Saw a band called Ga'an last night.  They're amazing.  I took some pictures - I'll put them up soon.

Now I'm drinking sake and reviewing life's most notable recent events, last to first:

That's the end of my notable things.  I haven't been having many adventures lately.  We threw parties at Fishmarket these last two weekends, and they were the usual good times.  But I haven't gone exploring, and that makes me unhappy.  I haven't had a good conversation which also involved walking long distances for a few weeks.  I haven't been deliriously happy since some time mid-last-week, and that makes me unhappy.  I feel like I'm coasting, and I hate that.

Temporary solution:  I am forming a costumed Jenga league and tournament based loosely on the luchador tradition but with more drinking.  If you'd like to get in on that and you live in Atlanta, lemme know.  We're having a preliminary practice tournament this Monday at 9pm.  Bring tequila.

* I don't think we've been seeing each other more than two or three weeks, so I was sort of expecting this.

I'm trying to take the time to make friends with people right now. It's hard. You forget how much of a process friendship can be. I've been meeting huge numbers of great people over these last few months, and we're friends on Facebook, and we say "hey" and talk about our projects when we meet around town... but we don't argue with each other, we don't laugh at private jokes, and the silences are uncomfortable.

So lately I've been really making an effort to connect with the people who interest me; I stay through the superficial part of the conversation, I try and build a lasting connection, a shared picture of who both myself and the person I'm talking to are.

Unrelated, here is a picture of me taking a picture, photographed by scary_mary , who is mysterious.



Please pay special attention to my massively gnarled knee muscles. If my body was a brick house, 80% of the bricks would be in my knees and 10% would be in my calves. If I got in a kicking contest with a mule, I would win.

Recognize.

PS: I heard a person using the phrase "REAL TALK" in a conversation the other day.  They weren't being ironic.  I was terribly impressed.

My new intern* sent over a transcript of the interview I did last Friday with Vicki Kelly, who recently organized a really huge art show in a section of Atlanta most people consider the ghetto.

Once you read this excerpt, I think you'll understand my hesitation to let anyone see these interviews until they've been heavily edited:

Ben: Um, yeah so, I guess, can you tell me where you’re coming from just in relation to the fourth ward art world first?

Vii: From the …uh. Well the old fourth ward is kind of you know everybody there’s my family and I’m really far away from, so I spend a lot of time there. I have the businesses are very important to me there so I wanted to bring my people and more culture to the area, and … yeah…you know bring some money to the area, and just like let people be aware of the … [stammers] nobody really knows what the old fourth ward is. Nobody knows. When I say the old fourth ward, it’s like people automatically assume like it’s a horrible place and you shouldn’t even drive through it. So it’s, just a matter of getting more people out there. Because its,.. what fourth ward I believe is can be an epitome of Atlanta, in a sense. It’s where you can go in Atlanta to experience every single level of Atlanta. You’ve got like rich yuppie people and you’ve got a whole bunch of hipster bikester… biker riders because you’ve got like the bikepack dunks, you know? Its um..not a lot of and [laughs]…then you’ve got like crack heads and people asking you for money constantly and you can get your car broken into and, I don’t know. But at the same time you can find opportunity there that I think is in one of those little sections of Atlanta, that’s easier to find.

Ben: Is there a... just to be clear that the old fourth ward is sort of harmless, chip of the card? Like the structural part between Ponce and …Memorial?

Vii: I would say, I think it ends at DeKalb. I’m pretty sure it ends from Ponce and DeKalb. Maybe North to DeKalb. Nah, I think its Ponce and DeKalb.

Ben: And the piques sort of weird too, I mean that’s an area with a lot of history, I guess. A lot happened there too.

Vii: Like Martin Luther King

Ben: Yes. Everything. you know and then..leaders from right there.[had trouble listening to it]

Vii: It’s the most visited state park, I believe in the country. Someone had told me that once, but I’m not quite sure. [Laughs]. Yeah, there’s a ton of history there.



I've included this picture from one of my most recent cat washing photoshoots as a chaser to that long block of text.

* Yay!!!!

A day in my life picture/narration thingy below.

Link to post on the ADIML community.

.

( 56 pictures. )

Dear Piedmont Park dogpark:  You are great.

Dear moms with facial piercings and awesome tattoos:  You are great.

Dear dogs in casts:  You are great.

