Friday January 20, Brooklyn Bound Q

Waiting is over. over.

They finally posted the Echoing Green semi-finalists. I did not make the cut to even submit a full proposal this time.

But in a great way to create some some suspense for knuckleheads like me they also posted on their website:

Due to the Martin Luther King Holiday, we were not able to get in touch with our subject matter experts to review a few last minute questions on a handful of applications. Therefore, we are publishing the initial list of Phase 2 applicants today and based on our reader input on our outstanding questions, we may invite a few more projects to submit Phase 2 applications no later than Tuesday, January 17th.

I'm not going to kid myself and try and pretend that my 7ARTS is so out there and abstract that they're just waiting to hear from some last-minute experts to decide if I'm going to be invited to the second round or not. My shit is not rocket science. I'm not in.

I knew getting the fellowship was a stretch but damn, I thought I'd at least get invited to the second round like I did two years ago pre-wagner, pre-almost two years of development experience, pre-edna mcconnell clark foundation. I actually thought the application I submitted was a lot better than the touchy-feely gobbledy-gook one I wrote two years ago.

I feel like I trained for a marathon like a maniac for a year and a half only to run a slower time than when I had as a fat out-of-shape fuck.

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Hugo Chavez is offering low cost oil to Native American tribes in Maine for heating use. The Bush Administration called Chavez’s deal an attempt to “embarrass” America. What’s embarrassing is the world’s richest nation not being able or rather willing to feed/clothe/heat/educate its population properly.

A weird analogy but it kind of reminds of this club/lounge I was at a few years ago. There was this chick who was hammered, completely toast. She was trying to dance and at one point fell down, straight pratfall. Her homegirls helped her up but then for whatever reason left her on her own. So she kept dancing (really sloppily) and this big, kind of oily looking dude, crept up on her seeing an opportunity to get his freak on with a pretty wasted and compliant (if not really capable of standing on her own) chick. So her gets up behind her and is “dancing” with her and putting his hands all kinds of places that this chick is really to drunk to care to protest. It was fucking gross. It was probably the only action that dude was going to get that night or had gotten in a minute. One of the bouncers was looking at him really disdainfully shaking his head. The dude, feeling the bouncer's disapproving stare looked back at him, upset because he was messing up his game, ”Yo, why are you looking at me like that? You’re making me look bad.”

The bouncer shoots right back completely deadpan:

“That’s because you DO look bad.”

Today's wow can you believe this?

Just got my new video ipod and I love though I haven’t downloaded any video yet. I didn’t think I would but having a big phat gorgeous color screen is really tempting. Damn those marketing geniuses at Apple.

One thing I’m getting into is podcasting which is great because I never listen to the radio but would like to keep up with some shows and stations that I haven’t listened to since I had hours in a studio to kill. I found the Democracy Now! Podcast on itunes which is awesome, I haven’t listend to the show in years maybe 4-5 so its great to have it on my commute. Friday’s Democracy Now opened with coverage of Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke and some commentary from Pat Robertson:

Ariel Sharon, who is again a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with, I’ve prayed with him personally. But here he’s at the point of death. He was dividing God’s Land. I would say woe unto any Prime Minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says, “this land belongs to me, you better leave it alone.”

-Pat Robertson

Right after that Amy Goodman (with a straight face I presume, God bless her) then says:

The Guardian of London reported Wednesday that Robertson is heading a consortium in talks with the Israeli government over building a sprawling a biblical theme park by the Sea of Galilee.

On the real, you CANNOT make this shit up. Don’t mess with God’s land. Unless its a Christ-centered theme park.

Main Street-Bound 7 Train, 12:30pm January 2nd 2006

More random shit

Looking for a job sucks.

I'm really bad at proof reading my own shit. But pretty good at bullshitting about myself. So hopefully I will be employed and Thomas won't have to kill me for rent money.

*************

The Knicks one a HUUUUUGE game. It was great, I have some hope for this team. Nate Robinson threw some nice passes driving to the basket, David Lee is a rebound machine, Eddy Curry pulled some nice offensive rebounds (but had some trouble finishing once he had them) and Starbury hit some big shots in the last overtime period. Jamal Crawford seems to get flustered if he has to take the last shot, but he looked good too. I just watched the overtimes but closing out a game like this and not blowing it was huge, a great learning experience, especially for the rookies. Might the Knicks actually have a future? Until we trade them all for Ron Artest or Ricky Davis and/or a bag of magic beans and/or Scott Layden.

