Going to Hungary!

I turn 31 on July 31st. I’ve waited my whole life for this lucky birthday. And it looks like I’ll be celebrating it in Hungary!


Dear Kristine,

Congratulations! You have been selected for the
International Artists’ Residency/Seminar to be held in
Budapest, Hungary. Your residency date will be
between Tuesday, JULY 15 - Thursday, AUGUST 7;

We had 328 applications.

Please let us know whether you ACCEPT or DO NOT
ACCEPT to participate, otherwise we will choose an
other artist for your space. If you accept this
invitation send us the nonrefundable $100 for booking
your place by Wednesday, April 5, 2008.

Your residency will be at Budapest, VI. Jokai
ter 9. 1061. Each participant will provide a
lecture/seminar about their work that usually run
30-45 minutes. Closing exhibition will be arranged.

Please send us your travel arrangements,
residency fee $1,450.00 (EURO$990), and signed waiver
to HMC, 2503 Costa Mesa Drive, Dallas, TX 75228, by
Friday, April 25, 2008. I need to wire transfer the
residency fees to our host by April 28th. I will
leave for Hungary on May 3rd, so all of above time
table is crucial.

Thank you for your interest in participating in
the Hungarian Multicultural Center’s competition. If
you
have any questions please do not hesitate to contact
us by e-mail.

Best regards,

Don Juan DeMileage

We've entered the glorious phase of MATX 603 where we spend 3 weeks on Don Juan/Don Giovanni - opera, history, intertextuality. I've watched half of the Met opera version and we're required to watch a non-operatic version/adaptation of Don Juan by Thursday. So I thought -- why not Don Juan DeMarco? EASY.

Not so. I left school and thought I'd hit Movie Gallery before my 7 pm workout. Had an hour to kill. Movie Gallery came up dry. So I rushed to Target - since I had to buy cat food. Not at Target. I called Xian up -- where's the nearest Blockbuster and Best Buy? I zoom over to the Blockbuster in CaryTown. Nothing. So I figure a jaunt to Short Pump/Best Buy is an quick drive on 64. Then I get lost in Mansionville and go 15 miles out into nowhere. Finally, I find a 64 connection and get back in the right direction. Get to Best Buy, about to pee my pants. AND THEY DON'T FUCKING HAVE THE MOVIE EITHER! Apparently it is only available new on DVD as a double disc with the Astronaut's Wife (barf!) and all 3 local stores are out of stock. CHEESE AND RICE! I call Xian to check in...he looks online and finds my Don Juan.

Where? Oh, about a mile and a half from my house at the local video store - The Video Fan. Nestled in the Fan (such a great neighborhood) and only on VHS. So Figg and I are going totally RETRO tonight as we watch the beauty and splendor of obsolete format for our high-end multimedia Ph.D program. 50 miles of driving, a missed workout date and gas at $3.24 a gallon. Whatever it takes, I guess. Damn you Don Juan! Cuckolded again!

Too Much of One Thing...

Today I played kindergarten PhD fun with my classmate Jesse and her mom Martha.
Jesse and I are shooting a 16mm stop-motion animation film with characters/puppets made out of paper, glue and a lot of luck! We're using magnet pieces and brad/hinges for movement and placement of our characters.

The set-up: Jesse's uncle was friends with this guy named Cyril Winter. Cyril Winter liked to think of himself as Buddy Holly and spent $1000 of his own money to record a single with a B-side. The song "Too Much of One Thing" is the result. It's probably one of the worst songs in the world. Poor Cyril tries to hit all the high notes like Buddy Holly, but falls flat there and everywhere else.

Our mission: To make the long-lost music video of Cyril Winter. We're not making fun of Cyril, on the contrary, we're celebrating whatever it is that makes a person create -- even if the outcome is subpar and comical. Cyril's efforts on this song -- his dreams to make it big, his spirit, his enthusiasm -- this is what we wish to capture.

So we're making these puppets, and I've never made paper puppets before. Jesse and I met at her mom's house, about a half hour outside of Richmond, and got right to work. She's making the doctor, who Cyril visits in the lyrics. Doctor tells him to find some LOVE. The Doctor has a moving arm and will hit Cyril on the knee with a medical hammer. I'm making the love interest, who blows Cyril off. I've named her Hedda Handsome. She has a huge head and freakish hands. Martha started on Cyril, but because he's our main character, we need many bodies and heads with facial expressions for him.

I'm likening the puppets for this project to the early South Park material where they actually used paper for their animation. And I think the Black and White 16mm film will capture the aesthetic of the 1950's Buddy Holly era perfectly.

Tommorrow, we work on finishing up our Cyril puppets and on to making his band. Then we have 4 scenes to create where poor Cyril has, of course, too much of one thing, and none of another. Such as "Large stack of pancakes, small cup of syrup" and "Huge pockets, small change". Get it? If anyone wants to hear the song, I'll email you the MP3.

Foucault, anyone?

The Beginning of the End and what I did inbetween

Today is the last day of winter break while simulataneously being the first day of the Spring semester. I have to write a quiz for tomorrow morning's InSight class, but I also get half the day to relax and reflect. I'll cook a nice dinner and drink some wine, but I'll never really feel like the day is mine, which is a common in the tumultuous relationship between me and Sunday.

