original content by dante woo since 1998.
2 9 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . 
off to a one-weeker in maine, just barely escaping chelsea "pride" tomorrow and times square "destruction" on thursday. since the laptop that i imagined would be so portable is, in fact, chained to my desk with a variety of usb devices, i'll be checking and replying to emails but not updating the site. it's been forever since i've been on the road, which will be fun. plus being on the beach, having no agendae, a full house. i baked mint brownies for the kids. just got a handwritten thank-you note from one of them in the mail. listening to the samples from me'shell's new album: "understand, young folks, when you put property rights ahead of human rights, understand ya tampering with nature ..." sux that i won't get to see jonno while he and the manstress are seeing the sights in the city. off to newark—see ya in seven. 2 5 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . this morning i woke up embarrassed because i was dreaming about trying to hook up with a girl and not really being able to. i remember being in a hotel bed and walking to the bathroom to take a shit but there was only a toilet sitting in the hallway. wait, i think there were two girls and one guy, all asian. we were jetlagged and wrestling and there were intermittent flashes of nipple. i had braces on and could feel the imprint on my tongue. either i need to get a few more hours' sleep, or that half hit of ecstasy from new year's y2k in playa is returning to haunt me. i tried yoga for the first time yesterday and am pleasantly sore at 8am while eating steel-cut oatmeal with dried cranberries and blueberries in it. can't wait to get to maine where it's on average 10 degrees cooler than new yuck city. does anyone else feel silly in downward-facing dog? don't think i can eat asparagus anytime soon if it's going to piss out this nastily. 2 4 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . yesterday someone surfed my site from domain candies.com. tee hee 2 3 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . met up with the boyfiend at 2pm in front of the fountain entrance to central park south. we walked a little ways, sat on the rocks, and had a good talk about trying to talk more and do more and give it another go. i doubt it's the last we've heard on this, but it feels good now. we walked to tower records and went to the classical section and listened to cds, then walked to lincoln center and browsed the juilliard bookstore and got the hindemith piano sonata that i taught myself the summer that i stayed on campus back in ohio—i really miss music being part of my life sometimes (anyone know a good piano teacher in manhattan? is it a dream to think that there might be one in the east village with a baby grand?). when i clicked "similar pages" from dantewoo.com in google, i got: jockohomo data panik or more stories about yes, it's suposed to look like shit. version 4.75 | since 1996. ... best in ie 4+ • made on look what i've become. 2000 - 2002 sturtle.com (as if unpleasantness [music of the moment: the smiths camper english 8 legs: cheering for the arrows and the braves churning out good copy, one day at a time rupaul : weblog cool. what else do i wanna say tonight? that i'm listening to billie holiday and wondering if i'll use the yoga mat that i just bought, either at sunrise at the community garden around the corner or at 6pm at the office? that i'm wondering what to do with the peppermint extract i got last weekend? that someone in the apartment across the backyard garden has green wallpaper with orange flowers on it? that i finished the first two stories in the maile meloy book that a dear reader got me for my birthday? that the times is sitting unread on my coffeetable, as usual? that i think my hairline is receding? that there's a book inside that maybe i should start getting on paper? who knows. g'nite. 2 1 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . 
