spackleshot

a gem of a conversation

2011-12-06T10:36:00.001-05:00

pete: you can use some rusty washers from my personal stash...

boss: you have a stash of rusty washers?!

pete: of course. when i'm out walking i just can't help myself from picking them up off the ground when i see them.

boss: you've got problems.

me: ...and you're one to talk, mr. dead dog!

boss: so i own a couple of dead dogs....so what?

festive ramblings

2011-12-01T09:24:00.001-05:00

if you know me you know that i'm loopy for holidays. when i was a kid, despite not having a christmas tree in the house (and I promise that will be the only ex-jovie reference in this post!), come december 1st, i would wage my own subversive holiday by switching to red pen in my journal for the duration of the month.

it's that daily spirit, that anticipation of something (and yes, i know, something so arbitrary and meaningless, considering i am not religious and also considering i haven't the budget for lavishing gifts on people) that warms my heart throughout december. it's walking through the red and white striped tents of the christmas fair at union square on my way to class from the subway (i'm speaking of a few years past on that one), it's buying hot apple cider instead of coffee, it's trekking out to far-flung brooklyn neighborhoods that go crazy with lights--and for the past seven or eight years it's been hearing the holiday music and the sound of a quick electric saw when one of my neighbors bought a christmas tree off the sidewalk opposite my apartment.

for all of those years i have been charmed and appreciative of the toothless french canadians who come with their truckloads of trees and strand of lights and camp out in their little security outhouse. i buy a charlie brown tree from them early on and always cross the street on my way out of the house to walk through the smell of christmas. that little stand has been a steady, underlying source of my christmas cheer. when christmas is close and it gets really really cold, i bring them loaves of pumpkin bread and gingerbread still steaming from the oven.

i feel giddy with anticipation on the morning after thanksgiving when their 2x4 tree pens appear, ready to receive the trees. and so it was last friday night that i felt concern when the pens weren't there by bedtime. jade comforted my anxiety--or attempted to--by insisting they never came that early. and i got crazy righteous and indignant, counting on my fingers the years that i have heralded their prompt post thanksgiving day arrival.

and here it is, december 1st, and still no toothless french canadians. still no trees! jade, with the concern and discomfort of a parent watching their child lose, inquired at the local bodega (that's deli for non-new yorkers), whose sidewalk the trees customarily grace. dispute with the landlord, was the report.

my holiday spirit crushed over $100 in unpaid electrical bills and a mess of stray pine needles?! say it ain't so! but even more sadly, i think the economy plays a bigger roll in the decision not to return. i noticed considerably fewer cuts on the electric saw in the past couple of years. a christmas tree is a luxury item that's pretty easy to trim from your overextended budget.

and yes, i'm speaking frivolously here, i recognize that. there are a lot more important things to be concerned about even in relation to this story than my childish desire for festivity. but we think about those things all the time. for now, i'm taking my distraction in a plaid santa mug full of trader joe's gingerbread coffee blend. welcome december!

don't i feel like a heel.

2011-11-20T08:52:00.001-05:00

i was joking yesterday when i told the tattoo artists at the shop that i was probably high from breathing primer all day. kind of.
but apparently i lost more brain cells than i realized. see i spent the day as i have the last many, coordinating the renovation of a new tattoo shop. it's wildly exciting and all, and i've been happy to log extra hours watching this space which had formerly been brutalized by bad color choices transform into ours.

yet all day i felt vaguely that i was forgetting something. i chocked it up to the overwhelming list of things to be done and proceeded to pinch my finger in the door on the way out.

any plans tonight? my friend who'd hung new sheetrock asked.
oh no, just this.

and after i finally closed the roll-down gate and looked back at our progress, feeling a great sense of satisfaction, i dropped some artwork off at the studio, swung by my friend's place to give hugs to counteract her blues, wandered aimlessly into target (yes, my wild 11pm on a saturday night outing to target), then got hit on by the guy in a truck on atlantic avenue making me the best falafel i've ever had.

while ALL THE WHILE, friends who i really care about were toasting their birthdays! it started at 6:30 while i was still huffing primer fumes, with ben, who usually receives a loaf of fresh-from-the-oven pumpkin bread from me (i even bought the pumpkin earlier in the morning!). then continued at 8:30, probably not too long before i closed up the construction site for the night, with dear barbara, who i haven't seen in god knows how long. damnit!!

and the only way i realized my mistake was to see barbara this morning on facebook. here is what prompted my 'oh shit' moment:

back to the shop today. if you are my friend and i've committed to some kind of plans, clearly my leftover brain cells need a reminder!

12 april 2009 easter sunday: keith

2011-11-14T08:23:00.001-05:00

11 april 2009: heather loop

2011-11-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

10 april 2009: abi

2011-11-08T23:28:00.001-05:00

click to enlarge.

two years later and i'm still posting '98 pictures of 98 people'. it's interesting what distance from a project will do. i'm startled to look back on it now and realize how unfinished i was when finals came around. so many of the images, like this one, never got text. in my memory it was only a few, but now it's showing to be quite a substantial chunk. i vowed i'd come right back to those neglected "few", but now it's just how they are. maybe a welcome breath in a long rattling story. some of the text was successful, some just long winded.

you miss spackleshot? how about some ranting?!

2011-11-04T10:30:00.000-04:00

i miss blogging. i miss the pre-facebook world when i read people's blogs and they read mine. i'm not saying it was better. i think it's terrific that everyone participates in the micro-blogging of facebbook. i just miss it.

so i resist the urge to post the following rant to facebook and instead will post it here (this post will automatically post there anyway--not than anyone even clicks away from facebook to read a blogpost anymore...). even though it is absolutely as exhibitionistly public as can be, somehow it seems more...privately mine.

so here i wind up.

dear man in line behind me at the bodega,

can you please explain to me what exactly you hope to accomplish by arguing with me "last word in" style that chicken stock tastes better than vegetable stock? are you really all that concerned that i'm missing some nuanced flavor difference? did i even ask you? did i, a voluntary vegetarian of 23 years, seem like i was wavering and you thought you'd put your two cents in to help me with this tough decision?

this is a really stupid thing to rant about. it just gets so exhausting to talk about it EVERY DAY.

and while i've got the petty gloves on, let me address another daily conundrum that seems to be of utmost importance in these trivial, nothing-to-talk-about times. if i didn't have lady parts, would you feel the need to ask me WHY i buzz my hair? think of how ludicrous it would seem if a man had to answer that question 10 times a day, or if a woman had to explain her bob or ponytail...

and by the way, man in line behind me at the bodega--i double dog dare you to make a butternut squash soup that tastes better than mine.

like dominos they fall...

2011-09-19T09:53:00.000-04:00

it is true that i have finally mostly transitioned, though kicking and screaming, into the digital realm of photography in my general practice. it is true that my entire darkroom set up currently haunts, in boxes, every spec of storage space available in my small brooklyn apartment. that is not to say that i don't fantasize about letting it breathe again in some mythical blacked out barn on some imaginary property in the country i'll have when i win the lottery. but for now, yes, i acknowledge that digital has taken me over.

i know it's the way the world of photography has gone, but i enjoy partially blaming some of it on the New School. for two years leading up to my enrollment at said university, i flipped through the course guide and circled countless darkroom classes i planned to take. although i expressed these intentions in my application, i embarked upon my first semester clueless to the fact that the darkroom where these fabled classes would occur had been torn down. when i finally became hip to this change, i was told that all of the equipment from the new school darkroom had been donated to the parsons darkroom, where i would be allowed to take classes. but when parsons figured out ways to get around that promise i was funneled to the Educational Alliance, an incredible community force whose art school boasted alumnus such as Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko. it was at the Educational Alliance, not the New School as I'd imagined, where i found a home in a darkroom.

now the Art School at the Educational Alliance faces a similarly vague and sneaky fate at the hands of a building renovation.

To read a very thorough explanatory article by the Lo-Down: click here

To Sign a petition of support: click here

My petition comment below:
I came to the Educational Alliance in 2005 when the New School University replaced its historic (built during Berenice Abbott's reign as instructor) darkroom with a wide hallway. The betrayal I felt by the mindless demolition of the very reason I enrolled at the New School has not faded in the passing years. I was lucky at that time, however, to be welcomed by The Educational Alliance to finish my current semester at their lovely darkroom. I had such a great experience that I continued for several semesters at the Educational Alliance, despite continuing my full course-load at the New School. Michael Macioce was one of the finest and most inspiring instructors I have had the honor to learn from. It makes me very sad to contemplate the thought of the endangering of another historic and important art program due to thoughtless plans for renovation.

and finally, me standing proudly by my work displayed at credit suisse, an opportunity brought to me by the educational alliance--not the new school.

quote of the day: i should be able to decipher this by now...

2011-08-03T11:16:00.006-04:00

me: what's the make and model of your boat?

boss: it's a pissin commanda

me: pissin? Like P-I-S-S-I-N?

boss: nah...that's the accent. P-E-A-R-S-O-N C-O-M-M-A-N-D-E-R

me: ah...boston.

when i repeat his words, questions or instructions to people i never know when they are going to look at me like i'm speaking gibberish, as i don't quite have the massachusetts scallywag swagger down pat....

gettin' gone!

2011-07-20T09:13:00.003-04:00

in 24 hours jade and i will depart this sweaty state of summer insanity and head for the glorious and mild mountains of colorardo. actually, the mountains are quite dramatic, but the weather, oh so lovely and mild.

colorardo is one of those trigger happy places for me. it's so stunningly beautiful that i can't stop taking photo after photo, never satisfied with my inability to do its stunning landscapes any justice. maybe if i were a nature photographer....

but having toted my camera around and shot thousands of photos last year, as seen here and here and here and here and here and jeez, now, a newly processed set here, i'm still bringing my camera, but in the interest of not being even more redundant, i'm going to TRY to restrain myself. maybe use the point and shoot a little more and relax.

and relax is the key word. no phone, no computer, no work. nothing but wilderness and campfires and myriads of really nice townsends running around and veggie burgers on the grill. yes, for those of you who wonder what a vegetarian does on a week long fishing trip, i turn you over to the wise words of my friend ben, who on a soho street corner last weekend declared to me, "I've found that fishing is just a good excuse to spend time on a beautiful river..."

09 april 2009 jack z.

2011-07-18T14:29:00.004-04:00

i love the unabashed insanity of children. that fun insanity that's really just a lack of inhibition that gets regrettably, eventually replaced by the true adult insanity that is obsession with what others think of us and our actions.

jack belongs to the zinsser dynasty. they are friends. talented, awesome people. those qualities are not dependent on each other, rather two separate and incredible things about them that i love. i am a jill of all trades for them, doing this and that ranging, from assistant teaching to plant watering to art photographing to dressing up like a gypsy and conducting candlelit rooftop tarot readings for giggling but strikingly career-focused eleven-year olds.

when it was little brother jack's turn, he looked into my eyes with all of the grave seriousness such a subject deserved and asked, "will i make it to the major leagues?".

i shot jack in the same school hallway where i shot his father, john, 2 months earlier. see that session by clicking here: ah, may as well make it a two-fer, since i didn't include the actual scan with typed print...

as usual, these are so much lovelier when you click on them to enlarge...

08 april 2009 maria (+diana)

2011-07-11T09:01:00.000-04:00

vegetables growing in the sky, part 2

2011-07-09T10:35:00.005-04:00

early may vs. early june

some time ago i showed you guys a photo of our modest fire escape garden. much of this garden was planted from seeds. this is something i'd never done, being that i possess the blackest thumb of all. i therefore had no faith that things could sprout from the ground under my care.

so let's credit jade. below, some mysterious kind of lavendar (from seed!) and a cutting of a maple tree. those top leaves--brand spankin' new life!

twin teardrop tomatoes! get your mind outta the gutter....

cucumber blossoms wrapping their tendrils around the metal of the fire escape.

and the dill, admittedly, not the happiest.

you say insect, i say magic little beast

2011-07-03T11:20:00.009-04:00

last week i met up with my sister and nephew in washington dc. though (and i knock on wood when i say this), i feel that new york city has been relatively kind to us this summer, my fair sister, accustomed to the freakishly mild weather in Northern California (I really have come to understand how unusually nice it is there compared to the rest of the country...), was drowning in the relative heat and humidity.

always the pollyanna, i periodically pointed out the beautiful side of the ugly east coast summer. i see these as little rewards for putting up with it. like leaving the house knowing you'll return after midnight, in a tank top, with no sweater. like an incredible, awe-for-nature-inducing thunder and lightning storm just went you think you'll simultaneously melt into a gelatinous puddle and spontaneously combust.

and then there are the fireflies. i understand that they are just insects. i understand that they light up to find their mates. yet none of this understanding changes the fact that they are 100% undeniably pure MAGIC. i remember the first one i saw. it was the 4th of july of 1997, my first summer on the east coast. of course i knew about fireflies, but they resided in that category of my brain labeled "exisiting only in the realm of books, television and movies". You know, mac n cheese and pizza behind the lunch line at school. That doesn't really happen except in sitcoms, does it? or halloween parties where every single person shows up in perfect and elaborate get-ups that could sell for $300 at a costume shop.

but there i was, sitting on the porch, and there came floating through lynn's yard, one of those mythical fairies, lighting up like a beacon. I squealed. I screamed. Suddenly they were everywhere. a veritable freakin' fairy garden. like maxfield parish must be lurking behind a bush around the corner. they may as well have been little unicorn/pegauses (pegasi?) flapping purple wings around.

and thus, i don't remember the fireworks. just the fairies.

Considering abbie is my sister and not only shares my exact dna, but also my environmental upbringing, i counted on her to have the exact same reaction. and how pleasing it was.

we toured the national monuments at sunset which led into twilight. as we walked away from lincoln's steps, past the expansive mall and into the pathways of trees and bushes, I knew they'd be there. i stopped abbie and put my hand on her shoulder to impart a great sense of drama. stay still and just LOOK over there! i whispered. and soon enough the squealing came. dozens of little fairies thanking us for putting up with the heat and humidity. our little consolation prizes.

our friendly tourguide, who'd been here for 30 years shook his head, laughing. he said, possibly to the bushes, possibly to the serious statue of lincoln, "....and these are grown women!"

oh! and i forgot to mention the glorious and spellbinding cicadas....

much ado about a tree

2011-06-07T10:56:00.017-04:00

you can go ahead and thank me for not titling this post 'a tree grows in brooklyn'. there. it had to be said.

so say what you will about bloomberg being evil, he has steadily garnered my respect over the years by doing things that affect me personally, positively. he took the smoke out of bars. he campaigned for gay marriage. and he's got this million tree planting program that is tree by tree, beautifying new york city.

in this program, even lowly tenants like little ol' me can request a tree planted in front of their building. which is exactly what i did back in september of 2008.

okay, so maybe change comes really damn slowly, and maybe i lost a little bit of faith that anyone from the million tree program ever cared about little ol' me. imagine my excitement when, 2 and a half years later, bloomberg's truck came to call on, you got it, little ol' me.

honorable indeed!

