We take a break from the usual war whines and po-mo indie irreverance to bring you a day in the life of a great man, my dad, born 57 years ago today!!

Happy Birthday, Pop!!

Actually, his birthday is tomorrow, I just had to get this up before he could see it. But see - he's celebrating already and he already has a day more to go!!! Rock on, old man!!! love, kid...

Fool for April

Hey - April Fool, did you read any good articles about the war lately?
Fool: No. Not really.

Appropriate for April Fools day - I'm reading an interview in the latest issue of bomb about Tom Sachs. I love this guy! He created an entire minature car racetrack surrounding Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation and Mies van der Rohe's furniture, a McDonald's restaurant, and 10,000-watt boom box, a ghetto, a modernist art park, a DJ station and had participants do bong hits, drink beer and wager for money. Deeper political implications of driving, modernism and project housing aside, I can't think of a better way to spend a first thursday (in this case, it happened Tuesday nights)... I think this man is the MTV Marcel Duchamp Mac Daddy for the 21st century.

Radioactivity

Been taking digital and analog pics over the weekend. Digitial will be displayed somewhere sometime soon, but in the meantime, here's a gangreen picture of me. I've since shaved off the facial hair (yesterday) when I realized how silly it looked.
Speaking of radio-active, my fave DJ is in NY for all you Seattle Expats looking to represent. (And yes, Ian - he likes Coldplay too...)
Always the morning faithfull...
J.D.

blame

Everyone is queasy and wary of what will happen next. We're not fearful of what others might do - although it's alwyas a constant thought - but what we're about to do to ourselves and our civil liberties. Why no one has stood up and said "If you tolerate this today, your children will surely suffer" is disheartening and sad. Well I did. I faxed my state congrebots and told them I really don't approve of cutting taxes to pay for this mess. $74.4 billion is obscene and insulting, even if you were crazy enough to think this war was a good idea. If you have a moment, fax your congressperson and tell them this just aint right, And you can too...
Yet - maybe we'll need all the money once our foriegn cred slides and no one wants to eat big Macs and shop at Gap anymore. Guess living in America - you often feel like you are working at the bad fastfood resteraunt with poor management. People hate you, throw paint at your windows in global protest, and you can't say anything because the mgt might fire you... (Btw - Picture above by the late Mr David Wojnarowicz, someone who understood what stifling speech meant and how many lives it cost in the battle to find a cure for aids.)

Shock and Awe

I wonder if anyone dwells on pictures like this? They are certainly closer to the hellish war than news graphics. Do people who are pro or antiwar see this and ever think - people are burning, dying, hurting. (Or on the other side - were the people out of harm's way?) We'll never know. We're so distanced, and again, the ripple of horror and fear shivers across humanity like a horse shudder. Something is going on. Something horrible. Something we cannot comprehend. Something we cannot undo. Yet this is spectacle. It's noise. It's show. It's business. It's an action movie with deeper political meaning than you can concieve of (because it will have a ripple into the future so far reaching it comes back to us).
This eerie detatchment from shock, this remote hurt and amazement reminds me of Laurie Anderson's Song "Night In Baghdad", about a journalist stationed during the Gulf War. I think it's somewhat fitting since we're just getting bits and peices of the war and yet we're trained to look below surfaces... Here's the song.

Night in Baghdad - Laurie Anderson, Bright Red

And oh it's so beautiful
It's like the Fourth of July
It's lie a Christmas tree
It's like the fireflies on a summer night.

And I wish I could describe this to you better.
But I can't talk very well now
Cause I've got this damned gas mask on.
So I'm just going to stick this microphone out the window
And see if we can hear a little better. Hello California?
What's the weather like out there now?

And I only have one question: Did you ever really love me?
Only when we danced. And it was so beautiful.
It was like the Fourth of July.
It was like fireflies on a summer night.

"Ducking for apples - change one letter and it's the story of my life." Dorothy Parker

I should feel fortunate. At least I get an apple. Some people don't get any apples. Some people get less than apples, they get apples taken away from them. However, Mrs Parker's vicious assessment of life seems so true at the moment for alot of people. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Who is giving it to us (no pun intended)?
I think of talented people working their asses off and I think of me. Uninspired, daydreaming and distracted. How do I get back onto some creative track at the lost age of [edited out] without seeming like a dilatante? Or all we all just amatuers out there now? Has the bar been raised so incredibly high that people cannot attain true discipline or artistry? Are there no masters - only computers? Are we all just simulating something akin to emotion and parroting real life in a series of reality-based tv shows? Is irony truly dead and reanimated now as new sincerity and people thinking how clever when they see it, laid out on a table like an installation piece (or worse, science project). How do I take something real when I don't even know if I am real myself. (Whoa there - going into PK Dick territory).
Back to "ducking". I wonder about talented people versus lucky breaks. I wonder about people who had both and blew it. I wonder if I ever blew it? I wonder if I should go see a therapist to tell me if I blew it and where to seek atonement in blowing it and never blow it again. I have the rock in my stomach from inactivity and inability to digest my modern life at the metabolic rate that is suggested by marketing analysts and culture dieticians. I am sick from exposure to said reality based tv shows and the evils of booze (which lubricates my hatred of said reality based TV shows and people who choose to be on them). I want to Elima-date the 21st century. I want to choose the path of best resistance and go off and live a fucking pious life because I feel like an an amatuer amorlist, a bad sensualist and person who can't appreciate anything.
I am a dilatante.
I am a drunk.
I am a petty artist.
It's all about me. No. It's not. Mousey me won't upstage true talent. Please take over reading my lines. I should be the understudy in my life. You are truly the master. I am the computer. I haven't had an original idea since 1978 when I thought about the plastic brick idea and reversable rain jacket-long underwear.
Who am i talking to on this blog? I need a new apple.

Suck Age

Things started to really suck early last week. Actually, let me rephrase that -- things started sucking 400 billion years ago and probably since the dawn of entropy was introduced. People (descended from well-meaning bacteria) put shit in motion and then it comes back to you. Middle East politics, nuclear weapons, bad presidents with inarticulate leadership strategies, social service bankrupting referrendums you had no clue were getting onto the state ballots, car exhaust spent going to Target so you can buy more crap, the task you messed up at work that day, bad faith, bad self-given haircuts, the cold you caught while drunk and jacketless outside in the rain, the extra piece of pizza you consumed at lunch, the time you wasted watching UPN, the money you pissed away on a bad movie... Bad choices, spiraling into worse consequences. Does it ever get better?

We're going to war. It's a disaster and looming like the other shoe preparing to fall. I can't imagine if there was a more bleak time, but then again, I started thinking about the early 80's and how it seemed to really suck. Reagan was in office and we were 12 minutes from nuclear midnight... but something happened (oh yeah, Russians blinked)... but for a time, it seemed like the end of the world. Perhaps it was my adolescent angst coupled with the fact that there wasn't much options out there... Now I feel like there aren't any options out there, we're again going into clumsy, bloodwashed history again without any hindsight ... Luckily the world isn't impressed.
However - I hear shit like this and I seriously want to move. Start over in another country and become an expat... (thanks Ginger for posting this article). Things are worse than the 80's. But moving won't solve anything. And the other shoe probably will fall anywhere at this point is anyones guess. Put in motion by our clumsiness 10 years ago (or 500 million years ago) however we want to see this...