baby jesus is almost here!

hey yall:

i am sitting on the couch in my fuzzy black pants the kitties love with larry on my lap. i just checked my email and all my friends blogs and everyone is writing their "last post before the holiday," so i thought maybe i should write one. i am such a sheep. baaaa!

so jes finished all her finals with flying colors. as soon as she got home she wanted to PLAY. and by play i mean not study, sell all her books back and go have drinks with friends. last night we watched "little miss sunshine" and i LOVED IT. i especially loved the little girl Olive. i have wanted to name my daughter olive for the longest time (b/c i love olives). that movie made want to even more. jes says "no way."

last night jes and i opened our presents to each other. she got me some sweet running shorts, this book i wanted, a wallet size subway map and delish bar of organic chocolate. i love it all. i got her some ornaments (i get her a star ornament every year), some warm biking gloves and, most importantly, the OC board game. she was totally surprised (and elated) by that one. we will play it nine million times. i am sure.

ok i think i should start my day. i just wanted to send a holiday shout out to yall and tell you i love you and miss you (if i know you).

light a candle for peace in 2007.

party time excellent

while most of the days and nights of the last week or so have been filled with jes studying for her finals (today is her LAST one, after it she is OFFICIALLY half way done with law school!), me sometimes working on the conclusion to my dissertation, me spending HOURS in line at the post office to send off holiday presents or books somebody bought from us or me walking bambino or loving on batu and nala (ali's cats), on saturday night we actually went out to dinner with friends AND went to a party.

hard to believe, i know.

jes had a take home final on saturday that roughly went from 10am-6pm. i cleaned up the house a bit, made higgins some peppermint patty brownies (so decadent) and then i went and met nancy for coffee so i wouldn't bug jes (if she is here i have to talk to her, its a disease i have). she was finishing as i got home, i showered, she showered and we prepared for the arrival of higgs and her sweetie bobby. bobby promptly fell in love with larry kitty (its hard not to). horace and emily were more reticent. we chilled, higgs ate a brownine and almost fell over from the sugar rush and then we headed to RICE in fort greene where we met lisa d. and vicki (and their friend ann).

jes and i had our usual: arepas, veggie pot stickers with the best sauce you ever did have, black rice and edamame. it was delish. i also had my favorite hot spicy sweet ginger tea. so good AND it helped settle my sort of wonky stomach. bobby had the mini chorizo hot dogs and he loved them. i don't know what everyone else ate.

after dinner we piled into two cars and headed to prospect heights (my new favorite *affordable-ish* neighborhood) to attend botacelli and steve's holiday (housewarming?) party. their place is adorable and as per usual, botacelli was floating around like a holiday nymph. you'll catch my drift when you see the pics of her below.

there was all kinds of tempting food, and surprisingly i didn't eat any. i was pretty full from dinner. higgs had some egg nog, jes had a piece of a dunkin donut and i just drank a miller lite, that i got at the bodega down the street from their house: only $5.50 for a six pack of bottles. so much cheaper than bodegas in park slope. double nice.

anywho, lemme show you the pics of the cuties. first up, higgs and botacelli:



and here is one of botacelli, vicki and lisa d. all kinds of emory alumni cuteness:



it was great to see everyone, but jes and i were pretty beat from a long day, so we headed home, watched a little bit of tivoed SNL with justin timberlake (he is fucking hilarious) and then hit the hay.

today is more writing (or not writing) and dog walking.

happy tuesday

pink wonders...

when will sarah come and help me tear off the rest of this shirt?

gus and jo turn 4

here is the cutest picture ever of my friends ara and steph helping their daughters jo and gus celebrate their fourth birthday



ADORABLE!

serious cuteness

one more thing...

i forgot to include these DARLING pictures of my friend tony & laura's little boy diego in my last post.

the first one they call "el pollito" (which i think translates into "the little chicken") and the other one is a gorgeous nature shot of baby d and some autumn leaves. can you stand those big blue eyes?

if you are feeling the sunday blues, just take a look at this little muffin and you will be instantly happy.





thank god my good looking friends keep having good looking babies so i have something to post on this blog.

its beginning to look a lot like christmas

whoa yall
i apparently had a post named this already b/c when i started typing the title in, it filled it out for me
so much for originality

anywho, jes and i jaunted into manhattan today to pick up a thing or two for her mom
it was unseasonably warm today and there were twelve million irritating out of town shoppers everywhere we went so we tried to be quick about getting what we needed and then getting the hell home to brooklyn.
but before we left, we went and saw this:



its the big old tree in rockerfeller center. i liked the one last year better.

