It's my birthday! Yeah! Presents! Adoration! Tiaras! Whoo-hoo!

I'm officially older than dirt, and have lived more than half of my expected life. I can still drink young punks under the table, and shake my bootie till the wee small hours. I can't actually get up the next morning, but by the middle of the afternoon, I'm fine. It's the small victories, people.
The RLA was the first with the presents this morning. He gave me a beautiful Spanish fan... for the hot flashes. On the one hand, I think this is lovely, and dear and sweet. On the other hand, I'm ready to shove the thing up his ass for reminding me about them. He insisted that I bring it to the office, to have it always at the ready.

I was too polite to remind him that my office keeps its thermostat at the requisite Florida setting of Meat Locker, and that I keep a heater under my desk to keep from getting frostbitten toes. I don't think he reads my blog often enough to read this, either.

My second present was from RJ, who sent me a birthday e-card that had a downloadable tiara. I'm wearing it. I have absolutely no shame. Or pride. One or the other. In an hour we'll have our company holiday lunch, which means... more presents!! And food!! And wine!!

Life is good. Or at least a hell of a lot better than the alternative.



Please note the fabulous red Swingline stapler in the background among all the crap on my desk and surrounding areas.

I was saddened by the notice of Peter Boyle's death. While I have managed to see absolutely no episodes, ever, of Everybody Loves Raymond, and I loathed his character in Joe (but, well, we were supposed to), I have always adored his turn as Frankenstein's monster in Young Frankenstein.
Young Frankenstein is arguably one of the best Mel Brooks movies, ever, anyway, what with its all-star cast, and spot-on satire of the genre, but Peter Boyle stole the show when he and Gene Wilder did their song and dance number.

Last March, The Coolest Person in The World (tm) was in Boca, and we met up at a beach-side bar. We promptly put down a plate of oysters, requiring the drinking of a shot (or two) of vodka to prevent any untoward side effects of said oysters. Then, because a single shot of vodka can get lonely, we had to have several more. I think there may even have been a bottle of champagne as an apperitif prior to heading out for dinner.

Dinner required more alcohol, because we eat our steaks rare, and, you know, e-coli and stuff. In any event, I was fairly well oiled by the time someone at our table pointed out that Peter Boyle was sitting two tables away. I behaved myself, and did not accost him until he passed us on his way out.

Then I stood up (not at all unsteadily, I may say) and very politely told him "Mr. Boyle, excuse me, but I just had to tell you that the scene in Young Frankenstein where you do "Puttin' on the Ritz" is sheer brilliance. It has always been one of my favorite pieces of your work. Thank you."

He just gave me a big-ass grin and told me that his wife always said that was "real" acting. I got the feeling that he was just a tiny bit happy that it was Young Frankenstein and not Raymond that I wanted to talk about.

After he left, and The Coolest Person In the World (tm) thanked me for not falling over or otherwise embarrassing her, we watched him leave and thought, damn... he does not look healthy. I'm really a little surprised he lasted as long as he did.

The RLA, our new friends the PDBs* and I went to Art Basel this weekend. There I learned a couple of things I didn't know about Art. That's art with a capital a, proles. Art that costs more per square foot than I make in a week. This is Important, Gallery Art, and not for folks like me. The dealers were Very Happy to make that clear to me.
Here's what I learned, in a nutshell.

1. The only art worth looking at in this vast space was art created eighty to twenty years ago. Joan Miro, Yves Tanguy, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse... like that.

2. There are only two acceptable positions when drawing/painting/sculpting a nude. These are, in the case of a female, lying on her back with a point of view directly up the ole cooch, foreshortening the head to irrelevance, or, in either gender, bent over and fingering one's own arsehole.

3. The dealers are self-absorbed, arrogant assholes who have a blatant disdain for artists or their audiences. Consider this interaction.

RLA, picking up a postcard advertising a "commissioned portrait show": Commissioned portraits? By whom?
Dealer: Artist X. If you want to commission a portrait of yourself. That's what this show is about.
RLA: Really? I'm a portrait artist myself. (He reaches into his jacket for a postcard.)
Dealer: NONONONONONO. I don't want to see that.
Me: Really? Not even to be polite? You won't just look at it?
Dealer: NONONONONO. We're really just focused on what we are doing here.
Me, looking around and seeing nobody in this booth except myself, the RLA, the little beige dealer** and his assistant: "And a roaring fucking business that would be."

RLA and I stomp out.

