Festival Spectacle and Story

On saturday I dropped by the treasure island music festival in which my little growing box lived for the weekend. It's tough to say how people dug it...it's hard for art shows at big music festivals to not feel like an afterthought. Betty did a good job of curating a substantive show, and I enjoyed the vibe at the art tent...Triple Base had some making stations going on and I had a nice conversation with Kyle Mock that coalesced in him drawing me a picture to emblemize the feeling I'm focus on right now. I enjoyed that. But when I walked up to the area where my trunk was, these two young new-hipster girls were sitting on top of my trunk and kind of caving it in, so that certainly set the tone. I had thought of staying to see Justice at night, but the cold sea breeze made a bowl of soup seem like the right course to steer. And anyway, forfeiting a chance to see those dudes for free was no big deal, having recently gone to see them for free in New York last March....

...so last march I had planned a trip back to the east coast to see my family, and when Luke of Lucky Dragons performed at Frank and my art show, he mentioned that he was going to be doing this big installation and performance in NY in March as part of the Whitney Biennial. I do love lucky dragons, and made sure to give myself a day and a night and part of a day in NY to meet up with some friends and see what luke was cooking up.

My mom dropped me at the bus station to catch my ride to NY, and as I was saying goodbye to her and buying my ticket, I realized that my Drivers License was missing. Not wanting to worry my likely-to-worry mother, I told her it'd be fine and I'd figure it out, and get back on my plane back to California somehow. So I had a whole bus ride to simmer in my nerves about this stupid situation. When I got off the bus, I waited for my friend Jamie to meet me in this little park and I listened to all the messages my mom had left me while I had my phone off on the bus as per bus courtesy standards. Besides getting on the plane without ID, another problem was that I had neglected to get a CA license for the first 3 years of living in CA, so my ID was still from MA. This means I was not a licensed driver according to CA and I'd have to provide a copy of my birth certificate and Passport or social security card and take a drivers test again. TOTAL bummer. My mom had already been on the tele with the DMVs in CA and MA about my shituation, and was on the phone with someone from JetBlue when she called me again in the park. She had the jetblue person on one phone and me on the other (so much for trying to keep my mom from worrying), and she was trying to sort this out. She was suggesting that I come back on the next bus, go to the MA DMV, get a new license and change my ticket to a boston flight. Well that sounded like anus to me, so we decided to keep my flight, and she'd FEdex my most important documents of all, that you never want to trust to the mail, (birth certificate and social security card) to my friend Jamie's house, arriving tomorrow morning. HOWever, she still had the Jetblue person on the phone, who, while we were thinking of changing my ticket, mentioned that she didn't see my flight anywhere. I used my friend Jamie's phone internet to pass on my conf # only to have the jetblue lady tell my mom, who told me, that I did not have a flight for March 24, but I did have one for April 24. Now, as my 5th grade students would say, this became a re-stupid situation, and I had to change my ticket which ended up costing an extra $300! soo bad!

Anway, after sorting through the muck of that mess (which was actually made totally lighter, if not hilarious, by my friend Jamie's participation and positive presence) Jamie took me for a nice long walk to cool down and get a hot dog.

Here's a photo of Jamie hanging from a tree when he visited last February...he's the friend that frank just moved in with in Brooklyn:


We walked to Union square and met our friend Jonah, and walked all the way up to the
Park Ave Armory where the Lucky Dragons show was (about 60 blocks through Manhattan, all the while still carrying my luggage). A nice crew of friends came and it was a joy to share that performance and piece of the west coast with them.




While eating pizza, our friend Kellen mentioned that through some work connection with the Tribeca Film Festival, he was on the list to see Justice at Madison Square Gardens and could probably get us all in. So we went (me still carrying my luggage) and we danced in the way way way back for a bit. It was an absurd day, and I felt no need to try and mess with that as my only Justice concert experience.




(on a side note, my most important documents arrived and I got on my plane, though I didn't end of needing them because I realized after that I still had my first ever, expired license, with a picture of me as a 16 year old, and that was good enough for both Jetblue and the CA DMV. I did not even have to take another road test, though I was getting kind of excited to, and I now have a CA license...which incidently has an interesting misprint, check it out, and don't steal my identity).