Red Wagons and Bottle Throwing
No gratuitous pictures, just my feeble words

Billion-eyed audience, upon reflection I can muster a few descriptions of today-- humid, and at one moment cloudy and threatening rain, the next bright and hot.

A young woman who knows my Partner In Art through classes she teaches saw me dashing after the Fairmount bus on Robinson and with great graciousness gave me lift closer to work. The ride was somewhat nostalgic as the car she drove was a mid-1960s model, no air conditioning, no radio, but all vintage. Kind of like me, but running on unleaded.

During lunch and walking up Strawberry Street, I happened upon an adorable dark-haired youngster who had parked her little red wagon in front of a shop at 425 Strawberry. She was handing out free cake. Lemony,  with chocolate icing. And business cards. Not her own--she was probably about seven years old or so-- but for the just opened Pink Pig Boutique. (And if they had a web site yet I'd link to it). 

  That's marketing savvy, and I expect big things from her -- although I didn't go in. I needed to get my eats then amble into Scuffletown Park for my day's communing with nature, chef's salad, the New York Times or a book or my own writing. There are mothers strolling their children, neighborhood kids, couples lolling, and dog walkers. Just a slice of urban natural perfection, really.

Then this evening, when walking home, behind a firm calved pony-tail swishing jogger, when I got to Boulevard and Main, I observed a couple ahead of me and the pony tail swisher. The woman of the two for some reason reached down and picked up a beer bottle that was cast by some thoughtless doofus next to a house.

She, without so much as looking behind her, tossed the bottle over her shoulder and it dashed into pieces on the sidewalk. The jogger did not miss a step. Being a writer and theater person, I though at first she must've been so angry with this man that she wanted to clout him upside the head, but she sublimated, and threw a bottle to make her point, instead. Or maybe, less dramatically, she thought the glass container would somehow land smooth on the grass of a tree well. She missed, and now it's a danger.

Finally, on my way home from procuring a six of PBR and entering from the rear alley of our abode, I came upon a sheer white cat, running with some excitement from the corner of the Sigma Phi Epsilon national headquarters. Dangling from the feline's mouth was an unlucky mouse. The cat's pink eyes registered its surprised to see me as I it, though the mouse was far more important, and the cat dashed across the alley and slid under a fence in that undulant and boneless way that cats have.

Thus ended Monday. Except for writing this book--which clocked over its 40,000 word limit about ten minutes prior to 11 p.m. tonight.

Sigh.

And by the way, Bloggerites. What gives with me not being able add web sites to my HTML listing? I've got several faves I want to add and copied and pasted in what I thought was the correct way, and they don't show up. This annoys me.

Thank you, and drive safely.

'Tis The Season...
For First Friday and Art Basel, Cell Phones, Bonsai and Book Sales



Well, billion-eyed audience, if you've been following along you with the story thus far, you know that this image of exuberance and annoyance signifies that it's our art monthlies, First Friday in Richmond. This picture was taken (not by me) at a long-ago opening at the Three Miles Gallery which is where the now busy downtown bistro, Tarrant's, will be receiving guests tonight in its expanded seating room.

The girls better wrap'em up, it's cold and rainy today though by this evening, the precipitation will have slacked off though the temperature will not be as hot as they are.

Exotica on the Agenda

Among the exotica on the agenda tonight is a demonstration of traditional Balinese puppetry at TheatreIV; Transfiguration: The Art of Bonsai at gallery5 -- at which nobody will be naked, or so I'm told--too prickly--and some of the trees that will be on display are, well, 400 years old. That puts things into perspective, doesn't it? The new Ghostprint Gallery has an introductory group show and Transmission may take the coveted Too Hip For Words prize with its show by Amanda Marie, An Unfinished Story. She is a frequent contributor of illustration for magazines such as Juxtapoz, The Onion, and Syntax Magazine, and other stylish publications with type-points too small for my fading eyes, thus, meaning I'm out of their demographic. (Although a yoot remarked to me, "Just get better glasses.")




I keep thinking if I buy these publications or view their web sites, that somehow an electro-digital-alchemical reaction will occur between my fingertips and their pages, or in some kind of weird exchange of information within the light refracted by the digital images, and the years will begin to slip away from me. I'll start wearing knit caps with dangly things and develop a hankering for Pabst Blue Ribbon (as demonstrated by this image via SLOG ) Alas, never happens. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what Amanda Marie does, live and in person, so to speak.

And there are of course all the other gallery spaces, on West Main and Broad streets, with all their plethora of plethoras.

Amieo and cell phones

Meanwhile, where is my partner-in-art-for-life? Well, in Miami, for the Biggest First Friday of Them All, the Art Basel Miami artgasm and extravaganza of marketplace economics. If you're going to catch big fish, you gotta go where the big fish are, and I want my Grande Louvre to hook a sturgeon, or perhaps a pilot whale. A passel of Richmonders have taken a flyer "down there" and I'm wondering if they'll find each other and if the collected energy may cause a geyser to erupt on Biscayne Boulevard.

The image below looks like it could be Richmond; but it's a portion of the Art Basel Experience, via Bloomberg. This is the opening of the NADA exhibit during a New Museum benefit, December 4.



So I put Amie O. on a jet airliner on Wednesday, amid snow, and got to communicate with her as she passed out of the security clearance via our new cell phones. My first ever airport terminal cell phone chat! Yes, billion-eyed audience, I have joined the 20th century, seven years late. It takes pictures and may make Julian fries, if I knew which buttons to push. I'd be quite the self-referential blogger if I had someone take a picture of me and my Razor and posted said image here.

Maybe later.

In the meantime, I'll be signin' and sellin' True Richmond Stories, tomorrow, Dec. 8, at Book People, between 3-5 p.m., though I'm not at the moment on their web site. It's 536 Granite Avenue, south of the intersection of Patterson and Libbie.