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.

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).