2 8 j a n u a r y 2 0 0 1 .
drool...
people are about to get fired where i work, and they don't know it but i do; it's a terrible feeling. the vibe of the office plus the pressure of the project i'm working on have made me into a person whose inbox is stacking up with unanswered e-mail. and these books are staring me down in my apartment:
- drown, junot diaz
- reinaldo arenas, before night falls
- the dream eater, james sato (thanks, cody)
- queer papi porn, edited by joël tan (thanks, jonno)
- eva hesse, lucy lippard (thanks, emerson)
- photogravity, gabriel orozco (ditto)
- carrie mae weems, international center of photography
- nan goldin, 522 west 22nd street
- marco maggi, 123 watts
- birdie lusch, k.s. art @73 leonard street
- (the incredible) ana mendieta, lelong @20 west 57th street
liz, marcelo, dori, and i were all sitting front floor, great hall, to see the flaming red-clad (and maybe just flaming) bruce mau. i was scribbling in the dark; what i can make out are the highlights listed:
- when we can make a website out of crayons, we will.
- . . . amplitude that travels alongside the author . . . because it's inside the lines that the real action happens.
- . . . Tree City accepts a degree of toxicity in order to establish greater presence.
- there is constant foray beyond the threshold; from there, we establish a new threshold ... as he stopped the rocket sled abruptly, he saw and felt his eyes turn pink, then red, then purple, then black.
- we're now seeing increasing efficiency and fragmentation in all practices, even cultural practices.
- disconnect between delivery and content
- [it's difficult these days to distinguish what it means to be a designer from an artist] designers operate in a pull economy, where they're engaged by others. artists operate in a push economy, where they have dilemmas of their own and push something into the world. not that i don't have dilemmas as a designer.
- i have a promiscuous approach to culture.
a quick, pre-emmy dinner date with jami at centosette; a quick, pre-closing workout at my ghetto gym; watching the abhorrent queer as folk with toby at his place; a nightcap at wonderbar. as i was walking home down 6th street between avenues a and b, i pass by a new bar and this guy sticks his head out and says hello. he's smiling so cherubically that for a horrifying split second i wonder if we've slept together. i ask him do we know each other? and he says no, he's just being friendly, followed by you look great. i thank him and bid him good night. keep walking, but then i hear several voices shouting wait! come back! he and his two friends want me to have a drink with them. deep breath, i could probably take them long enough to scream for help, you only live/love once, what good blog fodder it would be, we're off. they're from liverpool, and the young man named zack that first spoke to me lives in the neighborhood and does hair and makeup. it's not like i'm going to sleep with him. get to the bar, toss back a vodka soda (drink number 2 of the night, which is sadly more than enough for me), feel myself feeling less charmed than i was out on 6th street, and get home (alone) into my warm bed. see you in the morning.
"sorry, we couldn't find any items for '+poet* +underwear'." the mind reels...
saw the open ends exhibits at moma, which was really half a dozen small exhibits, each with themes that seem too broad to fit in small roomsprotest art, minimalism, big art, whitebut pretty tightly curated, with small numbers of efficiently-used pieces. a pretty extensive one about the my lai massacre, with letters and photos and posters. also a swatch of the wallpaper showing sleeping white men and lynched black men, that i remembered covering an entire room at the hirshhorn museum (part of the smithsonian) when i went there as a little kid. another woman made two huge blocks of chocolate and lard, took bites out of each, made products (chocolate hearts and red lipstick) with them, and then put the blocks out to gradually lose shape. funny how the exhibit whose title i like the bestinnocence and experienceis one that i don't remember any details of.
took the f train all the way down to my 'hood and went to the gym. saw the same 2 sexy guys (white-skinned puerto rican bruiser with wifebeater, thick veins on his biceps, and baseball cap backward; italian guy with the snake tattoo all over his forearm and the bright red baseball cap forward). i love my ghetto gym, but enough about that; talked to people, got caught up, gave free therapy, wrote a quick happy birthday card on curious george stationery for uri's 30th. went to hell to deliver it, saw him, made friends, ran into his friend that i unwittingly hooked up with a year ago. gotta love new york.
on january 22, i'm gonna do my darnedest to go to this bruce mau lecture. if you want to too, call phaidon press, the sponsors, because it's reservation only: 212.652.5407.
how fuckin' happy am i that erykah badu is playing radio city music hall on valentine's day?
check this guy out, now imagine him with curly black hair and a furry chest; way better, right?
it's 11:40pm and i have a client meeting at 8am, but you know what? i know this sounds pretentious, but i sleep better and don't wake up as tired when the reason i stayed up late was because i was writing.
shilpa moved to new york the same that jesse and i didwe all went to college together, and hung out a lot at first, not so much now. it happens, and i don't think there are hard feelings, and i was happy for her tonight. she'll be working with a south asian film festival in san francisco, and i think the work and city will suit her well; saw her off at bob with a funny crowd of roots and erykah badu-lite-esque black folks, mixed with a few kinda stussy japanese girls, mixed with the south asian american desi crowd that shilpa hangs with. unfortunately missed tina's birthday party, but from her guestlist, i think she had her hands full.
saw before night falls (beautiful. powerful. oh my goodness i'm in love with javier bardem's lips and hair and nose and hairy legs and voice) with mookie last night (but besides that, i wanna think about this movie some more and write more about it), unintentionally sacrificing my aim date with jami and dori during the world premier of temptation island. doh! by the way, check out homegirl's new piece, "head-turner." it's good shit, especially if you could hear her read it out loud. the night before i hung with both of them, which is where the timeshare idea fucked, conceived, and gestated.
a colleague/friend pointed me to bruce mau's an incomplete manifesto for growth. i like it because it diametrically opposes almost every facet of my job's product development process, business strategy, growth strategy, and work culture, and also because it holds a lot of principles that i could try to apply to my personal life. i like finding things like that, that can help shape a credo to live by.