...and dropped this little leaf linden on my front door step just like santa came in june. (our little leaf linden, pictured here with our friendly neighborhood 'vodka zombies'. more on them in a later post, that is, if you all haven't given up on me and my never posting habits of late).

little tree, meet 64 diamond street. your happy new home.

it was an awesomely streamlined process which jade and i watched glued to the window, occasionally running down to the front door to gawk. after the truck of trees delivered our little leaf linden, a man came by and painted multicolored warnings on the surrounding sidewalk, pointing out cable, gas and electric lines. then a big tractor came to dig up the sidewalk.

(are you sensing how this whole process turned me quickly into an eight-year-old?)

the tractor operator rocked an amzing cap covered with a rainbow of pot leaves. his deft hands controlling the dinosaur jaw of the backhoe (?) reminded me of kamaji, the boiler man from spirited away.

jade, glued to the window.

start a new life! plant a tree!!

then these dudes came with the dirt truck and pushed a bunch of dirt out of a secret flap, prompting jade to declare he'd found his dream job: to ride around new york city every day atop big piles of dirt.

and just like that, our new little guardian, and me, a smug as a cat who swallowed a mouse. (isn't there a phrase that goes something like that?) feeling personally responsible for bringing this little life to our little brooklyn block.

07 april 2009: petersen

2011-05-12T09:19:00.000-04:00

petersen playing the drums is as much, if not more, of a visual experience as it is an audio experience.

p.s. if you don't click on the photo to see it enlarged, you're not really seeing it...

monday, 06 april 2009: ann scobie

2011-05-11T08:55:00.003-04:00

be a dear and click on the image to enlarge!

ah. when i see this image i wring my hands. i wring my hands because this picture was taken the last time i saw ann and that's too long ago and there is no reason. even when we didn't see each other often, we still sent birthday cards. but even that has trickled off and i just wring my hands at the way life sometimes drifts people apart.

i met ann fourteen years ago on a catering job in philadelphia. we'd been bused down there like cattle and stood in line with water pitchers in a sweltering tent, waiting to pour drinks for rich people. ann turned what would be a miserable situation into a standup routine, keeping all of us laughing and smiling. she continued to salvage many tough work situations, leaving bananas and sweet notes on my desk at the us open when she knew i was pulling all-nighters, sharing support hose secrets with me--always reminding me to take care of myself rather than get too swallowed up in the heartless corporate work machine that tried to chew us up and spit out zombies.

ann went on to become a very successful voice over artist, pictured here, through the glass window of her in-home recording booth.

people bristle over the apparent saccharinity of this scene. i wring my hands over that too, as this moment was a fleeting one, a wave hello to her boyfriend, who had just walked in the door and passed behind me.

yet even that misconception is okay. perhaps the saccharinity works. what a strange world we live in, ann, the voice of the martha stewart show and the oxygen network. that soothing or authoritative voice that transitions you from show to commercial, commercial to show, coming out of a 10 square foot soundproofed box within an apartment on the upper west side of manhattan.

they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes, perhaps the wrong ones come through. photographers are generally terrible at editing their own images because they become too emotionally attached to each one. this is very true about me. i stubbornly chose this one for the series. think what you will.

fire escape sky garden, take four!

2011-05-08T17:47:00.003-04:00

mother's day seems like a good day for planting. i was about to qualify that statement, but i think you're probably smart enough to figure it out. let's see how we do this year?

05 april 2009: kevin lips

2011-05-06T09:10:00.002-04:00

click on image to enlarge
one of my favorite portraits

saturday, 04 april 2009 t-bone

2011-05-04T11:35:00.005-04:00

click on image to enlarge

sometimes there are so many words that there are actually none good enough to choose. therefore the margins remained blank. i think this was tbone's first show as 'hellbent hooker'. for a first show, the divey greenpoint bar was packed full. fresh from cuba, jade and i were still fuzzy, starry eyed and drinking cubalibres. hellbent hooker went on to thrill the crowd and possibly horrify the queens museum of art with their opener to 'those about to die salute you'

HELLBENT HOOKER - Long Black Train from Ben Chace on Vimeo.

03 april 2009: allison

2011-04-26T08:25:00.004-04:00

my obligitory reminder: click on the photo to see it bigger. these are scanned prints that i ran through my old typewriter. viewing the text larger is rewarding!

for those of you just tuning in: i started posting this series of photographs to my blog in 2009, while i was still shooting it. the idea was to photograph a different person every day. this project spanned three months of lugging my big camera with me everywhere i went and obsessing over who would be my next subject. i intended it to function primarily as an exercise in constant shooting, in breaking down my personal taboo of asking people to be photographed, and for exploring spontaneous portraiture. I also hoped it would function, secondarily, as a self-portrait. As I've lagged sometimes months between sharing them here, suddenly, two years has elapsed. this time provides the distance to see that secondary function emerge at the forefront. when i flip through this series i see a time capsule.

i shot this portrait, along with a slew of others to come, at a bar in williamsburg called iona. i spent a lot of time there over the course of a couple of weeks, meeting jade's friends and waiting out an awkward relationship transition at home. i didn't know allison at all. i knew her so little that i invented the words to type on her photo. i had no idea she'd become my neighbor, that's she'd sell me girl scout cookies and offer to deliver them in improvised uniform, that we would cook together and vent our troubles at my kitchen table.

to see more of this series, click here.

01 april 2009: miss sarah brown

2011-04-22T07:43:00.006-04:00

there are certain moments when you are struck by love. especially when you are just falling into said deep feeling, these moments are poignant realizations of admiration. usually they stem from small gestures that signify something greater, something important to you. maybe it's something you've knowingly searched for. maybe it's something you never knew you wanted until that moment. whatever the trigger, for me, these moments slow the pace of the world and heighten all senses.

behold, a moment at freddy's back room, roughly two years ago. this place no longer exists, having been demolished to make way for luxury condos or shopping centers or some such nonsense that none of us really have the funds to support.

sarah brown used to host a reading series there, monthly. it was possibly the best activity in all of new york (this statement biased by my own interests of course). rather than read from well written books or highly praised poetry, the readers would read from the ratty pages of their own teenage diaries. requirement: what you read must be so horrifyingly embarrassing as to make you physically cringe. hence, the title of the event. CRINGE. i cannot express in words what hilarious fun this was to watch. The comedy came from empathy, from having been there. and oh, was i there. i have 4 boxes full of faux paint-splattered, hello kitty, puffy rainbows, rhinestone-studded, behind lock-(albeit pickable by bobby pin) and-tiny-keyed tomes of cringe-worthy words to attest to this. and finally, i had something to do with them.

over the course of roughly a year, i laughed so hard i found it necessary to smack my fist on the table. on a few occasions i downed a pint of grapefruit vodka and soda to fuel the courage to stand behind the mic and cringe myself, reading ridiculous histrionics over ex-gay boyfriends and jaw-droppingly heinous 'poetry' about affairs with chefs. really bad bad stuff. but getting behind that mic and hearing others slapping the table and roaring with laughter easily constituted a year's worth of therapy. we've all been there, and we can all laugh about it together.

when sarah compiled entries from readers from freddy's into a book (Cringe: Teenage Diaries, Journals and Abandoned Rock Operas) she included a few of my 'gems' in the body of the book and a whole lot of anonymous excerpts and miscellaneous scrawlings and samples collaged into the interim pages. dreams about george michael written on garfield stationary. reports of rick springfield on hello kitty red and white. hearing that these entries had been selected for publication was at once exciting and horrifying, but having experienced the joy of laughing at myself in public (really cathartic!), i decided not to fret.

there was, unfortunately, a wet towel dampening the experience of cringe in my life, and it came in the form of a boyfriend who shall remain nameless, who was less than thrilled with my 'exhibitionist' activities. sharing these entries in public advertised the fact that in my 30+ years, i had actually shared love and lust with someone prior to him. the horror. he refused my invitations to join me even on nights i wasn't reading to see how fun and harmless it all was. he picked huge fights with me upon my return from cringe nights and gave me the silent treatment for days. he refused to accompany me to the publication party of the book and not surprisingly, awaited my return from said really fun and awesome event where i met so many great people and felt so proud to be a part of, with a fight. cringe became a bittersweet night, and so, i started to go in secret, just to avoid the fights, ridiculously sneaking around as though i was having an illicit affair or sleeping with prostitutes.

clearly this was not the man for me.

so let's return from my bitter rant (sorry!), to the moment you see pictured above. i've just fallen head over heels in love with jade townsend. freddy's backroom is so packed for cringe that we sit on the floor behind the readers, holding hands. as sarah introduces the next reader, i look at jade. he is laughing. he is there with me. and i'm so much in love.

i do not want what i haven't got

2011-04-11T08:17:00.005-04:00

before

hair.

i've been thinking far too much about it lately. i just can't seem to be happy with any haircut in the past year. this could have something to do with the fact that i refuse to pay for a haircut, but thankfully, i have a fairly buddhist standpoint on the issue of hair. it's not a big deal. it will just grow back. if you mess it up terribly, we'll just buzz it off and start over.

during

so the other day i hit my limit. i've been told i look like a mother, 'too sober', like a skinhead's girlfriend, like a troll. the list goes on and on. so on saturday, after helping jade buzz his unusually shaggy (but still adorable) hair off, i made good on my ultimate back up plan and let him take mine all off.

after

and i have to say, i am happier with it than i can remember feeling about a haircut in a long time! it's likely you won't agree. but don't worry. it won't hurt my feelings.

i wasn't looking!

2011-04-06T16:05:00.003-04:00

labor day. eastern parkway, brooklyn. in the heat of the crowd i caught him staring intently at her shimmering butt, index finger on the disposable camera trigger.

i'm in the middle of epic spring cleaning, alternately sifting through many snapshots that make me feel old as well as hand-made prints that affirm what i always knew: i was never a very compelling black and white photographer, as much as i love the magic of the process and the beauty of the print. however, there are a couple of gems that i was happy to see again. like this one from....egads....how do the years just blend together?!.....2004.

el tercero viaje a la habana, cuba

2011-03-31T15:41:00.010-04:00

i still feel like crap, but well enough to take the soup pot away from my bedside. gross! now none of you will come over for soup again. i didn't use it. it just made me feel more secure having it there. but as i asked jade for it, feeling weak and nauseated, defeated by a stomach bug, i got nervous for a moment that maybe it was some abhorrent behavior practiced in only my family and he would be disgusted by me.

it's really nice to have someone to take care of you when you're sick. the first two days were taken up solely with sleeping, moaning, thinking i was definitely going to die, deciding that if i didn't, then i surely didn't have enough strength to get through the rest of this life, mixed with trips on the half hour to the bathroom for unmentionables.

finally, today i am still bedbound, but well enough to feel stir crazy, bored and whine about the bedsores i must have amassed from three eternal days in bed.

i have a minute to sift through my photos from cuba. yes! i'm back. in 2009 i went to cuba and my head exploded with an overload of visual beauty and intrigue. i shot literally thousands of photos that, by and large, haven't seen the light of day. in 2010 i went to cuba and felt so much guilt that i had not processed those photos, that when the head explosion came, i punished myself by largely ignoring it and shooting a few snapshots on my iphone, which have also not seen the light of day. in 2011 i went to cuba and only took my camera out for a half day. therefore, i have a very manageable handful of photos to share with you. one day we'll catch up with the rest!

overheard while boyfriend wrangled with mousetrap

2011-03-06T09:13:00.004-05:00

doh!
gah!
damn!
how do you.....?!
gah!
this thing!

****quiet*****

oh! i could totally be a fur trapper!

p.s. don't give me grief about the trap. blame the man of the house.

oh, the petty injustices and disappointments of my world.

2011-02-28T09:02:00.004-05:00

fear not, people. i will not use this blog to say anything of importance. that said, let's get down to the most recent crimes against kitty joe. let me set the scene for you.

i'm tired. i had a triumphant opening on friday night (yes, as far as work and exhaustion go, it was my opening too). but many things were put on the back burner in order to meet that deadline. hence, weekend does not equal weekend, and sunday night found me still plugging away to get a proposal out.

it's 9pm and i've eaten one meal. i have at least three hours of work ahead of me. i cave in to the huge craving for a burrito. even though i know i will not be california burrito satisfied and i will feel guilty for spending the money even though i have soup in the fridge, i desperately need a burrito fix. so i go to calexico, the hip newcomer to greenpoint, and i wait a half and hour in the party atmosphere, shouting my order over the music and waiting impatiently. by this time i don't care if it's california good. i'm so excited to get home and tear the inauthentic paper-lined foil from its beautiful body.

when the moment arrives, however, my frenzied mouth is not rewarded with the frijoles negros, avocado and crack sauce the menu promised, but big chunks of gag-inducing beef.

sadness!! disgust!! mutiny!! i must spit the bite out in the sink and run the water on my 20-years-without-meat-offended tongue. and then i must re-wrap the burrito for my carnivorous mate and internally cry for the loss of a dream. to punish the world, because the world really gives a shit about my stupid vegetarian plight, i go to bed without eating dinner. because i'm that pissed off and stupid. oh, the very important trials and tribulations of kitty joe.

Announcing! Duke Riley/ Two Riparian Tales of Undoing/ Opening Reception Friday, February 25th, 6-10pm

2011-02-24T10:39:00.002-05:00

Dear Friends,
This show, put simply, constitutes the fruits of a solid year and half of my labor. For those of you who have wondered what exactly that labor entails, now is your chance to understand. Sometimes by rail, sometimes by helicopter, sometimes by beat up pick up truck, and sometimes, just in front of a laptop, I work with Duke Riley to execute projects. Come celebrate the opening on Friday night, or swing by before it closes on April 9th. Duke's announcement below.

Two Riparian Tales of Undoing
Magnan Metz Gallery
521 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
On View: Saturday, February 26 -- April 9, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, February 25th, 6--9pm
7:30pm: Performance by Lara Allen

Please join me at the opening of my next show, Two Riparian Tales of Undoing, at Magnan Metz on Friday, February 25th from 6-10pm. For this show, I divided the gallery space into two projects that I completed in the past year outside of New York City. Both projects deal with stories of riverfront communities that were destroyed, and address how these events relate to the current global political and economic climate. I've included a broader description of each project below.

Reclaiming the Lost Kingdom of Laird

Petty’s Island is a tiny island situated in the middle of the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden. In 1850, Ralston Laird immigrated from Donegal to Philadelphia. Shortly after his arrival, he set off for Petty’s Island, where he married, had ten children, and declared himself King. The generous king helped several struggling immigrant families to also establish themselves on the island. Over fifty years later, the island was eyed for industrial development. The elderly King was the last to remain when a mysterious fire finally drove him from Petty’s Island.