Dear Piedmont Park bridge with amazing iron and mosaic work:  You are great.

Art stuff Friday night, concert, and weirdo hat party filled w/ really young skate kids.

( More... )

There's this coffee shop I go to, and it is one of my favorite places.  Mainly because it serves booze too - I don't buy booze there because it's so expensive, but, for some reason, no matter what time of the day it is, half the customers at the shop do buy booze, and are consistently druuuuuuuuunk.

I've walked into the place at 11am, stepped over shattered beer bottles, and ordered my huge ass coffee while hearing a guy explain "I'm not that drunk, I'm just clumsy because I'm not used to drinking and riding a bicycle at the same time."  Who decides to track stand while drinking booze WHILE ALSO inside a very narrow bar?  The customers of the most awesome coffee shop in the world, that's who.

So it's a great place to talk to hilariously malfunctioning drunk hipsters, it's a great place to eavesdrop on conversations, and it's a fun playground to show up at after getting a good drunk on.  

Plus, on Tuesday nights they show old Japanese samurai movies.

If the day you have decided to document turns out to be uneventful, please do not post it.

On Monday, I sat in front of my laptop all day. I kept a box of cheerios to my left and an energy drink to my right so I wouldn't have to get up to make food. Later that night, I spent several hours watching movies. That's all I did for the entire day, movies and writing. Nothing in that day was worth photographing - so I didn't.

Please, take a lesson from my remarkable self-restraint.

Here is a handy rubric for deciding not to post A Day In Your Life:

• Do you use the words "typical," "uneventful," or "boring" in your introduction to the post?
• Do you have more than three photographs of a laptop, cell phone, or television screen?
• Is there ever a greater than two hour gap between photographs?
• Are the only characters in your entire day a boy/girl friend, parents, or household pet?
• Are you taking more than three pictures at a concert? Are you documenting a road trip?
• Is this "a random day in your life?"

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, please do not post your day to the ADIML Community.
-

So, every time I post to the ADIML Community, I get all enthusiastic about humanity and re-add the group to my friends list. Then, I start seeing several posts a day that make me want to kill myself*, and I quickly remove ADIML from my friends list. The above letter is my attempt to be more constructive in honor of Obama's upcoming innauguration.

* not actually. Rhetorically, y'know?

( What I Wrote at Five Thirty This Morning... )

-----------------------

I'm out of my ADD drugs, and it's been making these last three days difficult.

Ran into Betsy on the Critical Mass ride, and we had a good conversation about being a atheist-who-was-raised-Jewish on Christmas.  I meant to ask her about what she was working on - last time we spoke she had just finished designing the cover for a new issue of a magazine we were making with some other Atlanta art people.  The cover was an old board, pasted over with signs and graffiti, which she'd written on by burning letters with a blow torch.  It was a fantastic effect.

I've also been watching a lot of X-Files because one of the roommates has the first two seasons on DVD.  The show is amazing.  I watch it, and it's so entirely alien to the way TV is now, or the way people are now.  And only 14 years old.

One problem with trying to rehabilitate a space using only found materials - it is very hard to get your hands on good paint.  Surprisingly, it is hardest for us to locate white paint, as that stuff is almost never thrown out. 

I'm painting my bedroom red, white, and blue.  For patriotism.  Sergio is drawing drafts for some fish murals.  Samantha just covers everything with that lime green paint.

And we have kittens now!  They've got big bobbly heads.  I will post pictures of them ASAP.

I've drunk way too much coffee today.

A few shots from a show this weekend, with notes:

From 156 Show

( More photo!!! )

I'm trying to write about this puppet show I saw the other night, but I know nothing about puppetry or theatre. Dang.

And, I guess I'm getting ready to go see AIDS Wolf in a bit? Or not. I dunno, my hearts not really into it. Or maybe it's all this caffeine. Either way, I have a feeling the show's gonna make me feel really ansy. And I will wish I had brought something to drink.

You know what I would like to see? Beer sold in the big 500ml flasks you can get at liquor stores.  Ideally, good beer (also, good beer tends to be higher proof, so more bang for your volume, which is an important consideration when practicing flask-fu).  I mean, some times I want to have something to sip on at a concert or something, but I am not in the mood to drink straight whiskey or sherry.  I should pitch this idea somewhere or other.  It is a concept whose time has come.

But the pictures should be good.

