10/9/16 review of poetry book Mall Brat, by Laura Marie Marciano

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the poetry book Mall Brat, by Laura Marie Marciano.

The thread gives a bit of background on the book, how I learned of it, and the art for the book, which is done by Miza Coplin. The thread discusses the style of the book, its examinations and understanding of consumerism, the love Marciano shows in the book for her family and friends, and some of my favorite parts of the book.

Here is the link to The Accomplices web page for the book.

10/9/16 review of film Jesus Christ Superstar

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the film Jesus Christ Superstar, directed by Norman Jewison.

The thread gives some background on the film, as well as my own memories of watching it through life. The film discusses the 4K restoration. It also discusses a Q&A Ted Neeley (who played Jesus in the film) did at the screening I saw at the Sie FilmCenter. It discusses what I think of the characters, character dynamics, and pathos in the film.

I saw this film at the Denver Film Society's Sie FilmCenter in Denver, Colorado.

10/9/16 review of book Riding in Cars with Boys, by Beverly Donofrio

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the book Riding in Cars with Boys, by Beverly Donofrio.

The thread gives some background and summary of the book, as well as how I learned about the book. It also discusses how the book captured the time frames in which it takes place, as well as some themes I liked.

Here is the link to the Penguin Random House web page for the book.

I checked this book out from the Boulder Public Library in Colorado.

10/3/16 review of documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, directed by Ron Howard.

The thread gives some background on the movie. It discusses some aspects that surprised me, some fun footage moments, and the 4K restoration of the Shea Stadium concert footage.

Here is the link to the website for the movie.

I saw this movie at the Denver Film Society's Sie FilmCenter in Denver, Colorado.

10/3/16 review of book Chambre Close, by Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the book Chambre Close: A Fiction, by Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly.

The thread gives some background on the book and how I learned of Bettina Rheims's work. The thread discusses Rheims's photos and Bramly's text. And it discusses a show of Rheims's work that had been put on by the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in 2016.

10/1/16 review of teaser for book Things to Leave Behind

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of a teaser preview for the novel Things to Leave Behind, by Namita Gokhale.

This is kind of a strange thread. I read the novel later on, in 2017. But I wanted to review this little teaser preview, which was a few pages from the book, kind of to keep my experience of the Jaipur Literature Festival fresh in my mind.

Here is the link to the Penguin India web page for Gokhale's novel Things to Leave Behind.

10/1/16 review of a day of political canvassing

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of a day of political canvassing I did in October of 2016.

The thread discusses some volunteer canvassing I did for Jenise May, who was then running for a seat in Colorado's State Senate. It also discusses some garage sale book finds I made while canvassing. And it discusses some political phone bank volunteer work I did with One Colorado during that same week.

9/30/16 review of the novel Lamb, by Bonnie Nadzam

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the novel Lamb, by Bonnie Nadzam.

The thread gives a summary of the novel's plot and some background on how I learned of the novel. It discusses my opinion's on the novel's style, as well as Nadzam's skill in writing scenes. It also discusses some of the structural and emotional aspects of the novel.

Here is the link to Penguin Random House's web page for the novel.

I bought this book at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Aspen Grove, Colorado.

9/30/16 review of documentary David Bowie is

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the documentary David Bowie is, directed by Hamish Hamilton and Katy Mullen.

The thread gives some background on the documentary, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition by the same name. The thread discusses how the film shows Bowie's social impact, the resonance of his images, Bowie's costumes, and early drafts of Bowie's music.

Here is the link to the V&A's web page for their exhibit David Bowie is.

I saw this film at the Denver Film Society's Sie FilmCenter in Denver, Colorado.

9/26/16 review of 2016 Jaipur Literature Festival in Colorado

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the 2016 Jaipur Literature Festival in Boulder, Colorado.

The thread gives some background on the Jaipur Literature Festival in general and the Boulder, Colorado, event in particular. It discusses my experiences with volunteering with the JLF. And it discusses and gives pictures of panels and performances by people like Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Jane Shepard, Amrit Kaur, Jovan Mays, Nicholas Carr, Gopi Kallayil, Rajasthan Josh, William Dalrymple, and Vidya Shah.

Here is the link to the website for the Jaipur Literature Festival, which has events all over the world.

I attended this event at the Boulder Public Library in Boulder, Colorado.

9/14/16 review of Helikon Gallery shows by Sierra Barela and Natan Lawson

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the 2016 Helikon Gallery solo shows Four Whales and a Dolphin, by Sierra Barela, and ¡Splat!, by Natan Lawson.

The thread gives some background on each of the shows. It discusses Barela's style and use of fragmentation and sexiness, as well as my favorite work in Barela's show. The thread also discusses Lawson's technique and exploration of the mark-making process.

