TMi

exhausted, wired, dancing in a hotel room alone This is a long post. And certainly chock full of mistakes. Deal with it.  💙     I did a "wild" thing this month. I crossed the busiest international border in the world and took two flights during a global software hiccough to go to the Voices Against Cancer 605 Pop-Culture Con in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Some of the cast of the Ahsoka live-action Star Wars series were slated to appear there. George Takei would be there... It's an event to raise funds for kids with cancer...    Of all the people attending this event, however, the draw for me was Lars Mikkelsen- actor, Timothy Zahn- author, and Marc Thompson- voice animator. These three people have made and brought to life a particular Star Wars character that I have been in love with since I was roughly eleven years old. You may have heard of someone called Thrawn, perhaps? Eh, perhaps not. He's still lesser known than my other hard crush- Darth Vad...

I was invited to a cook out on Wednesday- yesterday at a little ranch up the road.  I social distanced in the shade of actual trees with other humans, sheep, goats, horses, a mismatched pack of dogs, chickens, turkeys, peacocks...  I really wasn't expecting this kind of place just off the main road, but there it was.   A lively young woman told this story in rapid, giddy Spanish that struck me square in the Absurd. The story was about this cup of coffee that just would not taste right. The woman had made her coffee and was dressing it up with her usual amount of sugar.  She drank some, but it tasted wrong; still bitter. So she added more sugar. Tried it again.  The coffee was still not to her liking, so she kept trying to make it taste better. She only gave up when another family member came and explained the reason for the coffee's bad taste. She had not been adding sugar after all!  It had been powdered snake!  She had drunk at least...

Photograph: Shawn Punch . Hair and makeup: Madge Earle .

  Who got theyself out to Nuebo Yorq last month? Was it meee?! It was unusually rough in the time leading up to this trip to New York though. There was certainly some energy against us at the beginning. I felt absolutely miserable about going. For no identifiable reason. Hugo was overly anxious about his show, and just before our departure, sure enough, our bad feelings about everything manifested. But once we were on the ground and jumping into the work that thing- that force wanned into the background, it's teeth blunted. Hopefully, it got what it all that it wanted... A small sacrifice to the What-Evers for something much better? There are already signs of better things to come. Hugo was offered another shot at showing in Miami. That means in a few short weeks we will be back on the east coast looking out indifferently at more palm trees. Oh, and installing a mural framed video projection. There might also be some, you know, huge art fairs happening too. Staying ...

τὸν τεθνηκóτα μὴ κακολογεῖν What? It's a new year? Twice over now? No. You can't fool me with that talk. There's nothing new about this year. It is decidedly a continuation of the last one- which was, in fact, a new year; though I won't trouble you with an explanation of how time does not move the way you think it does. And this post here, well, I guess it should finally go out. Ready or not. It's been sitting in edit mode, being edited sporadically for many, many months.  Last summer it was strange to be a tourist in Boston as I had never been in my younger days; when I lived closer to the city and it would have made more sense. I learned about the Bunker Hill misnomer mixup (go look it up) and walked the Freedom Trail. I felt the contentment of the dead in the much visited cemeteries. I saw at least two anorexic women in a posh neighborhood. But hey- why begin an actual written post after all these months of silence by jumping into random commen...

A tiny miracle happened down here in this land of bottle water and drafty sunshine. A friend from waay up in Queens made the trek across the states and the border to see a bit of the life that is Baja- Below. I had this impression that no one would EVER take me up on my offer to come down to see Jesus embracing the Pacific Ocean, hear chickens that need their timers reset, cuddle baby lions... and then- the stars aligned just right and  Hiram Pines  shows up with one of his L.A. friends,  Jess Porter . Luh-vly PEOPLE!  We sat and had a laugh about German - our different levels of language understanding being the funniest part. Our word for the day was the verb transitive- to prostitute. We drank a lively, satisfying wine with other local goodies from one of my favoritest stops along the wine route La Casa Dona Lupe . For me, it is the Italian(!) / Mexican equivalent of Brookfield Apple Orchard  in Massachusetts; which I visited often enough in my youth to ...