With API Heritage Month coming up, mental health awareness month, grant deadlines rolling in, and a lot of stuff in general coming up, and just too much to do, I find myself in high demand. I have decided to let everyone in my blog world know.

I NEED HELP.

More importantly, I need booking help. I am getting lots of requests to do shows (please! keep them coming!) though cannot write everyone back in the quick turnaround I'd like. I need help.

Does someone out there know someone who does live performance booking semi-professionally? Or better yet, professionally?

Can someone please help me with these calls?! I cannot handle this stuff. I got a show to make better!

Please, let's not see April turn into "Asian Pacific Islander Nervous Breakdown Month" again for Kristina. No no no!

I've been watching "The Secret," that cultishly popular self help DVD that everyone in LA swears by and I have decided to do what they say.

Step 1: ASK FOR WHAT I WANT.


Here are things I would like to have in my life now: a personal assistant, a masseuse, a home organizer, a housekeeper, and A BOOKING PERSON.


I must share that in my life the red seas have parted and I have turned sand to bread. I now am so filled with so much work, that I've had to hire people to clean my house. No, make that, clean my APARTMENT. And also do some admin stuff for me. And what's crazier, is I can afford to do this.

This is totally insane for me. And it brings up all sorts of weird class issues to watch other people do my dishes for me and clean after my nasty self. Wasn't I the girl who only a few years ago was picking through the trash of other artists, looking for stuff to hawk on craigslist? This is a fortuitous occasion for me, as I am completely incapable of keeping my living area clean. My kitchen looks amazing! It sparkles! And that's because I didn't clean it myself!

Oh the guilt! The guilt of being a grassroots activist artist who has other people do her dishes for her!

But oh the relief! The relief that I have this much more time in the day to work on what I'm really good at!

(Now... I beat myself up!)

There are just way too many deadlines at every nook, cranny and corner. I have not left the apartment today. My skin is so pallid from lack of sun.

I have become a troll.

I got a call from that artist retreat in Florida today. It's not just in Florida. It's on an ISLAND off the coast of Florida that is a nature preserve. Total heaven. Except, I don't seem to have a six week opening in my schedule until Summer 2008. Oh, how I long to go now. To sun on the sand. To surf. If only there were... time.

i want the world to see me as a serious artist.



Photo by Matty Nematollahi

Now if only the freaking car would start!!!!! ARGH!!!

http://www.eveningservice.com/Video

Can someone tell me if this is real or not?

So I am five minutes into my shock and awe.

I get a letter in the mail saying I've been nominated to be part of this artist retreat in 2007. It's located right on the beach in Florida. I'm not required to do any work. Just share my work with the community and maybe have dinner with the sponsor who underwrote for me to be there. Chill, relax, and be an artist.

Someone nominated me and now, without an application or application fee, it looks like I get to go! And it doesn't cost me anything to stay there.

HOLY SHIT! How did this happen?

Who are you? Who nominated me? Is this a joke? No way!

Oh my god! A beach retreat? How did this happen? My life is amazing. I knew it was worth all those years of suffering. I am so blessed.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.

God, I am going to cry. I am so so happy right now.

Whoever you are who nominated me. Thank you. Thank you so so much.

I am back in LA. The faint smell of cat pee surrounds me. Home again!

I had a shipment of yarn that was supposed to arrive while I was in NYC. And it hasn't. Or at least, it supposedly did, but my subletters said they didn't see it. Super bummer! Now I have to go to the post office and track that stuff down. Wah!!! I want my yarn!

What was nice was that my package from my holiday knitting exchange came.

My secret friend that I was supposed to knit something for lives in Florida. I made him this fancy scarf out of angora!

It took weeks to make!



Sean, my knitting exchange buddy sent me hand warmers made of merino wool. They are so warm! I wore them to dinner last night.



And he gave me other stuff too! Yarn, hand cream, wool wash, chocolate and a keychain with a little sweater on it!



It's nice when people make you things. I appreciate a boy who knits.

In other news, today is the first day in a long time where I am doing absolutely NOTHING. I earned it. Yesterday I got back to LA and it was so stressful. I read my itinerary wrong and thought that my flight was at US Airways. Of course it was on United operated by US Airways and I was at the wrong terminal with an hour until take off. So I'm running around the curb with a gigantic suitcase at LaGuardia trying to figure out how to get on a shuttle to the next terminal and decided to flag a cab down. The cab didn't run the meter, drove me the equivalent of 7 blocks and demanded 5 bucks for the ride. Ass. Anyway. It was like 5:00am and I didn't sleep because I pretty much stayed up late so as not to miss my cab to the airport. The plane ride was ok. Though we did hit major turbulence and someone on the plane started screaming which freaked the heck out of everyone.

Then I landed. Vince drove me from the airport to my apartment. And then I rushed to get ready to teach. I packed my car full of supplies to teach my workshop and then the car wouldn't start! The battery was dead!

I had half an hour to get to Van Nuys.

So I started calling women from my workshop to see if any could pick me up. Two of my participants in K-town hadn't left yet and swung and got me. I called my friend Latrice who is in the workshop to see if she would hold it down til I got there. I was already tired and undernourished and jetlagged. I got there half an hour after our start time totally huffing and puffing and freaked out and everyone was all stretched out in child's pose on the floor.

Well, the workshop went well. Everything was more than under control when I arrived, and the women participating are excellent.

