speed_raesr

so the title of this post is inspired by rm's artists sometimes have feelings articles.  except it's about me.  and how two of the last three artists I've had meetings with have offered me cheesy or buttery things, and I have said yes and eaten them to be polite, and have gotten sick afterwards.  though that really isn't the point.  the point is that I'm having all of these meetings and they're going splendidly and I am feeling like my show is coming together and that I am almost ready to write my prospectus and life is starting to be manageable again.   it has seemed a little not manageable for kind of a while now.  yay for management!  marx would be so proud...  

so the last week or so has been filled with a number of kind of irrational freak outs.  though of course their being irrational has no bearing on how they feel.  for some reason, I feel like all of a sudden I'm expected to have a clue of what the hell is going on with the things I like to talk about, mostly with my dissertation, and I really am realizing that I have not much of a clue at all.  part of me feels like my life is moving too fast, and I'm not ready for it, and I need to slow it down but I don't really know how.  I recognize that if I feel in control and on top of my shit then I'm not learning and all that, but this feels somehow different.  maybe because the stakes of it all just jumped.  

this has been made apparent by a number of meetings I have had in the last week.  for some reason for the last month or so I've been particularly active in terms of doing networky and talk to people type things.  which is probably a good thing.  and they should know that I'm talking to them because I'm trying to learn.  but that notwithstanding, I still feel anxious about them going in, and anxious in hindsight that I came across as an idiot.  

on sunday I met with an art history professor whose work I quite admire.  it was very helpful, really very helpful, in ways that she probably wasn't aware of (though she did kind of laugh and apologize for being a hard ass).  which made me follow up with RM about his not art history thing and I am now pretty sure I'm not going to get fired or encouraged to switch departments (don't scoff, it is happening to other people in the department).  so anyway there was that meeting and of course I was nervous so my brain wasn't working quickly and all of that and I made some historical screw ups that were corrected.  but whatever.  in the end these things matter much more to us than to them and she's probably forgotten about it all already.  I mean, we met 5 times before she remembered having met me at all...

so then monday I had an AMAZING studio visit for our show, with a wonderful artist at UCLA.  he has 2 pieces we want to use, if we can figure out how to afford to ship a light box for one and he gets the other to some form of finish.  I am STOKED on both pieces.  but I have no idea about curating.  none at all.  I mean I am actually excited, I seem to be doing ok in terms of the conceptual stuff for the show, the framework and the works included and stuff like that.  but other, more logistical things, I have no idea.  so I felt like a fish out of water with that.  I'd never had a studio visit with a stranger before (wu and I have meet before but only in large group, party like settings, and in passing).  and as much as the show hangs together I just don't know all that much about contemporary art, or about the Lacan and Ranciere and shit that it all gets put in relation to these days.  at least this kind of work.  so before the studio visit I sat in my car having quite the freak out.  the visit went great, in the end, but still.  all of this talk that we do about not demanding mastery and the problems of mastery within academia and all that, but still when I'm caught out not knowing shit or feel like I might get caught out not knowing shit, it makes me squeamish.

and then meetings I've lined up in new york...  I seem to not be quite so freaked out about meeting with AA about the show (AA is the guy who's still alive from the artist group I write about), I think because Steve will also be there.  but dude, that's CRAZY!  and then there's this photographer who was at UCLA last semester.  or quarter.  and she also was part of a collective that published this magazine.  so I am friends with her TA and she offered to forward an email from me to the artist, so I didn't just email the artist cold, and then the artist and I could be in direct contact about whatever I wanted to talk about.  so I now have an email from said artist in my email box.  and it's cool because she's stoked about how I'm locating the publication.  but yeah, this shit is a trip.  and contributing to the nagging notion that I should have a clue.  maybe I'm doing all of these things too early?  maybe I have more of a clue than I think?  maybe it's ok not to know everything?  I suppose that we shall see...  but in the grand pattern I have of taking cool things and turning them into stressful things, there you have it!  strong work, solomon.  maybe if it hadn't rained all week and I'd been able to ride it'd be better.  I did not move to los angeles for this rain garbage.  

