"Recess Is On" my last nerve.

I'm dusting off the ol' blog just in time for some holiday humbugging. This site caught my attention a couple months ago, right when economic mayhem was just getting fired up. It was a pretty spare site then, and I had a hard time figuring out what the hell it was. "Fuck the recession"? I felt like I could get behind that sentiment to some degree. I mean, what better time to re-prioritize? To wean ourselves off pointless consumerism and reconnect with the things that truly make us happy? If we could view the recession as an opportunity rather than the end of life as we know it, then maybe we didn't need to let it get us down.

But, whoaholdon, that is not what the Recess Is On site is about. It's actually a marketing effort by Morgans Hotel Group, the intent of which is to convince you that the recession is basically a disapproving adult that wants to rain on your parade and guilt you out of spending money or having fun. The panicky hoteliers want you to give economic realities the middle finger and continue to blow rails off Miata keys in any one of their well-appointed 5-star hotel restrooms! They host "Recess Parties," and show you where to pick up "Recess Fashion" (Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, and Prada, FYI), partake in "Recess Culture" (???) and generally indulge all your material desires with renewed shamelessness. Which I guess totally makes sense if you are rich and the recession is little more than an excuse to party extra defiantly.

The site is totally lame and asinine but it's hard not to laugh at lines like this: "Bars and clubs are businesses. Isn't it up to us all to go out and drive commerce?" and "There are the necessities of life and then there are the necessities of living. Fuck frugal." Yeah, you tell 'em!....corporate hotel group.

By far, my favorite part is this totally weird "Fuck the Recession" video. Chicken feet! Champagne! Weird hair! Stock images! Attitude is everything!

Hot pants!

When's the last time YOUR pants caught on fire at an office party? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Last night my agency hosted an art show, and I had a run-in with a tea light while waiting for the bathroom. I'm not sure what it says about me that my first thought upon seeing flames crawling up my jeans was "Oh noes! My favorite jeans are ruined!" and not "Oh noes! My leg is on fire!" I guess it says I never paid anything for my leg, but the same can't be said for my jeans. Anyway, we put out the tea lights after the hallway filled with the smell of burnt denim and denim chemicals, and in doing so, I spilled hot wax all over my arm. Yes, I had been drinking.

In conclusion, if anyone knows where they sell Freedom of Choice jeans in the Greenwich cut, let me know.

IM empowers me and my husband to communicate meaningfully, often.

An excerpt from my IM conversation with Derrick today. Keep in mind I could have cut and paste an IM thread from pretty much any day of the week and it would look like this. We just keep missing each other!

Highbrow!: A post about musems

In a somewhat recent issue of the New Yorker there was an article that complained of that museums have become so focused on their own architecture that the content—and the visitors—are almost superfluous. Peter Schjeldahl writes, "Witness the revamped Museum of Modern Art: it is less a building than a life-size architectural maquette, in with you and I will the roles of little figures stuck in to convey scale."

For someone who majored in Art History, I've never been much for museums. I find most of them alienating and cold—even the the older, staid, less architecturally bombastic museums like the Met (which Schjeldahl favors) elevate their contents to such heights that I feel inspired to worship rather than connect.

Last year, Derrick and I spent some town in a mountain town in southern Spain called Ronda. One morning, listless and hung over and seeking shade, we wandered into Lara's Museum, which is relatively tiny and (I think) privately owned. At first, the hodge-podge of antiques, dusty clocks and old photos was less than compelling. The owner followed us at a few paces, picking up an old accordian on display and playing a few notes, rearranging this and that. Nothing was behind glass and anything—for better or worse—could be touched. It was hard to take Lara's Museum seriously.

But then we descended into the basement, where we discovered an extensive collection of torture devices from the Spanish Inquisition and an interrogation scene cobbled together with crudely painted mannequins in authentic clothing. The juxtaposition of the exposed mechanics of cheap display and the horror of real (and USED) remnants of torture was disconcerting and very powerful. As was the fact that you could touch the guillotine or the head crusher. As were the bluntly worded and badly translated captions that accompanied each item, for example: "Used to crush head until brain come out ears."

After a while, we weren't feeling very well. That's when the owner, who was still tailing us, jumped behind a display of a 17th century sherry winery and jovially offered to pour us some Moscatel. We were grateful, if a little perplexed. Once recovered, we went upstairs to check out a collection of old World War I photographs unceremoniously tacked to the wall. Again, there was something very affecting about viewing history is all its cracked, yellowed, fragile glory. No glass, no guards, nothing to buffer you from the fact that, yes, all this really happened. It really was something of a revelation. More than coming to understand Spain's difficult history intellectually, me and Derrick left Lara's Museum feeling it emotionally.

