dimnova

it's 4 something on sunday afternoon. listening to "the christines" and still in my pjs. i woke up around 1 and decided i wasn't going to smoke today... we'll see how that goes... i watched a documentary on the origins of the aids virus. turns out there is considerable convincing evidence that the aids virus originated in the congo (common knowledge) but that it came from growing the polio vaccine on local tissues - chimpanzee kidneys. over 2 year period, 500 chimps were killed and the vaccine was grown on their kidneys. well the vaccine for polio was tested, but the dynamic of what the tissue (kidney) and the vaccine would do to a human was not tested. 1 million people of the congo were forced to take this vaccine from 1958-1960. and so it goes. a conference in london was held sep 10-11,2000 to debate the origins of the virus and none of the scientists present in the congo doing the cultures would admit to being there or growing the anti virus. (expected) so the theory is still out there with all of the evidence, but like everything else, nobody will take responsibility for such an awful pandemic.

ran 3 miles on friday night at the gym and did a zillion crunches to get my tummy better defined... went home and directly to sleep. saturday i had planned to go to see four dead batteries in rutgers new brunswick. but then carlos called & said everybody was meeting in jersey city for drinks for kevin's b-day. then ami called and wanted me to bail on everyone and hang out w/ her. so in efforts to make everyone happy... we drove to ami's in edison and picked them up & went for dinner in new brunswick at old man raffertys. that place was really cool. i had a beautiful glass of pinot noir and a skirt steak. nice. from there ami & dave left to home and we went to the film fest at rutgers. got there late & ran into my friend (and star of the movie) in the hallway. apparently we came just in time for the intermission between the shorts and the movie. so i grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down in the auditorium. it was just like being back at college in film appreciation class. and the movie was soooooooo fucking good. i loved it. everybody in the room was cracking up throughout the whole thing... it was so cool. and its one of those movies you can take so many funny lines from and laugh about it later. i was so impressed. i shook ben's hand and told him he is amazing. we left there and i called carlos because i forgot to tell him we wouldn't make dinner in JC.... it was 9:45. he said they just got to the restaurant... i told him we'd be there in 40 minutes. it was at the merchant on 1st street in jersey city. found kick ass parking in front and stayed for a glass of wine & chatted. after an hour or so, half the group planned to go to the 111 building party. carlos, monika and walter wanted to bail. i begged to go onto the party and so we did. apparently, the 111 building is an artist commune in which all these artists have lived there for years and years for low rents and were able to show their works when they set up a floor in the building as a gallery. kind of like the mill in paterson. well the new mayor of JC came in and decided to tear down the building to make room for higher income townhouses. so all of these artists are out of the building by march 1st and no later. so this thing we all went to was the last big party, a fairwell to the artists and a fairwell to the 100 yr old building. it fucking rocked. this building is so beautiful and has such an awesome history that you can read just by looking at the floors, walls and windows. they cleared out the gallery floor for this event and piled about 300 people in. it felt so sparse because the space on this floor of this building was so vast i don't think i've seen anything like it. so fucking cool. we hung out for about an hour and then the band we went there to see had started setting up. american watercolor movement. they rocked. there were like 8 of these bandmembers with more energy than i've ever experienced. they played for a solid 2 hours and captivated everyone in that space. it was cathartic experience for me. we left after about 2 hours... we were all exhausted and it was like 3am or something. as we all walked down the street... the band was still echoing out the windows! we had a long painful and cold walk back to our cars... to which i had smoked my last cigarette.... for now.
and thats that.