we got home and got to studying and we just finished our dinner break.
it was my favorite kind of dinner, the use-stuff-from-your-frig-to-make-a-delish-dinner kind of dinner
basically some left over chicken sauteed in garlic, onion and jalapenos with some black beans with lime, yellow rice, tomatoes, salsa and organic sharp cheddar. it was very very good. and for dessert jes had a rice pudding and i had three divine squares of dark chocolate with rasperries in it. i love chocolate yall. for reals.

ok now jes is back at work studying for copyright (boring!) and i am typing in my FINAL revisions for chapter four that i just received from my committee member. while i should start drafting up my conclusion after that, i think i will take a bath instead. neener neener.

happy sunday yall!

more on emily and our anniversary

jes is at the coffee shop with beth studying evidence and i just did another installment of mind numbing work on the senate website. i needed a break and i had to get away from my desk which is next to the windows with no insulation. there is literally a freezing cold breeze coming in from them. so i have relocated to the couch where emily sleeps next to me on my black brooklyn industries bag. larry is next to her keeping jes's spot on the couch warm for her. horace is either in the back room or on the penthouse of the kitty condo giving me the finger i am sure.

i wanted to post some pics of emily with her shaved legs and one of her wound a few days after she got home:





and here is one of jes and emily snuggling on the futon in the back the morning of the second day she was back home from surgery. the flash woke jes up so that is why she looks so groggy:



i think it is the sweetest and most hilarious picture ever. jes may scream at me for posting it. we'll see.

so while em is doing great, eating, pooping, drinking and purring like always, we found out yesterday that the mass they removed was in fact cancerous, a fibrosarcoma. it is the lowest level cancer and the least metastisizing (metastatic?), so what that means is if she is going to have cancer, that is the *best* cancer to have. the surgery may have removed it all and it will never come back and she will die of old age years from now. or it may come back, they may have to do more surgeries, and if that doesn't work, the next step is radiation. our doctor does not recommend it for her, and jes and i agree that she is too old for radiation. while this all makes me very sad and very scared, i am trying to hope for the best and really enjoy emily for being in my life now. as i understand it, we are to just wait and see if any lumps return over the next few months.

i told her i loved her so much and that i need her to be strong and healthy and to stay around for a few more years. i did this before her surgery and it worked, so lets hope it works again.

ugh, what a downer. and on a FRIDAY night no less.

lets move to something happier: more deets on our anniversary. here are some pictures of the flowers i got for jes. they filled the foyer with a sweet delicate smell for days. it was so nice:





and here is a photo of the apple pie i made with the left over pie crust from thanksgiving. it was ok, not really sweet enough, but we ate every damn piece (with homemade whipped cream of course):



and lastly, here is a picture of sweet horace overjoyed that jes and i have been together for over five years. he can barely contain himself:



now is that a cute cat or what?

i don't have much else to report on right now. its cold as fuck here in new york and i hate it, but that is supposed to change tomorrow. by wednesday it is supposed to back up to 50 degrees. god bless georgie and his global warming.

happy friday yall.

do you know what today is...

it's our anniversary
FIVE YEAR anniversary to be exact! can you believe it? jes and i have been together for five years. and what a lovely five years it has been.

i can't really go into the details of what exactly happened five years ago, but i can tell you that it started with me leaving work early.

fast forward five years and jes is asleep on our little floor fort in the living room (so that emily could sleep on the "bed" with us without having to jump up on our big bed. the past two days we have taken turns sleeping in the back room with her, but tonight we wanted to sleep together) and i am up blogging.

the cats woke me up at 4am to get some food and i started thinking and that was that. i thought i could come in here and do a little blogging and then be back asleep in an hour. then horace realized that our next door neighbor's nuisance of a cat named bellyboy (though i call him "creamiscle") was outside the window. he went APESHIT, his tail puffed up as big as his body, i threw larry out of the room and closed the door, then ran back and pounded on the window until the little fucker went away. when i let larry back in the room horace tried to beat the crap out of him, so right now horace is having a "cool down" session alone in the bathroom. my heart has just gone back to normal beats (as opposed to the POUNDING it was doing just minutes ago) so i am not sure i will get back to sleep after all.

luckily i have a conclusion to write for my dissertation so its not like i have nothing to do to fill the time, you know?