183 people visited my site yesterday, and only one of them interacted with me. me me me. what's up with that?
should i get a timeshare in new orleans with this girl and that girl, with this boy and that boy as my landladies? sounds fun, huh?
dante woo (11:00:59 pm): she doesn't deserve this much airplay
dante woo (11:01:11 pm): she doesn't even deserve this much hairspray
nycwhatever-whenever (11:01:20 pm): she deserves her own tshirt though
nycwhatever-whenever (11:01:27 pm): girl's name on the front
dante woo (11:01:29 pm): she could buy one at tremble.com
nycwhatever-whenever (11:01:30 pm): ho on the back
nycwhatever-whenever (11:01:33 pm): what?
dante woo (11:01:39 pm): he's whoring himself
nycwhatever-whenever (11:01:43 pm): he's selling tshirts?
dante woo (11:01:44 pm): check it out
dante woo (11:01:46 pm): and mousepads
nycwhatever-whenever (11:01:48 pm): hold on
nycwhatever-whenever (11:02:21 pm): does he have some huge fan base i'm unaware of?
dante woo (11:02:31 pm): no
nycwhatever-whenever (11:02:58 pm): does he have some huge friend base i'm unaware of?
nycwhatever-whenever (11:03:00 pm): family?
nycwhatever-whenever (11:03:04 pm): girlfriends?
nycwhatever-whenever (11:03:10 pm): teen dream queens?
nycwhatever-whenever (11:03:17 pm): an army of hos?
dante woo (11:03:17 pm): drag queens?
dante woo (11:03:25 pm): do you see the t-shirts?
nycwhatever-whenever (11:03:33 pm): what i'm asking is - is anyone buying what he's selling?
dante woo (11:03:40 pm): i'd buy it
nycwhatever-whenever (11:04:08 pm): is he gay or not?
dante woo (11:04:37 pm): not
nycwhatever-whenever (11:05:08 pm): i had coffee with him once. he seemed ok.
dante woo (11:05:24 pm): i like him
dante woo (11:05:39 pm): i really like swishy straight men
nycwhatever-whenever (11:05:49 pm): like my roommate
dante woo (11:28:49 pm): i'm gonna go bed
nycwhatever-whenver (11:28:54 pm): later skater
dante woo (11:29:00 pm): later player hater
nycwhatever-whenver (11:29:07 pm): later gator mater
nycwhatever-whenver (11:29:16 pm): later tater top
nycwhatever-whenver (11:29:20 pm): i meant tot
nycwhatever-whenver (11:29:24 pm): but top works too
dante woo (11:29:55 pm): :-)
suggested resolutions for others' new year (see mine below, and besides, i'm freaking perfect already):
- stop complaining about blogger. expect that free things online (especially when they claim druglike properties) may not fulfill your wildest dreams of 24 hour support, lightning speed, and foolproof content management. learn how to write your own damn code, and if you do know html and still use blogger, resolve to end your slothful ways. use this as an opportunity to break out of the design mold (interminable narrow column of text, yes, i know that mine doesn't stray far, but it strays) that blogger imposes.
- stop stealing. that includes (subtext is "my," but why not go cold turkey all the way?) content, ideas, design, unattributed quotes, and images. chances are you'll do something cooler anyway.
- stop misspelling words and using bad grammar. especially "definitely," "weird," and "masturbate"; sort out it's vs. its, and while you're bookmarking your new confidantes, Grammar Lady Online and dictionary.com, do a find on all the "--" in your text, not your code, to replace them with "—" or "–." this will make you sexy in the mind of any English major, and there are lots of us out there.
-
reduce by half the number of entries that include some form of "you know what i hate? <insert rant and rave here>." as a tribe called quest said in their first regrettably forgettable swan song album, the love movement:
we do it all for the love, y'all
we get the paper but it's still for the love, y'all
from the heart, inside of the heart, y'all
i was there, briefly; picture it: jonno, sturtle, littleminx, ggwoo, freakytrigger: cultural artifacts of the moment, and a WAP-enabled cameo by saranwarp. i'm sure one of us will be posting that picture soon.
no offense to these guys and girl, but i feel ambivalent (that word reminds of this essay that i once read and revered) about the gay blogger circuit and being part of it.
i think i'll stop there.
going back to work was not as dreadful as i feared, but stilli have to work hard this month, and i don't like working hard anymore. especially not after working in europe for a summer.
i haven't gotten any email since early afternoon. is my server down or does everyone hate me?
what i just had the urge to lie: "the highlight of my day was changing this meta tag:
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) 1999-2000 dante woo">
to this meta tag:
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) 1999-2001 dante woo">"
but that's not true. it was a nice day, that started nice and is ending nice. nice nice nice. that's the new year's resolution. that, plus bigger biceps, pursuing more creative outlets, attending more events about town, and whatever-whenever has one that i'd like to borrow: love everyone in my life more than i already do.