Not surprising, but still annoying.

The first line from the Daily Candy email I received today:

"War, the climate crisis, adult acne. It’s all so depressing until you get to BellJar, an enchanting new boutique in the Mission dedicated to gorgeous little things."

Wow, what a great set-up for an email about overpriced shit! I'm sure they didn't mean to offer up senseless consumerism as a salve for the horrors of war and our impending self-annihilation. They're just sort of dippy over there. It's sort of pointless to call them out for it, really.

Actually, this email kind of reminds me of the billboard I saw in LA this weekend—I think it was for the LA Philharmonic, but I'm not sure—and it said "Violins, not violence." Um. Yeah. And while we're at it: Flowers, sunshine, puppy dogs and rainbows.

My undignified breakfast.

I was in LA with Derrick this weekend, visiting my sister, her boyfriend, and my parents who were in from Milwaukee. On Saturday we went out to brunch and OMGOMGOMG we were seated next to Jason Lee and Giovanni Ribisi. They were with a large group that included their wives and their approximately 35 children, one of whom was wearing a gorilla suit and a leprechaun hat.

Steph pointed them out to me and we did the thing that people do which is pretend you don't notice. And actually, no one else in our group HAD noticed until Mom took out her camera and tried to take photos of me and Derrick. The waitresses totally freaked out and almost confiscated her camera. "Please don't take pictures of the celebrities." So then we had to explain to Mom and Dad who Jason Lee and Giovanni Ribisi were. Let me preface this by saying I love my parents. And yet:

Mom: What celebrities?
Steph: Jason Lee and Giovanni Ribisi are sitting behind Joss and Derrick.
Mom: Who's Jason Lee?
Steph: He's on My Name is Earl. On TV.
Mom: What's My Name is Earl?
Steph: It's a show.
Dad: WHAT'S GOING ON?
Me: SHHHH.
Mom: (extremely loud whisper to Dad) There's a famous actor over there.
Dad: WHO??
Mom: An actor. Who does he play?
Steph: Earl.
Dad: WHO???
Mom: He plays a man on a show. Steph, who did you say was the other one was?
Steph: Giovanni Ribisi.
Mom: what's he in?
Steph: I don't know. This conversation is making me so uncomfortable that I can't think of anything.
Dad: WHO'S EARL?????
Mom: (extremely loud whisper to me) Did you know there's a famous actor behind you?

And so on. By this time, all the people sitting around us who had been studiously avoiding staring at Jason Lee's table are now staring at us instead. And I am staring at Jason Lee's wife's ass BECAUSE I've been trying to figure out if she is wearing the same Anthropologie dress that I own and I have reached the conclusion that, yes, it's the same dress, but mine reaches my knees and she has hemmed hers to barely cover her ass. As I'm squinting, the waitress catches my eye and glares at me.

(Psst, Jason Lee looks exactly like he does on the show his wife's super hot his kids are cute Giovanni Ribisi was wearing a hat the end.)

Who is the Cupcake Tagger?

I first noticed a cupcake tag in my neighborhood several months back. But now they are seemingly everywhere, especially downtown Oakland and around the Laney College campus. Notice that some cupcakes have sprinkles and some don't. Perhaps the ones without sprinkles are actually muffins. Perhaps there is more than one Cupcake Tagger. Perhaps there are are rival Cupcake Gangs. Christ, I hope so.

Grand Avenue, near the theater:



Downtown Oakland, maybe 14th?



41st and Telegraph:



Laney College, which is practically covered in cupcakes (mmmmm)and points to the probability of the Cupcake Tagger being a college student. Notice there is only half a cupcake. "Share," says the Cupcake Tagger.

Noise Pop 2008 Pop & Shop

I haven't been posting cuz I've been hella busy making jewelry for the event shown below. Come spend some money! There's going to be lots of great stuff.

Ceci n'est pas what I expected to see on the wall of kiddie art.

Yer damn right that's not a pipe, kid. It looks like a malformed Tylenol. Oh, who am I kidding, this drawing's effing adorable! In much the same way kids are cute when they dress up in grown-up clothes, my nephew's foray into Surrealism is weirdly touching and almost made me coo myself to death. He's, like, four years old and in some pretentious pre-school art appreciation class, which is the kind of thing that usually makes me retch. But now I'm kind of hoping he gets into Dada and steals my brother and sister-and-law's toilet for his next exhibit.

