12.27.16

will it ever feel too late to talk about the end of 2016? i began december with more assignments than i've ever had in a single month, then decided to blog every day and run at least 100 miles; i've been at ye olde charity bookstore and the bird hospital almost every week. that isn't all that much, but these weeks are taffy, stretching out and sagging, is what i mean; tasks, gatherings, weird news keep on coming. i'm still waiting for christmas, somehow. my sister and her husband aren't coming to new york for the first winter in a decade or so, which makes sense, given that they have a five-month-old son (just hospitalized with a nasty respiratory bug, as it happens, along with his dad, who gave up his appendix for the holidays). we'll still see them—we're headed to northern california for new year's and to celebrate my mom's halloween elopement(!)—but it's new and strange and long, the last of 2016. we saw my dad and most of my stepfamily on boxing day. we've got a pint of organic eggnog in the back of the refrigerator. i haven't used my little crock pot for anything, but i don't want to put it away. i tracked a missing gift down the phone lines to ups, the usps, and kansas; "thank you for your spirit," kansas said when i didn't yell. who wants to end the year yelling at a stranger?

carrie fisher starred in it's christmas, carol! (2012), a hallmark channel movie about a heartless publishing executive visited by the ghost of her former boss, eve. only one cautioning spirit; budget cutbacks, &c.

carol: it's christmas eve, and you've come to warn me about if i don't change my ways. oh, what's the name of that story?
eve: miracle on 34th street?
carol: no.
eve: it's a wonderful life?
carol: no.
eve: it's not star wars, is it?

i always hated it's a wonderful life.

09.08.13

at the risk of being the girl who insists all gatherings are better in cemeteries, i'm starting to feel like all gatherings are better in cemeteries. my little sister and esb and i rolled out to see scream* at cinespia at hollywood forever when i was out in los angeles for matty in july, and i insisted on a follow-up trip when joe and i were back in town two weeks ago. this time we saw back to the future, so hobbyists' souped-up old deloreans ant-marched around the cemetery grounds. the crowd was a bit less costumed than it had been for scream's ninetiesfest (really, los angeles? who doesn't have an old puffer vest and/or a prom dress?), but it was enthusiastic, and it seemed to appreciate our complicated picnic accessories. we planned separate menus for encampments in line and in front of the screen, swapped cheese for wine with the kids on blankets behind us, and toasted absent friends as the sun ducked like a starlet behind the mausoleums. i'll say it again: new york, please try harder.

*was skeet ulrich ever plausible as a teenager? he's that franchise's gabrielle carteris. also, esb had never seen scream. what?!

09.06.13

i'm closing in on the wild-haired and dirty-eyed final week of shipping the november issue at work and can't in good conscience write at length about our nine days in southern california (we got back this monday), but i feel like* it would be selfish to stagger into the weekend without airing this photo of my family at guelaguetza. i'm sentimental like that.

*that post (and the jezebel post it references) is actively insipid. have you ever known a thing to be actively insipid? it's both depressing and kind of impressive.

05.29.13

my sisters and i joined the line for moma's rain room (a temporary installation in which fancy tech creates the experience of walking through a downpour without getting wet; it's dazzling, and it's been wildly popular) at something like half past noon this past friday. it was (old-fashioned) raining (on the outdoor line) at the time, and a staffer with an umbrella and an impeccably-cut mackintosh approached me. "just so you know," he said, "the wait is about three hours right now." i grimaced. "no, you don't understand," he whispered. "that's the best it's been for a week." we ended up waiting a bit less than that, in fact, and it was...quite nice, all things considered? as kidchamp dot net is obviously above all things a destination for practical data, allow me to share some strategic information. if you intend to rain-room,

bring pals, three if you can; that way two of you can peel off to explore the rest of the museum (or forage for provisions, or use the bathroom) while the other two perform feats of strength for each other, or play cards, or argue about the new daft punk album* in line. the line must include one member of your group at all times, but beyond that you're free to come and go as you please, provided that you hang on to your ticket.

bring layers. i wore a short-sleeved silk shirt and suffered. misty, late-spring rain gets into your bones when you're standing in it for a long time, even if you've got an umbrella.

bring booze. i'm not saying you should whip a bottle of wild turkey out of your purse, but if, say, you jog up to the columbus circle american apparel in search of a cheap cardigan and pass both a liquor store and a starbucks on the way back, you should bring your sisters fortified coffee.

bring a real camera. it's pretty dark in the rain room, and most cameraphones aren't fast enough to take decent photos. unless you're deft with baggies or a wild kingdom-style photographer's tent, moreover, you've probably never shot in the rain with good equipment; do it now. speaking of,

bring a crossword puzzle, or some origami projects, or the sunday times book review. dancers in the rain are nice and all, but they can get wet; it rains in every dance movie ever made. if you just want to be cinematic, like, recite roy batty's speech from the end of blade runner. i say use the special circumstances to make something new.

