I’m on the phone with Jonny as I write, and we have decided on the candies for the Morgellon theater!

Bottle Caps
Dots
Good N Plenty
Hot Tamales
Lemonheads
Mike & Ike
Skittles
SweeTarts

all screen printed in Omaha;

Whoppers
Sugar Babies
Milk Duds
Junior Mints

we will purchase and print in LA to try and avoid meltage of the delicious, delicious chocolate.

We’re also working out the design of the ephemera page.

Last night I visited Susan at Fringe. Jake was there. Sunday I’ll probably pick up the model from him.
We three spoke at length about the ceiling. Yesterday was all about the ceiling.
I think it’s safe to say that I was overthinking the ceiling, and that we were being overcautious.
With the ceiling panels being finished by Ket-Anne and Carol-Anne, we’re realizing that each four foot by eight foot section weighs maybe 10 or 15 pounds. And that hardly requires building a truss support structure sunk into the concrete walls of Fringe at multiple points and levels. Rather, it is perfectly safe to suspend it from the actual ceiling of Fringe, if we secure each panel to the plaster and lathe ceiling at numerous points.
The chandeliers will be attached to joists above the plaster and lathe. Sadly, Susan doesn’t think the joists are spaced regularly enough to use to install our ceiling.
Regardless, David and I are both very confident that we can safely affix our ceiling to Fringe’s, without spending several days building a support structure of steel and cables.

While at Fringe, Amy and I made a new set of measurements. Jake mentioned that he remeasured everything before doing the model because the measurements I gave him were so clearly cockamamie. I sent his dims along to David along with my own.

And finally, I received the news late last night that my mother is out of the hospital.
I have a deep abiding distrust of the medical establishment. Like everyone else in the world at this point.
My mother’s experience yesterday didn’t raise my opinion of the system.
Once she arrived for the emergency surgery, the surgeon took one look at her and sent her home. Turns out he hadn’t noted her age when reviewing her charts. And the surgery he proposed is so invasive they won’t do it on the elderly.
To top it off, he told her that this particular illness can also be relieved with a dietary change, but that’s always the secondary option after surgery. Not apparently because it’s a lesser alternative, just because they really like performing surgery.

Whatever, I suppose if I knew how to perform surgery I would want to do so, as well. As it is, instead I know how to create big, purposeless extravaganzas with no rhyme nor reason, and especially no social, political nor philosophical impact, so that’s what I do.
I’ll bet there is a dietary solution to the art world’s ills, as well. Maybe an artist’s diet book will be part of Portal Seven…

I do have two self-help books slated for 2009 as part of Portal Seven, and obvs I was never going to do just two because I don’t trust the number two. Three is a much better number for publishing.