The cubes were dropping in the ice maker, the pictures hung on the wall, painted by people who wanted to be artists. Breakfast had arrived, I swiveled on the stool as I held a strip of griddled bacon in my fingers. A coast line done in acrylics, poetry that rhymes rather than makes sense, and sad shitty websites, this stuff scares me sometimes. It is bad art. What good is bad art? Am I a part of the bad art scene?

Is this even an art project? Is it a good one, or just a song that shouldn’t be sung? I’m tired of meeting strangers, and it has only been three weeks. How am I building community?

Well, I have three thousand emails from people interested in talking to me. I get forty calls a day, at least, from strangers inviting me over. I need to take a minute and remind myself what this is about.

Highlight the importance of conversation.

Create community

What does that even mean? A woman called from USAToday and asked me what this was about, and I don’t think I explained myself very well.

It is important to talk to strangers. It is important because we learn so much this way. Especially about cultural perspective. The nation right now is very divided. People are upset about gay rights, they are divided on the war in Iraq, the religious right and fundamentalist Islam are clashing, there are lots of things pushing people to pick a side. That’s the first step in creating a battle: divide. Then someone can conquer. Which leaves someone else conquered. This is not what I want.

So I am naïve. I am having dinner because I think talking and eating can help people understand one another. Community means a group of people rubbing up against each other, figuring out how to get along. With that in mind, I would like to invite all the different people who offered to have dinner with me meet in one location. Have one giant dinner party. Where strangers can meet and eat and greet, have a seat, take a stand, lend a hand, on and on.

Right now I am bringing attention to the adventure of it, creating awareness that it can be a positive experience to meet strangers. In Europe as a backpacker, I found countless people inviting me into their homes. That doesn’t happen in America. We live in fear of strangers. I want that to change.

Going to Sakae’s home, she brought her community out to meet me. It felt to me that I gave her a stronger sense of her own community. And the same is true for Grace Nutter’s family in San Juan Bautista. By having me come to them, they were forced to explain themselves, to put into words what is important to them. It was family, a sense of community. To make a bad example: when you dig your stamp collection out of its drawer and show it to a stranger, you realize how important it is to you, how big or how small it is. You see its strength and weakness. Does that make any sense? I’ve felt this effect at every single dinner I’ve been to. Community is important to these people, and it takes on all different shapes. Those who have not eaten dinner with me can read about each of these communities right here. They can take away inspiration, I hope. They can pay attention to the community they have around them, and strengthen it. Sorry I am naïve.

Here’s my political perspective on it…President Bush wants “faith based organizations” to help the needy. If that meant he was willing to fund the Black Panthers and all the great work they have done in Oakland, I would support that. But it doesn’t. It means giving lots of money to a few organizations that donated to his Inaugural Ball. It sounds good, because people understand “faith based” to be a compassionate community. More so than a government agency. People want a human touch.

Which brings me out of my original funk. We are a community of humans, and the shitty websites and bad art people want to share with me is as important as a really beautiful work of art. We are learning from each other, learning what is possible, what is powerful, what is healthy, what is harmful. I spent last night at a café, just talking to the café types that spend hours there. Some people just rattled on and on. But I could tell my listening to them was important.

And Clark loves me.

Dumpster Diver

Here was a fellow who was out recycling with a horse riding helmet on.

I asked to take his picture, and he said “Sure, can you email it to me?” He went on, saying he went to Southwestern College in Chula Vista. “I got a B in photography, black and white. I’m gonna recycle, get a camera, I’m planning on it.”

It is conversations like this that remind me it is important to talk to strangers, to not take things for granted.

Artist invades newsroom!

KFMB CBS Channel 8 – It was ten oclock this morning, before the rain got going again, when Marc horowitz and his attending documentary crew of four rushed the front desk, asking to see Shawn Styles, a news reporter that interviewed Marc yesterday about his National Dinner Tour. Sources say Marc was there to drop off footage to be included in the four o’clock broadcast concerning his invitation to all of San Diego to visit him at LeStats Coffee Shop on Adams Avenue at 7:30 this evening. An eye witness described the scene as “totally bizarre – one tall guy had an old fedora with “Blog” written on a card and shoved into the band. Shouldn’t that say “Press”? And a cute blonde girl went off wandering around by herself, while a young guy who looked like Capt. Morgan with his curly mustache and goatee leaned against a wall twisting his handlebars. Finally, another guy in a blue quilted jacket followed Marc with a video camera, while Marc held a silver hard drive in his hands, asking for an editing bay.”