Today, the island is a fuel storage facility owned by the Venezuelan oil company
In April of 2009, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez offered to donate the island to the state of New Jersey for wildlife conservation. Details regarding the toxic waste cleanup are still being resolved between the two governments and the island remains off-limits to the public.

Using the historical society and the Internet, I tracked down and contacted all of the surviving descendants of the king, reestablished their royal status and minted a set of commemorative plates bearing their royal images. Artifacts from the site of the king’s former palace were also uncovered over the course of several unauthorized visits I made to the island.

Coincidentally, a group who identify themselves as the LKLA also permeated the island and painted a large-scale monument to Ralston Laird—the rightful King of Petty’s Island—atop one of CITGO’s remaining gas storage drums. It can only be viewed from satellite or aircraft, and from that vantage point, interestingly, bears a striking similarity to the Laird Family Royal commemorative plates.

I decided it only fair that Chavez be alerted that this once mighty kingdom is re-staking a claim on his land…

An Invitation to Lubberland

Buried beneath the city of Cleveland is a prehistoric river known as Kingsbury Run. Before it was rerouted underground, itinerant workers made their home along its banks. During the depression of the 1890s, a “tramp census” conducted by John McCook indicated 6% of the population of the United States were itinerant. At that time Cleveland was regarded as a “hobo’s paradise” because of the gracious handouts itinerants would receive, and lenient treatment by the city’s police.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s the itinerant population swelled to 30%, and the Kingsbury Run grew into a sprawling shantytown. However, a series of gruesome murders occurred along the Run, targeting the hobos. As a band-aid solution to stop the serial killings, the police department arrested and displaced the population, burning the neighborhood to the ground.

Today, itinerant cultures both nationally and globally are being marginalized to the brink of extinction. The hobo census, a once a respected barometer for the American economy, is now obsolete.

Motivated by our current economic climate, I traveled the country by freight train, attempting to re-conduct McCook’s census, ultimately returning to Cleveland. By infiltrating the sewer system, I regained access to the forgotten Kingsbury Run. In search of the lost “hobo’s paradise” I followed the Run, beneath the streets of Cleveland, to its headwater.

For more information please contact the gallery at 212-244-2344 or info@magnanmetz.com
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11am-6pm.

romanza..

2011-02-14T09:49:00.006-05:00

that's right. texas shaped waffle in bed.

meanwhile, back on diamond street, the morning doves are probably having their usual morning courtship.

cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater!

2011-02-02T10:08:00.008-05:00

it seems that groundhog day gets a bit more attention since bill murray got hilariously stuck in it in 1993. it was, however, always a big holiday where i grew up because i went to gravenstein school and we were not the ferocious panthers or the eagles that our teams faced off.

we were the groundhogs.

we were groundhogs in kindergarten and we were groundhogs when we graduated from eighth grade. (though sadly, i hear that a more recent class of junior high kids, reacting to that awful time of discomfort in your own pubescent skin, finally caved to the pressure of being the joke of the county school system and possibly to the harry potter craze, and voted to change the mascot to the gravenstein griffin. yeah, i also had to pause to even call to mind what exactly a griffin even is. turns out its a cross between an eagle and a lion. oy). but in the classic good ol' days before that blasted democracy interfered, groundhog day was huge! i mean, how many schools get their own holiday?! and guess what? groundhog day was as innocuous of a holiday that the jehovah's witnesses didn't even seem to have a problem with me celebrating it. brilliant! (though if you ask me, they may want to re-consider that stance. i mean, it sounds a little pagan or hocus-pocus to base a seasonal prediction on an underground animals behavior...) nevertheless, on groundhog day we dressed in our school colors--blue and gold. this tradition ingrained the idea in my little mind that groundhogs, the animals, somehow preferred those colors. but what else could you do to celebrate such a holiday? of course, you could have drawing contests.

so come with me back to second grade. i was decked out in blue nike swoosh sneakers, tall gym socks with a yellow-rimmed blue stripe, blue koo-lats (that's what we called 'capri pants' back then, except they were a little more skirt-like) and gold clickety-clacks in my hair. surely i was wearing a shirt too, but i can't remember which....what do you think i make this shit up?

a school-wide assembly was called to announce the winners of the groundhog drawing contest. i didn't think much about it. the week before, in a fit of shame at my lack of drafting skills, my big-time honesty good-two shoes self had lost out to my already fully developed self-consciousness and artistic inhibition. faced with the assignment to draw a groundhog, i'd finally followed my sister's advice and traced one out of the encylopedia. it looked a bit like this:

except, no offense to rmckay001, even better. cleaner. like an engraving. like the future boss would draw.

i turned it in to save myself from embarrassment, not to compete or win. but c'mon, principal lapinski, does a 2nd grader whose drawing style, even by 6th grade, only progressed to this:

(this, by the way, is a drawing sample from a hilarious family book that i'll share another time)

...suddenly start drawing encyclopedia worth block prints?

i should have been apprehended for cheating. at the very least i should have been glossed over for the prize. instead, and perhaps they were on to something that i never considered til just now, i suffered the even greater shame and humiliation of being awarded 2nd prize (keep in mind this contest spanned K-8), being praised in front of the whole school and photographed with the fake, for the yearbook.

i could barely lift my head.

somehow, this experience didn't instill in me a hatred for groundhog day. i continued to dress in blue and gold. i continued to listen excitedly for the seasonal prediction (though let's be real, by february 2nd, the magnolias have already bloomed in california, the green fields have already burst into gold mustard rhapsody...). but damnit, i'll never cheat again.

and by the way, in case the brooklyn groundhog has any confusion in its mind--it's not looking so good today.

oh, so many things to wonder.

2011-01-30T20:55:00.004-05:00

this image greeting me this morning brought up oh so many questions, foremost being, 'are deer antlers recyclable?'.

runners up: how the hell did deer antlers end up in my recycling can?, was there a deer on diamond street, shot from an apartment window? did one of the bearded hipsters so plentiful in williamsburg decide to wander over and do more than look the part, but take up hunting? does the weekly snow also come with reindeers?! oh, and since we're in greenpoint, was this deer polish?

oh, so many things to wonder.

they say good things come in three, don't they?

2011-01-16T05:44:00.011-05:00

photo by kim and tristan's incredible and multi-talented doula

today my dear friend kim turns 33. so i guess it's an appropriate time to announce belatedly, that holy crap! kim now has 3 babies! which is to say, welcome loretta adeline.

she came at thanksgiving time, which makes her already seven weeks old. and in case you're wondering, yes, it's driving me crazy that i haven't been formally introduced.

big sister ginger

big sister rose, practicing her baby talk. loretta, not impressed.

i suppose this is also an appropriate time to share images from kim's baby shower, which jade and i were lucky enough to swoop into town for a couple of days to attend...

click here to see the full flickr set.

iphone photo of the day

2011-01-13T09:08:00.002-05:00

catching these spontaneous moments was one of my favorite things about owning an iphone. but alas, it seems i'm simply not an adult enough to keep one alive (but hey-i've kept a cat alive for 12 years! knock on wood, i can't be that bad!).

my first iphone seemed to be so tough that after dropping it at least 80 times from my overall chest pocket while bending over at work, to no consequence, i became nonchalant. then one day i didn't even pick it up after dropping it absent-mindedly. instead, i stepped on it. one down.

so after over a year of hand wringing and withdrawl, i bought another one. used.
after three blissful months, it just mysteriously stopped working in the middle of hopping trains to cleveland. now don't laugh. this may sound irresponsible, but understand that this time i was so careful! I had it packed away in my backpack in a plastic ziploc bag and didn't even turn it on! but the genius at the apple store announced it dead on arrival due to water damage, data not even salvageable.

the conclusion to be drawn is that clearly, i'm not meant to have an iphone. so although my work takes me between two studios, and art gallery, a tattoo shop and all up and down the new york and beyond's waterfront, i pack this little green flip phone--a years old cast off hand-me-down from the williamsons. sometimes it just stops charging, but eventually it rallies. these days it's become a conversation piece. it seems there are two kinds of phone people use: the $20 disposable drug dealer phones or the iphone/blackberry/android smartphone. when i pull out my motorola pebl, it is met with laughter and wonder. as though instead of pulling out an ipod on the subway, i've pulled out an 8-track machine.

but i'm not afraid to break it, and hence, it survives.
this, by the way, is how i feel about expensive jewelry. terrified. gimme rhinestones any day and no thanks to diamonds.

being on the cutting edge of the trend, not so fun in this case

2011-01-11T06:21:00.002-05:00

new york city is being overtaken by bedbugs. we all know this. in fact, the entire country seems to be, with 3 cities in ohio ranking in the top 10 for per capita infestations. you can't walk a half a block without having to carefully maneuver around abandoned mattresses speckled with telltale flecks of sleeping victims blood. can't step on the subway without having to see bedbugs in advertisements blown up to the size of your head. bedbugs are the new ever-present monsters of the city now. the new roaches. the new muggers.
everyone knows multiple people who have them. everyone is in fear. but it's now a group problem that is met with empathetic sympathy.

this wasn't the case four years ago when i had one of the worst infestations i've heard of. it was august, and i was wearing long sleeve shirts in an attempt to cover up my nasty devoured arms. bite on the eyelid? just leave the sunglasses on all day! bedbugs were something kept very secret. no one wanted to know you had them. and no one wanted to know you if you had them. oh, and have them i did. the elderly lady who lived downstairs worked as a maid at a 5-star that had to close down five floors for bedbug extermination. it seems the infested carpets and furniture were just too tempting to pass up, and she decided she'd hoard them in our basement. it took over TEN visits from the exterminators, complete decimation of any semblance of normalcy in my apartment and the development of full post-traumatic stress disorder before i learned of this key fact. she's lucky our building didn't turn into a riot mob and come to her in the middle of the night with pitchforks and torches. we probably would have, if we hadn't been so damn tired. in a turn of events baffling and SO unfair, her apartment was one of only two in the building that was not infested. you can read my delirious reports here and here.

but all of this preamble to merely report a silly memory: during our many exhaustive exterminations, i quickly entered the phone number of the extermination company into my phone as 'BEDBUGS'. seemed simple, straightforward. first thing that popped into my head. but sometimes when my phone would ring, sleep deprived and on edge as i was, it would be very startling to look on my cell display and see the words BEDBUGS CALLING. you can run. but you can't hide. they're even calling on the damn phone!

you can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes.

2011-01-08T11:09:00.004-05:00

when my dad was young he pretended to hate elvis. pshaw, he scoffed. what's the big fuss about? later, he admitted to me that he'd just been jealous because the girls were so crazy for elvis. in flipping through my dad's old high school yearbooks, it seems that the girls were pretty crazy for him too, and the style he rocked was most definitely along the king's lines. and i don't mean white rhinestone-studded jumpsuit elvis, but the slick, young greaser, the elvis in blue jeans.

by the time i was a little girl, my dad had gotten over the stigma of liking elvis and no longer hid his full blown admiration of and devotion to the king. Rather, my dad embraced elvis as a hero, as someone who could animate his serious self to dancing in the car, pounding the dashboard as he drove and poking me with a big smile. in this way, i cannot think of elvis without thinking of my dad. fondly.

this morning i walked into pop's popular clothing, looking for some work boots. early saturday morning. bleak january sidewalks covered with a thin layer of treacherous ice and most of the roll down gates still locked down tight. the owner of the disorganized warehouse of a store turned elvis on the stereo and announced "the king would have been 76 years old today!" he looked an awful lot like my dad. and it made me smile.

31 march 2009

2011-01-07T10:31:00.003-05:00

it's been a while since i've posted any of these images from my '98 pictures of 98 people' series. since i'm so busy/uninspired over here, seems like a good time to continuing sharing them.

happy new year hoppin' john!

2011-01-01T12:11:00.000-05:00

and again, i'm eight years old!

2010-12-27T07:47:00.002-05:00

snow! out the kitchen window.

i'm pretty sure i take and post this identical photo here every time we get a big snow. but it just never ceases to awe me. it started snowing yesterday morning when i was out running errands. it didn't stop all day and all night. then the crazy snow thunder and lightning came for extra dramatic effect. really, lightning and snow--a strangely beautiful combination.

snow! out the bedroom window.

fa-la-la-la-la....is that right?

2010-12-24T08:05:00.009-05:00

ornament by the incredible nikki mc ferren

so maybe i'm a thirty-five year old child who gets as excited about christmas as a second-grader hopped up on hot chocolate. so maybe i can't help but make gingerbread today, even though kim and kiyomi are 3000 miles away, just because.

and while this holiday zeal is absolutely sincere, apparently i have my limits.

the most festive thing i've done this christmas time was to stumble into a swingin' country christmas singalong. yes. a swingin' country christmas singalong. new york is great for that. if you do your research, you could find an event as awesomely random as this, 365 days a year. in this case, sarah dragged me out of my working hovel and forced me into the ribbon lined, pews of jalopy--a cafe style performance space in red hook. being early december, i hadn't yet been hit with the holiday spirit stick--or cane, i suppose, in this case. but the sweetback sisters said 'bring it on!' and i was game. i was convinced. it was great.

except it was really hard for me. already i'm someone who hates crowd participation. i am eternally suspicious of the first few rows of any auditorium and really don't want to sit there, lest i be pulled up on stage and hypnotized into making out with an elvis impersonator or have to endure some clever thespian's spontaneous assault. or be asked to wear a burger king crown and slow dance while a boy you have a crush on sings fools rush in. (um, that last one actually happened). no thank you. i even really hate clapping along with a song just because everyone else is doing it. i will sit there with a bad attitude, arms folded, while everyone claps off-beat grinning. i hate it in the style that the grinch hated christmas. yes, like someone who's shoes are too tight.

but a sing-along shouldn't be a problem, right? i mean, they put the words in a booklet and everyone's doing it, not just the front row? and i love christmas, right? this should be totally awesome. but for that very same reason that i overzealously love christmas, it was impossible to feel right. and that is that i was raised under the influence of the jehovah's witnesses. i didn't sing christmas carols at church or at school. i wasn't allowed. in fact, when they sang christmas carols or made pipe cleaner santas or ate snowman cookies, i was escorted out of the classroom and generally given the task of counting the rocks on the elementary school wall. i could still hear the singing, but it was muffled and forbidden. an evil kind of satan thing. and by the way, did you ever notice how you could just scramble the letters of santa to get satan? mmhmm. i didn't think you did.

so being asked to sing "who comes around on a beard that's white" (wait, what's the lyric?), though a delightful thought, feels like looking at a songbook page that says, "shit fuck piss damn". these are words that as an adult, i don't mind saying (sorry, dad!), but nonetheless hold the stigma of trouble. of evil. singing them out loud feels weird. and that didn't change, even after 12 choruses of the 12th day of christmas.

and so it was. swayback sisters and band dressed in festive garb, artificially flocked trees glistening with electricity, jingle bells, and mouthful after mouthful of profanity. it was glorious. and it made me squirm.

my name is kitty joe sainte-marie, and i'm a recovering jehovah's witness.

a wild, high desert hare

2010-12-14T09:34:00.002-05:00

may. 2006. jenilee's truck wheels crunching slowly over desert gravel. around the bend and through the sage brush, this magnificent creature appears. ridiculously enormous ears alive with our sound, eyes bulging.
sometimes, in new york city, it's nice and bizarre to remember that these creatures are right now hopping in the high desert. while snow falls on diamond street and garbage trucks clatter on their way.
and sometimes it's nice to remember that i started this blog simply to share an image here and there. 'shot'. spackleshot. sometimes i don't post for weeks feeling pressure to entertain you, to give you only meaningful words.
so instead. here. have a rabbit.

o pioneers.

