Wednesday, April 13, 2005|
It's my birthday! Yup, today's my birthday and I am now 37 years old. I'm proud to share this day with father of our country Thomas Jefferson (1743), outlaw Butch Cassidy (1866), playwright Samuel Beckett (1906), writer Eudora Welty (1909), Get Smart's Don Adams (1923), Wonder Woman's Lyle Waggoner (1935), singer Al Green (1946), chess master Gary Kasparov (1963), and Silver Spoon's Ricky "Rick" Schroder (1970). Today is also the day that the first elephant to come to the US arrived in New York City (1796), the day that Pete Rose got his first major league hit for the Reds (1963), the day that "Grease" closed on Broadway in 1980 after 3,388 performances (probably 3,387 too many), and the day in 1981 when Janet Cook won the Pulitzer for feature writing only to have it taken away after she admitted she made up the whole story. Most exciting of all, the Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee of the University of Florida held a groundbreaking meeting in 2004 where they discussed pressing issues such as the Women's Gym Garden and Cultural Plaza Pay Visitor Parking. I think that if nothing else, this motley collection of people and events proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that astrology is bullshit. Thirty-seven seems like such a non-event birthday, halfway between the downhill-slide age of 35 and the really over the hill age of 40. Statistically, today marks the exact middle of my life expectancy, a fact that I have a fairly hard time grasping. Ray Kurzweil seems to think that I may be young enough to live forever, though I don't think that anyone really groks what that would mean. Who'd want all these old geezers hanging around, screwing things up for the young? Since people tend to become more conservative as they age and because anyone's who's got immortality in their grasp would want to hold on to it, one can only imagine how stultifying a society based on immortality would be. Maybe if everyone over 100 agreed to get on an interstellar vessel and head out into space it could possibly work. But I doubt it: exploration is generally a task left to the young and driven. People centuries old would probably want to sit at home and kibitz with their old friends. I can only imagine a world where all meals are "early bird specials," where all cars are huge luxury cruisers, and where nostalgia replaces dreaming. Increasingly I'm struck by how young I still am. I know when I was 18, 37 sounded ancient...hell, my 25 year old teachers seemed old! But as I look around and look at what I've done and what there's still left for me to do, thirty seven starts to look pretty good. I guess the weirdest thing for me is that I don't feel 37. If someone caught me in an unguarded moment and asked me how old I was, I think my first impulse would be to say 21. Not that I haven't matured (OK...that is a debatable point), but I just don't feel like what I'd always thought 37 year olds would feel like. I always pictured people my age as serious, boring, and focused on the practical details of life. I feel anything but that. In fact, I'm pretty darn proud of the fact that I've resisted the pressure to become one of those boring people. Don't get me wrong. I'm not denying they exist...they do and they're all around us all the time leading lives of quiet desperation. Nope, I'm just saying that my proudest accomplishment is that my life turned out to be pretty freakin' interesting. And you can't ask for a better birthday present than that. 5:46:58 AM 
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DIY Revolution Opening Pics...finally! If I wasn't so freakin' lazy (or so ridiculously busy) these images would have been up last week. As it is, this morning's the first time I've gotten a chance to post them. Sorry. Sort of. Anyway, what you're looking at is pictures from the opening of my zine show on April 7th at the Design Center at Philadelphia University. It went pretty well I thought (about 80 people total maybe?), though the folks at the Design Center were bummed there weren't more people. For me, I was happy: my friends and colleagues were there, I was surrounded by cool stuff, and I got to see some punk rock on the patio of a house with a grand piano-shaped pool. How bad can that be? Personally, I chalk up the attendance deficit to the fact that they didn't want to serve booze on account of the students showing up. But as much as that chafed me (I volunteered to card people...no dice), I totally understood. Sigh.  The opening room of the gallery. We suspended about 100 zines in polybags on monofilament from a wire grid system on the ceiling.
5:09:29 AM
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© Copyright
2005
Sean Carton
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Last update: 5/20/05; 5:49:42 AM .
Last update: 5/20/05; 5:49:42 AM .