2 0 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . and yesterday i tried fasting for the first time. juice fast, 24 hours. now i know that i can go without food, i just can't go without coffee. it was kinda purifying, but mostly all about the migraine. 1 8 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . so i think we're breaking (or already broken) up. don't wanna talk about it just yet. 1 7 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . i'm rewriting my company's site to make it easier to navigate and more informative, thereby getting more people to submit contact us forms, leading to more business, leading to profitability, leading to our stock price soaring, leading to my stock options soaring, leading to my retiring rich at age 29. right? and today the deadline for completion was moved from july 8 to june 27, so it's 11:30pm and i just got home. grumble grumble. all of a sudden my monitor seems way too close to my face. on the cab ride home that i will enter tomorrow morning into our expense management asp, i rolled the windows down since it was kinda nice outside as we went down 9th avenue. the air smelled strongly floral, even in that upper 20s stretch of noche that normally isn't very nice. there have been two incidents of brutal violence in my neighborhood in the past week—an elderly couple and a 49-year-old man were murdered in their homes on grand street, and late saturday night a guy went on a shooting rampage on 2nd avenue, ending up in bar veloce (where jami and i had a drink a few months back) and tying people up and dousing them with kerosene before the cops stopped him, but not before he shot three people. the city is so lit up at night from the street—i think of what it must look like as you're descending to the airport. all this stuff. there's something there that gravitates some people/us to it. do they feel some of that beauty and ugliness inside themselves/us too? 1 6 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . 11:00am last night i dreamt that instead of my grandmother, it was my parents that'd died. i was back in alabama at the church i went to all my life, and it was a regular sunday service and everyone knew they died but nobody was asking me how i was or talking to me much at all. i went to the organist after the service—i would sub or pinch hit for him during my last years in high school, so we usually chatted after each service. he was sitting outside the church talking about new musicians he'd just recruited—a couple who were officeworkers, and how they it turned out they could play something besides filing cabinets. the folks sitting with him laughed when he said that. i asked him if he needed a hand with any of the music stuff and he said no. i walked to the beveled glass front doors and am sure was about to start crying when i woke up. 1 6 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . 2:00am did you know that if you use blue cornmeal to make polenta, you end up with a purple polenta? it reminded me of poi, that taro goo that i avoid like the plague when i'm in hawaii. what is it about fights with your boyfriend that just sap the life out of you? and then when you drag your sorry ass out of the house because if not you'll keep watching shit tv or reloading nytimes.com over and over or listening to the same skunk anansie mp3s, you run into the folks that it takes the most effort to make small talk with, like ex-co-workers and ex-dates and people that shelve stuff at the co-op with you? it does give you lots of time to work on your site, so i'm trying a little experiment on the homepage with the content bubbled up—a lesson learned from too many corporate site designs designed. it's 2:02am, and i just read this, which linked me here, and when i read the word "steppe" i pulled out my borodin cd and played in the steppes of central asia—don't know how long it's been since i listened to it, but it did make me feel a little more myself. my first exposure to the piece was in a high school youth orchestra—i was so hungry for competition that i almost missed out on how touching the initially unadorned ten-bar melody is; it starts off with violin harmonics so quietly that you really are rising out of mist onto the grass in some isolated place; that melody gets repeated throughout the piece with increasing instrumentation until it's really ceremonial but still a little bit sad (if only i could still upload mp3s). 1 5 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . blues for mister charlie (written by james baldwin and based loosely on the emmett till murder in mis- sissippi in 1955. the play itself takes place in 1965, when sncc was beginning to fragment over the issue of non-violence as an effective [or realistic] organizing strategy) is on stage at the hudson guild (441 west 26th street, nyc 10001) starring kenyon, until the end of the month. jami and i rolled up to housingworks last night for an all-hands-on-deck reading by paul auster and stephen dixon. some williamsburgdorf with the re- quisite thick-framed glasses, sloppy hair, gum-soled sneakers, and tight sweater opened the reading with a ramble on how most lovers of auster and dixon have only read one of their works, and used so many big words that i leaned over and wondered in jami's ear, is he studying for the s.a.t. or something? auster went up and said, "to the extent that i understand that intro, i thought it was very good"—oooh, snap! 1 4 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . get yer porn while it's fresh pipin' hot! thanks to this bud's writing me, i fixed the contact form—if you tried recently, you should be able to get through now. hopefully the chin-up bar that's now in the doorway to my kitchen will get me doing it daily. finalized the logistics to be in the south of maine with my family and boyfriend at the end of the month for a week. i looked on gay.com for local bars and one was described as "lonely," so i think it'll be all about family time and r&r and blueberry picking with the kids. i feel so grown-up with my travel agent booking flights and a rental car and everything for me. will he and i get assigned separate rooms? that is the question. what if we go nuts and have to do it in the rental car and cops catch us? that always happens in the movies. this afternoon i have my first backcial. i know i say this all the time, but i love john coltrane and could listen to songs like i wish i knew for the rest of my life.
1 3 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . 
