In love with Love

Last night bordered on magnificent. I’ll never think of Friday the 13th the same again. I arrived early for my volunteer shift at the Love Show, and got to take a spin through the whole building and see all the art before any of the public arrived. Then a magical night began. Amazing art everywhere I looked, great connections with people I hadn’t seen in a long time - Kaj-ann, Vicky, Bruce from the PCM class that certified me as a producer, Richard who literally GAVE me the coat off his back, Jules who made an amazing 3D piece for the show of two kissing suspended jointed figures (I’m going to her bday at the Florida Room Monday night), S.I.D. (the artist formerly known as Jona) who wants to buy a copy of my book, Kjerstin who said she liked the Art Police script enough to want to help us film next weekend, Haberman who is always very affectionate, Ben Pink himself (I really wanna grab that guy and say, “Dude, RELAX for a second,” but I know the mountain of responsibility he has makes that impossible). Just truly a fantastic night and the most fun I’ve had at a public event in as long as I can remember. I was in love with Love. And aside from shoring up old friendships I made a bunch of new friends, including a very friendly dark-haired skater boy who was, shall we say, NOT UNATTRACTIVE, and said he wished he could take me with him when he left to smoke a bowl! (But I was stationed at the front door making sure no one left the building carrying an alcohol receptacle.)

I discovered a precious young maiden who had climbed into the middle of one of the installations (photo above).

I did my double volunteer shift (Leigh greeted me in the volunteer lounge afterwards with “The best alcohol monitor ever!” and gave me a sip from her flask of whiskey), got my two drink tickets, but by that time the bar had run dry and I was pretty tired anyway, so I bailed, but not before giving Vicky a big hug, because she is certainly in the top 10 of people I care most about in Portland, and now she’s made the most amazing offer to take care of Lucy for me (despite already having four cats!) until such time as I have my own place in San Fran and can take her back! Plus she said, “I’m always looking for an excuse to visit San Francisco,” meaning she might even be able to bring her down to me when I’m ready to reclaim her! This is nothing less than a miracle for me. My excitement about the future and the great things awaiting me was alloyed by sadness at having to leave behind this girl with whom I have bonded so strongly over the past few years. She really is a little person with as much personality as a human being, and I don’t care if it makes me a crazy cat lady/dude or not, I love her, and the prospect of never seeing her again was hard to bear. And now, because of the friendship of someone who empathizes with and understands my bond with this animal, I don’t have to! Everything is coming together beautifully. I’m still going to make an attempt to find someone else with less pets already to take Lucy until I can have her again, since Vicky already has so many pets, and her husband is opposed to it, but it’s so good to know there’s an option in the background in case nothing else works out. I’m going to sleep easier, or happier, from now until I leave.

I figured out my taxes today in about 20 minutes (so far the 1040EZ form still takes care of me nice and simple), and the IRS owes me $210, except they’ll just take it and apply it to the money I still owe them from years ago, that one weird year where I somehow ended up owing them over $1000. (I still wonder if I figured that wrong and screwed myself over, but it’s too late now.)

Made my weekly call to mother tonight, after a lovely dinner of stuffed bell peppers, asparagus, broccoli, lemon bars and sparkling juice with Scott, Meghan, their dad, and Meghan’s friend Brian. Dear Mother is her ever-lovin’ loopy old self. “I’m getting into younger guys again,” she told me. “I think the Jonas brothers are really cute.” So we’ll both be watching SNL tonight: her for the Jonas brothers, and me for Alec Baldwin. I bought some brandy for hot toddies to celebrate the occasion.

Anthony said he coined the word “murse” for a man-purse and it made it all the way onto The View! He’s paranoid about people stealing his ideas so I won’t be blogging about our titles and ideas for the book until after it’s all ready for public consumption.

