“Perhaps the greenest party this year wasn’t billed as such. Deitch Projects was the host of a do last February for the publication of the photographer Jason Schmidt’s book, ‘Artists.’ The décor was supplied by Gelitin, four male Viennese conceptual artists who wore high heels and buckets on their heads but no pants, and who spent the evening building a plywood structure over the bewildered guests’ heads. Anthony Roth Costanzo, a countertenor, sang a 16th-century melody called ‘Flow My Tears.’ And then the Gelitin members, along with three Icelandic artists, also men, from a collective called Moms, took the buckets off their heads and urinated — with dead-eye accuracy, said Dodie Kazanjian, a Vogue editor and one of the events’ hosts — into one another’s pails.”

The full article.

This will be an ongoing series of my latest and baddest irrational fears.

First up: Tim Gunn and anyone from those What-Not-to-How-do-I-Look-to-Wear type of shows.

I’m totally scared of running into Tim Gunn–or any TV fashion person on the street–for fear that he will look me up and down and laugh at my sense of style. It’s not that I don’t dress well. In fact, I like to think that I look quite dashing today. It’s just that Tim Gunn’s whole job is to show people how to dress. Granted, he doesn’t put down people, but I see right through him. Behind those fitted jackets and color cordinated outfits, he’s secretly judging us.

You know, people on the street always come up to me and ask, “Pimplomat, what the hell you been up to bud?” And I usually shrug and mutter something about jail and penguins and Connecticut. It’s enough to throw them off beam and let me get past them.

But here, my faithful three readers, I’m going to tell you what I’ve been up to lately. Honestly.

1) Jaymay. I love her voice and her lyrics and the little movements in her music. She has a new album coming out on 27 November 2007. Purchase it.  

2) I’m taking an acting fundamentals class. I haven’t been on stage as an actor since 9th grade, and it’s something that I miss. This is a good way for me to either relive my past or revive a dying part of myself.

3) Travelling. I’ve been doing that a lot for work. Montreal, Berlin, Oslo, and Philadelphia were my last four trips. Berlin, I have you in my sight for a return trip. It truly was a love at first sight affair.

4) Applying for jobs in a big city that starts with New.

By the way, since I moved over to WordPress, I believe I lost some people that read my blog on a regular/semi-regular basis. If you’re one of those people and you’re still around, please drop a hello in the comments section. I’ll buy the first drink.  

It was a depressing night for me as the last precinct votes came in on Dallas’ Trinity Toll Road Plan on November 6. How can 42,279 voters be so wrong by approving a six-lane toll road in the middle of a planned world-class park?

I love Dallas. I stick up for every time someone throws it under the bus, which is quite often. But now…now I may just have to be driving that bus. These toll-road supporters have poured another slab of concrete in Dallas’ coffin with this vote.

The planned toll road is nothing more than a quick fix that only treats the symptoms—traffic congestion—and does nothing for the disease. By approving this measure, Dallas has also lost a great opportunity to embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR). A toll road equals more traffic, less green space and more noise.

A commenter on the Dallas Morning News Web site succinctly expressed my own thoughts: “What a sad, sad day in the history of this city. A misled majority (of the few voters that even bothered to turn out) has been swayed by the lies and threats spewing from our elected officials and the propaganda promulgated by this newspaper and other monied interests. Rejoice, Dallas! Now you finally get to pave your floodway and ruin your so-called ‘world class’ park! Will this Trinity ‘project’ be finished in my lifetime? Possibly. Will I remain in Dallas to see it happen?…”

For me, the answer to that last question is “I don’t know.” Why live in a city that doesn’t appear to embrace a balanced vision, one that appeals to big business as well as the needs of a creative working class?

“Waterfront revitalization is part of a nationwide shift from an industrial to a technological economy,” said Harris Steinberg, executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Praxis design clinic, in the November 5 issue of the New York Times. “Waterfronts are really the playgrounds of the knowledge economy. This is what is going to attract the 20- and 30-somethings who will be the life blood of our future cities.”

Maybe this is the push I need to run for the District 2 seat on the Dallas City Council. I’m seriously considering it.     

