Here’s something that made me smile today, I dropped by The Library page on Flickr and Me-Jade had finished the Swiss Egg Book just in time for Basel Fasnacht. Double You and Raszka and had some nice starts and Driftwould and Paper&Me posted a beautiful new Collaboration. After Monkeybook, I’ve got to start mailing out the stack of starts I’ve got. It will be like a new beginning.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking through the past trying to figure out what to show Wednesday at Monkeytown… and also how to show it. I find it hard to look backward and forward at the same time without falling down in the street… So I haven’t been doing a whole lot of making of things this week, just looking badkward and trying not to fall in the street. I have been making these stupid cartoons to keep my hand in.

New York readers save this date!

Next Wednesday the 28th the Institute is hosting the first of what hopes to be a monthly series of new media evenings at Brooklyn’s premier video salon and A/V sandbox, Monkeytown. They’re kicking things off with a retrospective of work by your’s truly. February 15th marked the second anniversary of IT IN place, which we’re preparing to relaunch with a spruced up design and a gorgeous new interface to the archives (design of this interface chronicled here and here). We’d love to see you there.

For those of you who don’t know it, Monkeytown is unique among film venues in New York — an intimate rear room with a gigantic screen on each of its four walls, low comfy sofas and fantastic food. A strange and special place. If you think you can come, be sure to make a reservation ASAP as seating will be tight.

More info about the event here.

In The Library, Caroline VK finished my Mabeth/Bergman start and R. Anderson sent me a start in a Gideon’s Bible. Strangely this is the first bible used in the Library that I know of. Here’s my U.S.Ama finish.

We went Rolling around the Museum of Natural History with the nephew and I finally got to see a show at the new(ish) Hayden Planetarium. I must say it is one of the few times a thing has surpassed my expectations. It was really one of the more beautiful things I’ve ever seen projected, plus informative. You had this feelings that planets and comets would land in your lap. Later we went to a theme restaurant called Mars 2112 . There may be no better place to experinece a feeling of contemporary alienation than a theme restaurant saffed by aliens. It all felt somehow in tune to the series of strange dreams I’ve been having, where I am wandering around the city encountering all sorts of people from my past.

Two years ago, I started doing IT IN place while it snowed on Christo’s gates. Two years later, and New York is again blanketed in snow. In a much stranger fluke, the swatches of orange fabric they gave out two years ago are the exact same size as the chess board on the cover of “The Golden Treasury of Chess” that I was collaging with yesterday. It seems like a sign, but of what I’m not sure.

Shot a bit of video at the last night of Doug Aitken’s “Sleepwalkers” at Moma. I’d been meaning to get over there since the startof the run, but got distracted by the cold snap. The collage is a book start for The Library. The Mathematics of Flowers.

starts for the Library in which I was thinking of Patty Smith singing “Jesus died for somebody’s sin, but not mine” and the general alchemy of alcohol.

The animation is a finish of Brian Raszka Start for The Library. The alchemy of chocolate is my start (using one of Brian’s collage bits) for the same.

here’s a couple of finishes of Brian Raszka Starts for The Library.

We met the other night at the Institute to discuss the upcoming relaunch of the blog. Some of the discussion turned technical (which is to say over, or under, or around my head) so I started shooting things. Later, the evening devolved into food and drinks and jazz at Zebulon where we got onto a wide ranging discussion of politics, digital media, dj culture, and life during wartime. The animation is from the note book we used to illustrate our points, or lack there of. There was also a lo of prat falls and slap stick which only further convinced me that digi cinema needs its Buster Keaton.

Last night I dreamt that I was Dick Cheney’s house guest. He was very solicitous and kept apologizing that his other guests were all from the Heritage Foundation, or some other right wing think tank. He would say: “I really wanted to make sure that there would be some liberals here too, but it just worked out this way. I don’t want you to think I only socialize with conservatives. I have all sorts of friends.”

I told him it was not a problem and he shouldn’t worry about it, but all through the dream he kept coming up to me to make sure I had found the food, or the bar, or whatever and apologizing about all the conservative guests. It was then that I knew, he only ever had conservative guests to his house and that apologizing about it was his way of making me feel awkward and an outsider, but he did it so subtly and with such a smile on his face, that it almost amused me.

