Octoberfest picture.

February 10th, 2008

I keep telling people about this picture I saw online of a guy at Octoberfest in Munich who:

1) was on a ladder and

2) was playing a tuba with one hand and his foot

3) so he could hold his beer stein in his other hand.

Did I mention he was was on a ladder? I tell people about this picture all the time, and thanks to the wonderful world of the internet, it has been found:

octoberfest2k7_017.jpg

That is a devotion to beer I cannot even fathom.

Similiar but different: if you’re ever in Las Vegas, go to the Hofbrauhaus. Seriously. It’s phenomenal. Cricket, Cricket’s sister and I ate there when we were in Vegas and it was terrific food and the whole staff was German (we were served by Karin). They played that “Ricola!!” alp horn and an accordian and everyone wore leiderhosen – absolutely terrific.

What’s that sound? Oh, it’s the sound of me being AWESOME.

February 6th, 2008

That’s my nice way of saying I did some nice graphic design this week. Meet sloth:

sloth.jpg

I did a drawing back in the day of this sloth and then gave the drawing to a friend. I scanned it in before I gave it to her, but it was a low-res scan. I then redid it in Illustrator with colors and I think it came out nicely. I put it on some porcelain dishes for wall hangings. Next, a giraffe. I’m going to do a couple of tall/long animals and have a series. Very exciting.

A big weekend. One might call it Giant. Also, spam.

February 4th, 2008

I receive a great deal of spam on this website. These are the titles of the last four spammy messages:

Kyjasghg

Ytnfskvu

Wwxukkrf

Bwhjeawz

I feel like they’re not trying anymore. It looks like someone passed out and tipped face-forward onto their keyboard. It looks like a drunk guy typing in Welsh. Stop that.

So, Giants. First, I saw They Might Be Giants on Saturday night. I wasn’t supposed to see them, I didn’t have a ticket. Cricket was going with his best friend Pabby. However, Pabby’s wife went into labor the night before and Cricket couldn’t find anyone else to go, so I got Pabby’s ticket. Don’t get me wrong, I love They Might Be Giants. I just don’t care for live music very much. It’s loud, people are blocking my view, I have to put on pants to go out, blah blah blah.

(Funny addition: Pabby’s baby was born at 4:00 in the afternoon and my first reaction was, “Good! Now he can go to the concert at 8:00!” Cricket had to explain to me that no, he can’t. I have little to no motherly instinct, so it never occurred to me that he should spend the rest of the day with the woman who just pushed the fruit of his loins out into the world.)

So I went to the concert. It was lovely to see They Might Be Giants again, they were my first concert when I was seventeen. They sang several songs I could sing along to, so that was fun. I forgot how much I liked them. Now I’ve been listening to them nonstop for two days. It’s like reuniting with an old friend.

The next day was the Super Bowl. I went to my friend M’s apartment in Brooklyn to watch the game and eat a festive medley of cuisine including homemade jalepeno poppers (excellent, with beer batter, num num). I decided to root for the New York Giants because I had seen They Might Be Giants in New York City the night before and it seemed like there was a theme going. I don’t really give a crap about football, so that seemed like a good enough reason. We made a valiant attempt to watch the game (“They’re flinging the spheroid! Huzzah!”) but by halftime it became a brutal chore for many of us. Two members of the party left during the first half to go play pool. Yeah, we were a devoted footballin’ crowd. Then M’s girlfriend (who had baked cupcakes with green icing to look like the field and other cupcakes with the team’s logos – delicious and pertinent, both things I like in my dessert items) insisted we watch Spike’s halftime show, which was an egg and ham eating contest. It was horrifying. I had to look away from the screen repeatedly. There was a guy eating the ham (I think he was the winner after snorking down SEVEN POUNDS of ham in however many minutes) who had honey glaze and sweat all over his face. He was jumping up and down while shoveling the ham in, oh, it was bad. I blame Cablevision for this. If we had received Animal Planet we would have been watching the Puppy Bowl, but no, I had to watch bloated freaks inhaling food in a way that is NOT RIGHT. Shortly after that, Cricket and I headed for home in order for me to catch the special episode of House (which was excellent, Mira Sorvino was on it, good stuff). It was a good weekend. And yay for my team with the winning. Whoo hoo.

Will Smith and then some more Will Smith.