1 2 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . over the past few days i put everything on this site into a word doc so i could show it to someone in (offline) publishing; no expectations of what could happen, but it was a good exercise as i looked back on what i've been putting in here. i don't write half as much as most other people blogging and journaling and writing, but i still managed to fill 130 pages. i have one paper journal that i filled cover to cover, and half a dozen incomplete ones. it's always painful to go back and read entries (i used to feel that way? about that?)—like seeing that i once considered lauryn hill to be an influence. you try to keep yourself from changing things to make yourself look better to yourself. sarah sze, who i wrote about a few days ago, had a front page in today's arts section. she was my age when she was "discovered." should i bother having ambitions? is it better to be humble and shocked at the recognition that you might end up getting? or should i drop my first name, start using my hyper-hawaiian middle name and run amok in a studio in some brooklyn neighborhood that gets covered in time out three months later? a beautiful quote from sam phillips in salon: "i have always objected to the easy answers." 1 0 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . i just remembered what i did last summerlast friday. "the two things we need in france are jobs and law and order," said one woman who voted in paris today. the advantage of boring work is that you get to read more. i read the economist weekly edition on my handspring on the subway, snuck in a read of signorile talking about how he's softening (but still gets in some good jabs at douchebag andrew sullivan) at my desk, read the first couple of pages of the times on the stepmill until i was basically suicidal (in a nutshell: north korean prisoners have forced abortions/miscarriages/baby killings, there will be no retribution for enron, israel is after arafat's head, our military is performing in the tom clancy movie). 
do you blog? in new york? map yourself. 
ja rule has that hot oaf voice. like can you imagine j-lo begging for it and him growling in her ear on top of her? 9 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . last night we did his 'n his parties: one of his friend's (harlem) and one of my friend's (west village), so it was mostly on the subway. at his friend's, we got there at 5pm. it's a housewarming, but the buzzer evidently isn't working yet, and neither was his cell phone; i was sitting on the stoop feeling grumpy until the roommate came by with beer, and up the stairs (fifth floor) we went. everyone was introduced by titles, so i met the Roommate, the Ex-Roommate, the Friend, and the Nephews. i was introduced as the Friend's Friend's Boyfriend. there was confetti on the floor that the little kids kept on pushing into piles and the Host kept kicking back into studied scatter. by now it was nighttime, but not nighttime enough to arrive at party number two, so we walked down to the water and discovered a sprawling park/recreational center around 138th street and the hudson river. for the millionth time i thought about getting more space and less rent by moving to harlem. there was a track and soccer field and indoor pool and auditorium—civic guilt feels, i repeat, good. finally we trucked downtown to christopher street. it turns out that my friend lives upstairs from ty's, a venerable village institution, and the party was on the rooftop. we stood up there in nipple-hardening cold (we left in the afternoon in t-shirts and shorts), made small talk, and shared nut brown ale while developing acute apartment envy at the lofts whose floor-through windows we could look into. my friend worked at yale for a while, and so did another woman that i chatted with, but they both said they worked "in connecticut." every yalie i've ever met does this, so i said so, and she said, "well, it just sounds so pat, you know?" mental note to look up the word "pat" used in this context when i get home. 7 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . god bless summer hours. i tore out of work at 3pm on the dot, and headed down tenth avenue to check out the caio fonseca exhibit at paul kasmin. 
if memory serves, the winter i spent interning at rogers marvel took me, accompanying an austere croatian archi- tect named dubrafka, to mr. fonseca's east vil- lage loft to take measurements. his paintings were on the walls and she said they were nice, weren't they. i like his work even more today, because it's like you're looking through it into another painting under- neath. i was 21 then. next i went into matthew marks for a second, but the stuff he had in his other gallery that i saw last week with jami was better, but the cool thing is that i happened to walk by friedrich petzel across the street and check out the penetration show there. there was one huge piece of pink foam that had been stretched through the air so it was like a foam wine rack. another piece had a clothesline running from the entrance to the back of the gallery, and way in the corner was a piece of red lint that bobbed up and down the line based on vibrations triggered by visi- tors entering and moving around the gallery. sarah sze, grow or die. i'd never been to the paula cooper gallery before, but it's similar to the other one on 22nd street with wooden rafters. i was the only one in there looking at chonk, a 9-ton steel sculpture by mark di suvero. i tiptoed around and listened to sounds: the music coming from the car driving by, the music coming from the reception gay, an airplane landing, a piano playing?, humming lights, wooden rafters creaking. 6 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . i've been unfocusedly tossing around the idea of a book ever since i slapped together a chapbook and liked what i saw. today i spoke to someone in pub- lishing who had some thoughts on making it a reality (met through this site, natch), so now i'm copying and pasting the contents of the site into a word doc. 50 pages and counting, and i haven't even gotten the blog in there yet. and here i thought i was so clever getting through college without every writing a 15-page paper. and then i came home and opened this little morsel:
