hear from MASS MoCA about a job offer … which I did hear from them the following Tues. The news was good! I got the job. That means I’ll be moving up to NA soon. I’m pretty excited and think it’ll be a great opportunity. The only downside is leaving nyc and especially being long distance with Esha.

For thanksgiving week I went back to Kansas. Brooke picked me up and we went for a beer then met Tom & Steph for dinner. We went to this place Farmhouse in the River Market. Real good local food. I had some rabbit. Met Blume, Darren, Kate E, Malina at a sports bar somewhere. We drank beers. Had a nice breakfast the next day at the Blume’s. Mostly watched Charlie do his baby things.

Shawn Blume picked me up and we headed to Wamego. The whole gang reunioned down at the old cabin on Saturday night. I think there were 17 dudes in there at one point. We drank light beer and reminisced about old times under the florescent lights of the wilderness. I woke up early in the morning boiling hot and choking on smoke as I think Ted loaded up the fireplace before retiring to the least coveted and laziest sleeping spot — the bottom bunk. Went to my mom’s house that night to begin my week of silently criticizing her life inside my head.

Monday — night I cooked dinner for some friends. On the menu: kale and cannellini beans, polenta cake, pork loin with sweet potatoes. Pretty good meal and the most I’ve cooked for single handedly. The pork was dry, but still okay.

Tuesday — Scott, Lane and I went to a KU game. It was great to be back in the Phog. The game wasn’t much of a nail-biter, but I didn’t mind as I don’t really know who is who anymore. I just sorta waited around for the rock chalk chant. It was nice of my brother to get us tickets and think of something fun to do while I was home.

Wednesday — My mom (and everyone she talks to) deals in the most minutia of details in their day-to-day conversation. What time? With who? How much? etc. In the past I would get mad and say “what are you going to do with this information?” in response. This week I employed a new tactic. Tell her everything all at once. “The game was fun, we left at 5pm, I drove up 24. Got to the game at 6:30. KU won 82 to 41. We had fun. Ate at 23rd St Brewery. I had a cheeseburger, Scott had macaroni, Shawn had some pizza. We got home around 11:30.” This seemed to satisfy her.

I went to my favorite stop when I’m home, the Army Surplus store. got a jacket and some other stuff. Went down to the local bar that night. Only person I really ran into from the past was Jacque. She was weird, and I don’t think her BF wanted us talking to her. Anyhow, as usual it was a bad decision to go.

Thanksgiving — Aunt Carol’s. I haven’t been in 7 years I think. Lots of cousin’s kids I’d never even heard of or met before. Overall it was a good time. I brought KSU themed Bud Light cans that were a big hit. I drank a bunch of them.

Friday — Scott and I putted around in Manhattan, had dinner with mom and her friend. Had a beer that night at Jakes.

Saturday — finally found a moment to lecture my mom on her poor eating habits. Mom, please eat some fresh fruit and vegetables (not canned, packaged). Do not drink 1/2 gallon of OJ a day. It has a lot of added sugar. Drink some water once in a while. Don’t make meals that are one color (all yellow). Don’t even buy these packaged sugar foods. Etc. I’ve given up on the Diet Coke argument. She drinks them rapid fire in succession in the morning, so I don’t notice anyhow. I don’t suspect she’s going to make any changes.

Drove to the airport with fam. Wolfed down Arthur Bryant’s before boarding.

It was a good week. Kind of hard for me, cause I didn’t have much to occupy myself with in my down time and my mind was racing thinking about my move and new job. But great to see everyone and spent more time with people than usual. Nice to see everyone’s kids and that everyone is doing well.

On Sept 23rd I went to the dentist — no problems.

On Sept 26th I went Karyn’s baby shower. I think I got drunk and ate a lot of meatballs.

These guys were playing a Rhianna cover

On October 2nd I went to the Trinity Project open studio, Jame’s art thing at the church and drinks at the beer garden with the whole gang. Then to this girl’s birthday party at Union Pool. It was crazy. Trapeze artist, bands, Vic Thrill, creepy contortionist lady.

On October 9th I helped present for FEAST at the Creative Time Summit.

On Oct 18th Esha had a birthday dinner.

The weekend of Oct 23rd I went to the Jersey shore for Bill’s (macaroni rascals) birthday. Had a lot of fun. Jumped in the freezing ocean. Went to Kyle’s birthday when we got back on Sunday.