richard's class continues to go great.  though we had kind of a less topical to the interests of the course field trip on wednesday.  and I had a great meeting with him on thursday.  the class I TA for is still fine.  it's a bit too identify the attributes and locate the sex for me, and not enough - this is how sex comes to have meaning etc, but whatevs.  I'm learning painters that art historians should probably know.  the professor is still annoying but she is very nice so I'm starting to get over myself.  I really do have crazy little work to do.  they have a quiz coming up but that should be easy.  the last few days have been more productive (though I need to start taking down fewer notes in what I type into my computer from my exam reading.  8 pages of notes on just 2 books?  even though they're epistemology of the closet and gender trouble, that is not ok...) so I should be able to roll right through them.  

that's really all there is!  next week I go to NY for meetings and visiting C will of course be wonderful.  and then the week after that she's here, and then CAA!  so many things!  

so I've been in a ridiculous string of luck and happy recently and I guess it's time I outline it all.  today is the apogee of amazingness.

I've just been really happy.  I'm getting LA nostalgia and feeling like I need to get on doing stuff, but that's good.  

I'm a grader and not a TA, which is great because it gives me more time to study.  Once I figure out how to motivate myself to get the work done!  It's for Gender and Sexuality in the Renaissance.  And of course there are some problems with it.  And though the professor is exceptionally nice she is kind of annoying.  But it's a good job.  I will learn more about the Renaissance.  And that's cool.  I have something like an hour of extra work a week photocopying, and then of course the grading.  But the class meets 2-3.30 t/th and my seminar is wednesday so I have my mornings which is good for riding and only 3 days on campus and long weekends and life is good.  

The seminar is actually pretty great.  I presented this week and I think pretty killed it, which is great.  And now I am done with seminar leadings for evar!  Well, til I teach them.  But it isn't as big as I'd feared, I like pretty much everyone in there, there's someone from UCLA who I'd never met before who's very nice, no one show boats, no one's a blowhard...  It's great.  And even better, it seems to be helping with mine and RM's communicating.  We can converse, I'm not always wrong, all of the stuff I was worried about before.  And I think I can write a really great paper about...

OUR SHOW!!!!!!!!!  Visual AIDS chose  Steve and my's show, so it will be hectic to get everything pulled together in 4 months but it's a go!  I'm so excited.  And they're excited.  We're all excited.  So now not only do I think RM might not fire me, I might even get a job!  because...

I'M A FULBRIGHT FINALIST!!!!!!!!  Well, I think it's a finalist.  Is the finalist the round before you get it, or when you get it?  In any event I made it out of the US round, and I feel pretty good that I won't get rejected by Canada.  So yeah.  Dude.  Shitballz...

Life is good.  Enjoy the sun!  Now to freak out less and see my friends more...

no call.  and I'm not upset.  detachment achieved!  now I'm going to sleep...

 I was on the east coast for two weeks, visiting colleen and having meetings in new york for one and then seeing my dad and my highschool best friend, eva, for the other.  it was really cold.  and the airline broke my bike.  but it was fun.  and I got to see my grandmother on my dad's side, which is good.  not necessarily fun, but good.  one of my aunts and her two kids were there, and I always enjoy seeing them.  unfortunately my dad's other sister was out of town but one advantage of moving back to the east coast is being able to participate in all of the stuff they all do together.  I went to the beach since I pulled a hamstring and couldn't ride my bike in the mountains, and it was CRAZY windy.  so really it's been two weeks of a cycling comedy of errors.  now I am off to palm springs to hang out with  my mom.  really, I just want to relax in LA in a house where I can put my things away and have a routine and not have to be around my mother for extended periods of time.  but that's not what vacations are for...  