I had nothing in the planner today, but decided to make a lazy day productive by going to the media center and doing some editing on “Monsieur LeTigre Speaks,” the short film I shot with Emie a while back, the night we went to Slabtown for Sam’s birthday (or was it Audra’s?) To my surprise I found that we’d shot 45 mins. worth of footage, and some of it is quite hilarious! It’ll probably be about 10 mins. long when finished and I’m going to try to have it done for viewing by next weekend so we can watch it before filming Art Police, and hopefully I’ll be able to put it up on YouTube by then too.

How to stay busy while hibernating

This morning I was really happy when I called the bookstore and Kim told me not to bother coming in today, there won’t be any customers. So my first shift is next Monday, and the snow vacation continues. Of course, I’m never the kind who sits around doing nothing for very long. Today I made lots of phone calls – to Richard, to Smitty of CoG, to Ben Pink, to Pat, to Christa, to Kirk to ask him where he put the rest of that peanut butter cookie dough, to Godaddy to figure out how to link my blogger.com blog to the tonyletigre.com domain name I’ve been sitting on for over a year now. It was surprisingly easy and now I finally have my very own website and the name is MINE! I’ve written a script for a very short film called “The Art Police” and my little cast – me, Richard, and Smitty and Jack of CoG – are meeting next Tuesday to discuss the film shoot, which we plan to do the first or second week of January. I’m sure it won’t take more than one day to do it: only two locations, an art gallery and an artist’s studio, and the final product will only be 5 or 10 mins. long. Ben Pink, who was in New York when I called this afternoon, seemed entirely cool with us shooting the gallery scenes at the Launch Pad, as long as we obtain the permission of Caleb, next month’s artist, for his art to appear in the film, of course. Hopefully he won’t take it personally that one of his pieces will be singled out as an example of “bad art” by the art police in the film! I met Pat at Taco Bell a little bit ago and he gave me some more addresses to enter into the database; he’s considering pushing the Hat Party back a little bit since the weather has thrown such a wrench into everything. He invited me to his employee Xmas dinner Thursday night but I’m already committed to Christa’s party instead. It’ll just be me, Christa and Joel. I’m bringing red wine and jellied cranberries, the kind that come out in the exact shape of the can, ridges and all. Some things you never grow out of. Besides turkey and cranberries, Thursday night’s menu may also include maryjane, absinthe, and Kids in the Hall, among other things. How much better does life need to be? I really can’t believe my good luck right now. I’ve barely worked (as in, a real hourly-wage job) since I got back from Glacier, yet I’m in better financial shape than I’ve been in years, also getting in better shape physically since I’ve been drinking less and exercising more, also experiencing a re-surgence of artistic inspiration which I think will only increase when I get to Maui and San Fran, and the future holds only more adventure and even greater things to look forward to. I am in the middle of re-doing the entire layout of "The Fish Who Drowned" (the book formerly known as "Como me llamo," and before that "English Snowflakes") for a different format, and Smitty's friend from the print shop got back to me with a quote today: $104 for 50 copies, folded and bound, with a thicker cover stock for the front and back covers. About what I expected. So now all I have to do is finalize the layout and content and bring in the file! I really have a feeling about The Nightshade Family – the creativity incubation collective I intend to start after I establish myself in S.F. It is not going to be a queer-only membership. I don’t segregate people by their sexual orientation, or gender expression, or any of those other Portland buzz-words that frankly are pretty played-out in my opinion. I am far more interested in the fact that people create interesting, provocative art than who they sleep with or the ways they deconstruct patriarchal oppression. Another thing I’ve learned from my current living situation is that living with people who are very different from you can sometimes be a really ideal thing. My current roommates on the one hand are so different from me that we could come from other planets, or so I thought for a long time, but I’m discovering they are more canny than I gave them credit for, and certainly not conservative except in terms of dress and behavior. They could not possibly be called hipsters, and that is a GOOD thing. All I need to do is think back to that nightmarish nest of hipster scum at 6125 NE Mallory (aka The Meth Baby Mansion) to be grateful for the tranquil, low-drama existence I currently enjoy. MORE SNOW is supposed to be on the way – Christa said it’s the longest stretch of this kind of weather in recorded history for Portland – but I can’t honestly complain. It’s been good to me!