Wondering why I don’t post as much? It’s because I’ve been making bread. Here’s proof.

In July, I’m visiting Montréal to attend one of my work’s conferences. Since I’m prepping the daily conference paper, I decided to check out which bands will be in town for me to see. I found two likable local bands that are playing while I’m there. Check ’em out; you might enjoy them, too.

Malajube

and

Call me Poupée

Thanks to the Plus One, and her cable access, I get to watch the History Channel and feed my addiction of Digging for the Truth.

Sure, I love my job, and I get to travel to exciting places, but damn, I’d love to be the host of that show. The original host is gone, and will be replaced by four new hosts. Why couldn’t I be one of them!?

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been really getting into outdoor survival/adventure shows lately, like Truth and Man vs. Wild. Maybe I just need to go camping. I haven’t been in ages, and I used to go every summer growing up. I even once attended survival camp in Boy Scouts and ate a snake.

Really, that’s just what this is: I want to eat a snake.   

Yesterday, Adam Kirsch in The New York Sun wrote

“In fact, despite what the bloggers themselves believe, the future of literary culture does not lie with blogs — or at least, it shouldn’t. The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature, and it is no coincidence that there is no literary blogger with the audience and influence of the top political bloggers.”

I, personally, find that view shortsighted. In a world that is continually moving toward a leadership society, blogs are the conduit of mass creativity. What better way to discuss the literary merits of a book than to open up the conversation via a blog to the masses? Blogs are the new coffee shops, and the quicker people realize that they don’t need a suit or an ivory tower professor telling them what is good and bad the better.

When people come to their own conclusions about what is meritable (either by their own thinking or through lively debate with others), then in my opinion, the world will be a better place. Yes, we still live in a world of sheepeople, but more and more I’m seeing people stray from the herd, and that makes me happy.

I just needed to get away for a bit from the blogging, but now I’m back. I’ve trimmed things down, organized some clutter, and changed clothes.

Since I last wrote an entry two months ago, I’ve been to Alaska for work, been given permission to read any magazine I want at my desk (all in the name of “researching”) and thought a lot about co-creation in today’s world.

My company has overtaken the co-creation bandwagon, and I wouldn’t mind making this a co-created blog. Maybe I can get Long Division to contribute to this site. We could write maddening prose on the day-to-day life of desk jockeying.  Wait. Oh, who cares? You haven’t seen the way we can jockey a desk.

One of the ways to get people to buy actual CDs again is to create a unique package that the buyer is unable to recreate on his or her own home computer.

Even though I already have the latest Bright Eyes album through “illegal” downloading, I’m still going to purchase the CD. Not because of any guilt or moral beliefs, but because of the awesome album artwork.

“The Calendar Hung Itself”
by Conor Oberst

Does he kiss your eyelids in the morning when you start to raise your head?
And does he sing to you incessantly from the space between your bed and wall?
Does he walk around all day at school with his feet inside your shoes?
Looking down every few steps to pretend he walks with you.
Does he know that place below your neck that is your favorite to be touched
and does he cry through broken sentences like I love you far too much?
Does he lay awake listening to your breath?
Worried that you smoke too many cigarettes.
Is he coughing now on a bathroom floor?
For every speck of tile there’s a thousand more
you won’t ever see but most hold inside yourself eternally

Well, I drug your ghost across the country and we plotted out my death.
In every city, memories would whisper: “Here is where you rest.”
I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees
and I settled for a telephone and sang into your machine.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

I kissed a girl with a broken jaw that her father gave to her.
She had eyes bright enough to burn me. They reminded me of yours.
In a story told she was a little girl in a red-rouge,
sun-bruised field and there were rows of ripe tomatoes where a secret was concealed.
And it rose like thunder, clapped under our hands.
And it stretched for centuries to a diary entry’s end where I wrote,
You make me happy oh!! when skies are gray
You make me happy oh!! when skies are gray and gray and gray.

Well the clock’s heart it hangs inside its open chest with its hands
stretched towards the calendar hanging itself but I will not weep for those dying days.
For all the ones who have left there are a few that stayed.
And they found me here and pulled me from the grass where I was laid.

“Rain”
by Jack Gilbert

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.
I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.