January 28th, 2008

I’ve been inundated with the Fresh Prince recently. I saw I Am Legend last week, and then I saw The Pursuit of Happyness Saturday night. A lotta Smith, people. First, I Am Legend. It’s a great movie, up until it isn’t anymore, which is about twenty-five minutes from the end. But up until then, awesome. It’s very similiar to Castaway, because it’s just Will talking to his dog (who is named Samantha, but I would have been ecstatic if her name was Wilson. How freakin’ cool would that be?) for two hours. Oh, he also talks to mannequins and the badly-animated vampire-creatures that are animated badly. Also, badly animated. I mean, c’mon people, it’s 2007! They look like they were created around the time The Mummy came out. I’m a total fraidy-cat and I was not afraid. But seeing the shots of Manhattan completely deserted with grass growing everywhere and deer prancing around Times Square* is totally worth the ticket price.

On Saturday I went to a friend’s house. He decided to get a present for himself, and the present was an unreal TV situation. There’s the projector attached to the ceiling that shows movies on the 10′ screen in perfect resolution. And there’s the surround-sound speakers. And the giant comfy couches. It’s like the Sony screening room in his basement. Anyway, we saw The Pursuit of Happyness on the screen and here’s the problem: it’s a depressing movie (uplifting story, my hindquarters), but on the giant screen with the killer sound, it’s just that much more depressing. It was IMAX-sized depressing. I have decided that if I go over to his house, I will only watch chipper movies because I’m still bummed out. If you want to, see The Pursuit of Happyness. But don’t blame me if you walk around with a mopey face for days afterwards. I take no responsibility for that.

* The deer are badly animated as well. But who cares? They’re eating grass in Times Square, their hooves clippity-cloppitying on the asphalt. The coolness of the scenario outways the poopiness of the CGI.

Pat on the back for me.

January 28th, 2008

I took ever so many photos of my jewelry and purses today. Then I scanned them in as well, so each object gets two pictures, one with natural mid-day sunlight and one with scanner light, which is fluorescent. It gives you a better idea of what the piece looks like.

photos.jpg

See? I accomplished something. I have nine pairs of earrings and six pendants to paint, so we’ll see how those turn out and you’ll see them in the store shortly. Also, wall plates to come soon. Very exciting, people!

Welcome to my new apartment! Wheee!

January 20th, 2008

FINALLY. Pics of the apartment. It’s bright, it’s big, it’s nifty. Enjoy the journey.

entrance.jpg

You open the front door and, voila! You are greeted by twenty feet of window. Granted, it’s creepy institutional window, but window nonetheless. Do not be fooled by how big the room looks. It’s very big, but if you look carefully, you will notice that the wall at the end behind the light fixture is mirrored. The mirrors will be going. Also, that octagonal thing in the right corner? We’ll get to that in a minute.

kitchen2.jpg

That’s the kitchen. It’s BIG. There’s two ovens and a dishwasher (called the Potscrubber 700, I just love that, so futuristic). And a ginormous fridge with the freezer on the bottom (score!). The previous owners built that little wall there and the octagonal thing was a big Formica table in the middle so someone could sit in the kitchen and someone could sit in the dining area and it was like a breakfast nook. A breakfast nook FROM HELL. That wall will be going. As will the octagon. I will not miss them.

kitchen.jpg

Different view of the kitchen. See the Potscrubber 700? Also, please appreciate the Formica FESTIVAL going on in here. Countertops, backsplash, cabinets, even the handles on the cabinets. The previous owners must have had stock in Formica, it’s all over the bathrooms as well. I can’t afford both a new countertop and refacing the cabinets, so I may have to get all DIY and do some stuff to the kitchen myself. Luckily I have handy friends who will join me in my quest to end Formica’s reign of terror in my apartment. We may have some casualties, but we will win this war. For organizing the space and creating a more polished look, a Custom Closet Company such as Bella Systems can provide tailored storage solutions that complement your DIY efforts and elevate your home’s functionality.

hallway.jpg

Now let’s head down the hallway with too many closets to…

guestroom.jpg

…the guest room! Note: more giant windows. I don’t know precisely what to do with this room yet, maybe library/guest room, maybe office, we’ll see. Oh, and all the carpeting in the whole apartment is going. It’s icky and I am prone to allergies, but underneath is parquet which I’m having sanded and refinished and that will be nice. I’m also planning to add some wool vintage rugs to add some texture to my apartment.