so maybe later i will post five pictures of jes and me-one in each year of our relationship. isn't that a cute idea? i will need to get jes to help me with scanning the pics in b/c we didn't get a digital camera until three years ago when my nephew was born (my sister gave us their old one b/c they had to get a new fancy "we-have-a-kid-now" camera).

perhaps you are wondering what our day of love is going to look like. let me show you a rough draft of the agenda:

1. good morning niceties, green tea, and two pieces of fakin bacon each

2. donna goes and gets bagels (AND decaf COFFEE!) from terrace bagels while jes checks email

3. we partake in the deliciousness that is terrace bagels

4. jes studies some while i begin to prepare our anniversary dinner: homemade italian wedding soup

5. somewheres around 2:30 jes begins to prepare the TGIFridays spinach artichoke dip and the fake pigs in a blanket.i begin eating large green olives.

6. at 3:15pm we begin to watch the big game: Chicago Bears vs. Minnesota Vikings. GO BEARS!

7. we eat and drink until we are sick. maybe doze off on the aforementioned living room floor bed

8. when we are hungry, we have soup.

because this is a rough draft, i may have not included all activities in the day, but you get the general idea. food, football and more food. and lots of lovin.

ok my battery is about to run out and i think horace is ready to be released. i will try and post those pics later.

happy sunday, yall.

update on emily

so emily made it through her surgery with flying colors
apparently she did not like getting her iv put in so it took not one, not two, but THREE tries
so she has little shaved wrists up front and one on the back
she did not like the bandages they put over them so she let them know by hissing and then taking them off the front
i just took the one off the back

they told us she would need a quiet dimly lit place to heal so jes and i set up the back bedroom which is real warm and cozy
the futon cushion was on the floor and i took her right in there and closed the door
she immediately started meowing and laid in front of the door and with her paws under the door
basically, she wanted her brothers
so i opened the door and she just started ambling around the house. the boys have not hissed or meowed at her once and they are pretty much staying out of her way. she walks a bit and then plops down like she is a little drunk.
she has already gone into the litter box TWICE, ate a little wet food (meowing like CRAZY for it!) and she jumped up on the couch and back down.

so i think she is ok. i think she still should sleep in the back room tonight with one (or both of us) so that we can keep an eye on her. the next 48 hours are the most important, so i am going to stay close to home when jes is not around to make sure she is doing okay. hopefully all will go okay and she will heal up just fine. i will keep yall posted.

thanks for all the emails and voicemails i got from folks. your love and support means a lot to me.

think happy thoughts

in an effort to balance out the nastiness of that last post, i give you this, a picture of two of my sisters cats looking cute:



in about an hour, we take emily to the vet to get surgery. she is getting this growth on her side removed. the doctor said it is a quick procedure, maybe only fifteen minutes, but with a cat her age (16) and with compromised kidneys (both her and larry kitty have them) there is always a risk with them going under. jes and i have been teary eyed about it all week, both of us are scared, but we both agree this is what is best. if the growth is cancerous (they won't know until it is removed) it is good that it was taken off.

because she is getting surgery she could not eat after midnight, so we figured if she can't eat, none of them will. normally we get up AT LEAST twice a night and feed them wet food. needless to say they woke us up meowing just about every hour on the hour last night. i finally gave up and came out here to check email, blog, drink some green tea and start my day. i know i slept enough for two dream cycles but it feels like i got *maybe* three hours if that. good practice for if we ever have a newborn i guess.

anywho, please send positive, healthy, healing energy to emily kitty today.

just plain wrong

yall
i have lots to blog about. it will happen this weekend.
but i have to post this:

early morning- black friday

good morning all.

do you know why its called black friday today? i didn't, so i looked it up on ask.com and they told me that today is the day that most business get "out of the red" (out of deficit) and start making profit (get "in the black"). god bless american consumers. there ain't enough money in the world right now to persuade me to go shopping today. our day will consist of studying/working, volunteering at the co-op for a shift, eating left overs and watching "kinky boots."

before i tell you about our thanksgiving, let me post a cute pic of supper club eating ice cream for jes's bday last week. adorable:



on to thanksgiving. overall, it was a divine day. in large part because i only left the house to pick up ali so that she would not have to walk/bus through the freezing cold monsoon rains that plagued us here in brooklyn all day yesterday. jes talked to her folks in atlanta and her dad let us know that it was 65 and sunny there. whateva!

