It is that time of year again – time to head out to Fair Park for the State Fair of Texas! Last year I went with my friend Melissa and we proceeded to eat like we hadn’t had food in a month and ride whatever rides looked appealing (including some that weren’t so appealing, especially after the fact). I am thinking this year will be the same except I now have my digital camera to capture the whole thing, and the camera phone for photos as things are happening. I am no dummy though – I will be keeping a close eye on things since we all know that despite the huge DPD presence at the fair, it is still a bad area, and I would rather not become a statistic.

So, go out there and get your annual corny dog and funnel cake fix (or whatever is your choice of fair food), but don’t count on the petting zoo. Thanks to people who don’t bother to make sure their children wash their hands, people get sick, insurance goes up, and the rest of us must suffer the consequences of their actions.

Rita was a rain tease. She taunted us all last week with thoughts of rain, then didn’t put out over the weekend. Bitch.

Other than that, who knew I would have to tell the guy behind the counter at Kinko’s how to print two pages on a single side of a page from a PDF file (this had everything to do with the printer settings and nothing to do with the print settings for the PDF). Not me. You would think that if someone works around printers they would know how to use them. Even worse, the manager had no clue either (in this case, either he didn’t know, or he was playing dumb so I would have to pay more).

At this point I’m 99% positive that some people don’t evacuate just because they are sicktodeath of hearing about the damn storm.

ART PROSTITUTE PRESENTS…
In-Betweens: SEPTEMBER 24 – OCTOBER 24, 2005
An exhibition of new work by Gary Benzel & Todd St. John
www.greenlady.com
www.huntergatherer.net

ARTIST’S RECEPTION SAT. SEPT. 24 (7-11 PM) Artists will be in attendance.
ART PROSTITUTE GALLERY
210 E. HICKORY
DENTON, TX 76201
940.381.1526
www.artprostitute.com
Regular Hours: Mon-Sat 12-8 (or by appointment)

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BIO OF GARY BENZEL
Gary Benzel is an art director and designer currently operating the studio/store Igloo based in San Diego, CA. While in high school Benzel began creating graphic work in the form of zines, flyers, and silkscreened t-shirts primarily for punk music and skateboard related culture. After working with Todd St.John on design projects in college, Benzel/St.John launched the clothing label Green Lady the following year while both were living in California. The annual series of Green Lady designs and products existed as an opportunity to create and collaborate on experimental work. Igloo store grew from the desire to create a an environment to sell Green Lady/HUGA products to the end-user, and to feature other products and clothing lines using a similar art-based approach to everyday items. Benzel continues to collaborate with St. John and the HunterGatherer studio on a wide variety of projects including video/film, editorial, product, and identity design.
www.greenlady.com

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BIO OF TODD ST. JOHN
Todd St. John is a designer, animator and filmmaker living in New York City. He is originally from Hawaii, where most of his family still lives. St. John grew up drawing, making music and had begun shooting movies and animated shorts by age 10. In 1994, while living in California, St. John co-founded the independent label Green Lady with Gary Benzel. Green Lady began by making small runs of shirts and prints for friends, then became a yearly series of designs selling to select stores primarily in the US and Japan. St. John later moved to New York in founded HunterGatherer in 2000. HunterGatherer focuses on conceptual work across a wide range of mediums, mainly design and video/film. In addition to the studio, St. John has exhibited work internationally, he was selected with Benzel for the 2003 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial, and is a visiting graduate critic at the Yale School of Art.
www.huntergatherer.net

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Zayn previously touched on the fact that Dallas is not a bad place to plan dates – stuff to do, places to eat, etc. This is true. I am not sure what I am doing wrong with my dating life, but seeing as it is sparse at best, there must be something.

I know I am bored. Online dating bores me. I did it years back, and was very active at it too. Then things got to a point where I was just sick and tired of answering the emails. They were all the same and began running together. I was about to let my account expire when an opportunity arose – doing a tv show/infomercial (I don’t know what else to call it) for the site that I was on. I called the number. I asked the woman on the other end how many people they sent this invite to – she said “about forty.” I thought about it, and decided to do it – it was right down the road from where I lived at the time, I would get six months free added to my account, and it sounded like no big deal.

To my knowledge, this thing has never seen daylight. This fact alone pleases me to no end. I tried looking for it online (you would think that if it is related to an online dating site that it would be online… makes sense to me) and have yet to find it. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is always preferable that they are not publicly aired.

Today, I am still single, and now bored. I repsonded to one email last night, and only because it was different than the others. The guy had a sense of humor that I could play off of. Before that one, I can’t remember the last time I responed to one of the emails I am sent. I do get a lot of “winks”, and I have given a few, but lately I haven’t responded to any as none of them sparked any interest. Maybe this is not where I am supposed to meet someone. Maybe I am missing something, or I am just doing something wrong when it comes to meeting people.

That brings me to another issue – are computer nerds/dorks/geeks (I am sure many bloggers fall in here somewhere) really a different breed? I don’t feel I am lacking in social skills, but my dating life says different. I don’t bite. I have my shots (soon to be getting the yearly flu shot too). I don’t smoke and only drink occasionaly. Then, when you do meet someone, do you tell them you blog, or no? Lately, I have been going with the latter so I can blog the dates. I was doing that with the last one, but I did tell him since I was interested in him, and thought he was interested in me equally, and that things were going some where. Then got a casual email one morning, repsonded, and then nothing heard again. I didn’t write again or call as it could be assumed that if he was really interested he would not have let an email snafu stop him.

Maybe I have grown to accustomed to keeping to myself. I get emails on activities and parties but rarely go (doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the invite). I also fear telling someone about the whole blogging thing or having them discover it. Mine is dating back over three years. I do self edit, but experience has taught me people are weird (especially you guys out there) – they will stop calling or lose interest over the smallest thing. Then again, I guess that is better early on than having something trail on six months or more, and going through the more ugly break up motions.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t worry about it. Maybe the whole thing of something happening when you least expect it is what is going on here and I should focus on other things. Who knows.

Is it wrong to hope that hurricane Rita heads to Texas and the pressure system that would dictate the path moves slightly to the east? A big gully washer rain would be a nice change around here, and according to the weather guy on channel 8, if the direction is right we will have big rain next weekend… but it is still too soon to tell for sure.

I do not have any bad wishes for the cities of Corpus Christi and Houston, but some serious rain here in “big D” would be nice.

That’s how you say metroblogging in Spanish, in case you ever wondered…

Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Seyd Rios and I am your newest metroblogger. As you may have inferred from my last name I am of Latino/Mexican ancestry, in fact I was born in M

This was just part of a lengthy email –

“trained lyrical assassin”

Ahhh… when words like those come together to form something cool like that. Makes me all warm and fuzzy.

Sometimes the geniuses in marketing can’t figure out regional differences. I spotted this new item at Kroger this weekend.

Note: this might (barely) make sense in Ohio where Kroger corporation is headquartered. It gets cold there – not in September – but eventually. It’s still in the mid-nineties here in Texas. I’m not sure it’s ever cold enough for HotHands2 here. Unless they sold these at the over air-conditioned cinema, because that would make sense.

It does make me wonder, what was wrong with HotHands1. What design flaw was corrected in v2?

The Dallas Opera is having free movie screenings at the Angelika Theaters in Plano and Dallas starting next week. They have next weeks listings at the link but upcoming movies include “Raging Bull”, “Amadeus”, and “Moulin Rouge.”