Purrrr

If only there were always old-school-ish cocktail parties in sprawling upper west side apartments going on, where one could encounter a jaw-droppingly awesome soap dish like this in one of the bathrooms:



Yes, that's what happened to me earlier this summer. I was having a great time, sipping perhaps one too many Brazilian drinks and shoving one too many Brazilian treats in my mouth. Isn't this amazing? Look at that sudsy cat! Considering how much cats notoriously hate to get wet, it's pretty amusing to imagine one in full-court bath mode. Brilliant.

Spooky city

There are all sorts of reasons to find yourself spooked in this city. Like when you're walking past the Fairway on 125th street near the river to get to some crazy new restaurant and you say to your companion, "THERE ARE RATS AROUND HERE, I JUST KNOW IT!" and your companion replies "OH GOODIE, RATS ARE CUTE!" and then you see A BIG HAIRY, GREASY ONE and your heart stops because you know it means 100 others just like it are milling around so you run shrieking into the dining establishment before a scary and assuredly life changing rat battle ensues.

OR

You find yourself strolling down First Avenue, uptown in the 40s, one night, having just enjoyed a dinner at a Turkish restaurant that would sadly and inexplicably close a few days later despite the fact that this place made you fervently decide you absolutely LOVE Turkish food, when suddenly, you look to your left and GASP WITH HORROR because something incredibly scary and dramatic is happening in the park near the UN! Oh my god!! And you might have to click on the image below to see what I mean.



"CALM DOWN, THAT'S JUST ST. GEORGE SLAYING THE DRAGON," your companion says, but you're still in shock and can only mutter "WHAT? WHY? WHO?" In response your companion yawns and basically tells you to "just bleeping google it." When you finally get around to doing just that, you realize this particular "mammoth statue" is actually called the Good Defeats Evil monument, and then it's like ohhhhhhhh, that's why it's a good thing to have right next to the UN.

It's still really spooky though, when you look at it at night, whether or not you know what it is.

Bizzy the Great

I just got back from a lovely week in Atlanta, Georgia, where I went to visit my dad, stepmom, and brother Max, and hang out with my sisters Brook and Erica, who'd also made the trip, not to mention the endlessly adorable and entertaining Henry and Hazy, and GO SWIMMING! YAY, SWIMMING! But oh my god. I lost my camera. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was NOOOO. YES! Stolen. In a playground, of all godforsaken places. And the worst part is the fact that I had just that day taken what I thought was a really great picture of one of my favorite beasts on the planet: Bismark, my dad's long-haired daschund. Oh, well. Here is an alternate picture, with an accompanying human foot.



Bismarck is a really cool dog. And not just because he loves green grapes and bananas and burrows under things with great zeal as all good daschunds do. He also inspired this portrait that Brook painted a few years ago. It's one of my favorite works of art anywhere, anytime. For serious. Every time I see it I practically start waving the cold cash bills at my pops in the hopes of claiming it as my own. I mean, just look at this thing.



Anyway, enjoy. And don't worry: The credit card I bought the camera with is reimbursing me entirely for the lost camera. Crazy credit card company. Damn thieves.

Smug berries

In the New York Times' Science section today, there's a lot to be thrown by...like the article about the possibly sooner-than-we-think end of the world, the fate of Magellanic penguins, or the guy and the worms. But what really stopped me in my tracks was this illustration for a query about which has better nutritional value, whole fruit or dried. Look at those cute strawberries. Victoria Williams is the artist, and she did an awesome job, eh? I wish more things in the Times had as much wit and charm. Oh, snap!

Grumpin' around at H & M

Now, far be it from me to say anything at all about fashion and the fashion biz. As much as I love fabric and sewing, I ain't no fashion plate. I can't even, nor do I ever want to be able to know how to, walk in high heels. I know, horrors!

But some time ago I posted about what I thought would be the happy marriage of Marimekko and H&M. And this spring — yes, I delayed posting about this, THAT'S how crotchety I got over it — P. and I were out at a restaurant when he said, "Did you notice the Marimekko stuff is at H&M?" Why no, I hadn't. So after dinner we stopped by the Soho store below Spring street, and after looking around and around again for the good stuff (it must be here somewhere...it must be...) I grabbed a hat, a couple shirts, and a bathing suit and went to try them on in the dressing room.



P. took this very accurate photograph of my state of mind: GA-RUMPY! Why? Well, not only did they not choose such great patterns. Which is really hard to believe since there are so many amazing Marimekko patterns to choose from — you really have to be seriously eyeball, brain, and sense challenged to pick crappy ones. But they made the clothing in yucky, cheapo-seeming fabric, and then jacked the prices on them. So you're not even getting what you came into H&M in the first place for: a good deal!

