Whitney Museum Biennial

What the heck is a biennial? Well, it's an event held every two years. So the Whitney Museum is having their biennial this year of works they deem cutting edge or notable over the past two years. I only ended up at the Whitney yesterday because I was on an errand to deliver a book I bought for a friend, so I this is new to me as well.

At any rate, the person I delivered the book to, Carina, tried to convince me to see the exhibits, but I resisted. It's so pathetic, but I made the decision to go in finally because I needed to use the restroom, LOL -- since I was in the museum already with my tag and all, might as well just see the stuff.

Needless to say, I was inspired. There were some installations which I really appreciated -- even the pretentious stuff like the urinal, which inverted is now supposed to be a "sculpture" because the artist said so. There was also a cute boy in a baby blue shirt we, rather I, followed, so there was lots of inspiration to go around. Unfortunately, after one hour I had a headache. Art makes you think, and since I don't use my brain often, it was pretty much information overload -- and this was the first time I got tired just by going to a museum. Carina told me that looking at too much art can sometimes trigger an epilepsy attack. Scary. But I was indeed inspired. I want to make art now. I want to make people think. I want to do creative things. Why didn't I get the phone number of that cute boy in the baby blue shirt?

If you will be in Manhattan, you can check out the Whitney's biennial until May 28, 2006. If you want to save money, go on Friday evening between 6-9 for "pay what you wish" admission, which means you can pay a quarter and they will still let you in.

Afterwards... we joined Carina's Filipino friends for a karaoke party in Queens. Okay, if you didn't know it already, Filipinos love karaoke/videoke. There's even this device called the magic mic which stores all the cheesy songs on a memory chip, and apparently is a staple in every Filipino household. This karaoke-obsession is pretty hilarious to me, but it was fun to participate and watch. It's like every Filipino has an American Idol dream and that dream is fulfilled by the magic mic and a TV. LOL. We also had some great grilled Filipino food, and since I was so hungry after all the museum stuff, it was perfect. I also attempted to "network" which was great since I am shy and now coming out of my shell. Haha, I'm "shy", even if indeed thousands of people flock to this blog everyday. The irony of life.

And finally, earlier in the day, I had a phone interview from someone at the San Francisco Chronicle regarding my blog and Filipino podcast. I thought it was a great interview and it should appear as a podcast on the Chronicle Podcast site soon. I'll post a link here as soon as I get it.

So an interesting day.