Archive for February, 2005

julie tabouli comes to austin

hey guess what?

I’M GOING TO PARIS TOMORROW!!!

i know it’s crazy. but it’s true. i am seriously going to be in paris tomorrow with amber leigh garrison. HOLY COW!!!

i don’t know how i’m going to sleep. but i guess that’s ok cos amber
said i need to sleep on the plane as much as possible so i’m ready to
GO when i hit paris at 7:10 am. all i can say is, feed me some french
coffee and a chocolate croissant and i am miss adventure pants!!!

oh wow wow wow.

it’s a good thing that julie came to visit me this weekend, otherwise i
would have wasted the days by obsessively thinking about paris. it was
so WONDERFUL to see her. sigh. being with julie reminded me of why i
actually loved living with three other girls in two small wiess rooms
for two years (and then some). we stayed up every night talking, and i
realized how i lived on so little sleep in college… the energy of
kindred spirits.

i tried to show her austin, especially pieces of *my* austin. seth and i took her to the alamo drafthouse and mother’s cafe (she lurved the tofu lasagna, big surprise). on sunday i drove her down to one of my favorite small towns, gruene,
where we wandered through stalls of homemade crafts and kewpie’s jams
(yes, she was named after the doll– i bought pear jelly, yum). we ate
lunch at the gristmill (which rivals any french restaurant, i predict) and even caught some live music at gruene hall,
the oldest dance hall in texas. of course i took her to star seeds
while seth was working, and chris, the waiter, was shocked when julie
asked for some sausage gravy on top of her buttermilk pancakes (and let
me just say it takes a lot to shock a star seeds waiter). to show off a
bit of austin’s nature, we journeyed through the green belt;
the cold clear water of barton creek tickled our feet as we sat on
rocks and enjoyed just… being… together. it was perfect and natural
and easy, just like the company.

i am so thankful to be able to see such good friends, as though the
distance simply doesn’t exist (it really doesn’t). from california to
austin to paris and then back, it’s extraordinary. my friends are
extraordinary.

they make my life extraordinary.

so xanga, i’m off to paris! le adventure begins!

harry potter update no. 4,278

a little bit of harry potter fun: so franz ferdinand was rumored to be
in the running to perform as “the weird sisters” in harry potter 4.
well, i was disappointed to find out it’s not happening… until i read
THIS:

Singer Jarvis Cocker and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and
drummer Phil Selway will be part of the Weird Sisters group, playing at
the Yule Ball.

radiohead + harry potter = GAH!!!

two of my favorite things coming together in a way i never dreamed.

(yes, it doesn’t take much to make me happy)

poopty peupty pants

currently, my life during the day consists of sorting through the endless chaos of the department course schedule.

so i won’t write about that. instead:

if you like the “end of the world”
cartoon (source of such gems as “WTF, mate” and “but i am le tired”)–
what’s not to love?– then you must check out another cartoon by the
same guys. it’s a music video… sort of. and it’s call schfiftyfive, and it’s really weird. and really funny.

and it will get stuck in yr head. and the weird man with pigtails picture might freak you out. but still, it is worth it.

it even features the phrase “poopty peupty pants”. oh man. that is awesome.

sick pants

my weekend was full of being sick. gross.

at first, it’s cool when you basically have an excuse to lay on yr
couch all day and watch movies and old buffy & felicity episodes.
but after a while, it’s not really fun anymore. especially when you
start thinking about all of the stuff you could or should be doing.
then you sit up to do that something, and mr. woozy pants comes to
visit.

but i’m feeling better. so of course that means xanga. oh and work too.

when i got to the office this morning, i found a little bag of m&m’s in my inbox and a CANDY BRACELET!! yes!!!

also, another good thing about being sick is that i didn’t check my
email for three whole days, so my inbox seemed really full this
morning. i got an email from ryan with photos of the gates in new york
(totally orangetastic!), an email from julie about her upcoming visit
(mere days away!) and assorted other notes from people i love.

so being sick can turn out to be ok.

