Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Fire pics!!
Here are some of the latest pictures from some fire spinning I did in Washington over the holidays. Photos by Chrissy Menke! You rock, girl!
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
First day of the New Year
Today was an interesting kick-off to the new year.
It began with breakfast at Valois. An experience all in itself, Valois, a Hyde Park breakfast institution, was packed but according to my housemates, was not busy. "On Sundays around 11 am the line is practically out the door," Lauren and Corrigan informed me. At 1 pm on New Years Day, the line went about halfway to the door.
Snaking up to the long counter the only white person behind the counter takes my order. With 7 cooks behind him running back and forth crazily cracking eggs and flipping cakes, I feel pressure to get my order out in as few words and as quickly as possible. "Two eggs over easy bacon hashbrowns," I say. Usually I like cheese and green onions on my hashbrowns-but that's 4 extra words. The guy turns and barks my order at the cooks (all overweight older Hispanic men) with a baseball "hey batter-batter," slang, and in the same breath, looks at the person behind me and says, "Next!"
"Any toast or pancakes?" A woman asks me as I push my cafeteria tray down the counter. I shake my head as she asks me, "Anything to drink?" Oj, please. I push my tray to the register where you pay. "We'll bring water to your table," the cashier says. (It never actually comes...)
Regardless of the hustle bustle craziness, the eggs were awesome, the hashbrowns crisp and golden, and my entire bill under 6 bucks. Can't beat that for a hangover breakfast.
After coming home and vegging out for a couple hours doing, well, nothing, I decided I should go across the street to the apartment I'm watching and walk the dog. I trudge through the snow and up 3 flights of stairs, open the door...and notice the suitcase on the floor. Oops! They were home already....and I didn't clean up yet! Crap. I awkwardly hand them the keys and bounce. Well, at least I'm leaving the state.
Upon returning home, I commenced my taking it easy. I learned about some interesting people/things. Like the Transmission of Affect, a book Lauren told me about. It is a theory that says we project our energy/feelings to others. I also learned about Tuli Kupferberg, a crazy anarcho-author, Kate Bornstein, a transgendered gender theorist and writer of 101 Alternatives to Suicide, a vegan household in Capitol Hill, a cool new writing opportunity, and finally came up with a label for my sexual orientation (i am a lesbian except on special occasion-and most men simply aren't special enough).
Now it's 11:31 pm and the first day of the new year is almost over. It may not have been an entirely productive day, but it was certainly interesting.
It began with breakfast at Valois. An experience all in itself, Valois, a Hyde Park breakfast institution, was packed but according to my housemates, was not busy. "On Sundays around 11 am the line is practically out the door," Lauren and Corrigan informed me. At 1 pm on New Years Day, the line went about halfway to the door.
Snaking up to the long counter the only white person behind the counter takes my order. With 7 cooks behind him running back and forth crazily cracking eggs and flipping cakes, I feel pressure to get my order out in as few words and as quickly as possible. "Two eggs over easy bacon hashbrowns," I say. Usually I like cheese and green onions on my hashbrowns-but that's 4 extra words. The guy turns and barks my order at the cooks (all overweight older Hispanic men) with a baseball "hey batter-batter," slang, and in the same breath, looks at the person behind me and says, "Next!"
"Any toast or pancakes?" A woman asks me as I push my cafeteria tray down the counter. I shake my head as she asks me, "Anything to drink?" Oj, please. I push my tray to the register where you pay. "We'll bring water to your table," the cashier says. (It never actually comes...)
Regardless of the hustle bustle craziness, the eggs were awesome, the hashbrowns crisp and golden, and my entire bill under 6 bucks. Can't beat that for a hangover breakfast.
After coming home and vegging out for a couple hours doing, well, nothing, I decided I should go across the street to the apartment I'm watching and walk the dog. I trudge through the snow and up 3 flights of stairs, open the door...and notice the suitcase on the floor. Oops! They were home already....and I didn't clean up yet! Crap. I awkwardly hand them the keys and bounce. Well, at least I'm leaving the state.
Upon returning home, I commenced my taking it easy. I learned about some interesting people/things. Like the Transmission of Affect, a book Lauren told me about. It is a theory that says we project our energy/feelings to others. I also learned about Tuli Kupferberg, a crazy anarcho-author, Kate Bornstein, a transgendered gender theorist and writer of 101 Alternatives to Suicide, a vegan household in Capitol Hill, a cool new writing opportunity, and finally came up with a label for my sexual orientation (i am a lesbian except on special occasion-and most men simply aren't special enough).
Now it's 11:31 pm and the first day of the new year is almost over. It may not have been an entirely productive day, but it was certainly interesting.
Tuli Kupferberg
My favorite person of the day is Tuli Kupferberg. A contemporary of Kerouac, Kupferberg is a poet, cartoonist, author and anarchist. He wrote 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft in 1967, co-founded the band The Fugs, and is now writing things called I Hate Poems About Poems About Poems, and Teach Yourself Fucking. Anyway, none of these things are the reasons for which Tuli Kupferberg is my favorite person of the day. One reason is that he also wrote 1001 Ways to Live Without Working, on folded sheets of 8 1/2 by 11 paper and sold it on the street himself. But the main reason is this passage out of the prose poem "Memorial Day 1971" written by Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman:
I asked Tuli Kupferberg once, "Did you really jump off of The Manhattan Bridge?" "Yeah," he said, "I really did." "How come?" I said. "I thought that I had lost the ability to love," Tuli said. "So, I figured I might as well be dead. So, I went one night to the top of The Manhattan Bridge, & after a few minutes, I jumped off." "That's amazing," I said. "Yeah," Tuli said, "but nothing happened. I landed in the water, & I wasn't dead. So I swam ashore, & went home, & took a bath, & went to bed. Nobody even noticed."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
