As you may have deduced from the title, I am going to Germany for my Christmas break from work. I shall return on the 29th (hopefully) awash in cool pictures. Until then, have a lovely holiday season and we shall reconvene when I return.
Germany for Christmas.
December 18th, 2014TV I’ve been watching lately.
December 10th, 2014Oh Television, my true and trusted friend. Sometimes you lead me astray, but more often than not you fill my days and nights with endless wonder. This TV renaissance is nothing but fantastic, so much so that I’ve now opted to pay eight bucks a month for Hulu Plus, a service that has the audacity to charge me money and then STILL show advertisements. I never had a compelling desire to watch a lot of prime time major channel soap opera-ness. That is, until now. Were you aware that 98% of people on prime time shows are insanely pretty? Like, inhuman levels of pretty? That is something I had forgotten watching Nat Geo and Investigation Discovery. Everyone on 2, 4, 5 and 7, regardless of your preference, are super-bangable. Fun fact. Another fun fact: I apparently like pseudo-intellectual dramas. All three of the shows I’m going to talk about have smartish undertones. How To Get Away With Murder is good. I mean, the way the show treats the legal system is laughable and their logo is beyond irritating to me, but it’s engrossing. Seriously, though, why couldn’t you kern the word “away”? Why is it so gap-y? I always read it as HOW TO GET A W A Y WITH MURDER.
Why couldn’t you use your other title lockup? It was so nice, with the text and then the calligraphic swooshery. Y U no use, ABC? U make disappoint.
Hulu has introduced me to Sleepy Hollow. I would have never pegged myself for a Sleepy Hollow-show-liker, but here we are. Coupla reasons: I love that they use my home area as reference points. The show is about the return of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and it tickles my fancy that all this wizardry would be going on down the street from me. The show writers make up names for places, like The Rockefeller Estate Park and the Westchester Hospital, but I know where they are. Another reason is I like the two lead actors. One is a slight delicate British man, and I gots me a weakness for slight delicate British men. His name on the show is Ichabod Crane but they do everything in their power to make him look like Jesus, so I of course call him Ichabod Christ. Ichabod, since returning from the dead (it’s been 250 years! He doesn’t understand how plastic works! It’s like Freaky Friday, but with demons!), has a sidekick, a strong African-American female police officer named Abby Mills. These two actors have some awful dialogue to say that would be bad coming out of the mouths of lesser performers, but they make it work. It’s evocative and engaging. I feel like it’s my Doctor Who (since I could never get into Doctor Who, much to my chagrin). It’s a time traveler with a companion fighting off ancient evils. Lotta parallels.
The last show I binge-watched was a show on WGN, a network I had never heard of before. The show is called Manh(a)ttan, and it’s a fictionalized account of the Manhattan Project. It’s similar in structure to the Showtime program Masters of Sex – based on actual events, but everyone’s very attractive and sleeping with each other. I loved it. It’s got thirteen hour-long episodes and they were great, populated by so many amazing character actors you will recognize. There’s the guy from City Slickers and the Jewish speech writer from The West Wing and the jerky blonde dragon prince from Game of Thrones and the prostitute from House of Cards and the weird brother from Orange is the New Black, etc. I just read that a season two is in the works and I am so excited. Make a point to check it out. It made me want to learn more about the real Manhattan Project. When Manh(a)ttan comes out on Netflix I’m going to watch it again. I’m sure there are things I missed the first time around.
Kitchen: Part Actual Progress!
December 1st, 2014I worked my rump off in an attempt to actually be in the “somewhere resembling done” zone when Thanksgiving came ’round. And I did! First I blotched and sponged until the kitchen was a cool browny-greeny-maroony blend.
Then I borrowed a projector from work to lay out the white lines but since my kitchen is a limited space I had to find creative ways to place the projector to get the lines where they were supposed to go. Please note projector in oven.
After I traced the lines (which looked like this):
I took these crazy-complicated stencils that I cut (the foot is in there for size reference):
And sponged them in their correct places and poof! Massive amounts of progress!
Next, trees with magenta branches. Very exciting.
Two important items.
November 28th, 2014Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope it was a delicious and filled with good company. Two things came to my attention recently: first, there’s this special owl. He was found in the forest and now he lives on a stump in a wildlife center office. His eyes are filled with vitreous gloop (as all eyes are) but he lacks a cornea or retina, so he’s blind. And this owl has strings running through his eyeball goo. All of this leads to making this owl’s eyes look like galaxies. He’s a tiny magical owl. His name is Zeus and I am mildly obsessed with him.
