i just read over some old stuff in the cheese on blog backlog. i cannot believe it's been almost a year since some of that stuff happened. it all seems incredibly recent.

oh my god. i am going to die one day.

love
dan

yesterday i went to meet dibs and phoebe in central park to see all the pretty orange gates. on my way, i passed a herd of middle school boys. one boy in particular was clearly the ringleader -- taller, more swaggerly -- and he looked at me and went "hey I'm gonna be an artist!" and all of his friends laughed. it was totally awesome.

i met up with dibs and phoebe at the bethesda statue. it was all quite lovely. hey, i like orange. i like gates. i like central park. it's a fool-proof plan. i'm so glad the city let this happen.

i think i passed this boy paúl from high school, except i wasn't sure, because he wasn't 18 years old anymore. paúl duston-muñoz! if you googled your name and found this, drop me a line and confirm your presence at the pretty orange gates!

love
dan

last night the babyskins released their new cd. their performance made me feel tipsy. so much soprano. then me and yoko and dibs and nan and david k went out for some valentines beverages. it was raining and cold and miserable outside. in english class we call that "pathetic fallacy." for many reasons. when i got home, my new roommate had a huge pot of lentil soup on the stove that she decided not to eat after all. i'm gonna be working on that baby for at least two weeks. hooray for lentils!

points of note:

-radical right-wing horrorshow alan keyes' daughter maya is a total lesbian. my parents saw her speak at a big lobbying event in anapolis. apparently, rather than talking about her own experiences, she talked about all the other queer kids who are kicked out and disowned, and how all the support she's been getting should be redirected to them. what a class act!

-the mainstream press makes its inevitable entrance into the resurgent discussion of aids prevention in the gay community/population/gaggle. as usual, the reporter too often generalizes and attributes the actions of a few to the entire gay american population. not always, but too often. it feels weird that this story is in the new york times. i feel like it's a private conversation. too many embarassing specimens on both sides of the issue. nisht arum di goyim.

-a new group just formed in my hometown to support the queer-friendly health-ed curriculum that my superhero dad got approved by the school board. yay dad!

-dream bitches cd release tomorrow! c.o.b. at 7pm! woo!

love
dan

holy crap, i forgot to mention that last night i finally saw SHIRAGIRL perform! wow. it's been over a year. her songs are so catchy. oh how i bounced up and down. i was so happy to see missy come from behind the mixing table and sing into a microphone. and nikki rocked it on guitar. it was a real live electroclash band. ah, it feels like only yesterday a young shira yevin was telling me how much she wanted one of those. "do you like le tigre? no one around here likes le tigre." anyway, the show was fantastic and i can't wait to see her/them perform again.

i still have the songs stuck in my head. "i have this need to GO GO GO!"

i wanted to stick around to see soce perform but i was about to collapse. i couldn't find him to say goodbye either. soce, i know you're reading this. so i send you a belated goodbye! hope the show went well!

xoxo
dan

friday: cesar had a very nice party. kyle played some ridiculous covers. people were laughing, but i didn't find the songs funny -- i just thought they were incredibly good. then i played. afterwards a really nice man took me out into the hall to take my picture and said i reminded him of kim deal. i don't even know what that means, but i enjoyed it. then cesar played. i haven't seen him perform since may. he's gotten way pop-ier. i like his fingers. me and yoko and dibs sat on the bed for most of the party, but i met a nice boy who interns at a death metal zine and sells tents, and also a nice jewish lesbian, who is neither jewish nor a lesbian, who is really into diane cluck. sammy told me there would be lots of cute single gay boys there, but this wasn't really the case, and when i complained about this, yoko said, "what would you do if there WERE cute single gay boys here?" and i had absolutely no idea.

saturday: i took my gift certificate to bed, bath and beyond, where i bought some trashcans and a yoga mat. i guess that's "beyond." then i played another show at sidewalk. it was really last minute -- lach booked me on like thursday or friday, so i didn't have much time to promote or rustle up a crowd. some people came, though! lots of strangers, too. it felt good to play. i felt really scattered beforehand, but i think i sorta got into the groove once i started playing. dibs and i did the "yolanda" story, and i covered "psychadelicate" by pre-war yardsale. then kimya played. she was dressed as a skunk, and kept inviting people to come sing and beat-box with her. that dawson had a mad case of the giggles. it was raucous and sublime. it felt like a moldy peaches show. i got to do my whitney houston impression on stage again. (my whitney houston sounds a lot like sam kinnison) kimya's performance was really inspiring. i'm so used to singer-songwriters. nearly ALL of my friends are singer-songwriters, and the audiences at our shows are almost entirely singer-songwriters. it's so routine to just play a show. but when kimya played, there were people who do not write songs, who came to see a person they found inspiring. and THAT was inspiring, because it reminded me why songwriting is important. it reminded me how it felt to go see ani difranco when i was in high school, and how much stronger it made me -- how much her confidence and gumption wore off on my brain from yards and yards away. anyway. that was fun.

