A planetary disturbance

I haven't started tagging, I swear. Although I must say, the genius who tagged this on the Upper West side somewhere (thanks for noticing and sending me the pic, Wolf) does inspire me to get in the game. I like this "Jocelyn World" concept.

Seasonz Greetingz

Was there ever, or has there been since, a better urban photographer than Berenice Abbott? I don't think so.

Fa la la la la

I read two great books one after the other recently: The Three of Us by Julia Blackburn and While They Slept by Kathryn Harrison. Yes, I suppose it's obvious, these are both very dark tales and shouldn't be snapped up without a warning. It actually makes me a little sad to realize I've wised up and can't try to convince everyone I know to read them simply because I think they're so great. But if you're in the mood...it's the holiday season, after all! What better time to make an "inquiry into the murder of a family?!"

Perhaps you're already familiar with Julia Blackburn's book, from when you noticed the arresting image on its cover somewhere.

Well, this cover annoys the bejesus out of me. One of the many excellent aspects of The Three of Us is how Blackburn included photos from her life throughout the book with no explanation other that what you pick up from reading the text (none of the pictures have captions). It gives the reading experience an extra-added intimacy. But it also becomes immediately obvious that the cover photo isn't the author or anyone she knows. Not that it has to be...but for consistency's sake, wouldn't it make sense if they'd used a "real" photo on the cover, too? You end up wondering who the heck the half-submerged lady is and why she's on the cover of someone else's book. Or, you do if you're a persnickety realist, like I am!

This earlier version of the book cover from how it was published in London is accurate. I know, it's not as visually captivating as the above cover. But at least these are photos of the actual people in the book!



Hm. Now that I've written this all down I wonder if it's just my own odd take on it. I guess I should just get over it. And wrap some presents!

Crazy long lashes

The illustration I did for this year's Pet Beauty Contest! Here's last year's and one from the year before.

A heavy head

Robert, Social Tees owner and animal rescuer extraordinaire, had the brilliant idea last month or so to turn his shop window into a kind of kittens-and-cats-up-for-adoption display. As a result, there are always heart meltingly cute scenarios going on: heaps of sleeping cats, a kitten hanging off a ledge by one tiny paw and batting at other kittens with its free paw, etc. Lately, a little grey cat grabbed my attention because she/he seemed to be really hanging its head over her/his current situation. Hyuk, hyuk.



There's always someone or several someones admiring the cats of the day, and when I took the above picture a concerned woman asked me to knock on the window and make sure the kitten was OK. I did, and the kitten woke up, looked around, and then went right back to sleep. You can see her/his little ear in the pic below, evidence she/he moved!



A few days later, the grey kitten seemed to be hanging out a lot with a calico kitten, and then, a few days after that, all the kittens were gone and currently, a bunch of solemn full-grown cats are occupying the space. If you're in the market for a pet, stop by! There are tons of basement rooms in the back of this place, housing all sorts of homeless creatures, including lizards abandoned by wannabe lizard-owning East villagers and snakes dropped off by mothers of snake-loving sons who had second thoughts.



I hope the grey kitten found a good home and a new comfortable place to hang her/his head.

The drawing bug

I took two random yet similar pics of Henry and Hazy when they were in town this past week for Thanksgiving. These kids really like to draw. Not surprising considering how their Mom is a super superb artiste. It's in the blood, yo!



The picture below makes me laugh. Not because heart head was looking on (that's P., who still insists on remaining anonymous on this blog). Because H and H had just taken their baths and were supposed to jump into bed for stories but instead they went over to the table and Hazy began drawing in her Nintendo thingamabob and Henry got lost in a puzzle book. "They just don't want to go to bed," explained my sis, and it was so funny to me how quiet and focused they were being in their sleep avoidance.



Oh, and that little dog's name is Coconut. Aw. I miss you guys!

The comics crusade

My brother Wolf and I collaborated on many crazy projects when we were little, so I suppose it was only natural when we started an ongoing comic together for no real reason other than to crack each other up. This was back in the early 90s when I was living in L.A. (L.A. in the 90s! Woot, woot!) and Wolf was in New York, so we'd send them via good ole snail mail, and I remember Wolf used to (I'm not sure I did) draw really hilarious things on the envelopes. Damn, I should post one of those envelopes. Maybe I will!

Anyway, here are the first couple frames of what we ended up with. His is the first three frames, mine are the next four. I'm too lazy to post all 8 pages, but I'll tell you this: there is no way you can possibly guess what happens to this poor head and its resulting headless body. So much. Too much!



