How nice, me in the SF Chronicle, again! Thanks Annie! I am so tired, though (part of the problem is too many movies, my own damn fault, we should all have such troubles) that it took me a few minutes of puzzlement before I understood the last sentence in the article.

I went for another physical therapy appointment yesterday. Fun & games with electricity! There was, like, voltage applied to my hand, weird gizmos & goo, nothing that I'd ever experienced before. Western medicine is really off the wall. I was wondering when they'd bust out the leeches. The PT seemed amused by my reaction to all of it; I guess most people just shut up & go along with everything, instead of asking a million anxious questions. My hand does seem to be feeling a bit better though. A bit. I still shouldn't really be typing this.

Film-watching is an excellent activity for ailing hands. Someone else tears the ticket for you (you'd be surprised how painful stub-tearing can be) & after that the hands just lie there in your lap, or on the armrests, doing nothing. (Maybe eating popcorn, which the left hand can handle on its own.) So this year I'm even more grateful than usual for the S.F. International Asian American Film Festival.

Last night was especially entertaining as a packed house adored, heckled & laughed at the infamous Frank Chin. Afterwards, I was trying to come up with the right word for him: Firebrand? Idealogue? Curmudgeon? I'm kind of a curmudgeon myself, or at least well on my way to being one. It definitely gives me pause to think I could easily end up being similar to Frank Chin in temperament (rant! rant!), while I could only aspire to being similar to him in accomplishment. Not that I want to pick as many fights & rack up as many enemies as he has, but it might not be so bad to be a Living Icon of Asian American Culture. On second thought, though, that could really drive a person crazy. Nevermind!

I was ready for it all to be a bunch of hype, but I finally got Van Lear Rose & I'm a believer. Though I wouldn't call this a rock-solid album entirely, there's some good shit on here. For one thing, "Portland Oregon" is everything it's cracked up to be.

You know, if you'd told me ten years ago that I would be this into country music, I woulda laughed in your face. But then I'd also never have believed that I would have not just one, but two solo shows in a row of nothing but photographs. Me taking pictures?! Then there're all the unbelievable political horrors, but I won't go there right now. Suffice to say, strange days indeed.

In other news, I went for my first physical therapy appointment today & am now sporting a spiffy, custom-made thumb splint. Also I am now expected to spend most of my waking hours engaged in various activities with ice & hot water. & I should definitely not be on here typing this.

Sam Chu Lin, who's actually from Mississippi originally, wrote me up in AsianWeek.

My hand continues to improve in miniscule increments.

Is it spring yet?

Almost forgot to mention, I'll be on Against the Grain on KPFA 94.1 FM tomorrow. Noonish in the Bay Area, but I think they archive it too. Time permitting, I might play some of my Southern sound work in progress, so if you've been hankerin to hear Taft Wong's Mississippi accent, tomorrow could be your lucky day....

Yeah, what he said.

I almost forgot to mention, KTSF TV interviewed me yesterday; looks like I'm going to be translated into Cantonese for the 7pm news & Mandarin for the 10pm news, both on Monday. That's Channel 26 in the SF Bay Area. We don't get great reception at our house, so if anybody feels like taping these for me, I'd be grateful!

Last time I got translated, it was back in the mid-90s for a documentary where they did Chinese subtitles for all the English speakers. When I saw the finished doc, everyone else's subtitles looked really normal, but when it came to my subtitles, there were all these exclamation points all over the place! Ok, so I learned something about myself there....

Sigh! The hand is still not healed. I finally gave in & went to the doctor for a physical therapy referral. Last night Ms. Artstove said that when her hand hurts, she just yells at the pain to go away & it does. Too bad I don't have that kind of strong will. Anyway, I'm sure y'all are getting along fine without regular blog posts from me. If you're looking for something more to read, you could start with this.

Don't know about you, but I can't even fathom being awake at 5am on a weekend morning. So you can listen to me on the radio here instead. Don't wait too long, though, cause I'm not sure how long it will stay up on the site.

In other news, I am so excited about finally acquiring a butter bell! I eagerly came right home, washed it & packed in a stick of good organic butter. Now I'm going to have a slice of buttered toast with my salad.... Many thanks to Family Koshka for the gift certificate that prompted this purchase!

I'm in the Contra Costa Times today.

My hand continues to improve, still not 100% though. Swimming still happens only with a going-through-the-motions modified stroke, & knitting is completely out of the question.

All over town, every daffodil is blooming! Plum blossoms too! Good thing, because it's so miserably gray & gloomy otherwise.

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Spotted in Soho, en route to Chinatown:

Happy Year of the gender-unspecific Chicken, by the way. I had my little taste of the festivities, wading through parade floats shortly after snapping that photo.

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I'm back. My hand has improved greatly (but still not 100%). My Rx: travel light to NYC (so light that you can lift your luggage with your left hand & take the A from & to JFK, thus avoiding almost $100 in outrageous cabfare), ride the subway all over town (thus taking time off from the hand/wrist work of turning a steering wheel), catch up w/ friends (talking puts no strain on the hands), do no cooking at all, & watch your famous bro kick some fashion booty:



This blue velvet was my favorite of the Peter Som Fall 2005 collection. As always, you can pick your own here.

