Celebrating my Independence by Begging for Money

No, it's not my new boyfriend. Nor a local... well, yes a local, but a local artist named Brian Feldmanwho is also in residence here at Atlantic Center for the Arts. He's in costume because we all went to see the race at Daytona. His work is brilliant. In fact, today he hosted a 10 hour hot dog eating contest. I would be competing... but... read below at my agony...

Last year at this time, I was wandering around the Manasota Key (on another artist residency) with Larry the Cracker (an older fella with a confederate flag hat who taught me to fish). We watched the fireworks go off, said goodbye, and then I ran back into the artist residency house and locked both locks of the door.

This 4th of July, I celebrate my independence by working for the umpteenth day in a row on a grant application. Oh yes, and watching the clip of Sarah Palin recite that run-on sentence from yesterday for a live audience of seven. (WTF?!)

I want to run about with the other artists, but unfortunately, I gotta lock in the dough.

Here is the view I have from my laptop, chained to miserable narrative questions.

But on a brighter note! Here's my report from yesterday's trek to Daytona....

Last night we got tickets from the Chef who works here to go to Daytona 250 to watch cars go by. We had to buy two tickets from scalpers so the six of us could all get in. The value of each ticket was $60! But we only had to pay $60 for the extra two tickets.

Let's just say this auto racing shit is the armpit of masculinity. I don't get it. I learned that the number after the race (in this case "250") is not the combined IQ of the stadium but it means how many miles the cars go around. Yes! There is seriously a subculture where thousands of people gather to watch cars drive 250 miles. This race takes HOURS. We were at the top of the stands and it was friggin loud. We didn't stay til the end. After the obligatory gawking at the locals and trying to wait it out for the fireworks, we trudged back home.

We stopped at a bikini bar called "Bottoms Up" that's near our compound. It was standard depressing fare but as curious visitors we had to see the dredgery for ourselves. There is a 23 year old artist named Chris from Wisconsin who is here. Poor thing is a vanilla cupcake and was freaking out and processing out loud with me about how he felt like he was "feeding the patriarchy."

I handed him a dollar and said, "Dude. Just give this to the dancer and help her pay the rent."

Here I was earlier in the week giving a presentation on my entire life's work. I had five minutes to do it. I put on my nice dress for it. It went over ok.

Ok, back to begging.