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| 06302004 | |
| Sorry to close out June with a trifecta of health updates, but what the fuck is up with the right side of my head? The mystery lump has become larger and more painful, and the right side of my jaw just aches like the dickens. I've got a little sore throat and a little sinus pain but aside from that no other ill effects. Self-diagnosing Internet panic-mongering reveals not much of use, so I buckled, made a doctor's appointment for 11:15 tomorrow to let him poke and prod at my glands and hopefully fix them. |
| What, I say what, is up with my teeth? The weird feeling on the lower right side of my jaw has reoccurred, this time with a pain back toward the wisdom and a strange protrusion/lump/mystery spot on the bottom of my jaw. I've got no idea in hell what could be causing this thing and I'm not psyched about dropping more ducats on dental visits. I'll give it another few days and then we'll see what needs to be done. |
| Back to work with a little bit of a toothache - starting to doubt that my dentist really examined my foolish wisdoms all that well, but we'll leave that for another day. Back to work, filling in holes with my trusty shovel of metaphor, trying to round up the usual mess as well as deal new reports of mice in the office - yes, mice - and leave! For the day! Soon! |
| Still a little sun-boggled, headed down to the MoCCA convention for a half hour or so - met Ethan Persoff - truly one of the world's great geniuses - and did a little gladhanding with the usual suspects, but my heart wasn't in it - the assemblage of just-like-mes only with more talent or less, all chasing the same brass ring, kind of crumpled my spirit, to I bailed to the sunshine and the open road on my bicycle, something nobody can ever do better than I can. |
| AK and I danced our way down Coney Island in the Mermaid Parade with a motley crue of her friends - her in a totally sweet hand-sewn octopod dress and me, last-minute half-assing as all too common, in hand-scrawled FLIPPER shirt, shredded scrubs and bassguitar, flip-flops as sunken punk from the Gowanus depths. We ended up stationed behind a totally sweet brass band and a good time was had by all. After-parade, we walked down to the beach and watched little kids run into the ocean and out again screaming. |
| It's Friday - and this weekend is so overstuffed with goodness that it's like a calzone about to burst. MoCCA, the Mermaid parade, tons of other funtime foolishness - so I'm buckling down like a belt today to frontload all the work I can so that I can just enjoyment-coast through the rest of it. It's working mighty well so far, I'd say - I've got the energy that can only come from that sort of frenzy. Lots of new stuff coming soon. Eyes open, peeps. |
| This week's just speeding by like Superman outrunning a bullet. I'm trying hard to keep up with the joneses that I jones for - deadlines et cet'ra - and it seems to be working out, but new modern timewasters are always beckoning at my free time. Must be strong! Must be invincible! Must go get some lunch, actually. |
| Back to work, of course the weather's beautiful and outside (neither of which I am) - doing actual office duties lately as I am subbing for absent colleagues - so responsibility s'mantled on my capable carrying shoulders. Not a bad thing, though - just another focus. So - back to. Work. |
| Today was my day off but most of my activites were stymied by intermittent rainage - every time I'd get my dander up to get something done the sky'd open up and douse me. So read a lot, drew, recorded some tracks for the new-secret-fun-music-project (dropping in early August), went out and hung with Sterling and then AK and the crue, watching a friend's fine film about the perils and problems of a certain MC Torah. Liked it, it was good, then sleep. |
| Back to work - lots to do on the To Do List, but all manageable, which is nice - no sword of D'cles hanging over. Busy but not oberwhelmud - like I like it. I am coining and minting words at a furious clip. Last night AK ate an onion and kissed me. It's monday, it's officially summer, and it's all in the where it's supposed to be being in. |
| Slept in, went to practice, just Jon and I as the rest of the band was indisposed or in Long Island, so we cobbled together inttros, outros and bridges, as well as working a new piece based around a bass rif I ganked from a Nintendo commercial that mutated into something sounding like Fahey sitting in with Kraftwerk - mechanical and meandering all at once. Satisfying, locked in 18th floor studio space with the AC up and my fingers swelling. |
| Huge busy Saturday, woke up early to volunteer with the City for the Olympic torch ceremony - starting off in Astoria, my (very Greek) neighborhood. When I showed up, found out that the "volunteer" job was hanfing out Coke promotional flags - fuckthatshit, I bailed, watched as a spectator, got my bike fixed, out to Brooklyn, saw Acid Mothers Temple (house rocked), Rubulad party, overflow toilets, car ride home, and then sleep. |
| It was a mistake to eat at Kellogg's Diner last night, on the way back from drinks in an epic raistorm, it was a mistake for me to order a Reuben and disco fries. It was a mistake for AK to order chicken nuggets. It was a mistake for us to even eat as much as we did, and we were punished, kept awake by grumbling nausea and mysterious itching. A shower revitalized us slightly but ugh, lesson learned. |
| Big meeting in the office today, so I was up and running early, laying out the breakfast plate and fetching coffee and actually doing the office manager job for once - bizarrely! - but once the thing got started I was basically done for the day, on my own recognizance to write, draw, and do the do that I do. |
| Over at AK's last night, her cutting fabric into the shape of an octopus, me drawing her fireplace and drinking a cold glass of water subtly colored by the fact that I didn't rinse my lemonade out of the glass, listening to steel guitar music, a breeze blowing through her room - summer is here, and we are here, and it's all pretty unfathomably beautiful up in this piece. |
