home |
musings index |
feedback |
other journals
ast night MSNBC was going on and on about the latest leak coming from the Clinton scandal, saying that it was a major development and again predicting that Clinton was going down. But today, after a press conference and a few barbs thrown by Presidential henchmen, the focus was back again on what a very mean person Independent Council Starr. It's astounding and even a little exhilarating to see our President slipping out of one trouble after another like a greased pig at a amputees anonymous support session.
| |
|
| |
eggy and the Baboose came by in the midst of a wet little snow storm, saying she was afraid to back home up Carter's Mountain in such weather. I said that she should just hang out and watch teevee here instead. I didn't think anything negative about it at all until she got off the phone after a very long conversation with Jessika's mother and I learned it was Peggy who had made the call. Peggy was, it seems, impatient for Jessika's arrival, and just wanted to find out if she was coming, but you can never just have a short little information gathering chat with the women of the Flint household, so of course the conversation ran on and on, and it was (of course) the most expensive time of the day to have such a conversation and (of course) Peggy hadn't seen fit to ask if it was okay. It's just another example of how so few people in my world have even the minimal courtesies that I view as essential.
| |
|
| |
fter Deya got off work, she and I went to the Downtown Mall to partake of the first Friday of the month art opening phenomenon. First we went into the McGuffy, the big city-supported building known for its dowdy openings and somewhat older crowd. There were quite a few people checking out the art there, but Deya and I were among the youngest in the building. I had a feeling that most of the people weren't going to deign to venture further afield. But Deya and I continued quickly on to Gallery Neo, where a large group of familiar people sipped vino and stood around chatting in that uniquely art opening kind of way. My former housemate John Arnold and another UVA student, Armistead, were the featured artists. They were showing abstract and semi-abstract oil paintings. I guess the opening went pretty well, because John managed to sell three paintings for something like $400 each. Then over at Higher Grounds a severe-looking gothesque girl was showing some big social-realist-influenced cartoonish acrylic paintings. I felt sorry for poor Heliardo down in the Downtown Artspace with his show of retro cubist oil paintings (see yesterday's entry). Hardly anyone was there, just Deya and Jen the wacky Tokyo Rose bartender hanging out at the vino jug, laughing, drinking and talking and all but ignoring the art.
| |
|
| |
learned that Jessika had been sighted back at Gallery Neo, so I set off to find her and eventually did. She was with Joanna, who had finally gotten past her indecision and driven down from Malvern despite the shitty weather. After a little coffee at the Mudhouse, we headed back to Kappa Mutha Fucka. Deya and I picked up beer and vino on the way back. Joanna had some really expensive marijuana; it smelled like rich exotic incense. I'm was the only one in the house who really smokes pot, so I had a little with her, and it modified my view of the rest of the evening. Jessika told me a story about a new acquaintance of hers, a lad named Acid Adam who has spent his whole life in the King of Prussia Mall. He's been so lost in the maw of consumerist culture that he doesn't know lots of important facts that shape our lives from the outside, for example that America isn't the only place in the world. He only found out that it wasn't a few months ago, though he's well into his twenties. Jessika tells me some guy is doing a documentary about Acid Adam. Joanna and Jessika didn't stay long though; there's this impatience about Joanna that seems to always be compelling her towards the next event. They headed off to Peggy and Zach's place on Carter's Mountain and I sort of assumed the evening was coming to an end.
| |
|
| |
ut not so fast. Jen had told us that the Staunton emo band, Union of a Man and a Woman, was playing at the Tokyo Rose. They might be the best band in the entire region, and it would have been good to see them. And Deya had it in her mind to invite them to tomorrow's Aquarius Party. After all, we'd been inviting people all night. We felt the UOAMAAW kids would add much to our party; they're squeazably cute like Charmin toilet paper. So Deya drove me us down to the Tokyo Rose. As we were going in, we found the UOAMAAW guys, dressed as usual in their sheer black emo outfits, lounging out in front. For some reason I thought they were the evening's featured attraction, but their set was over and there was still another band setting up. In the end, by the way, we were too shy and intimidated to invite them to our party. They may all still be in high school, but to us they're rock and roll gods. Still assuming the best of the show was over and that the guy taking money at the door was no longer interested in who came or went, I just marched in like I owned the place, and so managed to get in free. It was the first time I'd successfully snuck into the the Tokyo Rose in almost two years. Meanwhile Deya managed to get in by exercising her connections with Wacky Jen. The featured band was Burning Airline. Two of its members are from Jawbox, real major-label rock stars. The music was wonderful. It was incredibly loud, fast, and completely unschooled. They were atonal virtuosos, well practiced at a style of music that they'd seemingly completely invented for themselves. Their instruments were old and unstylish, like awkward relicts from the seventies. The guitar even had glitter baked into its surface enamel. But the music was entirely modern. Here was a new form of creation enabled not by new technology (like my new forms of creation) but by an advancement in the definition of what is acceptable in music. This made it seem so profound and pure. And yet these guys, playing with such refreshingly youthful abandonment of all musical standards, were no spring chickens. Two of them were going bald and even in the dim light of the rock and roll stage, no one would ever think them anything less than drinking age. It was all rather touching. After the show, I was hanging out with Deya at the bar, looking over a crude little map of the United States. After a few questions, I realized that Deya knew almost no geography. She knew Virginia, California, Texas, Washington State, Florida and Maryland, but beyond that, things disappeared into a haze. When I told her Pennsylvania was Nebraska, she accepted it without complaint. So I undertook to teach her a few basics. Despite her seeming intoxication, she learned quickly.
| |
|