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For those who are wondering, here’s the new Friday the 13th tattoo. Looks to be healing up nicely. I was a little worried because it spent much of yesterday dangling in the Delaware River and out in the sunlight, but there seems to be little ill effect.

I was out in the river because I was on my first tubing trip, with twelve pals. The water was shallow and calm, the sky was clear, and although there were a lot of lines to get to everything, it was still a great day.

Once I got home however, I found that something seems to have happened to knock out the wifi on the eeepc. I spent much of today trying to diagnose the problem, with no success. I can’t tell if it’s hardware or software. I tried enabling the wlan through the bios control panel, but it isn’t even showing up. The next step would seem to be a total system reinstall from my original system disks, but that would require an external dvd drive that I don’t have. After two years has the netbook bit the dust? I’m glad that I got the second generation that had the ethernet port enabled, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to post this right now. Problem is that most of what I do on it is dependent on wireless access, especially now that I’ve taken to running Jolicloud on it. More diagnosis tomorrow.

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How dop we know I’m not a professional photographer? I don’t follow the golden rule, which is always make sure that your batteries are charged and you have enough space on your cards before you leave the house. As it is, I’m down in Asbury Park, at the new house of a friend, and in the middle of a very fun evening, my Nikon’s battery died. So this is one of the few pictures I got of the Jersey Shore Roller Girls warming up for their Roller Derby match last night. There was a bunch of other things that would have been great to shoot, but c’est la vie, as Robbie Neville used to sing.

Even with the power outage, myself and Lolita have been having a fantastic time. The house is two blocks from the beach and the boardwalk, and our hosts are gracious and excited about their new place. Lehigh has been a bit badly behaved, I’m sorry to say, but that’s just been a bump in the proceedings.

Roller derby is a bit more of a finesse game now that it was when I used to watch it growing up. They’ve eliminated the banked track and the railings which means that there isn’t as much violent checking as there used to be. The players still go down (and we had one injury that was sever enough for someone to have to be helped off the track) but it’s no where near as brutal as it used to be. Since I’m someone who can’t rollerskate for a foot in any direction without ending up on my ass, I’m astonished by the skill displayed by these women maneuvering around the track and through dense clumps of competitors.

The whole thing has gotten a lot more campy too: every one has that is essentially a drag name. My favorites: For a player: Sharmaine Tank. For an official: Biroller Disorder DSM4, for an announcer (and singer of the National Anthem): Mannah Montana. And then there was the local favorite ref: Douche Springsteen, whose name prompted a local yahoo to bellow “Hey DOUCHE! You’re a DOUCHE!!!” Every single time he saw it printed on the ref’s back. Some people are very happy to have learned how to read.

After the event we hit the board walk for pizza and ices and a visit to the Pinball Museum which allows you unlimited plays on a hundred vintage machines. I managed to get a high score on SkyLab, a machine I used to play thirty years ago.

Today is brunch and then wending our way back home.

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R’s been visiting and we’ve been prowling the city as much as the weather permits, which hasn’t been much. Still it’s very nice to be able to host in the newly cleared apartment. I’m hoping to have more friends over soon.

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Leather Pride Night last night and Folsom Street East today. It’s the one time of the year when I feel most like I did living in San Francisco: part of a community of affection. In the past few years, the number of people I’ve gotten to know around the New York scene is such that both of these events are like extended reunions. I get to see hot friends, have a little fun and at least this year, head out before I get too overwhelmed by the crowds.

Folsom East can’t really compare with the Folsom fair in SF, but that’s a blessing: That event has become so overwhelming I couldn’t take spending much time there. It doesn’t attract many gawkers or much trashy food vendors, and there’s a lot of gorgeous eyecandy walking around. Things felt a lot less pressured this year than they have in the past.I got in a lot of hug time and bit of cigar play.

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Shower now? I suppose so.

Boom, it’s New York Summer – with the New York dust and pollen on the attack. Grace Jones is telling me she just feels contempt when I cry. So part of me is transported all the way back to the early eighties before I could afford air conditioning, and drank quarts of Ballantine Ale on ruins of the Christopher Street Pier. Now the weather is making think of saying good bye to my hair, and the decongestants are giving me the slightest of headaches.