I could also write a long screed about the what-the-heck-is-H&M-thinking? bathing suit situation, but I think I'll hold back and just say bold prints on badly designed H&M bathing suits no looky good and fit even worse.

Of course, after my delirious post last year, my sister Erica, who is a virtual weathervane of all things fashion said, "They're not going to choose the good stuff, you know." And like the true fabric addict I am, I just thought, Now why is she all pessimistic? It's going to be FABULOUS! FABULOUS! So FABULOUS! etc.

I know: This is a very sad story, and I deeply apologize if it's inspired any tears or ruined anyone's afternoon. Remember, there's plenty of Marimekko stuff to pillage on ebay and other places, or if you want to throw down serious bank, you can always go fly off to Finland or drag your butt up to the upper East side and make your eyes pop out of your head over the cost of some dinky little change purse or whatnot. As for me, I — well, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I think I'll be OK. I think so.

COOOOKIE

As if taking on the Chimp face to face at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Assoc. dinner wasn't enough, Stephen Colbert (MY HERO!) was also brave enough recently to go nose-to-nose with none other than....well, check it out for yourself. Wow. It's hard for me to talk about Mr. Colbert without SWWWWOOOOON. Oh, excuse me. I feel sort of lightheaded. Whoa. OK, bye. Have a nice day. And thanks Erica, for sending me this!

Curiouser and curiouser

Here is the immensely adorable one-and-a-half-year-old Sofia.

Who I hung out with recently, in an apartment that boasted a view like this:

Not to mention Patti. Patti! And her marito italiano molto eccellente Umberto. (Not sure if that's correct, I did only take something like seven hundred and seventy seven years of Italian and still only know how to say "I'm hungry!" [Ho fame, sucka!] and something that's apparently not even really "Shut up!" [Stai zito, biotch!]) 

Sofia was totally into my tote bag and the Metrocard wallet, nail file, and box of tea-tree oil toothpicks she found in there. Was she interested in the beauteous Australian Aboriginal fabric I'd just purchased? Uh, no. What about the book about the whole world going to hell in a hand basket? Not really.

Soon after this picture was taken la bambina ate several tiny fistfuls of ravioli and then fell asleep in the arms of Mr. Molto Eccellente, after a diverting stroll up and down the hallway with her proud mommy Patti. Così perfetto!

Surprisingly macho fabric

The other day I came across some seriously crazy fabric at this oft-visited site, and bought it so fast my keyboard started smoking. (I'm serious! I ran over to the sink and dumped a pitcher of iced tea on it! And then the keyboard said, really gruffly, "Don't do that again!" and I was confused about whether it meant buy fabric so fast or dump iced tea on it. Of course, I'd been up several days without sleep and...ba ha ha ha, I wish shopping online resulted in such shenanigans.)

Here's the description of the fabric, with the picture beneath it:

100% Cotton
56" width/36" repeat
Designed by SALDO SWEDEN

Inspired by the famous chase scene in Bullit with Steve McQueen, this design diagrams shots from the movie using symbols. Red is Steve McQueen, stars are gunshots, arrows mean movement. Triangles are explosions, hearts mean love, crosses mean bodies, and so on. Great conversation starter. Light blue, white, and red. Order sample photo doesn't show details. We have 1 yard available.



Great conversation starter indeed! Whaaat? I mean, how often does one watch a movie and think, "Ah yes, I've thought of a new project. I'll make some fabric out of that movie I just saw!"? Here's the stuff up close:



Look at all those little Steve McQueens and explosions and movement. Here's a slightly better shot, maybe:



What am I going to do with it, you wonder? Well, you see...I have no idea.

Mark and Emily's wedding prez

I mentioned a wedding I went to recently down in hot, hot Texas a couple posts ago...well, the bride and groom are back in the city and P. and I had dinner with them just this very past weekend. These guys are one of my favorite couples to have brazenly silly and cocktail-ridden dinner parties with, and as I've never considered myself to be such a huge embracer of the coupley-er sides of coupledom (like indulging in unabashedly coupley dinner parties, for instance), that's quite an admission on my part! Well, tut tut for me.

They're super creative people; Mark designed the excellent poster for my play Six Available Men...

...and Emily penned an ingenious children's book about a lost elephant, among many other special things. When you're in their apartment, it's tempting to just walk around slowly looking at all the juicy images and fascinating book spines and beautiful pillows. So I knew as part of their wedding gift, I had to make them a drawing.

It's the one I hinted about in this post. (Click on the image if you'd like to see it larger.) I had a guest artist help me with the graffiti, but he shall remain nameless due to Sir Bloomby Bloomberg's recent zealous attempts to send anyone even thinking about graffiti to the jailhouse. Not today, Bloomby!