Well, recently a little bird reminded me about this strip (thanks DPE IV) and I un-filed it and read it again after lo, so many years. Wolf and I had some fun chuckling over it again, and he reminded me that we took something more like six or seven, or, ahem, eight? years to finish(!!) — considering it's not so much finished as halted since we just dropped the ball completely at some point, but aha! still managed to tack a satisfying end onto it, if you ask me — as opposed to the mere two years, as I originally thought. In other words, we were a bit lazy about passing it back and forth.

This step back in time coincided some with Wolf's birthday this year, and we were inspired anew! Wolf dared me to start a new comic for us to collaborate on by his birthday (Nov. 17). Well, ha! I did it! The below is the first installment. So it's your turn now, bro. Get to work!

Click below if you'd like to see it larger.

30 rocks

What follows is the ultimate tribute, to anything — in this case, a Sesame Street sketch inspired by the brilliant TV show 30 Rock! Now, in my opinion, if you've never seen 30 Rock, you're crazy — no, wait, that's not what I was going to say. If you've never seen it, this won't make you understand why people (like ME!) keep rhapsodizing about how great the show is. So don't go ahead and watch this and then be all like, See? I knew that show wasn't for me. That would just be dumb. O.K., glad we cleared that up. Enjoy! And thanks, Keith!

Fr-fr-frightening

There have been scary monster buildings popping up all over this city for years now. And I mean years! But in the last few years? Holy crap. This one really knocked the wind out of me when I first saw it looming over Madison Avenue at 23rd street. Oh what a crazy long shadow this sucker is going to cast.



It ate these two little buildings.



You think I'm kidding? Well, where are they?! Before (June):



After (November):



O.K., I guess I'm kind of obsessed with this building. Wouldn't you be, if you saw this growing in what used to be a perfectly pleasant neighborhood? It's in the trendy box style that was such a hit for the New Museum on the Bowery recently. And it has that spooky overhang that just lends to its fearsomeness. How does that work, I wonder? But it's just so damn tall. It's sooooo tall. If I was going to take all the ogre-ish aspects away from it, and just see it for what it is, it would still look to me, at the very least, like it was a weird, skinny building that showed up one day to bug the two cool old buildings on the corner of Madison Avenue and 23rd street and won't leave them alone anytime soon. 

I guess you can tell, I don't have any great pictures of this damn monstrosity. THAT'S how big it is. Here it is with all the little people, scurrying around on 23rd street. Poor little people! Run, run!

Guess what

One guess.



What does this tell you.



That's right: I got a cell phone. And yes, that's correct: I've never had one in all the cell-phony years gone by. The more time passed, and the more cell phones proliferated across the country like horde upon horde of skittery bugs, the more I seemed to enjoy not carrying around anything that beeped or buzzed. But, alas. Especially recently, moments have cropped up where it would have been much more convenient to reach for something at least somewhat clean and that I could dial that was in my bag, as opposed to using one of the garbage-strewn, sticky, leaning-like-the-tower-of-Pisa, and frequently peed-upon remaining NYC phone booths.

(Have you stepped into a public phone booth lately? I hope not. It is kind of interesting, though, to see a part of the city that was of use for so long, fall into such neglect and disrepair. In a sort of Planet-of-the-Apes kind of way.)



So anyway, I finally did it, I joined the masses. I thought I was joining the masses when I started a blog. But no: every single soul out there does not have a blog. Every single soul out there does, however, have a cell phone. I mean, I almost got hit by a nun driving a van and talking on a cell phone recently, and no, it wasn't Halloween or even the days leading up to Halloween. A real nun! Ignoring the stop sign on the FDR drive and banging an incredibly careless, high-speed right onto Houston street!



Anyway. I've always loved the above street art by skullphone. I think it's a brilliantly dark and funny, not to mention accurate, image. Sigh.

Joyride!

Holy Halloween costumes!

Wow. I am totally familiar with my sister Brook's artistic genius and yet, it still (and will always, I'm sure) have the power to make me totally speechless. Check it out. She made my niece and nephew Hazy and Henry their costumes as she does every year. This time Henry was a lego guy version of himself, and Hazy was a princess fairy magic glittery star covered yeah, you get the picture. But will you look at these costumes? Henry can walk and move his arms and hold things in that crazy cardboard contraption. And look what happened to dozens of satiny fabric samples — why, they turned into an amazingly sewn petal skirt on a perfect dress with wings!



And there wasn't even a contest going on or anything. Which annoys me. I think she deserves some sort of trophy, or like, a series of trophies, presented to her on a daily basis all throughout November or something. Not that I'm so into awards or anything, but come on, now. The costume ambition and excellence exhibited here is on multiple trophy-deserving levels, don't you think? Here's Henry with his new friend, wearing his favorite t-shirt (from H&M, purchased by Erica, of course).



