The Cardboard Queen

My crazy talented sister Brook has long been illustrating her heart out, and this week launched her new website. I've been tapping my foot waiting for this moment like the annoying little sister I am. I'm so glad it's finally here. Homey is even blogging. Congratulations, Brook!

Back in the day, she went through a serious cardboard phase. I think it started after she found a huge bunch of it around the corner from her dorm at Parson's, on 17th Street and Union Square West. Correct me if I'm wrong about this, B.

Around then we had some make art/hang out sessions in her dorm. Here are a couple evidential photographs of one such evening.



The (other) foxy blond is the lovely Julia.



I think we probably drank more cheap beer (Budweisers, shocking), smoked cigarettes, and chatted with our artsy friends than made art, but whatever. It was fun.

A few years later, Brook and I were sharing a room back at home when she was hired to do figures for the window of the old Patricia Field store. You can tell how big the figures are by comparing them to the two mannequins in the far right corner.



Those suckers were big! She got them all back when the window was taken down, and I remember often waking up with the redheaded vixen in black in the middle giving me the eyeball.



She did cardboard pieces for magazines, too, like these of Clint and Whatserface. Whatserface's hair is truly a tour de force, especially when you see it in person.



I really dug the whole era, obviously. But much like hmm, say, Picasso's Blue Period, Brook's work with heavy wood-based paper was destined to end. And you know what? This post is making me feel really old. That cardboard era was a hella long time ago!

Check out Brook's more current work at brookmeinhardt.com.

Another snake

I made another snake toy this week. He went into a box last night and I sent him off this morning. Goodbye, snake number 2!

We had a teary-eyed photo shoot before he left.



He's for a little man named Van, the baby of a friend of Evany's. I hope he likes it. Moreso, I hope Van and Desi get together and have snake wars or snake coffee klatches together long into the future.

Although I suppose if this guy just ends up stopping a draft, that's not so bad.

Gasp

I've tried to keep P shielded from what goes on in my apartment when he's not around, but then he found this image on the web.


Photo found here.

Bookworms

I thought it was funny when I went to the library to pick up books this week, how revealing my current stack is. It's like, duh, I wonder what kinds of things this person is thinking about, and what time of year it is?

The dangers of recycling

Can you imagine the nervous breakdown this building's super has when he finds a greasy pizza box in the plastics bin?

N'awlins

Last week, I went down to Louisiana's fine city with P for its annual cocktail convention, the same one we attended last year.



It was fun, and swampy as hell hot. Sadly, I didn't take any photos as amusing as the one from last year of someone's crutches locked to a parking sign (sorry, Erica). In fact, the only pictures I'd like to share with you, dear reader, are of lampposts. It's not as boring as it sounds. I hope.

The first is of the ubiquitous "Sauce" tag. Mr. Sauce is everywhere in New Orleans. When you're driving into the city from the airport, he's picked several prime locations to shout out his chosen graffiti moniker in a big way. If you ask me, this guy has perhaps unwittingly opened the door for food-inspired graffiti names. When is the notorious Spaghetti going to start competing with him, for instance? SAUCE vs. SPAGHETTI!!! OK, that's kind of stupid.

Drivin N' Cryin is still together, thank god. (Whenever I think of this band's name, which is surprisingly often, it makes me crack up.)

Speaking of the Lord. We found ourselves on the corner of Race and Religious one night. I don't know if there's another street corner in America as intense as this one. P bought an all-natural, very delicious plum snowball on Piety street one day. Or maybe it was Desire street. Desire comes right before Piety in New Orleans. But even those weighty words are no match for this particular crossroads.

Whoa.

We also ate and drank a lot: Parasol's roast beef po boy, fried chicken from the Praline Connection, enormous, cold sweet teas every five seconds, crazy ice cream flavors from the Creole Creamery, kooky cocktails from here to eternity, swam in a lovely pool every day, and peeled out of town to check out the bayou and hike around a little, but didn't see any snakes or alligators (aw). In other words, I have never sweat so much in my life.

This kind of thing never gets tired

Looking at pictures of the crazy outfits of yesteryear, that is.



I guess it's not surprising that macrame never really returned as a trend. I tried to stir interest in the early aughts by purchasing a brown macrame vest with pom-pom ties. I thought I'd wear it with a red t-shirt and jeans and set an example of how you didn't have to look like you snatched a blanket from someone's country house guest room and potholders from the kitchen and made a skirt out of it to show a little acrylic yarn love. But alas. I only wore it once or twice and then threw it back into the thrift store juggernaut.

