On Saturday night I went out to the first year anniversary bash for Birdsong, an ambitious little literary zine from Brooklyn-- founded, edited and published by Tommy Pico, a boy possessing extraordinary beauty. A bunch of people read poetry, sang songs and played guitar while I quietly drank several beers unto myself.
Boy genius Max Steele hosted the afterparty with his roommate Danielle. He read some really sexy, turned-up horoscopes that sounded like the author's future wish fulfillments or self-determined prophecies. Sex is an agreement reached between man and the universe. The zodiac predicts what we've wished for and determines the truth in advance.
Anyway, Danielle Rosa made this giraffe head, which Isabelle and Matthew took turns wearing.
I want to start by apologizing for not alerting everybody sooner to this really excellent show in Hartford tomorrow night; The Death Set and Ninjasonik are playing the Warehouse on Bartholomew Ave. and I think its going to be a great party. The Hartford Party Starters Union has organized it, and I have nothing but complete admiration for their mission and feel strongly affiliated with what they've accomplished so far. I raise my fist in solidarity with the Hartford Party Starters Union!
The union is right in the middle of a brilliantly messy blog fight with the Hartford Courant's Colin McEnroe, who increasingly demonstrates himself to be Hartford's loudest and most obnoxious pro-Hartford cheerleader. Lately he's taken up the cause of Hartford's "creative class," and tried to start beef with other cities like New Haven and Boston in a desperate display of city-state rivalry that holds little basis in reality. He would have made more sense had he been writing about ancient grudges held between Athens and Sparta. There is no thriving creative class in Hartford, which is what makes his suggestion so offensive, because it blindly ignores real problems in the familiar manner of other ill-informed windbags like Coleman Casey and Eddie Perez. The HPSU is posturing to take him down a notch and expose him for being the dizzy old curmudgeon that he is. So far, they've done a beautiful job, and you can track the fight's progress here and here.
The most beautiful thing about this whole mess, in my view, is that McEnroe fails to recognize how absurdly funny this whole confrontation is. To Wit fails to see the wit behind a group of young drunks calling themselves a Party Starters Union, as if they're organized, ambitious and have political power. Whats even funnier, is that the HPSU might actually possess those traits, as evidenced by this really major show they're hosting tomorrow night. Instead, McEnroe touts his own vapid narcissism, superiority of taste and opinion, in ways that make it clear to anyone younger than 30 that he is almost completely out of touch.
His win of the Hartford Advocate's best blog award by readers' poll appears as further evidence that we all really need to move out of town as fast as we possibly can.
I went to Trinity College's gallery on Broad Street last night to go to Chelsea Naftelberg's thesis show opening. She is such a sweetheart and clearly having more fun than most people do with Josef Albers. She calls the show "Homage to the Days." There were 31 panels arranged in a grid as if it were a calendar page. Acts like a comic strip, or like a diary, or like a storyboard. Anyway, they're all about narrative, clearing a path, delineating movement, making a memory and then marking it. 
Chelsea Naftelberg
WEEKEND PARTY UPDATE TV: EPISODE II - "ITS RAINING IN MY HEART"
A big, beautiful springtime "fuck you" to winter. Its finally over. Trees are budding and the flowers are blooming. Pretty soon its going to be all outdoor nudity all the time. FYI I think this video is NSFW. I would definitely risk it though. Its incredibly tasteful.
A big thank you to Greg, producer, cinematographer and total dreamboat. Also big thank-you's to Buddy Holly, David Hockney, Peter Schlesinger, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, LJ Mack, and all of the people that came to our birthday party last year. This episode took literally almost an entire year to complete because we're lazy/really busy. Worth it, obviously.
After my secret show opened and closed, all of my boyfriends met up for dinner and drinks at Ichiban. There was a decent turnout at the show. Later we partied at Marshall's house on Whitney. The work is up for most of this week, so get to La Motta Fine Art, 11 Whitney Street.
Judging from the photographic evidence, everyone is depressed. 
MARSHALL'S:
Rachel's jewelry
Brian F and Calvin
on the second floor, Rachel and I stumbled across a Magic Card game in progress. We're dying to know which total dweeb these belong to.
n00dz
my florist skillz
some magicThis evening I am showing a large group of new work at La Motta Fine Art on Whitney Street, Hartford. This is a limited one-week engagement / mini-exhibition with frantic buyers clamoring at the front door. Motherfuck a recession. I feel like rolling around in champagne-soaked furs smoking gold-tipped cigarettes just as much as I did this time last year, if not more so.
Anyway, if you're reading this, you're welcome to come out for a bit and see what I've been HARD-working ON.
I saw Were the World Mine last night with Kristin at RAW... ridiculous. It was funny and kind of cute. Its really gay. Everybody in the movie turns gay when Timothy, the troubled class fag, gets a magic wand. Its based on A Midsummer Nights Dream. I don't know what I think of anything anymore. Its all gay to me. The script is kind of bad and the acting is bad too, but the song and dance numbers are great and visually, its very pretty. High camp. At its best, it just a movie about entitled private school boys being mean to each other, which is, like, a huge turn-on. The best part about it is that Tanner Cohen from The Guts stars in it, and he is so dreamy. I love The Guts. 
lots of this... Pierre et Gilles style faggotry and embellishment.I went to the sculpture dept. show last night at HAS to congratulate CJ Day on killing and finishing college. Killed it, absolutely. Made it his bitch. God love him; I definitely do. Can't help it.
Anyway, group shows are all wierd, but these typical art school ultimate act of display-as-entry into the wider art world are especially odd. Forcing 21-year-olds to make art with each other and get along like nice, professional, like-minded peers is asking a lot. Whatever though. There were highlights. We still got drunk afterwards.
Saw Joel VanderKamp and Jacob at the opening. Saw Uncle Dave as well. Sneaky Devin "the devil" DiSanto gave a big drony noise performance in the gallery, which sent a lot of polite people outside for cigarettes, which was nice for catching up. No offense to Devin.
Went for beers and wings to West Wings on Prospect Ave with Joel and Jacob after the opening, which I thought I remembered having kitsch appeal. No sir. West Wings is a great place to go to feel bad about yourself, especially if you are a woman, gay, black, from Connecticut, healthy, stylish, educated, or otherwise "non-normative." Its a great place for obese white men to meet and hang out with other obese white men. Either that or packs of fraternity brothers who aspire to one day gain a lot of weight. I guess I got gay-bashed as I was leaving, but bro could have just been laughing in my face at my fabulous coat, I don't mean to jump immediately to homophobic accusations.
a deer, collaborative construction
Devin DiSanto and the sculpture dept., collaborative performance environment, cluttered neo-Dada this-n-that
CJ Day, center
Day
I mostly was just jealous of the jacket.
Ann Klicka's FABULOUS altered Volkswagen. Altered for pleasure tours around Hartford, and is fully functional, with just a whiff of Chris Burden-type pranking.
goddam fuckin' arts patrons.
muscles with a new friend
Jenn and Muscles
Ann Klicka
in bed with brian, 2009, oil on canvas, 9 x 12 
a wet dream, 2009, stickers on paper, 15 x 20 inches
nothin' but love all the aboveThis weekend, a few young dopes in the Scupture Department will present their thesis shows at the Hartford Art School, Silpe Gallery. The show is called One Master Signifier. I guess somebody took a semiotics class. I'm going in support of CJ Day, who is a precious pretty baby, a wild and unknown quantity. Joe Keo is showing, who also makes interesting things. Its on Saturday night at 7. I'm sure there will be partying somewhere afterwards. Then I have to wake up on Sunday and go to church with my family to observe Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead.
I love this image.
