I suppose things in my life have been nominally interseting of late, so thus it is time to update. The most recent point of interest is that Friday, instead of working, I took a day off and switched Friday's work day to work on Saturday. So, instead of working Friday, I ran some errands. First of which was to get up as early as possible and make my way to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Department of Much Violence. Dank Milk Vault. Anyway, that wasn't especially exciting, considering it involves standing in lines, having a light flashed in your face and, with the temporary blindness, having someone ask you if the picture on the computer is an acceptable likeness. "Yeah, that's fine, whatever." And then, after standing in lines and being assaulted by a light, you sit in the waiting chamber of woe (which is actually the same room, just a part that has a bunch of benches) as you wait for your number to arrive on a electronic board to inform you which register to go to and  make your purchase.

On the way home I made a stop at CVS and the deli to pick up some black poster boards and some crap to eat; I hadn't had any breakfast that morning. While drinking one of my purchased items, the favored strawberry milk, I knocked it over. I've spilled an exaggerated number of things in the last weeks, and I'm hoping Clay will come home soon and start spilling things so I don't have to. Clay spilled his sprite some weeks back and finally knew what it was like to be me, to know the agony of thoughtless idiocy. After that ordeal, I made my way out to the post office on Clay's account to mail out some small packages. Essentially another line that required me to stand in it. I got and started organizing my work into a portfolio for the Cooper Union's open house/portfolio day. I fumbled around with my stuff in a hurried fashion and worried a bit more than I should have, but a huge amount of relief came when I checked when the information about the open house again. I felt a lot better when I found that it was at 3:30 instead of what I had thought, 3:00. Anyway, I did a bit of cropping with my work and pasted them on black poster board. Myself and my portfolio got on the subway and made our way to Cooper Union, the land of destiny. Or maybe not destiny, we'll see.

The open house itself was pretty interesting, and the school has a rather attractive environment. Sixty to sixty-five students are admitted each year, and each student that makes it in gets a full scholarship after their work is scrutinized by most (or all?) members of the faculty. A student giving a tour made a crack about how, when he walked into an office of faculty strangers, they said hello and addressed him by his first name. It kind of freaked him out, because he didn't know them, but they had looked at his work and knew who he was long before he started schooling. The community, because it is small, seems pretty tight-knit and friendly. Everyone knows each other and most are willing to go out of their way to help you out. The portfolio review portion, which I nearly worried myself sick for, wasn't quite as bad as my body had expected. The guy looking at my work was really helpful and had a lot to say about my work, and about the drawing of Paris in particular. He went at great lengths about spatial relationships of objects in space. In that piece I took a highly detailed yet some what flat approach. I got shape and shading right, but forgot to consider light and form. After loads of thought concerning that, hopefully my work will start improving with that in mind.

Sometimes I imagine a conversation where someone asks me what my interests are and I answer, in a deep voice, "Dark, unspeakable things like ponies, and butterflies, and rainbows, and bunny rabbits." I guess it's not as funny as I thought.

Work and sleep. It's my new life and mantra! I do squeeze some other stuff in there sometimes, though. Even better than sleep, though, is napping. I do that a lot too. Last night I got a lot of sleep, for the sake of catching up on it and attempting to be rested for my day at the Museum of Modern Art with Skye. I got down there around 10:40, and, while waiting for her, I hung out at the St. Thomas cathedral. Really quite beautiful and peaceful. I read a bit of the Bible they had there, which was quite pleasant familiar reading, not to mention a good use of time. I migrated to the St. Patrick's cathedral for a moment, but it was crowded and really bright. The St. Thomas cathedral is more my ambience, since it's dimly lit and nicely quiet. Skye didn't arrive until about one o'clock. Apparently she convinced herself that one o'clock was a better time than eleven o'clock, and that she should wake up at eleven instead of arriving at eleven. I felt pretty stupid for wasting my time and being half-way stood up.