2010-11-30T19:27:00.038-05:00

it's tuesday and i'm back in new york city. winter has settled definitively into the space that was occupied last week by an unusually mild autumn. remembering the disgustingly hot summer and how it threatened to kill my love for this city, i don't complain. yet still i yearn to be back upstate, off the grid, in the big country house where jade and i spent thanksgiving week.

the first four days we spent alone, performing basic improvements to the house as a trade for the opportunity to be there, and preparing jade's sculptures for casting. we worked hard and fell into bed tired, but it was lovely. there were fires in the wood stove, three home-cooked meals a day and most importantly a huge expanse of space and quiet. romantic. festive. beautiful.

jade, sculpting.

we sat with our hands in cold buckets of alginate that turned to jello. creepy fun!

the day before thanksgiving, friends began to join us. to help out. to hang out. hardly any of them knew each other, but all became friends through the process. so awesome.

dwain.

nora.

i found myself fascinated to be immersed for an extended period of time in the barren east coast winter landscape. of course i've seen the leaf-less trees of the city for a decade and a half and have traveled outside of the city during wintertime. but i found it a totally foreign feeling to be so surrounded by entire mountainside and valleys of bony trees. that, combined with the novelty of being so far into the country, with the only neighborly interaction in a week being a wave from an orange-clad atv riding hunter from a field away, made me feel like i was in a time warp. an east coast time warp. ah, such are the delusions of a city girl. i felt like a pioneer, or like laura linney playing abagail adams, laboring away on my farm while revolutionary soldiers could have tromped through the hills behind.

david, allison, jade and matt.

and behold. aluminum was heated furiously hot and poured into molds.

xavier.

this was an incredibly laborious process that required knowledge, physical strength, extreme patience and keeping your cool.

sexy.
sexy!

david and matt discovered they were born on the very same day of the very same year.

terrified of all things related to fire, i can't claim to have been directly helpful to this process. i had to give peripheral support via running countless pots of boiling water out to bathe the propane tank, cooking big meals and keeping the fire going in the kitchen for the warming of numb limbs.

but what an incredible process to witness!

and how splendid to see jade's work cast in metal.

i have a bazillion and one more photographs, which i will upload to flickr in the coming week. in the meantime, extreme thanksgiving to dara and alberto: we're ready to move in!

how life really is...

2010-11-29T10:14:00.002-05:00

how often does conversation focus solely on the exact action occurring? in life, not so much, but in video, generally. here, a bizarre yet natural juxtaposition of setting up for a metal pour and gossip about television, death and fetish. a kitchen conversation captured while watching matt and david set up for metal pouring. hot dogs, hot metal, fetish, work and death.

how life really is... from kitty joe ste-marie on Vimeo.

"it's about to get real old new york in here"

2010-11-12T09:11:00.002-05:00

for two years the boss has been predicting the return to the new york of the 70's, the new york of everyone's fears. the gritty, graffitti-covered subway car new york. the pickpocket, everyone down on their luck new york. the romantic, crumbling new york. not the new development new york.
yesterday it felt that way to me as i walked to meet jade at his studio. glancing down a side street, my eye was caught by a flame. and there, just as i had walked into a movie set (which, by the way, is a common occurance in new york and especially brooklyn) men stood huddled around a garbage can, fire leaping upward, warming their hands. but there was no camera crew, no tent of craft services food to walk through, no mega cords and pissy pa's to trip over. just a fire in a can at twilight.

two hours later, as a group of my friends climbed the subway stairs to fourteenth street, a man and a woman screamed at each other, threatening to call the cops and hurling insults. as we waded through the melee, half cringing for fear of catching a stray punch, the screaming woman wrapped her hands around a steel crossbeam that supported a large scaffold. she twisted it mightily as the joint weakened and we scurried more quickly by. she meant business. jade's friend muttered as we chuckled with near fiendish delight, "it's about to get real old new york in here."

ah...maui.

2010-11-02T01:47:00.002-04:00

stole this snapshot from my mom. i'm on such vacation i didn't even bring a camera. i know. how do you not bring a camera when you go to paradise? two reasons: carry-on only, and do you know how much vacation time i spend with my obsessive taking five million photos of every natural feature in sight?
now, back to the sunset.

the secret downside of a good deed: junk.

2010-10-24T16:49:00.005-04:00

is it only my sickness that whenever i help anyone move, i end up coming home with bagfuls of junk? that stuff that guilt prevented to even regift is finally cast off, much to the relief of it's long suffering owner who is finally, through the pain of watching boxes of their belongings turn to mountains, emboldened enough to chuck it. or stuff that truly is great. it's just, you already have too much great stuff of your own.

all in all, after days of helping kathleen pack up her apartment, i was doing pretty well, being given wonderful and useful stuff like canola oil and sugar and taco shells. and then jade came across this monstrosity. apparently someone else does share my sickness.

and no, it's not even mug size. it's one of those weird tall mugs. and as for the extra inch of three dimensionality that the pig jumps from the body of the mug, i shake my head and have nothing to say. jade is mystified at my horror and keeps thrusting it in my face as though expecting me to coo and think it's cute. "it's a baby!"

of course, then i had to go home with three of these plates that my family will recognize as my grandma alice's classic everyday pattern...

i can't help it. i love them so.

just a tease

2010-10-19T08:38:00.004-04:00

so the deal with me is that i have to lay down when i get tattooed. even if it's on my arm, because otherwise i will pass out. or, to be more lady-like, faint. i add the lady-like 'faint' in, to show my mother that despite the addition of a new kick-ass tattoo, i am still totally a lady. um, as much as i ever was....
a tough girl who must endure the not so tough insistance on bringing out the 'bed'.

you're not getting an unveiling yet because my tattoo isn't finished! but here is the boss and me, mugging like it is....
get back to me in a month and there will be more to see and hear...

let the birthday spoilage continue!

2010-10-12T10:44:00.004-04:00

there is a unique and particular joy in sporting a layered mesh skirt that could only be described as stevie nix, that you dug out of a free pile of discarded 'art' in a sandy and abandoned hockey rink, with striped tights and boots, and knowing that tonight is the night that your boss, arguably the best tattoo artist you know of, will leave another mark on your arm.

thirty-five. really?

2010-10-07T22:46:00.002-04:00

back in 1998 i went to vidal sassoon on 5th avenue and signed up to be a hair model. this was a lot less glamorous than it sounds. it didn't involve strolling down any catwalks, but importantly, it did involve getting a free haircut. i was a little bit nervous, but tried to be buddhist about it--lose my attachment to material things. it's just hair, right? it turns out my hairstylist student failed her test. she was so nervous and unsure that she took 3 and a half hours to give me a bob. but i have to say, up to that point, it was the best haircut of my life. even though i had to call in late to work, i strutted out onto fifth avenue shaking my silken bob like it was my personal catwalk.

so if that was the haircut i got when the students failed, what could possibly go wrong? i came back in 1999 for more. i was 23 years old. i was feeling edgy. i said short. really short. i was thinking chunky. raw. punk rock. yeah! but the catwalk delusion was over. when shown the mirror i couldn't even gasp. this haircut was so awfully boxy and boring that i couldn't even get worked up over it.

again, i went straight to work, but instead of oohs and ahs, i got puzzled looks and hesitation. wow. you look.....very.....mature. said the nice people. the men at work, ever the more honest, flat out told me i looked old. in the space of two days, the number 'thirty-five' was mentioned more than five times. two different people told me i looked like a thirty-five year old lesbian.

this haircut seemed to really have a unifying effect over peoples' opinions, as though everyone had discussed the bad haircut of kitty joe before dropping comments. the lesbian part didn't bother me. maybe edgy lesbian would have been cute. but THIRTY-FIVE?! as in 35?! how could a haircut age me a decade and a half? i was horrified, and forced to take drastic measures. well, not pull out the clippers kind of drastic. but the haircut was never seen again, so buried under clips, barrettes and headbands it became. and so i became twelve years old. and for the next five months it took to grow out, i could be heard mumbling around the house, ".....thirty-five!?"

so, um.....
tomorrow.....i'm turning thirty five.
and all i can think about is that haircut. and how old, how ancient, how lifetimes away thirty five seemed. and yes, it was a lifetime ago. and sure, i suppose i do feel a lot older, even in the frightening ways i imagined back then. but some part of me--perhaps denial, perhaps protest--quietly notices, that i sure haven't made much progress toward growing up, striped socks and all. and maybe i'm kind of happy about that.

a little ditty bout boots, tape and love.

2010-10-06T11:34:00.005-04:00

somewhere between rochester and buffalo, the lower sole of my boot detached all the way back to the heel, leaving me limping and tripping over the railyard rocks. this did not provide me with a very smooth or incognito gait for trainhopping.

since our boxcar was detached from the freight in buffalo, we wandered out of the yard and over the freeway to investigate fixes. a roll of duct tape was purchased from the surprisingly inhabited wal mart behind the booming value city.

i was back in business--at least temporarily--and rocked the silver tape shoe all over cleveland.

and once i got home, my handy jade rigged up some glue and clamps, melting my heart. ah, the things that impress me.

if you go to one opening in nyc this year, be it this one.

2010-09-28T08:02:00.005-04:00

Announcing Radical Spirit, a pirate television broadcast, monumental sculpture, and video installation by James Case-Leal built inside the sanctuary of Lutheran Church of the Messiah in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The exhibition will be open to the public September 28 - October 2. The broadcast signal will be receivable by the local public on their television sets on analog channel 17 during these times. Please join us for a performance and opening reception on Tuesday, September 28 from 6 to 9pm.

Lutheran Church of the Messiah - 129 Russell St. Brooklyn, NY 11222

i spent the day volunteering for james case-leal yesterday, helping to install his incredible, 'Radical Spirit' show at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah. this is the church i look out of my kitchen window to see every morning, the church the full moon rises over every month. and because i take a purely heathen and aesthetic pleasure in (most) churches, what better place to see art?

james case-leal is a sweet and talented artist i met in cuba when i was doing this (staging the first st. pat's parade in havana) and that (falling in love). he and his wife maggie also happen to be raising twins in new york city! i take my hat off to them!

so when i heard about james' amazing-sounding show and that he needed help, i came out to volunteer despite being on the upswing of an ass-kicking cold because, do you know how many volunteers i've requested, enticed, begged and bribed with mulberry cocktails during my tenure as CEO of DRI? (that's the boss's new title for me--use your imagination). hundreds. people have ridden in the back of box trucks, threshed reeds, carried ships, bundled chigger-infested plants, painted stripes on zebras, made batches of fake blood, torn down wood paneling to make oars, BAGGED SAND for chrissakes! in short, i owe the world, specifically the art world, some volunteer hours. big time.

and though i will tell you, pews are damn heavy, i had so much fun helping out yesterday because i believe in art and community...and karma. and i would also be telling the truth if i said that tonight's opening and performance, will be the best in new york city, of all of 2010. it's really cool. worth even a trek from the L train in a thunderstorm. and the show is only up for five days, cause, you know, people gotta go to church.

so come on, art-believers, come out to church!

three high mice

2010-09-23T09:26:00.000-04:00

okay, so we may be out of the woods with mercury out of retrograde (hopefully the boss isn't reading this now, because he would grumble, "enough with the mercury in retrograde bullshit, already!!"), but my technological life, nonetheless, remains in shambles. this data missing, that data hiding, this computer running photoshop slowly but not the internet and sometimes no mouse, that borrowed computer having internet but no photoshop etc.

that is a lot of words just to say that all you get right now are more words. so sit back and get ready for storytime! this one is a mystery involving rodents, drugs and well, just that. a normal night in brooklyn? perhaps.

we were sleeping peacefully with the knowledge that we live in a brooklyn apartment unusually free of mice. this is because of prussia the cat. she may be a fourteen year old scardey fluffball who gags when she catches sight of an ant or a fly (no joke--though it is a hilarious sight), but despite her lack of ferocity, her primal cat smell usually does the trick, and not since the week before i dragged her in from the shelter in 1999, when i found the dehydrated and flattened mouse under the stove, has a trace of rodentia been witnessed in the three brooklyn apartments i have called home.

until this strange night.

now, history reveals that i am no light sleeper. i routinely sleep through the drunken polish teenagers brawling then hugging just outside my window, armies of clanking mondo garbage trucks and pounding 80's techno on the other side of my bedroom wall. as a teenager i often slept through my own nocturnal wanderings, once waking up downstairs in front of the washing machine, curled up in a dog bed, jackets pulled over me for warmth, only because my hello kitty alarm clock started beeping. convenient of me to bring it along.

but this night, something very unusual, and very quiet brought me fitfully out of my sleep. it was a strange rustling. that kind of rustling that you've never really heard, yet instinctively absolutely know to be derived from vermin. and then, silence. and back to my heavy sleep i went. in the morning i remembered the incident but dismissed it. we've never even seen evidence of mice even in the kitchen. why in the world would they be in my bedroom?

next night, repeat. but louder. weirder. in fact, way too loud to be mice scurrying as discreetly as they are supposed to scurry. it sounded like a mouse disco was going on behind my desk. by this time, jade was sitting up in bed alongside me, both of us straining our eyes in the never-quite-darkness of the city night. prussia approached the desk chair, on edge, ancient urges calling her to almost action. and there they went--not quick flashes of maybe-mice along the floorboards, but jumping, dancing, weaving mice, playing tightrope on the top edge of my narrow computer monitor, diving down from the framed photographs to my desk.