Well, apparently the kids had a great Halloween and scored tons of candy and attention. What a great mom you are, Brook. Kudos!

And speaking of inspired costumes, this was my favorite of the few I saw on the boob tube. (Hells no, I do not venture out on Halloween. N and O as in No, no, no.) A duo worked together to make this magic happen. She's the woman in the movie Psycho, and her partner is behind her, somehow making the shower curtain move while also making a shadowed stabbing motion at the curtain. She was able to scream and wave her bloody hands while walking down the avenue. Hooray for such creepy cleverness!

Thank you for this pic, bnittoli. Check out his photostream on Flickr to see more great costume pics from this year's Greenwich Village Halloween parade.

Oh snap indeed

My mom emailed me about this scandalousness:



Apparently, the nationwide teen favorite store dELIA*s (must respect their corporate choice of typographical branding, don't you know) is selling a t-shirt with the above image and logo! OMG!! I feel so...so...ROBBED! I cried about it for like three hours and then I went over to Bethany's house with Heather and Cisco, who has a huge never-going-to-be-consummated crush on Bethany, and we all totally freaked out some more, inevitably deciding never, ever to shop at dUMB dELIA*s ever again! That's right! Screw them!

Naw. Not even. As much as I would love to claim the image of a hand snapping and the words "Oh snap!" around it as my own, I simply cannot. It is everyone's. It's like the peace symbol. Well, not really, but hopefully you understand my meaning.

Also, thanks to Erica, I've had the Electric Company's "T-I-O-N, tion, tion, tion, tion" song in my head for THREE DAYS NOW. Help! And Beware! Do not watch the below clip if you do not wish the befall the same fate. But at the same time, I do highly suggest watching it, it's so brilliant. OMG, I'm so confused.

To get one's goat

It was P's birthday this past weekend, and in addition to the life-sized, crystal champagne glass full of his favorite bubbly, faux chinchilla coat and matching hat, and vintage rollerskates with flourescent wheels that I gave him as presents, I also adopted a goat for him, for the year, from a place called Little Meadows Farm in North Carolina. There are tons of places you can adopt animals from, but this place won me over for many reasons, including the fact that along with goats and sheep, they also have LLAMAS and ANGORA BUNNIES. ANGORA BUNNIES. The bunnies that can end up looking like this:



I had fun making a quick card for P announcing the goat gift:



P kept laughing each time he looked at the card so I guess he found something amusing about these drawings. I don't know why. They are incredibly serious goats, as you can see.



Also, while I was drawing, I am slightly embarrassed to admit, I was watching the Ridley Scott/Denzel Washington semi-disaster...no, actually, it's pretty much a total disaster...American Gangster. (That's where I got the idea to get P a chinchilla coat.) In the movie, Denzel, who is very boringly angry in the same dead-eyed, rigid expression-y way throughout the whole movie, gets a matching coat/hat chinchilla ensemble from his wife as a present. Well, this outfit gets him some unwanted attention and he ends up throwing the coat (but not the hat. What happened to the hat?) into his fireplace and then watches it, grumpily, burn, while his horrified and disappointed wife looks on. It was a very bad movie, never really an unexpected thing from Sir Ridley, unfortunately, but still.

But let's get our minds off that. I have other exciting news to report. Over the weekend, Frank and Patrick got married in L.A.! Whoop, whoop! It was all very last minute, so I didn't have enough time to jump on a jet plane and see this happen in person, which of course is a big bummer. One night, the proposal, the next day, the courthouse steps! But the next time I see them I'm going to pelt them with rice anyway, and you should, too. Heh, heh.

Graham Roumieu

This guy is hilarious. I've been clicking around on his website, cracking up to myself, a great deal today.



OK, perhaps I should have warned you: his work has a kind of dark sensibility.







But he can be kind of whimsical, too. Kind of!



Click on the below image to see the endless "dance, dance, dance!".

Putting words together

I couldn't help sharing this image I found in a vintage card shop:



I had such a moment of self-recognition when I saw it. That is EXACTLY what I look like every day when set eyes on my computer. I clasp my hands joyfully and a sort of exuberant red backdrop magically appears around me and sometimes I even say something like, "Oh, you wonderful, silly writing machine!" before I sit down and start typing away, page after page after page of my thrillingly inventive stories. Unless things aren't going so well. Well, okay, to be honest, what's more likely to happen is that I sit down, start madly chewing a toothpick, and then a small cat jumps on my lap. It's really not that exciting. There's never an exuberant red backdrop. Just a little cat. Which I must say, ain't so bad, y'all.



