Good report of an article, captured by Corie, in Brooklyn.

Busy, yet unproductive weekend.

Saturday night was Who's That Girl?, which is a fundraiser for Howard Brown Health Center. It's an evening of drag performers and is always very entertaining and gets better every year.



There were some especially good numbers. Such as the Annie Lennox that started out with long hair in a white robe and ended with short blonde hair and latex.



Or the drag queen on roller skates.



Or even Tempura Hilton.



During the show, they always have an auction for a makeover for someone in the audience. Picking straight guys is usually an audience favorite. Especially if they're either older or buff. This year, one certain person who shall remain unnamed (he'll kill me if he sees this) was the target of the auction. Actually, someone else won the auction and made him do the makeover. We were all surprised he actually went through with it. We thought for sure he'd leave. For real, don't be surprised if the pic is gone soon.

New Dream.

New Dream, new FOUND object.

Last Friday, I went to a Cubs game with my friend Martha. It actually turned out to be pretty fun. While I was waiting for her outside Wrigley Field, there were all these people everywhere and I was thinking to myself "maybe this is not such a good idea," and getting a bit claustrophobic. But once we sat in our seats, which were in the fourth row right behind the Cubs' dugout, I started to relax. There were all these little kids trying to get the ball players to sign baseballs and Martha and Maria were saying how you have to be a cute little kid to get an autograph and how unfair it was.

I was really surprised by my enjoyment, as I am not normally much of a sports person. I even found myself strategizing my bathroom visit, because I was trying to figure a time where I'd miss the least fun.

Some things I noticed at the game:

• When there's a cause for celebration, the fans all cheer in unison and then they sort of give high-fives or other forms of encouragement to one another even if they don't know each other. It reminded me of a catholic mass where the priest tells the congregation to introduce themselves and say "Peace be with you" and "and also with you."
  
• The starting pitcher, the last name of Mitre was quite young.
  
• There was a heckler behind us who was mostly annoying but sometimes pretty funny. My favorite: when two runs were batted in with a home run and the heckler said to the third base coach, last name Kim, "Way to wave 'em in, Kim."
  
• Martha wanted Kim's job of third base coach.
  
• Maria thought Martha said "I want his butt." That was funny.
  
• During the 7th inning, there was some sort of conflict about whether a hit was fair or foul and the umpire was recalling it. Like he'd already called it fair and was now recanting. This pissed people off big time. The people in the stands in the outfield began throwing garbage into the field in rebellion. Suddenly, a battallion of garbage boys descended upon the field with garbage cans and picked up the garbage.
  
• Later, the heckler yelled to the ump about a caught pop fly: "Is he out?" Pointing out that even obvious plays are up for debate. That was funny too.
  

I left during the bottom of the seventh with the Cubs down by three. I gave the Cubs a couple of chances. Including "if Sosa hits a home run now, I'll stay, but if not, then I'm leaving." And also, "If Gonzalez hits a home run now, I won't go, but if he doesn't then I am leaving." They didn't, so I left. From the time I walked out the door to walking the length of the park toward where I parked my scooter, the crowd roared three times, and I though "maybe they will win." I stopped at Pepper Lounge on my way home and was told there that they did indeed win, scoring 7 runs in the last inning. Oh well, it was still fun while I was there. Maybe I'll go again this year if it comes up.

Two new dreams, one from yesterday, one from today.

New Dream. It's homo- AND hetero-erotic. Doesn't happen too often.

I just read an article (this would normally go on my reading site, I know, but bear with me) from the washington post that was again mentioned on boingboing. It's about cattle rustling (you know, stealing cattle) coming back as a result of the demand for beef because of the Atkins diet.

Has it occurred to anyone else that the whole Atkins Diet thing is a conspiracy against ecological stability? I mean, if we all just ate beef, we'd need so much more land devoted to grazing - and there's so much grazing land already! I mean, remember when there was so much talk about killing rain forests to make room for cattle? I'm sure that just didn't stop happening. In fact, with this meat craze, it has to have grown.

I think it's kind of alarming. Whatever happened to moderation? It seems like Atkins is the opposite of that: "you can eat as much as you want of this one thing, but none of this other thing, and it just so happens that the thing you're allowed to eat is a living breathing animal with a brain and the thing you can't eat is a vegetable without a nervous system." I mean, don't get me wrong, I eat meat, but I listen to what vegetarians say, too. It's just a little scary the way atkins has taken off and people just are clamoring for it. I dunno. Just bothers me a little, is all.

When I awoke this morning, it was to the sound of scampering feet on my roof. A rat perhaps. It had the same spritely gait at my dog Lucky, whatever it was. I lingered in bed for as long as I could, not wanting to let go of my weird dream I'd had. It actually left a narrative to a short story on the tip of my brain which I'm hoping to expound upon while its fresh.