"it's like they're drunk or high!" jade exclaimed.
and sure enough, a morning investigation revealed a huge pile of catnip that had haphazardly fallen behind the desk, spread here and there, no doubt on the feet of delighted mice.

i cleaned up the drugs, and they never came back.

the stuff boys say #194

2010-09-21T10:31:00.006-04:00

him:
your new underware are SO cool! they have all the best stuff: stripes AND doilies!

me:
it's called lace, baby.

happy birthday to the virgo who finally won my heart

2010-09-13T05:37:00.000-04:00

Duke Riley: An Invitation To Lubberland

2010-09-09T23:03:00.006-04:00

a press release from the boss:

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
On View September 10th, 2010 through January 9th, 2011
8501 Carnegie Avenue Cleveland, OH 44106-2919
(216) 421-8671
Opening: Friday, September 10, 2010 7pm-10pm

HISTORY
Buried beneath the city of Cleveland is a prehistoric river known as Kingsbury Run. Before it was rerouted underground, itinerant workers made their home along its banks. During the depression of the 1890s, a “tramp census” conducted by John McCook indicated 6% of the population of the United States were itinerant. At that time Cleveland was regarded as a “hobos’ paradise” because of the gracious handouts itinerants would receive, and lenient treatment by the city’s police.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s the itinerant population swelled to 30%, and the Kingsbury Run grew into a sprawling shantytown. However, a series of gruesome murders occurred along the Run, targeting the hobos. As a band-aid solution to stop the serial killings, the police department arrested and displaced the population, burning the neighborhood to the ground.

PROJECT
Today, itinerant cultures both nationally and globally are being marginalized to the brink of extinction. The hobo census, a once a respected barometer for the American economy, is now obsolete.

Motivated by our current economic climate, I traveled the country by freight train, attempting to re-conduct McCook’s census, ultimately returning to Cleveland. By infiltrating the sewer system, I regained access to the forgotten Kingsbury Run. In search of the lost “hobos paradise” I followed the Run, beneath the streets of Cleveland, to its headwater.

so i've been in cleveland for two weeks installing this show, doing things like laying bricks, sanding down rusty railroad spikes and fillings projector screen wells with whiskey.

oh, and requisitioning materials.
that's why you haven't heard from me.

the show opens tomorrow and not only is it brilliant in all the ways you'd expect from the boss, but there are also a few photographs of mine in the process room. like the one below:

to see an endless barage of snapshots from a trainhop trip we took in the process of producing this project, click on the sets below. did i mention that i love my job?

cleveland hop: getting there
cleveland hop: there
cleveland hop: getting home

broke down

2010-08-29T01:31:00.000-04:00

excuse my absence...

2010-08-25T07:32:00.002-04:00

desperately busting through a deadline while mercury is haphazardly spinning backwards, with my entire technological world including phone, desktop coputer, laptop, software and harddrives failing me. above: a visual representation of my foray through this adventure.

i am action hero. i mean heroine.

2010-08-19T09:58:00.006-04:00

on occasion i'm reminded that i live not just in a city, but in a backdrop. new york can be very surreal, with all of the scads of people and tourists (sorry to give them a distinction separate from people...but they are their own species) and jumbles of buildings and SO much going on all the time, plus the zero probability that you'll leave the house and not stumble upon a film or television crew, or some ridiculously gaunt model dressed outlandishly inappropriate for the task of say, just walking down the street. after fourteen years of living here, i've grown fairly numb to this reality, however, yesterday my awareness of the vain entity we call new york was supremely heightened.

jade and i decided, spur of the moment, to play hookey and use the last of the free movie passes we've been nursing (thank you, amy!) to see 'inception'. being expert navigators of the subway and city, we should have had enough time to get the the theater comfortably. but that ever pesky--and i challenge anyone who doesn't believe in astrology to dispute the effect--mercury in retrograde slowed the trains to a torturous eye-rolling, finger tapping, forehead pressed against the window, pace.

when the sluggish subway doors finally opened, we wordlessly ran, weaving through the erratic crowd whose content was unusually high in wild card tourists (ug. ground zero!), out the station and up the stairs. on street level i shouted out, "let's pretend we're in BONES"! bones being one of the countless detective shows that jade is obsessed with. accordingly, we ran wildly through the streets and people-choked sidewalks, pissing off countless elderly people, ruining countless snapshots of midwesterners smiling on hallowed ground, hoping to hold off that 'dastardly' mosque, ignored by countless businessmen ground so far into the daily grind they probably did not even notice our fleeting pass, foiling countless traffic cops attempting to herd the mighty crowds at the crosswalks with plastic yellow chains. up the stairs of the subway, through traffic, past the decade of digging around in that gaping hole in the ground, up the pedestrian overpass--no time to stand on the escalator. we were secret agents for sure, desperately hoping the previews would stretch on long enough to counter our tardiness.

only problem was, i'm not quite as physically fit as a brilliantly smart and gorgeous anthropologist slash fbi agent. and jade, despite his football injury, doesn't exactly look and function like a ken doll killing machine fbi agent. in the center of the elevated pedestrian overpass, we huffed and puffed and i somehow managed to yell out, "aren't you glad no one is chasing and trying to kill us?!" i may have been hauling ass, but i would so be dead, and i can bet you our action sequence didn't look nearly as glamorous as the ones we watch on hulu.

finally finding the movie theater and weaving through the empty, superfluous maze of stanchions, paying the extra three dollars for our 'free' tickets (the new york city surcharge!), we thought we had it made, but had forgotten about that very unique and puzzling feature of new york city movie theaters: the average of eight floors one is forced to escalate through in order to reach our always high altitude movies. always single file escalators inevitably stocked with large hipped women who have likely shown up 1/2 hour prior to the start time of their movie rather than 10 minutes after, as in our case, therefore, going nowhere. and more running, running of stairs and pissing off of aforementioned large-hipped ladies when we absolutely MUST get around. we're agents, damnit! stop obstructing justice!

and finally we make it into our almost private 1pm showing of inception and the overbearing movie-strength air conditioning i so often bitch about that forces me to carry a sweater around in 100 degree weather can't blast cold enough. sweat is pouring down our faces in a way most unbecoming to fbi agents, but we grin and high five each other as just as we sit, the screen goes dark and the opening credits begin.
surely bones and what was that dude's name? feel the same way at the end of the episode after they ALWAYS catch their killer.

and if we thought we felt strange on our way into the movies. let me tell you, and if you've seen inception, you'll understand, how strange it was to walk out of that movie at ground zero with the multitudes of towering cranes and half built but ancient megalithic buildings and conspicuous and suspicious people everywhere with no apparent reason for crowding around such a construction site.
bizarre...

baby remember her name. remember. remember.....

2010-08-10T07:00:00.008-04:00

i originally wrote half of this post back in may, on allyson's fifteenth birthday. then, true to form, i lost my notebook. by the time i found it a few weeks ago, i'd weathered my bazillionth harddrive crash that left me without the iphone snapshots i took of allyson working on her incredible project. but now that it's opening, it's high time i share this with you-photos or not!
or how about i swipe one courtesy of Jeff Kan Lee, of the Press Democrat?

okay, i know i'm beating a dead horse here with the incredulity of the relentless march of time. but cut me some slack. my little niece allyson turns fifteen today. do you know what i was doing when i was fifteen?! why, of course, i was doing just what she is: making straight a's and nerding out much to the glee of my teachers.

this shouldn't be so shocking to me though, because in many ways, allyson already is mature beyond where i was at my quinceanera. for example, at fifteen, when people asked me what i wanted to do with my life, i withdrew into depression and turned the volume up on the 'love and rockets'. what's that you say? STILL the same response at 34?! i couldn't hear you over the music...

allyson, on the other hand, only feels uncertain as to if she should go for the harvard law degree before the parsons fashion education. but that uncertainty only lasts a moment before she reasons, "best to get the law degree out of the way FIRST." wise beyond her years? i have a theory about that. as an infant, she seemed already to be on a deadline--her brow always furrowed with concern. i'm pretty certain she had consciousness years before her actual birth. proof that even as a mere egg sitting in my sister's ovaries, she heard everything her mom said to my teenage self: as soon as she could say 'mama' she was furrowing that brow at me, pointing at my nosering and insisting i remove it. "why that there, auntie kitty kat? take that out!!"

i've always known she was a strong-willed, intelligent go getter. if she wants something, even if it depends on the help of someone else, she will do anything she can to make it happen. back when she was ten and starstruck, knowing i worked hi-profile events in new york city, she sent me a mini-sharpie key chain in the mail, to ensure i was ready to harvest autographs when her heroes showed up. and she called me weekly for updates on who i'd served.

but during this past visit she blew my mind. this is how my now fifteen year old niece spends her free time: after the straight a's, the soccer, running track, the girl has solicited donations of last season, samples and seconds from big label clothing companies and has spent hours and hours and weekends and evenings and her summer receiving them, organizing them and finally moving them from a donated storage space to a donated storefront, to give them away to girls in foster care programs getting ready to go back to school. seriously. jaw-dropping determinism and incredible charity from a girl wading through potentially the most narcissistic time of one's life.

during past visits i've taken allyson to the beach to collect seashells, to hike in the redwoods, or to the movies. this time, with four months time to spare before her project opened, she just wanted a ride to her storage unit and some help hanging up and inventorying her latest donations. it was probably my favorite three hours spent with her.

i feel honored to know allyson, let alone call her my niece. i see all of my sister and brother in-law's finest characteristics shining so strong in her. bravo, allyson.

here you can read a couple of real articles about her project:
the press democrat
the winsor times
threads for teens website
threads for teens blog

and of course, i can never resist a chance to remember holding these big neices and nephews in my arms...they may be growing up and taking over the world, but still i'm they're auntie kitty...
little allyson plotting to take over the world.

in the flesh!

2010-08-08T10:20:00.005-04:00

on friday night, genie, known to many as the inadvertent gardener was kind enough to plus one me at a blogher event--monster blogging convention in nyc. i have kept this little blogspot for four years, compelled mostly by having kept journals for twenty-three years prior to that. yet i have never attended a blogher coference.

being someone who exists on the fringes of the blogging community--actually, not even on the fringes, but really quite invisible to the blogging community, this was a total and complete oddity to me.

in addition to the prohibitive expense of the conferences, i've just never been much of a belonger. (isn't that a word, yet?). i've always tried to look on the bright side of my ostracize-inducing upbringing as a jehovah's witness by recognizing that being forced from day one to stand on the outside (no pledge of allegience, no eating of other kids' birthday cupcakes, no making of construction paper santas or valentines), i never struggled with the painful goal of fitting in. hell, i didn't even fit in with the jehovah's witnesses, being a non-believer, wanting to wear combat boots from age eleven, having an agnostic father, and a believer of a mother who extended her worship to boy george (oh, i'm getting in trouble right now) and let--no--encouraged me go to school dressed like him (is there a label for a girl who dresses as a man dressing as a woman?).

so i keep this little blog here without much ceremony. my peeps in california have a way to feel connected to me (shut up, facebook), and i continue some sense of journaling (no matter how unfortunately censored by your complaints and judgments it may be). but it's small. i can't and refuse to twitter or tweet or understand what tumblr is and how it's different from blogging. i don't make money on ads, or hold giveaways from companies desperate to influence my vast readership. i just do my best to keep posting, and delight when one of my handful of commenters joins in with my words.

so the blogher party was such a mixed up experience for me. it was at once business (the nyc hilton catering to us, the keynote speakers were awesome and inspiring), and high school reunion (or what i imagine a high school reunion would feel like), and prom (helium balloons!) and project graduation (take a polaroid with props!). there were activities to entertain us, drinks to loosen us, the popular girls walking around like celebrities--which leads me to the other twilight zone aspect of blogging that i'm still trying to digest.

you read people's daily journals. every now and then you hang out with them in a small group of other bloggers . they feel like old friends because you share in their daily thoughts, but so do thousands of others, so they feel like celebrities too. so when you see them at the conference, you default to that 'i don't want to be a groupie' feeling and avoid them. and you feel like a jerk for that because you like them and would love to say hello. and when one of them recognizes you (not for your fairly inconsequential blogging voice, but for your stripes and polka dots, tattoos and loud stories) you feel so happy, as though they aren't normal people with the capacity to remember human interaction. these basics of the blogging world still mess with my mind.

but then i run into danielle, who rocks my world and actually does feel like a friend, and i marvel that i am spending a very normal friend hang with genie, a woman i'd only met in the flesh for about 2 minutes previously, yet feel is a friend via our online friendship. and we run off with a group of women whom i'd never met, yet share a passion for photography and also happen to post random strings of words on this intenet thing. and we take pictures in times square, as if i haven't lived here for 14 years, and i delight in the fresh eye their excitement at being here brings to me, and all in all, it's pretty damn awesome.

adventures in my own stupidity

2010-08-06T07:36:00.004-04:00

who would be stupid enough to crane their head out a truck window after they themselves had depressed the automatic window-rolling-up button, thereby smashing their face with a pane of glass baring all of the pollution of new york city and the lovely bqe? why, that would be me.

to my defense, there was a big van double parked in such a way that made swinging into the treasured parking space nearly impossible. and a douche in a yellow hummer honking behind me. and it was 1 million, i mean 1 hundred degrees. oh, i heart new york, i heart new york....and summer. i really just love summer!

okay, yeah, so while there is may be no excuse for rolling your face up in a truck window, it sure would have made a hilarious video.

overheard at mc carren park. 10pm sunday

2010-08-02T14:38:00.002-04:00

child one to child two: dag! smell my armpit! i smell GOOD!

alert hollywood--gazpacho is the magic formula

2010-07-27T08:45:00.002-04:00

it's saturday morning. i'm driving the boss's truck over the 59th street bridge. it'll be 105 degrees with the heat index (whatever that means) by afternoon, but for now, with the windows open and the river breeze funneling through the cab, life is good.

the boss slurps really delicious gazpacho from a large, uncovered to-go cup. i change lanes.

a loud noise crinkles up from behind us and after mental checks ruling out the kayaks coming un-roped from the roof (would be MUCH louder), i remember the boss's two-foot square original drawing inked on very thin tracing paper stashed behind my seat. one of those drawings that could possibly sell for six grand. except it's no longer stashed behind my seat, it's floating free in the air, about to crinkle it's way out the open windows to float appropriately, down to the east river.

of course, this all happens in a millisecond, and my hands are still on the steering wheel. fear not, though--the boss's hands are instinctively and immediately grabbing the drawing. the cup of gazpacho is abandoned to the air, to settle pell mell, roly poly, with more surface area than you'd imagine, on my overalls, the seat, my bag, my hands, my face.

the drawing is safe, and the boss has made a breakthrough discovery: "wow! gazpacho really looks like puke!" maybe i shouldn't put that in quotes, cause i can't remember--he might have said 'barf'. definitely not 'vomit', though 'vomitron' would have been quite poetic. whatever the semantics, the outcome was the same--the appearance that i hadn't actually spent my friday night working till midnight then falling into bed, but rather drinking, say, eleven shots of jaegermeister, a few beers and a gutter of vomitron.

and yes, to give the boss credit, there were many apologies, but much more laughter and absolute wonder at the striking visual similarity between spilled gazpacho and spilled guts. we made a note for future video projects, and might just have to work some in for the genius of it all.

oh my god, my keybord i plotting gint me.

