I need to shave about 20 seconds off of my Channel 102 show to bring it under 5 minutes. Where will these 20 seconds come from?

Kaveri has been visiting for the past couple of weeks. For those of you who have not been keeping track of my girlfriend of seven years, she’s in her last year of graduate school at RISD.

We were invited yesterday to the studio of one of her teachers, a very terrific guy.

He used the word desemiotize. I had never heard the word but I now plan to use it regularly. It may be borrowed from the French by way of Deleuze. I love desemiotize. I’m not sure exactly what it means. My guess is that it means the act of “de-signing”—removing the signifying function from an image or object. So, for instance, Jasper John’s Cézanne-esque brushwork was an attempt to “desemiotize” the American Flag. Something like that.

This teacher had been “desemiotizing” stuffed animals by covering them with a sculpting compound.

But what if it was modeled after a signboard for the Société Anonyme?

I’m thinking of changing the picture that graces the banner of this blog—the one of me drinking. I’m pretty tired of it. Kaveri took it three years ago on New Year’s Eve. It was completely posed—I said, “I am going to pretend that I’m drinking and you take a picture.” And then she took it. I don’t know why I had to pretend—I was already drinking (Bourbon) so why “pretend.” I don’t know.

But that was three years ago and I look different now. I look like this:

So maybe I should get Kaveri to take an updated shot of me drinking. Or maybe not drinking. Maybe drinking is passé.

If I had the energy (and any computer expertise) I would redo this entire site—change the way my art is organized, update my résumé and artist statement, add all the SIAS videos. Who did Klausner’s site? That looks good.

Anyway, do you want to come drinking with me on Tuesday? I’m celebrating my Birthday.

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I think the paintings of Alex Katz were an early inspiration for my show, Sexual Intercourse: American Style. I look at a picture like this (which was taken from a book so the quality is a little shitty) and I think, “yes! That’s exactly what I want SIAS to be like.”

The whole painting is wonderfully artificial and strange—just these flat, bourgeois couples, stiffly holding each other, surrounded by nature. I like how everything looks like a Land’s End catalogue. You say to yourself, “wait, is this a joke?” No, this is not a joke. This is deadly serious.

[EDIT: WordPress won't let me go past a certain size picture so here's a detail:]

A Journey Jukebox Musical.

There. That’s it. There’s your million dollars. Does it need any more explanation?—A Broadway Musical centered around Journey songs. Now get crackin’ playwrights—all you have to do is figure out some loose narrative that can successfully weave “Don’t Stop Believin’” into “Wheel in the Sky” into “Open Arms.”

It is hardly a secret that every single person between the ages of 30 and 45 who has even a whiff of an interest in the Broadway Musical is an enormous Journey fan. More than ABBA, more than Billy Joel, certainly more than Frankie Valli —go to any karaoke bar and you will see the “musical theater crowd” wailing away to Journey songs. There is gigantic audience out there in desperate need of a Journey Jukebox Musical willing to pay good money! I don’t even like Journey and I’m tempted to take a crack at it.

I was at my cousin’s wedding this weekend.

All of my friends seem to be of marrying age—just waiting around, waiting to get married. Or deciding never to get married. One or the other. I’m not entirely against the idea. And I think I would like to have some sort of ceremony, rather than running off to City Hall.  It would be fun to have music and readings and such.

Maybe one reading could be Stan Apps’ poem,  “A Massive Image of Elmo”…

A Massive Image of Elmo

A massive image of Elmo is in the air above Elmo.

Elmo is surrounded by monsters of other colors

Looking at Elmo, listening to Elmo.

Elmo in the air holds his paws up and out

Reaching out to the world, to beseech, to cuddle

Blue monsters look at Elmo, green monsters look at Elmo

Monsters made out of used rags shake Elmo’s hand

Elmo is at the center

Elmo creates the circle that surrounds Elmo

There is nothing more deeply human than the family

The family is a dynamic power structure

That contains individuals by circumscribing them

Circles are sacred; the center of circles are sources

Elmo creates the circle that surrounds Elmo

The circle creates the massive image of Elmo

That is in the air above Elmo

All the monsters around Elmo take meaning from Elmo

Monster society is the production of monster consciousness

and monster being by monsters

The massive image of Elmo above Elmo is on a wall

The meaning that Elmo offers us is not a created meaning

Elmo is a monster at the center of the world

Which is where monsters belong

And the world shall serve the interests of monsters now

Rather than the abstract needs of imaginary beings