I'm so sorry to leave you high, dry & blogless lately. My hand is improving in the most infuriatingly infinitesimal, microscopic increments, with long plateaus in between. I can now lift a larger glass of tea, swim several laps as opposed to a couple (although still with a modified, careful stroke), & probably type a little more than this paragraph. But that doesn't mean I want to push it. Caution is the name of the game here. That said, I shall now disappear for a few more days. The show is up, though, & I daresay (is that really supposed to be one word?) going to see that will give you a much bigger & better dosage of moi than any blog entry yet.

I called my pal The Witch for hand advice; she had suffered a major hand breakdown that put her out of commission for months so I figured she must be the expert. Funny how it never once occurred to me to go to the doctor until a whole week had gone by, & even then I thought, why go to the doctor when I'm sure The Witch will tell me everything I need to know? Her best tip: alternate hot & cold! 1 minute of hot, 1 minute of cold, repeat for 10 minutes. My hand likes that a lot, as you can see by my ability to type this whole paragraph, using both hands! I also googled up this nice page of RSI exercises with helpful animations. Do them!

Did I mention the show is up? It's up! Go see it! & you can buy the catalog while you're there. The opening is Thursday night. I may or may not be able to shake y'all's hands properly by that time, but I'll still be glad y'all made it.

Okay, that's enough typing for today. Time for more of the hot/cold treatment.

We hung the show yesterday! Or more like, Donna & Irene hung the show while I stood around helplessly with my lame hand. It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I have to do a few little finishing touches & then it'll be fit for viewing by the weekend. I actually have much more to say but my hand won't let me.

btw, in case you missed me on Evening Magazine, you can see the video clip here.

so grumpy: i strained my right hand on saturday & it still hurts. i'm typing this all w/ my left hand, which feels really dumb. we're installing the show on wednesday. good thing i'll have help, is all i can say.

Escape from Birmingham! Really I was going kinda stir crazy in that little business motel in the middle of a soulless business park. Ugh.

So, I finally admitted that it's much better for all concerned if I don't make any promises about the sound installation at all. It's better for me (less likely to babble incoherently or faint at my own opening); better for the show (no substandard, rushed work); better for all the nice people in my life (no angsty, urgent pleas for help, no need to come peel me off the floor like a fruit roll).

I feel so much better now that I dropped the rest of Alabama from the itinerary. Sometimes when you bite off more than you can chew, you should just spit out the excess. In a ladylike manner, of course. Since we are still in the South.

In case you're confused: no, I wasn't actually in Birmingham the past few days, & I'm not actually in Tuscaloosa now. It just feels like that.

What? You say I'm babbling incoherently anyway? I'm pretty sure I'll recover once I cross the border back into Mississippi again. There's a very nice swimming pool in Hattiesburg....

I've noticed that the process of preparing for this show in some ways parallels the Southern trip itself. For instance, right now I feel like we're in Birmingham. I've climbed out of the exhaustion of Memphis & the misery of Holly Branch & Tupelo, had a nice little mental palate cleanser in Jasper. Birmingham itself has been a mixed bag, interesting & depressing by turns. Now, confronting the home stretch, I have decided to make drastic revisions to the original itinerary. I've cancelled some motel reservations & have to make new ones in different towns.

What that metaphor translates into: the sound installation is going to be extremely simple & basic. That's the cool thing about it being my first one; as long as I do something, it's fine. It doesn't have to blow your mind. And, I'm allowing myself to contemplate the notion that it might not be finished by the time the show opens. Since the show is two months long, I can add the sound part a whole week late & it will still be there for 7 weeks.

Anyway, the photos will all be there the whole time, & they make a fine show on their own, if I do say so myself. & the catalog will be available right away, too. Which is basically what I realized in Birmingham: we already accomplished so much in Mississippi that it's really fine if we don't have the energy for Alabama.

Hence, Mostly Mississippi.

Have gingham, will travel... back in 1999 I was in a group show that subsequently went on tour. The tour was originally scheduled through 2004, but now it's stretching all the way into 2006! So if it hasn't already come to your hood, it may well show up sometime soon. If you happen to be in St. Louis or Texarkana, why then, I would say chances are excellent. Too bad I can't ask my artworks to pick up Chinese takeout menus for me in every town. They've been all over the place! Go, Needle Art, go!

Not only is Yarn Harlot an amazing knitter, being some kind of Latvian Mitten Goddess, but she's also a hilariously funny writer. You should have seen me laughing hysterically in front of the computer the other day while reading her blog. She has also instigated a Knitters Without Borders happening, so if you took my advice before & donated to Doctors Without Borders, go check out what Yarn Harlot is doing; you could end up getting some yummy wooly goodies in the mail, if you're lucky.

I feel slightly less bruised (by jasmine petals, by catalog administration, by whatever, name your princess affliction) now that my fabulous crit girls came over this afternoon & showed me some tough love. No, nothing kinky, just them being their usual brilliant selves. I'm a lucky, lucky artist to have such smart & sweet friends.