Here is the link to the Helikon Gallery's website. Unfortunately, the gallery announced its closure at the end of 2019, due to increased property taxes in Denver, Colorado.

9/12/16 review of film For the Love of Spock, dir. by Adam Nimoy

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the documentary For the Love of Spock, directed by Adam Nimoy.

The thread gives a bit of background on the documentary, which is a biography of Leonard Nimoy. The thread discusses Nimoy's relationship with his family, his experience with Star Trek, what Nimoy added to the character of Spock, and some campy moments in the documentary.

Here is the link to the website for For the Love of Spock.

I saw this film at the Denver Film Society's Sie FilmCenter in Denver, Colorado.

9/11/16 review of 2016 Colorado Anime Film Festival

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the 2016 Colorado Anime Film Festival.

The film gives a bit of background on the festival. It also gives reviews of the Satoshi Kon film Paprika and the Isao Takahata film Grave of the Fireflies.

Here is the link to the Colorado Anime Film Festival's website. The festival generally takes place at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema locations in Colorado.

9/9/16 review of the book The Good Spy, by Kai Bird

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the book The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, by Kai Bird.

The thread gives some background on the book and on Kai Bird. The thread discusses how the book views Robert Ames as a CIA member and as a person. It gives a link to a panel discussion Kai Bird did at the Jaipur Literature Festival in Colorado in 2015. And it gives a preview of the 2016 JLF Colorado event.

Here is the link to the Penguin Random House web page for The Good Spy.

Here is the link to the Jaipur Literature Festival, which has events all around the world.

Some quick thoughts/Support me on Ko-fi!

Thank you for checking out my blog! If you like my work, please visit my Ko-fi page, where you can support by making one-time donations in increments of $3.

This blog is a table of contents for my Twitter threads, starting in 2012, and working through toward the present. I include links to the threads, as well as quick descriptions of the threads.

From time to time, I like to do a blog post reflecting on the time frame of the threads I've most recently posted to this blog.

As folks might notice, there is a big jump -- about three months -- between the threads preceding this post and the ones following it.

The big reason for this is, in mid-2016, I shifted over to Instagram. From June through September of 2016, I almost solely posted to Instagram. I posted almost no new threads to Twitter.

I considered whether I should include my Instagram posts in this blog. I finally decided not to. Instagram is a lot easier to go through. You aren't sifting backwards through tweets and retweets, etc. You can see the posts quickly and at a glance via Instagram's tiles. So if folks are interested in seeing my posts from that time, visit my Instagram timeline at preemiemaboroshi.

There were a few reasons I switched to Instagram. Most of them had to do with my involvement with Denver's art community.

I was doing more and more visits to art galleries in Denver and throughout Colorado. And it was easier to tag the artists whose work I saw via Instagram than via Twitter. So I did a lot of my gallery reviews via Instagram instead. Then I just transitioned to doing everything via Instagram.

I also had been really influenced to join Instagram by some folks I'd helped out in early 2016. Their influence probably wasn't totally positive, to be honest. As silly as it sounds, I felt like they didn't think I was cool because I wasn't on Instagram as much (???!!!). So I did more stuff on Instagram because I thought that would make them think I was cool. LOL.

But I also felt somewhat confident in the audience I'd gathered on Twitter. I'd gotten about 1,000 followers. But I knew that that many followers on Twitter (in the 2015 & early 2016 time frame) usually was the same as having 10x that many followers on Instagram. So I sort of got greedy. I tried to get more exposure on Instagram because I thought I could have 10,000 followers there instead of 1,000 followers on Twitter.

I was also experiencing a lot of emotional difficulties, as weird as that sounds, with the Denver art gallery I'd been volunteering with. From April of 2015 to maybe January of 2016, I really felt like an instrumental part of their team. But then, as more folks became involved with the gallery, it was like those new folks (who were established already in other area's of Denver's art scene) started pushing me out, and my gallery friends, not willing to make waves -- it seemed and seems to me, though I may be wrong -- just let folks pushed me out.

Since the Denver art gallery folks put so much stock in Instagram and not as much in Twitter, I foolishly thought that if I could just get as big on Instagram as I was on Twitter, I'd be able to convince them I was worth protecting from these people who tried to push me out.

None of this stuff ever worked out. And, to be quite honest, it really backfired. My getting on Instagram was probably the worst thing I could have done. I was already on the radar of people in the Denver art scene who didn't like me. And being on Instagram put me on their radar even more. They engaged people against me -- in my personal opinion, though I could be wrong -- and basically spent from mid-2016 to mid-2017 shutting me completely out of that world. Instagram, probably more than anything else, enabled the people who didn't like me to end my life in the Denver art scene.

