Kicking a girl when she's down

I signed up for this thing called Daily Candy - they send you and email every day with cool stuff you should check out. Today they link to this site called My Heritage, where you upload a picture of yourself, and then they show you what celebrity you look like. The results are just cruel. Here I am, full of low self-esteem, unemployed, and this is what they give me...



Oh, come ON! That's rude.

Well, I suppose Alexander Dumas is a handsome man, but...

that's just ridiculous!

and here's the only woman, who looks to be about 85 years old. Fuck you, My Heritage... fuck you.

Lunch at Tiffany's

Yesterday I had a kind of crazy day - I went to the Mile and did a little bit of shopping and got totally SOAKED in the rain. I was sopped like a dog so I decided to duck into Tiffany's to have my ring polished. It got really scratched when I fell off my bike and broke my wrist. Did you know if you buy jewelry at Tiffany's, they'll clean it for you for free like, forever? M & I figure we might be able to get our money back in polishing. har har har. Anyway, I was a bit miserable from being wet and jostled on Michigan Avenue, but then I had a nice Audrey Hepburn moment and felt a lot better.

Last night we attempted to see Pirates of the Caribbean at the $5 movie theatre, but the place was a frickin' madhouse and there for 4 million people there, plus their kids. The next 2 shows were sold out, so we left. On the way out, I saw a grown man pick his daughter's nose, and then freak out supposedly because the booger was gross. Then he wiped it on the wall and made all this kids look at it. It was a really classy day.

LA Review

Well, I'm back from LA, where I had just a terrific time with my sister and Murphy. My brother-in-law's in Europe on tour with Steve Tyrell and by the looks of his blog, he's having a fabulous time. I got to catch up with some old friends, went to a couple of museums, but most importantly, spent some good quality time with my sis laying by the pool or on the couch watching movies. Here are some pics:



this is a dirty one I took of M and C eating chocolate bananas on Olvera Street, the oldest section of Los Angeles and a really nifty place to hang out, see some historical buildings and shop around in the market. Check out Mike's short hair! Oh, turns out Mike's not the only one to cut his dramatic locks - check out our friend Stan.


this is us at the Getty Villa in Malibu - a great place to spend the afternoon and have lunch, which is exactly what we did.



The Villa has really amazing architecture and details, like this stone floor. What better display for my adorable pedicure?



Here's another shot of the gardens there. The gardens are fabulous, and there's an herb garden that's olfactory heaven!



and this is Murphy, everyone's special friend and just the best dog you'll ever know.

Now that I'm back in Chicago it's back to the old job search. I also wrote a few movie reviews for my long-ignored other website. Check out my reviews for The Devil Wears Prada and The Da Vinci Code - two movies based on some of the worst books ever written!

Hockney-esque

We went to the LACMA the other day and saw the Hockney exhibit as well as five Klimts,including the one that sold for 135m! I'm a bit grouchy with Maria Altmann for selling Adele I the minute she laid her hands on her, but... what are you going to do? The Hockney portraits were really cool, and we practiced taking some Hockney shots ourselves.

news

I'm in LA visiting my sista and my brother-in-law. The bad news is I have a really bad cold, but I guess the good news is they have HBO On Demand, and my sister, like me, has the capacity to watch hour after hour of television. Hello, Big Love. Other good news is that I had a good interview last week, but the bad news is I didn't get the job. Well, I feel my nyquil kicking in so I'm going to lie down...

skater boiz

So, from my rather nifty perch at the Art Institute (right behind the lion), where I volunteer, I see hundreds of young men whatdoyoucallit? skating, roller.. no, skateboarding down the Michigan Avenue at various levels of competency. Mostly what looked like poor to terrible levels (I saw a lot of crashes) - but what fun they were having! Crazy sight. And like, I could smell them. And it was hot today. I could smell them with a plate glass window and 30 feet between us. I detest the smell of "boy".

Last night our very special one, our little Kaya (oh, how I love her!) SCRATCHED for the FIRST TIME her special scratching post. Mike and I went totally bat shit and started praising her and picking her up and kissing her and poured out her whole can of treats for her to eat. We scared her so much she'll probably never scratch it again. You know what sucks about cats? You can hardly buy them anything. Buying cute outfits, I figure, is like, the reason most people have kids. It's one of the reasons I intend to one day get a ridiculous little dog so I can buy it ridiculous little outfits.

Investigate this!

What's this I hear about Karl Rove sliding off the hook? I wonder whose grandma spent a week in the trunk of a car before that happened? I suppose Republicans think this is another big "win", just like killing Zarqawi (which, BTW, the Daily Show has been doing some good bits on lately.)