Hanging out the museum was nice. For some reason I was in a somewhat dour mood, however. I have a tendency to make fun of modern art, generally. Some of it, admittedly, is really ugly. Skye and I both agree that painted quasi canvas sculture is just ugly. And it's just ugly for the sake of being ugly, too. Modern art seems to be a bit of a crap shoot, at times. To me, either it's beautiful and genius, or it isn't. If you're not a genius, copy a genius, and you'll get by. I think I'm not modern enough for Modern. Anyway, modern consists of juxtaposition for the sake of satire. I then determined that Post-Modern is Modern times two while taking a shit on Modern. Excriment on Modern was derived from the threat of urinating on the elevator. I think I had a better time sitting in the Cathedral reading the Bible. I skipped the chapters that had to do with genealogy, because that's just too esoteric. Being at the Cathedral during the mini-service with a whole of six people attending was really boring, though. Plus, it killed the silence.

After a good romp about the museum Skye and I parted and I walked uptown for a while. I walked all the way from 53rd to 86th street. 86th street is my usual bus stop from work. Sweet, sweet familiarity.

So start replacing the word "Christmas" with "Consumption." I think it's time for some swashbuckling right now. Time to swashbuckle. I came up with a cool Modern idea for an art series: Non-Functional Functional Objects. For instance, a chair made of oven or stove coils that is constantly red hot. The chair refuses to let you sit! Also, chairs that are way out of reach, oversized toothbrushes with metal needles and knives for brisels. There are so many possibilities.

Edit: Because I don't mind shitting on my own update, I'll add some stuff that happened today. Today I woke up early and made good use of the morning by doing nothing and getting that out of the way. I then went out with Craig and Ben to a little place on the corner and had a lunch with them. After that, I went to Central Park where I drew for a while. I really found my niche, after a failed attempted at a drawing, when drawing a tree with brown pencils. It is coming along well, and I'm thinking about giving it some more work. After that, I came home and drew some more with the brown pencils. I did a couple of sketches of Craigy's skull that he has for medical school, a portrait of Ben, and a final drawing of the skull that took about an hour and a half. Finally, I've had a good art day! It's been a while.

Clark just arrived from Chicago, he's here for a little while to audition and then go back. He's doing well, which is good. I need to show him my stack of art that I've been working on since he's been gone.

To all the fine folks at BYU:

JESUS SAVES.
JESUS SHAVES.

For the first time in a long time, I went running. It actually went better than I thought it would. I felt good and didn't take it too hard, yet still got a good solid run in. Ben and I went together, which made it more pleasant, as running alone makes it much less enjoyable, and him and I shared a good reasonable pace. Ben has been really good company of late, and I'm really appreciating him being around. He cooks for us every once and a while, and has cleaned the house that last two Sundays. Ben, you rule.

Yesterday I went to a party with Skye. I tried to make up for the lost time by working on my art project early in the morning before I had to go, and worked for about two hours. Awful how I have this much free time during the weekends and yet choose not to work. The party was pretty fun, I had a relatively good time, though I'm not much of a party person. A good portion of the people there liked to play World of Warcraft and were in the back room for a while playing, and I joined them to watch for a while. Funny how at ease I feel with gamers. One of the guys we met was interesting, only because he was typical and normal that he was different. He fulfills many a male stereotype; none too sentimental, just a really straightforward guy. I played two rounds of Scrabble at the party, which was quite enjoyable except that I got last place both games. I just got dealt badly, really. The first game the letters I pulled were all vowels. The second game, things just didn't work out for me. I was getting pretty tired too. I still love Scrabble, though. We watched a bit of Sin City, which seems really interesting, but I only had a shallow viewing and ought to get my hands on it for myself.

Skye and I went back to her house and I slept there, since it was so late and I didn't want to be out any longer than I was already. Admittedly, I was really quite frightened by being out and going through Queens and Brooklyn at two in the morning. Residual trauma from being robbed, I suppose. Plus, keeping on your toes that late at night is important; having a friend nearby is always good too.

The other day Ben and I were talking about Martha Stewart, because he actually works for her in some fashion and he's met her before. Anyway, apparently she has a bunch of different magazines. All kinds of Martha Stewart that I cannot remember, but after Ben said "Body and Soul" I said that Martha Stewart owned every part of our being and that she "died for our sins." Oh Martha, how nice.