There's a lot to be said about these three, I know. But I'd like you to turn your focus to the woman on the far right. I mean will you just take a look at the smokin' hot woman on the far right. She makes me want to schedule a business meeting just so I can go to it looking as much like her as possible.



Lastly, the family. What the hell is going on with this family. I had a kind of dark vision: what would happen if a freaked out cat entered this picture? There's a lot to be said about these guys, too, I know, but I think it's best if I just be quiet now and leave you to your musings.

For the love of a good lake

My friend Dawn lent P and I her house upstate last weekend so we could swim in her local lake, eat like pigs, and pass out in her hammock. Fresh air is a real tonic, don't ya know.

So is swimming in a crystal-clear body of water full of little fish who will happily glide around you.

We also hung out at a winery, where P took this rather civilized-seeming photograph of me. You can't tell I'd just come from swimming in the lake and was trying to figure out how to convince P to stop at the lake again for another quick swim before we went back to the house for dinner, right? I just look like one of those smug bastards from the city who show up on holiday weekends and expect the locals to be excited to see me.

Dawn, I hope you know, you have an open forever invitation to take over my dilapidated apartment anytime you want to come breathe in the sooty air and experience the hobo-and-nut-filled streets of my grubby neighborhood. We're here for you with open arms!

They Live! They really do.

I saw THEY LIVE this weekend. Apparently it's a long-treasured, cult classic B movie, its 5-minute plus long fight scene (hilarious) highly youtube-able, wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper in the lead (ok?), written and directed by the man who brought you Halloween, John Carpenter. Well, I didn't know any of this. I just knew P was hopping up and down from excitement when it arrived in the mail courtesy of Netflix. Do the smart thing and get your hands on a copy of it. Or just watch it right now here. (Crazy internet.) You won't be sorry. It's so brilliant. OK, it's not for everybody and I do get alarmingly hyperbolic about things I like sometimes. Whatever. It's still brilliant.

I'd like to be...under the sea

Spoonflower is a genius site where you can design fabric and sell it (they'll print and ship it). These cool seamonster threads are by a Virginian mosaic designer named Cean.

Of course I want to design my own fabric one day. Don't you?!

Shorty

I'm making shorts for P. I wanted them to be seersucker but he said no freaking way. I snuck some into the pockets anyway.



I used a pattern I found at Scavenger's. I've sewn from a lot of vintage patterns, but this time I felt like I was in a time warp. Something about creating the same kind of trousers I used to rifle through racks of at thrift stores....

I had to take them in about four sizes, shorten the crazy long waist by about half, and nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to figure out the pocket installation but otherwise, it's been a lovely experience.

A sad sight

Did you know a dead whale washed up on the shore of Jones Beach a couple weeks ago? This isn't a freak occurrence, apparently: sometimes whales get killed by ships. And then we bury their bodies in the dunes. So there are enormous whale skeletons in the dunes at Jones Beach. Isn't that sad, and spooky? And bizarre?

Photo and story courtesy of Gothamist. (I'm not a fan of Gothamist, and I'm not sure why. Occasionally those cats report on stories like this, or on horrific bike accidents in the middle of Union Square, more immediately and reliably than other news sources. I know, I know. But I still don't like them.)

You talkin' to me?

The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

"Urban Anthropologists Andy and Carolyn London interview some of New York City's more overlooked citizens."

Enjoy.

Responses to 6/15/10 post

I DON'T DRINK. I WAS PLAYING IN THE SUN. DAMN FOOLS.


WHATEVERRR.

Montréal est doux

The best ice cream in the world is in Canada's fair city of Montréal, at a place on Rue St. Denis called Meu Meu ("Moo Moo" in English, ha ha).

P and I went up for an extended Memorial Day weekend, hosted by P's intrepid bridge partner, friend, and philosopher Sari, who was back in her hometown attending a philosophers' convention. (It was fun to come home to a living room full of pontificating thinkers every night.)