while I was in NY I had a great meeting with my friend steve and with the organization that asked us to submit an exhibition proposal, Visual AIDS.  Our proposal is due in a few days but the whole process has been really really fun.  cool to see new work, find out about new stuff, schedule some studio visits.  there's a guy in LA whose work I like a lot, that I don't know very well, who I am planning to have a studio visit with in the next week or so, and also AA Bronson, the last guy around from GI, said the show sounds interesting and he wants to talk about revisiting their AIDS piece.  everyone we talk to think it sounds interesting.  basically we want to think about love as a political tactic, with 3 sub interventions - into activism, into identity politics, and into the archive.  locating this within a show for an AIDS organization seems to make a lot of sense, given the role that AIDS activist art played in the cementing of identity politics, at least within the field of art.  in terms of work, we want to juxtapose contemporary and historical work to demonstrate the ways in which love functions in a kind of pre emergent way within the historical work to undermine liberal enlightement subjectivity, in a way that has been written over by the historicization of AIDS activist art within the rubric of identity politics.  we're thinking about GI, fierce pussy, and gregg bordowitz for the historical stuff, but are a bit all over the map in terms of contemporary work, other than a piece by luis camnitzer.  part of what we want to do is show how an engagement with race brings out the use of love as an activist tactic within the contemporary work.  so we're looking at a bunch of stuff but haven't settled on anything yet.  here's hoping it works out!  they have a budget for a publication and for speakers and a panel and gallery talks and stuff, so that all would be really fun.  and also good both for my resume and my peace of mind that I haven't fallen off the map of the art world in which I was circulating last year.  fingers crosses they pick us!  

wow it's been a long time since I've used this thing!  probably less important now that I see you all regularly and don't need to assuage any fears of my death by mugging in new york.  I seriously fear that sometimes...

but anyway the semester is getting close to done.  I am freaked out about my papers because my year in new york taught me I'm not a bad writer, I'm just a slow writer.  so in actuality I'm probably prematurely freaking out but still.  I want these things to be good, and I now have an idea of how long that takes.  and I'm nervous about having to do two papers at once again.  I need to get better at multi tasking.  

so I am proud of myself.  I just took a proactive step to deal with some drama, rather than sitting at home and stressing about a decision while trying to guess which choice will result in less drama.  we'll see what kind of email response I get.  

thinks with rm seem to be working out better.  I had a meeting last week that didn't end in frustration or tears, which is great.  it didn't help narrow down my 80 book dissertation list, but whatevs.  I read fast.  

I'm excited to be working on GI work for my next chapter too.  for both of my classes this semester I get to write about things from kind of the next part of their work, which is cool.  I'm a bit nervous because jack's paper seems a bit meta and I don't do well with meta, or I feel less comfortable with meta than with stuff.  but we'll see.  I keep telling myself - at least I have a clue.  

I've been able to ride a decent amount too.  the mountain bike trail near my house is pretty cool, and it's helping me get my skillz back.  I am not riding enough, but I'm riding consistently and that's better than it's been the last two years, it feels.  I am an impending springtime crit master!  it's been fun to get to know the new guys on the cycling team, and to reconnect with the old ones, too.  they all remind me that not all USC undergrads are morons.  

I am really going to miss theda.  we have certainly developed the love.  more than just the general I love dogs love.  the specific love.  we are open.  she likes to play with the puggles, guinness and stella, at the dog park.  I don't mind.  she also loved colleen.  I don't mind.  it doesn't even matter that the thing with guinness and stella seems special, since she doesn't give a shit about any other dogs.  we're just like that.  it was cold this morning.  when she sat on the bench and chewed the tennis ball, she also kept my hands warm.  why do I want to go to new york again?   

so I think about this time last year I wrote about how disillusioned I was after attending high holiday services at the temple I grew up in.  and here I find myself coming around to the high holidays again and being awfully thankful for the opportunity for a fresh page.  many things about the past year have been amazing, but it also has been pretty difficult.  my grandmother just died.  I am flying back to nyc wednesday after my fulbright interview (where I hope to sweet baby jesus they will read my new proposal, or the first 2 paragraphs of the new proposal which is really all that is different and not waste my time talking about things I've already changed) and then I come back the last flight out friday evening to be here for saturday's grant writing workshop.  when really all I want to do is read and ride my bike, get through the classes I'm taking this semester and put myself in the best possible position to maybe pass my exams.  

