Showtime!

I've been largely MIA this month, due to a heavy rehearsal schedule for two shows. Tonight is the first of those shows, so here are some performance-related postcards:

This was my first post-college professional dance gig, a 20ish minute piece with live music that was part of an amazing dance festival in Vancouver, BC. We left Seattle early in the morning and I slept funny in the car, causing my back to go out. My memories of the performance aren't great - it was a matter of being able to do the work at all, not how well I could do it - but the group I was performing with was great fun and we managed to get up to all sorts of mischief. There's a BnB in Vancouver that probably still has my name on a 'banned' list.

There weren't any printed programs for the shows, so I grabbed a few of these postcards. I recall sending one to a college girlfriend and she later asked which one in the photo was me. Er...

Promo picture for the whole festival, not our group!

A year later, I had formed a dance collective with some of the dancers from the previous show. Our first production was in October 1997. On our opening night, another dancer gave everyone postcards for good luck (a nice performance tradition that I think has faded away).

Gold Crown Gas Queen, 1957

"You've done it! You 4'8", 91 pound dynamo. You are SO money, you don't even know how money you are. But beware, as the only reason that man put you on that stand was so he could look up your cape!

Have a super run + see ya in MAUI! Merde...."

Rest assured, I am neither 4'8" nor 91 pounds, but that's a reference to one of the dance pieces, in which I portrayed a gymnast preparing for the Olympics. I even had a cape! Not as nice as this one, though. Nice 1990s pop cultural reference to the film Swingers, too.

Now to get ready for tonight....

Four for Me, One for You

Time to show off some great postcards I've gotten this summer! Scanning has gotten more complicated in my house, so I've been pretty bad about keeping up. To be fair, the scanning process was kind of ridiculous already, but now space and electrical outlets are at a premium, so I need to set aside some quality time to scan them in batches.

This one I got way back in the spring, but it is so fabulous that I had to post it. It's a Peep, of course - but it's really a postcard of a Peep that was squished and scanned. By David Byrne of all people. Which kinda makes sense if you look at it - so simple, yet a little creepy.

A great postcard to Tilly and me from friends we got to see in July. It's an advertisement for liquor, but it's a cute image.

A handpainted postcard! Gah, I had a set of blank postcards for creating one's own and I think it went away with the Great Purge in the spring because I hadn't done anything with it yet. I totally loved getting this.

This one showed up just last week. Kind of a dark card for a relentlessly sunny summer, but I like it.




I did manage to get one postcard of my own out the door this week:

Titouan Lamazon - Heiata, égérie de la perle de Tahiti

Is this a black and white image with a slash of color down the middle? Or a color painting that didn't get finished at the edges?



I also got a packet of MOMA postcards given to me by a friend, so it looks like I'm going to have to block some time out for another scanning party pretty soon.

Sick Day, TBT, Vaults etc...

It's a lovely August Thursday and I'm home with either the worst allergies or the most annoying summer cold. I'm too unfocused to write correspondence, so I thought I'd go with Throwback Thursday and pull a postcard out of the ol' vault. I didn't even recognize this one, so it must have been unearthed during my spring cleaning.

June 1988, to my roommate and me:

Bear and monkeys, Egyptian painting c. 1335, from Bidpai's Fables.

"hey guys - how's it going? Not much here - DC is great - Joe N' I have been getting around by subways (they get you everywhere). You know I miss you both cuz' DC's nice but, just ain't no CINCINNATI. Tell Danny I said hi. Been playing lots of cards? I've been teaching Joe how to play games - cuz' he don't know none - we went to the FREER Gallery & the Hirschorn Museum AND the Sculpture Garden - I'll tell you more when I get home -- See you areound 7:00 (I THINK?!) Friday -

love,
Mimi"

The summer between my 1st and 2nd years of college, my friend Susan and I lived in Cincinnati. Mimi came into the café in our building a lot - she was a teenager, still in high school, and unbelievably precocious. Girl had a LOT of energy. Joe was her older brother (our age), and was the shyest punk to ever rock a mohawk. They made a funny pair.

It seems so odd now to read a postcard from a brief trip letting us know what time we would see her next, clearly only a few days away - but then I remember how careful we were about long distance phone calls back then. We didn't even have an answering machine at our apartment, let alone voicemail, so this was the most efficient way to let us know she was coming back!

Summertime Blahs

It's hot.

This summer has been so hot that I haven't had much else to say, here or through the mail. It's no surprise that the only postcards I sent last month were written on those rare days when the temperature dipped below 85 degrees.

I'm not sure where this one came from. I haven't been to San Francisco since 1997, but it looks too faux-old-timey to have come from by grandmother's postcard collection. 

I grabbed a handful of postcards and asked Tilly which one I should send, and this was her choice. She liked it because it is an homage to Edward Hopper's Nighthawks - a fact that I did not know, despite the presence of many of the Sunday "tribute" panels in this MUTTS postcard collection AND the fact that I've already shown my affinity for Hopper's moody restaurant-themed work.

A couple of summery images rounded out the July post:

I've only just noticed that there is a dog driving a boat in this image.

"Pool Sharks"

For the last one, I was flipping through my address book and saw one for SEV, which surprised me. I'm positive that the address is at least a decade old and odds are low that the postcard reached its intended audience, but .... maybe? This process of writing has helped me reconnect with several people I'd lost touch with, so why not?