2010-07-24T16:11:00.004-04:00

for uite ome time, i've hd technologicl gremlin folloing me round lughing t me. firt my dektop computer crhed nd ouldn't turn bck on. then the freking lptop. it eemed the light ppered t the end of the tunnel hen jde ble to turn my dektop computer bck on. i decided i hould give it ome tlc, nd clen up the dektop, the creen, the keybord. o i diconnected the keybord nd ued the creful computer clening fluid ith the creful computer clening ipe.
it prkle. by the y, tht ord i like hine. grrrrr
but inted of being hppy, no hlf of my key don't ork. even igning in pinful--cut nd pte.
could you undertnd ny of thi?

fffff

unlikely grill buddies

2010-07-22T22:00:00.003-04:00

okay, so i'm in trouble because i've been back from my colorado fishing trip for days and haven't told you all about it or shown you any photos. just trying to play catch up with work and beyond. and then there is the desktop computer where i edit my photos that is frighteningly unwilling to turn on. i hope this coming weekend i can address these issues, if my brain hasn't melted from the 104 degree weather. in the meantime, i did loan jade some snaps i took in colorado for his blog--why don't you step over there and check them out?

okay, i'm back. everybody quit looking.

2010-07-19T09:39:00.000-04:00

gone fishin'

2010-07-09T04:31:00.002-04:00

not to be outdone by my burgeoning blogger sweetheart, except kindof being completely outdone, i offer you this image of me fishing with my uncle and dad, age 8.
the rumors are true. this vegetarian is going fishing. off to colorado to entertain more people who aren't used to how stubborn i am about 'no i actually won't put a worm on a line or even catch fish and throw them back in'.
just looking forward to some slow down time in the mountains and NO HUMIDITY for a week with my baby.
it's 4:36am and i'm blogging. and i'm not drunk. this, folks, is dedication. now try to tell me i'm neglecting you!
ah, but serious apologies, i had ambitious plans of plotting an arsenal of auto posts during my absence, but alas, too hectic to leave town!
adios! (read jade's post linked above for details on our trip!)

oh how i wish....

2010-07-06T06:54:00.003-04:00

kathleen and i, sledding in brooklyn seven months ago.

did anyone mention it's hot here in new york? i don't think anyone mentioned that to me when i said i was moving to new york--of course, i didn't give them much chance--having just gone and bought a one-way ticket two weeks out.

there are things about summer in new york that i've gotten used to--like that strange sensation of leaving the house knowing i'd return after midnight and still not bringing a sweater or jacket. like there being absolutely no option but to wear tank tops and sandals every day. sleeves and socks simply have no place in this insane climate.

but there is simply no getting used to the intensity and duration of this heat and humidity.

ah, what i would give right now to want to wear leg warmers!

money saving tips for starving artists #4: 'plant' a weed garden

2010-06-29T07:18:00.004-04:00

who says gardening isn't an expensive hobby? honey, here in new york, the mere act of walking five blocks could bankrupt you. so what happens when spring comes around and you just don't have the funds to buy any little baby tomato plants or new soil etc? embrace those weeds that start cropping up in last year's tomato planters. they are green and they are alive! there is even a huge element of surprise when they start poking their green shoots up--who knows what they will look like? endless hours of pleasure.

so jade started watering our weed garden. i thought it was cute. but hey, look at these pretty flowers! photo by jade 'the weed whisperer' townsend
i do realize this post could be construed in a completely different, more lucrative way. but being one who gravitates toward poverty, oh and fear of arrest and authority, that's really not the kind of weed garden i'm after...

tips for starving artists #3: DON'T think you're clever when it comes to parking in new york city. you WILL be towed.

2010-06-25T06:31:00.006-04:00

apparently the cops here aren't big on logic and leniency, so perhaps i should have gone with that whole 'shadow of a doubt' rule of thumb. but it was late. i'd worked ten hours AND watched an emotionally exhausting usa world cup game. and do you know how frustrating, ye out of towners, it is to circle the same block 22 times looking for a spot, hoping that some brooklynite might decide to leave the house at 11pm, hence clearing a spot for me and the boss's truck? the answer is very. extremely. hair-pulling-outingly frustrating.

on lap 23 i finally succumbed to the the wild yet very logical seeming temptation of parking at the newly defunct bus stop. of course i know you can't park in a bus stop. $115 ticket and a guaranteed tow. but this particular bus route has recently fallen prey to mta budget cuts, hence the sign on the damn sign that reads: THIS LOCATION IS NO LONGER A BUS STOP. THIS SIGN WILL BE REMOVED SHORTLY. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

so no bus. no reason not to park there, right? totally and perfectly logical. and yet, in this overly competitive parking climate, still the defunct bus stop yielded three gorgeous empty parking spots. i totally knew i was in the right. but why in new york city should i trust that logic and kindness would trump the blind ecstasy of a cop and a tow guy finding a truck in a bus stop?

in short, the damn truck was towed. verified from a good morning text from the boss, the following am. in short, my day was ruined. wouldn't it be a nice idea to place the tow pound at least a couple of miles from a subway stop? i mean, it's pretty difficult in this city to find a location that is MILES from a subway stop. but the fine folks at NYPD managed to find it. i left the house in the sourest mood, eschewing jade's offer of a meal. must punish stupid self! and be cranky! trekked through the blazing heinous sun (no, summer is not really on my good side right now) to the pound. and why, might i ask, does all of new york city have to be completely torn up with massive, big loud machine construction?!

at the tow pound i signed away the rights to my first born child and did a big tap dance that included tears to win the right to pay for and pick up a towed truck that was not registered to me. miraculously, it worked. you better believe i'll be photographing that sign and fighting these fines. but in the meantime, i can't really recommend dipping into the upcoming rent scrapings for such a brilliant endeavor. take heed, poor and creative parkers!

my best impression of boxcar bertha or notes from my business trip to cleveland, part 1

2010-06-20T16:01:00.010-04:00

after a prolonged battle with technology and banging my head against the idiocy of copyright laws (iphoto will only allow you to export videos using music you've downloaded ILlegally--tell me how THAT makes sense), i present to you a less than perfect slide show of photos not set to the right song (though this one is beautiful), and edited choppily. at this point i just have to throw in the towel and post these....oh, and now i see that youtube degrades the quality of the images. grr...will repost elsewhere and send link!

6am friday 11th of june 2010

train stopped in rochester. first we thought we'd get caught. paranoid from yesterday's experience. yesterday we hopped the wrong train and ended up headed back toward new york. it was still gorgeous though. the four of us sat and slept on the back of a grainer car, looking down gorges to rivers below, teetering on bridges you'd think couldn't support these metal beasts. but they do, so what's four more people?

apparently someone at a railroad crossing spotted us and called 911. really? 911? big roll of the eyes to the 'if you see something say something' society we run with. or against, i suppose. and just like that, the new york state police and the ulster county sheriff awaited our arrival at the next crossing and stopped our ride. the anti-cruise.

so we packed up the sleeping bags we'd been huddling under and got out. they let us go, warning us we'd be on CSX's trespass list, and attempted to seem tough. but really they seemed embarrassed to be wasting everyone's time. the sheriff rummaged in his squad car and pulled out a laundry bag to help us pack up. and we were on our way. we walked the "three miles" toward new paltz feeling that classic disgust from all of those passing by in their empty suv's, by walking, by being dirty, by carrying backpacks, we are marked, reviled and feared. it's ridiculous, meaningless and as easy as putting on a costume to assume this role. the world is a bunch of pretense and bullshit.

but right now we are living high. four hours after our little bust, we made it back to square one. the rail workers whom we had dodged and hid from previously pulled us up from hiding on the tracks and hooked us up with our own empty boxcar. better than a room at the ritz carlton. they propped the door open for us, gave us a ride in the back of their work truck through the quiet strands of trains and we climbed straight up off their truck into the waiting car and waved good bye. they loaded us up with water bottles and rail lights. there are incredible people in this world. and then there are those who call 911.

the train is moving full speed now, hence the difficulty with the pencil. rochester rolls by. we see the old kodak building, which is beautiful, because kodak is all i know of rochester.

duke draws on the boxcar door--a full shanty town aflame. it is one of the central images of the cleveland show--the whole purpose of our trip.

sarah rests, brett plays the banjo. he's learning still but the sound is intoxicating. i take pictures. loads of them. they will be repetitive and boring but this moment is so special. which does nothing to encompass it.

last night i peed in a ziploc bag. i would have gone over the edge of the open door but duke and sarah had set up their sleeping bags there, leaving us to marvel at the stars, the hills of nighttime trees glittering with fireflies. the first of the season. fucking magic.

i didn't expect this triumph. the first day was discouraging. we got a pretty late start. it was pouring rain. duke drove us to albany in his truck. duke and sarah up front, brett and i in the back, laying on tires he'd gathered as bumpers for his sailboat--a tarp shielding us from the pouring rain--and johnny law. three hours later and miraculously we weren't drenched.

the first night, which i mentioned, was tough. we had to cross a field of knee high grass. by the end of it we were soaked toes to thighs, with the rain steadily working on catching up on top. at a clearing, i stole into an old caterpillar and changed into dry socks. not smart--because then we had to cross a deep and mucky stream and then bushwhack through some insane jungly forest. at the yard, sunset was on. we hid in the phramites before darting into the yard gravel, which are little boulders. ground unstable.

we climbed up and over the first track, but then saw a csx vehicle, panicked, and ran low. with the heavy gear i carried, i flet like i physically couldn't make it over the tracks. i had fallen to my knees. and oh, i am not a child anymore! but still, the truck rolled toward us. so i hefted myself over the tracks, ignoring the huge pain in my knees, and rambo log-rolled down the track, backpack and all. ridiculous.

the rest of the evening continued in this fashion--me pushing my body to its physical limits and having to go still further. in order to cross between trains, you cannot just duck under their hookups. the train strands seem constantly to shift. we saw creepy 'ghost' train cars rolling remotely down the tracks to join the strands. and when they did, there was huge rumbling and jostling. careless people are apparently killed this way. so you have to climb up metal rungs on the side of the cars, shimmy across, then back down the rungs on the other side and jump down to the gravel. with 30 lobs (or whatever it is) on your back. we did this no less than forty times. while it rained on us. near the end, i was increasingly cranky, internally. quiet externally. i had developed some kind of abdominal cramping. be it gas, or more likely a result of the physical straining--climbing with wight like a monkey--and being so muscle-clenchingly cold. it made me wince with every ladder step. i'd say i was close to miserable, saved only by the excitement of attempting to hop trains.

finally we found an open boxcar--a dream--and climbed inside. i remember the boxcar kid books i used to read when i was a kid--the magic of inhabiting your own world in there. it was after midnight. we'd been monkeying between trains for six hours. the boxcar started to move. we yelped with joy. it slowly moved through the yard. then back to the other side, where it sat. by 2am, exhausted, unsure if it would move again and without a clue, we crashed out for three hours, literally freezing with the wet feet shoes legs pants. the works. but actually slept a little.

more journal and photos to come...

i see a handsome check in your future.

2010-06-18T13:47:00.004-04:00

and here i find myself dealing these cards again. it's strange how natural it feels.
once upon a time i managed a metaphysical bookstore. this has become a joke tagline. but it's true, and at the time i was very serious about it. well, not serious enough not to be able to poke fun at the crazy people it exposed me to. at some point i vowed to write a book detailing the characters who walked in on a daily basis.

there was cranston the beared copper jeweler who professed his love for me via a frighteningly sharp copper pokey necklace, begging me to come away with him and his dog and his trailer. i passed, only to be not-so wooed by the man who would come to 'clense' the shop with his didgeridoo. he was fond of 'doo-ing too close to the girls, perhaps in hopes of exciting them.
then the aliens from the vega star system just walked right into the shop--imagine that! looking totally human yet carrying a staff that touched the ceiling, they offered me a spot on their ship. among these customers, it was almost uneventful when tom waits walked in. almost. my gay boyfriend at the time jumped up to not-so-subtly change the chanting monks or tinkering fairies or kokopelli pan-fluters to the portishead cd i'd contra-banded into the changer. just so tom waits knew we were cool. uh-huh.

most of my time at the shop was spent with various forms of divination. i read astrology, drew angel cards, and dealt a whole lot of tarot cards. tarot was a language i'd learned from the owner of the shop, who treated me as her 'god-daughter'. she was my spiritual guide, my teacher, mentor, inspiration. she gave me readings, i gave her readings, and i gave the whole town of sebastopol readings at the annual celtic festival.
tarot and writing were the therapy that brought me through my adolescence and young adulthood. i consulted the tarot at every turn. unlike the hocus-pocus fortune telling reputation it garners, i used tarot as a tool for contemplation and understanding of decisions and emotions.

but then i had a strange falling out with this woman who i'd loved and trusted, who'd called me daughter. she wrote me a letter telling me sarcastically to have a nice life. suddenly, these tools seemed powerless and false in my hands. i put all of my cards away for nearly a decade.

then last week i got an email from candi. she and her husband have employed me as teacher's assistant, as expense report writer, as photoshop consultant, as photographer. so naturally when they were looking for a gypsy to read tarot cards at their 11 year old daughter's birthday party, they turned to me for ideas.

i can do it!
really?
uh, well, i think so.

so off i go, dressed in maria's impressive belly-dancing costumes, looking like a first rate gypsy. kind of funny to revive this skill in such a diminutive way. i told myself that i don't believe in the cards anymore. but i think i was just hurt and needed that decade away. i still think of the cards as a tool for self-discovery rather than fortune telling, but let's see what the 11 year olds think. nervous!

fallout! computer rage!

2010-06-08T06:52:00.002-04:00

twice blogger didn't let me submit this comment to my last post in response to genie's comment so out of frustration i just post it as a post:

ah, shucks, genie. you're so sweet and ridiculously talented yourself!
i admit lately to being on a lazy iphone photography spree. and i don't even have any of those apps everyone's rocking to make the pics better, but i've been very pleased.
and yes, must give props to rosanne pennella. she is a great instructor! http://www.rosannepennella.com/

she teaches weekend seminars in different cities i think through nikon and pop photo. i highly recommend!!!

that magic hour

2010-06-07T08:55:00.002-04:00

my photography teacher always said that the key to beautiful photos was to wait until your shadow stretched longer than your body. last night as jade, his brother kip and i walked by bryant park we noticed that our heads had crossed the quite broad 6th avenue before we'd stepped off the curb. beautiful magic.
then i spread my legs for dramatic flair.

unexpectedly bad smells of my life 1-4

2010-06-04T09:27:00.002-04:00

1) dead flower water
2) sun heated nyc garbage
3) steamed brocoli water left on the stove all night, covered
4) tar

go ahead, add yours.