I realized after my last post that I have been a bit of a negative nancy on this thing for the last little while.  it's funny.  that's why I never kept a journal or anything growing up, because it seemed like an exercise just in dwelling in negativity.  so I though I should post about my last weekend, which was really great.  I went on 2 amazing bike rides and got to see a great friend from college I hadn't seen in a couple of years.  and this weekend too, one of my two best friends from college is here.  and earlier in the week, a medievalist friend (hi kris!) read my fulbright proposal, no, skimmed it, and said it looked good.  just that it was possible for her to skim it is great.  but no, I don't talk about those things, I talk about the bummer things.  maybe this is part of that therapy step where I don't just repress any negative feelings but I address them before they can infect absolutely everything?  or something.  in any event, yeah, I'm happy to take the lessons of this past year, realize all of the growth that I have been able to have, and get onto things that are a little easier.  or less complex.  or something.  which is probably not studying for exams...  so maybe the year after then?  good times...

it exists to remind you of all your faults and to enthusiastically point out all of your failures.  I was gone just long enough to have forgotten.  here's to shittastic days.  and to the crappiness that is grant application-ing. 

while I was looking forward to it more, Hamlet 2, though funny, is NOWHERE close to as good as Tropic Thunder.  go figure.  

fyi:

so they end up being stupid expensive because of more than ten bucks of convenience fees and whatnot, and the websites say that tickets are only available through ticketmaster and not at the box offices of the venues which I don't exactly believe but I am worried about the shows selling out so bought the stupid online tickets anyway...  but if anyone else wants to go we should meet up!

10/18 - Patti Smith at the Orpheum
10/19 Tegan and Sara at some place in Hollywood.

yay for concerts!  yay for, though each show with its own demographic, illicit celebrity lesbian sightings!  welcome back to los angeles, grasshopper :).

tomorrow morning I leave new york city to come back to los angeles.  I was supposed to leave on thursday but with having to go up to VT to help with my grandmother last weekend, I changed my plans and pushed back leaving a few days.  I am freaking out.

I am excited to go to LA, but I am worried about being lonely.  I love the classes that I am going to take and am excited to learn about something totally different with the class I am TAing.  I also have a number of projects to work on that will keep me busy.  and quite frankly my life has been too hectic and social of late.  the slowness will probably do me some good.  but still.  I have worries.  the one other thing I am psyched about is to get back on my bike!!  I am going to mountain bike every day the first month my mountain bike gets there :).  btdubs, amtrak shipping amazingness, 290 lbs of stuff, 175 dollars.  I shit you not.  amazing.  how I am moving myself back, fer sher.  though I upsed myself my bikes.  I want them sooner.  each counts as 100 lbs and you have a 500 lb max.  and I don't have a car that can pick up 3 bike boxes, 4 book boxes, and 5 suitcases all at once.  god only knows how much shit I'll have when I move back!  I am hoping just more books and one more bike.  I don't want to come back with much more in the clothes department then I left with.  oh and my photos I guess.  so I might have more things...  but I am looking forward to jettisonning a LOT, almost all of the stuff I've had in storage for the past years, except for the t shirts with sentimental value.  I also am not necessarily looking forward to getting back to always feeling stupid and have people tell me I'm a shitty writer.  but I also think I've grown a lot in the last year so maybe I will hear that less and when I do it will be less affecting. 