4. Big-headed Japanese anime-style cartoon children or Sailor Moon-dressed pubescent girls are hott.

5. Magnetic tape, when stretched across a frame into a 5-foot square, is worth $70,000 dollars, and there is at least one idiot willing to pay that much for it, because the piece was already sold. Or at least that's what the abusive bitch who yelled at me for several minutes for looking at said piece too closely and (GASP!) BREATHING ON IT!!! told me. To add injury to insult, she didn't even move her cell-phone away from her ear as she was loudly berating me.

6. Glitter is hott. So are rhinestones and shiny plastic "gems".

7. Impasto is back with a vengance. The thicker the build up the better. It is important to use silicon caulking as a base for your paintings.

8. Figural art (if it isn't big-headed anime or self-fingering nudes) is totally not hott. In fact, if you are a figural artist, you need to be an "outsider" artist and do big-headed, big-eyed Keane sort of little girls in densely inexplicable situations that are vaguely distubing. Extra points are awarded for including dead animals in the composition.

9. Sculpture is good if it: sits on the floor, is constructed of iron or steel or blackened metal, represents random body parts unrelated to each other or anything else in the installation, is kinetic. In fact, one of the nicest pieces I saw consisted of two old-fashioned floor fans, painted shiny black, facing each other. In between was a piece of magnetic tape (AHA! a trend?) spliced into a circle, held aloft and shimmering by the wind generated by the two fans.***

10. There seems to be a factory somewhere in Miami that produces women of a certain age with identical nose jobs, inflated lips, too-tight cheek bones, highlighted blonde hair and plastic grapefruit inserted under their skin on the fronts of their chests. They travel in packs, too. They are not shy about opining about the Art they are looking at, either. Their bust size is higher than their IQs. This is a quote from one of them: Look. This is all symbolic. This symbolizes a bridge.

The "this" in question was a photograph, one of a dozen or so in an installation, that depicted some sort of dining table detritus stacked up to look like, well, in her defense, a bridge. Or a dock.The rest of the photos were of what the dining table would look like if you let a pack of ten year olds play with their food for a couple of hours. Sugar cubes arranged in circles. Crumbs piled up into tiny pyramids. Like that. I refrained from asking her what she thought the bridge was symbolic of. I didn't want to get yelled at again.

On a related note, the RLA and I watched "Art School Confidential" a couple of weeks ago. Rent it. If you ever went to art school, film school or knew anyone who did, you will laugh yourself sick. If you didn't? This movie is a documentary, really.

* Persons Dressed in Black

**The dealer was monochromatic. He was sort of tanned, his hair was sort of brownish, he was dressed in a tan/beige suit with matching shirt and tie, and he was wearing perfectly circular, thick-framed, light tortoiseshell glasses.

*** No. Really. That was one of the best pieces, except, you know, for the old masters like Stella or Warhol.

It is the end of the line for the bitches and the hos. The final three are Eugena of the dismal personality and bad skin, Everybody Hates Melrose and CariDeeMented. It just doesn't get any lamer better than that, does it? Well, yes it does. In order to coach the girls on their Covergirl shoot, we have a "real" covergirl come to visit. Is it Heidi Klum? Is it Tyrant? Is it anyone you've ever seen on a cover of anything? No. It is last year's winner, Dani(elle). I loved Danielle or else I'd say that this is not only self-referential, but just pathetic.

We have our Covergirl commercial and our final runway show. They all blow chunks in the commercial, which is somehow cobbled together to make something watchable, if not memorable or good. CariDeeMented's eyes dart left and right throughout her shoot. Melrose has a big-ass smile. Eugena tries (and fails) not to have dead eyes and a deadlier persona.

Then we shoot stills. There is some foreshadowing when the photographer gives high fives to Melrose and CariDeeMented and wishes Eugena good luck.
Unfortunately for Eugena, the good luck wishes aren't enough to keep her going to the final two, despite all the footage we get of her and CariDeeMented snuggling with each other and whispering how much they want it to be just the two of them in the finals.

CariDee and Eugena cry in each others arms when Eugena is sent away. CariDeeMented murmmurs sweetly to Eugena that she'll "bring this home for you, baby." and sweet tap dancing Jesus I wish I was making that up. But I'm not. Didn't CariDee have a boyfriend at the beginning of this show? Before she nailed Dennis Quaid, the random Spanish model guy and anything else that showed up available during shooting.

Anyway, now that Eugena is out of the way, we are treated or subjected (take your pick) to the Battle of the Blondes. Eugena opines that a "natural" blonde should win. I'm not going to venture down that road of how she knows, but I will point out that it wasn't Melrose's choice to go blonde.

The runway show is another freakfest. It takes place after dark in an Antonio Gaudi building. The theme is Bride of Dracula. Each trot down the runway gets darker and freakydeakier until the girls are running and shrieking (but still looking fierce and fabulous) down the passageway lit by candles.

