10-13-01

Last night was the release party for The Bridge literary journal. It was a most fantastic party, a real intelligentsia, artistic happening. First of all, the book, with CD attached looks fantastic. It's beautiful! Very well put together, perfectly designed, full of unusual and intriguing content. I'm proud to be in this issue. The artist who did the cover art and a few pieces inside was also the featured artist at the gallery that night. The Bridge sponsored a simultaneous opening of works by Patrick W. Welch, and his work was brilliant. If you are in the neighborhood, or looking for some unusual art, visit the Heaven Gallery at 1550 N. Milwaukee. His paintings are "Miniature Narrative" paintings each priced at $200. He presented a series of 143 painting acrylic on paper exactly 3" x 4" with weird surrealist, cartoonish in some cases and obsessively detailed (must've used a single hair brush on some) scenes, diagrams, metaphors, that also included texts, phrases, titles written in tiny print or script (also with acrylic). Very impressive. I met the artist, and he seemed like a really nice guy.

There was a keyboardist who played for a while that I didn't pay much attention to, but when the DJ finally came on he was pretty good. However, I was also pretty gone at that time. There was a really crazy performance art piece that happened around midnight or so, and it was quite fascinating. This woman started laughing louder and louder and more uncontrollably and a few other people joined in and soon half the room was laughing hysterically or watching people laughing hysterically. She was also videotaping randomly while she was laughing. It was so simple yet unusual at the same time.

I met several interesting artists and writers and had a great group of friends show up. Shouts go out to Patrick, Heather, Mandy, Jason & Bridget, Eric, Sean & Ron and their crew, Brian & Jessica, Anthony, Lars, Kevin and Eve. I ran into Greg Gillam but not Jason Pettus. I meant to ask Greg about Jason, but I forgot probably because I was drunk. I hope Jason is okay (even though he blew me off about a month ago and hasn't called since). Many brilliant ideas were passed around and plans hatched for artistic domination. Someone told me that my e-journal will someday be a historic document because I'm writing it during this time of American upheaval. I never thought of that - I would never be so arrogant as to assume so, but you never know, I guess.

The night had me so pumped that I couldn't sleep when I got home. I tried to go to bed, but I had too much adrenaline going on. Plus I drank a lot of beer on an empty stomach, and I was peeing every half hour. I don't normally drink much beer or much alcohol at all. Sometimes wine, but I just prefer other diversions.

I ended up sitting on my couch watching videotapes of the new adult cartoons on Cartoon Network (Adult Swim Sunday nights at 9pm) until about 5:30 in the morning. And I couldn't sleep late today either because I'm taking a figure drawing class from 9am - noon downtown. Oh well, I'll crash tonight.

Thanks again to all who came out. And go get a copy of Bridge: Stories & Ideas, Volume 1, Number 3. Visit www.bridgemagazine.org to find out where you can get it! (In Chicago, try Quimby's for sure.) Read my short story and email me with your comments. Peaceout.

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