Go to this on Thursday:

My pal Ryan is the guest curator. So many good artists in one tiny space!

Andrew!

So, Andrew is about to be 15 months. Walking is no longer a rarity, and he can say "kitty," "doggy," "moon," "cookie," and "juice." My mom also swears he once said "puppet," but the rest of us remain skeptical. He loves to go down the slide backwards, remains unamused by carousels, sometimes throws his dinner on the floor, is afraid of horses, and still adores cats. In other news, he is the cutest person who's ever lived.

My friend Joe started a blog and it's really fun:

For my part, I'm currently desiring turntables, a Balmain dress, and of course, a show horse.

I still want to go to prom. Preferably several proms...

... so I can wear all of these Valentino dresses from the Spring 2010 ready-to-wear show. Valentino has never especially caught my interest before, but all the crazy ruffles, drapes, and pleats in this collection are calling my name. Somehow these dresses manage to be both architectural and whimsical, which basically makes them perfect. This first one, in particular, should really be on my body:

Overheard at work:

"I met him in Provincetown 'cause he was singing Billie Holiday at that bar where we had to show out butts to get in free."

Sometimes I love working in a restaurant.

The Ruby Suns are a band that I like.

I played hooky from work last Monday so I could see the Ruby Suns play at Bottom of the Hill. Considering the fact that just about every mix CD I've made in the past year features at least one of their songs, missing this show was not an option. I will admit that I was initially a little disappointed by the new direction in which they seem to be headed on their latest release, Fight Softly, but I think my ears were simply tainted by a residual fondness for their last album, Sea Lion. I do miss the so-called "world music" vibe that they managed to pull off without a hint of cliche, but after witnessing their new line-up in action, I'm disinclined to write off their change in sound as a creative misstep, the way some other reviewers and critics have. Less commercially viable, I suppose, which is a bit ironic, considering the leanings of this new album towards a chilled-out/tripped-out Animal Collective-ish-ness that has become a rather commercially successful sound as of late. But I certainly wouldn't dismiss this as a mistake, as I've never been of the opinion that a band ought to stick with a particular sound just because it worked for them in the past.

In any case, the show itself was fantastic, and I didn't even have to be drunk to feel like dancing, despite the unpleasant crush that's customary at any sold-out BOTH show. The evening concluded around the time the sun was coming up, after the band had been given the truly San Francisco experience of sitting around drinking cheap beer in a friend's apartment, eating leftover pasta and playing with an endless ball of string while someone iPod DJ-ed in the living room. All told, almost as fun as this new single of theirs, which everyone should listen to, all the time, because it's delightful.

"You're doin' it wrong."

I spent a solid afternoon reading Herbert Marcuse today:

"In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of domination." 

In an appropriately ironic twist, whilst reading these thoughts on the fate of individuality in advanced societies, I received no fewer than 10 text messages and 50 instant messages online. I also received a number of emails directing me to, amongst other things, change my Flickr password, pay my cell phone bill, and check my bank statement, all of which I did. I browsed through Facebook. I downloaded some pirated albums. I organized my iPhoto albums. And I closed the afternoon with this sentence:

"There may be a need to keep alive the spark of utopia after all. Its function for us today is... to undermine the complacency that makes the intolerable tolerable."

Hmm.