al franken's wedding speech

here is al franken at ben's wedding, explaining the tradition of the smashing of the glass, which took place at the reception rather than at the wedding ceremony itself.



al was a good sport. someone asked me if i had any pictures of him & me and i explained that no, i didn't, because i was the one taking all the pictures. i have many pix of al not with me - talking with beth's dad, the fervent bush supporter, laughing at something ali was saying, pointing at the country club coat of arms.

ali got mad at me for telling al franken how we met (on a cheesy lesbian dating site.) she wanted to perpetuate the lie that we met by happenstance when i was driving through town. al stood there smiling as he observed ali and myself having it out over this. i thought it was funny, how we met. she was embarrassed by it. oh well, too late now, cat's out of the bag.

anyway i am home now and relieved to be moving on with my life, such as it is. once again and true to form i am awake way too early which means i have a day of work ahead in which i will be sleep-deprived and underproductive. not exactly the way in which i was hoping to leap into the fray. i'll report back with news of how that's going, the work thing. if only i had a non-work thing that gave me so much satisfaction, then i'd be maybe living a life. i hear stories about me having a bunch of "cool" friends ever since the vegan bus thing but really, who hangs out with me? a couple people at best. true, i'm never around. true, i turn some people down. but i'm not hanging with any sort of "cool" crowd or any sort of crowd, period.

over & done with

well, the birds have been sacrificed, the cousin has been wed, the big celebrity has left our midst, it's all over and done with, and now we can all go home. i am relieved. there is only so much excitement i can take. actually my biggest excitement of the entire thanksgiving/wedding weekend was after the wedding when i went into the bathroom to be by myself so i could mope (all the happy people were getting me down) and everyone left without me to go to the after-party. then i had to walk all the way to the big mansion alone in the cold and by the time i got there i realized there was no way i could go in, not in my mopey mood with the sounds of hundreds of people cheering coming from the inside. so i had to call my mom at her hotel and beg her to come rescue me and drive me home to ali's (ali had left early to have some mopey moments of her own.) my mom was a very good sport about it but she & stan got lost on the way and so i spent an hour prowling around the woods outside the mansion, and walking back and forth to the country club just to keep myself from freezing. my toes and fingers went numb five minutes into the long wait. eventually i was rescued (just when it was starting to rain) and driven back. ali was already asleep. since none of the wedding food had been vegan i was hungry and i ate two bowls of peanut noodles and a piece of vegan pumpkin pie while watching "the office" before going to bed.

there were a couple nice moments during the wedding. one was holding hands with al franken while dancing the horah. it was fun having him there, fun for everyone except, perhaps, al franken. he always had somebody mobbing him. i felt like that has got to suck, having to constantly hobnob with strangers who come up to you, but my mother reminded me that this is politics for him, now that he's running for office he has to be a friend of the people. so i felt slightly less bad. anyway i lied when i said there were a couple nice moments because that was really the only one. i thought that the entire wedding ceremony was lovely and romantic, and the celebration was big and celebratory, but being around people in love and looking at happy couples everywhere i turned only served to remind me of the ten years i wasted being married myself. and i don't get happy, as a general rule, so all the overwhelming happiness all around did not rub off on me. instead i felt as if i were watching it all on a screen. i kind of was - i was watching the entire thing on the LCD screen of my camera as i took picture after picture. every single one came out badly and i could only nod and smile politely when people came up to me thanking me for taking so many "great" pictures. just because i was holding a professional camera, they all assumed i was a professional photographer. instead, i was really just sucking major suckage.

i have one more day in little rock before i return home. what kind of day it is will be determined by how ali is feeling. she has been having a sort of episode since i've been here (and before) and her meds aren't working right or she's having an allergic reaction to them or something. whatever it is, it's going terribly terribly wrong and she is not well. there is nothing i can do but be sympathetic because i've been in such states plenty of times myself. anyway we haven't been able to really have much fun because she is feeling so crappy and un-fun and not artistic and so on. so i don't know about the creative jump-start i was hoping to get, if i've gotten it or not. i won't know until i return home. i do know this: having someone i can shoot pix of openly and without reservation has been liberating. the reason why i can't do the same thing at home is that i don't necessarily have a willing victim. i am going to miss ali's and my exhibitionistic/narcissistic way of collaborating. and i am sorry that we did not do more. we would have had she not been having issues with her meds knocking her out and/or giving her panic attacks. oh well. there is always next time. and in the meantime i might have to become my own willing victim. in other words, i'm going to have to learn to make use of my tripod and get a remote shutter thingy and just do this by myself.

now i am going to post a few pictures to flickr and go to bed. it's very very early for bed but ali's already slumbering and there's not much else for me to do. oh well.

al franken

word has it that al franken is going to lead us in dancing the horah at ben's wedding. yippee!!!!!!!!

hava nagila
hava nagila
hava nagila venis'mecha

hava neranena
hava neranena
hava neranena venis'mecha

dexter schmexter

 

here is ali the serial killer wrapping her latest victim up in plastic. dexter eat your heart out! for thrills and chills of the much more mundane variety you can check out my latest flickr set there. so far nothing really excitingly mundane has happened today. we went to the goodwill and then had falafel. i can't believe that tomorrow is the annual ritual animal sacrifice! even worse, i can't believe that my family is having dinner at a restaurant on shackleford st. it has to be an omen.

getting ready

 

what the hell is peanut parking?