*meh.

08.02.11

my sister (baby jo) and brother-in-law (chris) are as fond of movies and cemeteries as we are, bless their dark filmgoers' hearts, so our conversations about our upcoming stay at their place in los angeles were mostly a competition to see who could be most enthusiastic about rolling out for cinespia, a decade-old summer screening series at hollywood forever (a favorite final resting place for the famous and dead - valentino, douglas fairbanks, and the like).

cemetery picnickers start lining up around around six on saturday evenings, and they don't wait to make it through the gate: tables and chairs sprouted like mushrooms on the lawn at the side of the road. everyone had the same roll-up gnome-table; i'm guessing it came from the silver lake trader joe's, as we ourselves had (both in a temporal and metaphysical sense). perhaps a tenth of the crowd had had pizza delivered to them at the cemetery, while jo brought the russ and daughters caviar dish i gave chris last christmas. "you could bring candles," i said. "bitch," said she, "please."


{brother b's handmade cinespia table cloth}

we turned out for it happened one night, frank capra's 1934 screwball road trip movie with clark gable and claudette colbert. a deejay played assorted indie rock (and a lot of amy winehouse) as we staked out spaces on the vast lawn in front of the mausoleum/screen and reassembled our alternapicnics. folks queued for the voyage-dans-la-lune-ish photo booth; a placid cat wore a harness at the end of a leash. just before the movie started, one of the organizers came out to tell us that the deejay and his family had just moved to los angeles from northern ireland, and it was his (the deejay's) young daughter's birthday; the birthday girl came out as well, whispering that she was very nervous and didn't want the microphone, and we sang for her. the organizer asked her if she had anything to say. "bacon," she replied.


{gable, colbert, mausoleum}

dew settled on our legs and shoulders as the moon rose.


{clementines, votives}

we made short work of our wine and sake and tunneled under jo and chris's four thousand blankets (quilts handmade by jo, naturally). when the movie was over, i tucked in my arms and rolled over them both, the suckers.


{leaving the cemetery}

where are your saturdays in the cemetery in the summer with my sister, new york? please try harder.

10.13.10 {go team wedding, baby jo edition}

wedding DIY is a beast to document; i was across the country as jo, her friends, and my mom did most of their prep, and for the final 72 hours i juggled photos of making things with, you know, making things. also tacos.

mom needed something to trim the hat box in which she was giving chris and jo part of their wedding present; ten minutes and a stack of vintage book-guts later, she'd made this. (i had to mail the first part of our gift, a c.1970 ice bucket shaped like a diving bell, so i defaulted to our family's other traditional presentation method, which is to make a creepy tuneless noise and gift a thing with no wrapping at all.)

aisle garland with hand-punched paper and fishing line, wound and wound for days and days prior to our arrival; "i made it long enough to go up and down the hallway six times," said mom. someone might or might not have been lifted from the ground by their lapels on saturday when they told her the garland had slipped from the bucket and gotten too tangled to use down on the beach; i wasn't there.

i was around in plenty of time for the table numbers; jo freehanded the shapes, em lined the cutouts with rubber cement and wax paper, and i painted like a helper monkey. long night, night 2 (my mother hand-sewed the rolled grass runners in the background in that craft dungeon shot; they were too wide to load into the sewing machine).

the best man, justin, is a vintagemaster; he spent a year collecting mystery objects in and around los angeles. each of the eighteen tables had (hand-sewn, pocket-folded napkins, vials of sea salt, wee menus tucked into each napkin, and) a collection of spyglasses, scales, hurricanes, candlesticks, orbs...especially candlesticks and orbs. i believe we had three glue guns going at once (to turn the sticks into pedestals for terraria and more succulents).

justin also brought in mason jar lights for the hallway between the cocktail patio and the reception hall; kate, maid of honor extraordinaire, secured them to the ceiling. i can take or leave fashion tape, but i love a woman with an electric staple gun.

10.12.10 {go team wedding, baby jo edition}



day I, 0800h: after a late-night arrival at wedding HQ, we awaken to grueling weather and an atrocious view. it is excruciating.

day I, 1000h: an argument concerning the proper way to hollow out a vintage book that is to be hand-painted and planted with succulents (and who should do so) yields my favorite mother-of-the-bride quote of all time: "look, i'm stronger than you, and i can fuck up my hands."

day I, 1200h: joe realizes his main duties will be to shop for food and alcohol and to stay out of the way.

day III, 0900h: i discover that the shortcut to an amazing bridal party makeup session conversation is to ask one's artist about her work in special effects. mine (chelsea) had just wrapped a film about cyberattacks and survivalists, so we got to skip over the magic of marriage and girliness and talk about continuity with bruises and gunshots ("most of the wounded died pretty quickly, so i didn't have to advance them too much from day to day"), blood sources (unlike my college roommate the stage blood factory, chelsea preferred to purchase stuff called myblood), and plausible vomit (one of the actors had to puke onscreen, so she had to whip up something that both looked right and wouldn't taste horrible*). i wear false eyelashes for the first time.