I thought that whatever the scurrying animal was moved to the iron stairwell that lead to my roof, but when I looked out the door that exits from my bedroom to the roof, there were only pigeons flying from mine to the next. Racecar, my other dog, wanted to have a look (though not because he heard the animal too, I'm sure), so I let him. I tried to call him back, but he refused and went all the way up.

He came back in a moment without any event and I walked him downstairs to the front door to allow him to relieve himself. While I stood at the door in my bright green H&M underwear and long john undershirt, hoping no one would chance by to see me dressed thusly, I saw through the branches of a still winter-bare tree a black plastic bag clinging to the fence of the playlot of the Pritzker School across the street. It was undulating as though alive and this had a disconcerting effect on me for a moment. But then of course I remembered that scene in American Beauty that at the time I enjoyed until someone pointed out it was silly - where the kid who films everything says "want to see the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed?" and its a bag blowing around in a mini-cyclone of air in a concrete backdrop.

I came back to my computer and started writing, beginning with the dream, then my final post on All Quiet on the Western Front for the hipster book forum.

Tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be a year from thirty. It will also be easter.

bhofmeister13 is risen

too bad I couldn't schedule a site make-over to coincide with this uncommon synergy of birthday and mythological observance, eh?

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Last week I went to see the undergraduate show for the School of the Art Institute. Overall, I was quite impressed. Someone had told me earlier that day that if one could harness the attitude of that school, one might be able to power a small country, something not unlike what I'd heard before, but I really didn't experience that at the show. Contrarily, many artists were quite friendly. Granted this was opening night.

I had arrived twenty stinkin' minutes before closing, which kind of sucked. I had to breeze through. But I did see some really great work. Four or five things/artists really stuck out.

Talia Chetrit was on the main floor and to the side and I missed her coming in. I'm glad I took a moment on the way out. The piece that really impressed me was a photograph. It was quite simple. Just a really tight depth-of-field image that looked something like a cottony piece of material bound in burlap that looked vaguely organic and natural and at the same time very man-made. In the background, completely indistinct, was water. It had an abstract, yet nautical feel. I loved the color scheme. Very...um, nautical. Reminded me of a copse of birch trees I'd seen in another book, once.

Linda Lee created a beautiful bound book. It was comprised of black paper and archival ink. The illustrations were organic looking. I only looked for a moment, but I really was moved by it. It had silver text to, in regular Times New Roman font, but it seemed really appropriate for the tone. Reminded me of a sort of ancient love poem or maybe the story of Shaharazad.

Andrea Mavros (I guess I have an affinity for female artists) had this painting of a woman passionately kissing a clay bust that looked vaguely classical. It was wonderful. "I love art...passionately."

There was a room that I could have spent the entire twenty minutes. I don't know the artist's name, but the title of the work was something like "24-hour noise experiment" and it was a room full of musical instruments (keyboards, bass and six-string guitars etc) and other appliances (vacuum, etc) as well as recording equipment and electronic composing equipment. I went inside in the beginning of my visit and once again toward the end and there was a definite difference in the noise, but it was all very much musical. There was always an underlying beat probably emanating from a drum machine. I didn't notice a card for this guy.

Finally, Tyrell Cannon's project was a wooden rack populated by black and white comic books.

I wrote about that under a separate post in my reading blog.

If you're visiting as a result of my birthday email, welcome and thank you.

Feel free to look around. Sign the guestbook.

xoxo

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Also,

I posted a couple of pretty fucked up dreams yesterday.

Posted a new article on the In The Periphery page yesterday. And there's some stuff on the Reading site.

Yesterday had brunch at Angelina's. The food was pretty good. I had a salad and banana french toast, strangely enough.

Anyway, there was a couple sitting next to our table and they had one of those lamb cakes sitting on their table the whole time. Later, they stuck a knife into its back. I said it needed some blood, so I put a strawful of bloody mary so it was pouring out of the wound. It was pretty cool.

This picture was taken using my friend Desiree's Nokia 3600 phone. Damn, I need one of those camera phones. I then emailed it to myself and to the couple. I asked them what the deal was with the lamb cake.



Turns out, they were in love. They originally fell in love, according to them, while going out on faux-dates. See, one of them was always getting dates and the other was not. They theorized that the key to starting dating is to actually start. Like the law of inertia applies to dating. So the one with lots of dates went out with the one lacking in order to spur new momentum in the labor of love. But then they fell in love. And I guess on the faux-date where they came to the realization that they were in love, they had a cross-shaped cake and it was a year ago on Palm Sunday (I think). Funny story.

New posts to DREAM and Reading blogs.

That Corie Trancho, in Brookly, NY, she's something. I like reading her blog. I think I'm gonna link her right now.

____


OK, I did it.

She just got elected president of her co-op. Next, the United States of America?

One never knows.

_____

Oh, and now a new FOUND object, too.