Dignity matters: Why beg when you can buy, borrow and steal?

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lmost $1000 went into my bank account this afternoon. That's not too shabby. Next thing you know I'll be a card-carrying Republican. I could buy some nice Pentium system or a shitty Mac with that kind of money. I'm considering getting some kind of nice machine for my own personal use.

Money issues were handled on the Corner. While I was there, I found a few people to tell about Saturday night's house warming party. Unfortunately, most of these people will be out of town.

I'm sure the guys at Atlantic, ever-eager to launch the next Nirvana, gently conveyed to Jawbox the message that it would be appreciated if they increased the accessiblity of their music just a smidgen.

I bought a CD at Plan 9: For Your Own Special Sweetheart by Jawbox. It's on the big Atlantic label and came out in 1994. It's well sung and well played, dissonant, melodic and full of palpable angst. But it seems to lack an essential quality. The album feels just a little too much like it was simply cranked out. The slow brooding second song "savory" is pretty good though. It's sort of a love song, see, something that Jawbox appears to usually avoid as contemptibly beneath them. I'm sure the guys at Atlantic, ever-eager to launch the next Nirvana, gently conveyed to Jawbox the message that it would be appreciated if they increased the accessiblity of their music just a smidgen. If the result was "savory" then I have to applaud the cigar chomping hucksters at the big label.

Back at 129 Observatory Avenue, my mother Hoagie had come to visit. She has become an addict of the phenomenon that could be called the First Friday of the Month Art Opening Extravaganza. While she amused a variety of housemates, I putzed around with my contribution to the Jenfariello-orchestrated photography project. I thought maybe it was due today, since she would no doubt be having an opening at the Downtown Artspace today.

They're all full of angst and ruin, the figures as frayed, torn and incomplete as the material upon which they're rendered.

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y work was only half-cooked by the time Hoagie, Deya and I left for the Downtown Mall. So it's a good thing that instead of a photography exhibit, the Artspace was featuring the mostly two dimensional cardboard mixed-media works of Gina [Eastern European Name to be filled in later]. I've referred to her before. She's been prolific of late and has created a number of very large works. They're all full of angst and ruin, the figures as frayed, torn and incomplete as the material upon which they're rendered. I liked many of individual works, but the whole was even bigger than the sum of its parts. Best of all, Gina's workplace had donated sandwiches.

My boss from Comet, Ken, was there. For some inexplicable reason I was cold sober, so I didn't even give him a chance to see some of that side of me revealed in my notorious musings which hopefully he doesn't read.

What I particularly hate is when someone I could safely assume never reads the musings suddenly gets a computer and a modem.

These musings are slowly developing a readership throughout the Internet, but it's always had a core readership consisting of my friends both afar and right here in Charlottesville. More peculiar are the strangers in Charlottesville who have stumbled upon my musings and can relate directly to the streets I walk on and the businesses I patronize. I provide them all the information they need to find me. They know the patterns of my movements and even my work schedule. They can, for example, almost expect to see me somewhere on the Downtown Mall on a Friday night. And they know what I look like too. Today a woman I'd never seen before walked up to me and introduced herself while I sat chatting with Jenfariello in the Artspace. She thanked me for ... I expected her to mention my art ... my web page. She said she visits my musings every day and considers me an amazingly talented writer. When I introduced her to my mother she called her Hoagie. My mother was amazed.
Fame is cheap and easy on the Internet.
Maybe not easy.
This is a lot of work.
What is best about the Internet is that it is the first true meritocracy.
It's a marketplace of ideas where the most interesting pages prevail.

Jen tells me that all her housemates, or the ones who know me at least, read my musings. I wonder how long these musings will last before I completely paint myself into a corner. What I particularly hate is when someone I could safely assume never reads the musings suddenly gets a computer and a modem.

Over at bozART, the works being featured were minimalistic renderings of human forms and backgrounds. I quietly thought they were pretty bad, but Monster Boy (who'd come to the Downtown Mall with Peggy in her dented cherry red Toyota) said so out loud. He apparently didn't consider who might be listening. I know better than to ever slam someone's art when looking at it.

Also at bozART were a couple of Ana Klausmann's creations. She managed to get into this co-operative gallery under their scholarship program. She pays no money to be a member but gives the gallery twice the usual number of hours. Most of Ana's recent pictures focus on her baby, Nemo. I can't relate to the obsession mothers have with their infants. The hormones involved have never reached influential quantities in my blood. Ana also does some collages and uses novel framing techniques employing things like wire.

