Teenage Wasteland

You know what? I got nuthin’.



Really. The movies I’ve been watching have neither sucked enough to warrant comment, nor been great enough to warrant review. My work place sucks rotten eggs, and the boss’s wife has been known to read this blog so I really can’t speak to that issue. The sturm und drang of my bother and family business is at stasis, and besides, he has accused me of speaking ill of him to all and sundry. Well, fuck, who knew he read my blog?



The usual riffraff on the train is the same old ill-mannered, appalling cattle that I always see. My studio is in a state of disrepair and I can’t find the floor. My quilting is at a standstill, ditto the tallitsim. My knitting has had to be put on the back burner because the magnificent Lizard Ridge afghan gave me bursitis.



My friends are on the spectrum of odd to totally fucked.



My financial status is firmly in the fucked catagory.



My pets are healthy, and the RLA and I are celebrating our 17th wedding anniversary by going to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. So that’s a plus. As for the rest of my life? Tan’s fading. Mellow vacation head is dissipating. I’m out of Cosmo mixers. Ditto Tangerine Martini mixers.



The pool tether to allow me to swim as though I were in an infinity pool? Not installed. My new, fabulous dress mannequin? Missing parts. All in all? Life could be better.



Comment, you bitches.

It was one of those days for me on the train. The morning commute included a pair of women putting on their makeup in tandem across the aisle from me. The one was a little embarrassed and a little bit happy to be photographed while doing it and the other was totally oblivious. They both saw me shooting and just didn’t care. I didn’t get the money shot which was of the lady on the left circling her eye with liquid concealer, like some sort of inverse panda.



dueling compacts



This was followed by this, which while ample, resembled more an apple pancake. Not all round and juicy as the name would have you believe.



ample bottom jeans



Both of which pale compared to the ride home. The Person Dressed In Black and I were seated next to some grumbling old gomer who was discoursing (loudly of course, it is always loudly) about his day in court. No. Literally. He was all on about what the judge said and what his attorney said and what the other guy said and whether or not there was an acceptable offer on the table and why should he take less than the previous offer and even the judge said that and he was customer service employee of the year/quarter for ages running and and and. And of course I, of the delicate sensibilities kept shooting him the stink eye and he kept ignoring me. Such is life.



As we got to the end of the trip, a man of an uncertain age pulled a sheet out of a sketchbook and handed it to the PDB and me. It was a little gesture drawing of the two of us, and while not an exact likeness, you might have been able to pick us out of a line-up.



street portrait in which my torso and hip get noticed



I’ve seen worse police sketches. We were charmed and a little unsure of what this implied or entailed. But we laughed and said of all the people on the train to draw, we were both artists and had both gone to art school. The artist-in-residence wasn’t sure if we were putting him on, and the PDB said, no, both of us held BFAs. The gnarly old gomer (who was now off the phone) piped up and said that if the artist had told us he was a chef, that we would have told him we went to chef school. That’s when the PDB offered that she had, in fact, attended Parson’s in New York City, and I had to mumble University of Miami (damn my portfolio for not getting into Rhode Island School of Design and my young self for having had too much fun at UM to consider a transfer).



Well, the Artist-in-Residence said he’d like $4 per face, and the PDB and I looked at each other and said, Uh, no, but thanks. I offered the drawing back. He told me to keep it. The train stopped, we wished one another well and deboarded. As we were going down the stairs, I saw that I was still next to the loud gomer, and said, and exactly where do you get off questioning my honesty? And he said it was easy, because I was a pain in the ass. What? Yeah, you kept staring at me while I was on the phone, like I was talking too loud. Well, I said, you were. No, he yelled, he was not, and by the way, he added, you (meaning your narrator) are cheap, lady. You should have at least given that guy a dollar.



That stung. I’m not cheap. But, dude. I didn’t ask for my portrait to be scribbled by a stranger on the train, and I offered it back to him if he thought it was worth money or saving for a retrospective of his street work. I am a BFA, I am still a working artist. And mostly, I did not need or want to hear all about your law suit. So, I may very well be a pain in the ass, but not because of the reasons you stated.

I was noodling around in the links today, and first RJ finally did a meme I sent her so long ago I don’t remember, and then Marseeah over at The Pink Shoe did this meme. Which, just as she says, is a fine and entertaining sort of meme. I won’t tag anyone else, but feel free to play and leave a link in the comments when you do.



Here are the rules:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image.

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.



Questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favorite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favorite dessert?

9. What you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One Word to describe you.

12. Your flickr name.



And here is what I came up with:

image

Morning at the beach. The Gulf is a dark aqua and flat as a mirror. There are two fishermen on the shore: a boy of about 8 and a Great Blue Heron. The boy catches a fish, the heron inches closer. The boy is excited and doesn’t notice the stealthily moving heron. One of them is going to eat the fish, but which one is still up in the air. The boy is jumping up and down, calling for his parents to see this wonderful fish. The two cabana boys, 19 and worldly wise, wander over. “You’ve caught a shark,” they tell him. The hopping about gets a little more frantic. The heron proceeds with caution, and moves back a couple of feet. The cabana boys offer to take the baby shark off the hook. The heron accepts that this will not be his breakfast, and moves down the beach. The shark goes back in the water, and swims away. The cabana boys continue to place the lounges and rake the sand. The little boy goes inside. The Gulf is flat and calm.

Fuck, Piss, Shit, Damn

I’m late to the party, but my excuse is that I’ve been in Sarasota, lolling about on the beach with RJ, The Sistergirlfriendgirl and her squeeze, our childhood friend the May Queen, the RLA and his childhood friend HippieBob and his wife and Star. Well, despite the excess of alcohol and good times, I need to mention the passing of George Carlin, one of the greats of comedy. I’m not jumping on the 7 Words or the Stuff routine, though. My favorite of George’s raps was this: the differences between baseball and football.





Farewell, old man. You’re safe at home now.

Mirror, Mirror

Yesterday I won a skirmish in the battle for public civility: there was a young man on the MetroMover, examining his face in the mirror back of his i-pod. He checked his immaculate goatee, and then (quel horror!) began picking at his zits. Or something. So I whipped out my camera and started to take a picture. He noticed, shot me a look of loathing, and stopped. He put his i-pod in his pocket. After about 30 seconds (some people have shorter attention spans than others) he pulled it out again, and again started to pick at his face, using the pod as a mirror. I refocused. He moved out of my line of vision. I moved to put him back in. Again with the stink eye and again he pocketed his i-pod. And then, the doors opened and he got off the tram, prevented by me and my camera from picking his face in public. I feel very virtuous, even if I would have liked to have posted an equal opportunity bad public behavior picture.

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