Winner of the Coveted Golden Reader Award

I will try to add some new posts soon about art, the history of art, the making of art, or some criticism of art- something that is about more than just how totally awesome I am!
I know I have been posting a lot about winning stuff, getting in magazines, and just generally being pretty amazing- but really it has been a pretty good fall.

Well, I have another big award to announce-
The Golden Reader Award!

Here I am in Clem's living room after receiving the award from the previous
winner Janet (on the right). Clem is the one looking envious on the left.

Clem Robins, a fellow painter friend of mine every so often has a reading party. I suppose the main goal of this party is to get folks together to read their own writings, or any literature that they enjoy, and then do their best to entertain and have fun. The contest is secondary really.

Who am I kidding? It is all about winning!
Did I mention it yet? I won.

The basic rules are as follows:
You get 90 seconds to set up your reading, and then three minutes to do the actually reading. At the end of the evening, everyone votes in a secret ballot on their favorite reading of the night. The votes are counted and the winner is announced. If you win, not only do you get the large tastefully spray painted gold plastic sculpture, you get ten full minutes reading privileges at the next party. More time to impress and entertain. Plus it is a chance to hold on to the statue. Though I must point out that no one has ever repeated and won with their ten minutes.

There was a nice mix of readings, ranging from 13th century poetry from Afghanistan to an article from the National Lampoon. Some wonderful stuff was read, and some of it was read brilliantly.
I decided to go with my favorite piece from this blog. It was the blog post from last year called Confronted by BS. I had to adjust it a bit to be able to finish it in 3 minutes- which is not easy, but I had an advantage of practically having the thing memorized.

I hate to end on a negative, but as Clem was nice enough to send some photos of the evening, there was one thing I thought I should mention. I discovered something pretty disturbing in the following photo. If you notice on the left of the photo, Clem's wife Lisa is looking at me as if she were wishing for my violent death. Now both Lisa and Clem did some fine readings, but I beat them fair and square. Click on the photo for a real good look.
Scary stuff really. I made some subtle adjustments in photoshop adding the heat and smoke coming out of the top of her head. In being totally awesome, one never means to negatively affect another person. I suppose it is something I am going to have to get used to----having people be jealous of my greatness.
All I can do is wish her luck for the next reading party. If I can offer some advice, I think you just need some intestinal fortitude and hard work to win something like this- It might also help if she reads a post from this blog.