Gallery Neo had a show of two dimensional architectural designs. Three architechs showed works: Carlton Abbott, Fred Oesch and Thomas Zuk. Fred is the somewhat hedonistic guy who started Gallery Neo some years ago. He could be found showing wireframe previews of a house to an unattractively giddy middle age couple using a 166 MHz Pentium machine. The most interesting work was a black and white rendition of a Bruegelesque Tower of Babel done with quarter-inch-square pixels on a gridlike array of laminated eight and a half by eleven laser printouts.

At Higher Grounds, an old friend of the family, Bill VanDoran, was showing his paintings of clouds. Hoagie and I attended his show at Spencer's in the Spring of 1994 and that's the moment I was conclusively sold me on Charlottesville.

I was too late for McGuffey, which closed up shop early. Outside, pedestrians stood around watching in amazement as Chimney Swifts queued chaotically in flight to dive down the central McGuffey chimney to find roosts for the night.

Back at the Artspace, a band called something like Plush Toy was getting ready to play a set. It mostly consisted of members of the Plan 9 employee scene. Not the classic rockers with embarrassing high school graduation pictures showing them with mullets, but the mock retro kids who listen to even more Guided by Voices than I do. Or at least want you to think they do.

They were really good, at least to my sensibilities. The music was amplified yet mellow, melodic low-fi type stuff. The musicians all sat down while they played. It was that anti-80s, anti-style thing that is so undeniably cool. I'm very pleased that Charlottesville is slowly but surely making a low-fi name for itself.

Most of the members of the Curious Digit were there, and being low fi musicians themselves, they were enjoying it all. They told me that if I'm the reason they're on the Internet. Suddenly I'm aware that I'm a God, able to craft "fame" out of thin air.

The Curious Digit guys, their girlfriends, their nongirlfriends, Wonderboy Neek and a pear tree were all intending to go drink Margaritas at the restaurant that stands in the place of the old Brasa on Water Street. I wanted to join them but my mother and Deya needed to have a transportation option of some sort. I gave Deya my keys and told her to drive my mother home. I would find my way back somehow.

I'd bundled up and shipped away my mother and Deya, for whom I used the shorthand "former girlfriend."

As we drank our Margaritas and ate obscene amounts of nachos at the restaurant that stands in the place of the old Brasa on Water Street, I told the Curious Digit guys, their girlfriends, their nongirlfriends, Wonderboy Neek and three french hens all about the fact that I'd bundled up and shipped away my mother and Deya, for whom I used the shorthand "former girlfriend," so I could have some the rest of the evening to myself. It was an amusing enough conversation that it was basically all that was said at our table.

The Curious Digit contingent, with neither Wonderboy Neek nor two turtle doves, left for the Tokyo Rose and I rode with them as far as Emmet Street, then I walked back to 129 Observatory Avenue.

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y mother was holding regally forth amongst the far more youthful contingent that surrounded her. She was sitting right next to Toni Dirtbag. I thought my mother was pretty cool for chipping in $2 for a box of vino that soon arrived. If she'd contributed more, I wouldn't have thought she was quite as cool.

Monster Boy's manateelike friend from Norfolk had come to visit and he'd brought Monster Boy's television and VCR. This is in addition to Matthew Hart's teevee and one dropped off today by the Aaron known as Bad Bumpersticker. It's thought that eventually we'll have a pyramid of televisions all tuned to different channels.

I fired up some pot that I had, but only Leah was much into smoking it (Monster Boy was gone at the time, see). I was kind of tired and considerate of my tomorrow-self, so I went off to bed rather early.

What happened as I slept:

• Some girls from Tandem Friends School (the alternative hippie school attended by Matthew Hart, Leah and Deya among others) came over. One of these was the youthful looking sixteen year old, Sarah Kleiner. She's the daughter of the bozART junk artist A. Faith.

• A vampie movie directed by Andy Warhol was viewed on one of the house's three televisions.

• Morgan Anarchy and Toni Dirtbag delighted in inhaling fumes from a bottle of rubber cement I'd carelessly left on the coffee table.

• Leah hid the rubber cement, but when my mother reached to get it from a crack in the couch so it could be moved to a better location, she was bitten twice by Butt Noodles the mangy gutter mutt.

• My mother went to bed after the dog bit her. As she tried to fall asleep she heard glass breaking twice.

  Having been influenced by the vampire movie, she bit him so hard in the middle of the forehead that she left a brutal region of bruised and reddened skin.

• Leah caught Matthew Hart in the bed they share with another girl: Sarah Kleiner. They were all wrapped around each other, but fully clothed. Leah attacked him, screaming that Sarah is "only thirteen years old." Having been influenced by the vampire movie, she bit him so hard in the middle of the forehead that she left a brutal region of bruised and reddened skin. Then she proceeded to pack up to leave for good. Matthew persuaded her to stay, arguing that he hadn't seen Sarah in a long time and they're good friends and all. The marriage was patched together and all is well except for Matthew's forehead.

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