day III, 1500h: as solo prep shots go down indoors, the bridal party turns to taking running starts and whipping tiny green apples** into the ocean from the balcony, a pastime which is significantly more popular with the throwers than it is with the purchasers of the throwers' engagement and wedding rings.

day III, 1630h: the wedding party arrives for a shoot at turk's. formalwear and our giant box of bouquets confuse local barflies; we tell them we're carrying a body. i sip my shot instead of cowboying up for photos, for i am a mean old lady. an order of onion rings is tucked in the flower box.

day III, 1730h: a girl i've known since she was six reads the same wallace stevens poem paul read at our wedding in england. my baby sister is married.

day III, 2000h: stanford beats usc with seconds to spare. the bride's family gloats.

*apple juice, oatmeal, and mashed banana, if you were wondering. the vomit i mocked up as a child to try to get out of school, by contrast, was bread crumbs and vinegar, since i merely had to point at it.

**rejects from the Tiny Caramel Apple Dessert Project, a popular but grueling wedding craft that was farmed out to professionals at the eleventh hour. (we still had to provide the apples, which was a bit weird.)

01.05.10

small confession: it really is a bit different to host for the holidays in a place that's yours. joe and i have already had every sort of holiday at our place; i remember a particularly improvisational san francisco party at which we floated sliced red onions in a vase. being married for the past few years didn't affect things much, either: when you've been with your partner since college, you don't exactly have to merge when-i-grow-ups, bank accounts, pet populations, and so on. we and our little hell's kitchen apartment were more or less the same. having our family over this time around, at a place we sweated, cried, and bled over for the better part of a year? i won't lie. there were frissons. good ones, happily: once we knew for sure that the dining table we ordered (thanks again, by the by, for weighing in on that) would arrive on time, we got excited about making things to plop atop it. christmas eve dinner with joe's parents went something like this:



i dug out spare candlesticks from the questionable cupcake stand project of '08, split a mixed bouquet into minisettings for our four thousand random vessels, and got out of the way; joe made wild arugula, poached egg, and some-sort-of-foofy-pork* salad, and artichoke and crab quiches for his mother's handmade crusts. had our sectional** arrived in time for christmas (alas), we'd certainly have formed a (drowsy, contented) human levee on it.



dinner on new year's day was a slightly more aerodynamic variation on that theme: we used our wedding dishes again, but we swapped the neighbors' stemmed wine glasses out for my beloved etched glass skull and thrifted don ho tumblers, i brought out a few more fabric roses, and we broke in the boss placemats my sister made and brought for christmas. joe made artichoke marinara over fresh pasta, which...i am not going to describe in detail, for there's a bit left in tupperware and i don't want to remind him that it's up for grabs.

speaking of sistercraft, in addition to jo's placemats, the marvelous gingerbread beings jo and em made in california for me, and the friendship bracelets i made for them when i had pneumonia,*** you guys:



wedding quilt! it's a galaga ship, handmade by my sister jo (with hand quilting backup from mom). "you didn't seem like the wedding ring types," said jo. to say that it was worth the wait would be a gross understatement.

a thrifty, bougie-tablescaping, crafty-like-ice-is-cold new year to you and yours, my people.

*i would be a terrible food writer. "and then there was a meat, i don't know, it smelled greasy."

**we address it apostrophically, to the confusion of those about us. GET HERE NOW, YOU COUCH!

***good excuse for errors, no? there were errors. i haven't made friendship bracelets in (cough).

10.26.09



we concluded a truly epic wedding season this saturday with the union of our lovely jersey barbecue hosts, megan and patrick, and a wild celebration in west orange. say what you will about the less lovable parts of the garden state, but it was in its glory this weekend: i actually didn't mind our getting a bit turned around on the highway en route to the reception, as it bought me another fifteen minutes of roadside leaf-peeping. joe and i also broke out our "name that (meowed) tune" time-wasting game, so four fifths of the car* spent the last bit of the drive to the manor meowing "we are the world" as soulfully as we could (judd really outdid himself on the cyndi lauper and michael mcdonald parts). a long weddingless winter is on the horizon, but we have my little sister's wedding in the hazy future to sustain us: baby jo and her excellent boyfriend, chris, got engaged this past friday, and they tell us their first dance will be "as the world falls down." if she rocks sarah's ball gown (a distinct possibility, as she's getting her MFA in costume design), i can die happy.

*george was the holdout. in his defense, he was driving.

05.18.09: california

[a diner in monterey; 1 adds half and half to her coffee and accidentally dribbles it across the table]

2: fail, fail!

3: that looks like a dia de los muertos skull with a fancy hat.

2-5: skeleton!

[1 sketches with the half and half]



2: he's rabid.

[fin]