And, wonderfully, people are making art inspired by Zeus. Because, in case you didn’t catch it, he’s a tiny magical owl. Who can maybe see into the future. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one who thinks Zeus is THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE.
The other thing I noticed recently was television’s inability to learn from mistakes. I’ll explain. There has been a glut of redneck reality programming in the last few years and almost every show has had a tragic flaw. There was “Duck Dynasty” where one of the members of the family said some hateful, small-minded things. There was that show on MTV with the teenagers in West Virginia, I think it was called “Buckwild”. One of the teens died from carbon monoxide poisoning in a truck. There’s “Gypsy Sisters” which also films in West Virginia and where one of the cast members was caught stealing almost $15,000 of merchandise from a Target store. And, of course, there’s the recent “Here Comes Honey BooBoo” situation which is deplorable. I would think at this moment the cable channels would look into another area of society to mine for reality shows, but I realized I was incorrect. I’m not exaggerating, when I first saw this I thought it was a parody or a joke of some sort.
I’m kind of disgusted with myself, but how badly do you want to see this show? I want to watch it mainly for that little kid. I hope nothing bad happens on this show due to poor judgement of the people portrayed. Between running a funeral home and wrasslin’ for funsies there’s so many ways for this to go horribly wrong and I would like it if they could somehow navigate this quagmire of potential catastrophes and come out okay on the other side. That would be just great.
All kinds of items from the internet.
November 15th, 20141. The world wide web has given us many treasures over the years. One is Birds With Arms. It’s a Tumblr. With Photoshopped pictures. Of birds with arms. Enjoy some of my favorites.
Also, Drunk J. Crew. Someone noticed that the models in the J. Crew catalog tend to look inebriated. They added text to the pictures. The rest is magic.
2. I was pottering around and saw this phenomenal artist Dashi Namdakov. He does Mongolian-infused artwork in a myriad of mediums. Giant bronze sculptures:
Small sculptures:
But (not surprisingly if you’ve met me) the work by him I simply adored was his jeweled creatures.
Addendum 12/3/2014: Look at the commercial I saw today! http://www.tastefullyoffensive.com/2014/12/birds-with-arms-star-in-this-funny-new.html
A classic and a possible new classic.
November 10th, 2014I saw two movies recently, Gone With The Wind and Boyhood. Gone With The Wind I saw ages ago on TV with commercials poppin’ in every ten minutes which really chopped up the experience (it’s tough to get into the Civil War when you’re perpetually interrupted by smiling white people wearing backwards robes like cult members). The Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers was showing the movie in one of their smaller theaters so I, my father (who is one thousand years old and saw the movie when it came out in 1939), Snorth and Snorth’s mom flounced off in our finest garments made from curtains to check it out properly with a good screen and sound system and no commercials. Here’s something interesting about the movie: it totally holds up. The first half, the half that’s about the Civil War, is thoroughly engrossing. The second half is a bit melodramatic and romantic, but it’s still pretty great. Here are some thoughts I had.
1. The last line makes me so bummed out. It is, famously, “Tomorrow is another day!” Yeah, yeah it is. So was yesterday. And two weeks from Thursday? That’s a day too. EVERY DAY IS A DAY. Whatever. It’s fine.
2. No matter how bad it gets for Scarlett (starving, unwashed, wearing the same dress for a year) her eyebrow game remains on point. Good for her. Also Vivian Leigh has the best RBF of all time.
3. This movie’s alternate title should be “Crying and Sweating in the South.” Lawd have mercy. I am not exaggerating – in every single scene at least one character is weeping copiously or is slathered with dewy drops of sweat. If it was a drinking game you would be sloshed in the first hour.
4. I’m all for tasteful classy ladies of society, but I really wanted to hang out with Belle Watling the local madam. She wore vibrant outfits, had lots of money and her home had a crystal lamp shaped like a peacock. She didn’t have to go to those stifling affairs all the fancy plantation owners did. Team Watling for me.
The other movie I saw was Boyhood. The movie itself is not what’s amazing, it’s how it was made. Boyhood was filmed over 11 years with the same actors, so you get to watch them age. It’s amazing that Richard Linklater (the director) got all the actors to show up for a few weeks every year. It’s well-acted, it’s beautifully filmed, engaging things happen, all it’s missing is interesting dialogue. Maybe I’m lucky but so so many of my conversations with people are fascinating. There’s humor and exciting interaction on any number of topics, and in this movie there’s… not so much. There’s a lot of mundane “how are you doing?” and “get in the car” and “don’t forget to come home after school!” After that, when the lead character becomes a high school student, he has long boring emo/introspective speeches which are 100% accurate to being a teenager (and what I make an effort to avoid talking to teenagers) so I had to deal with that. I would encourage people to see Boyhood because it’s a one-of-a-kind in the timeline/filming regard but I wish that characters had been more witty. The other thing I learned from this film: Don’t drink alcohol. That’s bad. That’s a reoccurring problem.