If you'd ever like to see some of what I've been snapping at concerts and around town, feel free to stop by my picasa album.  There is one album on there which is not mine - the one labeled Food Not Bombs.  (A photography student borrowed my camera for a project he was working on - he's used to film cameras).

Anyway, Tuesday night was fantastic.  I was calling everyone, and it felt like everyone was calling me.  I got a call from a friend in New York, and I asked if she was inside because all the music was so loud.  She said "No, I'm in HARLEM!"  For some reason, hearing that made me really happy.  I guess I was just thinking about how much New York's changed since I first visited before 9/11.  And then I was thinking about all these phone calls flying around, and I realized it was the exact opposite of the hours after 9/11, when entire phone networks shut down under the weight of a million "are you okay?" calls. 

But this time, the question was "can you believe this?"

Sitting at a cafe on Edgewood, blowing one of my gift certificate prizes on things which eat my brain and rot my teeth.

There are some middle-aged white guys sitting on the couches next to me with very good looking briefcases. They are discussing:

1) opening a new restaurant.

2) whether one of the guy's frequent post-midnight calls to an employee are grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit.

-

I'm considering getting into a fight with this guy.  Over a girl.

Yes, batshit insane... but strangely tempting.  I doubt it will happen.  In my (second-hand) experience, it is very hard to start a fight.  Also, most fights, once started, do not come anywhere near a satisfying exchange of blows.  They generally become two combatants rolling around on concrete - at most, the worst damage done is a face smashed into the ground (never very hard) or some scraping punches to the ribs.  I haven't been in many fights, but I find that the most pressing concern is keeping clothes clean and glasses unsmashed.

Anyway, there's no particular reason this would happen.  I think I'm entertaining the possibility because I'm annoyed that I've put myself in this situation in the first place.  Getting in a series of fights with an imaginary opponent is a good metaphor for: "Ben, don't be fucking retarded."

-

I've been paying special attention to the way my bike handles since the crash, trying to figure out what sort of damage it took, and I finally realized it today: my handlebars and fork (the thing the front wheel is attached to) have gone slightly askew.  That explains why I've been feeling unbalanced lately.  And, coincidentally, this makes my drunken, stopped-by-police-for-running-reds, robot-armor-wearing second place win much more amazing.

My parents are traveling to Turkey, so I've been spending most of my time trying to avoid telling them how long they should stay in Cappadocia.  I don't know guys, stick around until you get bored.  There's giant stone penii in every direction - you should be happy for a few days.

The bike's falling apart more than usual.  My cassette teeth are so worn down that a few of them are more round than square.  And somethings wrong with my right shifter - I think I can probably fix that.

Halloween parade yesterday, and Halloween things afterwards.  It was fun.  I realized that I shouldn't be around my musician friends when they've got instruments.  I realized for the millionth time how much I love October.  I realized that drunk people love bathrooms even more than they love shots, traffic cones, hamburgers, or promiscous members of their favored sex.

I got tricked into going on a date Friday night.  It was late, and I was confused, calling around to see who was still up at 10:40 pm.  I reached an old high school friend I hadn't talked to in months, they said come meet them, I did, and was introduced to this girl they'd been trying to get me to meet all those months ago.  It was pretty awkward (surpise!) - The girl and I are sitting next to each other, there's three other people at the table, and the whole time I get the idea that my "technique" is being closely inspected.  I wanted to leave very very badly after ten minutes, but I didn't want to insult the girl or my friends, so I invited the girl to come for a walk, which ended up being a bad idea, as the walk lead to my place, and a long drawn out morning the next day, and probably another week or so of journal entries along these lines.

I'm planning a Halloween pre-party on the day of.  It will be at my apartment from 6 until 9, there will be weirdo foreign horror movies (with an emphasis on Lucio Fulci's ripoffs of American zombie movies), hunch punch colored orange, and probably a smoke machine.  Maybe sandwiches too.

I am trying to find a way to organize all the parties and stuff happening over these next two weeks.  Halloween night is especially bad - Critical Mass, my pre-party, an alleycat at 9, the alleycat afterparty, Black Lips at Star Bar, and then like three different house parties.  I would like to try and be at all these things.  I would also like to get fairly trashed and makeout with a girl dressed as a sexy cat (this is my goal for most nights, but October is the only month it actually happens).