I also don't feel ready to leave ny.  I like the life I have built for myself here, although it is a bit too hectic.  I am very much looking forward to coming back, though I worry that the friends I have made will be gone or will have moved on/forgotten about me.  and I won't have time to do the go out all the time so people know me thing when I'm studying for my exams!  but I feel like I got such a short time here where I was actually happy this summer.  I got drafts of my fulbright and my article done, miraculously, but I also worry those will fall through the cracks.  or at least the article will.  I sent a draft of the article to RM but we all know what that means.  the fulbright stuff I have a meeting scheduled for on tuesday.  here's hoping it goes ok!  I am not looking forward to wrapping up this stuff and selling off my things in storage (anyone want anything, or want to help me get rid of it?) while starting my semester, but there's not much that I can do about it, that I can think of.  just do my best to get it all done!  today I went to moma to see some stuff and then out to queens to a performance there that friends of mine did, and I ran into a good ISP friend and it was nice to spend the day with him.  yeah, I just am not ready to leave.  I also have a bit of a thing going on that I am excited about and don't want to leave, but visits can happen.  that isn't the end of the world.  it will be good for me to sleep and get things done, which new things tend to block!  but that's another thing contributing to me not being ready to leave.  I am in fact almost totally physically ready to leave.  my bike's all packed up.  I have everything but my pjs, mr okapi, and the underwear I have on in a suitcase.  and the subletters have already dropped off a load of stuff!!  I am also a bit freaked out that I am doing a bit of an illegal thing having them in the place, but hopefully that will pass.  I just need to be sure to get my rent in on time :).  they are a nice couple. 

1 Patti Smith, Horses
2 Bloc Party, Silent Alarm
3 Le Tigre, Feminist Sweepstakes
4 Tegan and Sara, This Business of Art
5 Save's the Day, Can't Slow Down

(holy crap I'm a big ol' homo...)  (and when I get back to LA can someone teach me how to use bit torrent?)

IAGKOBOAMMAISTIASOMM Meme
I am making up a meme. I am calling it "I am getting kind of bored of all my music and I'm scared this is a sign of my mortality." Here's how we'll play. I'll list 5 really great albums, just off the top of my head. Then you post your albums. Then we all go on bittorrent and steal some music and feel better that old dogs can learn new tricks. It will only work if we all cooperate! Put on your prettiest cooperation hats! Please!

1. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
2. Pixies, Surfer Rosa
3. Jane's Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual
4. Laura Nyro, New York Tendaberry
5. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above

so vh1 is currently showing a program called the 40 hottest hotties of the 90s.  I am watching it.  worse is that I am flipping between it and randy jackson presents america's best dance crew.  I am ashamed.  and enthralled.  so anyway brad pitt was number 4.  to which I say are you CAPTAIN INSANE-O?!?  but I digress.  I was more thinking about what a beautiful specimen of humanity he is.  and I wondered, if I started some kind of, like, a lesbians in love with brad pitt club, would it be able to take over the world?  I think it might...  that is all.  

I have had the best week, despite the blip on Tuesday, and am happier than I have been in months and months.  Bless the sleeping.  It's funny to think about all the moments when I feel like I'm back to my old self, but I feel like right now I really am back to my old self.  well, not really, because I have gone through an amazing amount of growth in the past months.  growth I wouldn't have been able to go through without the insomnia-induced bad state. 