But more importantly: Congratulations, E & M! Your wedding was spectacular, and so are you.

Shameless copycat

I am a major copycat and I'm not afraid to admit it. As a result, I will write the rest of this post in meows, since that is my true native language. Or not. O.K., not!

One of my habitual check-ins on the web is with the talented and beautiful author of The Secret Language of Sleep, at her long held online diary, evany's extended cake mix. Beware: This woman is super funny and stylin', and you might end up trolling ebay in search of, for instance, an awesome plate, when you had every intention of spending that part of the afternoon writing a brilliant and persuasive letter to Mayor Bloomberg urging him not to rescind the new 6-day schedule for New York public libraries, instead. A very similar thing happened to me recently. (I bought one for myself, too!) But when you take a look at this thing, can you really blame me? This bird is crazy hypnotizing.



I really don't know what I'd do if I were, say, served dinner on this plate, and then discovered the bird slowly as I finished my spinach and mashed potatoes. I'd probably totally flip out, man!

Now that's some crazy creativity

Check out this incredibly oh-snap-worthy video. (I will be surprised if you don't utter "Oh snap!" several time while watching it.) It might take an extra minute to load...and it's so worth the wait. I'm serious. Soooo worth it. Thanks for sending it along, dpe!


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Sock puppet nation

I love this blase sock puppet. Whassup sock puppet? I didn't make it, but I wish I had (this person did). My attempts at sock puppetry turn out more like this:



Which is not so bad, I know, but I aspire to the artistry of Mr. Blase up there. Yeah, man. And thinking about it further for a moment, I just realized who that rad puppet kind of reminds me of:



Janice from the Muppets. Right? Or at least, like, they should hang out together or something.

Update: The incredibly musically aware dpe emailed me this pic, to show who Janice looks like — indeed, right down to the crazy Isis gem necklace. Nutty! So Janice is like some kind of Carly/Joni hybrid (see comments, below). Whoa.

A hot (and I mean HOT!) wedding adventure

P. and I flew down to Texas for three days of extravaganzas celebrating the wedding of our friends Mark and Emily. Boy are those two ever married, now! I mean, they are MARRIED. Did you ask if they're married? Well, they're MARRIED. As in the-knot-has-been-seriously and ceremoniously tied-eth. I wish I could post all the silly pictures I have of P. and the wedding, but P. is a man of mystery and will not allow it. So be it. I will have to turn your attention to some other interesting things in San Antonio.

The iguana in the hotel, for instance. I have mixed feelings about this iguana. I'm sure he's not on the payroll. I kept imagining him sneaking out to the parking lot for a smoke and to complain to one of the two toucans, who were also in work/residence. Does he look happy? I can't tell.



Then there was the architecture. Does a pig live here? Is he working in a local hotel, too? Is this where he comes home to watch T.V. and plan his next attack against America's unflagging love of bacon?



There was record heat going on, 100+ degrees day and night (or at least it felt like it), so the discovery of Fruterias was a source of much joy.



I cannot even begin to explain how yummy and awesome the Fruterias were. There is very ripe and delicious watermelon, pineapple, strawberries, coconut, and cantaloupe in those huge styrofoam cups, so cleverly wrapped higher to contain as much fruit as possible. And OK, I know, some of you have heard me crowing about Fruterias and want me to shaddup already. But I'm telling you...if you ever see the magical word "Fruterias" on the side of a building...walk into that building.

We'll see us again very soon

My good friend Vera was in town last week (or was it the week before last? Jeez.) from Hamburg, Germany, and we hadn't seen each other in five, count 'em, FIVE! whole years. Vera is a true glamorpuss in that she's both super smart AND super foxy. She is a fashionable European intellectual, people. She will whack you upside your head with her Isamu Noguchi knowledge and then blast past you with a crazy scarf-tying technique that no one on 7th avenue has even thought of yet. Watch out, is what I'm saying.

I spent part of the visit trying to learn the real, true way to say "Vera." I say it very American, like V-EAR-RA (with the E like "EEK!"), when it should be more like V-EH-RA (with the E like "EH"). Oh, Veehhhrraa!

One of the many things I admire about this woman is how whenever anyone is about to take her picture, she looks suddenly very serious (and glamorous) whereas I usually look like some sort of demented clown whenever a camera is around. So when we took a picture of us after dinner at Seymour Burton, I tried to drop the silly expressions and go for a more no-nonsense look.



Which didn't work out so well. I look like someone just stole my bike or something. Damn. Now let's see what some smiles on these faces look like. Preferably with as much cheekbone interlocking as possible.



That's better.