What was supposed to be a simple fire wire transfer from his hard drive to the stations editing bays was confounded by the PC versus Mac platform conundrum. Marc, a self described “artist”, naturally chose the more creative Mac, while the cash conscious news room was outfitted with PC’s. A quick trip down the hall brought the travelling band of misfits into the Graphic design department. “The light is much softer in here”, Clark, the camera man following Marc, commented. Marc sat down and began a refresher course on the editing software Final Cut Pro, since the inhouse program was Avid. As Marc figured out how to supply a major news station with a story he produced, Shawn stood over his shoulder, reminding everyone that he had 45 minutes to write the voice over and then get on air.

“We’re glad the stopped by, but we are also glad they left,” a woman at the ffront desk was heard commenting.

Brad Dickson 31 “Sometimes people cancell reservatioons with wild excuses. ‘I can’t find my cat. He ran away.'”

Genoa Dickson 27 “It doesn’t matter if you wait or not, sex gets boring eventually. Make sure you really love the person you’re with.”

Native San Diegans, both, Brad and Genoa married last August, after four years a’courtin’. They met on the sandy beach in front of the hotel they bought as a fixer upper a few years later. They run the hotel together and live down the street.

The Ocean Beach Motel looks out onto the San Diego peir, and brown waves are crashing into the pilings out there, the water stirred up and dirty from this swirling storm front that hangs just off the coast. More rain than anyone can remember, but I’m a few blocks away, nice and dry on the second floor of Brad and Genoa’s, with a warm fire burning and two plates of fancy italian style hors de voures to snack on. We are drinking red wine from giant glasses that get my whole nose down in and we step out onto the balcony. Brad and Genoa are not artists. They are hard working and business minded, on the whole.
Genoa tells me, “Sometimes my husband and I talk abou the meaning of life, why we are working so hard. I’m 27, haven’t hit a bar in years, why aren’t we artists, out having fun?”

She talks about her younger brother being the artist, always taking off on a trip, not preparing for his future, which worries her. “I’m the business side, a math major, which is rare for a girl. I was like, one of two women in my classes.”
I am on my second glass of wine, so we are talking pretty philosophically all of a sudden. I begin a soliloquy.

“That’s the sad thing about our culture: we tell people to pursue their specialty, instead of trying to find a balance, or explore their weaknesses.” I may have a buzz, but that’s the truth. I was a business major, and worked in the corporate world. There was not a lot of encouragement in those worlds for “art”. One of the biggest unspoken divides is between art and business. We tend to start lining up at an early age, with future econmists looking down on artists as crazy and frivilous, while artists look at the business world sadly, wishing they could have a little money to buy some dinner and a new paintbrush.

Genoa was definitly a little hesitant about this whole process, she told me. It is Brad who called, when she gave him the Crate and Barrel catalogue to look through. It was part of their Wedding Registry! He was the 32nd person to call me, actually. I like that there is some resistance to this project. Not everyone understands what conceptual art is, and a lot of people who do understand it still think it is stupid. I really hope this changes Genoas mind about what art is, because I obviously think it is very important that people have a chance to release their wild ideas.
If joseph Buoys was right about everyone being an artist, then it is only a few who get paid for it. Wouldn’t it be nice if she could look at the work she has done on the hotel and see it as art? She hand picked all the mirrors in the bathrooms. That is an artistic statement. When she can be a bit of an artist, that allows her brother to become a bit of a business man. When people understand where the other is coming from, they are closer.

You might think I am still feeling the philosophical effects of red wine, with all that talk. So let’s get down to dinner. Brad was a cook for a lot of years before buying the Ocean Beach Hotel. He had a panini sandwhich maker, which is basically a waffle-iron type of machine that heats up a sandwhich and puts fun little corn rows across the bread. Here’s how he got started.

“I sear the chicken breasts, then bake it at 350 in a pan with olive oil, garlic, and salt and pepper. If the crowd gets talking like we did, hold it at 200 degrees. It won’t do anything at that temp. I sliced vedallia onions paper thin, dipped them in flour and fried em. Get these together with your chicken, then cut a foccachia loaf across, so it is in two thin pieces like a pan. Coat the insides with olive oil, then lay your ingredients on the already cooked side, so the grill can cook the soft centers that are on the outside now. Oh, don’t forget to add a little provalone and roasted red peppers, hand torn basil, endives… then you let the grill do the rest.”

They were delicious, and the foccachia has such a great texture in your mouth, with the toasted ridges from the grill. A green salad with pecans and golden raisons almost left no room for the cappachino mousse for desert. By then it was midnight, and we parted ways, agreeing to meet Brad in the afternoon for a tour of the Ocean Beach Hotel and a ride in his 1949 DeSoto down the strip.

Ocean Beach Hotel

I have been contacted by a San Diego newsman for local NBC station Channel Eight. He has set up an interview with me at Brad’s Hotel, with Brad’s okay. I will have a link to that too, once it airs. In the meantime, here’s a still photo. I think I was explaining how the RV flipped over last night.

