Aces

I found a couple of aces in the street recently. Just thought I'd blog what it means according to this site.



Ace of Hearts Love and happiness. The home, a love letter. This card is a particularly favorable card that indicates troubles and problems lifting.





Ace of Clubs Wealth, prosperity, unexpected money/gain. However, in a difficult spread, this money may disappear almost as quickly as it appears.




This one kind of makes sense because at the beginning of the month I thought I had extra money, now I'm so broke I'm not sure a check that I've written is going to be covered. ~gulp~

Dance for Life

On Saturday night, John and I got a little dressed up and went to see Dance for Life, which is this yearly fundraiser for HIV/Aids charities. It consists of several performances by all of Chicago's major dance studios, including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Joffrey Ballet, Giordano Jazz Ensemble, and my favorite, Thodos Dance. These all comprise the major schools of dance, too, which is great. It's a nice sort of "taster" medley of dance. I've gone for several years now. Dance is one of my favorite performance arts. I especially love really non-narrative stuff. I get a little bored when there's a story trying to be told. I prefer, most times, to just get absorbed in the abstract movements of the dancers.

Saturday night I got to thinking about the spectacle. I was thinking about how, in college, I took a modern dance class and for a while was dating a dancer and how, at one point, I thought that I could've been a dancer. This got me thinking about whether all the other people around me were thinking along similar lines. Since this benefit was pretty pricey, the age bracket was pretty high. I was definitely one of the younger audience members. This all got me thinking about how really primitive this spectacle is. I mean, though "modern," it's really such a visceral experience to watch dance. Your muscles become taught at the sight of a grown man extending his leg deftly above his head. You feel it in your own toes when a ballerina goes up on hers. The performance, for the first time for me, felt like this sort of vicarious experience of youth and athleticism. When I was younger and watched dance, I felt more like it was a communication - like a two-way conversation, because I felt like the movements I saw were within my ability (maybe with some practice). Saturday, I had the keen feeling that this language was a forgotten one. Not so much alien, just nostalgic.

So, when I say "primitive," I think of it in terms of the old gladiator arenas. The "people" or "masses" watching a few athletic people, usually criminals or destitute individuals (let's face it, dancers don't do it for the money - many of them have two or three jobs to support their passion) and living out this cathartic episode through (in the gladiator's case: violent) acts of athleticism. So, it also had this undertone of bourgeois to me. I've never felt so much a part of some weird elitist group. I dunno. I paid for my tickets and it's for a good cause, so whatever. I just suddenly had gotten really outside of myself and a little self-conscious.

In the end, the experience was awe-inspiring. I still love dance and would like to see it more frequently. It's usually not very expensive. Chicago has a great community of dancers as well. It's the art form that I feel is most like music, which is most like abstraction, which is most like Divinity, which is pretty cool.

The Aristocrats

Last night I watched this totally funny movie.

All I'd heard was that it was offensive. It made me think "must be something like a live-action South Park. Turns out, the kids from South Park even made a cameo appearance. The whole film was cameo appearances by different comedians. This is a must-see film, especially for the likes of the peeps in HBD and WOW. Check it out.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares tonight

So, for a little while I've had some mice problems in my apartment. Sometimes at night I would here the sound of crunching. And during the day I'd find little mouse poops on my kitchen countertop. I'm pretty wishy-washy about doing anything about it, but John was like, "we need to get some poison." I didn't argue.

I found the first corpse a few weeks back. It was sitting on a carpet near my back door, with rigor mortis already set in. I scooped it up with a shopping bag and put it in the garbage. John had been a little concerned that Racecar might want to play with the dead mice and eat one or something, thus being poisoned himself. He hadn't seen this one before me (I found it in the morning before he got to the back door), so it still seemed like a possibility.

Today when I got home from the grocery store, I moved a chair in my art studio and underneath it was a dead mouse. I said to myself, "how long has that been there?" It looked a little ragged, like its fur was, just, matted down or something. So, I grab a plastic Apple Store shopping bag and scoop it up and I found out that it must have been sitting for a little while, at least, because after I picked it up there was a pile of writhing maggots all wondering where there food had gone. It was probably the most disgustingest thing I've ever seen in real life. Ugh. Now I can't even finish my Taco Bell, either.

Friend Department Memo: Supply Diminishing

How do all you people have time to keep up with groups and interesting blogs and height-of-cleverdom snarky commentary?

Ugh.

I've been in the cafe for like two hours and haven't gotten a lick of work done and this is my first moment of creativity!

Right now I'm waiting to hear from Pep Boys about my mother's car. Todo Sobre (la coche de) mi Madre. See, last week it wouldn't start. Since Tuesday's my only day off, I waited till today to take care of it. Hopefully it won't cost an arm and a leg. (I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!) And also hopefully, it will be done with some vestige of alacrity. We'll see.

What else? Last night I went bowling with my friends. That was fun. I think I came in second or third one game and I think I won the other, but honestly I don't remember. I am so non-competitive, I could totally beat you at it.

This group of friends and I used to go bowling every monday. This group of friends has also slowly suffered from a severe attrition rate. Our third member is moving (this one to SF), so we're getting down to a bare-bones group. These are tough times in the friend business.

There's a MySpace Chicago group meeting this wednesday which takes place at the same time as a show that I'd like to attend. Trying to figure out how (if possible) to do both. There will be one or two people who I've never met there and would like to meet, but I guess there's always next time, right?

More Meetro stuff: So, that black drag queen who hit on me? She's Taj Mahal, a local performer. I've seen her in a few shows, including Who's That Girl, about which I've blogged before. She's a nice gal. Anyway, she's looking for a job, so if anybody knows of an opening somewhere where people are pretty liberal (who want's to hire a drag queen, right? Which reminds me, the hirer should also not be some trans fetishist freak and want to put the moves on her, but I suppose that goes without saying), she's a nice lady and says she's a hard worker. Interestingly, she used to manage an optical practice in North Carolina (I think), but she's not an optician, so I can't hire her, but it's something I'm considering - don't know how that would fly with my partners or investors, but never hurts to ask, right? Heck, we've had at lleast one drag king buy glasses from us, maybe we'll find a niche market!