sent: thursday, june 06, 2002 1:31 pm to: dantewoo.com subject: "adult" advertising solutions for dantewoo.com hello, please put me in direct contact with your company's online media buyer or vp of marketing for dantewoo.com . i have contacted dantewoo.com in the past about "adult" advertising oppor- tunities with sex-e-bits, and i just wanted to inform you that the sex-e-bits ezine is currently reaching 1.45 million "adult" consumers that would be interested in your "adult" related products and services. the cost to ad- vertising in this ezine is $2,750, but for the month of june we are offering ad- vertising in this ezine for only $899.55 (this is our break even cost). we really believe that our audience will find a personal liking to your site, and be- cause of this we want to give you a very inexpensive opportunity for you to feel confident advertising with us. here are a few samples of the sex-e-bits ezine for you to look over and see how the ads look. [ lame url 1 removed ] [ lame url 2 removed ] also, we are offering solo-mailings for only $0.02 per email. you can choose to send your solo-mailing out to "males" or "females" only if you choose this rout. please let me know how you would like to move forward. thank you, [ name withheld ] sr. sales manager sexebits.com
at least i merited the sex-e-bits senior sales man- ager contacting me about my "adult" content for both "males" and "females," although i unfortunately just laid off my marketing v.p. i found her solutions re- sults-oriented, but not actionable, scalable, or de- livering a measurable r.o.i. 3 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . two friends got published, one way or another, today: jami in exiled in germany: a hamptons state of mind toby in a renter thinks large about a small space 2 j u n e 2 0 0 2 . writing "birthday birthday birthday" in my last entry was the most involved thing i did for it—it just felt a little early this year. i think i'm gonna try to get my shit together for thursday or so. on friday i was surprised by the peeps i work with as i was finishing a meeting. they came in with much-appreciated cupcake cafe treats, and then i was off to northwest chelsea to meet jami for art and iced tea. we started at gagosian, and like she said, the exquisite rafters are better than anything that ends up on the walls. i wanna get married there. we went to a few other places, like luhring augustine, which i usually like (and a lovely website to boot), but a lot of the art passed by in a blur because i was cracking up at her story of fiftysomething korean chicks in matching lingerie giving her a nekkid full body scrub followed by walk on her back. our conclusion: not a massage parlor, but something is going on there. i was also diverted by news of a new friend that sounds like good stuff, so i'm happy for her. my homeboy took me to one of my favorite low-maintenance restaurants for dinner: max, conveniently a block from my house. there aren't many perfect italian places around here where you get a warm bowl of pasta whose every strand twirls neatly around your fork (without aid of a spoon, which real italians don't use anyway) and leaves no more sauce behind than can be wiped up with a bread slice. the little things. then we got home for present opening and sumthin' sumthin'. i sang happy birthday to my nephew's parents' answering machine since he's turning nine in hawaii right now. saturday was spent tooling around the neighborhood (not too fast so we wouldn't sweat too much), then hitting an art opening, "point & shoot," not far from razorfish that was much better than i expected—i love seeing urban/hiphop/stussy/whatever art where the artist seemed to really finish and follow through with and attend to the piece. y'know? like a lot of times i feel like it's not done yet when i see it. anyway, i felt strangely tattooed and was horrified to find that the leafy greens i bought in chinatown on the way there were the putrid garbage smell that was following me through the gallery. we ditched dactyl and ditched the greens in the trashcan in front of de la espada on wooster and grand. why do i buy the sunday new york times when i can barely make it through the magazine before the day's over? at least i got to read about that bratty writer from my alma mater, gary shteyngart, who, even though i wasn't into his disrespect for his upbringing, i need to read about people with my education and around my age writing books to kick me in the ass. tonight i did like i've been doing a lot, which is job searching online and sending resume after cover letter after email. i dunno why, when my day job is alright, but something kinda like when nas says all i need is one mic ... to spread my voice to the whole world, except without all the gangsta posturing and bitches this 'n that, because please, if nas is a gangsta then so am i. it's a powerful video, though—that south african shantytown with the black local people going up against the black police with him in between them is some ponderous shit. m o r E
