The Weather Outside is Delightful

I live in Florida. I am bragging for all you who have never been here before or came in July to visit Themepark Land. It is beautiful right now. Has been since February. I've been at the beach every other week since February. Today I am going knee boarding with a friend of mine - he is married, has two kids, and a career...and a boat. And that is what we have in common. He has a boat and I like to go to the water and ride in it. He likes to put gas in the boat and I like to be driven in it - in the water. It's May. I'm tan, quite tan since I've been on the beach since February. Did I mention that?

Somehow, I missed out on a lot of water activities in my high school days. I have actually never been water-skiing, wake boarding, or knee boarding. I learned to windsurf...at scout camp. So, I'm not sure if that even counts, because I haven't done it since. But now I LOVE boating and boats and skiis and water and money. You have to have a lot of money to own and upkeep a boat. Not to mention take it out, fill it up, and haul it back. I'm just guessing here but I don't think a trailer with a boat on the back of your F-350 INCREASES fuel efficiancy. Just guessing. So those that go out have money, or are friends with those who have money. And as Grandpa always says, "It's just as easy to be friends with a rich kid as a poor kid." Actually, he says "it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as a poor girl." But that seems worse in some ways. My cousin, the golden child, did that and he's living in hog heaven - as they say here in the South (this is kinda the South still). Unfortunately I don't know any really rich girls I would marry.

Home Alone IV

There is certainly something freudian about sleeping in your parents bed. Hopefully less so when the alternative is a thirty year-old pull out sofa inhereted from my grandmother in a make shift home-office. And since my parents are out of town until the end of the month I have taken over their room, replete with dirty laundry on the floor and unmade bed. In fact, I should be with my parents at my brother's and his family in Tennessee. If I were any kind of caring sibling I would have quit my job to be there for when his second child is born. But then I think, is that what he would have wanted? And then the Ian in my mind says, "Hey dude, it's cool. I don't care, I just have these 10 days off fore the next 8 months before they probably deploy me and it would have been cool to hang and stuff. You know. But whatever. You're job sounds important, what do you do again? Oh yeah, you make $8 an hour answering phones and watching YOUtube all day. And how are those online classes going? Still working on those same 3 since October? Well, great. Keep at it, you'll get them suckers. Sorry you couldn't make it to be here for the birth of my second daughter. Glad you're employed at all I guess - lazy mooch."
"Huh?" "Oh, just sayed I love you."

"Love you too. How much is a ticket to Tennessee from Tampa?"

Instructions for fixing the "BLANK"

Before we get under way it's best if you stop what you are doing and take a nice long break. If you feel so inclined, run over to the 7-11 around the corner and grab a Super Big Gulp, especially because refills are only 69 cents, and a donut twist is just $1.09. You'll need these to stay awake while we go through this procedure. The sugar rush and the caffeine help immeasurably to get this done while absolving you of any guilt over the amount of time your about to waste. But of course, you have to waste it because you can't fix it on your on. And I hate to be a nag, but you did mess it up. And I just want to help you fix it, and now you're back with plenty of legal stimulants (don't raid your roommates enviable collection of prescription narcotics, amphetamines and hallucinogens-that's dangerous and illegal). Let's get going!

F.A.Q.'s (which LOOKS like an acronym for a group with alternative sexual preferences, but it's not because that's a "Q" at the end, not a "G." Which gets me every time, and I giggle a little to myself.)

1. Why did I buy this piece of trash in the first place?
Good question. Easy answer. Like me, you are a cog in the free-market wheel, succombing to the will of marketing underlings and their money whording overlords. And we like bright shiny things. And new technologies. So in their haste to get a new product out to you the consumer - I hate that phrase, it feels marginalizing - it usually comes with lots of bugs. To overcome these glaring deficincies, THEY make it pretty and fun and test-martketed right to you. In fact, you have to buy it our you are a fat, good-for-nothing, hairy beast that obviously doesn't have the intellegience to get a job that would allow you to buy this junk.