we slept in yesterday, until 10:30 (craziness) and then we got up and did some work. i hung our new roman shade blinds from ikea. it rindonkulous how much cleaner they are then the ones we had up before them (same ones just old, dirty and broken). seriously, they let so much more light in b/c they are not coated in cat hair. niiice.

so we started cooking maybe at 1pm. we weren't sure if ali was going to join us or not because she was illin like a villian. i guess the thirty minute nativity scene that told the entire life of jesus at the rockette holiday extravaganza was too much for her. she went with her mom. it gave her a fever. back to the cooking. so here was our menu:

deviled eggs
barefoot contessa's chicken with 40 cloves of garlic
jes's homemade stuffing muffins
mashed potatoes with garlic, onion, mushroom and cream cheese
green beans sauteed with garlic
pea and asparagus caserole
cranberry jelly out of a can
homemade-ish pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream

now here are the pics:











as i finished up sauteeing the green beans, i checked my cell phone and ali had called and said she was feeling much better and her fever was gone. so i went and picked her up and we all chowed down together. she brought a seriously nasty looking quorn (this fake meat product) pot roast. she assured us it tasted great. i just took her word for it. the garlic chicken i made came out ok. instead of doing a whole chicken, i just did a couple chicken breasts and it did not yield enough sauce, so the sauce was more like a paste, which was not so good. jes thought it tasted a little overcooked too. i was most pleasantly surprised by the stuffing muffins. jes kind of free styled it using parts of three different recipes. they were really flavorful, which is rare for stuffing, i think.

while jes did the dishes (bless her heart) ali and i watched madonna's confessions concert on tivo. she was wowed as well. the dance/performance number she and her dancers do to the song "jump" is really like nothing i have seen before. if you can, check it out on youtube. its amazing. after madonna, we watched al gore's documentary "an inconvenient truth." yall i was so excited to see this film. i mean i wanted to see it IN THE THEATER, which is rarely true, b/c its so expensive to see a movie now. god bless al gore and the environmental movement but this movie was boring as fuck. we all started dozing off during it. its like an hour and a half lecture (with power point yall) interspersed with little vignettes about his own life. i think ali hit it right on the head when she said "al gore could learn a thing or two from michael moore about making documentaries." the message is important, the science (at times) is fascinating, but the delivery is pretty painful.

ali left after the movie was over and jes and i watched one of my favorite shows: Ugly Betty. yall, for real, i can not get enough of this show. right now i am IN LOVE with three shows:

Ugly Betty
Everybody Hates Chris
Medium

seriously, when the episode is over, i am so very sad. thank god for tivo, because i have no idea when any of them come on, but jes keeps track of it and then we just watch them with NO COMMERCIALS (which i love). and i loved Ugly Betty long before hottie mchotster Salma Hayek was on it, but I tell you what, she sure makes it even better. i love America Ferrara, the woman who plays betty, i love her boss (though he was super evil in The L Word and OC), i love betty's queenie little brother, i love vanessa williams and her assistant and the skinny blonde who answers the phones and eats junk food when she stressed. basically, i love the whole show. i wish it was on every day.

ok, enough of that. even though i ate enough for two people yesterday, i am somehow hungry, so i am going to make my way to the frig and make me some cereal. happy friday yall and have a great weekend.

so its been a minute...

...since i last wrote.

i was definitely on the upswing health wise. feeling better every day. and then last night i got sick again. luckily, i went to the doctor today and got a referral to another doctor so i think i am least doing something about being sick, which is good, right?

while a number of things have happened since i last wrote, like:

1. the chicago bears defeated the new york giants
2. the chicago bears defeated the new york? jersey? jets
3. the ohio state buckeyes defeated the michigan wolverines
4. i turned in some job applications
5. i got a phone interview at one job
6. i got a face to face interview at that same job

the most important thing that has happened is my sweetie had her bday. yep it's true, jes turned 27 last friday. we had a great weekend celebrating AND she raked in the gifts yall. that kid is loved for shizzle.

ok so friday day she and i both worked and then i met her in the city where we did a bus tour of uptown manhattan. it was so much fun but way too cold. i will post pictures forthwith. after that we headed home, warmed up and changed and then headed to dinner at rice with pony. jes and i deviated from our normal menu and got the chicken satay (intsead of the veggie potstickers). big mistake. we did get the delish edamame (so salty) for an app and some black rice and the arepas. so it wasn't a total bust.