Moving on.

bathroom.jpg

Across the hall is the guest bathroom. This is the major project in the apartment. I’m ripping this whole sucker out. It be hideous and I no likey. The fixtures will be in the same place, but they’ll be white and modern and nice and the Formica will DIE and I will rejoice over its Formica corpse. I may even dance upon it. Check out the 1 Bedroom Apartment for sale in Kileleshwa being sold by Sarabi Realty Group.

bathroom2.jpg

Another view. The tub is six inches tall so you can only cover your kneecaps in water and the tile makes you feel like you’re bathing in a big quilt.

bedroom.jpg

Now, my bedroom. Again, windows out the wazoo. Also, it has its own bathroom and a freakin’ awesome closet.

bathroom-master.jpg

This is the master bathroom. Now, it’s also kind of unattractive, but you have to pick your battles, and since I’m probably the only person who’s going to see it, I don’t really care if it’s kind of unnatractive. Also, the previous owners were a thousand years old, so there are a delightful collection of bars in the shower stall. And they built a seat into it. Truly. They bashed out a chunk of wall in the closet next to it and built a happy little divot into the shower. Niiiiice.

closet.jpg

And this is the super-killer closet with built-in super-killerness. I don’t need a bureau in my bedroom, I can fit all of my clothing items in this puppy. There’s plenty more I could show you in the apartment, like the millions of closets I’ll never use or the water heaters, but I figure you get the idea.

Bad Blogger Jessica, Batman Begins, and Pigeons.

January 18th, 2008

I know it’s been eons since I wrote anything, but there are a few reasons for that. One, nothing that interesting has happened recently, if you don’t count the fact that my bathroom redo-ers had to submit draftings to the City of White Plains and they may not approve my bathroom redo for a month or two, which SUCKS. Two, I’ve been working a freelance job in Manhattan at a big ad agency and I don’t get home until 8:30. Then I snork down some food, watch something on TV for fifteen minutes and fall asleep on the couch. Good times, good times. So, between the nothing-of-interest-to-share and the tired-when-I-get-home, I’ve been neglecting the ole bloggybloo. I promised pictures of my new apartment and I shall deliver. I also have some purses that I painted that I will take pictures of as well and then, THEN my friends, there will be cool things to look at.
At work when there is nothing to do I watch illegally uploaded films hosted in China. They’re not very good quality and they have Chinese subtitles at the bottom, but whatever, they’re free and I’m trying to keep myself occupied during the lulls. I’m very excited to see the new Batman movie with Heath Ledger as The Joker (he looks cah-RAZEE in the preview), so I watched the Batman movie from 2005, Batman Begins. Umm, did anyone else think that it was kinda not so good? Like stilted acting and bad plot and whatnot? If you have the opportunity to see it, go ahead and pass. It’s… well, “bad” is a strong term. It’s just not very good. Let’s all pray Crazy Joker Heath will be better. Here’s the preview for the new Batman movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk1Tz5bumhw

See? Cah-RAZEE.

I’m also reading a book called Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird. I like books about things. I’ve read:
Salt: A World History
The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadaver
A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis
Jewels: A Secret History
The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

So right now, I’m reading about pigeons. I’ve learned a great deal about pigeons. I now consider myself very knowledgable on the rock dove. One thing that amuses and horrifies me is how, predictably, people decided to take genetics into their own hands and through selective breeding, made some of the weirdest-looking pigeons ever. For example, the fantail. The fantail is a nice bird, except that its chest is so big it can barely see over it. Eating has got to be a problem. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLMaCZ6IlgA&feature=related

Yeah. That’s the Pekinese of the pigeon world. Not good, people. Also, there’s a pigeon out there called a parlor roller. It rolls. Backwards. On the ground. No one knows why. Some people think it’s pigeon OCD. People get together and race their parlor rollers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1gXvYTu0f0

I don’t get it either. Pigeons is a very raw book, because people are very mean to pigeons and it addresses all of that. But if you’re interested in learning about them, I recommend it.

I’m “hep” and “with the times”. Oh yes.

