12/15/02

A weekend of inertia, of which I'm not terribly proud, but I probably needed it. Actually, it wasn't totally inert: I went with Lisa & Lauren to see Adaptation today, and sort of wished I'd known much less about it before I went to see it. Not that there are shocking plot twists or anything, but... it's not good to be able to anticipate what sort of movie it is.

And yesterday, come to think of it, was positively ert. I went out in the morning and dealt with a bunch of Dark Beloved Cloud business; zipped uptown for lunch with my mom, who's in town for a few weeks; bought a couple of birthday presents for friends; bought some new shoes (I like both kinds of shoes--Doc Martens six-hole boots with greasy and shiny finish--but they didn't have the shiny ones in my size, so that made the decision easier--I may be a walking cliché, but at least I have good ankle support); rewarded myself for getting through my papers on time with some totally predictable CD-buying (new Fall single, Fairport Convention bootleg of BBC sessions from 1970, Black & Proud Vol. 2comp of Black Panther-era and -inspired soul) and even more predictable comics buying (come to think of it, my pile also included Black Panther); went up to Columbia for the visual-arts division student open-house; headed back downtown for Anya's birthday party; neglected to go to Jeremy's birthday party or the party at the Happy Birthday Hideout because by that point I'd been wearing my new Docs for eight hours or so and my feet were gently suggesting that they were about to fall off just above the well-supported ankle.

But I was delighted to see that my favorite artists at the Columbia thing were also my favorite fellow students from Coco Fusco's class. Fabienne Lasserre did some fantastically distinctive & imaginative paintings on mythological themes--I sort of want to buy one now, actually, if they're for sale for non-astronomical prices, & suspect that if I do I'll have "a Lasserre" on my wall ten years from now, if you see what I mean. And Jamie Isenstein had set up two racks of odd colored flasks full of powders and fluids; one of them had this sort of demonic death's-head pharmacist mannequin reaching toward it, and the other one had collapsed on top of her--she was lying on the floor in a white lab coat under the fallen rack, staring up at the ceiling and saying "I'm okay.... I'm all right..." every 30 seconds or so, or whenever somebody looked concerned. Kind of a great way to deal with a first show.

Douglas

 

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