But, a month off is wonderful! Heres a brief month in review - it's been fairly productive:

- Got drunk with Kim, Selmin, Joel, Heather, Greg, Angela, Gregg, Peter, Hernon, Chris, Courtney, Katherine, Tobie, Allen, Kelly and many, many others.

- Fell down Heather's stairs

- Learned how to make forcemeat and a stuffed suckling pig from the wonderful cookbook Heather got me for xmas. She is so thoughtful!

- Bought new living room furniture - a couch and a love seat! Sage green and scotchguarded so please come over and spill wine on my couch!

- Entered Insight into the College Television Awards

- Submitted my Cut-Ups paper to two conferences

- Submitted my Cut-Ups paper and Hillary Clinton paper to the VCU writing contest

- Applied for an Internatinal Artist Residence at the Hungarian Multicultural Center

- Joined the International Documentary Association

- Applied for a grant from the Roy Dean documentary fund

- Submitted my graphic novels multimedia presentation to the Electronic Literature Organization conference

- Was solicited to screen The Good Wife's Guide at the Mitten Movie Project in February. Why the hell not? So I submitted that oldie-but-goodie to another screening. Screening is at the Main Art Theatre on February 5th.

- Watched the entire Series of Firefly, plus Serenity, then I officially became obsessed with Nathan Fillion after watching Waitress.


- Got a six day head cold, and in my delirium, spent two days watching America's Next Top Model marathons and the entire 6 hours of Stephen King's The Stand on demand. I was very, very ill.

- To redeem myself, I've also watched Ratatouille, Who Killed the Electric Car, The Pursuit of Happyness and a few other choice selections.

- Correctly predicted Hillary Clinton would win New Hampshire.

- Supported Jon and Stephen as they came back on the air.

- Transitioned between reading Stephen's book and Oscar Wilde.

- Discovered the incredibly inspiring sounds of Klaus Nomi's music while listening to the Richmond indie radio station yesterday. Fucking rad!


- Slept and ate and relaxed!

School starts again tomorrow, and honestly, I can't wait! I'm ready for it! Bring the crazy, hectic, unorganized, random, unrelated, bizarre, stressful and entirely awesome shit on again!

Final Finale Finally

First semester of MATX is officially over! And I'm back in the land of the living!

After a week of very little sleep with dreams in PowerPoint slide design, I'm proud to announce that I got A's in both classes and passed the Pass/Fail Practicum.

Final projects were:
Cut-Ups are For Everyone: The Appropriation of Found-Footage Filmmaking and Media Culture - a pretty straight-forward paper on found art, collage and filmmaking. Focused on issues of ownership, authorship, copyright and fair use by looking at four cases. Ties with with the Surrealist movement, culture-jamming and new media. One of my favorite papers ever. I'll be entering this into the VCU Dept. of English Student Writing contest!

Textuality and Graphic Novels: Identity, Influence and Adaptation in V for Vendetta and Beyond.This project really pulled me out of my comfort zone - not a standard paper at all. I composed a multimedia/hypertext in PowerPoint and then Christian helped me with the online version. It's fun, it's funky. I quoted MCP. I put in a picture of Wilson. I've entered it into the Electronic Literature Organization conference as of an hour ago. First conference I've ever submitted to!

Even though I'm thoroughly hungover from the overwhelming amount of red wine I drank at Melinda's party last night, my confidence level is pretty high. I feel...smart.

Retail Therapy

After a shitty day complete with teary-eyed meltdown in the middle of class and crucial sugary Starbucks peppermint mocha injection, I still needed more to bring me outta the practicum induced funk.

So, Christian and I went shopping and out to dinner at our favorite restaurant in Richmond, this tiny little Mexican place called Su Casa on W. Broad. Best tacos I have ever had. I crave them. I dream about them. And my dreams came true last night for a total of $24.00 w/tip.

Then it was off to Marshall's, for guaranteed cheap clothes. I have purchased new clothes 3 times in the past year: in January I bought some socks. In August I bought some shorts. In October I bought a sweatshirt. Ladifrickinda. It was time to do some major damage and revamp my wardrobe.

Marshall's purchases: 1 pair of jeans, 2 pairs of pants (one casual, one dressy). One cashmere sweater (zip up with hood, my favorite). 3 pairs of knee high socks. Two pairs of patterned tights. One scarf, one pair of gloves. Total: $202.00

Next, Target. Something's up over there - they must have a new fashion buyer. The clothes were kickass cute and actually tailored to fit. I bought six tops of a variety of styles. I bought two black dresses, a belt, a pair of earrings and a hat. Some Burt's Bees balm. And two bottles of red wine. Total: $200.00

Then I came home and sent out my Amazon order:
One 4 Gb jump drive. 15 rolls of 35mm film (various speeds and styles). One battery for the Canon. One battery for the Minolta. An essay book on photography by Susan Sontag. Total price: 130.00.

And I felt so much better when I finished blowing my entire two-week stipend payment in one evening. A thousand times better. Maybe it's also because I've been so starved for new clothes after getting rid of so much when we moved to Richmond. Maybe it also has to do with the 15 bonus pounds I'm carrying on my gut and ass that's making me not fit right into what I have. Who knows? But retail therapy works, and I am proof.

After it was all said and done, we opened a bottle of merlot, sat on the couch, snuggling with each other, the dog and the cats, and watched A Beautiful Mind. And I thought I had problems...