In other news, there's been a dramatic change in MY most trusted advisor - here are some before shots of him. Mike donated his hair to an awesome program called Locks of Love. Very soon, some little girl will be wearing Mike's hair - that makes me feel all fuzzy inside.

Andersonville Rocks

One of the advantages of my neighborhood is the annual Midsommar Fest, which I really think is the best fest in all of Chicago. I mean, you're likely to get shot at Taste of Chicago, but at Midsommar, the worst you'll encounter is a poor reel in lederhosen. It's really the lederhosen that separates Midsommar from all the other fests. That and the tres cool, dog-owning, baby carriage pushing, lesbian vibe. I love Andersonville, and really can't imagine living anywhere else in Chicago, but please oh please, can't you stay out? It's getting hard to park on the weekends. Find your own cool neighborhood, loser. hee! Well, if you are visiting, I've placed some books outside for a giveaway and registered them through bookcrossing.com, which is a really cool website and program, you should check it out. Its occurring to me that someone might interpret my personality based on the books I'm getting rid of. There's CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, the Pope's book, some book by Mitchner called the Covenant that neither one of us will claim and have no intention of reading and a bunch of books by Carl Hiaasen. The casual passerby might assume I hate Florida and have given up on organized religion. Actually, I guess that's mostly true, but mostly I'm trying to declutter. (bands pictured are Bumpus and Funkadesi - they were great!)

Devil's Lake

Last weekend we went camping at Devil's Lake - it was really fun, and by far the best park I've been to for camping and hiking in the midwest. This picture of Mike's feet was taken while the rest of us stood far back, shouting at him to come back from the edge. When I downloaded this picture, I got mad, but I have to admit it's a great shot, and, it turns out he didn't fall to his death after all, so it worked out ok.

Love Song

I saw Love Song at the Steppenwolf this week - it was mostly boring, although it had an amazing set. Lately the shows I've seen at the Steppenwolf have better sets than they do plays. The last stinko I saw was The Well-Appointed Room which had the most amazing set I've ever seen. It had an actual Herman Miller Eames lounger. Do you have any idea how much those cost? Oh, I should very much like to have one of those chairs one day. Anywho - I don't think I'm going to renew my subscription to the Steppenwolf next season, not only because I won't be able to score my sweet student discount, but because the lineup looks terrible. Anne Frank's Diary? Give me a break!

they can take those bricks and shove them up...

OMG, according the NY Times, people are sending bricks to their senators as a not-so-subtle message about the border between the US and Mexico. I have to wonder, did these people mourn when the Berlin Wall came down? Should we build other walls between the "good" parts of town and the "bad" ones? Has anyone actually contacted any Nazi's for advice on how to build a good strong wall and what measures to take when people cross it? Like, how big should the no-man's-land be, and whether you should leave the dead bodies lying around as messages to others interested in crossing - oh, I know, why don't these jackasses just mail the dead bodies of Mexicans to their senators, that might make a statement. Or, better yet, why not put the slain bodies IN the wall, like they did when they were building the Wall of China in, what was that? Oh yeah, the 3rd century. Pics: Building of Berlin wall, 1961; construction of "Security Fence" between Isreal and Palestine, 2000.

I'm an art historian!

Promised pictures from my graduation weekend. The ceremony at Millenium Park was really nice - Elizabeth Catlett spoke - she's an artist I really admiire. The weather was gorgeous and there were some good speeches. Had a great party with friends and family in our backyard - after a week of rain, we had a gorgeous day of reprieve. Was really grateful to have everyone around - I have some of the best friends in the whole world and felt, as I frequently do around this gang and my sweet sweet husband, a sort of overwhelming sense of happiness that I have been blessed by these people.

Free at last!

I had my cast taken off today! I'm typing (painfully) with two hands!!! Although I did have the most beautiful cast off all time (confirmed by the Dr.) I did gleefully leave it behind, but here are some pics to remember it fondly. Thanks to those of you who made it a bit more tolerable by decorating it so nicely! My arm's not as weird looking as I thought it would be, or as smelly, after scrubbing it for a good half hour - oh, delicious water - but a bit swollen and odd looking. Tomorrow: pictures from my graduation?

now what?

Yeeow! Friday I had my last class, so that's mostly that for my master's degree. This week I am going to present my thesis at a symposium, and then Sat. is graduation. After that all I have to do is find a job and starting paying off massive amounts of student loans, innit? If you run into me, I beg you, please don't ask me what I'm going to do now, cause I don't know, and the mere question gives me heart palpitations.

I saw my friend Caitlin's solo show at The NeoFuturarium, and it was an amazing, strong performance. I was so impressed by the honesty and humor she brought to the subject of reality tv makeover shows, with their mind-numbing qualities and simultaneous effect of making viewers feel superior. It's a topic close to my heart. Her performance is nicely paired with another show about this guy who was on Jeopardy. Check it out!

