Party Barbie colette

March 12th, 2009, at The Régine.

Come celebrate Barbie’s 50th anniversary at Régine this Thursday, March 12th, starting at 10pm, with Lady Bunny, Mister Rabbit, a live by Steed Lord, a warm-up by Olympia Le Tana & a dance performance by Dangerkat. The House of Dangerkat is a Canadian-based collective of arts professionals synthesizing fashion and styling with music and dance, further enhanced by video, photography and design. The House’s laissez-faire style of performance art has wowed the fashion, dance and music communities with their progressive approach to art making and rule breaking. Check out performances from Paris, New York and Canada at Dangerkat.

A very special thanks for providing champagne to Nicolas Feuillatte, for vodka to Girl By Necker and for lemonade by Lorina.

My friend Jason Williscroft saved me from getting too wrapped up in the trappings of this non-holiday by sending me the video of his evening at avec in Chicago last weekend, where he proposed to his girlfriend Shara with a self-described Barbie Diamond.** Congratulations to Jason and Shara! May you have a long and happy life together!

Penny’s a good dog. She’s been with us for three years today, 1/11/2009.

Click to play I Love My Dog

Doug and Bill Boydstun wrote and recorded I Love My Dog in 1982, a year before Invisible Zoo was formed. It is unreleased. In 2006 I Love My Dog was added to the playlist of listener-supported Radio Free Phoenix, the best free-form radio station we can reach. In honor of Penny Day I was given permission to post the song to this site. Enjoy!

I Love My Dog
By Doug Lynner and Bill Boydstun

Me, I’m just a good old boy
Goin’ through life alone
Thinkin’ about the kind of joy
That a guy like me never knows
One more highway
One more bar
When I get tired I’ll go sleep in my car
And I’ll be dreamin’ about the the only thing….
That I’ve ever had to love

Things have been pretty hard
Livin in a whiskey bar
Life never got too far
Sittin in my Chevy car
One more highway
One more jar
Of old corn liquor in the
Trunk of my car
but I’m not worried
About the shape that I’m in,

Cause I know that I’ve been loved.

I love my dog
(brilliantly appropriate campy howling)
I love my dog
(brilliantly appropriate campy howling)
He likes to be close to me
(bach)
He likes to hang around
(bach)
And you know ’cause he’s there
(bach)
I’ll never be down,
Oh no,
I love my dog.

I can remember when
I advertised for a friend
Hopin’ I could find someone
But I couldn’t never get me none
One more highway
one more beer
one more roadhouse
one more tear
but I won’t worry,
I’ll be doing fine,

Cause I know that I’ve been loved.

I love my dog
(brilliantly appropriate campy howling)
I love my dog
(brilliantly appropriate campy howling)
He likes to be close to me
(bach)
He likes to hang around
(bach)
And you know ’cause he’s there
(bach)
I’ll never be down,
Oh no,
I love my dog.

Being part of your special day has made this our special day. May your unbounded love and happiness continue and magnify, to illuminate and inspire all around you. May you always have plenty of friends with whom to toast Health, Happiness and Prosperity. We are lucky and proud to count ourselves among them.

Love,
Doug and Collette Lynner

Left to right:
the lead actress Rita Corey, the video’s director, Invisible Zoo members Andy Robinson and Doug Lynner, their interpreter, and some other obscured people.

The Music Video for Invisible Zoo’s minor hit single Nobody’s Girl was filmed in 1983. Its back story is a sitcom: a sign language interpreter hired by the band misunderstands the lyrics to the song, and decides that singers Doug and Andy are insinuating that she is a tramp. Mortally offended, she sues, wins, and literally before they can turn around, Andy and Doug have lost everything to her and are exiled to obscurity. Bill Boydstun, above the fray, gets the girl.

The video is very funny, even if you don’t know sign language. Nobody’s Girl won a Governor’s Award for improving the employability of the disabled, or whatever. I’m not sure of its actual title, we must have it in another box somewhere.

9/11/02

Dear clients, family, friends, neighbors and passersby,

We’ve spent an entire year trying to find words to express our shock and grief at “the terrors” of 9/11/01 and the frightening changes to our political climate since. We can’t, and decided instead to share some observations.

We were visiting the East Coast to celebrate Doug’s mother’s 80th birthday and spend a day with a favorite aunt of mine in Brandywine, MD. We had a rude awakening that day, literally: my aunt pounded the bedroom door, hollering, “Get up, get up, you’re not going anywhere!”

We remember that week as a string of amazing and shocking images:

• Swarms of refugees walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.
• The ironic weather: an empty, endless, cloudless sky after a week of oppressive heat and overcast weather. Walking outside, we could hear constant, thunderous sonic booms from sorties leaving Andrews Air Force Base.
• We saw no aircraft in the sky for days.
• The agonizing images of New Yorkers desperately searching for missing loved ones.
• Emergency Room workers waiting for casualties that didn’t come.
• The excitement of rescue workers finding a survivor.
• The practically empty beltway at rush hour on 9/11. I took the photo [above] heading North on the beltway as we approached the Annapolis on-ramp that evening.
• The sudden bloom of cheap American flags, like wildflowers after a hard spring rain.

I personally see things differently than I used to.

Email has never been more important. While phone circuits were jammed or down, my aunt’s house guest was able to reach his family in Japan to let them know he was safe, and by the end of the day we were able to reach all our friends back home. Members of mailing lists we subscribe to wrote personal accounts of their experience that were more powerful than any film could capture.

Cellphones have never been more important. I remember how amazed I was that the victims aboard Flight 93 could report the hijacking and call their families to say goodbye. I bet victim’s families cherish that last conversation. My cousin, who works in the Pentagon, was able to find her partner on his cellphone that morning. That day I called my landlord to let him know he still had tenants (we didn’t tell him we’d be on vacation), and was able to reach my parents in Virginia.

Family has never been more important. While we can’t write about our grief or shock or anger, we can say without reservation how grateful and lucky we were to be visiting our families on the East Coast that day. Our return to California was delayed and it seemed like life was upside-down for a few days, but we were grateful and relieved to know that our loved ones were safe. We found such comfort in spending time with them. Love is the most powerful emotion I felt that week, more than fear or grief or anger. I want to hang on to that.

People can really be so friendly to each other. In the weeks after 9/11, it’s as if we all decided to drop our baggage and just help each other through another day. Doug and I used priceline.com to purchase airline tickets (US Air) and rent a car for that trip (Hertz). Our original contracts were honored, which meant we were not charged for 5 extra days of car rental. Fellow passengers on our flight home got to know each other and shared food. The San Jose International Airport froze parking fees after 9/11.

There won’t be closure for 9/11 yet, and it’s been a hard year for everyone we know. But things are getting better.

All the best,

Collette McNeill
Doug Lynner
McNeill/Lynner WebWorks