Insults: better when expressed in the spirit of LiteBrite.

This post is a thinly veiled excuse to make LOLart.

Once upon a time, I had a shitty, shitty boyfriend. He was in a band and those of you who have dated musicians feel me when I say he was an emotionally stunted jackass. Breakup time came and I fell into a slight depression (psychotic tailspin). So, in a histrionic act of "Why doesn't he just fuck his guitar if he likes it so much?" combined with "Who says Art History majors can't make art?" I created this painting:



If it looks like a guitar with boobs and a vadge, that's because it is. See, so he can have sex with it! YEAH! It's not a tasteful nude. After I was done, I was super embarrassed by it and I threw it out. Unfortunately, my mom dug it out of the trash. And because I was still playing cello at that point, Mom mistook Vagina Guitar Lady for a cello. A tasteful nude cello abstraction. Never mind that it has a weirdly blurry, yet single sound hole found on acoustic guitars rather than the f-holes (seriously, that's what they're called) that you find on a cello. Never mind that, hello, it was in the trash. Probably there for a reason. Mom actually took it in to have it expensively framed, and now it hangs in the front hall of their house, at the bottom of the stairs, where Mom points it out to dinner guests, and where I've had to look at it every time I come home for going on, oh, ten years now. My asshole ex-boyfriend's anthropomorphic, fuckable guitar. I still haven't been able to tell Mom what it really is:

Pageboys on Dudes: Who Wears it Best?

Happy Thursday! There's a new trend afoot and it doesn't involve visible ears! Which of these sexy sexpots rocks it best?

Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men?



Or the Little Lad from the Starburst Berries n' Cream ads?

David Lynch says "fuck" a lot these days.

My love of David Lynch began retardedly early in life. It all started when, at age 10, I watched Blue Velvet with my family (Uncut. On Easter. Discuss.) and I was completely taken. In 9th grade English class I wrote a paper about Twin Peaks, in which I asserted that Lynch was re-defining the Horror genre through his use of lighting (though I probably didn't use the word "genre.") In my presentation, I made my classmates watch the scene in which the otherwordly killer, Bob, appears in a vision to Maddie while she's sitting with friends in a well-lit living room after singing a 50's-era rock n' roll ballad. He walks toward her in slow motion and climbs over the couch to get to her. I still contend that it was absolutely one of the most horrifying moments in film or T.V. Lighting changes everything, people.

Anyway, so no one got what the fuck I was on about and then in college, David Lynch came to give a talk and was forced into this Q&A session at the end, which he clearly abhorred. If you've seen his films, you can imagine how it went: "What was the meaning of Agent Cooper's vision of the ring in scene 8 of episode 3 in the second season?" He basically told everyone to shut the fuck up. I asked him something about how his films revisit the themes of good and evil, blah, blah, blah. He said "I have no idea what you're talking about." It was awesome.

If you follow such things, you'll know that Lynch has recently founded The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and Peace, which supports transcendentalist meditation in classrooms. I'm not sure if it's in spite of his embrace of transcendentalism or because of it, or maybe because he's just becoming a crotchety old man, that he has been doing a lot of swearing, albeit succinct to-the-point swearing, to the media lately. Consider:



Also, this iPhone commercial spoof, based on a Q&A in Berlin (Q&A's put him in a seriously bad mood, obvs) featuring similar sentiment:

The Tattoo: Phase 2

We're making progress. Green, yellow, purple and pink progress. This took a while, and I thought I was doing really, really well handling the pain like a pro and making witty banter with Rocio. But after 2 and a half hours I started to notice I was saying things that made no sense. It was like having the bends, for you divers out there. I felt fine, but I clearly was not. Who knew the effects of an endorphin deficit mirror those of nitrogen narcosis? NOT ME! (Am I not making sense again?) Anyway, back to work.

Lost in translationseseseses.

After looking at this, I don't think I will trust any subtitled movie, ever again. Granted this is a translation of a translation (English --> Chinese --> English), but still. How does "premonition" become "pregnancy"? And why does the word "fuck" turn up so much? And where the hell did the reference to the Presbyterian Church come from?

Christmas 2007

I'm not a very good photographer, so I was excited this turned out so well. At the Christmas party for work, my charmingly inebriated co-worker crashed a pre-dinner opera performance of "Mama Mia"(no, fo realz). "Did I really do that?" he asks me. Yes. Yes, you did.