Preconference News

1. I saw a guy you had painted himself--his suit, his briefcase, his hair, his skin--bronze. At first I saw him walking down the street, then a few minutes later I saw him sitting on the corner of Post and Powell at Union Square. Oh, I get it. He's a sculpture.

2. I came in from the airport in a shuttle that contained two parents and a child. The parents had obviously lived a lot of life and decided to have a child when they were ready to handle it. They were checking into the Hotel Nikko (class resentment alert activated), and when the van driver opened the van doors and put down one of the seats to make it easier for said small blessed family to get out of the van, the dad says, "So this is what happens when you have a kid." Ah, yes, perks galore when you have a kid. My kids are almost all raised, so I've thankfully missed this bullet, but those of you who are still raising small children, a warning: Do Not Become Smug Like This Yuppie Man.

3. I am staying at a hilarious hotel. It's a boutique hotel, which sounded cool to me. It's themed around the arts and artists, so the walls of the corridors and lobby are covered with photographs for sale. Rooms are decorated by local artists--they are in fact works of art. You're going to have to use your imagination here: so I walk into my room, and there is what appears to by arty stenciling on the door--maybe about the size of a man's hand. I unlock, and inside there's a wall that's blue, darker as you get toward the window, lighter as you get toward the opposite wall. There's a flurry of paint--it's like a giant X, which I later learned was supposed to be something like a blurry picture of a bird (I learned this from the placard outside my room--just like in a museum!). There are paint splatters and drips all over this wall, plus in the alcove above my sink and on the mirror. I believe that the paint might interfere with the functionality of the mirror, but hey, anything for art. There's a kind of gritty feeling to the place, even though there seems to be no actual grit. I could go on: tiny towels, lighting from hell (like, either glaring overhead lights that give gorgeous illumination to the wall, but make you feel like your head might explode, or tiny dim bedside light--how to read?), can hear stuff all over the hotel. But I slept fine last night, there's cable, so this is part of my adventure.

Okay, I better go to the actual conference. This little internet cafe is just two doors down from my hotel, so this will be blog central for the duration.