In other news, an old classmate of mine is on the E Channel's "Daily 10." She used to be Cathy, but now she's "Catt." I have a feeling that's going to torment me in my upcoming period of unemployment.

bwoken arm

aw, she bwoke her arm...

You know what's weird? Everyone thinks it;s like totally adorable that I broke my arm. sometimes I do too, but usually only after I've taken a vicoden.

moviies

u know wht makes me really mad? that united 93 movie. who, i ask u, is going 2 watch that shit? if u r, dpn't even tell me or i'll be very grouchy with u. u know what also gets me? that apparently the families of the people who died have "approved" the movie. and i'm even madder that some people think that makes it ok to go see it. i;d like 2 knock the director about with my good arm. the same applies to RV.

i am interested in seeing friends with $, Brick, /thank u 4 smoking and American Dreamz. i suppose after i graduate i'll be able 2 resume my old movie-goind schedule.

break!

oh, man - you arent going to believe what hapnd! i fell off my bike and broke my wrist! mt left wrist, and now i cant type 2 good. so, that was the second trip to the emergecy room in a week - i had to go the previous weekend because i was sick and i got dehydrated. sucks, right? i didn't even know it was possible for the bones of grown up people to break. i guess i'm going 2 hav this cast 4 at least 5 weeks. ): everyone keeps teling me 2 use voicerecognition software 2 type - do u have any idea how crappy that shit is? its worse than this, ill tell u that.

Art appreciation

Today, I took a sort of nauseated spin around the art institute, not because what I saw was nauseating (well, I'm not crazy about their art before the 19th century), but because I've been feeling sick for a week now. So, I'm standing in front of this Fantin-Latour and a guard sidles up next to me and says, "Oh, they painted this real nice, didn't they?" I used to have this opinion that museum guards, who stand in front of art for 8 hours a day, were an untapped resource of art criticism and insight, but in every interaction I've had with them, that theory has proved incorrect. So I'm like, "They?" and then we had a talk about how Fantin skillfully painted glass. Then the guard told me what she really liked was the dollhouse downstairs. I had actually forgotten about the miniatures until several weeks ago and I went down to have a look at them, only to encounter the most idiotic group of open-mouthed gum chewing nincompoops I've ever seen. I thought to myself, "They should get rid of these stupid dollhouses."

So, then I walked around some more, and I was tagging along tours like I always do - I heard this high school kid shout in front of the El Greco Madonna, "How much did that thing COST?" His instructor bizarrely replied, "A bazillion dollars." I hate to see that kind of ignorance, but then I tack on behind this group of kids who I swear couldn't have been older than 6 years old, and the docent is showing them a Dutch still life, and she actually says to them, "As you can see, the black background really pushes the composition to the fore, which is quite typical of 16th century Flemish painting."

Lists

A few nights ago I ironically drank some boxed wine and ended up with an unironic headache. I'm careening toward the end of my MA degree and pretty sad about its conclusion. After I finish my thesis, I'm going to go about the tricky business of finding a job in today's economy. Would you like to hire me? I'm fully qualified to read and take notes. And make lists.
Things I'm looking forward to:

• My sister's visit
  
• approval of my thesis
  
• Graduation party
  
• trip to LA
  
• Friends with Money
  
• seeing the baby this weekend
  

Things I'm not looking forward to:

• Agonizing process of looking for a job
  
• completion of school
  
• cleaning house tonight
  
• United 93
  

We're funny.

I had a real nice visit with my parents - had quite a time watching 40 Year Old Virgin with them. Who knew it was that dirty? Not 5 minutes into that thing they're talking about donkey shows... I got totally kicked in the balls by one of my professors over a paper I wrote. That sucked. But, in brighter news, here's the long awaited video from the Oscar Party. So, if you just had a baby or you're in Uraguay and couldn't make the party, you'll be able to see what a drunken good time you missed. I think it's rated PG, if you're at work. Watch in Quicktime. 11 mins long.

moles

So, tomorrow my parents are coming up for a visit, and it reminds me of a funny story my dad told me a little while ago - no doubt I'll have more of these gems to share on Monday...
Daddy told me how one of the cats ate a mole out in the yard and upset my mom. I said, "Why, did they get blood all over the place?"
"Blood? Don't even know if a mole HAS blood," he says.
"What?!"
"Well, Kelly, they're tougher than a junk yard dog. 'Bout have to take an ax to kill 'em."
"What?!"
"Can't tell the front from the back."
"What?!"
"Well, it's true - They're disgusting. They got a little pointy nose, pointy tail..."
"Let me talk to mom..."
"...Hello."
"Hi, Mom. I heard the cat ate a mole."
"Oh, they're disgusting. Can't tell the front from the back."

animals are funny

Found a few videos of animals that are just ridiculously hilarious. Maybe tomorrow I'll post a bunch of taking-it-in-the-nuts videos. Check out this, and this - but I think this one is the best.