2. How old are you?
No real signigicance here, I just like this question. Especially because now that I am in my upper twenties I am subconciously obsessed with age. Plus, as an adult I am equally obsessed with numbers and quantifiying things. I swore to myself, and the Little Prince who inspired me, that I would never turn into one of those robotic men whose first question to children would involve some statistic that has nothing to do with how they feel or what they want most. It is clear to me however that it is the inevitable fate of all who choose to grow up by taking on responsibility in greater and greater measure to become overwrought with a predeliction for numerical analysis. One can't help but think in terms of excel spreadsheets when one has to figure out how to provide personal insurance, car insurance, rent, cell phone bill, heating bill, recycling bill (who am I kidding - if I had to pay for that it would stop tomorrow), groceries, movies, stuff, poop, etc. We quantify everything. You do. How much time have you already spent on this? What task could you have already accomplished? See!?

3. What is your greatest desire apart from what your mother wants you to do in 5 years time? And what country holds the most intrique and mystery for you?
Clearly I want to set up a foundation for the repatriotization of French speaking West African foreign nationals. Second, Kualha Lampur. Easy.

4. How can these questions help me get this done?
Not easy. Good thing you have your bev and treat. Ooh, that's fun to say, "bev and treat." I think I will sell that to 7-11. "It's great late, grab your BEV n' TREAT! 73 options to mix and match!!" And you have to use an exclamation point...or no punctuation at all, just really loud font (which I secretly hate).

Back to if this is helping you. Yes, and no. You are your own help, be the change you wish to see in the world, stop,drop and roll. When have any of these words of wisdom been of help to you? The last time I stopped, dropped and rolled was in a car over the weekend and the only advice that saved me then was the swack on my bum from my dad when I wouldn't put on my seatbelt. I had it on. Yup, seatbelt saved my life. Really. But it didn't help me solve your problem. And what is your problem exactly? We've been talking in vague terms here, using metaphor and simile (this word looks like smile, which is why I prefer simile to metaphor - that and similes are easier).

Let's get down to brass tacks here. Where are the butterflies in your stomach coming from? Why is your mind like a dark attic with a burned out light bulb? We'll fix this when you can get through these questions without deceiving yourself about your potential, or about what you will do tomorrow because you just don't have time today, but you really would if you could, really. Or how you tell people that your were the dumper when you were the one dumped - though to be fair it's not like we sit down and go, "I'm dumping you." Or in your case, "Why are you dumping me!? (Tears and aborted hugs)." Usually it's a lot more ambiguous then that and you are still "dating" the person for awhile when you've actually been dumped you just didn't know it and your hairdresser tells you that Judy was just in here the other day and said how horrible it was that "BLANK" dumped you and she hoped everything was okay. But you can't react because you're hearing this for the first time. And you talked with your mom over the phone YESTERDAY about how you thought everything was going fine, maybe plateaued but, fine. And now what will you tell her? That you totally missed all the clues? That your freaking hairdresser was the one that broke up with you? No. You'll tell her you were the dumper. It was ovder, just like that. And YOU couldn't take it anymore. But now you are a deceitful person. And guess what, you've lied to your own mother. It's okay...well it's not, but I am your friend. I support you. I support me too, because in an effort to be honest I am trouuuubled. But I believe in getting better. I'm not going to wallow in my pithy errors, I'm going to acknowledge them and move on. It is us getting through this. I'm not Tom Cruise. Here's to starting completely over with nothing to hide, no shame, and no reason to keep your buffant wig under your bed.

The Hilarity of My Sincerity

Ever wonder why your the last one picked or end up stuck in a windowless office at an air-conditioning installation company with 6 employees answering one phone call per hour for $8 an hour? Of course not. Because if you did then you would be me and you are certainly not me. Because I am me and were I not I would be you; having the time of my life, getting married, developing an acting/singing career, looking gorgeous, and being first pick. That is how I know you are you and I am me. And these are the kinds of things I wonder about on a regular basis:
1. Why do I come up with ideas for operas but have no skills to create one?
2. Where will I get enough money to buy a car, a computer and rent money to be able to move?
3. How come I don't have bigger pecs?
4. Can I make money writing, and if so, who do I approach?
5. Why do I hate writing every other day?
6. Is this why I don't have a writing career?
7. Perhaps this is why I haven't graduated yet.
8. That and I hate going to class.
9. And homework.