Oh, and a camping trip sometime in the future, but inside the city.  I'm thinking along the beltline - there's a few really nice spots that are far enough away from people that campfires can be set up with no problem.

Work still sucks, still looking for a new job.

Haven't felt any real inclination to eat lots of acid for three weeks now, which may or may not be a good sign.  Though, now that you mention it, I currently do want to eat lots of acid.

Whatevs.  I'm gonna go be in a pillow fight.

"Hey, good to meet you - I'm Ben."
"Oh... yeah!"

This response freaks me the fuck out. I don't want people knowing who I am before I know who they are. It makes me try and think of all the memorable things I may have done while drunk/drugged... was it spending five minutes figuring out how the patio gate worked? Trying to convince a certain pixie-esque* keyboardist I could only communicate with her through osmosis? Pushing bouncers out of the way so I could take a photo of something?

I'd like to think it's because lots of Atlanta people are reading my writing, but I have a feeling that's not it, as informal quizzes show me to be much more recognized as a photographer.

Maybe it's a sign.

* can anyone point me to that essay about annoying pixie-girls in movies?

"This threw me for a loop. You'd think there were other devices in the vehicle that he might have employed more effectively if his goal was not to run into me, but apparently by simply sounding an alarm he thought he was doing me a favor. After a brief exchange that was actually fairly civil (apart from the fact that every sentence finished with the word "dumbass") I reflected upon the incident. An then it hit me. Some people are actually so stupid that they think horns make things happen. They actually believe their car comes with a magic button in the middle of the steering wheel that can change reality. Suddenly, I became aware of the constant chorus of beeping all around me--the kind that's always present in a big city, and the kind you simply tune out like you do crickets in the country. In every case, I realized the drivers stuck in traffic all around me were using their horns not to communicate information but simply in a vain attempt to change what was happening to them. It was as though they thought sitting in congestion was a bad TV show, and that by honking they might somehow change the channel and be transported to a clear roadway. I'm not sure where this notion comes from. I don't think there's ever been a traffic jam where somebody beeped and the thousands of others also caught in the traffic jam suddenly realized, "Hey, he's right, we can all just go!" and it was over."

From today's Bike Snob NYC.

This is a bit of a long shot, but do any of you know of a functioning bike co-op in Charleston? I want to fix up the bike I'm borrowing from my hosts, but I need some specialty tools, a new (or gently used) set of brakes, and a spare seat post.

Other things - Charleston continues to be way awesome, and has actually improved since Adam left. The people I'm staying with are nice, every stranger I meet in the city is nice, and even the drivers are nice. I sleep next to a pair of bunnies at night. They are also nice.

Are you on couchsurfing yet? Why not? I am.



I would like a ukelale.

Oh, and I finally started working on that article for Southeast Performer.  I think it's going to be way better than the normal band spotlights they publish, and my editor will be FLABBERGASTED.

We Don't Rave with Good Dancers

Chick: What are you doing this weekend?
Guy: I'm going to a passover rave.
Chick: What the hell is a passover rave?
Guy: That's where we have a Seder, then drop ecstasy and go dancing.
Chick: That is so awesome. Can I come?
Guy: You're not Jewish.

--Waiting Room, Pacific College of Acupuncture Clinic

Overheard by: Colleen

via Overheard in New York, May 9, 20


I bet I wouldn't be an atheist if I had been born in New York.

From a 1 star Amazon review of Alice In Wonderland:

"I think the book Alice in Wonderland is a very good book. While it can be confusing at times, it makes you wonder. For example, when they were talking to the turtle, it didn't make very much sense. Also, the trial over the pastries, it was very idiotic, and if that trial happened today it would get thrown out. Lastly, at the hare and mad hatter's on going tea party, it was very senseless. The author's use of language was very unlike our language today. For example, when she said so many times the words, "shot up", it sounds English or something. The book has this tone a lot throughout it. Maybe the author has English back round. But it was in very easy to understand language, accept for the times people were talking non-sense. The main character is Alice. At sometimes she can seem clueless, and go on rambling like while talking with the turtle. She even pointed it out her-self. A lot of her decisions during the book make no sense. Like to just walk off with that little pig at the Duchess' house. And why would she follow the rabbit to an unknown land to begin with. There was many times where she confused me sometimes. Like when she talked with the caterpillar and said she wasn't the person she started as at the beginning of the day. One thing of the book I did not understand was the theme. In fact I did not see a theme. The only thing close to a theme was a girl trapped in an unusual world, with no way out. One other thing I didn't see in the book was a plot. The entire book was was a girl going with the flow and seeing where the adventure took her. The cat that kept disappearing and appearing even asked her why did she need directions to somewhere, if she didn't know where she was going. In my opinion this book had no effectiveness. It also had no meaning. It had no moral, and nothing to learn from it. So I think the book was very pointless, and just something to read for fun.'"