after dinner we headed to this bar (i love) called "Moe's" in fort greene. yes it is named after the bar in the simpsons. how hilarious is that? i had a great time there chatting folks up as did jes. there were even some delish black forest cupcakes thanks to beth b. (bless you beth). we got home too late and i was exhausted. on saturday we studied some and then picked up ali, hit the key food to get some game day food and came back here to watch the OSU v. Michigan game. as ali said throughout our viewing it was "anybody's game" through most of the game. very on the edge of your seat. luckily the buckeyes prevailed. that night we met up with glennda and kim at rancho alegre for some divine mexican food. we had some great chicken tacos and glennda had this really good chicken mole poblano. yum. after that the kids got some ice cream at hagen daaz (i refrained due to my recent gastrointestinal distress) and then we all headed home. for whatever reason, jes and i have been really really tired. i think its b/c the sun goes down at like 4pm. i *hate* it. on sunday we slept in, studied some and then got a nice intimate dinner at boreum hill food company. they have an avocado and cheddar sammie to die for. basil mayo. and their fries are by far my favorite in the whole world. thus far.

ok enough talk, lets get to the pics, the part yall really want to see, right?


here is a picture of jes and nikki from when she visited earlier this month:



and here is one of nikki and christina. we were freezing at kate's joint in brooklyn. they just opened and their heat didn't work. oh bother.



here is jes getting her bus tour ticket from whoopi goldberg:



now when we passed the american museum of natural history on the upper west, we saw their new additions, the christmas tree dinosaurs. jes and i think they look like snufalupagus from sesame street:



we learned a lot on the tour, like where madonna's apartment is and where rupert murdoch lives. you have to have a net worth of 100 million dollars to even buy in his building. how bonkers is that? here is jes and i freezing our butts off:



these are the black forest cupcakes beth b. made. everyone loved them and many people ate more than one!



here is a picture of higgs, erica and her new sweetie whose name i can't remember. ugh:



here is beth, liz, pony and jes kicking it live one time at moe's:



steph tried to get in most pictures, so here is one with her, jes and pony:



here is liz, jessica, max and mark:



and here is beth with steph and stephanie:



thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate jes's bday. it was such a great weekend.
stay tuned for the picture from saturday.
have a restful and delicious turkey day yall!

busy and sick

yall
so sorry i have not been posting
i have been sick
and i have been busy with work and job apps
and we have had visitors
right now i am trying to get healthy
after i do, i will post more text about IDKE and what has been going on in my life
peace
dj

IDKE 8- Sunday Brunch

woody on the guitar at the brunch:


kfw & jake danger, emcees at the brunch:


some of the austin crew and some of the board:


here are the austin cuties giving cherry a tiara and wand to say thanks for her hard work:


here is scott turner schofield saying something about the number three:

IDKE 8-saturday

picture of the some of the board members after our saturday morning meeting.

back row L to R: dante, kentucky fried woman, mel,cody, julie, quid
middle row L to R: jodi, kristin, rain, alana
front row: me and ken



here is a cute pic of tamale and johnny t, the emcees for the showcase:

pictures from dragdom

i just want to get these pictures from dragdom up. when i have time later, i will add commentary.

quid and mariah:


this/that way and jolie:


jodi bon jodi and me:


mel, tanner, venus envy and me:


jr stranger (my brother from another mother), johnny t. and me:


i will post pictures from saturday and sunday next

finally an IDKE post-FRIDAY: conference

happy halloween yall. get yerself a beverage, this is a long ass post.

i am so sorry it has taken me nearly two weeks to post about IDKE 8 in Austin.
i always have such a hard time getting back into the swing of things and work and life have been more hectic than usual.
so lets get to it. i am going to do this day by day. that is the only way it is manageable for me.
in my last post, you will find the pictures i took on thursday at the meet and great. they are mostly of the folks i was staying with, so i am not going to re-post them here. overally, the meet and greet was fun. we had a few drinks and went home fairly early b/c folks had to be at work the next day and i knew that friday was going to be a full day for me.

so the first thing i attended on friday was the "butch on butch" panel put on by amber billey, debbie linn and sam bryer from chicago. we had a problem parking, so we got there late, but luckily they were just finishing up introductions. you were basically supposed to say your name and one word (or phrase) that you thought of when you thought of butch. i said "hot."