Knock Me Down Girl

This is a great song: Knock Me Down Girl!

Today in the art history survey course that I'm a TA for, the Professor showed this painting by Charles Demuth called The Figure Five in Gold (it's at the Met - beautiful to see in person), and he read the poem by William Carlos Williams that inspired it. It goes:


The Great Figure

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

fire truck

moving

tense

unheeded

to gong clangs

siren howls

and wheels rumbling

through the dark city


There's a woman in the class who translates the whole lecture into sign language for a deaf student - it was so beautiful to watch her sign that poem. I love watching sign language. I always watch her and try to learn at least one word a lecture. Today I learned "vagina" because we were looking at a lot of Georgia O'Keeffes. It looks like this.

bouncing balls

Just saw this really cool video of bouncing balls bouncing down a street in San Francisco which is somehow one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. Those are really balls, baby! I have a feeling friend D, who wrote a whole diary entry on bouncing balls when he was a kid, which C pulls out to read to us every once in a while, is really going to love it. "Oh, bouncing ball, I bounced you so high today..."

I miss San Francisco.

That's no lady!

I now know TWO people that are on the extras to DVDs - pretty good ones, too - friend Sarah is on The Incredibles and now my brother-in-law Lyman is on Lady and the Tramp! That's awesome! If you don't plan on buying the DVD, you can watch it here - Lyman's the one with the uh, bass, and he looks like the star of the video. I was in LA when he filmed the video and I remember being so knocked out that he got to keep the clothes that the wardrobe person brought him. That's slick.

In other music news, I've been really addicted to Dolly Parton's Travelin' Thru ever since I saw her sing it at the Oscars. Gorgeous song.

Well, I'm off to the theatuh pretty soon for A Well Appointed Room at the Steppenwolf - too bad they couldn't come up with a better appointed title. Last week saw A Child's History of Bombing at the Neo-Futurarium, which was mostly good, but a bit preachy, and I am, of course, the choir.

Oscar Night!

In the interest of providing world-class blogging coverage of last night's Oscar bash (or could it be mere procrastination of working on my thesis???) I offer this brief summary from C & D's party. The food! The fashion! The
célébrité! We weeped for Jon Stewart, who got burned by his audience, and were outraged at Crash, which won best picture. My own M took home the best prize of all (me!) No, he "guessed" the highest number of oscar winners and won the very generous prize handed out by C & D (by guessing, I mean of course looking up the Vegas odds). Here are a few pics, and hopefully soon I'll be able to post video highlights of the show (montage style, just like last night!)

laughs

Check out my website for the yearly "we pick the oscars" extravaganza. In a rather unprecedented move, it is I, and not my guests, who does not follow the "rules" of the game.

We all posted our pics for the best film of the year, but in the last few days I've discovered a little video, which I've since seen about four hundred times, that is a strong contender for all categories. Check out the laughing quadruplets!

Do you need help, little man?

Last night I discovered podcasts and had a good time listening to all my fave radio shows like Wait, Wait...Don't tell me! which I always seem to miss on Saturday morning. This week's episode features Corky Siegel, a blue harmonic...ist who plays a song called The Texas Quail Hunt Blues (click on "Not my job: Corky Siegel") The dude plays a mean harmonica.

Like others, I've also been enjoying the Brokeback Mountain parodies, including Brokeback To the Future, which is hilarious. Also I just saw this fairly ridiculous video about the dreaded human-animal hybrid - worth seeing just to hear this guy go, "Do you need help, little man?".

Hillbilly VP shoots old man

Isn't it sort of hilarious that Dick Cheney went HUNTING and SHOT a Republican contributer? That'll teach you for supporting the Bush administration! Even more hilarious is that the White House thought they could cover this up. Well, I'm anti-gun, so I have very little sympathy for any of these fools, but it turns out this guy is ok, but did spend some time in intensive care after being, uh, shot in the FACE by Dick Cheney. WHO, I ask you, would go out in the woods with Dick Cheney and a GUN? Oh, these Texans and their effing guns...

culture

Last night we saw Mary Zimmerman's Pericles at the Goodman. It was a very good performance but I wish she had picked a better play. Perhaps she meant to prove that the old saying "You can't polish a turd" is incorrect, because she did manage to polish it. Something which was not polished is the LUMA (Loyola Art Museum) exhibition on Caravaggio: una mostra impossibile. It's an outrage, and I was totally incensed! If they hadn't had free champagne and one of those chocolate fountains, I would have torn the images off the wall and smashed them over the cheese hor d'orves table. Anyway, what is this world coming to? I ask you. A whole show of copies of Caravaggios. It was like walking around a goddamn poster shop.