While she sleeps the steam hisses from the radiator and in her dream it is the sound of ocean wind in the leaves of three palm trees by the pool…. or tell me what you think.

painting in a book cover for the Library and a painting on a jewelry box.

I went to the memorial/bash/wake… I don’t know what to call it… for Allan Stone last night. It was a fairly joyous event as far as anyone can be joyous around the subject of death. There was a lot of laughter. Still, walking home in the fridgid city, I couldn’t help but feel a real sense of loss and a sense of my own mortality. He bought the first painting I ever sold… I think twenty years ago. It seems impossible.

The drawing is a collage from the drawings I made for the video.

Seems odd given my love of gifs, but no one in the Library has done this obvious gif trick till now. This is Brian Razska finishing my starts. By making an animated gif out of the two stages, Brian lights the way towards a kind of narrative… a motion picture palimpsest . I hope others will play with this idea…. one of my hopes has been that The Library would start becoming a sort of animation bee (like a quilting bee)… ending up with something usable for OMegg.

Every year my friends Tom and Sharron have a party on Superbowl Eve. It is more or less a recap of the December and January parties…. only much later. They find a tree at the end of Christmas and keep it up till the party. Santa shows up (he gave out Lotto tickets this year… other years have been cigarettes and airline sized bottles of booze) and at midnight it’s new years again with all the horn blowing and kissing, etc. Then we dance. Sometimes there’s just too many parties during actual Holliday time and it all can become a sort of social chore, but by now everyone is getting depressed and house bound by the cold and just ready for a party again. Plus it’s nice to be a little hung over and nurse the wounds with beer and wings and football the next day.

When the winter finally comes, everything changes. I feel like I’ve been banging my head against a wall all Autumn and the wall is still there, but my damn head has split open and all the happiness and hope and pleasure and desire has fallen on the floor like a broken yolk. The wind comes through the studio windows and the mice chew through the sheet rock walls.

I go down to the bar and the beer helps as long as the money holds out and that’s not very long. I’m drinking Budweiser because it’s cheapest and the guy next to me is drinking Bud too.

“It’s beer at least,” I say to him.
“Right,” he says, uninterested.
“It’s the cheapest stuff here,” I say.
“I like Bud,” he says.
“Have you ever had the real stuff?” I ask.
“I’m having it now,” he says.
I start explaining how the real Budweiser is from a city in Czechoslovakia: Budweis … and is one of the oldest and best Lagers in European history… That’s why the American’s stole the name for this rice and corn beer shit… It’s nothing like the Czech beer which is lagered in enormous pitch lined barrels… full of flavor.
“I like Bud,” he says…. And besides we all rest on the shoulders of giants. A lot of great things were inspired by Europe. You seen that hotel in Las Vegas? Looks just like Venice, but clean and with gambling and strippers. Awesome.”

I start explaining how the name Budweiser has been used for hundreds of years to describe beers from Budwies, but only since Prohibition here. Nobody cared with all the troubles in Europe. It only became an issue since the Iron Curtain fell and the Czech republic looks to export the few things it has to export… which is more or less: beer, vodka, and guns. Anhauser Busch sued them to prevent them from selling their beer under it’s traditional name… “the name they stole. It’s one thing to rest on the shoulder’s of giants, but the reality is that Bud is now the giant and it won’t get off the shoulders of Budweiser… it’s trying to keep them down…. I’d like to live in a world where we all just rest on the shoulder’s of average sized men.”
“That sounds like Communism,” the guy says.
“No that sounds like democracy.”
“Tell the truth. Are you or have you ever been a Communist?”
“No. Just an average sized guy who likes decent beer, but can’t afford it.”
“I’ll buy you a Bud,” the guy says. “It’s decent beer.”
“Why not?” I say.
It’s cold and actally tastes delicious and we talk and drink and smile and later I stumble home half drunk in a whisper of snow. In the morning I’m miserably dry mouthed from the kicking steam heat and the anesthetic qualities of Budweiser.

Here’s a link to an Interview bob stein did on WFMU here in New York. He talks about all sorts of interesting stuff and even this blog you’re reading now: Bob on the air. Today’s trees are from Sonja and Gundanasu at the Library, the sky is from Remyyyand the abstract snow is mine.

finish of a puzzle map started by Jade Peggler.