It’s remarkable how this past few weeks have meant so many contacts with people from different parts of my life. Shows what happens when you go out and look at art. Thursday night I went down to LaMama La Galleria to see a group show organized by VisualAIDS, which includes work by some great people including David Cannon Dashiell, who was one of the first people in San Francisco to support my work, and was a remarkable, complex queer artist. For the third time in a week the vibe was low key, familial and interesting, without a lot of the empty grasping that seems to pervade so many shows I’ve seen lately in more “mainstream” venues.

June is supposed to be the month where the main events of the art season are over, timed to coincide with the spring auctions. What I’m seeing is that this year things are just getting interesting.

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To Dominic Vine, who has embarked on the adventure of home making. Love you, bud.

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It’s been a big week for going out with friends, and reconnecting with the past. On Tuesday I saw Chris play, and while there ran into Sarah Schulman, Joe, who produced my project at BAM a dozen years ago, and CW, one of the members of my high school art nerd pack. Wednesday and Thursday I went to TES meetings (later I’ll post a picture of how good my boots look after Thursday’s class). Yesterday I went with Dominic to the Marina Abramović show at MoMA. I wasn’t as moved by it as I was by the Picasso print show that is also up there. But there, in the middle of the throng of oddly (or perhaps typically) behaving New Yorkers I saw Ben, one of my oldest friends, and one of the ringleaders of the aforementioned pack. As D remarked, he had a full shaman/priestly outfit thing going. Since it’s been a good 20 years since we last saw each other, I had to introduce myself. There was something fitting about hooking him up with Dom,given many of their overlapping interests.

After a bit more art viewing and a burger at the Parker Meridian, I scooted downtown for a quick interview with someone I’m going to be working with for a future class. And then I bought a new mop at the hardware store, so I could finish up the job I started on my kitchen floor. I should have checked the package to see if it said single use, because seconds after I got done with my first pass on the linoleum, the metal handle came apart in my hands. I’m strong, but not that strong. In fact, I’m not even strong. My privileged consumer heart is outraged by the shoddiness of the thing.

Today I’m off to see a group of young artists perform a kind of anti retrospective of Abramović works at 25CPW. I suppose I’ll be the one standing around with a broken mop in my hands.

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Here’s my pal Chris Cochrane playing a bunch of songs at Dixon Place last night. He did great. I love where his guitar playing is going. The audience included a hodge-podge of people that I’ve known for decades. I remarked that it was the sort of scene that would get scoffed at in a movie, because someone would say “what, there’s only the same twenty people in all of New York?”. But that made it distinctly homey.

Dixon place has got a queer performance festival coming up with an incredible season pass ticket: 60 shows for $60.00. If I can make my cash flow work out, I’m going to try to get in on that deal.

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We hemmed and hawed, but eventually Dominic and I got together for a little art viewing this afternoon. After lunch our first stop was the top of the Chelsea Hotel, where we met up with a some friends of his who were having a pop up sale of their work. One, Elisa, gave him a a lovely garment for his unbirthday, and just for being around I got a dashing cravat. She and I had a long chat, and it turns out that we’ve got a lot of points of overlap. I once met her father on a grant making panel.

The apartment was a fantasia of color and pattern and it made me very happy just to be around it. Afterwards we headed into the more traditional gallery environment, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun.

Second time I’ve worn a tie this week!

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Part of my office chair fell off last night. What will provide me with high tech lumbar support now?

It’s always a pleasure to see a friend teach well. So it was a good night at TES.

I’m late to the pod cast party, but now they are the soundtrack to my commute. Thanks, Thor for pointing out Bad At Sports for the art stuff. Most of what I listen to is heavily weighted towards comics and I just recently added Art & Story, which seems to me to be genuinely useful from the creator point of view.

The art and story site has a little brush inking tutorial on it which gave me a clearer understanding of comic inking than any of the dozen books I have on comic technique. Sometimes you just have to see someone else do it.

Similarly, a very nice class at TES last night. I feel bad that the increase in work responsibilities has curtailed my time with the organization, but it felt nice to be back.

The podcast thing – it’s a bit like my own privately curated radio station. I get accustomed to the personalities on particular shows, which means that I’ve been mourning the ongoing hiatus of The Buck and Bobaloo Show. Reading the blogs of the respective stars doesn’t quite make up for listening in on their cozy weekly byplay.

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