Sesame Street

I've had a really nice week - my first full week of classes, including my internship at the Prints and Drawings room at the Art Institute, which is really fun. I'm getting to see and handle some incredible art, and I get to combine both my love of art with my love of order by placing everything neatly in it's proper place. It's the perfect place for a person with mild OCD like myself. I'm using some of my free time this morning before I head off for my TA gig to peruse YouTube for classic Sesame Street video - I'm looking for this adorable little skit that used to melt my heart with a kitten in a dollhouse, and another one called me and my llama. I haven't found it, but I'm catching some great golden oldies, like the 1-12 pinball song, Uncle Alligator, the typewriter... This weekend we're going to have a small superbowl party - if the game's interesting, we might watch it. OH MY GOD!!!! I JUST FOUND IT!!!!! Oh, that is SO sweet.

an elongated marshmallow

I'm rather thrilled about the press A Million Little Pieces is getting, not because I really care about the book either way, but I like to hear a public debate over the arts. Did you know that back in the 19th century, James M. Whistler got in a fight with someone over art and threw him through a glass window? You just don't see that sort of public discourse going on any more. I saw a bunch of video of Oprah questioning Frey and publicly shaming him. Then I just now watched a preview for this dopey Disney movie called Eight Below which is supposedly "inspired by a true story" (incidentally, so was the improbable Hidalgo but, like, what kind of idiot do you have to be? No one gets a root canal without anesthesia) and I started thinking how funny it would be if Oprah had 8 sled dogs on her show and said, "Where you trapped in Antarctica or not?"

"Roof!"

*gasp!*

M and I were just talking about how funny it is that Google's motto is "Do no evil" (yes, this is Friday nite conversation) and what a ridiculous world we live in that a corporation would even include the world EVIL (I assume they mean the devilish variety) in their mission statement, and THEN, not even be able to abide by their own relatively loose strictures. "Oops - we did a little evil after all." If those bastards turn our records over to the Bush administration, I'm through with Google. Somehow.

I've been too busy to blog about this weeks' Project Runway in which Tim's words cut to my very heart, because, I guess, I'm projecting too much. When he said, "People, I'm very concerned" and "She looks like an elongated marshmallow and she's such a STIFF walker" I thought, "Oh, Jesus, if Tim said all that to ME, I'D jump through a window!" I really don't know how those people went on after being devastated by Tim. I mean, Oprah tries to devastate you and you just go out and have a beer and laugh it off - but Tim... oh, Tim.

weekend

Well, I had a fabulous weekend - on Friday I hung out with my friend J and her baby, E. Or "e" rather. Then M and I saw Underworld, which was deliciously terrible. Then on Sat. we went shopping and then had dinner with the gang, then on Sunday we did some more shopping and then had a margarita while looking out on the snowy streets of Chicago. I've been doing a lot of thinking about Tim Gunn, so much that I hate to tell you how much time I spent perusing the Project Runway website, listening to his podcast and reading his blog. I learned a cool word from one of his entries: croquis - which mean "creative sketching." I like that. He also, was confused by the "tootie" remark. He wrote "...where was the vulgarity? What tooty?" (sic) Indeed. Oh, tootie! Where is thy toot?

My last semester of my master's program starts this week - I'm little nervous, per usual, but also sad, because I really love being in school and I have an idea that it's going to fly by, and also a little overwhelmed, because I want to finish my thesis by May and that's going to be tricky. Eek!

too much tootie

If you're not watching Project Runway, I just don't know WHAT you're watching. And if you don't have a crush on Tim Gunn, I don't know WHO you have a crush on! I wish Tim Gunn would come to my house and say, "Kelly, everything you're doing is FABULOUS." and then I would know that it was true. I make the following PREDICTION: that Santino goes out in a ball of flame in the next few episodes, either because he storms out himself or because he leaps off the runway and starts punching Michael Kors, and gets kicked off, Real World-style. Anyway, it was a relief to see Emmett get the Auf Wiedersehen last night. The dude seriously creeps me out. But something left me confused, so I watched it again in one of Bravo's many replays of the show today - one of the criticisms of Emmett's outfit was that it showed "entirely too much tootie." Urban Dictionary confirms that a "tootie" is, indeed, a vagina. Who knew?

Murphy raps

This is Murphy, my sister and brother-in-law's dog - this video is so hilarious, you're going to totally pee your pants. (click on the image to play) Hey! How'd she do that?