Photo by "Aïch of the clan" on Flickr

I wasn't able to photograph this breathtaking and inspiring place because when I was there I experienced heart palpitations and blurry vision, trying to narrow down my choices of the many sweet and/or savory flavors (fromage ice cream, anyone?) that change (and are made fresh) daily. The grapefruit sorbet was particularly vexing. This wasn't some reach-into-your-deli-freezer and get some Haagen Ciao Sharon's Bella Dazs Sorbet sorbet. I don't even really like sorbet. But this grapefruit stuff! I was laughing and weeping and shoving heaping spoonfuls of it into my face, no kidding.

OK, collecting myself. Deep breath. I love you, Meu Meu. Let's move on.



A pee detour! And look, someone knocked over the sign to take it! (Not me, I swear.)

Little pee-wee eggs! Aw!

One not-amusing thing was my inability to track down Julie Doucet, as planned, and convince her to get back down into the coal mines and start producing her brilliant comics again. I didn't really put much energy into the search, it's true. We stopped by the Drawn & Quarterly bookshop so I could stare bitterly at the finite number of books she's put out. Dammit, Julie, you're driving your fans nuts! Also, my brother wants to marry you. (Seriously.)

By the way, cats in Julie Doucet comics say "Miaw, Miaw."

I almost had a heart attack one night when I walked into a unisex bathroom in a restaurant and saw an enormous buffalo head on the wall.



What the...?!

It was the kind of thing you walk over to very carefully, in case your assumption it's fake is wrong. But the fur was acrylic. A tell-tale sign of fakeness.

We passed this feline many times on the way back and forth to Meu Meu. He is impressive, no?

I also loved Le Pick Up, a great cornerstore/lunch counter that serves an amazing Halloumi sandwich: grilled cheese, except the cheese itself is grilled and then layered with freaking tasty coleslaw. And Laika, a cafe named after the first dog in space with an after hours club vibe. It has an industrial interior and comfortable modern chairs falling apart from overuse, there's always cool music playing, the grub is delicious and the service is charming but lousy. You can sit around for hours wondering why your evening turned out the way it did and whether you should go home to sleep, out to breakfast, or just get up and dance again.

We were too lazy to ride any of the new public bikes you can rent cheaply for the day or hour. I nodded at them appreciatively, instead.

Photo credit: Mark Evans

Montréal est la bombe.

Cats in the house

Trey told me I don't post enough about my cats. Dawn, though, told me I post too much about them. (Dawn made this observation awhile ago, though, so she might not think so anymore.) Hell if I can tell. If I had my druthers I'd travel the world in search of weird and wonderful little eels and this blog would be exclusively about my findings.

Anyway, Beatrix is doing fine.



Olive, on the other hand...

Moss-covered art and super dope style

Neil Van always posts fun and fascinating stuff on his blog, but recently, two images from a couple of his posts have been especially beguiling to me.

How cool is this sculpture in artist Tim Fowler's garden? I would love to have or make something that could stand up to the weather and welcome the encroaching moss as gracefully as this guy does.



And how awesome is Beatrix's style? No, not this Beatrix. This one:



Sites like the Sartorialist would be more compelling to me if they featured more images like this. We've seen enough women snapped while walking down the streets of New York and Milan. Capture some shots of fashionable individuals going camping in the rain, will you?

Anyway, clearly, I love everything about this woman's style (Especially that skirt!). Rock on, Beatrix. And thanks, Neil!

Zzzz

So apparently if you don't leap into bed after having your nose one inch from a bright computer screen, and if, in the morning, you make your shades ricochet up immediately so the sun radiates directly onto your face, you will get onto a "normal" sleep schedule and stop moaning to anyone who will listen about how you've always slept like a log and don't understand what's happening to you, etc., etc., blah blah blah.

You can read all about this interesting and plausible-sounding theory here. This article also contains a link to a free, downloadable program called Flux that alters your computer screen light, so it's more natural and less harsh. So you can still read fascinating articles, Google(TM) important things like "Mrs. Meyer's hand soap refills" and answer urgent emails just before nodding off, because you know you were never going to be able to cut that out.

Self-portraits

When kids ask you what they should draw, a good shotgun answer is "Yourself!"



Henry did a rendition of his class picture, he said.

My drawing group hasn't been meeting as often lately so I haven't been drawing as much. A self-portrait would be a good way to keep the pencils sharpened, so to speak. If only I could get motivated!

Yikes

Frank asked me why I didn't post the picture P took of me laughing at Patrick's opening.



Because I think I look scary, like the woman in Gary Winogrand's photo El Morocco!