 

parking for peanuts??? parking if you have peanuts? parking if you want to throw peanuts? parking if you ate peanuts on the plane and are ready to upchuck them? i did eat peanuts on the plane (the only vegan option) but i felt no need to upchuck them even though i was illened by the hours of waiting around all day for to get to my destiny. destination? nay, destiny. ali met me at the airport (on time, no less!) and we were both dressed all in green. "it isn't easy," she said. she had been up all night. now she is napping. i had a short nap, then took a couple pictures of her in her sleep before i began to worry that the sound of the camera shutter would rouse her. so i am going to hunt down some aspirin or midol and sneak one or two of her mom's vegan cookies (!!!) and then go back to bed myself. i don't know what the liquor laws here in arkansas are, but we're supposed to go out and get red wine later (it's healthy for women!) my concern would be of course, that it would be too late, as it would be back where i harken from. but not everywhere is so puritanical as MA. anyway ali has given up the hard liquor in favor of this lighter fare in light of recent events that left her not in the mood for all-out debauchery. to which my entire system shudders a collective "whew." granted i was looking forward to madness and mayhem but NOT to a week of blood alcohol poisoning. plus, my hooping would have suffered.

more later. look for me in your email boxes and possibly on flickr. i am using a PC here and i DO NOT like the monitor, for i cannot view my pictures in their true light, so i don't know what adjustments to make before uploading (if any.) i might have to wait till i get home before sharing, but by then the sparkle might have gone out of my eye (hard to say, it not having happened yet.) you know me and the lack of enthusiasm thing. i've been all alive and motivated since i got here but that could just be an ali thing. she, on the other hand, is suffering extreme sleep deprivation and needs to get caught up on her zzzzzs before we can even TALK art with a little "a".

well, see ya. peanut gallery.

cosmic twin mayhem alert!

in just over a week i am heading down to arkansas for the wedding of my cousin ben, who's getting married the saturday after the annual national ritual animal sacrifice. i'll be staying for a week with alison, my cosmic twin! the last time i saw her was in april when i flew down to jump-start my life (it worked.) this time i am hoping for a sort of creative jump-start, since i already have a life but i am feeling rather muddled in the creative arena. i haven't been writing at all or doing anything of any artistic value save for a really cool mobile i made when i had the flu, but that has to be destroyed. it was temporary art.

anyway, this is what i do when i am with ali: we run around and take a lot of pictures. we make out in front of people and take pictures of that. we stay up all night talking. she reads me poetry. we let her four dogs in and out. we hang out with her friends and take more pictures. we make plans to visit the graveyard and the train station for photo shoots and we never make it there. we never make it anywhere on time. we never get around to most of the things we plan to do because we're too busy talking. we share music with each other. ali always has beautiful music playing, always.

i'm bringing a lighted hoop with me and planning to hoop at midtown, the dive bar that's open till 4 am and which serves boca burgers for a dollar or for free if you're a girl and you're there at the counter making out with another girl. how cool is that? i know, sexist. but no, it's really sweet. i only met a couple really creepy guys the last time i was there, the rest of everybody was really nice. so anyway i am working on my first-ever actual hoop routine so that my body will be trained to actually do something and i won't freeze up or just do stupid shit. i know a lot of basic tricks, i just never remember that i know them so i never do them. i've now got them all on post-its on the wall and i'm ordering and re-ordering them to figure out how they best flow from one to the next. if i get it together and feel ok about this i will have ali videotape me at midtown so that i will have a real video to put up on youtube, and on the hooping tribe where i never post anything because i don't have anything to post.

in other news, i am kinda working for star and i learned how to mount his grids and finally mounted a whole one on my own the other day, which was really gratifying! i like doing it, it is a very meditative activity. the next thing i will be doing for him is scanning 2x3 grids for his film into the computer (digitizing them) so they can be used in final cut pro, for his film. i will be doing other stuff too. i'm excited to be a part of the project. it's something i really look forward to working on although i never have any idea when he's going to call me to work. so it's hard to plan around it. good thing i don't have much else going on at the moment. i had this idea of going to massage school, but i might be too lazy to actually look into that. we shall see. it would be cool to become a really good masseuse but i have a feeling that we are at the very tail end of the "service economy" and i wouldn't have much of a career ahead of me.

that's all for now.