When I think about those days on the black top, waiting at the end of the line (I'm not sure I have fully forgiven my mother for marrying a man whose last name wasn't Applebaum), picking flowers in the outfield and singing to myself, I realize that I had a dream then. It is the same dream I have now. To be jewish, rich, an ivy league alum, and to change the world with my charisma. I can safely say I live in the same world as my seven year-old self and am just picking daisies humming songs alone.

An Open Invitation

Dear You,

What I love about you is your timeliness, you never let anything just sit and wait. You have great gumption and drive; these are qualities I admire (read, lack myself) and are the reason I am your friend. Anne Frankly, I am the center of your rather dull and uninteresting life -regaling you with stories of my adventures as the stereotypical Baby Boomlet wunderkind.

For example, I am waiting to hear back about an internship this summer in Salt Lake at a capital investment firm in their marketing dept. Should be interesting, if I get it. Otherwise I am going to travel to Europe - France, Spain, Morocco, Greece, Sweden...and Ceska Republika? Could be, but don't hold your breath, I am notorious for changing travel plans.

I don't know if you got wind of it, but after moving hundreds of miles away and having less and less contact, I have finally let Ellie go. I just hope she can pick up the pieces and move on with her with life in some kind of meaningful way. Perhaps she can find someone to mend the broken heart I've left. If she's lucky, there might even be some guy from her past who has still kept the torch burning and will wisk her away to married life in Utah. Wouldn't that be just the ticket. Here's hoping.

I on the other hand have nothing but blue skies ahead of me, what with working as a professional temp, taking online classes and living at home again at 25 (26 on the 26th this month). What more could I ask for!? Besides the community my folks have moved to has a pool, weight room and gorgeous grounds. And the wisdom and experience of the people who live here is ever-flowing. Gosh, that "greatest generation" really have the stories and opinions to convinve themselves that they are.

So, come down anytime. Please, soon. I need a distraction. I need an escape strategy!

New Parents Please

In what is probably the hardest thing for me to confess, I want to let my dear friend Kari know that I have always wanted different parents. Let me say that I love my parents. But that love has changed and developed over the years as I hope it continues to do. In my needy years I loved them unconditionally, because to be infallible meant to provide me with the necessities of life - a full lunch box, a bunk bed, and play time. As I got older, I started having my own milestones (first day of kindergarten was hers, as was my baptism at 8 for that matter).

My Eagle Scout court of honor was a big one for me and I would have given anything to have anyone else function as my parents. My mother was so eager to pin my badge on me that she rushed up, pulled me by the hand and denied me the dignity of walking up as I needed to do as a 17 year old young man. She shrieked and tears rolled down her cheeks. This was a milestone of MY life. I felt like a clown of a kid with an overbearing mother who didn’t know how to respect her sons boundaries. I wanted a different mother who would go to PTA meetings at my school; who would remember after the 7 billionth time that I don’t like tuna fish. The mother in my imagination could have looked the same and talked the same but she would do more for me, more to make my future life be easier. She would be better at personal finance, at follow through, at getting things organized. I guess I didn’t want a different mother so much as another mother whose skills would augment mine and who I could learn from in a different way.

I’ve always wanted a different father. But for better or worse, they are who I was stuck with. I am grateful for the bond that I’ve made and continue to make with them. But is it wrong that I will want to make a bond with my in-laws (whenever that’s going to happen)? Or that I want my friends Andrew and Shelby to be at my wedding as much as my mom and dad? Maybe I’m a little more heartless than most. Perhaps I am too independent. Without going so far as to say "out of sight out of mind," there is a lot to be said for "love the one’s you’re with." I think that the people in our lives are the ones who shape us and make us and it is how we interact with them that truly forms who we are. My mom is a different person then when I was five. Our relationship is different and she and I have both had to adapt and change to meet the changes we both have gone through.

Do I miss my old mom? Yes, of course; but only as much as I miss being in kindergarten again which is more about romantic reminiscences than an actual desire to relive that time. As time goes forward it takes us with it either with complicity or kicking and screaming (that’s part of five that I don’t miss). I try to assess each day and what its challenges are. I try to access the joy of each opportunity to grow and make the most of what I have right now. Tomorrow it will only be a memory.

Some Kine of Wonderful

I am continuing to plug along at school. I will definitely need another semester to graduate and hope that my GPA is high enough by the end of this semester to get back into BYU for the fall. Life here is good, the weather has sadly gotten down to normal Florida winter temps and I am too cold! But that just means I have to wear pants when I go outside and can't sit for very long to dry by the pool. Poor me!

I am in limbo with a girl here, Melissa, who I enjoy spending time with. We are a lot alike which has it's pluses and minuses. She is two years older than me and pretty into her career here as a web-developer and communications associate director. It doesn't intimidate me that she is doing so well, but that I have a hard time trusting that I am worth her quitting for so I can finish/continue school. Not that we're even at that stage yet. Why RELATIONSHIPS! More like, why my crazy mind and perception of relationships.

I am enjoying spending time with my parents. They are both in varying stages of unwell, my dad just having suffered a tow surgery and in need of a knee replacement shortly, my mother also having knee problems that she would like to have invasively corrected though the doctor says not yet. I should be logging hours for a nursing degree with all the extra chores I am doing. I don't mind, appreciating the opportunity to serve. And they are so generous to me and my imposing on them. My grandma, who also lives here, is the most self-reliant of the bunch. She does her own laundry, makes most her own meals (odd eating times account for that) and watches her own tv. Having lived alone for the last 25+ years, she is used to a certain lifestyle. When the missionaries come to teach at our house, invariably the new one will be a little surprised when she wonders by to use the restroom, asking "who's that, is she a member?" Fully active, she stays more on top of Sunday school scripture reading than anyone else in the house. I love her.

I won the grant for SCOPE Art Fair-New York to create the opening booth Performance Project. The tichet booth inside the entrance to the fair is designated for a performance art that sets the tone for the whole rest of the fair. Ususally whimsical in nature, it is awarded to an individual or group who must then conceive of the project and create the work which is performed through the duration of the fair. Think of it like improve actors who lightly heckle you while you are trying to buy your tickets. Add some sort of bizzare premise and voila, the piece. I am quite excited and will be in New York the last week in February through the first week of March. Scope has really been good to me, bringing me down to Miami in December for the fair their as well. There I did administrative support work and assisted in that ticket/booth/performance piece. I also got a great tan. I won't be getting bronzed this time as the weather in the city is in the 20's. Darn.

Some kind of Wonderland

This conversation happened at my house -

Ian: After I was certified on my 9mm barretta...

Dad: Oh, does that mean I get my gun!?

Ian: It was a dream. I shot two guys. (Smiles, nervous enthusiasm).

Dad: Yeah.

Ian: You can borrow my buddies 40 caliber Hecklar & Coch. He'll let you, as long as I clean it.

This is who we've become. My brother has joined the army and we learn about fire arms. Merry Christmas.

Me in Miami

I am going to be in Miami Beach for the first two weeks of December for Scope Art Fair, they hired me free-lance and I will be doing what I did last time which is help with exhibitor relations, I have also been asked to participate in a performance art piece that will collect money or charity.I think it will be a great time. I am excited to see Helen and Sadie again.

Also, the intern I hired before I left for this semester is a BYU student and Scope accepted him, after seeing the video I gave them, to receive a grant to perform a performance piece as well. He and his wife and his associate from BYU as well will all be there. I looked on lds.org to find the local chapel and it says there is a Singles branch in Miami Beach. I hope to be able to go there for the Christmas devotional and church on Sunday.

Florida is, as always, a nice retreat and it's great to be at home especially during the holidays. I am working on classes and it is going better than expected. I thought I would hate having to spend my time working on school but it is going well and I enjoy doing it at my pace. I can't believe how much I miss working full time though and have set up an internship with a research company for the next semester and am working out another one for summer with an investment company.

I am going to Park City in January for the Sundance Film festival but I think I will be coming up to New York for a visit in february or March.

I'm shrinking!

Why is it people think I am 19 when they first meet me? Perhaps because I have maintained an enviably youthful complexion. Something tells me it is my vastly immature nature and gross naivete.

It's not so insulting as it is odd to me. I suppose I should take it as flatering that they think I am some kind of prodigy having worked as the Director of an art gallery in New York, completed 4 years of school, filled a 2 year mission to France, mastered singing, piano, tap and jazz, featured on 2 albums (my thanks to nolens volens) and starred in a Saudi Arabian television show. I mean please, I'm 25, by normal standards I am behind the curve.

Alas, such is my fate. I should apply to medical school where the local media will eat me up as the "youngest kid doctor in America." Then retire by 30 on the royalties from a great first person narrative television show based around my life. I'd make them change my name of course. To something like 'Douglas Howard, Kid M.D.' Then I'd exhume the body of Johnny Carson so I could appear on his show as I've always dreamed. Gosh, it's good to be young and care free.

Except I'm not. I turn 26 in March and am unmarried, ungraduated and unemployed (I DON'T cound hocking jewelry at JCPenny's "employment"). Those who don't think I am barely post-pubescent question my masculinityby attacking my interest in the arts - that and the way I prance around like a fairy. Leave to the bullies to kick you while you're down. What is left for me? Music? No. That is the domain of the truly depressed and f#cked up. Only with life then. Maybe I'll start passing myself off as 19, go on another mission and doing everything right that I messed up the first time around. I really will be a prodigy! This is it, I have found my ticket to success and ultimate Shangrai La. Hallelujah! I am born again!

What is in store?

I am busy with school with my class at the comm. college (which I just qualified to be exempt from the final), and my ind. study courses. I am taking my first Bio mid term next week and my only Hist. mid term the week after. I just started a job at JCPenney's for the holidays. I have been in training this week and will be busy selling at the jewelry and watch counter come Saturday. I have also been offered a job working at Scope Art fair in Miami in early Dec. and am going to call them today to let them know if i'll take it. So far, it's yes. It's just one week and I should earn about $1,200.00. That will help me with my other expenses for sure.

Ellie has been very occupied with her missionary who has just gotten home and dealing with all that. He is not out east as far as I know, but back in the states and they talk to each other regularly I gather. I feel best about giving her as much room as she needs right now - which is a lot. She knows how I feel and that I am very much here for her and will be if and wehn things with him don't work out. It just hit me that this could appear as my being her second choice, but I don't really feel that way. If she doesn't like him then she was not her first choice after all. And I can respect that, either way it goes.

Kendra just got accpeted to get her Bachelor's from Univ. of Florida in Gainesville, about 3 hours north of us. She is very excited about it and I too feel like this will be a good and progressive change for her as she continues to deal with her life post-divorce. She has offered to be my roommate out there but I would not be going to UF, but the Comm College there and I am not sure it is worth the expense when i can live at home for free and keep doing more ind. Study classes. no, I think I will stay here through April then decide where to go for the summer then back to BYU in the fall if I can make sure to get back in.

I'm growing

What I recognize about my great friend R. T. Barnhart is that he is keen on anticipating other's needs. He always makes himslef available to help - moving comes up a lot and Ellie was particularly cognizant of his aid on multiple occasions in the last few weeks - but also emotionally and spiritually. I notice too, that as much as giving up freedoms to move back home after living not just away at school but really on my own with a job, that I am very much a different person when I am back home - thinking about others first is no longer a consertated effort I must make but comes second nature as my motive to be truly helpful overcomes childish desires for attention and selfishness.

I have to look at where I am going to move come January, because it is becoming very clear to me that I cannot stay here longer - not taking up space in my parents condo and not in this part of the world where there is so little to offer in the line of peers, spirtuallity and personal growth. That is one of the greatest things I got out of New York, was who I was becoming. My weaknesses and strengths came into heavy relief and allowed me the opportunity to grow in ways I couldn't have otherwise. What I feel also as strongly that I received are the friends that I made and the people with whom I was blessed to create a bond.

Now What

I have made so many changes in my life and all for the good. After finishing the season at the gallery in New York, I decided that that was not the path I wanted to be on and in spite of dating a wonderful girl, Ellie (with whom I still talk on a daily basis), I needed to come HOME of all places to finish my GE's through independent study.

Now I am living in Florida with my parents, my grandmother and my sister who is also free-loading after a divorce and finishing her A.A. at BYU-i. In a funny twist of events, California was calling me when, during a work trip to LA, Hilary introduced me to an acquaintance and student who runs an international ancient-art gallery. He pretty much offered me the position of director there on the spot when we went in to meet with him but, like my NY job, it was not what I wanted to be doing. Sadly, it was then I realized that spending the next 8 months working to finish my degree in a comforting and affordable environment was what I needed to be doing.

And that brings me to here. I miss my girl in NY. I miss not being able to be out in LA with Hilary and my other friends there and I miss having the independence of full-time employment. Once, you have tasted the nectar of that world, it is hard to return to the dark underworld of undergraduate study. But, that puts me on the path to Grad school, with its enlightened minds and deeper course of study. It was pretty appalling frankly, that so many potential employers cared so little for the fact that I hadn't even finished my B.A.

I think that come summer, I will move back to NY where I will find some kind of job/internship to prepare for grad school a year from then - future entrance date 2008.

Three-Eighths of an Inch

Jason saw that there was a three-eighths inch difference between the right hook and the left. It meant that the painting would not hang level. This was a problem. This problem had repercussions. Self-loathing would consume him. He would become short with his boss – maybe even yell a little in frustration. Under the guise of sarcasm, the boss would retaliate and call him a Palestinian terrorist or a stinky Sudanese. What made this worse was Jason was a self-loathing, guilt ridden white boy of 25 whose only real desire was to feed inbred children in the Middle East – or give them free dental cleanings on one of those trips millionaire Orthopedic surgeons go on every few years to salve their consciences.

Three-eighths of an inch didn’t really make a difference but the boss would notice. In the middle of taking a break from drafting an email to talk on the phone with one of his boy-toy, bubble-butt buddies he would slosh himself around on his wheeled chair and bark. “It’s not level. Check the level; you have to check it with the level. The hooks must be off, that’s why it’s not level.” Jason would grasp at his reserves of patience to feign submissiveness. “Yeah, I know…I mean you’re right, the hooks must be off. I’ll check it with the level.” “Now you’ve got to take it down. Do you have to take out the screw? Take out the screw. Remeasure. You have to put another hole in the wall? Oh, then you have to patch the hole.” And then back to his conversation, all interested big brother – right into their pants.

But it wasn’t what he said that frustrated and angered. Jason was sure he meant it as a personal attack. He knew that with all his privilege he should now how to hang a picture level. Wasn’t he grateful to be born white and not unattractive so he could have this job? That’s why he took a huge decrease in expected pay – he was lucky to be working. As much as it was his right as a college-educated man in his mid-twenties to have a flashy job in New York, he was cognizant that how he got there was based more on what he was born with than what he had accomplished. And it helped that old men liked to flirt with him.

Sweat was soaking through his pits and groin. The screws he had hung level but the hooks on the frame were off – by three-eighths of an inch. Damn framer. Asshole, overpriced, cock-sucking faggot. Why had Jason pursued the job? Was school really that miserable? He had thought that this was the answer to avoiding teachers who hounded him for late papers and make-up quizzes. An apartment in New York that he could barely afford, but afford all the same, was better than moldy student housing and Green-Day playing roommates. If New York was calling who was he to turn it down?

He wiped his face. The dew on his brow now darkened his forearm sleeve. The old logic didn’t add up when faced with this problem. The problem of his racist boss, of the lack of support from any of his peers, of his growing spending habits and diminishing savings. He wiped with his left arm. Matching stains. Matching lies. Matching problems. He stared at his arms. The stains were off three-eighths of an inch.

Guess what, i'm older now

This is my 25th birthday weekend, celebrating my entrance into the REAL adult world (but not the "adult" world...). Now 50 something clients won't say, "Gosh you look young! How old are you!?" and instead of, "24." "Ohh, well, that's nice. (Silence. Turn and walk away.)" It will be, "25!" "Amazing! What you've achieved so young, but at least you are a real adult and I will listen to what you say as it now has more legitimacy."

Such is the blessing of living. And the blessing of calendars. And the blessing of a culture bent on self-aggrandizement where I can turn one day into a four week bachinal. Yes.

So tonight I am going into Brooklyn with about 12 of my new friends - and some old ones from my distant, never to return again BYU days - to Relish, a hip fun diner in Williamsburg then to my friend Helen's place where she is throwing a huge bash.

ME!

All I Do Is Party

After coming in at 4 am last night from my fifth party this weekend (and counting), I feel confident that I am adjusting to life in the city pretty well. Between the girls in my singles ward and the girls at my gallery, I have more invitations then I can resonably handle - at least to be able to attend church at 9:30 with more than 4 hours of sleep.