For Halloween I was a ‘ghost’ and went to Esha & Arthee’s Tim Burton themed party. They really put a lot of work into it. I drank too much but apparently didn’t embarrass myself.

Last weekend I went to Mary & Chris’s housewarming and watched the marathon in Ft. Greene.

On Monday, I went to a great lecture with Jenn at MoMA about Mildred’s Lane and other commune type things.

Yesterday I gave a lecture to Sandman’s students, and it went really well. I like talking about myself and molding minds!

Let’s see … This last weekend I went to Philadelphia. Went to see Dave’s new place. He has a shop vac. Then went to see Kate’s place. She has two living rooms and an extra bedroom with a bed in it. I was pretty comfortable there. Then to a dance party for young persons. I tried to dance buy my heart wasn’t in it. Spent a good portion of Saturday at Nato & Theresa’s eventually ending the night there with a real beet session. Roasting, peeling, chopping, dropping, mixing, riffing, punning beets. I think my peel rate is about 10 BPM. Sunday I had a real nice day of shopping, visiting and attending the 1st Philly Stake, a friend to our Brooklyn FEAST. They did a great job and was deemed a success. Took the bus back Monday morning and it was free.

The weekend prior I went camping by myself for a night. And had an Eid Dinner at Esha’s. And worked on our Hit Play-sentation for the upcoming Creative Time Summit.

The weekend before that Jake and Alison and their friend Megan came, then Sam and Beth came. They did all kinds of stuff. But I only consumed food with them. Lots of it.

The weekend before that I didn’t do nothing on account of being ill.

The weekend before that was FEAST.

I think you should be all caught up now.

Film
The Swimmer — only on “watch it now” this guy in the suburbs swims home, pool by pool.

Animal Kingdom — Australian movie. Was okay.

Bill’s Run: POV — I’d already seen this, maybe on PBS in Kansas.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus — Not my thing.

The Game — Michael Douglas & Sean Penn in this amazing psychological thriller. Worth the re-watch.

The Massie Affair: American Experience — Media stirring up a story on the backbone of prejudice and racism. Glad this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore!

L’Avventura — 1960 Italian movie. Beautiful B&W.

Jimmy Carter: American Experience — Nice guy that Jimmy Carter.

This last weekend I went camping. One night solo and then a bunch of people came up for Saturday night. I like camping. I am pretty happy with my set-up too. Everything is light and compact. I think I may look into a mattress pad or blow up mattress thing next. The weather was real nice, and I did a fair amount of swimming in the forbidden lake, as well as a few swings on the rope.

I went to No Lights No Lycra last week.

The previous weekend I partied; Poker with Gino, a rock show in a woodworking shop, and a party on Emily’s roof in honor of Miranda going off to grad school.

The weekend before that I went to the beach with Esha.

Film
Life During Wartime — by the guy who made Happiness and Palindromes, and some other movies I haven’t seen. Weird. I liked it enough.
Pope of Greenwich Village — just some goofball italian dudes in the old neighborhood.
Home — French or Swiss or SwissFrench movie about these folks that live in a house near an abandoned highway.
Youth in Revolt — even though everyone’s supposed to be over Michael Cera, I found this movie entertaining.
The Lost Weekend — An oldie about an alcoholic writer.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller — Western. The thing that really struck me was the main characters drink of choice — whiskey with a raw egg cracked into it.
The Red Shoes — I turned it off, I don’t see what all the fuss is about?

Europe
Part One
We left New York on a Monday evening and arrived at the EuroAirport on Tuesday morning. Took a taxi to our hotel in Germany and then to the Vitra Design museum to go directly to work in the archive and conservation warehouse area surrounded by nearly every iconic piece of furniture from the latter half of the century … Nelson, Noguchi, Eames, Gehry, FLW, Memphis … all those people. There were lots of lamps too. We spent our time down there digging through and maniacally photographing 40 years of Alexander Girard’s archives. There was so much more than any of us expected to see and it was generally very inspiring. There was very little free time, KR, Jason and I managed to go out for a bier most nights. However that was mostly for posterity and we were exhausted. There was a lot of pizza eaten as well.