this better than ever-ness was epitomized by yesterday.  yesterday I had tickets to see this Patti Smith documentary that she was there for, it was advertised as a screening after which she would be doing a q & a.  I got there at around 7 for a 7.50 screening and was maybe 50 people back in line.  or something.  I have difficulty judging numbers above 10.  but yeah, people in NYC love their Patti.  anyway it was amazing.  I was totally star struck.  it's funny because at this point I know a fair number of kind of famous in the art world people.  and I keep my cool pretty well, most of the time don't even need to bother to keep my cool.  but it was tough here.  I was standing at the counter waiting for my popcorn and she was standing right there next to me talking to people (I had heard people talk about her being aloof and disinterested in talking to fans, and I just didn't have that experience at all) and I was kind of giddy.  The movie wasn't actually that great.  it was a congregate of amazing scenes and an interesting document of the development of the filmmaker's relationship with smith and in fact his developing filmmaking skillz.  but too long, no real coherence.  though proof that I could watch/listen to patti smith read the phone book.  the q & a after was kind of stupid, but again fun because she's really pretty funny!  affable, personable, etc.  so then afterwards jeannine had to use the bathroom so we were standing around in the lobby and smith was talking to people and signing autographs and I was obviously trying not to be a super geeky fan and soyoung comes up with film postcards and grabs me to go stand in the line to talk to smith.  I protested a bit, saying I didn't want to bug her and be that kind of fan and soyoung looks at me and asks if I want something signed and I responded with -- well if she's being bugged she'd walk away!!  so we wait and soyoung grabs my pen and talks with smith a bit about godard and then smith walks away.  but then she turns around and asks whose pen she has.  since it's mine I say so and ask her to sign my card and she does and we chat a bit and I wasn't an idiot.  I am pleased.  what's even cooler is that the pen was totally one of the ones that I stole from CAA in my quest there to replenish my pen supply.  so she returned what was obviously a free pen and now in my mind she is even more amazing. 

in other news, I have a job.  it's for the ancient asian art class, which isn't my first choice, but at this point a job is a job.  part of me is excited because I will be looking at cool shit and learning stuff, but at this point I might rather put my time into writing my prospectus or seminar papers or fulbright application or article or or or...  but whatevs.  I'll deal.  it's looking like I will teach 2 sections on mondays too which is perfect.  wednesdays and fridays not on campus!  woot!  two weekdays at the getty!  I want to get into the habit of that immediately. 

I also found a subletter for my place.  a really nice couple that moved here without stuff so is happy to be renting a fully furnished place and cool to leave the middle of may and it seems to be a pretty perfect match!  other than that they have a cat.  it's not the end of the world since I will get a dog so will eventually contribute to the animal hair in the apartment but I want a short haired dog to minimize that problem as much as possible! 

wednesday the dyke bar down the street played but I'm a cheerleader projected on the wall next door so we sit on the deck and watch movies and it was REALLY fun.  my good friends from 2 different circles came and we chatted some with strangers and it was a great night.  thursday I had dinner with an artist friend I hadn't seen in a LONG time and it was a great time.  yesterday was a hang out day with dar and willis, since willis is done with classes for a bit and dar took the day off.  I have 2 new favorite bars, both kind of dive-y but nice vibe to both of them and, as it turns out, both allow dogs. 

handball is on tv now.  it's pretty fucking awesome!!  I fear for my productivity...  cycling is on in a bit and when that's done I'm turning off the tv and leaving the house to avoid temptation. 

I packed up a bag yesterday, my fancy clothes and cold weather cycling stuff.  weird. 

1 - my friend can't sublet my apartment

2 - my friend I had planned on going to this concert with tonight flaked

3 - I might not have a job with my department this semester

the big news of the century is that I'm sleeping again!!  I feel reborn.  kind of.  actually I fall asleep at about 10.30 or so and sleep til 8 and I'm a little tired all day and do it all over again but it's probably just me catching up on sleep or even if it isn't I'll take the herbs making me tired until I get back into the normal swing of sleep again.  sleeping til 8 keeps me off my bike but I've kind of decided to hang up racing for the season.  I am so undertrained that I need to do a base to get ready for base!  a cycling joke that might not translate unless you train, sorry non-cycling friends.

I got the final ok for the china essay.  and I had a great lunch with a friend/mentor on tuesday.  it was great.  it's nice to have friends who are young enough to remember the anxiety of what the academy looks like from the outside but are inside enough to know which anxieties are ridiculous.  thursday I did some research at moma for richard and then had dinner with my dad.  it's been an unproductive week but right now I think the sleeping will make the next 2 weeks more productive.  because I need to crank out the fulbright and the article!