| So I was up 'til about 3:30 this morning preventing my roommate from sleeping on the roof and/or choking on his own vomit, the product of a ceremonial bottle of Veuve Cliquot and a little too much pastis and seltzer and a lot too much bad feelings - a complex situation but let's boil down to what was once a wedding day turned into a finding out about another wedding day and then it's all a puddle of champagne on the tarpaper and locking yourself in the shower for a few hours. Goodnight. |
| Back to work and the weather outside has been sliding through a rainbow of moods - cold and gray this morning, leading into rain and hurry-flurries as the day wore on, and now as quitting time approaches it looks as if the sun's out and getting awesome in the sky. Roommate's cooking dinner tonight, I have beer in the fridge and a song in my heart, what could be better than that? |
| Slept in this morning, lazy long waking-up period, went to practice where we shredded all hell out on our body of work thus far and I shredded all hell out of my left index finger (stupidly fingering sideways, ruining non-calloused flesh), and then I went home and collapsed in a sleepy heap, drained down tired but happy to be alive and enblanketed in good feelings. I hope you are too. |
| Out late last night, first at Leela's birthday and then meeting AK at a bar down on East Broadway for a little crazy crazy dancing and goodtimes, we were out pretty late and on the way across the Brooklyn Bridge the moon was low and crescent and yellow in the sky. Today we ate barbecue and watched "Chronicles of Riddick" and man! That's a bad movie you guys got there. |
| Red Eye, Black Eye is back on schedule and should stay that way for at least three weeks, as the downtime gave me the opportunity to scrabble catch-up and frontload some finished strips into the machine. So much drawing to do - I did a flyer for Owens on the W train going home last night, pencils and inks, which is just going too far. Deadline for SPX book is next Tuesday, so I gotta get back to that. |
| AK and I went to see Jonathan Richman last night, to great reward - she pointed out as we were walking to the train that he's somebody who maintains this kind of stasis while always seeming like it's new to him - even on his hoariest chestnuts it feels like he's still excited and surprised by his own songs, which is a pretty good way to be. Lessons learned, internalized, and slept on through a hot summer night. |
| Back to work, not sure if today should seem like a Monday or a Wednesday or a Tuesday or what exactly, so I'm playing it safe and going for it feeling like a Friday with benefits. It's hot as hippy hell outside and I've got a bunch of stuff to do inside so I'm going to sign this one off and get it done. |
| I took the first of my summer Tuesdays off and yes, it was glorious and wonderful and exactly what I needed 100% - woke up, walked to Costco, bought a toaster oven and 19 pounds of soy milk, bus home, made AK a picnic lunch, took it to her at work, went to the gym to swim, 80 laps, comic book store, walked across the bridge, played some music, drew, relaxed, tried and failed to fix bicycle, thought about a whole lot of nothing and it was perfect. More like this, please. |
| Rootdown is President of the Internet. Make it happen, people. Also like a horse died over the weekend, or something? |
| Surprise! It was great. Beautiful atmosphere, enchanting company, really great food, pleasing performances, a great night was had. Post-dinner, we car'd out to Wmsbrg to attend a birthday celebration, winding up at Red & Black, supposedly a pretty decent hipster dancin' destination but for some reason on a Saturday night the wheels of steel were comandeered by maybe the worst DJ I've ever heard in the city. What kind of genius plays both the Electric Slide and the Macarena? It was like he was playing some horrific conceptual joke that would never end so we bailed, spent the rest of Sunday in bed, warm. |
| My constant and sometimes ill-advised desire to do new and goofy things has resulted in me and AK being on the RSVP list for "6 Raccoons," some ungodly combination of Korean dinner party and absoludicrous performance art in the backyard of the Madagascar Institute. Yes, this is one of those things that could careen rapidly into utter misery, but it could also be so brilliant that our brains will explode. And the best thing? There's no way of knowing. Blind faith, carry me through again. |
| Beautiful weather, one of those days when the outside world mocks you from beyond te office windows. I make every excuse possible or plausible to jet out for errand after errand, trying to massage the day by as fast as possible. And it worked! Welcome, weekend, and summer following behind it like a loyal pup. |
| Finally had time to sneak out of the office and down to Hello Beautiful for a long-delayed haircut. My spring shag had grown to the point where it was overrunning the rest of my skull's defenses, laying down covering hair near my spectacles and generally being a total mess. So - to the barber, the residue of my coif on the floor around me, a halo of hair, and then out to the street, dome pounds lighter. |
| AK and I continued our good movie streak with Control Room - the documentary on Al-Jazeera (the Arab satellite station) and their coverage of Iraq War II. This is something that would have been so easy to fuck up by sliding too much either way, but the filmmakers paint an amazingly balanced picture of journalists balancing their jobs with their nationalism, and dealing with countries led by insane maniacs on both sides but with citizens just trying to get by. I recommend it highly. |
| Welcome to official summer - June is official summer, right? It's not still spring, is it? I hope not. Summer is where it's at right now - huge blue skies, wispy puffs o' cloudage, oppressive, smothering heat. |
MAY
all content (c) 2003 k. thor jensen