I was watching classic ESPN and a Knicks/Magic game from Shaq's rookie year and it made me so sad watching the mid 90s Knicks. I know everyone outside NY hated them but we loved them. It was a great era.

Happy New Year

For those of you into Salsa music I have been listening to Eddie Palmieri's Ajiaco Caliente OBSESSIVELY over an over. The song is beautiful, the interplay of the horns and the piano. When I listen to the piano I can imagine his virtuosity, the push and pull, its like he plays with my emotions...then the horns and the vocals come back in for a glorious finish. Get this song and listen to it and just close your eyes. Its got kind of slow start but if you listen closely and carefully its incredible, I can imagine him manipulating the keys on the piano so skilfully. Kind of makes me think of what it must have been like to watch Thelonius Monk on the piano.

I played "truth" with Rosalie yesterday and it was the first time I think I'd played since 8th grade and the first time playing sans the "Dare" component. One of her questions (she asked good ones, I asked adolescent stupid ones like "duh where's the wildest place you've ever hooked up?")

Anyway she asked me my best and worst of 05 of an arbitrary time frame especially because my years tend to fall along the academic one having been in school or working at a school or both for the last four years (five counting Brooklyn Museum education) but January to January Best and Worst of 05.

Best (no order)
Good times with good friends in a manner that is only going to decline as people grow up settle down (though I will be the last I guarantee it). I have always been blessed with good friends but the strength and support of my closeset friends this last year has been a treasure. I never fail to stop and pinch myself and ask myself why good people care/believe in/support me.

Growing phenomenally at Wagner and learning and networking in ways I never thought I'd be able to. Its what Im payin those fuckers for.

Making a serious leap as a dancer (especially last summer-I feel like I am taking the next step into really getting it as expression and not just doing steps and moves, I feel like I own my dancing more than ever before)

A birthday party that provided at least year's worth of comedy and I'm still learning shit about.

One completely responsibility-free, chill-ass, summer an absurdly high-paying internship without the pressures of a real job.

West Coast and NY Salsa Congresses...blaze....

Fuck that, I was on TV hahaha.

Worst
Mad self doubt, too much knowledge, too much learning. I reminisce about the bull-headed ignorance and passion I had when Kwah and I sat down and started 7ARTS because we wanted to some art with teens because it had helped us so much and that was it. Now I'm immersed in all this management, program evaluation strategic theory and I'm trying not to let it paralyze me but help me. But definitely very worst in 05 was learning too much and how scary it can be.

Wondering what the hell I was doing with mysef and whether my whole premise for attending Wagner was just stupid and I should have gone and got my Art Education degree and that my whole think big shit was just stupidity. Typical self-doubt graduation's approaching shit.

Sleeping on a bed of knives, hiding liquor and sending cryptic text messages to Thomas in one of the most bizzare and fucked up nights of my life. (Manu I love you man).

Nearly hitting Acadmic Probation at Wagner. (Which I'm not in the clear yet).


Happy New Year y'all

art school flashback...like whoa...

Just came from a late night going-away party for a friend who is moving to Argentina for a year. Lucky her!

I met a guy at the party who is an aspiring film maker, Puerto Rican (I think), born and raised in the projects on the Lower East side then studied film at Vassar with a bunch of rich-ass drugged out white kids. Which for him, was posssibly an even more traumatice experience than my 3 years in the painting department at RISD.

The topic turned to gentrification and he talked about wanting to make movies about neighborhood gentrification, with white interlopers as villains and local community members responding in constructive ways (community activism and organizing) and not so constructive ways ("yo run me that wallet...") but basically his "mockumentary" would end in the community members going crazy and postal on the white interlopers. One of my classmates from Wagner made the good point that gentrification is a little more more complicated then his narrative would capture, "what about African American professionals returning/moving to Harlem or BedStuy? What about other people of color?" I think she took issue with his extreme caricaturization of good guys and bad guys. His point was that such extreme characterizations, even bordering on the cartoonish, was critical to his strategy because he felt it was the only way to get people to wake up to white dominance in Hollywood and the pigeon holes and carricatures that people of color have been relegated to in film, this grand tradition having begun with such fine films as DW Griffith's Birth of A Nation.