Part Two
We took a train in to the Bernese Oberlan Mountain region. This is Rick Steves territory folks! The routine was to get up, guzzle a small pot of coffee, steal a knife, go to the grocery store for picnic supplies (bread, cheese, fruit, wine, cucumber, chocolate) and hit the trails. Hike for a couple hours. Eat lunch. Get a little hiking buzz going. Hike a couple more hours. Get a bier on one of the mountain-side restaurants. Hike an hour or so back to the hotel. Rest. Dinner. Try and drink another beer. Watch weird TV. Sleep by 11. The trails were really easy. No switchbacks, ropes or cables. The first and third day we really hiked hard. It was very quiet up there. Hikers are quiet people. It was picturesque to say the least. I bought a floppy hat, but left it on the train on the way back to Basel. We spent an afternoon in Basel, it was old and charming and you could watch heads float down the river while you drank bier with teens, but compared to the glory of the mountains, it seemed more like a mall. We stayed in a hotel that was formerly a prison. Nice trip overall. I’ll probably never go back.

So there we were, Jen, Aug, Willow, myself, all stuffed from a big brunch at Diner. Walking around sort of aimless. Eventually the plan was to go to Jen’s and drink beer and do some arts and crafting. Jen pops in to her laundromat and asks if they stole some of her clothes. Meanwhile this dog follows her in. Let me describe this dog — cute. Piercing icy blue eyes, white fur, pink nose. It’s an Australian Shepard we later learned. This dog is coming up to everyone. Nuzzling, laying on it’s back for belly rubs, not barking. This local lady is going on and on about the dog, how it just walked up and was running loose and how she’s taken in two cats and how her husband didn’t want the cats at first but now he’s really into them. So we hear her out, and finally tell her we’d take care of it, and she blesses us and finally leaves us alone. Someone calls the vet number on the tag. They’re located in Texas and not open. We call local dog places and no one has called them looking for her. We take her to a vet to see if she has the micro chip buried in her. She doesn’t. We make hand-drawn posters of her and put the phone number on there. We can’t believe no one is running around frantically looking for this amazing dog. We’re walking her all over the place. People keep stopping us. “Can I take picture of your dog?” Then we tell them how she’s lost and they hadn’t seen her before, but will gladly take her if no one claims her and they chime in with their various advices and dognapping horror tales.

We walk and walk and walk. We see all kinds of people we know, people from our pasts, friends of friends, etc. From like 2pm til about 8pm. The only person to contact us was a text message from someone who loved one of the signs and had fallen in love with whomever made it, and they hoped we were a cute single boy. We get the dog back to Jen’s and feed her and the dog is still totally stoked and having a great time. At this point we’re all day-dreaming about how we’re going to change our lives for this dog. Who’s gonna try and keep her. Or if we can’t keep her — what qualities we seek in future owner. We don’t want the day to end, so we go to the movie rental shop and pick out an animal documentary and I wanted some pizza, so we went a little bit out of our way for that. I’m inside getting the pizza. I come out of the pizza store. I see Jen talking to another dog owner. Then I see two gals coming up out the subway. Their faces light up. I think “oh brother, another person who thinks we got a cute dog.” One says something to the other, “oh that looks like my dog. Wait, that’s is my dog! That’s my sweetie!” Apparently her roommate is stupid or something and must have left the door open as the dog was supposed to be in the back yard. She’d been gone all day and had no idea her dog was loose. She didn’t even know she was supposed to be fretting and worried sick. And … get this — the dog is deaf. We’d thought it was just real cool and didn’t care what we had to say, but it couldn’t even hear us. Anyhow, the dog was turned over. The dog owner lives across from Jen, so hopefully we’ll see Data (the dog’s name) again.

Yesterday I told this story many times.

Last weekend was the 4th of July. This year featured One Van to Rule Them All, mix CDs, louder music, glowing in the dark, receipt collection, great weather, pool time, raging bonfires, sparkler typography, food, Coors Light, dinner table jokes, weird god’s eyes, tie dyes, tubeology, sissy paddling, no traffic. All in all pretty fun, pretty smooth. After three consecutive years, we have probably squeezed all the fun out of Slide Mountain.

Film
Dogtooth — totally weird Greek film. Made up language, isolated family.
Winter’s Bone — this girl in the Ozarks is trying to find her meth head daddy. Really good movie I thought. Everyone looks so miserable in it.
Screwed — stupid movie starring two great comedians. I thought it would be sorta good, but wasn’t.
White Dog — this dog is racists.

Went camping again at the usual spot the previous weekend. Swam a bit this time. Got in trouble towards the end of the stay by the park ranger fellow. Informed us there was no swimming or camping. Tore down the “no swimming” sign on the way out.