January 8th, 2008

I like to let technology do its thing, and after ten or so years I decide whether to get on the bandwagon. (Examples: I got a cell phone two years ago. I used a typewriter to type my papers all through high school (1991 – 1994). I started this blog in 2006. You get the idea.) Recently I discovered there is a terrific comedy duo called Flight of the Conchords. Then I found out they have a show on HBO and they’re actually quite popular and I am once again totally out of touch. Anyway, perhaps there are others of you out there that are also in the dark about them and I would like to enlighten you. Here’s some Wikipedia info:

Billing themselves as “Formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”, (having been bumped by a tribute band of themselves, Like of the Conchords) the group uses a combination of witty banter, characterisation and acoustic guitars to work the audience. The duo’s comedy and music became first the basis of a BBC radio series and then an American television series, which premiered in 2007, also called Flight of the Conchords.

I think they’re nifty. Here are some videos from YouTube I found of some of their more rockin’ tunes. Some of them are a bit risque, so if you have wee tots in the room and you don’t feel like explaining things to them, I recommend waiting until they’re off playing something on their Nintendo DS before you watch these.

Business Time

Frodo, Don’t Wear the Ring

If You’re Into It

Foux Da Fa Fa

and my personal favorite:

Rhymenoceros and Hiphipapotamus

New Year’s at the Big Apple Circus.

January 2nd, 2008

I rang in 2008 at the Big Apple Circus in Lincoln Center. It was super-duper-awesome, one of the best new year’s ever. I highly, highly recommend it. And it’s not just for kids. There were college kids and many many middle-aged people just whooping it up. Now join me on my travels back to last night.

christmas-tree.jpg

This is the Christmas tree in Lincoln Center. It’s next to the fountain and it’s very pretty, but I think I liked it better when it was covered with large musical instrument ornaments instead of LED stars. Musical instruments are more Lincoln-Center-y. But still very beautiful.

celebrate.jpg

This is the sign that greets you as you come into the circus. It’s up because this is the 30th anniversary of the Big Apple Circus, but I pretended it was because of New Year’s.

chair1.jpg

This was the only stunt I have really great pictures of. There’s a ladder on the left. Two men are on top of the ladder. In front of them is a teeter-totter. On the left is a man holding a woman on stilts who is holding a chair on a pole. The idea is that a man stands on the end of the teeter-totter, the two guys jump off the ladder, the guy FLIES through the air and lands butt-down on the chair. It’s insane and totally fabulous.

chair2.jpg

There he is flying… ohmygodohmygod…

chair3.jpg

… and he made it. The whole audience went nuts. We were screaming and stomping our feet.

friends.jpg

Then the show ended at 11:45 (the circus started at 9:30 to facilitate ending near midnight) and they handed out headbands and red noses and noisemakers and champagne glasses. From right to left: my friends Collie, Frog, Feena and me. Oh, and don’t think it was just women sportin’ all this finery. Oh no.

cricket.jpg

Yep. That’s Cricket. Doesn’t he look smashing?

waiting.jpg

Then you make your way down to the ring and move around anxiously waiting for the countdown…

happy-new-year.jpg

Happy New Year! Streamers and confetti went everywhere and the band started playing and everyone started dancing in the ring. There were couples slow-dancing together and people just boogying in place. Someone started a conga line. It was such a good vibe.

dancing.jpg

That rather happy fellow you see there started the conga line. He was a jocular fellow. I think if the circus had lampshades, he would have been wearing one on his head.

rednoses.jpg

uws.jpg

Okay, all these Upper West Side people just stood around the edges watching. I think they thought they were too cool to get jiggy with the commoners and I just wanted to yell at them, “You’re wearing clown noses on your ears! That lady has the biggest taffeta full-frontal wedgie I’ve ever seen! Your dignity left hours ago! Just dance already!” My favorite is the guy in the top picture on the left pondering something, like he’s Jane Goodall and we’re gorillas. “They seem to be celebrating something important in their group. If only they could talk so I could figure out what this all means. My research will have to continue until I have a better idea.”

Then we left and everyone went their separate ways home. Cricket and I took Metro-North and luckily I got through the whole evening without seeing anyone throw up, so it was a success all around. If next year you have nothing planned for New Year’s, may I recommend the Big Apple Circus. A good time was had by all.

fountain.jpg

Also, Feena climbed up on the fountain and I was able to snap this photo before the guards got to us. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year!

December 31st, 2007

I hope everyone has a lovely and safe New Year’s Eve. I’m going out to dinner with a bunch of friends and then we are going to ring in the new year at the Big Apple Circus, which should be fun and cool. I’ll have pictures. In the meantime, here’s a drawing I made that is going on plates. They are two forest creatures confined in a square. I love them.

creatures.jpg