30 marzo: twins

2010-06-02T08:07:00.001-04:00

on cubana air from havana to nassau.

finally, an honest statement in williamsburg, brooklyn

2010-05-27T08:07:00.002-04:00

okay, i guess i should qualify the photo below for those of you who don't live in new york, and therefore don't understand the implications of williamsburg, and also for those who simply don't get my very underdeveloped sense of humor. williamsburg is a brooklyn neighborhood i moved into fourteen years ago after my nine-month basement hopping tour of manhattan mercifully ended. the very first stop on the L train into brooklyn after leaving manhattan's east village, there was a thai restaurant on bedford avenue and a lot of artists lurking in lofts that required a trek from the subway that at night felt empty and a bit on the edge of dangerous. my digs at the second stop on the L train felt like a moon away from bedford's mini bastion of cool. we were the youngest people around who weren't living with their parents. and we weren't italian. or puerto rican five blocks the other way. it's what i love about brooklyn--it's a patchwork quilt of communities.
but clearly, this patch has undergone a lot of changes. real estate brokers are now calling the seventh stop in on the L train 'East Williamsburg' and now the tourists and bridge and tunnel crowd come to bedford and beyond for their excitement. rents are so high that the only artists in those lofts have been there since the empty and dangerous days, or their parents are footing the bill. bedford avenue and north 7th street (at the subway stop) has become the times square of hipsterville. some days, you just need to walk parallel on driggs because you can't navigate through the bicycles, street vendors, accessory dogs and gawkers. and how many store fronts are now occupied by the model kitchens of the army of high rise 2 million dollar per apartment towers closing in on us from the bqe to the waterfront?
when this change started to accelerate, approximately eight years ago, i packed up my junk and moved just 15 blocks north to greenpoint, a homogeneous community of polish ex-pats living a quiet life on the other side of mc carren park . now, that same change is following me, but the hard core little warsaw will fight stronger not to be overtaken. it keeps a nice balance in check so i still love living here. but i bust my ass to find a low rent. people are content to move into this neighborhood and pay astronomical rents because williamsburg is a stones throw away. but not me. i will forgo the shining bosch appliances and sliding glass door balconies for a slanted, splintery wood floor and rooms you have to walk through to access the other. (memory of heinous houseguest upon discovering higher-rent apartments in the nabe: "i didn't know they had REAL apartments in greenpoint!") so i'm happy in my very charming, full of character apartment. because i've chosen to be a 'starving artist' eating rice and beans, and loving life free from the corporate rat race. so when you hear me humorously complaining about the creative ways we get by, worry not for us. it's just fun to make light of these situations.
for the others in the neighborhood in their brand-new buildings, there's mom and dad to foot the bill. this is common knowledge, yet something the hipsters do their best to veil.
which is why it was so refreshing to come across some honesty, and credit given where credit is due, etched right into that williamsburg building i came across yesterday while walking just a block from my former willy b home. "thanks dad".

for an early father's day nod (wait, didn't i do that a few weeks ago?), i say, 'thanks dad' for teaching me a strong work ethic, not to be spoiled and to make my own way through the world. i do not envy my privileged, hip neighbors.

it's bitter baby but it's very sweet...

2010-05-17T11:39:00.003-04:00

okay, so i'll admit that i have recently found myself falling prey to a whole slew of issues i never thought i'd care about or consider relating to the process of aging. getting old, the kitty joe is. these issues manifest themselves in the most random places and catch me quite off guard. case in point: the other day when i landed in california for a family visit. standing on the sidewalk after mowing down a table full of mexican food, i noticed my baby nephew's arm scrawled with a message from his girlfriend.
understand that i still have to hesitate before i can type out those words 'baby nephew's girlfriend', much less accept them to be true.
understand that it really doesn't seem like long ago that i watched him being born.
but as i hesitated, i had time to realize that wow, my baby nephew is SEVENTEEN for chrissakes. and i was also seventeen when chris bowers wrote those red hot chili pepper lyrics on my arm and made me swoon and like a good cliched teenager, i washed around those letters hoping to extend their smudgy life as long as possible. or at least until he returned from seattle.
and this also didn't seem that long ago.
kyle was five months old.

2010-05-12T11:58:00.000-04:00

my kind of 'welcome to california'

2010-05-10T00:11:00.004-04:00

flying over south dakota i'd already informed jade that we would need to take 101 south and hit mission street to stop at taqueria pancho villa for a proper welcome to california. we needed to remedy new york's overpriced and under-flavored mexican food, pronto.

my sister abbie, having first made the faux pas of bragging to this ex-pat californian that there was now a local 'chipotle' in town, made a big save when she texted me immediately upon landing in san francisco, "burritos in the mission?"

hell, yeah. i said.

and like that they were gone.

luckily, there were "pudding filled churros" to introduce to jade.

money-saving tip from starving artists #2: invite your 'in-laws' out to 31 cent scoop nght

2010-04-30T16:50:00.012-04:00

what? don't know when 31 cent scoop night is, or worse what 31 cent scoop night is?

blasphemy!

perhaps ice cream isn't as high a priority in your life as mine.
perhaps you don't list mint chip ice cream as your favorite food.
perhaps it isn't one of two reasons you're not vegan (number 2 being CHEESE!).
and you must not have had a big sister who worked at baskin-robbins as i did. seriously, for an eight-year old, could it get any cooler than that? actually, yes, it could. incidentally, my other sister worked at the hello kitty store at the mall. my sisters were demi gods in my mind.
a quarter century later (!) and still, i haven't outgrown my eternal love for ice cream. well, maybe outgrown isn't the best choice of wording here...

so i may have mentioned that the dining out budget has been severely reduced of late, in the interest of staying afloat. and yes, that includes even pints or scoops of ice cream.
especially pints or scoops of ice cream.
so how excited was i when i spied the annual 31 cent scoop night poster at my local raskin bobbins?
like it was christmas in april. um, or easter. like it was easter.
except without the depressing dead jesus part.

i wrote it on the calendar. i got nervous every thursday that perhaps i'd forgotten that it was the night before, then rejoiced in being reassured it was still forthcoming.
when jade's brother announced he would be in town one evening only from chicago for business, and that evening happened to coincide with 31 cent scoop night, i ALMOST hesitated to agree to hosting him for dinner (okay, i'm exaggerating here. seriously kip, i swear!). but after some thought, 31 cent scoop night became even more brilliant because not only could we get almost free ice cream--we could treat jade's family to almost free ice cream, thus looking like total big-shots. brilliant.

despite this month of anticipatory buildup, it's been an exhausting week of de-installing a museum show, in the rain. i know, a flimsy excuse for almost forgetting 31 cent scoop night (gasp!). thankfully, however, ice cream is never far from my mind, and as jade chatted with his lovely brother kip about how he always orders the same dish at thai restaurants--massaman curry--i related that i totally knew how he felt. mint chip always stands in the way of my venturing into other flavor territories. and when i do, i usually just lick my cone thinking of how i wish it was mint chip. and OH MY GOD IT'S 31 CENT SCOOP NIGHT!!!! DID WE MISS IT?!

no. we had not. but we only had 20 minutes to get ourselves (including my favorite disabled cane walking boyfriend) down to baskin robbins for this:

this:
and oh my god, this!

jade and his totally impressed brother, kip--they look like brothers, no?
and we all lived happily ever after. the end.

a sunday smile

2010-04-25T09:58:00.000-04:00

rain and grey all day today. but this is happening.

father's day in april

2010-04-21T08:56:00.002-04:00

let's take a moment to talk about my dad. like my entire family, my dad is an artist-in-the-closet. both of my parents have strong streaks of creativity hiding behind their practicality that drives their projects. my mother used to bring 'shirt tree' hangers laden with be-ribbonned and silk flowered clips to sell in the waiting room when she'd take us to the dentist, then later 'fell' into business making a full line of tapestry tote bags and accessories 'accidentally' while making a pillow for my dad's car. there was always a glue gun within her reach as i grew up.

my dad's style is very 'now', very 'green' though he's always done it, and it always involves recombining old parts of things to create something new and totally over-the-top grand. most often i would catch him in action when i myself had a project i needed help with. in fourth grade i was to build a fictional musical instrument. guess who spent his evening with me in the garage duct taping pvc pipes and joints together and helping me tie on horns, kazoo and the like until the 'instrument' was taller than my nine year old self?

he really shines in the automotive-themed creation, as cars are his passion. oh, if only i had pictures of the 1957 'wheelbarrow mobile' he built for racing.

the email below is a perfect example of his talents and a reassurance to me that he will never give up this insanity that has inspired so much of my life--most noticeably on halloween, when i throw open the closet doors and think, 'what can i work with here?'

"Hi All,

Here are some shots of the BBQ that Bro. Allan and I have been building.

Allan did all the welding and fabrication. I sandblasted, painted, and re-inforced the trailer. The wooden steering wheel to raise and lower the grille is off an old car out of the 1900's . Inge (Mary's step mom) had on the wall in her steak house, and gave it to Mary for me, probably 20+ years ago. I had it in my office at Reliance for quite a number of years. It is lamanated finger-joint maple. The aluminum angle around the outside edges of the trailer is from a salvage yard in Santa Rosa. The wood table on the front is a two foot square butcher block off of our old dishwasher top.

The nice rounded corner, fold-up work space at the rear is made of a trundle bed frame.

The frame-work around the fire bricks in the firebox and around the grille is also mostly steel bed frame.

The trailer was a 1947 Sears fold out camp trailer, all heavy steel. You can't see it too well from the photos, but there is a removable 30,000 X 2 burner cook stove mounted on the front of the trailer courtesy of part of a Costco year end bonus coupon (the rest of the coupon went for dog & cat food). With the butcher block in the forward position, there is just enough room for two very large chili pots, one of which Allan gave me for my birthday - I think he wants me to cook for him. The stove also has a flat-top grille for pancakes as they would slip through the BBQ grille holes. We have visions of an aluminum sunshade over the top, but that is still in the thinking stage. Most of the expanded metal work space over the heat buffer around the grille is from an old patio table from G-ma Donna's house. As you can tell, there is a lot of used stuff that makes up a big part of the project, but with a lot of elbow grease and paint, you cannot tell it from brand-new. We took it on a test drive a week ago, and it did not self destruct, so I guess it is ready for it's first hot dogs!

As of this AM, we have five dates to use the BBQ. not counting the inaugural hot dog test "Q". I am under pressure from Allan and others to get the "57 side fin aluminum trim installed - Talk about cool !!!!!! Next time you two get out here, we will throw some tofu burgers on and have a big ole' party. Wow, I see in the paper that it has been downright summer there the past few days--- must be pretty with all the blossoms.
Back to work,
Love Dad"

and then, the following day:

"Wait till you see the finishing touches.....................we had aluminum sheets cut that cover the grille portion and overlap each other. When not covering the grill for transit so that the dust from the charcoal does not blow out on the road, they double as a sun shade attached to the top bar and look like a set of wings -- film at 11.
Dad"

jade can't wait to visit california again for the sole purpose of testing out this contraption, and the boss shook his head and said, "your dad is a true artist".

　

question of the day...

2010-04-17T07:44:00.004-04:00

written thursday
for three days we shoved drano down our faucet only after trying in vain to use grandma's trusty science class vinegar and baking soda trick. no dice.
last night the plumber stayed until 11:30pm. no dice.
this morning roto rooter came and dredged up all of this nasty brownness. no dice.

prussia's on suicide watch because she refuses to drink water if it does not trickle from the bathtub tap.

we've been told the original plumber will come back on saturday (2 smelly days from now!). because he had such success the first time.

but apparently now they are going to open up the wall to get to some pipe. i swear this is not my fault. same thing going on next door too.

but all this build up to the punch line.
after we were told it wouldn't be resolved until saturday, jade glanced down at the nasty tub and said,

"....so....i can take a shower now?"

creepy things afoot.

2010-04-14T12:41:00.014-04:00

okay, so i've mentioned it's spring?

and i've mentioned a couple of times that jade is nursing a torn acl and meniscus? our biggest outings together have been to the doctor--weekly--and now that some swelling has subsided, mc gorlick park. it's two blocks away and there's flowers blooming and beautiful benches.
let's see that redbud again....

so we saddled jade up in his polio crutches and ambled down that way for some morning sun before i went to work.

and there we were sitting on the lovely benches. it was too early for the hipsters to be up yet, so we watched the old polish dudes walking their non-accessory dogs.

and then. and then the corners of our eyes were caught by a man kissing his dog a little too enthusiastically. now i understand that you dog people...wait, strike that--i don't understand, but i know that you dog people...okay SOME of you dog people feel the need to let your dogs lick your faces knowing full well that dogs are happiest when they are eating their own poop...yes, i admit, even that skeeves me out, but i have come to accept this behavior as 'normal'.
but this was not that.
said man sat on the lawn on his knees, while this large dog had it's front paws resting on his shoulders, so that they were face-to-face. and the man was caressing the dog (even petting is not a skeevy enough word for the action we witnessed), as though it were a lover--with both hands circling around its shoulders (i don't even think they call them shoulders in dogs--haunches?) then down around its butt then under its belly and then cupping those things that sometimes people chop off. my god, i'm squirming and euphemising writing this, like i'm writing bestiality porn or something. and that's what it was like to watch.
finally it became too weird to only catch from the corner of our eyes and we sat there staring, jaws hanging open in disbelief, stammering to each other.
"....wait, this is really weird, right? this isn't normal right, like even for dog people? dude! isn't that guy just totally making out with his dog?!"

and he was.
making out.
with his dog.
in the park.

soon a hush descended over the park, despite the road construction and the tweeting birds and chirping squirrels. everyone on the benches surrounding focused their eyes like lasers in the direction of this inter-specieal pda in total disbelief. it continued well over a minute like this. and anyone who's been in an earthquake knows even how long fifteen seconds can last.
finally the kissing man noticed he was under scrutiny, pulled away, and stood up. even more disturbingly, jade pointed out, he then fiddled nervously, both hands in his pockets, before storming away in the opposite direction. without the dog.

which is when we noticed that behind the tree trunk, sat the true owner of the dog, who had just watched the whole scene at close range. with my brilliant drawing skills, i've put together a little reenactment for our viewing pleasure.

like any scandalous couple, they left separately. or i guess the scandalous couples arrives separately. whatever the case, it made me want to approach the other gawkers to relate. we didn't just imagine that, did we?

money saving tips from starving artists #1: improvise household appliances out of your trash

2010-04-12T13:19:00.005-04:00

so a key piece of our coffee grinder that makes it work has been coincidentally missing since our heinously unwelcome beast of a 5 week houseguest’s sojourn (or perhaps ‘rein of terror’ would a be more appropriate description). i’ve been too polite to do more hint than about that experience, (again, perhaps 'misery' would be a more appropriate word.

