This just landed in my inbox:
Artomatic and Playa del Fuego are excited to announce
The Art of Change :
An Inaugural Celebration
of DC’s Creative CommunitiesDowntown DC, January 20, 2009, 8 pm until … ?
Save the date (because there’s nowhere you’ld rather be on a
Tuesday night!), and look for full details this Friday, January 2nd!
The website is at artists-ball.org and will have all the details as they emerge.
I was putting together this week’s Friday Five when I realized that I didn’t have five fun links bookmarked from the weeks surfing. Also, it’s no longer Friday. In lieu of that, here’s something that struck me as funny this week as I’ve been restoring my blog archives once and (knock on wood) for all.
I forgot that Artomatic made an appearance on Countdown in 2004! In the Oddball segment, of course.
My first vaguely obsessive post about Countdown with Keith Olbermann was in April 2003, but the funniest (Olbermann-related post) is this one from July 2004 where I whine about why no one else seems to want to watch it with me:
I thought it was funny, anyway. Not that my first post about the show was any kind of deep critique:
I can’t be the only one watching MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, can I? It’s a really good news show. And Olbermann is a snappy dresser. Hey, if we’re going to hold female news anchors to a certain standard it’s only fair to apply it to the men, right? Keith can rock the pinstripes. That’s a risky look on television, without some height it’s easy to end up looking like Lou Costello.
Hey, I still think he’s a snappy dresser…
So you’re looking to show your art somewhere, and you haven’t a clue where to begin.
I have one word for you: Artomatic.
Is that even a word? It is now. After 10 years in operation, the open-to-all-comers art institution (which began life in 1999 in a former laundry, hence the name) is expected to return next summer to the neighborhood near Nationals Park.
How many eyeballs can you reliably count on to see your work during the show? According to Artomatic honcho George Koch, a whopping 52,500 people visited this year’s roundup of roughly 800 area visual artists in the NoMa, or north of Massachusetts Avenue, neighborhood in Northeast. Like that one, the 2009 show should also include live bands, along with a host of other performances.
The criteria for entry are easy: Scrape together one C-note, give or take (the exact registration fee is to be determined). Other than that, there’s no aesthetic gatekeeper. Which means that, yes, you’ll be hanging with the sublime and the ridiculous.
Still, there is no better way to shake off the studio cobwebs and get your work out there.
If you don’t want to show your art you can always volunteer, you know.
Last night Husband and I were filtering through emails from friends about which Inaugural Balls they’re attending. $10,000 for commoners tickets to the Creative Coalition Ball? We’ll pass. Bring us a matchbook.
We liked both of the options at Dionne Warwick’s American Music fete, the Urban Ball or the Legends Ball. I don’t have any idea why anyone thought we’d be going to the Pennsylvania State Ball.
We’re sad there’s not an urban legends Ball, because that sounds like the most fun of all. This was followed by some nerdy political jokes I’ve already forgotten, as well as the decision that we’d had enough bourbon and hot apple cider. It was terribly amusing at the time, though.
Back in August, I had an incredibly weird dream. I wrote a draft post about it (which appears below), filed it, and forgot it. Until I read this:
The event mentioned above made the news because they’ve invited the Obamas to attend and adopt a puppy, I was not randomly surfing around looking for dog weddings. Maybe I should have been.
I’m too tired to clean up this draft so it may seem odd because I wrote it August 11, 2008 and always intended to revise it so it would make more sense, but never did.
Last year, in a flickr and/or artomatic marriage made in heaven, Dr. Birdcage married Phil. The ceremony was performed by Pat, as written by me.
I mention this because the memory of this event must have been the genesis for the dream I had last night. I have no other explanation. It seemed so real, I was actually concerned that it had actually happened. The look on Husband’s face when I asked him if he knew anything about a massive artomatic dog wedding assured me it was only a dream.
So here’s the dream. I repeat: This did not actually happen, nor is it a planned event for next year’s Artomatic.
The dream took place at Artomatic, presumably the 2009 event, although we were still in the 2008 building. It was a dream, let’s just work with it. Pat and I built a little wedding chapel at Artomatic as our installation and, as Pat and I can both legally perform weddings, we were marrying people on Friday and Saturday nights. To each other, not to ourselves, of course. It was quite nice. People would invite their friends, we had a special Roger-built bar-cart for the receptions. We had sunflowers. Some people brought their own flowers.
Somewhere along the way, we decided to perform a ceremony so Ellyn could marry Emo, her dachshund. To the best of my knowledge, Ellyn has never, in real life, expressed any desire to marry her dog. I can’t explain why I would think she wanted to in this dream, but remember, it was a dream. We agreed to perform a wedding for Ellyn and Emo, and the next thing we knew more people wanted to marry their dogs.
For some reason, we decided to find a country that would agree to issue legal marriage licenses for people and their dogs. We found one, an island that saw good publicity and cash flow when it flashed before their eyes, and the process was simple. The marriage was non-exclusive, meaning you could also be married to a human and/or the rest of your pack. The marriage was only recognized on the island of St. Maarten. Presumably only the French side. I say that not because I think the French marry their dogs, but because that’s where Tracy was when I had the dream. And in the dream, she had stayed there to be our registrar of licenses. Somehow, we still managed to have Pho together every Sunday, distance never makes much sense in dreams, does it?
As an aside, you cannot actually marry your dog in St. Maarten and they have actual matrimony rules, which my subconscious decided to make a mockery of for no real reason. I blame Tracy.
Back to the dream…Next thing you know, we have a stage set-up in a huge field and we have thousands of people there to marry their dogs. There were of protesters, courtesy of the Rick Santorum website. Yes, Rick Santorum appeared to me in a dream. That, frankly, troubles me more than any other detail.
I could describe what everyone was wearing and what the band played and all those other oddly specific yet utterly mundane details, but it would be boring. Just picture a big field full of dogs and people, lots of camera crews, and, as proof this was a dream, hundreds of cheerful and enthusiastic volunteers. Also, a large cake shaped like a fire hydrant, which was instantly recognized to have been a very poor plan.
When we kicked off the ceremony, I made a stern speech about how people need to keep their dogs on a leash or they’d be escorted off the field. It went on a bit about this being for the safety of their own dog as much as others. I believe the military was supplying security. Also, for some reason that made sense at the time, nuns.
I made a joke about CNN being there and said that I’d originally planned to tell a joke about Wolf Blitzer and his cat, but had been informed this was now a family event and that I shouldn’t tell it. People could see me afterwards if they wanted to hear it. Even in my sleep, I have animosity for the Blitzer. I wish I could remember the joke, apparently it was as hilarious as it was obscene. Does Wolf have a cat?
We had the ceremony, and each person had a “Best Friend Best Friend” who recited the dog-vows. Pat recited the human vows. I recited the dog vows, which actually went: “Woof. Woof woof woof, woof…” etc. And the Best Friend Best Friends repeated the vows, “Woof. Woof woof.”
Like I said, I woke up deeply, deeply disturbed.