The emotional turmoil of this experience was probably heightened for me by the fact that, in late June of 2016, I lost my job. From 2012 through 2015, I'd been working hard for a company, helping them get sold for a lot of money. I received really nothing in return from that company once the management changed, other than animosity from a lot of people in the company. And I was fired in December of 2015. I got another job two days later. But that job slowly crashed and burned, and I was left without a job again by the end of June of 2016.

However, I had sort of seen the writing on the wall with that company. And by March of 2016, I had started some side work as a consultant. So when I was let go from the one company in June of 2016, I decided to see whether I could build up a book of business as a consultant.

I ended up spending the second half of 2016 working short-term projects as a consultant for a number of different companies. It was hard and frustrating work. But by the end of 2016, I had a somewhat stable book of business.

But during the second half of 2016, I think that I was really questioning a lot about my life. And every time folks in Denver's art community pushed me away, I felt like that was a reflection on the same aspect of myself that people in Denver's business community disliked, that was causing them to push me away. So, really, I might have been amplifying a lot of my self-doubt and projecting it onto my experiences into Denver's art community.

Despite this, though, I really hate to say that nobody in Denver really cared what I was going through. Nobody ever asked if I was okay. Nobody ever tried to help me. People just kind of didn't treat me very nice at all. So even if I was only imagining all the bad treatment, nobody ever really cared enough to ask me whether I was okay.

I'm also kind of sad that I didn't do Twitter threads during this time period, though. Since I had time freed up, I was able to do a lot of stuff. And I did a lot of stuff!

I took a couple trips to San Francisco. I took a couple trips to Marfa, Texas, where I watched an art gallery, for one-weeks stints each time. I did a lot of political work -- probably three or four days per week of canvassing, voter registration, or phone banking work, when I was really in the rhythm. I helped a literature festival, basically working as a board member and helping to manage all the volunteer activities, in what was only the festival's second year. And I did help a Denver art gallery make a huge transition, moving from one space to another, and do a highly publicized (partly thanks to me) grand re-opening with a show that probably should be remembered as one of the best art gallery shows in Denver in the 2010s.

Unfortunately, though -- all of that stuff is captured on my Instagram and not on my Twitter. But, again, you can visit my Instagram to see it, at preemiemaboroshi.

By September, I decided to go back to doing threads on Twitter. And that's where the posts above pick up.

My reasons for doing Twitter instead of Instagram -- other than trying to avoid the people on Instagram who disliked me -- were simple. Twitter allows you to do bite-sized tweets. So people can pick and choose what they like within a thread. And Twitter is much more of a multimedia experience. Since each tweet is separate, each tweet can be a separate type of media experience. Also, I never got more than a couple hundred followers on Instagram. And, while I had been at about 1,000 followers on Twitter, I was starting to lose followers, since I was never on Twitter. So I decided to get more active on Twitter again, so I wouldn't lose followers, and so I would hopefully gain followers.

Anyway -- this is probably one of the longest "what happened to me during this time frame" posts. But a lot happened during this three-month period.

As always, thank you for reading my blog.

Please enjoy!

6/12/16 review of Helikon Gallery shows Mythos and Ghost Bear Sorrow Skin

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of Helikon Gallery's 2016 shows Mythos, a group show, and Ghost Bear Sorrow Skin, a solo show by Emily Wilcox.

The thread gives some background on each show. It also discusses and gives pictures of work by Emily Wilcox, Michael Page, Ellie Rusinova, Stephanie Inagaki, and others.

Here is the link to the website for Helikon Gallery. Unfortunately, the physical gallery has shut down, due to rising property taxes in Denver, Colorado.

6/12/16 review of Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the 2016 Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown.

The thread gives some background on the event. It discusses and gives photos of pinball games like Cirqus Voltaire, Bally's Old Chicago, Coney Island, Bally's Spectrum, Bally's Evel Knievel, and Bally's Atlantis. It also discusses and gives pics of a Billy Mitchell panel. And there are some interactions with Goemon047.

Here is the link to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown's website.

5/30/16 review of poetry book Teen Surf Goth, by Oscar D'Artois

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the poetry book Teen Surf Goth, by Oscar D'Artois.

The thread is brief but gives a bit of background on the book, how I learned of it, and why I liked it.

Here is the link to the Metatron Press page for Teen Surf Goth.

5/30/16 review of solo shows at Pirate Contemporary

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the 2016 Pirate: Contemporary Art shows Home Economics, a solo show by Laura Phelps Rogers, and Southern Exposure, a solo show by Bruce Cavanaugh.

The thread gives some background on both shows, as well as a small supplemental group show, Home Economics 101. The thread discusses and gives photos of work by Phelps Rogers and Cavanaugh and Phil Bender.

Here is the link to the website for Pirate: Contemporary Art gallery in Lakewood, Colorado.

