It's all New York to me

A shameful fact about me: I've never been to New York. I mean, come on! What the hell have I been doing all this time? I'm an American, godammit, and I have never even been to the most American place on the planet!? Well...maybe Las Vegas, but that's more like kitsch version. So, tomorrow night I take off to N.Y. with two of my friends, a mysterious Japanese person, and my husband. What adventures await us? Well...for sure a few nights in a shitty hotel and a visit to the Guggenhiem museum. Maybe I'll even eat a hotdog from a street vendor! Fancy that.

Hello Again

Ahh, well...this is embarrassing. On several occasions I have logged in, typed up a post and subsequently deleted it. I admit it's a problem of mine, that is, losing interest in my own hobbies. The giant lull in blog posts mainly came from a long stretch of winter blues. At the time I was not working nor going to school and I just didn't feel fit to talk about anything. The creative juices had frozen solid.

But things have changed for the better (mainly due to no longer being locked in the dungeon of winter). I'm five months into full-time French classes. It's crazy. I'm the only American in the entire school amongst every other nationality of the world. I get a strange mixture of attention from people practicing their English on me to serenading me with Justine Bieber. The entire experience is quite bizarre, but in a really positive way. Awkward moments seem to be the norm, so I feel right at home.

I don't know how much I can promise to this blog. Honestly I'm just busy and tired everyday. At times I feel a little silly coming here to post about my otherwise normal life. Though, if I were to approach posting in a blog as something completely profound and never done before, then I would just be fooling myself. In all of this running around, I just need to find a little time to reflect.

And here a picture of a cat sleeping.

I think my blog needed a little touching up...nothing that a little original art can't fix! Matt's mother gave us a printer/scanner, which allowed me to scan one of my drawings.

Now that my residency is edging towards finalization (after an entire year!) I have begun the foot work for applying for Grad School. It's like a stress-inducing walk through memory lane...emailing my old professors and requesting my transcripts is triggering some feelings of anxiety, which was pretty much my mental state throughout my entire college career. Yeesh, what I am getting myself into?

On an unrelated note, I suddenly piqued an interest in reading the Wikipedia bios of old Hollywood actresses from the past...you know, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Judy Garland and the likes. Their stories made me realize how insanely driven and legitimately crazy these women were. I mean, they practically grew up in show biz. They worked their ass off, were plagued with vicious insecurities, struggled with self-worth and addictions and on top of it all had to sing and dance and look stunning throughout all of it. I'm convinced that modern actresses don't have to try half as hard as those women to attain such fame. Joan Crawford said herself "getting there is easy, staying there very difficult".

First real snowfall. The lockdown has commenced. From this day on, it's all long nights lit up by Christmas lights and the glow of open laptop monitors. Headphones on, head down, and feet buried under the snow. These are the song of the winter time.

Teenagers

Teenaged girls. Somehow I feel like I never accepted or capitalized on my teenage-hood. It wasn't until my years in college that I ever got that generally accepted notion of That Teenaged Experience....or more like the version of adolescence that movies show us. Only now is it that I look back on those teenaged girls whom I adored and secretly knew I would never really turn out like, and wonder what I could of experienced if I had gotten to known them better. There was one girl, Paula, who was my sister's friend.

My sister and I were still fairly okay with hanging out with each other despite our difference in age. And every now and then I'd get to hang out with her and Paula. My sister and Paula were girls scouts together...and I think thats how they met. Paula had wild white curly hair. It stood out everywhere. She was always so pale..pink white. She read Tank Girl comic books, took ritalin, and was into witchcraft. She was an only child who was adopted. The way she dressed herself was unlike anyone I had ever seen...she was like a villain character in one of my many comic books. There just wasn't anyone I knew who was even half as cool as her.

Once, she and my sister dug a cave in the side of a tall sand embankment along the creek. One night they snuck out of their homes to camp out in their cave...so with candles and sleeping bags they slept there. I think I remember the night they snuck out, and how I wished so badly that I could come with them.

Then my sister and Paula went through high school. Of course everything changed, as they often do, and I haven't seen nor heard from her in years. Last I heard she was working as a gunsmith somewhere. Of course she would be a gunsmith.

Pinups and playboys

My friend Alyssa had contacted me a couple weeks ago asking if I would be interested in taking some photos of her for her boyfriend's birthday. When she had asked me, ideas of a 50's style pin-up photo shoot started running through my head. She is really the perfect model for it too...she is like a pint sized Marilyn Monroe! So, I dusted off my lighting rig, rearranged some furniture and busted out some outfits for her to wear. Afterwards it was pizza and wine time....I think everyone went home happy. The rest of the set can be found at my Flickr page ;)

The curse of Halloween as finally been lifted.

For the past five years, I have had a tenuous relationship with the accursed night. But, I love Halloween. I mean, who doesn't really? As a kid, I used to LIVE for that night...preparing for days the haunted house that I would construct in my grandmother's garage. I simply wanted one thing: the scare the living bejeezuz out of all the neighborhood children. Nothing makes me more happy that the terrified shrill of 6 year olds in Ninja Turtle costumes. But, Halloween took a sharp nosedive into pure suckiness once I moved out of my parent's house and away from the limitless supply of tiny babies for me to frighten. In the age of late teen and early twenty-somethings it became about going to huge street parties dressed up as some ironic celebrity and vomiting out the 12 shots of vodka that you received from a "slutty Rainbow Bright" or something of the sort. I would foolishly go along for the ride and curse every second of my decision.

It went on like this for the past five years. Not always some huge party, but always an enormous setup for bone-crushing disappointment. What happened to my beloved holiday? Suddenly it had this huge pressure to become "the best night ever" and had to involve waiting in line...outside...in the cold...in costume that was not suited for the weather... After so much disappointment, I learned to not get excited. In fact, I came to simply dread any plans for Halloween and would prematurely write the night off as a disaster.

But there is a good ending to this story. While all of the odds were against me, I managed to have the best Halloween in a long time. It didn't start off promising though. Matt and I really didn't have an clear plans and around 7:00 it started snowing. But, despite the fact that the weather had turned into bullshit, we met up with some good friends of ours at their little pad downtown, started with a couple of drinks and a crappy Icelandic movie about being stranded on a whaling boat. The company was good and everyone's mood was warm despite what was going on outside. Later we shuffled through the rain and snow to the kookiest little bar. This place seemed like it was MADE for Halloween. It was a little punk rock joint down in the basement of these 100 year old buildings. The moment I walked in, I felt like I was in a movie. There were skeleton boys, black cats and little ghoulies everywhere, two pitchers of Montreal beer and a Cramps cover band that was fronted by a skinny kid in his underwear was playing on stage. Everything just seemed right in a perfectly demented way. I leaned over to my friend, Myra and shouted in her ear, "Best Halloween in a long time! Thank you!".