Katrina Dinner 2006 
Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 07:23 PM - Travels, Politics, Friends, Food
My friend Justin in New Orleans has devised a kind of next-year-in-the-Lower-9th ritual for the lost and wandering tribes of the city. Part voodoo, part seder, mostly party (of course) it has 5 questions, candles, bitter pickles, and red beans and rice. Send it on to the displaced and repatriated you may have sheltered last fall.



San Gorgonio Wilderness 
Tuesday, July 4, 2006, 04:34 PM - Travels

This is where I hiked yesterday. I can't believe I can get my snowmelt swimming fix so close to (new) home. By August this lake should be the perfect temperature - now it's brisk and lovely.
This means my weekend included both ocean and lake dips, and it really doesn't get better than that, does it?



New Orleans' Newest Tourists 
Wednesday, June 21, 2006, 06:09 PM - Travels, Sex, Friends, Art

I talked with my former colleague Sybil yesterday - she runs the New Orleans sister site of the HIV prevention project I used to manage in SF (community-level HIV prevention for high-risk adolescents). They've been doing street intercept interviews with teenagers at nightclubs in Central City (where those 5 kids were killed over the weekend) - Sybil's had to suspend her project (again) until everything calms down. She told me that while some things haven't changed (there are still a lot of 15 year old girls in the supposedly 21-and-over clubs), most of the 'neighborhood' adolescents are driving in from Houston for the weekend to party. As far as I can tell, this implies that New Orleans is becoming a city of richer, whiter residents, and is now a short-hop tourist destination for its former underclass...which is a truly freaky demographic shift. Perhaps the national guard will start stopping carloads of black kids at the city limits?
And for something almost completely unrelated, my old friend Justin is very talented, if you didn't know. Check out Greetings From New Orleans - pre-Katrina, even more important now that found objects from New Orleans are likely mostly lost.



Hollywood Weekend 
Monday, June 5, 2006, 02:59 PM - Travels

There was lots of Hollywood in my weekend - Adam was down to visit from SF, and in true oblivious Catherine style I walked right by Jake Gyllenhaal at the Farmer's Market Sunday morning. Adam is appalled at the thought of all the glamorous people I'm overlooking on a weekly basis...if Nick would just set up defamer/stalker perhaps I'd be more motivated to make a celebrity cheat sheet, or flashcards, or something, but I kind of doubt it. I was much more interested in the 14-year old Matt Dillon in Over the Edge - which we saw at Hollywood Forever in my first trip to what all my LA friends claim is the best open-air cemetery movie picnic in town.

But my favorite "I live in Los Angeles now. How did that happen?" moment was starting my Friday evening with a quick scenic jaunt on the 2 freeway...
Did I mention how much I love people on flickr who've taken pictures for me when I forget to? It facilitates my tenuous hold on this whole blogging form.
And did I mention how I think eggplant is the best possible color for a Chevy Malibu on the 2 at sunset?



Drawing Restraint 9 
Wednesday, April 26, 2006, 11:01 AM - Travels, Art

I saw Matthew Barney and Bjork's latest project last night. The most horrifying thing about it was not the underwater romantic dismemberment, but rather the number 9 at the end of the title, suggesting that I'll be spending two hours a year for the next 8 on Mr. Barney's stylized, well-lubricated fantasies. This one fugues on Japanese culture, which apparently even the uber-weird Mr. Barney finds perplexing. At times it seemed like Leslie's and my trip, had we been shooting ourselves up with Ketamine and dropping acid daily. That said, there are stunning panoramic pageant moments at the beginning that I adored (that man is our generation's .Busby Berkeley), exquisite thoughtfulness in the oceanic tea set, and fabulous shots of congealinig icebergs of vaseline. It does crack me up that this was the first film I've seen in a theater since I arrived in LA; apparently I'm not totally assimilated into mainstream film culture quite yet.