Alcohol. The truth serum of the world's greatest hack visionaries. Yes, this includes me. I'm just beginning to sober up and realize what a dumb idea this is. Enjoy what could be a modern day Socrates or just a great waste of time.

The four clips below fall in order for your jeering pleasure.

Hey everyone. I took these down after some trusted friends said that it was too much to share it for youtube. Perhaps you were one of the lucky 20 to hear me share some amazing nonsense. I'm confused lately at what I am really supposed to give the world as an artist. And what I can share. Honestly.

Yesterday started slow, grew to disappointing and like all bad movies that I insist on watching in full because I believe somehow the ending will redeem the bad writing and give shape to the annoying and one dimensional characters... it just ended in a big waste of my time. The highlight was seeing my friend Soomi and being treated to lunch by the lit agent.

Friends can call me for details. It's just too bleh to write about.

In other news, life goes on. I'm going to visit my friends at Creative Capital now.

I still love New York.

I am so happy because I moved this morning from my squat in the LES to a two bedroom sublet on E 25th (should I be giving approx streets like this on my blog? oh well.) I'm subletting from a comic who is pretty freaking famous and was on a reality show who I guess I should know about if I actually watched tv. It's so nice and cozy here. It's not that I couldn't have stayed at that gallery taking care of Steve and tidying the space up for another week, but when it comes down to it, I'm just a freaking princess that needs a lot of space and a toilet that half of the Lower East Side hasn't used.

Man do I have stories about staying in that gallery. It wasn't like poshy posh gallery in Williamsburg or Chelsea as I thought it would be when it was described to me over the phone (by Steve-- who's blind!). It was in a 6000 year old building with all original parts in the LES that had almost been burned down years ago. It was such a sitcom hanging out with Steve and sleeping in this backroom. All these characters coming in and out. He has tons of stories and says really funny shit ("Oh god, I'm 150 years old but back then I'd deal with women.").

I was so freaked out on the cab ride over here. I couldn't and still can't find my day planner! And it had the address to this place. And the guy who is doing the trade off with the sublet, his phone number wasn't working. And I was thinking, "Shit! Am I going have to live at that gallery the rest of the week? Nooooooo!!!!"

But I finally got through to the guy who was subletting up to this point and now I'm here.

A refugee of the art world.

hi everyone.

in new york. got here last night.

i'm staying in the lower east side with steve cannon, the blind director of "a gathering of the tribes" an art space in the lower east side. i'm staying in the back room where books and old files are stored. steve lives here and sleeps on the couch. there's a bunk bed left by some performance artists in the back room where i sleep. he's quite a character. for my stay here, i get him cigarettes in the morning (he's such a neighborhood regular that the guys at the bodega know the cigs are for him because what chinese woman smokes winstons?) and coffee, tidy up here, and read the paper to him.

i was interviewed today for a documentary on hip hop theater. (yeah, you knew i was gangsta, and now it will be immortalized on the mid sized screen.) it was shot at the production company and i think the doc will get a lot of play. they have all the heavy hitters of the hip hop theater world in it. so amazing that they wanted me to be a part of it since i'm a newbie (and i often fear i'll be called a "fraud"). of course i thought of a million more intelligent and witty things to say on my way out of there to the subway station.

tonight, i saw an awesome show called "get your war on" based on the comic strip. it was a show put on by my friends the rude mechanicals of austin, tx.

tomorrow i chill and get interviewed by a writer from new york arts magazine (thanks nancy and mike for hooking that up!). badass. i see a show in brooklyn after that.

later on in my trip i'm going to this breakfast with mayor bloomberg and a bunch of other artists, meeting a literary agent (thanks master cleanse!), going to meet with some folks from the national asian american theater festival (wong flew over the cuckoo's nest will premiere here in new york in june! just got the word.), and then i will hawk my wares at the under the radar theater festival at the public. i've been invited to be part of the speed dating for artists section! i basically sell my show to groups of different presenters before the bell rings on me! wahoo!

then i ring in my friend's birthday, then i get on a plane back to LA and start teaching my workshops three hours after I land.

totally insane.

so much happens in a new york minute.

7AM PST I'll be on the air with Riku Matsuda doing god knows what.

KPFK 90.7

Or on the web at www.kpfk.org.

We are going to take calls. So time to use your extra cell phone minutes!

7AM PST I'll be on the air with Riku Matsuda doing god knows what.

KPFK 90.7.
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Or on the web at

I got home safely to LA yesterday. I can't believe my car made the trip. I took the 101 down to LA, 400+ miles and it took less than a tank and a half of veggie oil!

The car has been leaking fluid like crazy, yet everytime I check the motor oil and other fluid levels, everything is a-ok. Where is this fluid coming from?

I can't believe I haven't been home in a month. It's always depressing to come home and see the mess I left in the rush to leave the house.

My house sitter was still here when I got back, and I felt bad for booting him out of my bedroom so I could have my nice big bed back.

But anyway, here's why I am such a filthy creature...

-- I come home and Oliver had peed all over the area under dining table. Not so much "accidents" but him marking his territory. I guess me being gone made him a little annoyed. It's stinky still.

-- My manager left me a note to clean up the carport because the mess of empty vegetable oil boxes, broken suitcases, and oil puddles was going to attract rats. I am not sure what to do about the giant vagina that's been wrapped in a blue tarp from a show I did five years ago. It was a lot of work to make.

-- My office plant was almost dead from no watering.

-- Cat hair everywhere.

-- I have yet to shower and wash my face or brush my teeth. And it's almost 1pm.

Nice to be back to normal.