Wednesday, February 27, 2008

THESIS SHOW

COME TO MY THESIS SHOW.

Tibbott Family Pet
Burial Recovery
Project

GWU's Dimock Gallery
(Lisner Auditorium, lower level)
21st and H NW

(foggy bottom metro)

This is an excavation of 6 of my childhood pets...the closing reception is this Friday, Feb 29, 5-7 at the location above. So far this has been going pretty well, so anyone who is around should def check it out!

Saturday, February 16, 2008

the death of the death of death

so i saw 'diary of the dead' this weekend. i was kind of looking forward to this in the first place, as i keep up with horror releases, but i never go to the movies anymore and i' on that self-omposed house arrest. yesterday, though, i had a visiting artist crit at school that shifted my focus momentarily.

one thing that is pretty awesome about my grad program is the visiting artist schedule they line it. it changed from month to moth, but sometimes it's really rigorous in a great way. anyhow, we all get half-hour chats with these people, and typically they really don't give a fuck about anything. it's fucking AMAZING. we've had a bunch of straight up weirdos come through here in the past 2 years, and they just LAY IT DOWN. rainer ganahl, austrian performance linguist for lack of a better description, ended a crit with me by smashing down my plans for an elaborate, pompeii-specific forgery project. he knew the area well enough ot mention the threat of the napoli mafia (probably not the first mafia i'd really wanna fuck with): 'they will decapitate you! they will decapitate you!' i abandoned the project, mainly because i work there as an archaeologist and i don't want to, you know, get banned or something. however, the crit struck a nerve: if even in an obtuse way, i might be able to create something that would possibly cause people to want to kill me (for technical reasons more so than personal, but still...), shit. maybe i shouldn't treat my foray into art school as just a phase.

yesterday was one of the more fun crits i've had; seibren versteeg, who does a lot of cool internet-and-programming work, checked out my thesis stuff and helped me out a lot. 'diary of the dead' came up, and he recommended it. i had just read a reaaaallly bad review but this dude seemed to be on a similar wavelength -- like how recently i realized that reigning in my oddities has done NOTHING for me in the way of other people thinking me to be normal for the most part, so why the fuck am i not just getting balls-to-the-wall strange? anyway, this is exactly what was suggested to me in this crit, and it made me super-aware that after all this time, i am busting at the seams with weird shit. it is what it is.

aaron and i entered the movie theater and for a while, it was completely empty. this was, like prime-time, friday night viewing so before it even began we knew it must be pretty shitty. after a bit, 2 douchebags entered; i hoped that the movie would just be the four of us, so i could get even more scared at the prospect of a zombie usher biting one of the douchebags and then that douchebag biting the other, and ultimately, we would be chased from the premises by two douchebag zombies until, of course, i ruined their skulls. this didn't happen, though, because one of the final crowds to arrive were also douchebags, and there were several of them, and they sat right behind up, telling bad jokes to the girls they were with and talking about the joys of being a downtown office drone. after the movie, aaron and i both acknowldged a little anxiety on both of our parts when we realized these new douches might be hecklers. generally, i don't mind a heckler -- hell, i even appreciate a good heckler, in most cases -- but there was something particularly annoying and -- dare i say -- douchey about their sort of humor. my game plan for addressing this was going to turn around and yell 'shut the fuck up' in a zombie voice.

but then, the movie started. look, i enjoy entertainment, even when it's shitty, so i did enjoy this estrogen-soaked bongwater. one line is...'it used to be us against us. now it's us against them...but they're us' or something.' the gore was generally on point; hospital scene featuring intestines dribbling out of a man's thoracic cavity and slurping onto the floor was a highlight, as was a videotape in which a zombie CLOWN showed up a little girls' birthday party, and her name was GINA. the girl's mother, on the video, says 'don't be scared of the clown, gina.' that was seriously like the story of my childhood! i know a lot of kids hate clowns, but like i said, my bar is low and i appreciated this as one would a cosmic shout-out. yeeaaaah.

however, i left that movie theater with a tinge of sadness. i haven't been so see a movie at union station since, shit, 2001 or something. i never thought i would miss that theater, but last night, i did. aaron and i both agreed that 'diary of the dead' would have been much, much better in a theater full of hecklers, so folks of washington, i suggest seeing this movie there. lesson learned, i guess. lesson learned.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

new fave show: my SHOCKING story

a few weeks ago, oprah made the announcement that she had purchased discovery health channel for the purpose of turning it into some o-network shit. normally, such news would have left me reeling, devastated. however, discovery health, whose programming i once knew by heart, has faltered greatly in the past year or so and this oprah buyout, as a result, no longer upsets me. see, discovery health has weathered a one-two punch in the past year: one of the most eye-popping programs, MEDICAL INCREDIBLE, was cancelled, and dr. jan adams, host of plastic-surgery: before and after, was turned into a hollywood plastic surgery pariah following the death of kanye west's mother, for which he was apparently responsible. although this program had also been cancelled, the reruns, which were numerous, were played constantly. the news broke, then, and it was permanently pulled from air, with the exception of some weak, cobbled-together theme programs ('plastic surgery: best of facial reconstruction' etc. whoopty fucking doo).

so, yeah, discovery health is sucking these days. oh well. TLC, however, is kicking some serious ass with a show that has certainly upped the sideshow ante. 'my SHOCKING story' smartly does what medical incredible rarely addressed: the fact that, sometimes, when people are all fucked with a rare or bizarre condition, there IS no underlying story of healing and redemption. on 'medical incredible', the only story i can really recall that was honestly hopeless -- as presented to the viewer -- was the terrible story of a 19-year-old seattle woman whose muscles were slowly turning into bone. don't even try to tell me that girl is not completely fucked, discovery health! anyway, 'my SHOCKING' story' also profiles just one person for each hour-long segment, which means wayyy more time is given to medical consult and analysis. recent episodes includes the following:

-- TREE MAN -- a man with a wart infection so insanely bad that it caused gigantic, horn-like warts to sprout from his hands and feet. he looked like an ent. i have never seen anything like this.

-- 'MY GIANT FOOT' profiled a florida woman who, although she was not obese, had a localized case of lymphedema that caused her one foot to swell to NINETY POUNDS. hot shit! my roommate, who can weather crapola such as 'bad girls club' on a more-than-weekly basis, proclaimed this to be, finally, the television program she couldn't stomach. seriously, not for the faint of heart.

-- 'THE MAN WITH NO FACE' -- this could mean so many things! did he lose it in an accident? bad case of crouzon's? nooo, this portuguese fellow had a slow-growing hemangioma that weighed like 7 pounds and was basically a jiggly, pulsating sack of blood that had slowly eaten his skull. sad episode; he was really terrified of surgery. you know what? if i had a giant dangly water-balloon of a face, i'd probably be a little wary too.

also highly recommended: national geographic has finally returned with more episodes of taboo. yay TV!