the room was really full with folks sitting on the floor and crowding in. what i was most taken by was the generational diversity of the group. walking into the room, the first thing i saw was a number of what i would call "old school" butches or studs, you know the folks who fought the fight long before i even figured out i was queer. that felt really good. i was also really excited that there was a discussion of the difference between "stud" and "butch" and how race and culture influence the understanding of those two words. one person, from st. louis (maybe?) said something like "look, i am 36 years old and i still identify as a stud, butch is something i aspire to be one day, its a process." i just liked the way that s/he articulated a history that many of us forget. overall it was a very lively discussion. i also liked this one younger person who talked about working in a deli with other liberal and/or queer types and how because s/he is the most "butch looking" person there, folks expect hir to take out the trash and shit. just a nice way to talk about the expectations of masculinity. it was a rich discussion. i am glad i went.

after that, i went to the "making history: documenting our performance cultures & communities" panel by julie applegate, christa (simon) and alana kumbier. it was interesting to hear all the projects that have been done and are being done by folks to save all the memories created both at IDKE and in their own communities. they passed out this great little zine that is a wonderful "how to" archive your own work. they also let us know about a blog that you can post to. its address is:

www.idkearchives.blogspot.com

they asked that folks cross post their posts about IDKE 8 there. i plan to. i missed a good part of the end of the talk b/c i was helping this random woman with her two adorable twin babies. i forget their names by now, but they were about 7 months old and girls and adorable. one was skinnier and very wiggly and one was chubbier and more chill. when the wiggly one got REAL wiggly and sort of loud, i asked the mom if she needed help occupying the chill one (who started to get a little not so chill) so all hell wouldn't break loose. she handed me chillbaby and she immediately became mesmerized by my long luxurious locks (read: my stringy greasy straight hair) and my chin. with my help, the mom lady (who was from austin) was able to stay through most of the panel. we bid our adieus outside the room when the babies really started fussing. so many people asked me if those were my babies. i was like "nope, i was just an instant nanny."

If you have any questions about archiving, please contact one or all of the following people:

Julie Applegate/Jake Wakeman: vespadyke@yahoo.com
Alana Kumbier/Redrider: dragarchivist@yahoo.com
Christa Orth/Simon LeBongo: christamae@yahoo.com

they are smart folks and they can help you.

after that i had lunch and hung out a bit with my new friend jodi bon jodi who is on the idke board. then i headed to the film shorts. some of my favorites were:

1. "the sea calls us home" by annie simpson- because trevor endeavor was in it. hot.

2. "les maladventures de zut-alors" by jeanne stern- the whole thing is about these two sort of party blower sock puppets. fucking ingenious and hilarious.

3. "miggy n lil" by bug davidson-weird but engaging film about this butcher who falls for this femmey hustler girl. i am not sure i completely "got it" but you should check it out.

4. "lez side story" by hedia maron & faye driscoll- also HIlarious. fruits. queers. dancing. chains. a must see for the whole family.

the last thing i did on friday was facilitate the race caucus. now this was requested by jolie harris last year at winnipeg and i said i was interested then. so for the last few months six of us (jolie harris, dd chandler? cummings?, sand chang, mel corn, matt richardson and myself) have been discussing how to best organize a race caucus at IDKE. we decided that splitting into affinity groups based on racial identity for the first thirty minutes and then spending the next thirty minutes together as an entire group was best. each group had a set of questions they were to discuss.

Topics for the people of color affinity group:
• How do we use our performances to explore race? What does that look like, and why is it important?
• As audience members and performers, when have we been offended? When have we decided to leave spaces because of fucked up race politics on and/or off stage? How have we confronted others who participate in the offensive performance, or if we haven't, what are the barriers?
• What does being "colorblind" mean? Is it possible?
• Is it okay for people of color to appropriate music by people of color from a different racial group? How does power play into this?
What is the difference between impersonation and interpretation? Can a performer responsibly and respectfully do cross-racial performances?
------------------------------------------------------------

Topics for the white affinity group:
• Why do we adopt racial tropes/stereotypes in our performances? What are the alternatives?
• What does being “colorblind” mean? Is it possible?
• How can white people use gender/drag performance to intentionally explore race? What does it look like? Why is it important?
• If we see someone in our troupe or on stage doing a performance that makes us uncomfortable because of the race issues involved, what can we do about it?
What is the difference between impersonation and interpretation? Can a performer responsibly and respectfully do cross-racial performances?