5/30/16 review of Robischon Gallery group shows

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of Robischon Gallery's 2016 group shows, Declaration and Harford/Zlotsky/Petley.

The thread gives some background on the shows, and the Ginny Williams Collection, which is the basis of the Declaration show. It also gives a lot of pictures and discussion of work by Alice Neel, Jae Ko, Kara Walker, Ann Hamilton, Wendi Harford, and Kate Petley.

Here is the link to the website for the Robischon Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

5/30/16 review of RedLine Denver's EPIC and ArtCorps shows

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of RedLine Contemporary Art Center's 2016 EPIC Arts and ArtCorps shows.

The thread gives a background of the programs whose work the shows display. It also gives a lot of pictures and discussion of work, which includes work by Denver-area schools, as well as artists like Tya Allen, Evan Espinoza, and Dominique Molina.

Here is the link to the website for the RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver, Colorado.

5/30/16 post about political canvassing

Here is the link to a May, 2016, Twitter thread I did about political canvassing.

In particular, I'd been canvassing for Jenise May, who had been running for a State Senate seat in Colorado. The thread gives some background on how I'd gotten involved with volunteering for May, my impressions of May, and my first impressions of doing political canvassing.

5/30/16 post about my life in general

Here is the link to a May, 2016, Twitter thread I did about my life in general.

As I mentioned in the blog post below, I was going through some pretty tough times at the end of May of 2016. It had been about a month since I'd posted any structured threads to Twitter. And this thread was discussing some reasons for my absence.

Some quick thoughts/support me on Ko-fi!

Just a quick thank you to anybody who checks out my blog!

Also, if you like my work, please visit my Ko-fi page, where you can support the work by making one-off donations in increments of $3 (i.e. the cost of a cup of coffee).

As I've often mentioned before, this blog is a sort of table of contents for my old Twitter threads. I include links to the threads, as well as quick descriptions of the threads.

From time to time, I like to do a quick blog post thinking over the time frame of the threads I've posted to this blog.

In March and April of 2016, I was involving myself a lot more in the arts scene in Denver, Colorado. I had initiated a few projects in the Denver arts community over the first couple months of the year, and I was interested to see what I might be able to do next.

By April of 2016, it had also been about a year since I had started doing a lot of volunteer work with an art gallery in Denver. The gallery gave me a point of reference within the community. And that made it easier for me to feel confident being a part of the community.

Unfortunately -- whether it was true or just my feelings, I was starting to feel a lot of pushback from Denver's art community regarding my participation. It felt to me like, starting within the gallery I was volunteering with, but also moving out to the rest of the community, people started to push against my becoming more of a part of the art community in Denver.

What hurt the most about this was that the folks I was helping in the gallery didn't really defend me from this. Instead, they seemed to justify what was happening to me by claiming that I really wasn't good enough to deserve to be a functioning and happy part of the community, anyway.

This was combined with my work situation, which wasn't very good, either. I had spent from 2012 to 2015 helping a company get sold. I got paid somewhat well for my work while I was at the company. But when the management teams switched, I didn't really get any benefit from the sale, and I was fired by the new management on December 1, 2015.

I immediately found a new job. But it ended up being a situation that slowly crashed and burned through the first half of 2016. I ended up getting some consultant work on the side. But it was a really stressful time in my work life. I felt like I'd been betrayed by a company I'd helped quite a bit. And I felt like I was being set up for a fall from the very beginning by the company I was working for now. And on top of that, I felt like, just as I seemed to have found a place in Denver's art community, I was being betrayed by that community, as well.

So it was a stressful time. And I think that begins to reflect itself in my Twitter postings. In particular, I moved away from Twitter and onto Instagram, because Instagram was easier to post on, and I just didn't have the emotional or mental energy for my more structured Twitter posts.

However, from March of 2016 forward, I started getting a lot more involved in some other work. I started doing a lot more political volunteer work -- phone banking, canvassing, attending meetings, etc. I also started volunteering my time, essentially as a board member, for a literature festival in Colorado. That was fun, and it all really helped me feel more involved in more of Colorado's community.

Anyway, thank you for checking out this blog. I hope you enjoy the posts.

5/1/16 review of documentary The Burden, dir. by Roger Sorkin

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the documentary The Burden, directed by Roger Sorkin.

The documentary is about the uses of alternative energy in the military. My thread gives some background on the film, as well as a summary of a talk after the film with Mike Breen of the Truman Project and Admiral Len Haring of The Center for Sustainable Energy.

Here is the link to The American Resilience Project's web page for The Burden.

Here is the link to The Truman National Security Project.

Here is the link to The Center for Sustainable Energy.

I saw this film at The Tavern Uptown in Denver, Colorado.