Delinquent 
Thursday, March 23, 2006, 02:30 PM - Travels, George, Friends, Food, Art
I've had not a minute to keep up with this little enterprise. Perhaps you'll be sympathetic if you hear that in the last 16 days I've been in Boston, New Haven, Bridgeport, Brooklyn, DC, San Francisco, LA, and Denver. Yikes! No wonder I slept in today. All have been good travels; really the optimal mix of work/family/art/fun/food that one can find on the East Coast. I made an excellent blanket fort with my goddaughter in Boston, went to the (kinda stinky) biennial with Andrew, ate homemade canneloni and cannoli with Leslie for the Sopranos premiere, and drank our signature cosmopolitans with my dear New Orleans friend in DC. I had a good visit with Dad - full of nice weather and walks by the water. I'm so lucky that he's still so independent. Denver had some swing dancing and a fun planning meeting for MoveOn's fall program, and back up in NorCal I took the Republican to Joan Blades' birthday party. He gets lots of points for a) venturing into the liberal lions' den and b) dancing with me even though he'd been on a million-mile bike ride that day. Now I have to finish unpacking my life and start seeing what things will be here....pretty much all I've done is see Claudia and Angel so far, but there's a whole city out there waiting. And an update on Griffith Park running: last night at dusk I saw a coyote and heard tons of frogs and crickets. I couldn't believe that I was in the middle of the great metropolis...

Time in Transit 
Saturday, February 4, 2006, 05:13 PM - Travels
So I did a whirlwind trip to Boston this week to participate in a planning meeting for the next stage of MoveOn's Operation Democracy and 2006 field campaign. I spent as much time on a plane as I did in Boston. Last Sunday I went up to the mountains, and probably was in the car for as much time as I was on the snow. But all that time in transit I think helped me be fully on board with my transition into campaign mode for the next 8 months. It should be an intereting adventure...

LA SRL SF 
Monday, January 23, 2006, 03:10 PM - Travels, Technology, Art

Despite my best efforts to begin transforming into a Silverlake post-urban LA denizen, the most interesting event I attended this weekend was a small Saturday night SF-proud SRL performance in the parking lot at the end of the row of Chinatown galleries. There's something about the immolation of a vomiting dragon/dinosaur head backed by the roar of an airhorn hovercraft that's just sublime. Makes me think that maybe I'll fit right in in LA, after all. Picture is taken from our latecomers' perch in the garage across the street- perhaps a lifetime of parking structure art spectation awaits me in the Southland?

Mike Kelley at Gagosian 
Friday, December 30, 2005, 07:14 PM - Travels, Art

I had a blast at this show in Chelsea. LA artist who searches out really strange extracurricular activity photos from yearbooks, recreates them and extrapolates short videos and installations. There are maybe 35 of them running in seemingly random sequence in the gallery, beautifully sideshow-esque and cacophonic. He and many 1970s high school students is/were apparently fascinated by vampires, but my favorite piece was the operatic performance by the chick in the bedazzled 'Fresno' overalls, on the porch of a weirdly modernist representation of a farmhouse. Great fun....

The Beautiful New Beginning of Irony 
Thursday, December 29, 2005, 01:59 PM - Travels, Friends
I am freshly back from the east coast, and while I did have some ridiculously wholesome holiday times with dear Dad, there's nothing like NYC during a transit strike to make you realize the true beauty of human nature. (In truth I was comfortably watching MNF with George when the strike was called, but trust me.)

Favorite parts of my trip:

Watching Andrew in his triangular Italian army jacket pick up a hot blonde on the F train by discussing her ability to suck Ruper Murdoch's cock.

Suprising Gaby at a Hanukah party (thanks Nick!).

Brunch at Prune with Claire and Heather.

Spending Friday night at a black tie event thrown by artsy Brooklyn artists scraping to afford NYC, and Saturday night at a White Trash Xmas party thrown by a bunch of Wharton private equity rich kids. And the bare-chested bartender at the gay hedge fund party, did I mention him?

Watching my hardass friend Rachel transform into a cooing blissful mom when she holds brand-new Ulisse.




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