January 30, 2023: Curtain going up on Late Nights -

The Clinton Street Coffee House sent me an email on Tuesday, asking if I wanted to be the February Artist of the Month, sorry for the late notice, but their February person cancelled.

Uh… sure! I had eight days. I could get it together in eight days.

Then they wrote on Thursday: Actually, their January person sold almost all her work, and the walls were bare. Could I hang some paintings that very night?

Uh…. No? But I could get a few things up on Friday for them, with more to come.

That SAME DAY, I got a message from a different coffee shop: their February Artist of the Month cancelled. Did I want February? I thought about that briefly, then had a flash of sanity, and introduced them to my friend Jonathan. (I’m awaiting a Willamette Week article on The Mysterious Disappearance of Scheduled February A’s of the M. What became of them?)

The show is hung now, and February is still two days off, so I’m feeling pretty spry and adaptable, but also a little more jumbled than usual (which is pretty jumbled). I’ve been searching for the analogy, and I think it’s the Surprise Party.  Not the 15 minute workday Surprise Party, where you get paged to Conference Room A,  and open the door to find your hilarious staff playing the Happy Birthday song by blowing those hooting tones into beer bottles. (If there’s a verb for that, enlighten me.)

No, this is the slightly malign Surprise Party where you are asleep, and somebody hammers on your door and says GET DRESSED NOW, HURRY, IT’S AN EMERGENCY, and so you pull on used sweats and run outside unwashed, only to be taken to a champagne brunch somewhere.

HOW NICE!!! How churlish to complain. And yet, boy, you would have liked to take a shower first. That’s what it feels like to be asked if you can do a show at the last minute.

The paintings will be up all February, and there is an opening the night of the 4^th, if you are looking for diversion, or coffee drinks, bagels, cookies, and really quite good avocado toast. But I’ll also be hanging out there a lot during the month, so if the opening doesn’t work, come by another time.

Anyway, I celebrated the Fastest Show on Earth tonight by doing my part for the environment: PGE was having a Peak Time Rebate Event, trying to get people to use less energy on a very cold night. Rick and the dog are out of town, so I turned off all but the porch light, and walked to CineMagic, and had a beer and popcorn, and admired that amazing gold lamé curtain, and watched the first-released Star Wars movie (A New Hope) with about a dozen people, and I used no energy whatsoever! I expect to get about $1.38 back on my PGE bill, which will not equal the movie and beer and popcorn, but hey, being a virtuous eco-warrior is not always free.