I am having more frustration with att.  the post office is giving me problems about delivering the phone that att refused to mail to me, would only mail to my mom since she's the primary name on our family plan.  we got this family plan before all the cell companies started their free calls within network deal.  now it's so stupid but some battles just aren't worth fighting.  the problem is I have a limited amount of time to mail them back the old broken phone.  they will get a call from me on monday. 

eva is up here visiting this weekend.  and of course there are all kinds of things happening I want to do.  hopefully she doesn't mind coming along.  I want to eke out all I can from my last few weeks here but I also want to finish this writing.  any suggestions? 

it has been a crazy month and a half.  two week trip to the west coast, come back here and ram jam out an essay from scratch on artists I haven't written about before and one work I haven't even seen, another trip to SF and back for more working on the essay since I scrounged myself another week to work, making it three weeks to write the thing instead of two, a trip to dc...  I finished the essay, which is the one on Simon Leung and Sharon Hayes, on Monday.  I had a bit of a fight with  my friend/the curator/editor about one point of grammar, about quoting something with bad grammar and putting [sic] in there to show it's intentional.  he didn't like it.  I'm not exactly sure why.  we worked it out.  he said he'd send it to the artist and see what we got back but there ain't no way we're going to hear back so it will just stay as it is without any sic or ellipses or anything.  you know, outside of the fact that I don't like the way that I write, I think it's a pretty good essay.  I think I said something interesting and new and now let's just home someone reads this damned triennial catalog!  now on to turning the talk into an article and also writing a fulbright application. 

I finally decided to see an acupuncturist about the horrible, horrible insomnia.  I didn't fall asleep during acupuncture.  she said that it wasn't what I need, that I need herbs to treat a deficient blood constitution and a hot head.  she did that amazing thing where she felt my pulse and could tell that I grind my teeth.  and at this point, having taken them for about a week, they don't even taste so bad.  though they still look like dirty water.  at least the consistency's not weird.

it's been great watching the tour de france.  depressing because I'm not training because I'm not sleeping, but fun.  this season is pretty much a wash at this point.  I just need to make my 15 races for my minimums to stay active with my team and focus on being good and excited for next year. 

the weekend before last was homo cycling friends' wedding.  it was amazing, particularly given they planned it all in 4 weeks!  ok, maybe 6.  they had worked on the whole marriage thing and even though I think it is evil it meant so much to them and they were so happy and of course I cried and it was great to see them be able to take advantage of something they'd worked so hard for.  I got shitcanned off red wine and somehow wasn't hung over the next day.  I attribute it to the dancing and drinking many glasses of water out of my wine glass once we got back to my friends' for the post reception dance party.  unfortunately I didn't get to ride with people because the airline broke my handlebars but a friend had a spare set that are PERFECT and alloy so I can TT now and I didn't get charged either way for the bike so all's well that ends well.  we'll see if I feel too beat up without carbon bars. 

after I got back from DC on monday I spent two days helping to arrange the program office, build shelves, be general helpful guy around town.  it was actually really great to spend time with the director and also the new assistant director.  both of them are super smart and it's nice to have a working genial relationship with smart nice folk.  the new assistant director has also written a lot of stuff that is really good, and is friends with richard, so it's doubley good to develop that relationship! 

I am psyched because the head archivist at the national gallery of canada is totally cool to support my application.  I just emailed jack to ask for a recommendation and it was super stressful.  I have no idea why.  of all of the wonderful advisors I've been able to surround myself with, she typically is the most supportive and most willing to take the time to figure out what I'm saying and engage with my terms, not with what she thinks I'm saying or her interests.  and she also is really great about conversing in relation to my knowledge, and make me feel like my thoughts are adequate even though I don't have a working ability to quote Derrida or whatever.  so I don't know why the anxiety. 

