home |
musings index |
feedback |
other journals
I went to Cocke Hall and worked mostly on the Blue Penny Quarterly's upcoming issue (which will be found at http://blue.comet.net/). I found it almost effortless to work on HTML conversion.
Back at my house, the housemates were goofing around and watch Ricky Lake (who appears to be pregnant these days). The subject was girls whose parents are upset by freaky boys. Naturally, Ricky used the show to hook up these girls with the freakiest guys who could be found. The freaks were all punk rockers, mostly with spiked hair or numerous facial piercings.
From Snooky's (the downtown pawn shop) a used VCR had been purchased (for $94). I'd contributed $15 to this purchase. Now we can watch flicks at my house again, something we haven't been able to do since my VCR went on the fritz.
I attempted to take a nap but had no luck whatever. At around 6pm I drove the Dodge Dart downtown to partake in the monthly art opening orgy that befalls Charlottesville.
I went directly to the Downtown Artspace where I found Jenfariello. She wasn't alone, but she was startled by my sudden appearance anyway as though there is something in her subconscious that takes me for an ax murderer. She'd know better than some.
Tonight I was partly on a mission to secure more art for the upcoming issue of the Blue Penny Quarterly. Jen is a photographer, of course, and she allowed me to rummage around through her bin of forgotten black and white photographs and found a couple of interest to me, especially one with which I could illustrate a tale about rape on the beach. (I had a girlfriend that lost her virginity by being raped on the beach by some boy she knew; he bragged about it the next day too and she did nothing about it.)
Then Jen and I went to a very packed Gallery Neo for the opening there. The place had some excellent sculpture and some less impressived 2-dimensional work. The sculpture was a more tidy variant of the junk sculptures of Cameron Gray, A. Faith and others in bozART.
We proceeded up 2nd Street to the tiny burrito stand whose owner recently bought the Rising Sun Bakery and we stopped in for a moment for some free vino there; it seems in that district that every business manages to find an excuse to have an opening on the first Friday of every month. Jenfariello says she will be working for the burrito lady.
Up at McGuffey, the place was crowded but the vino was already gone. I recall little or none of the art.
bozART featured the chaotic mostly bas-relief junk sculptures of Cameron Gray (one of my favourite bozART personalities, along with Gigi Payne and A. Faith). His work has improved a lot over the past year, I would say. They are real compositions now. Gigi had a unique little installation: a suitcase full of lifetime relicts like childrens' books and letters and such. Viewers such as myself were urged to rummage around through the things and be voyeurs. By this point I'd somehow become separated from Jenfariello.
I saw Katherine D'Good's dog, Deeohjee, outside Millers and I knew my Dynashack gang was inside. I joined Elizabeth, John, Ches, and Katherine upstairs and we mostly had dark beer, one each.
We all went to the Downtown Artspace, where a sort of informal gathering was happening. We weren't drinking anymore...just clowning around and being drunk. Deeohjee is a very perceptive dog and we played and talked with him. He gets very excited at the mention of birds or squirrels and switches instantly from lethargic passivity to energetic barking.
Alone, I drove back to my house and watched teevee with Steve, his visiting sister, Amara and others. There was whiskey, and I continued to drink. At a certain point a respectable crowd had gathered, with personalities as diverse as Jenfariello and Elizabeth. (No punk rock friends of the Gus, however). We watched a Liz West video short assembled from various sources including my poetic rants at the last Artspace Openings. The highlight was a seduction scene involving a real man and a female manequin.
For diversity of experience, I walked to the horrid apartment, where a surprisingly small group had gathered, playing cards. Anomalously, Tad came by and started chatting at me in his normal unsatisfying manner. I took my leave.
Gossip time: Jenfariello and Andrew were having a private discussion in the kitchen about secrets only they know anything about when I came by to fill a glass of water.
I went to bed surprisingly early, at around midnight. I did this as a real effort to stop drinking for fear of a hangover like the one I had a week ago. This is the first time I have ever moderated my drinking because of concern about a future hangover. Usually my attitude is one of "who cares about the future when the booze is here now?"
The Hole is hard to critique since it is so familiar. I have heard it everywhere from Josh Furr's redneck metalhead porno rattleshack to Jen & Ami's tidy cat-friendly feminist apartment to Jeff Brecko's grungy post-Seattle burnout dive in Blacksburg. It is probably the most familiar CD title in my collection to date. Hole has received a fair amount of prejudice from the fact that its popularity can be wholly traced to the death of singer Courtney Love's famous rock star husband, Kurt Cobain, singer/guitarist for Nirvana. But truth be known, Hole is an excellent band with excellent songs. There are zillions of excellent bands out there no doubt, and occasionally one wins the lottery so to speak and gets to show the world their talents. I would opine that Live Through This is within the same vague grunge genré as Nirvana, although it has more of a punk influence and slightly less of a metal influence. Much of the instrumentation sounds like Nirvana's Incesticide (the best Nirvana album, in my opinion), though it lacks most of the annoying experimental stuff. The lyrics are less obscure than those of Nirvana, but they have their own special clouded metaphoric quality.