modern art memories #1

i once sat at my grandmother's kitchen table attempting to explain andy warhol's art as she chain-smoked and glared at me like i was making fun of her.

i wonder if she's met him.

more likely, she's hanging out with john philip sousa and ronald reagan and steering clear of the whole factory crowd.

sometimes the best thing we can get from knowing someone

is learning how not to act.

when your fingers are inside my brain

Freeman [after cuts made in the left side of the frontal lobe]: Do you feel any difference?

Patient: I feel there's a book on my face. They worked on the left side. There was a drawing when they put the knife in.

Freeman [later during the operation]: Does your conscience hurt?

Patient: I don't know where it is. It was down by my heart, but I can't feel it at all.

but this time, it's all vegetarian

i am hosting my first thanksgiving today. necessity dictated a weekend, as the english don't get a thursday off work just because the americans are spending the day eating (again).

it's like i've woken up this morning as an adult. in the wrong country.

but thanksgiving is not about location, it is about appreciating those around you. and i appreciate the hell out of the lot that are coming over. it feels good to know that if i had a bigger kitchen, and the infinite cooking capabilities of my late gramma, i could have invited over still more wonderful people.

we make our own families, and today marks the first occasion of mine assembling around a holiday dinner table.

(also, if i fuck up thanksgiving, my guests are english and won't know the difference.)



'i really don’t know if anything sums up america better. it’s simultaneously preposterous, incredibly laughable, impressive, charming, ridiculous, expensive, overpopulated, wonderful...american.'
stephen fry

these things are golden

on my way to life drawing night, my husband awkwardly checks to make sure that i'm planning to draw the model, not model for the drawers.

as though if i had decided to go back to life modeling (which i did when i was putting myself through art school) i wouldn't have mentioned my intention to take off my clothes for strangers to the man with whom i share my life.



p.s.
tits per hour in chicago = twenty dollars
tits per hour in the uk = twelve pound fifty

i am reading a book about lobotomy

it is, so far, not as upsetting as one might imagine.




it's almost attractive.

sunday

i dreamt i worked at a museum that was attacked by bears. we rounded up the visitors and staff and barricaded them in the cafeteria. (the furry attackers were uninterested in most of the dioramas, but tore apart the taxidermied polar bear display.)

teenage waste

'how do you eat all that and still look so thin?'

'oh, i throw up a lot.'

when we email to plan the next step in decade revivals

'Have you picked a 90s icon to represent?'

'at the moment, i'm working on combining the two female leads from the movie reality bites - winona ryder and janeane garofalo - and a girl in my biology class when i was fifteen who wore corduroy miniskirts and chunky soled shoes in colours like maroon and olive green.'

'oh, yes, that'll do it. the angry elf look. rock on.'

'exactly. except...um...angry six foot tall elf. dark lipstick.'

'well yes, you won't be an elf so much as...angry fairy? angry angel of a vindictive Lord?'

'overgrown sophisticated grunge pixie?'

i forgot i had a blog

you officially live in a place when the officials running that place allow you to work legally.

(i officially live here now.)

filling out applications, i decide to find out what a prospective employer would find if he or she googled my name. see, i'm recently married, so all internet data on my name is really quite new. if it weren't digital, it would be delicate. that's how new.

in my google list, i find a blogger hinting that i am an idiot because my face is aesthetically pleasing.

to do list:

• grow up fat
  
• develop a personality and sense of humour because relying on looks is not an option
• read a lot of books
• lose weight in twenties
  
• get used to being considered hot