Colts and Robbers

So, this weekend M and I went to Indiana - to visit his grandmother and mom, and then to visit my family on Sunday. We went to my brother and my new sister-in-law's place and unwittingly found ourselves watching a Colt's game. I bet you never thought you'd find a sporting recap on my blog - but that's what I've got for you, my little cornish hen. I doubt there will be enough sport's information on my blog to fill my own secondary sports blog, like some others have done, but you never know. So, we're watching the game, and I don't know too much about football, and I'm asking my brother a lot of questions. My brother and my dad are like walking rule books of any sport you can imagine. And there's this one moment in the game where this one guy on the other team, the really cute one with long curly hair? He like, leaps over and grabs the ball and rolls on the ground and then he stands up but then he drops the ball. So, then there's this long debate over something, and eventually the umpire says that it's the Colt's ball. And even though my family members are all Colts fans, they agree that it was a bad call. Then, my brother rattles something off that sounds like it came right out the football rule book, something like "...blah blah blah and as a result it should be the stealer's ball." And I'm all impressed. Anyway, then we're watching the game some more, and someone makes another reference to "stealers" and I'm like, "Wait a minute, what is the name of the team that is playing the Colts?" and everyone's like, "Duh, the Stealers." and then it all became clear because I thought they were just referring to them as "the stealers" because they had stolen the Colts balls. See? And we all had a big laugh.

Christmas Pictures

As promised, here are some Christmas pics!

The World: Good?

Before I know it, it's going to be late January, so I'd better get some early January thoughts out there, before it's passe. In the wee early days of 2006, I've been thinking, Self, maybe the world is not such a bad place after all. And I allowed myself, in a rather unprecedented way, to experience a calm and satisfaction and happiness in my life that I had not felt for continuous days for I-hate-to-tell-you how long. This is due to a variety of factors including a tear-less holiday season, a winter that seeks not to chill me to my very bones, idyllic relations with my boo, my friends, and a new baby, a monumental task finished and a certain optimism that Things Might Be Work Out Fine. Then, what gets in the way of my peace and happiness, but The World and Brokeback Mountain. All it took was a little evening news and an Ang Lee movie to remind me that the world is, in fact, a terrible place! Where civil rights erode, miners die, Native Americans get robbed and two cowboys live a live of misery because they fear the repercussions of a hostile society that doesn't understand their love.

This very mild winter I'm enjoying is just the product of global warming! How can I experience true happiness with a Republican president in office? I don't know... nevertheless, I wish us all joy (Joy!?!) in 2006.

Home Sweet Home?

After spending Christmas in NY, M and I returned home to Kaya last night. It always feels strange flying into Chicago - I'm always like, what am I doing here? And then: oh yeah, I live here. Anyway, it was only a short trip, but it felt like ages. We saw a lot of friends, spent time with my sister and my brother-in-law, went to a few museums, a party in a music studio, had Christmas dinner with a friend and a couple of dogs (pics coming soon, perhaps) and otherwise hung out, walked around, ate great food and did some shopping. M gave me some beautiful and wonderful presents and we had a nice time laying around the hotel and shopping at the Strand (2nd fave bookstore in US). Well, hope you all have a happy New Year's Eve and a prosperous 2006.

An Open Letter to Tyra Banks

Tyra, there is only one beautiful but strange girl standing before me. Some of our judges, namely me, think that she is TOO strange to continue to receive our viewership. She's a little mean. And our judges are wondering what's. Up. With. The. Enunciation? We can understand you, you don't have to talk like that. You know how sometimes you tell the outrageous girls that they have TOO much personality and the quiet ones that they don't have ENOUGH personality? Or the short ones that they're too short and the "plus" sized ones that they'll never have enough personality to make up for being a size... 12? Well, WE don't like it when you do that creepy flutter thing with your eyelids when you say "One of you. Will be. Eliminated." Our judges think you need to tone it the eff down. You need to be less. Insect-like. Because you. Scare. Me. TYRA! I have never in my life screamed at a supermodel like I am screaming at you now! Your show used to be cool! And it's like you don't even care! I care! The judges care! So get it together before your next season. Also, get rid of Jay and Miss Jay - they're even more bizarre than you.

movies, music

On Sat. Night Live I saw this cool musician - James Blunt - I'm really digging him. Here are a few songs. Had a pretty nice weekend - met up with an old friend of mine on Michigan Ave. on Saturday. Was a total madhouse down there- tried to do a little Christmas shopping but started getting overwhelmed by crowds and had to leave. Watched Melinda and Melinda which was SO terrible. I've just about had it with Woody Allen. Also saw Bruce Almighty and it wasn't as bad as I've heard - although the pseudo-God bits were really stupid. I hate movies about religion, or rather, movies which dance around religion. Odd trivia: Steve Carrell is in both those movies. I mean, the fact that Woody Allen put him in one of his movies shows you just how much the old man's lost it. Also saw Aeon Flux. It was also mostly terrible but we had a good time watching it.