sunday: i saw a performance artist who will remain nameless do a big one-man show that will remain nameless at a large venue that will remain nameless. it was very "good." he was a fantastic performer. and very funny. i laughed a lot. and i enjoy laughing -- really i do. and so i was grateful for the laughing and what-have-you. the show was very satirical. it made fun of the spirtual ills of modern urban commercial society. and it did so very well -- it "made fun." the performer pinpointed ridiculous aspects of commodified urban living and made "fun" out of those ridiculous things, and everyone got to share in that "fun." but i left the theater with a sour taste in my head. for all his "satire," the performer never really *attacked* the subject of his work. for all his wit, he seemed to glamorize and reify much more than he tore down or subverted. as a person, he seemed so entrenched in the media he spoofed that he was unable to really resist it properly. there was much discourse of entertainment culture being "part of him," composing him, making his sense of self possible. and i buy that. we cannot truly "liberate" ourselves from our surroundings. that is something i believe. but that is not a cop-out. it doesn't mean we cannot try.

the best art comes from that effort -- that desire to transcend the societal grossness that emerges on the very skin of our identities. so no matter how "good" a performance is...if that effort seems weak or even absent, i cannot applaud.

love
dan

the eagles lost the superbowl. i am so glad i decided not to stay in philadelphia. sara, matt, gregg and kevin! stay safe! don't steal any dvd players! stop drop and roll!!!!

love
dan

another antsy philly morning, with everyone else asleep.

can't decide whether to stay in town for the superbowl. it could be hilariously grand or hilariously boring.

last night i dreamt i was in george bush's cabinet, or one of his advisors or something. and i wasn't me -- i was this very pragmatic guy who hated the president but thought i could do good things from that post. except the dream started somewhere in richard montgomery high school, where i may or may not have been taken hostage. i know there was some sort of dire spy-movie situation from which i escaped, and made my way to the president, on air force one, and i was like "what the hell is going on here!" and he was like "you haven't heard?...." and i was like "tell me!" and he got all wimpy and started snivelling in the corner, so i burst into this other room, with colin powel and condoleeza rice and a bunch of other types, and i interrupted their conversation and was like "what the hell is going on here!" and they were like, "there's a big storm cloud over washington d.c., and we think it's about to rain fire." and i was like "but my brother and his family live in d.c!" (in the dream i had a heterosexual brother with a nuclear family.) and they got all somber and went "i know." and i went "nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!"

and i don't remember what happened next...

but the dream ended with everyone drinking whisky and me and colin powell rolling around on this bed with beer bottles, singing a song and laughing really hard.

love
dan

last night me and gregg and dibs went to ortliebs jazz haus in philly. i discovered the key to listening to jazz and not being bored!!!

PAYING ATTENTION!

obvious, no?

today we rehearse. a lot. new arrangements, new surprises. everyone's asleep right now but i got restless. i think i'm gonna hunt down some orange juice...

love
dan

last night i listened to "kill yr tv" on the shiragirl website like 30 times. i'm so proud of her. just two years ago, we were both filled with ideas for performances and songs, and now we're making those things happen. when you're in college and someone says, "i'm going to get a bus and drive around the country spreading love and peace," you go, "yeah sure, whatever," but shira actually did it. and all online evidence suggests her songs have gotten way better, and her performances more professional. now i just need to go see a showwwwwwwwwwwww.

big rehearsal in philly this weekend. we're re-introducing banjos and mandolins and cellos into the band. rock.

love
dan

So we got a review in the Advocate. You can read it here. I can't wait to see the actual magazine. The Advocate was the first gay publication I ever bought. I think I learned about it from my friend Maya's lesbian mom. She said it was "the gay Newsweek," and my parents subscribed to Newsweek, so that sounded respectable enough. I remember that first issue really clearly. There was some gay olympic swimmer on the front cover (scantily clad, of course), and this list inside of "hot young queer people to look out for." One of them was Rufus Wainwright. It was before his album came out. Skin from Skunk Anansie was in it too. But mostly I spent a lot of time starting at the vacation ads in the back few pages. I think a lot of teenage gay boys who buy that magazine have a similar experience. Anyway, this was just after I came out to my parents, and I remember there was a big furor when the magazine was discovered, with a half-naked dude on the cover. It all looked so much seedier than it really was. But then, a few months later, my mom went out and bought me a copy. I was so happy. I remember that one too -- the big story was about parents of gay people, and it had Anthony Rapp and his dad on the cover. That was my mom's big "I'm trying to understand" gesture, and it worked.

Yay Mom!
Love
Dan