Basically, what I interpreted was that examining complications and nuances was not really of interest to him but more rather expressing an attitude that says "Fuck that! This is how you all treat us in your media, I'm going do the same shit right back and show you how ludicrous and exploitative it is."

It took me back to my own experience at RISD and how angry I was at how much more I had to go to explain myself and my motivations because I was a person of color. Back then, I basically had the same fuck you attitude as him. But for me what was frustrating was that my anger led me to make some art work that was more catharsis and blindly lashing out rather than work more honest to my interests. It didn't feel real, the overtly political and angry work I was doing. Not the content, because questions about privileged narratives, identity, desire and idealized images were always interests of mine but more my strategies, which didn't feel honest to me, not at first.


Artistically, I felt like I was just swinging wildly trying to hurt and piss of as many people as I could because I was so pissed-it took me a few years to step back and think about nuanced means of communication and different strategies for getting people out of their comfort zones. It was such a relief to leave RISD because I made work that was more true to myself because I didn't have to be so angry all the time and I finally felt a little free.

After the conversation, I talked with someone about admiring Felix Gonazlez Torres' cleverness in using piles of sucking candy as metaphors for his sexuality and how brilliant his matching analog clocks in Perfect Lovers was able to subtly, elegantly allude to our comfort/discomfort with homosexuality.

Sometimes pure anger can keep you from thinking about the beauty and effectiveness of visual metaphors. Torres just blew me away, especially with the candy, when I read his thoughts on his candy installation I was like, "gross man, I put that shit in my mouth and its about his gay lover?" Funny, but he succeeded in removing me from my heterosexist comfort zone and getting me to think about sexuality, masculinity, hetereosexism, intimacy-fuck, whats more intimate than caressing and sucking something with your tongue slowly and savoring it, even if its candy?

One thing Andrew used to tell me was that-if your message is going to make people uncomfortable and force them to question uncomfortable truths, assumptions and privilegs about their positions you'd best be strategic about doing it because if you don't want to hear the message you'll find a way to block it out. Thats what I loved about Torres' piece. He snuck INTO MY MOUTH-a most private of sexual spaces with something completely innocuous and chidllike-a wrapped sucking candy.

I mean, I see where dude is coming from with his films, when I saw Birth of a Nation, I wanted to walk out too-I was blown away that I could be asked to seperate the fucked-up racist imagery from the film's considerable pioneering accomplishments in editing. But I think its always important to remember the value of metaphor, something that Ernesto Pujol always talked about when I worked on his residency.

But, I do want to see the film when it drops.

viva la salsa!

Moving over from my livejournal page...wanted to post pictures without paying.

A friend asked me yesterday if I have ever dated in the New York Salsa Scene and in three years of obsessive dancing I haven't. It seems counter-intuitive on one level, it would seem to make sense to date people you share irrational obsessions with but part of the reason I like dancing is that there isn't all the baggage of trying to rap to chicks and dealing with all that stress. Its really just dancing which is nice. Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly beating off hot-ass salseras with a stick (though I've been told that I have the FOBby asian akward asian female salsa dancing demographic locked down) but its nice to not have any baggage out on the floor.

It reminded me of a funny question that Alberto, one of the new members of my dance troupe asked me a few weeks ago. He said "honestly, how many asian girls do you pick up becaue of salsa?" I haven't (not that I've really tried). (if you don't know me-I am the lone Asian in an almost entirely latino salsa dance troupe) and I thought the shit was hysterical because he really thought that because I could salsa dance that I was some kind of Asian salsa mack just racking up chicks which couldn't be further from reality. I pictured it from the girl's end "hmm..I want to meet an asian guy...why don't I take up... latin dancing?" Somewhere there, as I'd say when I was teaching the LSATS for Kaplan, the logic train is getting derailed. For a reasonably not horrible-looking Asian chick there's probably a ton of ways easier to find an Asian guy than going to all the trouble of learning to salsa dance and going out of your way to learn to salsa might be a slight indication that Asian dudes are not her bag of chips. But from Alberto's perspective my Asianness was an asset that should make me a novelty and commodity. It was pretty funny how we had completely different takes on it. I felt bad that I had to dissapoint him hahaha.