OH and i don’t think i’m lactose intolerant (i know you guys were
holding yr breath on that one). i went to the doctor again yesterday
and told him that my two week dairy-free diet only resulted in me
really really really wanting cheese (but my stomach continued to be
weird). on the upside, i lost 4 pounds just from not eating lactose
things. which is impressive. but DEFINITELY not worth it.

so i had a cheese pizza for valentines in celebration! i heart you, dairy products.

orange gates

i’m worried about the situation in north korea (for a great op/ed piece, check this out). and as usual, i’m worried about the bush administration’s foreign policy for the middle east (this op/ed about sums it up).

but instead, i’m going to focus this post on the Gates Project
currently being installed in central park right now. the times, of
course, has been offering some great coverage of this (in my opinion)
landmark installation piece by christo and jeanne-claude.

this morning i read an article
about the great variety of people who have come together to basically
install hundreds of bright organge gates. i was struck by the whimsical
nature of this collage of people– how much it contrasts with the
heavy, scary things of this world that hover in my brain. people might
say this project isn’t art, but i would wholeheartedly disagree.
anything that can bring such a beautiful mix of humanity together is
the highest form of art you can achieve.

oh how i wish i could be there!

(here’s a few excerpts– you might be surprised by a certain person’s participation!! and also the marfa mention… awesome):

*****

Inside the boathouse, the 600-odd paid volunteers enlisted for the
five-day job were chatting over coffee and rolls, waiting to head off
to their assigned areas. Things had gotten off to a slow start on
Monday. It had taken time for the workers to assemble, find their work
areas and figure out the most efficient way to work.

Still,
every team seemed competitively conscious of its accomplishments. “We
installed 27 gates yesterday,” boasted Ann W. Richards, the former
governor from Texas.

“There’s something magical about people
coming together for a common purpose without something for them to
gain,” she added. “I’m having a ball.”
…..

Like mutual strangers in a reality television show, each team felt
somewhat randomly thrown together. But often, the common strand was
art: Area One, Section 10, for instance, was made up of a performance
artist, an advertising art director, a retired doctor/Yale University
professor, a sculptor/gilder, an architect, an architectural draftsman,
a freelance stagehand and a recent college graduate who is on his way
to become an intern at the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary-art
organization in Marfa, Tex.

“I’ve never seen so many artsy
people in my life,” said Huascar Pimentel, the stagehand, who is one of
the professional workers that was assigned to the team. “These guys are
great - they don’t mind getting their hands dirty.”

Still, most people who stopped to chat had positive reactions. “I’m
not sure about the color, but I’m a fan,” Douglas F. Eaton, a United
States District Court judge, said after his daily round of skating.

****

a district court judge who ice skates!! how whimsical can you get?!

yr husband’s ashes

ok, so i like to read this section of the austin chronicle called “shot in the dark”,
where people attempt to contact random strangers that they didn’t get a
chance to hit on in person. it’s really really fun. i’m always
wondering what the success rate is…

anyhoo, there’s this one “shot” that CRACKS ME UP so i must share it
with you here. i swear i am not making this up. maybe this person is
just trying to be funny. regardless, it is awesome.

YOU WERE SPREADING husband’s ashes at Pedernales Falls. My dad
played bag pipes. Didn’t think to get your name. Amazing experience we
shared. Call Phone5055

yeah, you looked so hot at yr husband’s funeral…

here’s another good one that is most definitely BS (i think?!):

PROTEST CONGRESS ST 1/20: You cop on motorcycle, me hippie on bike. Why did you try to run me over? Coffee? Phone5170

selling yr colon

so every week or so i get an email newsletter from a woman named carrie, who works on stay free magazine
(which is “a nonprofit magazine covering American culture, politics,
and life in South Central Brooklyn”). i subscribe to it mostly because
she sends out great articles concerning branding, commercialism, public
space, etc. also, she does some crazy shit. such as this little piece:

“Maybe you’ve heard the recent story about the guy selling ad space on
his forehead on eBay. Or the one the woman who auctioned off space on
her pregnant belly.


Since these stories became media sensations, eBay has been flooded
with copycats — people trying to sell space on their faces, bald
heads, backs, etc. I guess it’s a small consolation that most of
these morons haven’t found their auctions to be nearly as lucrative
as their predecessors, with bidding hovering around a dollar or two,
at most… but the fact remains that they remain undeterred.

Therefore, at the risk of my dignity, I’ve decided to step into the
fray and auction off ad space on my colon:

“Advertise on my colon”

Perhaps this way we’ll at least get to see an ad in a space where it belongs.”

amen sister!

harry da vinci’s rings

there’s this comic called “get fuzzy” which i have lurved ever since
the strip that featured swedish fish (my most favorite non-chocolate
candy of all time!!!). today i got a big kick out of this one: