intellectual properties

rawk

ra ra ra, originally uploaded by Bex from Hex.

a, b, j

12.31.10 – 1.01.11

ROYGBIV

^^ROYGBIV, originally uploaded by JasonUnbound

last 3 photos by special yellow guest, steph goralnick

from the Institute Village monochrome dinner party, rehashing monochrome day at burning man

little monsters

from halloween….

Bad Unkl Sista in French Vogue (!!!)

the November 2010 issue of French Vogue has a section on Burning Man (bm-vogue-pdf), which is exciting for many reasons, but particularly since there is, not in the main article (which does feature art by other friends!) but in another section, a photo of our Bad Unkl Sista butoh crew during our white procession at the Temple at dawn on Thursday.

(enlarged below)

L to R: Kyle Hailey, Myana, Calli Beck, Orange, Wanda, Yaella

what you’re seeing is part of a full circle of 16 people. i’m only a leeetle sad that all you can see of me is a slight bit of profile standing on the far, far left, next to/behind Kyle, but *so excited* that as a group we made it into F*ING FRENCH VOGUE. since i’m pretty sure i will never get this close to being in Vogue again, and since i am technically in this photo, i’ll count this as it.

see also: my Burning Man 2010 report + this recent NYT article on BM-inspired haute couture in Paris

out of whack/mid-30′s weekend

i must’ve jinxed myself with that last post, because the rest of the day afterward was rough.

i took the day off work because 1. it was my birthday and 2. we were going away for the weekend up the coast to a rented vacation house at Sea Ranch with some friends. first, on the car ride up, a wave of spiraling depression (the kind where you know your thoughts–>feelings are totally illogical and then amplified by feeling stupid for being so affected by uncontrollable illogical feelings only makes it worse) hit me like a brick and rendered me mostly speechless and crying for most of the car ride. generally i only have these episodes during PMS, which made it even more frustrating as i had nothing to blame it on (i need to investigate whether mood swings are possibly related to having started recently taking melatonin supplements to try to get better/less restless sleep at night).  i can’t objectively get any perspective on whether the things i was thinking/feeling sad/angry about are in any way justified or not, and i felt that talking about it with anyone would probably just make things worse (because those conversations get so so complicated, so so quickly), and honestly i didn’t even have the mental energy to talk about it, especially not on a vacation getaway weekend, so i just stayed silent and waited for it to pass.  woooo. happy neurotic birthday!

secondly, having not had any major bout of pain for several weeks, i guess i must’ve over extended myself working out and doing yoga last week. when i woke up friday morning my neck/shoulder were stiff/sore, and by the time i woke up saturday i could barely move my head back and forth and i was whimpering around again. obviously it physically hurts, but more than that it is so mentally depressing. so there i was on my 34th birthday weekend Sea Ranch getaway feeling a little depressed and with a painful body, and holy crap did all that make me suddenly feel like i’d aged 10 years in the last 1.

so i spent the weekend smoking and drinking trying to ignore the nagging voices in my head and the nagging pain in my body.   I WAS ON VACATION AND IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY, i excused.  but honestly both of those things just make me feel older and terrible and after a friend chided me a bit for all the smoking i was doing i had to agree that i was only hurting myself and now i’m back on the Healthy Wagon.

i am going to be ok. i just have really dramatic moments.

NOW: my friends are smart and funny and beautiful humans who are very supportive and understand when you might be having a little breakdown/crisis and offer you either the space or hugs you need.

AND the northern california coast is undeniably one of the most beautiful and magical places in the world and when i wasn’t consumed with focusing on the above i had a wonderful time. my favorite parts of the weekend:

–the aquamarine surf and baby seal faces and black volcanic rock and starfish and autumn sun and wind in the grass

–night walks in total darkness

–staring at the stars on a moonless night and mutually agreeing that it’s very hard to believe that the starry night sky is REAL

–arguing about whether or not it should be legally ok to ride a whale, specifically if it happens to approach you while you’re out surfing

–having a totally 9th grade conversation about what celebrities we want to sleep with, true slumber party style

–delicious breakfast foods and the amazing 5 course meal our friends cooked from scratch that puts most restaurants to shame

–compassionate and healing hands

–a room full of people, quiet, reading.

through hoops

IMG_2151, originally uploaded by Antonio Gomez.

me & antonio @ HowWeird Street Faire 2010

brides, baseball, chanting and compost

friday night:  went to ariel’s offbeat bride v2.0 book reading in the upper haight (backstory: we’ve been online friends for years, via hooping, and have met up in-person a few times). i’ll admit that when i arrived i wondered for a second why i was there, actually (outside of seeing Ariel, but i didn’t necessarily have to go to the book reading for that), as i have zero intentions of being a bride (yes, still. please let us not talk about it AGAIN.) and i have already been to see her do this book reading once, when it was first published.  as i listened to the reading and the questions, i flipped through the current issue of sports illustrated swimsuit issue (aside: swimsuit models are so much better to look at than runway models. duh, you might be saying. but i spend most of my time looking at fashion, not men’s magazines.)

it was when Ariel started talking about how the main reason she started and continues her interest with OBB even though her marriage is way past that i perked up, and remembered why i continue to read (ok, SCAN) the OBB website even though i don’t intend to get married.  weddings entail and wrap up so much of our culture, from fashion to what we hold sacred (not that those are totally separate), and the process of planning a wedding isn’t just about where/when/who/whatdoiwear; as many brides and grooms have discovered, really complicated cultural questions can come up (case in point: there is currently a very long live email thread on one of my womens’ lists about changing your last name, sparked by THIS link suggesting doing so could have negative impacts you might not have expected).  weddings are a bit of microcosm of culture, and since i’m super into cultural habits/themes/rituals etc, it makes sense that it interests me. plus, i find out about all the hot underground fashion designers/dressmakers that way (i am not however, reading Offbeat Mama, even though I understand the same thing applies (parenting is a much about culture as it is about offspring), it holds almost no personal interest for me.) the book reading was lively and amusing, and it was great seeing how much people are enjoying the Offbeat Empire and good to see the Electrolicious family in real life again.

saturday morning was an absolutely glorious sunny spring day, jay went mountain biking, and i found myself in another context that you wouldn’t usually find me: a baseball game. it was my longtime friend JB aka Windigo aka The Fox‘s birthday, and a bunch of us went to the A’s game to celebrate. the first 8.5 innings were fairly uneventful, game-wise, but the group of 20ish people assembled amused ourselves quite well. and then, in the bottom of the 9th, the A’s pulled it together and somehow managed to load the bases and score 2 runs to win the game. the crowd went wild! it was great.

later that afternoon we went for sushi at Ozumo and then that evening, jay and i donned the only green outfits we had (yes, my wardrobe is fairly monochrome: black) and went off to celebrate the birthdays of 3 of our favorite women in a emerald city themed birthday party that only sort of got busted by the cops. WTF, SoMa? not even midnight on a saturday night and you’re telling us to turn it down? jeesh. sometimes it’s just too hard to party in this city.

yesterday was also glorious, so we headed north to China Camp State Park in marin and jay and the neighbor went mountain biking while i took a leisurely 2-hour/5 mile hike. i found myself doing this thing where i have imaginery conversations with people about things that have not happened, as if i need to prepare a script in case it does. i won’t get into the topic, but at a certain point i literally said to myself “why are you thinking about this and not something good?”, at which point i developed a little chant to try to empty my head and also provide a bit of a rhythm for hiking faster, like a march. it went something like “shoulders back! chin up! irises! green plants! blue sky! sunshine! the hum of the insects. shoulders back! chin up!….” yeah, i know it’s weird maybe, but sometimes chanting is the only way i can stop my brain from going all kinds of directions, and even then i noticed that i was thinking about things while chanting. actively trying to clear your mind is difficult.

we returned and stuffed ourselves silly @ Vik’s chaat, still the best Indian in the bay. they have instituted a 3-part solid waste system of compost-recyclable-trash (THANK YOU, VIK’S!), and it was amusing, sitting next to the waste station, to watch all of the people who looked like they’d never encountered such a complicated system in a restaurant stop, read the signs, and then sort their waste, *usually* correctly. it’s amazing how effective some signage can be, and i’m betting that a number of people learn something new about waste disposal when they go there, and not just greenwashing to make yourselves look better. this is an example of DOING IT RIGHT.

and then went home and watched The Life Aquatic.

life is good. the end.

what you get is no tomorrow

weekend: food (dinner @ levende east + weekend brunch @ flora is yummy), friends (hottub with jason, neva & orange + thx for the fun rabbit food dinner and photoshoot yesterday, ali&bruce), fashion (thx gelareh for another amazing show), music (the people, they like to party), & movies:

“Shrink” is a pretty good film, especially if you like Kevin Spacey.  the script was a little too hollywood-y (would have liked a more indie-feel to it myself), but that’s also the subject (hollywood), so maybe they did that on purpose. it’s a dark film – fame, drugs, family suicide – but also has great comedic moments.

also watched “The Girlfriend Experience“, which i thought was done quite well (Steven Soderbergh directed). beautiful escort tries to make it high class, long-term boyfriend is OK with her profession (to a point), and all the concessions that go along with that.  starring real-life porn star Sasha Grey, who is not the best actress in the world, but she sure is beautiful.

bad unkl sista: the study of soft: march 5&6 2010

hopefully i’ll be performing with BadUnklSista both of these nights next weekend – it should be intense, and beautiful.  come check it out, esp. if you’ve never seen BUS.

The Carpetbag Brigade and Bad Unkl Sista present two kaleidoscopic double-bill evenings of fun, disturbing physical theater and Butoh.

In “The Study of Soft”, featuring live music by Totter Todd (of Heavyweight Dub Champion), Pym (iampym.com) and F’kir Elderfae (Bad Unkl Sista), Bad Unkl Sista fuses multi-genre dance forms, live and original produced music, art installation, video and couture costuming into a continually evolving Butoh-based performance experience. For 2010 Bad Unkl Sista has begun a year long study of soft, and brings a different show to CounterPULSE each night.

The Carpetbag Brigade’s “You don’t know Jack” returns to CounterPULSE taking a Jungian twist on “Jack and the Beanstalk” with a dash of PTSD to create a surreal, comic tragedy of an alcoholic dead man and the shadow of his wildly dysfunctional family. Inspired by Robert Bly’s “The Sibling Society”, this funny, nightmarish fairy tale is a potent brew of physical theater, dance and a live musical score created by the ensemble cast.

tickets are $15-25 at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/100860

requires a 1 hr. commitment

This mix is, among other things, a mark of the season, an ongoing fight for honesty, a need, a desire, a campfire, a peripheral vision, balance that isn’t a compromise, a thin blanket of snow, a tribute to Christopher Alexander, a dream seeking words, a roll across the shoulders, an acceptance of the unknown process, and a brush against the edges.

1. download/burn/stream/whatever/GETIT: http://benchun.net/2010/01/pattern-language/

2. listen.  see if you like it.