The chances that said housebeast was actually involved in the disappearance of aforementioned precious bit of plastic without which our daily beans are not ground, are actually slim to none. but it feels good to irrationally blame her.

so we’ve been rockin’ the pre-ground ‘chock full o nuts’ of late, a solution both practical and economical for broke artists. the leftover cans have so many uses, too! (just slow down before you pour what you think is laundry soap into the washer...)

but now, since jade’s non-existant 'disability checks' have totaled a big fat zero, nor has the ‘sick time’ that freelance work doesn’t offer kicked in, the budget, even for ‘chock full o nuts’ has evaporated, focusing our coffee-hungry attention squarely on the very exciting and fancy pound of free-trade beans my kind aunt liz sent in the mail.

it's been sitting on the shelf, forgotten and mournfully neglected in its whole bean state. UNTIL.

true poverty breeds creative innovation.

cut a slit in the top of the chock full o' nuts container and insert a braun multi quick or any kind of hand wand mixer and voila! before you can say burnt-out blender engine, you've got coffee grounds in every size and shape you could want. who needs consistency anyway--it's drinkable!

cheers.

disclaimer: don't try this without the lid slit. this product was tested in our high tech kitchen lab, and trust me, un-lidded tests yielded less than happy results for the broom-wielder.

this post brought to you once again, by my crappy but oh-so-convenient iphone camera.

need support for your medical emergency? don't call me.

2010-04-07T08:34:00.006-04:00

see the 30 mark? doc pulled two of these suckers full from jade's knee. oof.
at least i didn't include the needle. image poached from google.

on saturday, my jade came limping home covered in dirt moaning, "i'm hurrrrt." in short, a typical post-football saturday afternoon entrance. of course without the benefit of doctors diagnosis, we've been through the jammed fingers the broken toes, the broken collarbone (uh-huh), and the bruised (no--broken!) rib.

so forgive me that it took me a little time to recognize that this one was 'serious'. there was whining and cursing, much swelling and no weight bearing. everyone online shook their heads and mouthed the S-word. the s-word for the freelance artists. the s-word for the uninsured. the s-word for those of us who just scraped up money for rent but must now buy groceries is SURGERY.

and then angel of friendship came and set up a FREE appointment with a sports medicine doctor. wow.

and other angels came and dropped off arm crutches. not the padded 'i-broke-a-bone' under the armpit kind, but the serious 'i-will-never-have-use-of my-legs' scary kind. so slowly we toiled (well, jade toiled--i just walked really slowly waiting for him to fall down the stairs on me) through a maze of subways to the doctor. sometimes, living in new york is really hard.

jade lay on the examination table, his right knee easily three times the size of his left. the doctor guessed that he had ripped not just his meniscus, but his mcl and acl. but too much swelling to diagnose for certain now.

i rubbed his left shin comfortingly (i hoped) and the doctor exclaimed how lucky he was to have such loving support. and not two minutes of looking at the inside of his knee via ultrasound passed before i was removing my jacket. then my sweater. then pretending to read the framed article on the wall about healthy sleeping positions for couples (fascinating really-no, i mean it!). but ultimately i couldn't tune out the talk of internal tears and swelling due to blood etc. i closed my eyes. i tried yoga breathing. but i couldn't stop that familiar feeling of my body screaming with the force of a spun-out two year old "GET ME HORIZONTAL. I DON'T CARE WHERE. NOW!'

i excused myself to the ladies room, walking dizzily through the carpeted corridors, hoping no one would come into the bathroom as i lay green faced, as close to the mercifully cold and i-don't-care-how-dirty tile floor. i know that i've mentioned this little 'problem' of mine before with the whole blood and rust finger slicing incident. it is a lifelong weakness that just seems to be getting worse with age. i mean, come on--an ultrasound?! feeling ashamed, but blood finally back in my extremities and face, i returned to the treatment room as though i really just had gone to the bathroom to pee.

but when i walked in, the doctor was exclaiming that she couldn't believe she'd need to remove a SECOND fat syringe full of blood from jade's ailing knee. 'you might not want to look at this' she said under her breath to me. oops. too late. i sat down, closed my eyes and tried the yoga breath again. but nothing works except horizontality. (sorry spellcheck--that made up word is totally necessary in this case). and so, i was soon back at the front desk, grateful that the office was bustling with people distracting the receptionist from my drunken walked grabbing of the restroom key for the second time in five minutes. this time i really almost went down in the hall. my head was like an old movie that had been spliced in with too many black frames.

i decided i wasn't really bringing any support to jade by creating this spectacle, so once i returned the second time from my friend the tile floor i just stayed out in the lobby pretending to read about sandra bullock's husbands double life. much less disturbing.

what a friend, what a partner i am.

welcome spring. tell me you're not fooling.

2010-04-01T10:37:00.002-04:00

i've never been excited by april fool's day. i mean, who really cares? not that tricking people into believing bold faced lies hasn't been a past practice of mine. in fact, when i was fourteen and gina what's-her-nose misunderstood something i said which led her to believe that i'd actually WRITTEN the lyrics scrolled on my trapper-keeper, i became drunk with the power of fooling my peers. it entertained me through the ridiculous time that was early high school. yes, love and rockets paid me $50 for every song i wrote for them. no, i actually hadn't spent last summer commuting to UC Berkeley and taking part in the nerd program--i mean Gifted and Talented program. really i was on tour as a back-up singer for the cure. because my singing doesn't cause even my cat to run away. ask my sisters. actually, you probably already know.
yes, i was engaged to my exchange student and only studying spanish so that i could flee the country after my next tour. and did you know that my hair is actually naturally curly? i straighten it daily with a flat iron.

at first this was amusing. but soon i realized i could get anyone to believe anything i said. why not? it's human nature to believe. once i discovered this, the stories didn't seem so fun. add to the equation that i actually do occasionally have true and outlandish stories to tell, whose truth and impact became compromised by the false ones....and it was time to come clean.

so yeah, april fools. not my cup of tea.
but what DOES excite me about today is the abundant sunshine and a peek out the window at the pink magnolia trees and the yellow forsythia. it's like a freakin' easter egg over here! welcome spring. tell me you're not fooling.

because while you californians may not be impressed with this meager display of 'early' spring, the seasons mean more to me on the east coast than i ever could have understood while living west. i'm not even one to poo-poo the winter, however harsh it may be. and in my book, that's really harsh. but after the total barren look for however many months, when those blooms start to show their color in this grey winter scape, it makes you want to scream, SPRING! REBIRTH! RENEWAL! really, it's so dramatic and cliched. but it gets all the way down to your toes and you just want to go to the park and jumprope.

maybe not such an innocent fall

2010-03-31T08:09:00.005-04:00

now that we've all had a chance to have a good laugh at my expense, it's time for the self-pity to set in. cause it turns out, it wasn't such an innocent fall. daily i am able to blame another ailment of my life on those fateful 2 seconds. (you like the melodrama, right?)

for example on monday i noticed some strange pain the my right arm and shoulder. at first i thought it was the pilates video jade and i have been laboring through (but that's it's own ridiculous image for another day). then i realized my arms are probably the only part of my body that video doesn't work. i guess smashed grapes aren't as effective a fall break as i'd thought.

then worse, yesterday i noticed the below damage to my preciously expensive and indispensable to my job macbook pro:

sure, it seems to be working fine for now, but surely it can't be good. grrr. i think i'll take up a melodramatic subway ad campaign against broken sidewalks. because kids aren't starving in africa or anything.

and as a p.s. can we just take a minute to praise my phone (even though it has inspired jade to call me iNerd). i reached for my hulking D300 camera and realized how absolutely silly it would be to make a 60mb raw file of a cracked computer shell to post on my silly blog. my phone has become my point and shoot. it's a beautiful thing (and yes, maybe i'm a just few years behind the rest of the world).

break your mother's back.

2010-03-29T11:23:00.004-04:00

i had a very new york experience yesterday that led me to ruminate on the opossum cpr incident once again and conclude that certainly, pennsylvania may be close, but there is not a chance that would have happened here.

the abovementioned new york experience could also be filed under 'the universe it laughing at me', for only two days prior--before the poor flattened opossum was ever desecrated by a misguided and guilt-wracked drunken man trying to make good and before i ended up in a puddle of smashed grapes (i'm getting around to explaining THAT)--i sat on the subway and chuckled to myself over a very grave ad. not just an ad, but an ad for a cause. the ad's tone was dark and serious, as though addressing the tragedy unfolding in haiti or the hiccups of an unborn and almost aborted fetus. this ad warned against the dangers of a hidden new york city menace. not batman, not crackhouses, not even anarchists protesters, but the evil 'broken sidewalk'.

having just returned from havana, where the locals generally avoid navigating the only sometimes existent 'sidewalks' for fear of being flattened by crumbling 400-year old non-maintained balconies, i balked in a way the universe apparently found most patronizing. it was time to teach me a lesson.

so yesterday, while rounding the corner onto diamond street, laden with a backpack full of electronic equipment, laptop bag containing um, a laptop, shopping bag of the boss's 2009 receipts, as well as a overstuffed bag of what would aspired to be our dinner, i hurriedly shifted the delicately balanced weight of this awkward assemblage of packages in order to fish out my apartment keys without stopping. and just as i so impatiently did, wouldn't you know it, i was attacked by that sneaky bugger of a new york menace.....THE BROKEN SIDEWALK! well, in this case, the universe also threw in a 10 year old workbook sole that's been re-glued one too many times coming undone, and boom! on the ground i went.

it was a big one. even for me. those who know me are aware of my clumsiness, but also that super talent i have for recovering from falls mid-air to the point of fooling people into thinking i was off my rocker, performing some kind of strange ballet. it was one of those slow motion falls, where i had time to recognize there was no stopping it. where i had time to swear in a voice uncannily similar to my mother's. where i had time to really believe i wasn't getting out of this one without broken bones.

but thank god for the grapes. seriously. i cushioned my fall on the bunch of juicy green grapes that lay smashed on the sidewalk, having flown from my grocery bag just as my sunglasses flew off my head to the street.

i lay there on the ground amazed that i truly seemed undamaged. due to the frequency of my falls, i didn't have the standard feeling of embarrassment. mostly i just wish i had tape rolling so my friends could laugh at me.

but what really pissed me off, the true new yorkness of it all, was that not a single person stopped as they passed me by to extend a hand to help, nor to even inquire if i was okay.

so i packed my squashed groceries back in their bag, flipped off all the callous bystanders in my mind and reached for the goddamn keys. maybe if i had been an opossum and the sidewalk had been drunk, i could get some help. not that i needed it, thank you very much. here's hoping i never do!

Man drunk, opossum dead, CPR futile

2010-03-28T08:18:00.004-04:00

couldn't help stopping on this headline. sadly, after having murdered at least six opposums in the former days of my mgb, my guilt was so great i could imagine it being about me. and not even with the being drunk part.

Police report attempt to revive flattened opossum

By Jason Kessler, CNN

March 26, 2010 8:52 p.m. EDT

(CNN) -- A Pennsylvania man attempted to resuscitate "a road-killed opossum," state police say.

But this was one possum who wasn't playing possum -- the ugly creature remained dead.

Troopers responding to the scene in Oliver Township on Thursday determined that Donald J. Wolfe, 55, of Brookville, was drunk, according to the police report.

Several witnesses observed Wolfe's failed resurrection of the flattened marsupial, police said. It was not immediately clear how he endeavored to restore the possum's life.

The arresting officer in the incident was unavailable for comment Friday. Attempts to reach Wolfe were also unsuccessful.

Wolfe will be charged with one charge of public drunkenness, police said. couldn't help stopping on this headline. sadly, after having murdered at least six opposums in the former days of my mgb, my guilt was so great i could imagine it being about me. and not even with the being drunk part.

cuba by iphone

2010-03-24T22:45:00.006-04:00

the man who lived downstairs from my 'casa' begged me to tell people in america that cuba wasn't all that bad. 'no one has killed you yet, right?' he asked in spanish. good point.
so here i am, safe in new york.
a few of my favorite snapshots of my trip...courtesy of the iphone...
and that's what little boys are made of...

te quiero

sarita

bicitaxi lot

yumi at the bodeguita

happy anniversary

2010-03-21T06:43:00.001-04:00

i don't have email access from cuba. nor phone. so i can't tell jade how much i love him and how i'm thinking of him every minute that i'm down there in cuba, thinking of how we held hands in these streets a year ago exactly. email him and tell him what you think i think of him, since i can't. jademtownsend@gmail.com

...how i miss you and i just want to kiss you...

29 marzo: che

2010-03-09T07:58:00.004-05:00

remember to click on the photo for detail...
last night in cuba...

the hidden dangers of recycling

2010-03-07T11:05:00.004-05:00

the above image is a representation of a can that jade and i open every morning for our cheap pot of coffee brewed french press--to fancy it up.

HOWEVER, the above image is also a representation of the container we use about once every other week to transport powdery detergent to the laundromat.

you sharp ones may see where i'm going with this post.

well, last night was a typical multi-tasking spree of making dinner, working on my laptop and washing a pick up bed's worth of nasty clothes that had been, for unknown reasons (actually, i know very well the reason, and it has something to do with my boss's habit of throwing anything in his hands in his pick up bed as he gets in the truck and leaving it there....for months), rotting under a nasty web of autumn leaves, rusted out boat engines, broken bikes found on the curb, rain and snow. I gathered this soppy mass into the laundry machine, ratcheted it up to HOT, fed in my 19 quarters (really, doesn't this seem excessive?!) and dumped probably four times the amount of detergent a normally dirty load of clothing should require, doubting even this would strip the smell that could only be described as foul from the load.

only the detergent wasn't white. it was brown. and suddenly the clean, fresh smell of the laundromat was replaced with the distinct smell of starbucks.

of course. i had grabbed the actual coffee grounds. not detergent. coffee does not clean clothes. or maybe it helped? don't they give you coffee beans to sniff between smelling perfumes to clear out the last aromas?

i looked sheepishly around to find four sets of polish eyes laughing at me. sometimes recycling can be dangerous...

28 marzo 2009: la esquina caliente

2010-03-04T07:04:00.000-05:00

art basel miami beach hooverville

2010-03-03T07:39:00.004-05:00

you must click on image above for more detail!
the brilliant behemoth that jade townsend and william powhida have been working on... 60x44 inches!

27 marzo 2009: policia especializada

2010-03-01T10:36:00.003-05:00

approaching strangers to request permission to photograph them? difficult. cops? even harder. cop in communist country? even harder. such is the power of lust...

good morning, brooklyn!

2010-02-26T08:22:00.002-05:00

out my kitchen window. happiness.
when i was a little girl i used every opportunity to make a wish--usually on the first star--to wish it would snow. and while a trace dusting about twice in my lifetime did wake me up squealing, i'm thinking new york is just a delayed answer to my little girl wishes. this is what east coast winter should be. enough of the cold and dreary with no white, business!
i like it!

24 marzo, wednesday: oliver jeffers

2010-02-24T08:59:00.001-05:00

one year since cuba creeps up. one year since jade creeps up. and i'm just posting these now. return to cuba? ojala!

el 23 de marzo: la casa de juana

2010-02-22T11:39:00.002-05:00