Myles and Nicoloff

I had heard of Eileen Myles before, but I wasn’t exactly sure from where. For some reason I placed her with the likes of Laura Mullen; a proper name, a white name, an intellectual name. It was windy today, like yesterday and the day before that. I ran toward the closed door at the entrance to 21 Grand in Oakland where Eileen Myles would read after an unknown angsty Michael Nicoloff. Before sitting down I headed straight for the bathroom, and on my way bumped into a greasy-haired woman dressed in a masculine way. She was talking to someone quite far away from the door to the bathroom, but alerted me that she in fact was waiting for it and that I would be in line after her. She looked away. After emptying my bladder I entered the white-walled room and sat in my red metal chair. A baby with the middle name Duchamp introduced Michael Nicoloff, the unknown amateur poet of Oakland who published the chapbook ‘punks’.

Nervously stumbling toward the microphone, Michael’s head hanging low for his entire set. Not once does he acknowledge the presence of his audience, perhaps to avoid an awkward moment or two where he would suddenly gain enough awareness to be embarrassed of his present situation. His eyes glued to his angsty words (punk, fuck you, Satan, Spinoza-sucking, nothing is real, the dick train). Yawn. As soon as he opened his mouth, all of his nothing words fell out in a messy vomitous stream, at 100 miles per hour. Uh, Michael, are you reading for me? Am I supposed to understand you? Or am I just supposed to remark at your impeccable spitting skills? I realize that secretaries who can type more words per minute are valuable to their employers, but I never thought that there was an incentive toward spewing out a high amount of words per minute. Each poem sounds the same, is read in the same monotonous voice, and abruptly ends in such a way that I am delighted to experience silence so that I no longer have to deal with the anxiety-inducing task of attempting to understand a word Michael says. Even Michael’s angsty cliché words must hate him, for they are most likely insulted by his total disregard for the whole thing. In his last breath, his last word, Michael spits out just as fast as anything else, a “thank you”, and runs off the stage.

After eleven minutes of i-pod DJing, Eileen Myles finally entered the spotlight, equipped with a witty prop; a black box. She joked that it had something to do with a bomb and then flipped the case open and grabbed a pile of papers. She began reading excerpts from her upcoming novel Inferno. A dim light shone over her greasy hair as she talked about some slick-haired man she once fucked in New York. I then realized it was she I bumped into waiting for the bathroom. And then just as quickly, I remembered it was her whose name I had come across in high school when I was first exposed to the quiet video works of a youthful Sadie Benning. As Myles continued reading, imagery of New York punk popped into my head, and so did dialogue from Andy Warhol’s from A to B and Back Again. She reads about sex, art, sex with punks, sex with business-men, typewriters, pill-popping prostituting sexy sex lesbian lifestyle, poetry, New York and ultimately this:

(F)utility

what is irony?

is it Thomas Kinkade's painting entitled 'Heading Home'? Let's all give a round of applause to Modern Painters for bringing Kinkade into the Artworld dialogue. I have some plans for you mister Kinkade, but i'll save that proposition for another day. On a different note, I was walking down College Avenue the other day, passing by the thick cloud of sweetened udder-milk hibernating in front of Bittersweet cafe, when I noticed their sidewalk sign in my path. It clearly stated that Bittersweet is now "proudly serving Starbuck's coffee". I laughed a bit and then realized the genius behind the words. I then proceeded to walk through the rank dairy cloud and up to the front counter only to find out that it was all a straightforward joke. Perhaps there are no geniuses out there after all.

(kinkade's description of his piece: I did not choose to show the warrior's face in my painting of the homecoming veteran. The hero of Heading Home is not an individual at all; he is the essence of the American soldier. We cannot tell whether he returns from Normandy, from Saigon, from Beirut. In a sense, he has spilled his blood on all those fields of honor.) hm..............................

Stone's Throw

Biting my nails while waiting in traffic to get into the city this morning, the radio turned on (yes, all by itself, you see, my cd player broke and ever since then the radio has a mind of its own and makes this harsh popping sound when it decides to turn on or off). Jennifer Stone came on (KPFA). I had no idea who this lady was, but her mature voice began to crack a little as she started talking about spring and birth and death and poetry and HBO...yeah, she's all over the place, but all in the right places. She's very poetic and knowledgeable about seemingly everything, and she enunciates every letter in every word with such care, it makes my ears tingle. She's sort of the female counterpart to Andy Rooney, but less crotchety. Sorry Andy.

At the end of each show, Stone remarks; "this has been Jennifer Stone with Stones Throw. Till next Tuesday at 3:30, go easy. And if you can't go easy, go as easy as you can".

on peace

i'm trying to clean out or dispose of the clutter in this room of mine. i'm moving soon and have to part with some of my most treasured forgotten papers hidden away in the dusty crevices next to my bed. one of these papers turned out to be a poem my grandmother had written and sent to me in November of 2006. i somewhat remember having read it and sort of pushed it aside, thinking it was sort of silly. but, it has since resurfaced and been reconsidered.

PEACE THE LOSER WORD by grandma

How did peace become a loser word?
The loser-est word we've ever heard.
War is macho
Hate is fine
Kill the mid-east, that's devine
But peace? Who needs it?
It's for nerds.
It's one of those smart ass liberal words.

How did peace become a loser word?
The most boring word we've ever heard.
Power's great
Big money's fine
Steal the oil,
That's devine.
But peace? Forget it.
It's for nerds.
It's one of those love-thy-neighbor words.

Blow up towns with bunker busters,
Kill small kids with bombs in clusters,
Get the refugees to run
Then blow them up for good clean fun.

Neo-cons we all attest
Pre-emptive war is still the best.
Forget Viagra and the rest
Try the manly war-hawk test.
Scare the people with fake dangers
Then get it up by killing strangers.

How did peace become a sissy word?
The sissiest word we've ever heard.
We let them scare us
Our minds froze.
Bush and Cheney's
Who we chose.
So peace? Forget it.
It's for nerds.
It's one of those save-the-planet words.

two-month old balloon

creative commons

my mother called me up today and told me she was trying to find my website (i don't have one). so, she typed in my name on google and found a link to a flickr page where someone (mystery person who i will soon find to thank) posted a photo they took of my show. thank you to the mystery person who documented my show, for i didn't get to it. also, thanks to creative commons and the internet for making image sharing/stealing/copying/borrowing so goddamn easy.
flickr link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wink/2321382264/