Would you like some charts? Because I happen to have some right here.
November 7th, 2014Several of them involve dinosaurs.
Kitchen, Part Never-Ending Ouroboros.
November 7th, 2014Backsplash! I’ve started working on it. I waffled back and forth on a variety of ideas but now I have finally decided on this.
In order to decide if I liked it I stared at it for several days to see if I would get sick of it. I did not, so I began the painting process. First, a brown paper bag-colored basecoat. Then I did the first layer of splotches but the sponges weren’t diffuse enough.
So I got tiny round sponges on tiny sticks and started painting individual dots. It’s a long way off but it’s getting closer.
After I paint several million more dots I will re-update. SO MANY DOTS.
Rhinebeck Sheep ‘n’ Wool Festival 2014.
October 30th, 2014I went this year! It was great. I drove up with my sister K. because she is a super-talented knitress and as opposed to me who goes for the sheep-petting, she actually goes to buy yarn like a normal person. This is some of her work:
Yeah. She’s amazing. Anyway, we went up and I saw some excellent work. I considered walking up to several people wearing beautiful handmade sweaters/shawls/gloves/etc. and thanking them for making and sharing these wonderful pieces with the world, but then I decided that that would be way too weird even for me, even for the RSnWF. And let me tell you the RSnWF can get mighty weird. One example that immediately comes to mind is when I walked up to a woman, a professional woman, a woman manning a booth filled with wooly products for sale. She had a two-year-old child sitting on the counter in front of her and while this woman was talking to a client the child pulled up her shirt and was nursing from one of her breasts while finger-playing with the other nipple. All of her goods and services were hanging out into the great wide open and I mentally shut down. It was like seeing a griffin*. I’m all for breastfeeding but this was waaaaaaay too much. I think I got boobPTSD from that experience. My point is that one could walk up to a stranger at the festival and compliment their knittery without being the oddest thing that happens to them that day. BY A LOT.
We hit up a couple of specific shops K. wanted to purchase products from, one of which was Fiber Optic. They sell yarn groupings that gradually change from one color to another so you can make ombre-type scarfs. I LURVE me some ombre so I loitered outside their booth staring at the examples they had pinned up. So good.
Other neat things I saw at the RSnWF: this sweater.
This shorn roving with pictures of the sheepies that it was shorned from which makes me want to buy this fleece even though it’s probably greasy (lanolin) and I have zero use for it.
The truth was I did end up buying some roving because I have a very special project in mind. Let’s start at the beginning. When my friend Ness turned 30 she and a bunch of her chums went to New Orleans to celebrate what she called her Dirty Thirty. At this exact time a hurricane had passed through the delta and drowned thousands of nutria (a giant South-American rat) and these nutria corpses were washing up on the beaches. I could not stop talking about it. So, in order to make Ness’ trip even more memorable, every time she would post something on Facebook I would comment with something about nutria. No context, no explanation. Every time.
Then I started photoshopping her pictures.
I was shocked she didn’t come back and stab me in the face with a collectible plastic margarita glass shaped like a fleur de lis. I honestly expected the stabbing but I still couldn’t stop myself. Now Ness is getting married in May and the wedding is going to be in New Orleans, her reasoning being “it’s equally inconvenient from people on both the East and West Coast.” I cannot let this opportunity pass. I am making myself a Southern church-going hat to wear to the wedding and on top (you guessed it) will be a six-inch nutria doll made of felt. In order to make this felted nutria I bought some brown roving from a llama (no lanolin so naturally dry and clean) with tiny sparkly threads woven in. It’s going to be glorious. Get ready.
*”Is that half eagle, half lion? What’s going on with its front legs? I have so many questions and I cannot physically stare hard enough at this.”
A small medium at large. And all the dog memes today.
October 20th, 2014Sorry for the long delay between posts. There just wasn’t a whole lot of anything going on. I was working, and then I was working some more, and then for a change, work.