So there I am, being asked the usual questions. How is this art, why did I want to do this, etc. etc. So let me take a minute to make a point.
I AM AN ART STAR

I didn’t make this up. Here it is in SOMA, a San Francisco based magazine:

click here for full text

On The Road

The rain has not left me alone since L.A. Camera man Clark tells me Toyota made the Sunrader for warm weather, and the Dolphin for moist climates. To get technical, the weather has been freakish. Downtown San Diego looked like the National Guard had rolled through, sand bags bunkered every shop door on Ocean Beach. Some streets were closed with a foot of water.

Inside the old RV, I discovered more leaks. Almost all the windows were letting moisture in. My clothes in the closet were soaked – the duct tape patch on the roof apparently was a brainless decision. The toilet has a plastic pipe that goes up and out the roof. Perhaps for ventilation, or to allow for pressure for flushing. I ripped the toilet out a long time ago, and don’t know the real function of it. But it leaks. So I went to a hardware store to buy a cap for the pipe and was told RV plumbing is wider by an 1/8 of an inch than regular plumbing. Of course I was told this after I had bought a cap and tried to hammer it on in the parking lot, to no avail. That’s when I decided to try duct taping it. It’s supposed to fix anything, but this time it didn’t help. The most horrifying moment was realizing the vent in the shower ceiling was also leaking, which is where all the most sensitive and delicate equipment was stored, along with the footage Clark had shot for the documentary – footage that is irreplaceable.
”That’s the stuff heart attacks are made of,” Clark said, after we had yanked the plastic bins open and found some things damp, but nothing ruined.

Camping

I drove from L.A. to San Deigo, after leaving my friend Hak’s place

He edited a ton of footage on his professional editing equipment, so I would have something to give to the news crew that wanted to meet me in San Diego in the morning. In exchange for his services, I took a series of swanky portraits that he can post online to woo the ladies with. They won’t know it is Manishevitz in the glass. That’s the beauty of film.

We left at 2 in the morning, so as to avoid getting caught in L.A. Monday-morning-commute-with-a-monsoon-to-boot-traffic. At 4:10 a.m. I pulled the leaky vessel into her berth: beneath the awning of a drive-through self-serve car wash. This was to prevent any further water damage, if possible.

I had to get some sleep, since I’d be waking up in three hours to have a telephone interview with Robin Young of Here and Now, on NPR. Take a listen on this link, and you can hear how tired I am. I felt like I was on acid, after so little sleep and my nerves shot from piloting this Albotross RV down Highway Five, which looked more like the Mississippi than a seven lane freeway. Thank god not many big rigs were on the road, they would have pushed me right off the tar. My hand was still formed in the pattern of it clutching the steering wheel when I awoke. Using them both like blunt instruments I was able to maneuver my cell phone open and up to my ear. Robin mentioned it was Presidents’ Day, and I didn’t need to drive all night in a misaligned RV, there would be no commuter traffic. I got off the phone and slept until 10 in the morning, when a nice lady from the car wash pounded on the hood and alerted me to my need for a cup of coffee. She needed to clean the Car Wash. I got behind the wheel and headed to my next dinner host, Brad.

EMAILS

I have an intern that responded to my Craigslist ad. She has been taking some calls, because I really want everyone that calls to feel like they connect with someone. I just don’t have enough time in a day to answer the hundreds of calls that come in. So Lisa has been answering emails and talking to folks. Thanks Lisa!

“Please come have lunch with me at our school. Wednesday is pizza and broccoli day.”

One young woman wrote to tell me her goal in life is to get so excited her eyebrows pop off her head. She likes ribbons. All kind’s of ribbons. And sunshine

On the Road

We woke up behind a café, and a guy parked next to us took a real interest in the RV.
“86?” He asks.
“84” I say. (the year it was made.)
“Someone botched this caulk job. Rip that shit out and go to Marine World and buy some fuckin’ clear shit.”
“Really?”
“Yeah man, I used to work on these. You should rip out the electronics, put in a carb, make it international….”

He was a very intense talker. I started to go for the door to get back in.

“Hey, you guys got any weed?”
“No, sorry. “ I say.
“Well fuck you then. It ought to be against the law for you not to have weed in a rig like that.”

He jumped in his early 80’s Ford Crown Victoria and I heard him burn out twice as he left the parking lot.

Laurie and Ben

It is an LA town, on an LA street, an apartment complex made of masonry and painted gray. There is an ornamental metal gate; ring number seven and the buzzer rattles like an electric chair, and the door pulls open.

