Filed under: getting out of the house, i make things | Tags: comics, emily nemens, harvey pekar, paul buhle, studs terkel
Please come out this Saturday, 7-9, for a panel discussion/general celebration of Stud’s Terkel’s Working. KGB is at 85 East 4th St in the East Village. Details here.
Hope to see you there!
Filed under: art appreciation 101, getting out of the house | Tags: Brooklyn Elvis, emily nemens
As any frequent “Notes” visitor will have noticed, I’m not posting all that much these days. The reasons are numerous: a book project, the graduate record exams, summer heat, but mostly it is because I’ve been logging my internet hours at brooklynelvis.com
Go there to find pictures and posts from around town, and (almost) daily drawings of Elvis. Real and serious news about Emily’s writing and art will still show up at “Notes,” but for the equivalent of my “Art App 101″ and “Getting out of the house,” click on over to Brooklyn.
Kisses.
Filed under: getting out of the house
After a few months writing sentences at the kitchen table, I have finally gotten out of the house. I got so far out of the house, I crossed the country.
La Conner, Washington has a tulip festival. They weren’t out, but the dafs were blooming in full effect. Here they come:
It was raining and snowing and all sorts of trouble my first week home. Then the sun came out. This kind of weather makes Seattle folk stupid-happy:
We got to Whidbey Island by way of Deception Pass.
We’ve got a new guard dog in Seattle: Penny. Life is better with bulldogs.
The hitlist continues, sans illustration:
Kader Attia at the Henry. Loved it more than the Rome show at SAM, both are great. Huge bowl of Penn Cove mussels on Penn Cove. Acox and the Legacy Quartet. Poached eggs at Glo’s. Mariners victory. Charles Lloyd on saxophone. Pints of Manny’s Pale Ale and Boundary Bay IPA. Vivace Coffee. Selling books. Sushi. Telecommuting. Chicken potpie. Greenlake. Ferries.
I’m having such a good time, I decided to have surgery. Hence the title.
Filed under: getting out of the house
the past week’s been a busy one, hosting a couple hundred folks at the kerouac house—about fifty for my farewell reading, a couple hundred for the college park home tour, and for a more extended stay, my mom. despite the house guests, i managed to get out of the house a bit. mom, dan, and i went to mount dora. we missed the antique mall, but managed to find lots of chochkeys. such as my favorite stone dog wearing a bandana:
the three of us went to st. augustine, which was much better. flagler college calls an opulent old hotel home (pics in a soon-to-come architcture post), and there’s a very old fort.
not to mention that st. aug is the oldest continually occupied city in the us. here’s the oldest house. at one point it was the “oldest house in the country,” then they had to knock it down to “oldest house in st. augustine,” when that was challenged, it was down to just the “oldest house.” they get points for playing it safe.
they have a state park on the beach of anastasia island. florida state parks make me love this state. did i mention it was still 80° outside?
back in college park, we went to downtown disney to see cirque du soleil. which was great. especially because it was free, thanks to a very kind french-canadian guitarist named yves. after that is was thanksgiving. we had to improvise on preparing the pie crusts, let’s just say it involved a budweiser and the dining room table. happy holidays, folks.
Filed under: getting out of the house, i make things | Tags: emily nemens, scrub
come by infusion tea (1600 edgewater) around 7 to see the farewell (for now) installment soft exposure, joe pasquale’s biweekly reading series. i’m one of three featured readers, then there’s an open mike.
i’ll be reading from the book. that’s right, it’s here.
Filed under: getting out of the house
and by vice, i mean pork. so many cuban sandwiches in 48 hours. also, a great deal of beach was covered by we three. There was the crowded (south beach at 4th):
and empty (state park on key biscayne):
we spent some quality time along the strip of art deco hotels on collins. a particularly nice set of fonts:
and then went back in the nighttime hours for a tour of the hotel bars. we found one that was entirely white. not like skin color, like fabric and paint. everything. blanco.
at vizcaya (see art app 101), we crashed a quincianera. it reminded me of my days as second clarinetist in cesar’s mariachi band.
in the end, we got some corporate seats to the heat. we are still recovering, and have yet to determine whether it was a shaq attack or o’neil offensive that left us sprawled in its wake.
Filed under: getting out of the house
Yesterday boasted two adventures in bringing Florida’s wildlife indoors. First, the successful venture was Flux, my friend Tony’s dog. Tony is going to Hong Kong next week, so Flux and I were testing each other out. It went well.
The second was more traumatic and involved closing my venetian blinds.