The joke I am referring to in the title is this one:
My sister K. is a producer and she asked me two weeks ago if I would be available to be filmed having a reading done by a medium. I said I had ebolaAIDSpinkeye and wouldn’t be able to go because I do not believe in hocus-pocus, but she needed bodies to populate this video so finally I acquiesced and said yessssssssss fine. On Sunday morning I woke up at 7:30 (before the sun which is the Lord’s way of saying don’t wake up yet), put on an appropriate outfit (no black, no logos), painted my face, brushed my hair and went to Manhattan where the filming was happening. I filled out paperwork allowing them to use my face and any corresponding footage for this video and possibly as filler in porn movies (I didn’t read the document) and then waited for the medium to arrive. The other producers asked me whom of my dead relatives I wanted to speak to, and I answered honestly. “Well, I would really like to talk to my paternal grandmother because she died when my father was nine and all accounts describe her as a very nice woman, but she only spoke Yiddish and chances are we might not be able to communicate. Most likely my maternal grandmother will come through who helped raise me and was a ‘strong woman.’ That’s a nice way to say it. I’ve heard her referred to as ‘soul-crushing’ and ’emasculating’ but ‘strong woman’ is probably the best way to put it.” The first thing the medium, who was a nice tiny woman of about thirty years old, di when she arrived was burn sage and clear the room of negative energy (actual result: the whole space smelled somewhere between a Catholic mass and a 4/20 rally) and then she called the four people who were going to be read into filming area (me and three freshly-graduated NYU students). We did some meditation, clearing our minds and readying ourselves to contact the deceased. And then she began. I would LOVE to say she changed my mind and I got to chat with family members and I’m a total believer now, but alas, she did not. She asked incredibly vague questions until she narrowed it down to something tangible in your life and then she honed in on that. My favorite example was, “I’m feeling a twisting sensation in my belly area. Did you know someone who had gastrointestinal troubles or someone who internalized their feelings?” Why, yes, yes I do, because you’ve just described everyone who’s ever lived on this planet, ever. Thanks for that. She could have said, “I’m feeling a tender sensation in my earlobes. Do you have a relative who was able to hear in both ears?” Wow! As a matter of fact I did.
In my follow-up interview I was very diplomatic. I said while I didn’t feel convinced that this was not an advanced parlor trick, if someone had lost a person close to them and was suffering and this medium brought them some peace, then I was totally okay with it. Placebos work too. I don’t think that’s what the people recording the TV show wanted to hear but I wasn’t going to lie, especially for what they were paying me (a fat hairy ball of nuthin’).
In a thoroughly unrelated note my friend Gem was in town for the Annual Gathering of the Nerds Otherwise Known as Comic-Con (did everyone see this amazing costume? It’s all the roles Johnny Depp has played on one person, that is GENIUS):
And every time Gem comes to town she takes me to a different bar or eatery which is good because I am totally inclined to staying in my apartment and crafting while watching copious amounts of Nat Geo Wild and Investigation Discovery. This time she took us to The Dead Rabbit which is a bar in the financial district. It was extremely cool. I know exactly zero things about the original gangs that ran in New York during the 1850s and one of them was called The Dead Rabbits. I believe the movie Gangs of New York was based on them. We got to sit at the bar in the parlor which normally would bother me (I’m sad when my feet don’t touch the ground) but this particular time it was awesome because I could watch the bartendress. Her name was Jillian Vose and she blew my mind. First of all, there are seventy-two cocktails on the menu. Seventy-two. Twelve of them are seasonal and change regularly. Sixty-four are separated into groups based on different sections of the Dead Rabbit gang leader’s life, John Morrissey. Here’s a sample page from their menu.
When an order comes up there’s a small screen under the bar that lists the ingredients but Jillian still had to figure out which bottles to use to make it. There were like fifty bottles with various concoctions in them, syrups and whatnot, all the same size, all unlabeled. You can see them in this picture from their website.
She was amazing to watch. And then she would take large chunks of ice, put it in the palm of her hand and whack at it with an ice pick. I kept waiting for Jillian to give herself stigmata and a strong metallic taste to the subsequent drinks but it never happened. That woman’s a pro. In addition to there being a gazillion festive drinks and British foods (I tried a scotch egg for the first time, they’re pretty darn good, like a breakfast food orb) when you order your drink, in order to hold you over until your drink arrives, you get some house punch in a porcelain tea cup. How freakin’ cute is that?
I would go back if it was on the grid, or near the grid, or literally not at the bottom of the island in what I consider a no-man’s-land of New York. Perhaps if someone else goes with me I will return. If left to my own devices I would get lost.