I know, I've posted about this before. Consider this an update! She is still incredibly, mysteriously invested in the new play I'm working on. It's not even about cats. (Hyuk, hyuk!)



I wonder if, when I'm done, I'll have to say "by Jocelyn Meinhardt...and Beatrix."

Also, I am still, and will probably always be, really angry and sad, not necessarily in that order, about David Foster Wallace's death. McSweeney's is posting memories people have written about him here. Apart from the incomprehensible human tragedy aspect of it all, there's the cap he put on his writing output by offing himself. All you have to do is read one of his essays or stories and you recognize his inimitable voice right away. And now it's gone for good. It really sucks.

This week's miscellany

I got a writing tablet last week, and its first test drive was when P. put a stylin' hairdo and moustache on a jpeg of Neil's painting. It makes me laugh because I've had the painting so long, it's entirely possible the guy could grow a very long moustache indeed. Riiight? Here's a closeup:



And while we're still in the land of the VanderVloed-Nash clan, here's the FRONT of Neil's shirt on his handsome tough-guy cousin Neil Nash. Watch out for this guy.



In other news, I am immeasurably sad about David Foster Wallace's suicide this past weekend. What the hell. I just read a nicely penned editorial about it here. It's just the most messed up thing ever. WTF. WTF.

Kingston, where Art is King

This past weekend, P. and I ventured upstate to Kingston to see one of my favorite artists in the whole wide world's latest show, which was a super cool father-son collaboration at the Kingston Museum of Contemporary Arts, aka KMOCA. Here's the postcard for it.



Neil VanderVloed and his son Jake are SILLY, FUN, MAD-TALENTED ARTISTS, PEOPLE!

Wayyyy back in the early 90s, when the internet was still just a rumor to the common people, some people still used telephones with actual cords attached to them, and urban taxi cabs were generally horse-and-buggy affairs, Neil had a show in the gallery above Flamingo East, in the East Village. This is where I first set eyes on his painting Big Guy Stepping Forward — the one that's been hanging ever so gloriously over my desk for the past 15-odd years.

It was the first real piece of art I'd ever bought, and the first time I'd ever experienced that weird, passionate art buyer feeling of "I want to LIVE with this!", "I must have it!" I even snuck back up to the darkened, empty gallery during restaurant hours a couple times while the show was still up to show it to people, I was (and am still) that nuts about it. And the plane — this plane:

— even made it into a birthday card I made for an ex-boyfriend, below. I have no idea what's really supposed to be going on in this illustration, but you can't mistake that VanderVloed-inspired flying machine. It's the same one!

It was super fun to see it on a shirt Neil made that his cousin and my former flame Neil Nash was wearing at the opening. See it, right under the collar, flying across Neil's back, this time encountering a sudden, one-cloud rainstorm?

Of course, the weekend wasn't only about Neil's brilliant work. I got to see old friends like Dawn VanderVloed and Adam Snyder and meet Dawn's preposterously cute son Dutch, and daughter and heartbreaker-in-the-making Joliet, and warm and wonderful husband Kent, and hang out with the whole awesome VanderVloed clan. And by awesome I don't just mean run-of-the-mill great. Growing up, I always had a kind of chip on my shoulder about being one of four siblings who were close, I was all like, damn, I have a cool family. Then I met the VanderVloeds and, I mean, they're even close with their cousins. They're close as siblings AND cousins. Damn! That's impressive. There was something so satisfying about seeing these guys with all their beautiful and beautifully named kids running around, in and out the art gallery, the backyard, the house....Viva la VanderVloed, is all I gots to say.

P. and I also swam in the pool at the Sky Top Motel, took a delicious nap, visited Fleisher's Grass Fed and Organic Meats and ogled the sausages, swam in the motel pool again, and went to Storm King, which I'd never been to. Not a bad way to wave farewell to the summer. Better than stumbling along a hotdog wrapper strewn beach with an empty liquor bottle crying and muttering to myself about the end of warm sunny days and swimming opportunities, which is what I'd imagined I'd be doing.

Memoir pile up

At some point this summer, I found myself wildly interested in reading a new memoir by a woman named Susanna Sonnenberg entitled Her Last Death.



I ran over to The Strand and got my hands on the last reviewer's copy! I started recommending it to my sister before I was 20 pages in! And then somewhere in there, I just lost — not interest, really, because hers is an interesting tale regardless, but faith in the narrator's voice and conviction. I felt like she was kind of whining a bit. So I told my sister, eh, don't read it after all, and I'll probably end up selling the book back to The Strand. (I know — harsh.)