As part of my musical education, I'm listening to David Bowie and The Beatles. I'm thinking that this is a good idea.

So I finally finished this project I've been doing at the museum. I've been working on drawing the statue of Ugolino And His Sons for a while now just during my lunch breaks and after work on Fridays. I also finished a really great rendering of Paris at the museum a while ago that took about twenty-five hours. This one only took about seven hours or so and is more a very finished sketch than it is a full project.

I've rediscovered Don Hertzfeldt. His work is totally genius.

I think complex people like things to be simple and simple people like things to be complex.

Because I implored Clark to update his Xanga for once, and he did, I feel the need to update mine, as it's only fair. Plus, it's been a while. First, I think I'll talk about what's been going on just during the long weekend.

So I asked off Saturday at Details so I could get a lot of art work done, as it is "crunch time" in my part of the universe in terms of getting art projects done. So Friday I worked for two and half hours on my drawing of a statue of Paris at the museum. Then Saturday I showed up for more punishment from noon to close, getting in about seven and a half hours of work. Thus far I think I've worked about sixteen hours of work on that project. So, after all the work, Sunday I planned on staying home and working on my cityscape project. Unfortunately I was having a weird emotional/psychological day that wouldn't let me get to work on my stuff. A good part of my day was spent napping, too. Skye gave me a copy of a book of Joel-Peter Witkin's photography, which has been long since copied and cliched in terms of style of content. The book still served to give me a major emotional and intellectual impact. Witkin's photography is really incredible and really difficult. Fortunately each photograph had text that explained what was going on and offered some light in terms of the meaning of the work. So after that I took another nap, which probably wasn't the best idea, since Witkin's photography is wrought with disturbing images. That and while napping I suffered from a painful bought of sleep paralysis. Then I went to bed later and suffered some more painful sleep paralysis.

So finally after a really shibby Sunday I woke up Monday and actually got to work. The pencil work for the cityscape has been really tedious, and there's still more to do, though most of the ground work has been finally laid down. Anyway, to get around the boredom that is outlining with a pencil, I started to do some coloring, which is going relatively well. I'm actually getting somewhat sick of the project as a whole, but coloring did help me get along a little better because it actually felt like I was getting something done. Where one hour of penciling renders a foot of lines, an hour of coloring renders square inches of "finished" work. Anyway, this art talk is boring. Oh yeah, my sculpture with Paris the friendly statue is looking really good and is near completion. One more weekend and I'll have it done, probably.

So how are things in general? Well, they're interesting. Of late, I've been living in fear, somewhat, and with one foot in the grave. I'm convinced that I'm just going to get killed, and Skye alludes that I might deserve to die because I'm a closet bigot. I'm not a closet bigot, I'm just scared of black people in Harlem. It's a reaction I cannot control. But, with all this inner fear and turmoil and all my free time at work, I tend to contemplate where these feelings come from and try to reprogram or at least rethink why I have some bigotry in me and consider all sorts of social things. Have I talked about this already somewhere? Anyway, I'm starting to understand that certain cultural and behavioral aspects of the inhabitants of Harlem has less to do with color and more to do with the culture of relative poverty, possible lack of education, and class distinctions. Anyway, my apologies to Skye for being a bad person.

Speaking of Harlem, I keep thinking about designing somewhat of a campaign to encourage people of my part of town to respect the city and not litter. I'd probably just try to get donations from local businesses and then make flyers and maybe get some people together to put up the flyers throughout Harlem. Sounds like a half-baked quasi-Eagle Scout project to me, but hell, people litter sometimes and I feel the need to instill some sort of desire in the people to not through shit on the ground. However, I'm kind of lazy, so it's hard to say whether this would ever go over.

And now for some anecdotes:
Forgive his fashion folly for he is frankly fornicatable.
The Baby Mullet: The Mullet that doesn't know better.

That's all for now. Feel free to ask questions, or die trying.