Melrose-the-Loathed absolutely rocks the runway. She is fierce, she is beautiful, she can walk, she never loses sight of the fact that she is modeling clothes. She twirls, she stomps, she gives CariDeeMented a serious up and down stink eye when they are supposed to dis each other in passing. She uses her flamenco lessons to her advantage as she brings up her arms. She is amazing, even in white face. She is amazing even after CariDeeMented (maybe) accidentally rips Melrose's train to shreds. She still whips that fabric around and works it.

All of a sudden Miss Jay gets up out of the front row and disappears. Is he going to tell Melrose to get a grip and ignore the hateful little CariDeeMented's antics? We wish. He is off to join the runway show and drag queen along in a black bride of Blacula wedding dress, showing the girls how to camp it up for the final pass.

Melrose is perfect. CariDeeMented is perfectly deranged. She flails around. She makes really ugly, contorted faces. She bunches up the wedding dress so high and so tight we almost see her lady bits (and wouldn't THAT be special). She shrieks, she camps, she's awful.

Final judging. There is some talk about how all the girls hate Melrose and Tyra says maybe they hate her because she's just that good. Nigel mouths some bullshit about how Melrose is perfect, but only because she's a perfectionist and works too hard at it and maybe isn't a natural talent. He disses her for her know-it-all aspect.

Mr. Jay shows that he's got cojones, after all and points out (quite rightly) that what Nigel is dissing Melrose for is exactly what they are constantly bitching at the rest of the girls for NOT having: a personality, a clue about personal style, a working and pretty comprehensive knowledge of the fashion industry and a ferocious work ethic.

She's toast.

Despite the fact that she is just batshit crazy, despite the fact that she asked Nigel if the giant stick he was holding came out of his ass after a previous judging, despite the fact that all of the judges acknowledged that her runway walk was a disaster of horrorific proportions, CariDeeMented was crowned America's Next Top Model. Proving that she is NOT all that, and did NOT deserve to win, she tries to use Danielle's patented Mommy, I'm a Covergirl line. It doesn't work.

Cut to Melrose crying and saying she was robbed (which she was). Fade to black. Has the show finally jumped the shark?

Between this and Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo winning Project Runway, I think I have finally had my fill of "reality" teevee. In the immortal words of my grandpa: "Feh."

Long-time readers of this blog know the great disdain I hold for the great southwest, a measured response to the dog-years I spent living there. But now another of my friends has decided to move to the tiny little blue dab of jelly in the huge red doughnut of Texas: P-Roo and her husband have packed the dogs and the car and headed out today to Austin.

P-Roo (a new nickname for my girlfriendgirl) and I have been friends for a million years, since the dark days when we were married to earlier, evil husbands. Those two men were as close to being friends as sociopathic lawyers can be, and every time we'd run into each other at some lame-ass law school function, she and I would be delighted to see one another and we'd beg our husbands to make plans for the four of us to go out. They'd agree, and then we wouldn't meet, and my ex, the Antichrist, would conveniently forget to give me their phone number or he wouldn't know it, or something.

We divorced at about the same time, she and I and immediately became the best of friends. Nothing like losing 160 pounds of inconvenient buzz-kill to lighten up a relationship.

P-Roo is an artist, too. She was a jeweler until health reasons forced her to give up metal working (and red meat, and alcohol and wheat and nuts and bananas and strawberries and pretty much everything that makes life liveable. Except coffee. She can still drink coffee. And smoke cigarettes, and what the fuck is it to you if we do?)

Now she is a quilter, and in fact, it is she who does all my machine quilting for me. She designs all of her own quilting patterns and they are pretty amazing. I particularly love the ones she based on a book of Gothic stonework (that I bought for her at a used book store in Sarasota a couple of summers ago). Synergy, people, synergy.

But today she left for Texas, and the only bright spot I can find in this is that the bitch will finally start reading my blog, just to keep up with me.

Any of you out there in Austin, or quilters looking for an amazing long-arm quilter to do your tops for you, drop me an e-mail and I'll tell you where to find her. Austin may be one of the hippest cities in America, but it still can be cold and lonely if you don't know anyone there.

Day three of laying in bed hacking up lung so hard that my ribs hurt and my abs hurt like I've been doing crunches non-stop for all three days. Which, if you saw me hacking, you'd know to be true.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and here's mine: I've just listed two quilts on Etsy. There's a Red Ribbons and Hearts quilt that I made for an AIDS auction that never happened. Instead, I'm going to donate half the sale price to CareResource, the AIDS organization on whose board I once sat.

Tante Leah's Handmades. On line and on sale now.