But it's weird: after I finished the book, I read an interview on Amazon.com with Sonnenberg which starts:

Amazon.com: You follow a rich family tradition of writing memoirs steeped in eccentricity. Did you feel pressure to follow the familial literary path?

SS: My father, stepmother and grandfather all wrote memoirs. My stepmother has written two, both wonderful. She's taught me a lot about the difference between recounting a life and telling a story. It’s the story that’s important, if you're going to ask a reader to pay attention to it. So you better think really carefully about the way of telling. I never felt pressure to follow, but the anxiety of influence is another matter! I made a point of not looking at my father's beautiful memoir at all while I was writing mine.

This got me interested in her dad's memoir. I looked it up and got it out of the library.



Well, can I just say? Lost Property was my favorite book of the summer and perhaps the year! I've never read anything like it before or since. Sonnenberg the Elder grew up in 19 Gramercy Park, the huge, old mansion that was recently renovated on the corner of Irving Place, which in his time was full of crazy amounts of art, servants, and wealthy weirdness (and as I'm sure it continues to be). He's a highly literate lady killer who travels all over the world and dresses well and gets his dad to pay for everything but accrues debt all over the place anyway — in other words, lots of great contradictions, but also just beautiful, self-aware writing. I keep remembering a line he wrote that goes something like, "It was time for me to face myself. Being two-faced, this was difficult." I kind of get the feeling that if I'd met this guy at a party I'd probably want to smack him, but reading his highly entertaining memoir was great, great fun.

At some point I put it together that Sonnenberg the Elder is married to Dorothy Gallagher, a writer I also love! In fact, I have a quote of hers pinned up somewhere so I see it every day, I like it so much. It's from a New York Times article:

"The series of snags and calamities that Ms. Gallagher has bumped up against throughout her life — the ex-husband who carried brass knuckles, the psychiatrist who seduced her, her current husband's total paralysis — reminded me of an essay she wrote a few years ago for The Times about writing: 'Truly, life is just one damn thing after another. The writer's business is to find the shape in unruly life and to serve her story. Not, you may note, to serve her family, or to serve the truth, but to serve the story.'"

So now I'm rereading How I Came Into My Inheritance. It's still excellent.



And both How I Came Into My Inheritance and Strangers in the House have been recently released in a single volume entitled Life Stories, which is pretty cool, if you like two books squished together like that.

But it's just funny, isn't it? I don't mean to dis Susanna's book. I know — believe me, I know — it's not easy writing about your complicated relationship with your coke-sniffing mom and her sex addiction, your resulting sex addiction, and all the shenanigans that took place in tony locations like New York, London, Monte Carlo, Greece, Barbados — oh my. And she even took Gallagher's advice and wrote a good story. It's just, in this case, in my opinion, her dad and her step mom are just like, whoa. In a way, I admire this Susanna person more for the attempt to write something when she's got such crazy good scribes in her life to live up to, than for the end result.

Walk this Way

Now this is a great New York Times article, written by my old friend-in-passing David Rakoff. But I don't understand why it wasn't on the front page of all the New York editions, in a taking-up-the-entire-front-page kind of way. I'm going to post it here, and if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'm out on the street handing out xeroxed copies of it, too. Enjoy!

She's super fly, that's why

An image popped in my head last Friday as I was putting together a birthday box for my sister Erica, and I suddenly I knew I had no choice: I had to stop, drop, and roll over to my colored pencils and get to work pronto. Erica was the inspiration, as she is so totally super fly in ways too numerous to mention. (Well, O.K., here are some: She's beautiful. Whip smart. Incredibly insightful. Creative. Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashionable, I tell you. And phew! that's enough for now. The short list will have to suffice.) But another inspiring aspect was the fact that she'd recently bought 3 dresses in 3 different colors and sewed them together in a "I want them all, my way!" flurry of fashion-y chutzpah. So a big part of the image I saw involved the resulting dress. It also involved Pam Grier:



As well as the poster image for the movie Super Fly, which is, check it out, a color pencil drawing. (I knew colored pencils were S.F.)



The final result:



Oh my goodness, look how bad ass my sister is with Leo, her friend the A train, and an aquamarine umbrella we can all imagine might turn into a double-barrel shotgun if necessary. Which reminds me: Oh, how I wanted to draw my big sis with a big, double-barrel shotgun. But alas, that would have been so far out of character as to have been just plain wrong. Even faced with a dangerous criminal, my sister would find a way to get him/her to sit down and talk about his/her need for attention and how never knowing his/her father had perhaps contributed to a life of crime, rather than pistol-whipping him/her Pam style. That's just the non-violent way it is with this woman. And to each her own, right?

HAPPY BURFDAY, MY SISTAH!