Mom’s Weekend Visit Rundown
Thursday
Plane arrived late. 12:00am arrival. Waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Didn’t show up with the throngs of people. Went downstairs to luggage claim. She was waiting there in wheelchair with attendant. “I was afraid I would get lost.”

Friday
Visited my office — “Awesome.” Showed her the books we’ve made. Pointing to a photograph: “you drew that?” Yeah, I guess so mom. Went to Governor’s Island for a picnic. Mom, we’re going to ride on a boat to the park. We get off the ferry, “when are we going to ride on the boat?” Did not want to eat an avocado sandwich because avocados look weird. Ate pizza at Carmine’s for dinner. That was pretty good. Met some of my good peoples at Harefield Road. KR introduced her to the delicious mixture of vodka + tonic. Home by 9pm.

Saturday
Went to Diner. Everything was excellent. Thankfully it was unusually uncrowded that day thanks to the World Cup. Was treated very well by our as-standard-per-Diner-cute waitress. Molly gave my mom a pretty big hug on the way out. Went to a Staten Island Yankees game that night. Probably asked me who was playing about ten times. Asked the guy in the next seat once for verification. Hot dogs, beers, peanuts, Cracker Jacks. No complaints there. Was plans to get another vodka and tonic that night, but it became too late in the evening.

Sunday
Went to church in Williamsburg. Very boring. I don’t think I saw more than 3 people actively paying attention. The cathedral is pretty and I daydreamed about someone playing ‘Great Balls of Fire’ on the massive organ in there. That entertained me for about 2 minutes. Then I slyly played with my phone the remainder of the mass. Went to see an old movie at Film Forum and just barely missed the Gay Pride parade madness. There were a bunch of barely dressed people in rainbow swimsuits on the train and a pretty convincing trans gal on there, but I don’t think my mom noticed anything. Dinner at Pepe Rosso!
Was super hot and muggy. Had a little longer than usual walk to the subway and I think mom was pretty much out of gas at that point.

Monday
Went to the airport. Delta terminal at Laguardia is a complete mess. I feel bad for the TSA employees assigned there. Just a real bad layout in there.

Film
The Squid and the Whale — Not sure why I’d never seen this. Really enjoyed it. Nearly every minute.
Raw Deal — 1948. At the end of the movie, this old feller in the theater clapped and said pretty loudly “now that’s classic film noir!” I agreed.
The Wrestler — I thought Rocky was better.

Last weekend I rode my bike from Babylon to Montauk. This was the third time I’ve done this, and every time it gets harder. I think I was out of gas about 40 miles in. I don’t think I’ll do this particular route, but I wouldn’t mind an opportunity to redeem myself later in the summer. Maybe I’ll train up a little and remind myself to take more breaks. While there, I bought some too-small shorts, paid $17 for 2 hard shell tacos, did a sake bomb, ate breakfast, then left.

Film
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains — movie about an all girl band, kind of like The Runaways, but fictional.

Last weekend a few of us went to suburban New Jersey in honor of my birthday and also Molly’s birthday. We ate, drank, watched tv and played some games. Mostly people were talking. I didn’t wear shoes or leave the house at all.

The prior 2 weekends I went camping up at Harriman State Park. In my opinion, camping is the thing to do this summer. Especially if you have a nice spot. One time I went with up Mike K, another time I went up with Mike K and August. Dave said he was gonna go the second time, but I think he was too afraid of bugs or something and didn’t go. There was also a BBQ at Mary’s on Memorial Day weekend.

I’m 30 years old now. Everyone keeps asking me how that feels. I don’t really know what to say, or why they are asking, as most everyone who asks is 30+ themselves. Uhh.. It feels fantastic! I feel about the same. I do feel less interested in going out and drinking, but I think that might also be a side effect of exercise. I’m still doing P90X, but less intensely. Probably what I’m doing now is just working out like some normal people do. Also, I want to travel less.

Film
A Face in the Crowd — Highly recommend. First movie I’ve watched in a long while that I have really liked.
Lost in America — Sort of funny. But depressed me on account of my birthday. This couple quit their jobs (they seem around 30ish) and sell their house and use their nest egg to buy a RV and travel the country. That’s all well and good, but I have no nest egg so to speak. So I was all hung up on the idea that I pretty much go to work everyday in order to break even in life.
Windy City Heat — Somewhat funny. Interesting, but once I thought about it, was kinda fucked.
Suddenly, Last Summer — One of those older movies that has a lot of yelling.