I bought my ticket back to LA today.  August 21.  there will be a party soon after!  stay on the lookout.  it's so soon.  it's so crazy.  I feel psyched to be going back to LA and sad about leaving NY.  these last days without the essay looming have been really great.  and I'm a bit anxious to go back to LA only knowing I'll be back in NY in not so long.  good news is a friend came to look at the place today and is likely to sublet if for the term of my time I'll be gone.  that's a great relief.  so now it seems all of the housing stuff is totally wrapped up.  yay.   I was bumming for a while after getting rejected from CAA and then the Yale queer cinema conference and then the LA queer studies conference, but I'm feeling better after getting this guangzhou essay to a point where it isn't so bad.  and in hindsight at least CAA and LAQSC aren't essential conferences for me at this point.  I'm not near the job market for CAA and I'd have to write papers from scratch for both.  Yale is just a bummer.  But smart people that I love didn't get in either so I blame it entirely on east coasters being bitter and hating on CA. 

so I am feeling better and so able to put off adopting a dog.  for now.  it didn't help that the last time in SF meg and I went to the spca!  not smart.  so fun. 

It's Tour Time, Baby!!  Which I can't watch because I have this essay to crank out...  It's finally coming along, this essay, though of course I am not yet done with the first artist and I'm almost at the word limit.  Ah well.  Get the thoughts on paper, and then condense through editing...

Yesterday's stage was sweet!  Valverde's acceleration over that last 200m was amazing.  Something to watch again with last night's insomnia.  I even took a melatonin and couldn't sleep!  the plan might be not to try to sleep before midnight.  it seems to happen when I try to go to bed before midnight.  so maybe a midnight bed time and a melatonin is the trick.  though I'm not sleeping today until I finish this essay.  it isn't the end of the world if I have to take today off and then do today's training tomorrow. 

I think I might be onto something with this essay, finally.  how the artists' musical references reinforce the politics of queer sociality.  here's hoping...

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

So I just live with my ipod on shuffle so I have to list mostly bands that I get particularly psyched about when they come up. 

1 Patti Smith "Land"
2 Bloc Party
3 Santogold
4 Le Tigre
5 Weezer
6 Flobots
7 MIA

and I don't know what tagging is...  well clearly I know what it is but I have no idea how to do it.  sorry to break the chain!

so those of you who know me know that I think that the primary pride parade is evil.  so you will be amused to know that I went to it.  kind of.  it went through my typical cycling route home from the GW bridge and I didn't think about that so I had to wait for a break in the parade to get across the street and on my merry way home.  eva and I got caught in a torrential downpour and let me tell you that while the pretty boys in tightie whities is kind of nice when they're dry, once they get wet it's a whole different ball game.  *shudder*

I was actually a little bummed not to have made it to any of the dyke or trans things but with a friend in town and being so tired from all of the traveling and then getting up early to race it was really just nicer to stay in Brooklyn.  and also all of the rain!  but sunday after we got back we tried this vegan restaurant I've been wanting to try and it was great and then I found these green adidas that I've been wanting on sale no less and tried them on only to see that they also come with yellow laces to go with the yellow stripes!  did I mention that they were on sale...  so now with the blue vans I got in UT I have two new pairs of shoes.  which is funny seeing as it's been a loooong time since I had any pairs of shoes.  when it rains it pours, I guess.

I am freaked out about this essay I need to write for a triennial catalog that's due in 10 days.  they didn't give us much notice.  which is a little annoying, and they're not paying us either, but publishing is publishing, to a certain extent, I think.  any tips for writing catalog essays?  I am writing about 3 artists I've never written about either, which makes it a lot more work.  though I'm writing about queer politics so at least the framework is familiar.  so much for trying to work outside of the queer thing.  damn you CAA ritual panel! 

I had insomnia last night so couldn't get up to train :(.  I will see what I can eke out in the heat but now the air conditioner's on so that it doesn't happen again!  I look forward to getting past whatever it is in my life that causes this and being able to go back to being a champion sleeper.  I slept fine on every variety of surface in LA, UT, and SF...  stupid new york.