A different reviewer, on Borges' Labyrinths: Selected Stories:

This book is filled with short stories of bad boring science fiction. References, complete with page numbers, to non existent books only add to the tedium

Nabokov's Ada:

This is a masturbatory fantasy. Nabokov has created his dream world: The United States and Russia are one country and everybody who's anybody speaks French, too; World War I never happened, let alone World War II; and Van Veen has a lifelong love affair with his cousin Ada (actually his sister), full of passion, yearning, intellectual stimulation, and the thrill of the forbidden, plus a soupcon of jealousy provided by Ada's full sister Lucette, who wants Van to love her, too, and finally kills herself for want of him, spicing Van's life with a touch of sweet remorse. Oh - I forgot to mention the voyeuristic lesbianism when Lucette describes her own affair with Ada, and their threesome.
If this isn't the stuff of your dreams, you may find Nabokov's mandarin literary style a little heavy for the subject matter, like a g-string made of real cloth of gold.

Lolita:

All this hoopla about Lolita made me curious enough to read it. Don't tell me this is about love. This pedophile clearly stalks young girls. Maybe his first true love could never blossom, but to carry that feeling throughout his life screams psychological problems, not love.

Crying of Lot 49:

Lot 49 was introduced to me by an English professor at the university I attend. I can tell anyone that it is the worst novel (fiction for that matter!) that I have ever read. I enjoy reading fiction and I cannot believe that this novel could ever be popular. P's sentences ramble on and on as if he was in a state of mass hysteria or a drug induced coma when he was writing. Not only does this novel not make sense, I have to agree with another reader that it is not in the least bit interesting. I WILL BE FORTUNATE IF I NEVER HAVE TO READ ANOTHER BOOK BY PYNCHON AGAIN IN MY LIFE!

What a strange New Years.

I got over to Jeremy and Jose's place a bit after four, and got busy trying to fall asleep in one of those reclining chairs.  Jeremy puttered around and watched tv, but went up stairs to sleep by maybe 5.  As always, I had trouble getting to sleep, and it was worse because I could see Jose sitting in a chair by the window a few feet away from my own chair.

His body was bowed forward like he had fallen asleep, but he was holding his cellphone in his hand, and he could have been sitting there motionless for the last half hour, just staring at the dark screen.

At that point, I realized the bottle of gin sitting in front of him, which had previously been half-full, was now empty.  Worrying that he might be dead, I squirmed around and eventually emerged from under my blankets miracously wearing pants.  Jose didn't move the first times I taped his shoulders, so I grabbed his cheeks the same way my grandma used to squeeze mine when she wanted to exclaim something like "look at the punim on this one!"

He didn't exactly wake up; it was more like stepping away from a meditative state.

I asked if he was alright, and he said that he had talked to his ex that night.  I didn't know what to say, and he was definitely alive, so I went back to trying to sleep. 

For the rest of that short night, I drifted between sleep and blurred jolting wakefulness as Jose's phone rang and my eyes cracked open to see him, in the moonlight and then the first light of dawn, staring at the ringing phone without answering.  Later, when I gave up on sleep around noon, I didn't mention to Jose the night both of us had spent listening to the phone's ring, and I don't know how many times the person on the other end called.

-

The Black Lips concert was great.  I'm beginning to think that the quality of a concert can be predicted by counting the number of couples who lock themselves into bathroom stalls to do coke together.

-

I drank a lot, and I got my hands on all sorts of drugs, but most of the pain I'm feeling today can be blamed on lack of sleep, and the hours we spent walking around Atlanta.

I really like this city.  I like realizing how far and fast a bicycle can take me around this hilly town, and I like knowing people in every bar I visit, and I like bouncers who are friendly, and I like the secret train tracks that make instant shortcuts between crowded city blocks, and I like the green everywhere, and there's so much more...