the Musings of the Gus home | musings index | feedback | other journals
May 1997 index
previous | next                 page bottom

May 8, 1997, Thursday

When you're on the run: don't take time to cover your tracks through the river.

On rare occasions they hold the copies aloft and ask who is the culprit printing them.
A

fter I got off of work I went directly to Cocke Hall and printed out numerous copies of the Dynashack Party flyer. As usual for my exploitation of the free UVA printout policy, I printed out the multiple copies in batches so as not to draw attention to what I was doing. Sometimes self-righteous students stand at the printer as my reams of identical copies accumulate, indignant looks on their faces. They grab each copy as it emerges with ever more disgust. "When will these wasteful copies end and when will my work, ever so much more important, finally break through?" they ask themselves. They toss the flyers in a rude disorganized pile. On rare occasions they hold the copies aloft and ask who is the culprit printing them. At such times I hide silently and faux-industriously behind my monitor with a completely unrelated window at the top. By printing my flyers in small batches, I avoided most potential for raising studential ire.

When I awoke from sleep at 3pm, I went to Olsson Hall to resume printing flyers. While the printer at Cocke Hall had been low on toner, the one in Olsson produced the rich blacks one needs for a flyer advertising a space party.

B

ack at the Dynashack, I did a little more straightening out of my room in preparation for the party, but then John came by and invited me (and Ian Cohen, who was also there) to an art opening that was ongoing at the old Follette bookstore on the Corner. I certainly wouldn't want to miss out on such a thing.

Follettes is a terribly big space when stripped of all the display racks full of books and office products. It makes for a gallery vast enough to give breathing room to the works on display. Liz West, who lives on the third floor of the same building, apparently secured permission from the owner to use the old bookstore for tonight's opening. The phenomenon of artists using otherwise unused retail space for one-time shows is relatively common in Charlottesville.

The works were all by UVA students, including housemate John Arnold and Liz West. Liz's major work, the signature piece for the show, consisted of a labyrinth of sheets hanging from the ceiling. She also had some welded rebar metal sculptures and large metal and plaster marionettes. At today's show John debuted his large painting of Cecelia the Brazilian Girl. It has a tense electricity about it. I don't suppose I should be surprised; she was on tussin when he painted it. But he's worked it over a lot since her initial sitting. I later learned that he actually managed to sell that and another painting at the opening. The little room where John's work was on display was rude and industrial. It was decorated with fibrous blue air filters and arrangements of cans of cheap beer and bottles of Colt 45, which John encouraged any and all to consume. He was thumbing his nose in his usual good-natured way at high-society pretenses. After two glasses of vino and 32 ounces of Colt 45, I was feeling rather drunk.

The most disturbing of these was ruptured at the anterior, birthing numerous little fetuses cast in bronze and mired in a pool of white glue.
I took careful notes of the show in fake Greek (English represented phonetically with greek letters, a code I developed in the mid-80s), but naturally I misplaced my notes and so cannot refer to them as I type now. Lucky for me, no one discovering my notes will be able to make any sense of them. I do want to say that some most remarkable works were by a girl named Holly. She'd put on display some close-up photographs of naked flesh, sometimes cut into visual slices by taut strings or poisoned by black ink. She'd also made a number of plaster sculptures of stylized female forms. The most disturbing of these was ruptured at the anterior, birthing numerous little fetuses cast in bronze and mired in a pool of white glue.

E

lizabeth and I walked back to the Dynashack together, but I recall there being a certain amount of animosity between us as we did so. I don't recall why.

Monster Boy and I went around in the Dart to, among other things, get decorations for the Space Party. I'm going to be building another space ship in the front yard, just like at the last Space Party.

In the late evening, we housemates, with the exception of Penley, but with the addition of Monster Boy, had a house meeting about the party. We decided to get four kegs. Elizabeth wanted to get a keg of good beer, but the rest of us wanted quantity, no quality. The matter resolved itself nicely during the meeting when a friend-of-the-Dynashack named Jesse called and told John he'd sell us a spare keg of Killian's Red (a fairly good beer) for a measly $50. That's what a keg of Beast Ice normally costs for Christ's sake.

The housemates went off to the Tokyo Rose to see the Ninth and Shannon Worrell play their tunes. Meanwhile, Monster Boy and I stayed back at the place, watching the Three Stooges on teevee. I burned my finger burning a pile of little plastic things on the front porch.

There was no pre-work nap for me tonight. I went to work a half hour early to compensate for coming in late some weeks ago. The Amy who works at the Tokyo Rose came by and hung out with me for hours (she's here right now in fact, learning how to FTP with Netscape). I encouraged her to play her own music, and she ended up playing classic rock: the Kinks. I have to say I've never met anyone who liked the Kinks before. I think her interests in classic rock reflect old-school Mod tendencies. She also likes the Who, the creators of the classic Mod movie, Quadrophenia.

back to the top
previous | next