now first of all, i thought we would have MAYBE 25 people at this session. while it was scheduled when nothing else was scheduled, i figured it was the end of the day and really i thought not that many folks care to talk about race, racism and how both intersect with IDKE. i was wrong. we had probably between 75 and 100 people there. and lots of them were white folks (something i also didn't expect).

mel and i facilitated the white affinity group. it went pretty well. there were a lot more people than we anticipated, so i did not have enough handouts and i think that it may have been easier to handle and hear if we broke into two groups of white people. the feedback i got privately from some of the folks in the group was that as facilitators, we should have taken those particpants who said problematic things to task. i think they were probably right and i am trying to figure out a way to incorporate more of a "talk back" structure when we do this again. i do think that most of the things i did not agree with that were said, were in some way addressed by other members of the white affinity group, so that, to me, is good, but i agree that sometimes, things that may be hurtful or violent to others sometimes need to be identified as such by the folks facilitating.

the most interesting thing (to me) of the "coming back together" part was the number of white people in the room who vocalized how they felt tension in the room. i didn't feel the tension, but i think if people did, its a good thing. i think the tension is that "uncomfortable-ness" that we white folks have when our race privilege is exposed. to me, that tension was a sign of transformation. of movement. so i welcome it.

a lot of the participants thanked us as facilitators for putting on the caucus and said they were really glad it has become an institutionalized part of the conference. while it was exhausting and frustrating at some points, i mostly felt exhiliarated and blessed to be amongst so many amazing people who were willing to engage in hard discussions about race, racism, power and privilege. i felt humbled and proud to be a part of the IDKE community.

ok this has gotten way too long and i have to head out to meet someone for drinks. i am going to have to post about dragdom tomorrow. there will be pictures, i promise.

it's 3am

and i can't sleep, so here i am, starting the blog process.
i certainly have work work and dissertation work to do, but strangely, my brain does not feel like doing that
nor, apparently, does it feel like sleeping
the real fucked up thing? i just went to sleep less than four hours ago.
i smell a nap for my friday afternoon

so there was much talk of the importance of archiving at IDKE 8-Austin this past weekend, so I want to be able to cross post from my blog to many of the newly created blogs and live journals and what not. so to do that, i have to split up my weekend into reports on my idke friends and my non idke friends (even though throughout the weekend the two intertwined), to save time and writing energy, i am going to create this weird separation. so let me begin with my escapades with my friends in austin that were not affiliated with IDKE 8.

so jes and i left at the ass crack of dawn (4:45 am) last thursday morning to head to the airport for our flight to austin. we were both attending IDKE 8 and jes was also attending the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) conference, b/c really one event a weekend is really not enough. NLG is an organization of politically progressive lawyers, law students and legal workers. basically the kids who want to fuck shit up in one way or another. i digress. airport, early, flight to austin. overall, the flight to dallas and then from dallas to austin was pretty uneventful. on the way there they showed a movie... what was it, oh yes, the lake house with hottie mchotties sandra bullock and keanu reeves. not a real winner- i was able to doze off for about twenty minutes in the middle of it and still got the gist of the storyline in the end. i did like that it was set in chicago. more movies, in my humble opinion, should be set in chi-town. its a very lovely city, if i do say so myself.

moving on. so the plan was when we got to austin, we would meet up with kim (who flew there from atlanta) and get a rental car. this all went smoothly EXCEPT that delta lost kim's small toiletry bag that she checked so she would not lose her $25 bumble and bumble hair product (AGAIN!) once the very nice dude behind the luggage counter got done taking the info of where we were staying (and frankly, hitting on her- he was old enough to be our dad-nice!) we were on our way to the rental car, a nice, four door white chevy.

from the airport we headed to lee and rebecca's house. l & r are friends of kim's from new orleans. they lost just about everything in their apartment in hurricance katrina (though their cats were saved, thank god) and they have just settled in austin after a quick unhappy jaunt to houston. they now rent this lovely house in austin with their two cats lu and paeda (or something like that). rebecca took us to lunch at this delicious mexican restaurant called chuy's (jes and i kept roaring like chewbacca when they would say the name) where i had a divine margarita and some guacamole tacos. they were BRIMMING with guacamole. loved it! all i remember after that was taking a nap in their gorgeous guest bedroom and then eating some delish homemade chili before we made our way to the meet and greet at some place called the cattle company (or something like that). all i know is it had a big ole dance floor and queers were two steppin.' here is a picture of jes, rebecca, lee, kim and r&l's friend aimee. how cute are these kids?



