basically

Perhaps it is (and there is only) time for the basics.

I have, it seems, landed. Landed that somewhere in that somewhat permanent sense, that I have been wistfully wondering about for oh so very long. I have an apartment. I have furniture. I have sheets that are all mine and I share a cat who tolerates my attentions as long as he can stalk the birds outside my window.

But perhaps most crucially, I have a job. I now spend a mostly structured day answering subscriber emails, entering data, office managing, and coordinating event participation for artonpaper magazine - a bi-monthly publication focused on works on paper.

And in the sign of real permanence (and a mailing address), I finally have a library card. It's green, it reads Brooklyn, and I activated it on my birthday.

nothing like a cat in your window to make a body feel at home

if you're gonna get made don't be afraid of what you've learned

Welcome to January. I am not a fan of resolutions or more specifically, I'm not a fan of self-inflicted disappointment. But I have a friend with resolution that is both creative and fits into certain interests of my own.

The said resolution is to become a hipster via osmosis and during a night out which included stops at Fume and Local 44, two West Philly bars that represent the hipster beer dilemma (or is it divide? can one drink both craft beer and pbr or does the quality of beer one drinks mark one's hipster identity?) we discussed the intricacies and potentials of such a task. Amid suggestions ranging from where to buy hipster threads (second hand to be truly hipster or Urban to be upscale hipster) to proposals of an organic baby food line (very ready-made/crafty hipster), we seemed to agree that this resolution should be put to the test on MTV's pygmalion experiment, Made.

I volunteered my unemployed time for the research involved in going hippie to hipster. So, if you were ever curious about how to get your 60 minutes of teenage fame, here's where you start.

information from mtv follows below:
Please email the following information to the corresponding addresses:

-First and last name
-Address
-Email address
-Phone number (mobile or other)
-Send Photo of yourself
-School schedule (work, internship, camps, etc)
-What are your hobbies? What activities are you involved in?
-Why do you want to be made?
-Why do you need MTV's help?
Or if you have another goal and need MTV's help to make it a reality, email us at MADE@mtvnmix.com - we want to hear from you!

ps: if you can identify the source of this post's title, you're well on your way to being made musically hip

because modern art tells me so

I've been in Albuquerque for the past few days visiting my father, step-mother, and sisters. It is a annual pilgrimage temporarily left unfulfilled last year by travels of a different kind. Albuquerque is an odd kind of city. From certain angles (particularly around my dad's bosque neighborhood) and in the glow of a desert sunset, the Sandia mountains, the cottonwoods, and the Rio Grande speak a language of grand western beauty - the barren mixed with the majestic, the feeling that it is simply unlike anything else. But from other angles, Albuquerque is the very model of uncontrolled western expansion - housing developments, strip mall upon strip mall, everything drive-in ready.

It is impossible for many people to talk about Albuquerque without talking about its upmarket neighbor, Santa Fe. Albuquerque is where you fly in, Santa Fe is where you want to be. Santa Fe stands on its own, but for most visitors, Albuquerque exists only in relation to the capital, a reminder of all environmental degradation, unaesthetic development, and Burger Kings from which Santa Fe is an escape.

And no matter how snarky my tone, my trips to Albuquerque almost always include sojourns to see the art galleries and winding streets of Santa Fe. Yesterday we went by train. A commuter line has just opened and has yet to teach its eager riders that behind the green novelty of train travel, commuter line still means public transportation and therefore should not be counted on for clean, empty seats, considerate fellow travelers, and working restrooms.

Santa Fe greeted our packed train with a sharp dose of freezing temperatures and snow along with its usual assortment of galleries and fancy toy and bookstores. We wandered to Site Santa Fe - a kind of museum of modern art which is a welcome reminder that contemporary southwestern art is not all hotel wall - ready pastel plein aires of desert and generic Native American iconography. Their current show bills itself as a biennial and includes custom designed projects such as the one above - the gallery is linked by a winding ramp which allows the exhibitions (almost all video) to be seen from on high. This artist apparently didn't much care for them so he asked Site to cut one short and haul in some mats (judiciously and repeatedly noted as professional stunt quality maps) so that visitors could jump off the ramps and, apparently, live out action star fantasies.

The weird part (or one of the weird or rather just puzzling parts) of the interactive art event is that it ends up emphasizing the insurance hazards of displaying modern art. The visitor has to sign a release form, watch a video about how not to jump, receive instruction from a gallery guide, and if under the age of 18, have a parent or legal guardian present. All for the second long thrill of falling a few feet while hoping you don't hurt your back or break your neck. Is this some sort of comment on the grand build-up of some much of this new way of interactive art that leads to puzzled disappointment? I suspect it's an ill-conceived attempt to pointlessly subvert one architectural show with another - one being a way to mediate experience, its "destruction" overshadowing everything around it by promising child-like thrills for adults.

But over-thinking art always leads to more promising metaphors. And something about the plunge and precipice implications compels my mind in egotistic directions. In a way, this little trip southwest is its own kind of precipice. After a few months at home dwelling in comfort and familiarity, I am about to reenter (or maybe re-plunge into) the scary world of the adult and independent life back east.

If only I knew there was a mat waiting.