high school music

Got this idea from Deevan to go to musicoutfitters.com and enter in the year of my high school graduation for the top 100 list of music that year. I'm 1992, a good year, I think - or at least I liked it. Here are the songs I really liked:
7. My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It), En Vogue
13. I'm Too Sexy, Right Said Fred
39. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
44. Set Adrift On Memory Bliss, P.M. Dawn
57. Mysterious Ways, U2
60. One, U2
71. Friday I'm In Love, Cure
75. Rhythm Is A Dancer, Snap
100. I Can't Make You Love Me, Bonnie Raitt

Here's what I hated:
15. Achy Breaky Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus 16
16. I'll Be There, Mariah Carey
46. 2 Legit 2 Quit, Hammer
59. How Do You Talk To An Angel, Heights
91. That's What Love Is For, Amy Grant

Yelch, there was a lot of Amy Grant out that year. As you can see, I was a big U2 fan - still am. Hmm... now I just looked up the year I was born. Here are the songs I like:
12. Jungle Boogie, Kool and The Gang
18. Sunshine On My Shoulder, John Denver
20. Hooked On A Feeling, Blue Swede
39. Top Of The World, Carpenters
49. Waterloo, Abba
88. Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing, Stevie Wonder
97. I Honestly Love You, Olivia Newton-John

Wow, I didn't know Olivia Newton-John was that old. I should download Hooked a Feeling, that's a REALLY good song. Top of the World makes me laugh. Probably my mom sang that to me, she loves The Carpenters. Now I just looked up the year I got married. Here's what I liked:
2. The Boy Is Mine, Brandy and Monica
10. I Don't Want To Wait, Paula Cole
28. Sex And Candy, Marcy Playground
35. Tubthumping, Chumbawamba
75. Ray Of Light, Madonna
79. Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Verve

Here's what I hate(d):
3. You're Still The One, Shania Twain
5. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes
13. My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion

Indiana boy makes good

Last night my brother-in-law, Lyman, was on Letterman! Regis Philbin has a christmas cd and he played backup while Regis sort of what do you call it? Chanteused Rudolph, my least favorite christmas song, which made it very difficult to sleep. Occasionally Donald Trump would bop out and shout something. It was a very odd, sort of post-modern performance. The cool thing is, Lyman was standing right behind Regis, so he was on the whole time. We'll have to keep out eyes peeled on his blog to see what he has to say about the experience. BTW, L. has released his first solo cd - check it out.

And now, a word on Letterman. First off, what is WITH Paul Schaffer? The dude's a total freak. I mean, how much coke do these guys do before they go on the show? Also, Colin Hanks was on, who in his Hanksiness is quite unbearable. I'd like to know, does Tom Hanks have other children who are exact clones of himself that we'll have to endure for generations to come? Will the world will forever be plagued with Hankses and will they all have that same annoying way of talking as if everything they say is like, SO interesting?

4:20

Where am I going to get more stuffing?

11am

Ate last of Thanksgiving stuffing.

It's too easy (get it?!?!)

What do you think Paris Hilton's perfume smells like?

So, I had a great Thanksgiving. I hope all my reader did too! M. made a flow chart for the dinner preparation - I'm sure you all had one - time on the horizontal axis, dishes on the vertical. That last half-hour is a doozy, but it all worked out. I got a lot of writing and applicationing done, and finished grading my student's papers. I was thankful for that. (:

Do what is right, or do what is easy?

I had a great weekend this past - finished writing my chapter with only a little bit of anxiety and weeping, and then on Sat. went to visit the new baby, then M and I ate some really good BBQ. Yesterday we saw Harry Potter, which was fun to watch. I wrote a review of it on my website. My agenda for this week is to grade papers, make presentation for my Rodin class, meet with advisor re: thesis chapter and make any necessary changes, buy gold heels if I can find perfect pair, clean house, get oil change, make Thanksgiving dinner, entertain friends and mail out first grad application. Easy.

I have another weekend of serious writing ahead of me to finish up this Whistler chapter I'm writing - then I'm going to move on to van Gogh. The last few weekends I've been working really hard on Whistler, but it's always a bit difficult to get rolling - for some reason, my house has to absolutely spotless before I can concentrate.

Dudes! My brother-in-law's band was on NPR - how cool is that? You can listen to a sample - it's really great.