now the weird thing is that a few weeks ago, jes and i had dinner at kate's joint in new york with our friend darrelle and her sweetie (whose name escapes me this late/early). they told us they were going to be in austin for a day or two while we were there, so we made plans to meet up at the meet and greet. here is a pic of jes, darrelle, her sweetie and their cute gay boy friend whose name i can't remember either:



luckily, lee had work on friday morning (she's a physical therapist-sexy), so we went home at a fairly reasonable hour. i am pretty sure i crashed immediately, but i think jes may have stayed up and played video games? or maybe that didn't happen until friday night? who knows. friday day jes and i spent conferencing while lee worked (yuck) and kim and rebecca played and ran around town. we all met back at the house and i am guessing we had dinner but i can't now remember what it was. maybe jes or kim will remember and post about it. friday night was dragdom at this outdoor bar called emo's. the show, for the most part, was entertaining with a little whack racist shit thrown in. it went real long so we left before it was over, in large part b/c there was too much of this:



just kidding. it was more b/c it was late and we were all pretty tired. now kim was a little bit worried she couldn't get a ride home, so she first tried to get in some guy's trunk:



but she had to move to make room for his amp and speakers. so then she tried this random bike:



it took a lot of convincing to keep her off somebody's crotch rocket (very fast motorcycle). luckily, she agreed rebecca's suv was the best way to go.

much like friday, saturday was filled with more conferencing for jes and i while kim, rebecca and lee slept in and then relaxed. i had a IDKE board meeting that went from 8am-11am, so by 3 in the afternoon, i was pretty wrecked. we headed back to the house, had a bloody mary and took a quick disco nap while the other three ladies went over to a friends house for a quick drop in on a party. now let me tell you about this bloody mary for a minute. first of all, it was in lee's gramma's official bloody mary glasses- one of the few things that survived katrina. second of all, it was delicious and spicy and you could not taste the vodka, and third of all-and honestly, to be this was the best part- it had PICKLED GREEN BEANS IN IT YALL. i mean i have never had one of those before. but you take them, and let them soak in some spicy tomato bloody mary mix and you have what i like to call HEAVEN. i liked them so much that after i ate the two complimentary beans, lee replaced them with... TWO MORE. just. plain. good.

that night we had dinner at this adorable joint called mother's cafe. jes got a big ole baked potato and i got this avocado sammie (sense the trend here folks-they know how to do avocado in austin) and we shared. wait a second. maybe we went to mothers on friday night? its blurry to me now. but the take home point- good food. moving on. saturday night was the showcase. now just rebecca went with us at first b/c lee had tickets to some concert. shawn colvin i think, but i feel like she only stayed for the opener, whose name i am forgetting. jesus christo yall, i really REALLY need to stop drinking diet coke. this is what it is doing to me. anywho, here is a picture of cutie mc cuties, jes, rebecca and kim at the showcase:



now the showcase was in this lovely space called the palmer arts center. it is brand new and very spacious and at the beginning- very cold. i brought my video camera to tape and of course my batteries ran out shortly after the beginning of the second half. there were no plugs in the room (except the ones the sound people brought with them) so i was freed up to just watch the show and not worry about if i was getting a good enough shot of it. the showcase also went pretty long so by the time it was over the kids were ready to head home. lee joined us at the showcase, which was a nice surprise. we headed home and i headed to bed, but jes stayed up and whupped rebecca's ass in either tetris or mario brothers. they were talking trash back and forth all weekend:



on sunday morning we slept in (until about 9 or 9:30) and then hung out, had some HOMEMADE blueberry muffins, and then jes and i headed to the brunch and kim stayed back to chill with lee and rebecca, and their cute cats lu and p. here is a picture of lu, the wonder cat:



overall, it was an outstanding (and exhausting) weekend. for me, it was a nice balance of IDKE stuff and then just chilling with lee and rebecca at their lovely house. they were hella great hosts-giving us "keep austin weird" coozies (how do you spell that) and letting us stay in their divinely comfie guest bed. rebecca, who is a singer and musician (sexy), even played us a tune or two. she has the voice of an angel. when her cd is finished? comes out? i will post a picture of it here. i am so glad we got to know them and i LOVE seeing kim with her New Orleans friends. she is even more adorable than usual (if you can imagine that).

ok its almost 4am and my battery is about to die. wish me luck on falling back to sleep.