At least now I know why my dining room smelled funny.
Also in animal related matters, I’ve gotten some flak from animal lovers about my new gator head. Perhaps the purchase was a little rash (as was the white jumpsuit), but to justify my decision, a brief history of gator farming from The Gator Hole:
During the 1960’s the alligators population continued to diminish. Poaching of the alligator was widespread, and because of a loophole in state laws, authorities were unable to shut down the interstate network of illegal hide dealers. Finally, in 1967, the American Alligator was placed on the first Endangered Species List. In 1970, federal regulations were imposed that effectively ended the illegal alligator market, and the populations of alligators began to rebound. It has been speculated that perhaps the alligators population was never as bad as originally thought, but that the alligator had just become more adept at eluding humans.
In 1977, the alligator was reclassified from an endangered to a threatened species. This change in status allowed the alligator to once again be available for commercial use. During the 1980’s the alligator became to be viewed as a renewable resource, and several alligator management programs were instituted by the State of Florida. These programs allowed for controlled hunting of the alligator by private individuals and the collection of eggs and hatchlings by licensed alligator farms.
Alligator farming is now a thriving business, with an estimated 30+ alligator farms in the State of Florida. This multi-million dollar industry generates approximately 300,000 pounds of meat and over 15,000 skins a year. Alligator meat averages $5-$7 a pound wholesale, and while skin prices vary year to year, the average price is around $25 per foot. Currently in the state of Florida, it is estimated that we are home to over 1,000,000 alligators, not counting those raised on the commercial alligator farms.
Filed under: getting out of the house
i knew it would happen, and well, it happened: writer’s block. scrub is at the printer, i edited blue-eyed apples to cut out most of the first-person-crazy-lady and thus shift the narrative voice a good deal, bless came and left, and well, i did my laundry and couldn’t figure out what to write next. instead, i did a bunch of stuff:
1.my first gator head and my first florida orange of the year get acquainted.
2. cornell art museum was meh. really good for such a small school, rollins. there was a little bit of impasto that made me happy, and one of the profs had an instatllation of underwater art that was pretty neat-o (98 different sea creatures!) especially consdering the context:
3. i am reading moby dick.
4. i also read an essay from 2005 about the 20something generation and how we’ll never have babies or responsibility. actually, it was more about how 35 is the new 25, but it also hit the nail on the head in terms of how i am struggling with what to do with the balance of the decade. all the 30somethings in essay club enjoyed giving me a third degree of sorts. think they like to see me squirm.
5. i dressed up like a human cannonball and then headbutted people i don’t know really very well until close to 5 am. the party also featured a clown named eddie (the host), a mangina (not unlike the breathtaking conclusion of ace ventura, pet detective), finding beer money in the street while riding bicycles, and a lot of gay cowboys. The evening devolved into a crying clown, boys-hitting-girls fights, and being serenaded by a man twice my age that sounded a lot like elvis (costello).
6. a girl in a white leotard and furry boots gave me snus. i read an article in the nytimes about it, so i thought i’d try it. once i put it under my upperlip, as instructed, i got really scared about cancer and threw it all way.
7. cover letters galore, for readings of scrub in nyc, for the next jobs. i think breathing into a paper bag may have helped in the process.
8. baseball. may colorado rest in peace.
9. lips. lemons. lips. lemons. repeat. pictures tk.
Filed under: getting out of the house
The space shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center at 11:38 this morning. After haranguing a number of friends and board members for a ride to the coast, I ended up staying in Orlando, watching the launch from the side of Lake Ivanhoe. Here’s the goods:
also, for all of you that actually work during the days:
did you know that this happened?
Filed under: getting out of the house
things that happened this weekend:
1. keys to a volvo, which enabled us to get lost in cape canaveral. imagine: 9 pm, saturday night and dying for dinner, dead ending into the space center air force base. whoops. and driving around the coast during biketoberfest. such a bad idea. and a car wash, which was just plain confusing. (me: how are you? cashier: 6′4″)
2. walks on the beach.
3. canoeing in wekiwa (wii-KIE-vah) state park with bless and harrison. very deliverance. very nice. i mustered the courage for a rope swing off shell island.
4. a bottle of nice scotch. and cigars. and the pitter-patter of rain on the porch’s tin roof.
5. gatorland. so many gators.
the gator jumparoo
you can pay extra for a paper bag full of turkey dogs. idea is that you feed them to the gators, but sometimes that doesn’t go quite right:
6. the best sunset florida’s seen in a while.