Inside the apartment a group of stage and screen actors, musicians, and costume designers have gathered for dinner. The rain falls so hard we talk loud to ignore it, and with red wine and Miller Lite, dinner gets started and we talk louder still. It is fun stuff, songs are broken into like a new Honda in a dark alley. There is so much garlic on the garlic bread it burns the roof of your mouth, and there is just as much in the home made marinera, known as Puttanesca (whore sauce, in Italian, since it attracted men to the bordello). Beets have been sliced and stacked four high, with goat cheese between each layer. Stephanie called it a “beet parfait”, and it was delicious. Bel Gioioso cheese was grated onto a plate, it has the lightest feel, like picking up loose tinsel, but it has no sparkle and it melts on your tongue. Shrimp pesto and Japanese noodles, fresh basil, green salad and spinach rounded out the table. And another Miller Lite for me.

Mark, a dinner guest, was from England, and spoke with an appropriate accent, the kind that adds IQ points if its natural, and takes them away when you try to imitate it.
“I’ve just finished an article that discusses the differences between hero’s and celebrities. Celebrities are celebrated, hero’s are unnoticed. They are schoolteachers, nurses, people that are working to help others, while celebrities are just famous.”

He was nice enough to call me a hero, because I am bringing attention to unknown people and trying to bring good things to light through this project. The British are a classy bunch.

A Day Off

It’s debilitating, to be on the phone all day. Why haven’t I bought a hands free headset yet? I am in denial that my number is metaphorically written on every bathroom wall. Plus, headsets still aren’t cool yet. Probably this time next year things will be different. It won’t reek of drive through window to have an ear bud.

I sat in the front seat of the RV, parked at the curb in downtown Santa Monica. It was about 9:30 at night, and it was raining. Across the street I noticed a woman and her friend struggling to close a big white umbrella the wind had blown inside out. She tried to run into the wind to blow it back, holding it out like a lance in a calvery charge. No dice. She held it above her head and jumped up, hoping the gravity would add more leverage. Still nothing. When her friend tried to push it back, it seemed to wrap around her body and clutch her. I noticed the helping friend was buckled with laughter at this point. Even though it was dark and rainy and things were broken.

We stayed at my college friend’s house last nigh, Hak Lonh’s. We have two nights to stay with friends and not film, get caught up on internet stuff, emails, phone calls. One forgets how much energy it takes to make friends. There is a physical and mental effort exerted as one reads body language, tries to learn new personalities, look for reasons to trust or not trust someone. I have been meeting strangers and needing to gain their trust, and trust them, for almost two weeks. Like a muscle rarely used, it is hurts to do this.

With Hak, I crashed on his floor, opened the fridge, and took a shower without feeling any freeloader guilt. We talked about current projects, saw some film he is editing, and just hung out. It is nice to meet new people, but it is also important to stay connected to old friends. That can be just as much work. Ever wonder what the limit of possible friendships can be? In a physical number? How long before you wouldn’t have time to see them all?

Over breakfast in a Silverlake diner Hak and I talked about how much things costs, especially pure art projects.

“The Winchester Mystery House is a crazy place. The wife of the guy who invented Winchester rifles believed she needed to build a room for every soul killed by one of her husbands guns. It’s two miles of walking inside, dead ends, secret rooms, it’s bizarre. She spent so much money.”

“I wish I had invented something. Like the question mark.” Hak said.

“Did someone invent punctuation?” I asked him. What an amazing thought.

“I am the man who excites verbs. I call it exclamation.”

We paid our bill and left, headed back up into the hills. I don’t want to end this like a Bukowski story, but the Hollywood sign was hidden by a rain storm.

The next night was at a Naomie’s apartment off Fairfax in L.A. I met her on the original Dinner Tour. She invited a group of friends over for this evening and we went to a bar and sat at long tables and talked and had delicious Margaritas. Naomi’s friend Lilla is a professional free-lance writer who does food reviews. I would like her to come to our dinner tomorrow here in L.A. and write a critique of the meal. I think the more people involved in this project, the more it comes to mean. I don’t want to spoon feed people one answer to the question “What’s a National Dinner Tour?” I want to make a community around the project itself, and I have. From the friends of friends who helped me install a new water pump in the RV, and the guy who lent me a heavy duty floor jack so I could fix the leaky gas tank, lots of people have made it possible to simply get on the road. It would be fun to have Lilla give her professional opinion on this whole project.

People ask me all the time what the best meal is. I think any meal I don’t have to cook is delicious. The bigger point is what goes on during the meal. Eating dinner alone is one of the saddest things I have to do. I usually go out to eat instead. But standing in a kitchen with friends, washing carrots while someone stirs pasta sauce, that is one of the happiest things I have to do. Perhaps part of the appeal of the Dinner Tour is this same instinct in others. The need to share a meal, rather than eat alone