4.5.04-- The prodigal daughter returns home but is back in LA now...

Wow. I just got back from a whirlwind trip to the Bay Area. I was working non-stop. We drove in Wed night and arrived at 3am, then had a lecture at SF state the next day at 8am, then we rehearsed, teched, then the Locus show, then slept, then more tech, then the big show, then I flew back the next morning! Both shows went great! I am so happy. We got a standing O the second day. I am so excited at how the Bay Area seems to nuturing and supportive of APA artists. For me here in LA, it's really hard to get random people to just come to your shows. It's a lot of hustling and writing and calling and only 3% of the time are you really making art.

A lot of people I didn't know were at both shows, which is a great feeling.

My mother and my friend Patty both said to me, "Wow, did you lose weight? You look great, your face is not as big."

My mother was like, "Can you stay like that size? It looks good."

I think all this nervousness about the future, arts funding, and the show last weekend was making me shrink. Plus all weekend, I must have gotten IBS or something. I went like five times every day I was there. Blech. No fun.

Whatever. If I want to gain weight, I will. I like having a belly. In fact, I am going to eat a big ass plate of ravioli right now just to meaten me up.

Here are some pics. I don't have anything else interesting to say. I am trying to hunt down a copy of Turbo tax so I can do my taxes. If someone has a copy for the mac, please pass it on.

I also need to suck it up and figure out what kind of job I am going to get. Ugh. Life as an artist is fun, but the money part sucks.

Here are some pics.

	I performed "Laundry" on Friday night at the Galeria de la Raza in the Mission District. The Galeria is ironically in the same space that my grandparents' butcher shop was decades ago. So it was an amazing homecoming for me to do a piece about ancestors and history in the same space where my grandparents built their dreams.
	I don't like this picture because it looks like I am giving this guy a BJ.
	I don't like this picture either because you can see my underwear coming out of my pants.
	This is Steve Tanamachi. He was one of my best friends in college and he was in an Asian fraternity at the same time. That's proof that I can be friends with anyone! He was so nice and came from El Cerrito to my show.
	After I did "Laundry," Edren, the wise guy said something like, "I've never seen you be so sincere, that's a good change." I was all hurt but handled it in a passive aggressive way and kept saying out loud how I am always insincere and pretended to wank people while screaming, "Waka! Waka! Waka! I'm always on!"
	It's Zero 3, Ova, me, and Annie Koh from Locus Arts.
	We went to eat tapas after the Locus show. Goddamn! Tapas are expensive! The lady in the purple was our waitress. She would bring bread to our table and tell us it was chicken. We believed her the first time. The guy in the middle is Ravi. He is a poet but also a psychiatrist. I kept acting out different mental illnesses and had him guess what illness I had. He guessed every illness right! I even did "Woody Allen" and he was like, "You are Woody Allen."
	For those of you who want proof that my parents have not disowned me, here you go. This is a pic of me and my parents after the show at La Pena. My parents love me. So there. Now stop it with your nosy questions about what my parents think of my work.
	This is from L to R: Sara, Gennifer (dressed like a man, she made signs during my show and totally threw me for a loop when she held up a sign during the middle of my auction and almost kinda hit the pause button on the show but it was funny anyway), tall Claire Light who is teaching a fiction class at Kearny Street, me, and Roger who went to Riordan (the all boys high school in SF) and used to torture me in high school
	It's Guillermo Gomez-Pena! The most famous performance artist in the world! And he came to my show and looked at my metaphorical vagina! Oh my god! He said to me after the show, "You are sharp Kristina! You are also insane." Such a compliment from the master guru!

Ok, back to work. I hate work. I wish I could just do art all day instead.

Oh the oppression,

Kristina