i think blogger is confused

It says my most recent post was on Monday but that's not possible and also doesn't make sense from the context of what I wrote. Anyhow, today is Friday, and it seems that I'll be painting once again. Painting sucks, especially by yourself, and I'm not sure whether I'll actually do any today. I've worked plenty of hours now for the amount Lincoln said he'd pay me to help out. But we'll see.

Yesterday was the most eventful day in a while. I painted most of the ceiling over at the Fulham-Cohens' (the job today would be to finish it). Then Linc, Mom and I went to the Phillips for the ColorField (the only art movement ever to come out of DC) show there. It was cool for the location aspect and some of the pieces were nice but this was not a big or particularly influential movement. The real show is upstairs in the permanent collection, which has some really tight pieces by the heavy hitters of the past 150 years: Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, Miro, Klee, etc. Plus some excellent less-well-known stuff. Right after that I went and met up with Robin (!) and her friend Boris to go to a one-man show at Busboys and Poets about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was neat, he used beat-boxing and singing plus a whole host of characters to illustrate some tired but important themes about the similarities between the people on either side of the walls there and about the dehumanization of each side by the other. But it cost a lot of money and Busboys and Poets isn't cheap, either. In the end I spent 20 bucks on it, which would have been unheard of in Chile for the same show. Oh well, guess I've gotta choose more carefully down here. It was great to see Robin, though, she's such a cool girl. And I liked Boris.

A couple of other notes: I've taught Lincoln and Jack carioca, although we haven't played a complete game yet because it required a real time commitment and we're all busy and on totally independent schedules. But Jack and I did play a game of Scrabble, which, to my surprise, I won 403-315. Not bad after a year with not a single game in English! Also I found --bless you, Dad, the only THINGS you obtain are books and music and 90% of the time they're great-- an album in the kitchen by a guy named Boubacar Traoré. Well the album's great, and I did some snooping around on YouTube to try and find something to put up here and, well, I got to clicking and discovered a couple of other awesome musicians: Ali Farka Toure, Salif Keita, Corey Harris. It seems Mali produces a lot of great music: Amadou et Mariam, Tinariwen, Traoré, Keita, Toure. Sheesh. It's really interesting to cruise through YouTube, though, and hear just how much of a continuum there is between the traditional African sounds and American blues. Awesome. So the song I settled on ended up being Taj Mahal and Corey Harris playing "Sittin' on top of the world." Enjoy!