"They sat on the riverbank and contemplated the miracle of mud."

"I read menu, talk to waitress," Malkin said.
Also:
"Uh, let's watch Transformers. I have seen it before and it is good."

Busted!

It's November 28th and we have a Christmas tree.

I can't remember the last time I had a reoccurring dream or held hands while crossing the street. I had a third thing I wanted to share but I can't remember what it was.

I was gently awoken this morning by the sweet sound of Walter Egan singing Magnet and Steel. It was very nice. Thank you, clock radio.
I've been monopolizing the conversation. Sorry.
You look good.
Are you doing alright?

I'm going to form a gang and we're all going to wear these.

Shalom, dear blog readers! When I last left you I was preparing to spend about twenty minutes in the car getting to Handmade Arcade (it was only supposed to take me seven minutes according to Google Maps, but I don't think that's humanly possible). It ended up taking me an hour and a half to get to Construction Junction because the parkway was a nightmare and my exit was closed. Ugh. However, my unerring sense of direction (my "luck" if you will) enabled me to find my way to my destination pretty quickly after finally getting past all the construction.

Anyway, Handmade Arcade was cool. Our print activities and toast were a success (well, the toast was a novelty at least), and we got the word out about AIR. Unfortunately, we were undermanned for most of the day, so I was too busy to really get to walk around and look at everything. I did get to see some of my favorite people, including a couple of my teachers from Pitt. Hallelujah!

I'm starting to get used to being recognized as an "AIR person". Special love for the people who printed stickers with us at the East End Co-op and remembered my monkeys carrying fruits and veggies!

The only bummer, aside from being understaffed, was that it was so cold that I had to keep my sweatshirt on the whole time. Only a select group of invitation only VIPs got to see my t-shirt. Oh, well!

We have 45 loaves of bread.

"The Mixed Tag Team Match between King Kong Bundy and his midget team of Lord Littlebrook and Little Tokyo against Hillbilly Jim and his own midget team of The Haiti Kid and Little Beaver was next. King Kong Bundy's team was disqualified when Bundy attacked Little Beaver, because Bundy was not supposed to be in the ring with the midgets."

-- "No way...Wrestlemania!"

Remember when we were young and active on Friendster? Those were the days. I was looking through my old Friendster inbox earlier. I was lured there by an email about a new message. The message turned out to be a phantom, but I found a bunch of other, older spam. It had been a while since I'd been in there. Strange things were growing.

I was surprised by the number of messages from actual people. That doesn't happen on myspace. It's all spam all the time on myspace. Friendster actually offered up messages from real people who had actually read my profile. Some of these messages were very old. I'm not sure if I'd ever seen some of them before. I should reply to them. "You messaged me on here two years ago and I never replied." And then ask some bizarre personal questions. That could work.

I also read back over the few messages from the people I know. There are some weird ones from my brother when he was at school and some random messages from people from Pitt. There are also a couple messages from people that I don't know, and, shockingly, replied to. For instance, a girl messaged me, and we became "friends" although we never had any interaction beyond her initial message to me, my reply to her in haiku form, and another message from her. I guess the ball is in my court on that one. But, hey, isn't that what's missing from the internet age? Epic correspondences? I think so. No more three line replies to email for me. From now on I take years before I reply but I write a novel back to you. Well, maybe a novella.

Yesterday was fun. Received my postcards from Moo. I don't think I'd pay $25 for them but the quality is good and the ease of use getting the images off Flickr is phenomenal. I'm not entirely sure about some of my image choices though. Some people may be getting a weird postcard or two in the mail soon.

Voted, which is always a breeze since they know me there.

Later, I went to open studio because DJ Mary Mack was playing and I thought I'd either a) enjoy the crazy party atmosphere, or b) make sure there was at least one person there. It turned out to be a pretty normal night. It was really nice having a DJ. We should do that more often.

Before going to AIR I scrambled to print out the separations for one of my recent illustrations, and, even though I screwed up one of the layers, I was able to get it all together and print a shirt (I seem to be making a "guys walking" t-shirt series. Who knew?). It may be petty, but I always feel I need to wear a shirt I made to Handmade Arcade ("Yeah, you have a table and a lot of stuff, but I made a cool shirt!). I'm such an infant.

I couldn't go two elections without voting. The only real reason I voted was because one of the judges' husbands is one of AIR's project artists this year, and, now, if I find myself in her company at the opening on December 15th, I can say "hey, I voted for you".

"In the dream, I only have a few minutes to convince the pope that the mule that carried Mary out of Egypt was the same mule that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, and it should be a saint."

AIR will be rocking the Handmade Arcade next weekend. Yeah, you heard me. Rocking. I'll be there all day Saturday. ROCKING. We're cooking up a something special for it (Cooking. Get it?). Oh, yeah.

A: I smell an intern.
B: Yeah, the quality of interns has really dropped.
A: It’s not like it was when we were interns.
B: Yeah, they don’t even make them take a vow of chastity anymore.
A: A…what? You took a vow a chastity?
B: Didn’t you?
A: No.
B: Damn it!

We're always getting new interns at AIR and I don't usually even try to remember names because I hardly ever see most of them, and lately all the female interns have had names like Caroline, Catherine, Krista, Christine, Carolyn, and so on. How am I supposed to keep names straight when I only ever see them every few months and they all have basically the same name? It's impossible! We need nicknames or some sort of numbering system!

I'm not even going to try to write a novel this month.

I may try this though.

I've been enjoying the hell out of this.

Steve Bissette writes very good movie reviews.

AIR is at the Children's Museum this Saturday and again on the 17th 24th. Bring the kiddies!

So, yeah, Halloween. I think it was slightly better than the last few years. The weather was perfect. My mother got a bunch of candy so I wasn't forced to get creative with the treats (my backup was individual latex gloves. "Take two, kids!"). Trick or treating in Mt. Lebanon is officially from 6-8 (although I don't know what they do to you if you get caught out after 8 o'clock. Probably something unspeakable...).

The main barrage of kids from the street happened a little after 6:00 while it was still light out, so there was an E.T. vibe (which is good, I guess). After that it was kind of sad for awhile. It was getting cold so I went inside after a bit. Come to think of it, I pretty much gave up around 7:00, but I wandered back down and caught the last three groups who were pretty amusing.

The first of the last was this adorable group of little kids. Really little kids. The kind of kids who haven't quite got the hang of what order they're supposed to say "trick or treat" and "thank you", but when they were prompted by their mothers they each went into the whole "smell my feet" version with great passion. It was very cute.

The second to last group was a lone girl. She was totally alone and moving very fast. She had a very impressive haul. She is my hero.

The last group was the only other group to be out without parental supervision. It was the girl who lives nextdoor, a girl who lives up the street, and one of their friends. There was giggling instead of saying "trick or treat". Actually, there was a lot of giggling on that one.

I think that's all. My computer says it's November. That can't be right.

This is probably a huge mistake, but I'm going to try to Twitter aggressively in November in an attempt to find out how pathetic my life really is. Well, when you put it like that!