I love the internet so much

I've been working on a drawing lately that I can't tell you much about because it's ultimately going to be a little surprise, heh heh. But it's been making me wonder if I ever would have gotten back into drawing with such gusto if it weren't for my pal, Internet. Without el Internetto, I probably would have taken one trip to the Mid-Manhattan library to look in the picture files for interesting snaps of alligators, etc., and by the time I got home and was finally ready to draw, I'd be like, "Damn! This is exhausting!" and lose interest. Now, all I have to do is get all Googley and I've got all the images I want, if not way too many I'd rather not have. It's so much fun to have a huge picture library at my fingertips. I love you, Internet! Anyway. Here are a few images that have come in handy for my latest drawing, which I will undoubtedly post about at some later date. Unless, of course, it ends up sucking tomatoes, in which case, it will never see the light of day, and you will thank me for not exposing your impressionable eyeballs to it.



This is Graycie, courtesy of a blog called "My Seattle Pets," who hopefully has been adopted by now. Graycie, you are one foxy momma. You inspire me.



This image is for desktop wallpaper, apparently, created by some dude named Michael Chavez. I have a major crush on this lizard. Look at how freaking cool he is, especially his curly fingers! If I saw this lizard crawling by me, I'd turn into a total construction worker at lunchtime and start whistling and tossing out inappropriate propositions. Obviously, Mr. Lizard, you inspire me, too.

And the beautiful birds above are from the Philadelphia Print Shop Ltd. Thank you all, but thanks especially to this guy, who apparently had a serious hand in helping create el Internetto.

I love this idea

This excellent lady photographer, Gail Albert Halaban, recently started a project taking photos of New Yorkers and the neighbors they see out their windows.



If you're interested in being part of the project, email her! Check out her blog to read more about it, and see the first few shots she's taken. And you can see more of her work in general on her website.

Don't forget to click on the pics if you want to see them bigger. Some of these, you just gots to see biggah.

The pillow as weapon

There was some mad pillowfighting last week when two little munchkins named Henry and Hazy came to town with their cool-headed, foxy (and wildly ambidextrous) mama Brook. The sad fact is, I didn't take many pictures. Why? Because I was often running from a pillow myself. And the few times I did have my camera, a certain someone (HENRY!) always managed to do a good, quick duck-and-roll away from me. But I did take this action snap of the All-Powerful Hazel Louisa trouncing some dude named Wolf.



Wolf, were you perhaps trounced because you made the fatal mistake of taking off your glasses, therefore making APHL blurry in your eyes, and sealing your fate? If so, I'm sorry, my brudder, I'm sorry. Next time. NEXT TIME!

Holding paws

I've been ruminating about otters ever since I watched one of the super charismatic little mammals in the Los Angeles aquarium a few weeks ago. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of him to share; just imagine an otter spinning around quickly like a log in the water to the amusement of many schoolchildren and you get the idea.

What is up with how crazy cute they are? They hold paws sometimes when they're sleeping, just so they can stick together while off in dreamland.



P. left this image on my computer's desktop the other day, which reminded me of the oh-so-understandably popular video on YouTube of (perhaps these same) otters during nap time. It took a second look at this picture for me to notice their little triangle noses, and their closed eyes.

Oh, and according to Wikipedia, one of the rarest otter species on earth is called, gloriously, the Hairy-Nosed Otter.

Uh, yes, this is exactly why you stopped by to visit this blog today. So you could stop thinking about like, the IRS or whatever, and focus on something REAL. Riighhht??

Doucet doubletake

I know, this blog is about to become the Dynamite Doucet Emporium, run by spiral-eyed Julie Doucet groupies, like me. Apologies in advance!

I've been reading 365 Days, an illustrated journal by YES, OK, Julie Doucet, published a couple years ago by Drawn and Quarterly. And here's how she drew herself before she went to sleep one night:



Well of course it reminded me of this painting, mentioned in this post.



Right, right? Isn't that cool? Huh, huh?



I'm probably going to start seeing this type of image everywhere, now. In the clouds. In my cornflakes. What, oh what, does this repetitive Woman, Book, and Cat imagery mean?

Salton Sea finale

So after we saw the little volcanoes and the abandoned hotel, smelled the Salton Sea, climbed up Salvation mountain, and drove through Slab city and the tiny, ancient town of Calipatria, which boasts ownership of "the world's tallest flagpole," we stopped for gas in another small, stuck-in-time town, named Brawley, and saw this:



Well, high-ho silver!



Frank became understandably preoccupied with it and took these inspired shots. I love this one, especially. The horse has been returned to his first love: the wilderness!



What a storefront. About 100% too freaking patriotic for my taste, but I like what they did with their awning, yes, indeed I do.