My friend K and I went to the member museum preview of the Matthew Barney exhibit at SFMOMA last week. From the SFMOMA website:

SFMOMA is the only U.S. venue for this full-scale survey, the first to gather together Matthew Barney’s entire DRAWING RESTRAINT series. Spanning almost 20 years, DRAWING RESTRAINT is an ongoing, performance-based project exploring the notion that form emerges through struggle against resistance. A site-specific installation designed by the artist, the exhibition occupies the Museum’s entire fourth floor, which has been reconfigured to eliminate the gallery walls and so encourage a nonlinear experience of the art.

The opening was your typical San Francisco artsy scene. While we were waiting in line outside, there was a couple walking around dressed like some of the images in the Matthew Barney exhibit. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether these people were dressed up especially for the exhibit or whether they were just being themselves because at any given moment in San Francisco someone is always in costume, but at a typical art opening the number of people in costume expands exponentially depending on the magnitude of the event and gravitas of the artist. At the Matthew Barney member opening, it felt like about 40% of the people attending were in costume. I just found it so fascinating that SFMOMA had such a variety of members. Besides the artsy fartsy crowd in costume, the blue-hairs were there as well as people who look like they would never walk into a museum let alot a modern art museum. It always makes what Andy Warhol would have thought about us all had he been standing outside SFMOMA last Wednesday night.

I love Matthew Barney. He does such interesting work with with sculptural material. There pieces of scuplture that looked like foam or a blob of shaving cream, but which are in fact hard to touch. There was a piece that looked like someone had put a huge slab of butter or dough on the floor. It's all so fascinating!

The artist Bjork was in his photos and in his films, and she added the rock star phenomena to his pieces. I love the juxtaposition that he was a football player and wrestler in his youth and is now this avant garde NYC artist. There is something about that combo that is so very strange.

Then there was these weird videos about fawns doing strange things in a limo. I thought they looked like birdies myself, but my friend K said there were men dressed as fawns and doing lewd and weird things in a limo driving through the streets of NYC.

You can read what the SFGate had to say about the Matthew Barney exhibit,
Matthew Barney, In Glory all his own.

I am closing my AT&T dial-up account finally! I have been so ambivalent about keeping it because I had a personal web page with my stories and I was able to store pictures too, but it doesn't make sense for me to pay for a dial-up account and DSL. If only AT&T offered DSL in my neighborhood when I needed it, I would have stuck with them. But they didn't.

I will have to create a personal web page someday on the new AT&T (formerly SBC)/Yahoo. Ah well! Yes, I know my template is outdated and I need to update it more regularly, but well, who has time?

I am currently reading "Gods and Generals" by Jeff Shaara. I loved his father's book, "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara, which I recently read about two weeks ago. I am boning up on my War of Northern Aggression history, or as its learned in school, Civil War history. I would like to read all of Jeff Shaara's books, not to mention Shelby Foote's books.

I am posting my hula Barbie picture here, so I can store it on my blog.

I love watching the USA show "Monk". Monk is so funny and I so relate to him because he is so very strange. I know what it's like to be weird but still respected because you're smart.

There was an episode on Monk where he had to infiltrate an office. People in the office started liking him, and it was so poignant because you could tell that this was the first time Monk ever felt accepted by people. Then of course, Monk being Monk, it didn't last and in the end the office people thought he was weird and things were back to normal for him.

I am so having a Monk experience at my job. I heard the secretary who was promoted to an analyst whisper loudly to the summer intern "don't talk so loud, Brenda is here." I am such a freak at my office. I know I shouldn't care because I deliberately don't hang out with the office crowd, but for whatever reason it still hurts. I wish it didn't hurt and I thought I was too old for it to matter, but you know it still hurts and I'm like thinking "JC, why have you abandoned me?"

Okay, I know I am being dramatic but that's what I feel like right now. I know it's all my fault because I don't hang out and I don't gossip, and I'm one of those office workers who keeps to themselves and don't really hang with people in my group, but other than that, I don't know what I did to deserve such treatment. It's not like I snitch on people like the other people in my group, who are the biggest gossips and snitches I've ever come across in any office.

People in my group act like they're still in junior high or high school and it's like some popularity thing at work. I have not come across such clickish behaviour in an office in such a long time. It's like totally alien to me. I wish I could be like the two other women in my office who don't hang out and don't care, and are senior managers. But I'm not a senior manager and I guess some part of me does care.

Honestly, I have never worked in such an immature office before. I'm like, I used to be really well liked in other departments at other companies I've worked for, but not this one. I hear gossip about our group all the time, about how we're so strange. We are a strange group! I thought the new director would change our group dynamic, but I think it's gotten worse.

I have to get out of my job. I spoke to this guy in another division in muy company on Friday about an open position that he has, but the timing for me to move into his group will not be right until September. If I have to work with people, I want to work for someone who recognizes me and likes me and this guy so does. We can talk for hours and hours about healthcare and its problems. He treats me better than anyone in my current department. Sad isn't it?

I don't know why I feel so sorry for myself right now about my working situation, but I do. But you know, it's always like this before I make a change in my life. Before I moved apartment, things got really bad and I started to hate living in my old place. Before I change any job, things get really bad. It's almost as if the universe is pushing me out the door and moving on to my next step in my life. Things get so bad that when I do move, I have no regrets. It's an odd way to move on to your next step in life, but one that is probably necessary for me because I'm the type who tends to get rooted very quickly. It takes alot for me move one and things have to get really bad before I even consider. Once I make up my mind though to move one, then things happen pretty quickly for me whether I'm ready for it or not.

I expect the same thing to happen now. I am so ready for a new job that I know things will start to happen very quickly so I can get out of my current situation. I've been thinking for about a couple of months now that I will not be in my job for the whole month of July.

When I first had this thought, I was so confused! I wasn't actively looking for a job and things weren't so bad. But as the month of June has progressed, my job and my attitude towards it have gotten progressively worse. Things have gotten so bad that I want out of my job at any cost! God, I hope something happens soon! I don't know how much I can take my job anymore. I hate not fitting in and having people talk about me like how our ex-secretary spoke about me today. I'm like what the hell did I do to deserve this?

I think M-Square is sick or something. I haven't spoken to him since we broke up but I can still pick things up from him, and I get that he is really sick. I have no idea what's wrong with him, and part of me wants to call and ask but I know that would not be a good thing.

The man obviously did not want me in his life anymore and for once I'm going to heed my friends' advice and not beg him to take me back. S0 many good things have happened to me since we broke up anyway, things I know wouldn't have happened had we still been together. So I am in the firm belief that it was all for the best that our relationship fizzled out.