Well, aside from writing there's nothing on my weekend agenda aside from checking out the new Harry Potter movie - oh! That reminds me - so, we're taking the L home today and there's this dude sitting next to us, and he's wearing a wizard robe (read: black graduation gown) and a Griffendore scarf - except he totally looks like Draco Malfoy because he's got this platinum blonde hair - except he's like, my age. So, we're all like, he should wear a Slitherin scarf.

schadenfreude

Today I have an opportunity to use one of my favorite words, schadenfreude, because I see that Bush's approval ratings are at an All Time Low. This is apparently even lower than the previous All Time Low his ratings were at. According to CNN.com, his ratings for "trustworthiness" are also at an All Time Low. I aim my schadenfreude at both Bush and people who voted for Bush, so... take that. Generally I do not enjoy watching others fail, but in this situation, I do. The only downside is that he drags the whole country down the toilet with him. Anyway, another of my favorite words is "tony" which was used in a review of my brother-in-law's show in the New Yorker, in reference to the venue, not the performance. I managed to slip "tony" into my thesis - I hope my advisor doesn't ask me to cut it. We have slightly different ideas about writing, I think it's going to come to a head over the use of exclamation marks. I would like to use one.

In case you're wondering, I absolutely hate the word "intimate". It makes me want to throw up. Also I hate "anthropomorphic." Anne Rice totally ruined that one for me, but everybody has to use "intimate", don't they? Ugh.

Kids, I hate to tell you what I watched on television last night. I did give in to every temptation. I watched models cry and get drunk and cry and act like insane divas and watched Tyra at her most bizarre, and I watched a crazy, toothless woman from "God's country" freak out and scream about horoscopes and mandalas, which she referred to as "dark things" and of the devil or something. Instead of making me feel intellectually superior, I just got depressed in a blue state kind of way and thought it's all doom, doom, if we can't understand each other, and if people like that are allowed to vote. She is surely anti-abortion, and I doubt she understands the importance of upcoming privacy issues in the supreme court. I'm going to have to take a hard line and force myself to never watch Trading Spouses again, and I hate to say it, but ANTM is looking pretty shaky too.

What's on?

Doesn't the Colbert Report suck? What a disappointment. I don't like Stephen Colbert 'cause he has a face, I like to say, that I don't like. But he really does, you know? If you have a face like that, I'm sorry, but I won't like you. But anyway, you're almost guaranteed to be a jerk, just like all guys who have a face like that are. In other TV news, Monday's season premier of Arrested development was hilarious. "Church and State Fair"! That kills me! Also I can't get enough of America's Next Top Model. I'm totally over The Gilmore Girls - I mean, how boring can one show get? OMG, I don't know WHY, really, but last week for some reason I watched a Trading Spouses or something? And you know they're always making these ridiculous pairs? They're like, "Let's see what happens when we put vegetarian, African American woman from NYC who works for the ACLU in the home of a bunch of rednecks in Tennessee who run a pig farm!" Anyway, in this one, it was, "Let's see what happens when we put an ignorant born-again Christian in the home of some light-weight hippies who check their horoscope in the morning!" Well, I'll tell you, she totally freaked out. She freaked out so hard, it was a two parter, and ever since then I've been absolutely torn as to whether I should watch the second half, which very well could have been on last night. OMG, WHAT did I just DO? I checked the TV listings. It's on TONIGHT after ANTM. Oh God! "Let's find out if Kelly will watch the most ridiculous show on earth that will make her feel like friggin' Einstein or be responsible and finish grading the 27 papers she still has left!" Stay tuned!

What a weekend!

Oh, my friends, it's been quite a weekend. I spent most of it working on my thesis, or rather, a small part of my thesis, which was at times agonizing, at times thrilling - it could be the best or the worst work I've ever done. We'll see what my advisor has to say about it. Went out for dinner with the gang on Friday night and had a terrific time except for this crazy group of drunkards sitting behind us whose conversation started out salty and ultimately crescendoed to the point where I was reaching for my cell phone and wondering if a beer bottle was going to be broken over my head. After they stumbled out to the parking lot to solve their problems in more sophisticated ways, like passing out in the backs of their el dorados, our gang had a little laugh about what our favorite lines were. Lines so salty, I tell you, that I hesitate to write them down because I'm wondering if any young people might read my blog. Anyway, Sat. it was work work work on my thesis all day, with a break to go shopping for the new Margaret Atwood for me and Quake 4 for M. The Penelopiad is a super-quick read - I finished it in a couple of hours, and really excellent. I only wish it had been longer, because now I don't have anything else to read. Except for, uh, books and books on 19th century art. If you also want a review of Quake 4, I can tell you that Mike seemed amused, although not obsessed - even now, he is not playing it, for example. I was looking over at it while I was writing earlier, and I can tell you it looked kind of gross. He said some characters were called, like, Strogrose, or something, and I said, "they're SO GROSS!" Get it?!?! OMG, I'm such a dork.