Oh, and I'm about to become a very serious book buyer; why not, gosh! I have come across a contmeporary French philosopher whose name I was told is "Wellbottom." That can't be right, my google search is not helping on this one though. But I am avidly looking for the French version of his writing, so if you come across it let me know.

"the art world is the fart" world

What happens when you sit around hoping that someone is going to discover that you have no ability for the job you've been hired to accomplish. I don't know because I am a genius at what I do and I wouldn't be here if that weren't the case. Just the other day I sat around as artists whose esoteric work garners millions of dollars from the richest, most pompous collectors from the Greek isles came to me begging me to share in their wealth and show their work in our top tier Chelsea gallery. You see, somehow I attract these fools like flies, but have to regretfully decline because we just don't work like that with those types of people. No, it is important to maintain integrity in this business of wolves, and I for one will eat gruel instead of just take on some artist because their work will "allow me to eat everyday," or "make it possible for me to pay my rent and clothe myself." I am a man of integrity, I will starve for my art...ists.

Double "U," Tee, Eff (Exclamation Point, Question Mark)

I live in New York, I live IN New York, I live in NEW YORK. And I love it, the subway rides that keep from from seeing the trees and the sky for about 1/16 of my working day, the dirty grime that seems to collect in every crevase of sidewalk and corner (inside and out-of-doors), and the lavendar walls that line the hallway of my Harlem apartment building. I love it!

Day 1 of New York - Unpacking, parents invading, sore neck from looking at all the tall buildings
Day 2 of New York - Parents leaving, wandering, movie, FHE, sleeping in my own bed
Day 3 of New York - Waiting for Pete to show up at RARE, me here

Christmas is...

What is it about Christmas that makes it okay when as adult children gathered in the spirit of family togetherness no one feels compelled to change the HBO Chris Rock special for...count them...45 minutes? Or, the bizarre normalcy of sharing masturbation techniques disguised as embarasing moments / "this one girl I know" stories (yes, even the ladies got involved). At this festive and holy holiday season a certain cloud of openness falls upon the merry-makers which in any other context could thankfully be attributed to boozes, but in mine, the practicing Mormon one, our closeness has nothing more to be blamed on than a growing sense that we are less and less our parents children and more and more--well--our parents.

As this frightful thought drowns my mind with fears of growing a grizzly beard that I casually insist makes me look more "rugged, like Magnum, you know Magnum P.I." I realize that this is maturity. No longer is my sister gauging my back with a sharpened pencil lead contending that I do indeed still owe her $35 from prom tickets I couldn't afford; instead we mock our mother in happy comradery as we reminisce over the time I found out my phone hadn't been receiving calls for two days because she let the cell phone bill go unpaid and that it had happened to dear sis twice (yes it's not very nice to joke about financial ineptitude but if we can laugh at it then maybe we will be aware and it won't happen to us).

And maybe this is what Christmas is, an annual token of the small but significant lengths we have taken to find our independence and gain greater control of our individual destinies. This has in fact been a seminal year for each of us: I have left three/fourths of the way into my degree in Sociology to take a job in New York which I am ridiculously unqualified for - a fact reflected in my paltry pay, Ian completely failed to attend any of his classes after the first month and is ambitiously climbing the corporate ladder of his retail chain store because now he has a wife and baby to support - seriuously, though, how could he be expected to parent while trying to retake classes for the next six years, the youngest of us has made the least impact by getting her Associates degree but shows promising signs as she has no clear intention of turning that into a bachelor's but may move out to New York and take her stand-up act on the road.

Oy, I wish I had kosher!

My dear brother toasted unicorns and rainbows as we gathered as siblings around the bench/coffee table we appropriated for our Thanksgiving feast. My sister chinked glasses over her desire to spend less quality family time and my very pregnant sister-in-law couldn't even get out her toast as she was already stuffing her face. I love being with family. It's about...striving (to get through the "time").

I am thankful for pre-cooked Tyson hams, canned green beans, disposable roasting pans, and Pillsbury rolls. I'm thankful for "imported" sparkling pear-apple juice (non-alcholic) and Sara-Lee frozen pumkin pie. But mostly I am thankful for naps, long quiet naps where I can be alone...sleeping.