Things I Love Thursday: 2011.4.28

♥ Measuring Tapes: I thought I might shift all of my furniture around my room today, but a quick jaunt with my measuring tape told me that it won't be that easy! Aww, thanks for saving me from all that work & frustration.

♥ Pinterest: This website is like a little digital scrapbook. I can grab images from (almost) any website & enter my notes about them. I can see this being very useful for costume design research, but for now I use it to collect general inspiration. You should join me!

♥ Flowering Trees: No wonder People like spring. Now that I'm not living in a part of the state where Spring doesn't appear until mid May, I see the appeal. I'd probably like it even better if I lived even further south, but then it would be hot in August.

♥ Planning to Pack: I think when it comes down to it, I don't like moving so much as I like the idea of the process of moving. Which shoes will I bring? How will I make everything fit into a tiny bag? How much money can I avoid spending? These are the questions for the ages, my friends.

The Little Things:

♥ Cell Phone Cases ♥ Card Games ♥ Irish Alzheimer's ♥ People who care about my success! ♥ Pens ♥ Drawing ♥ Caribbean Accents ♥

What do you ♥ today? 

Romantic Stereotypes

Yesterday I had the day off (ahh, the life of the marginally employed), & M.ton & I decided to take a romantic little jaunt around New York.

First was the Museum of Natural History where we wanted to see only dinosaurs. Unfortunately the same problems of organization I encountered last time I was there persisted, & we had to walk through the hall of Biodiversity & the hall of Asian Peoples to find it. Weird.

While looking at the dinosaurs, I encountered this drawing, & began spinning a post in my head about the continued relevancy of art in the digital age in a partnership with science. Luckily for you I'm too tired to write that right now, so let's settle with saying that this is fuckin' cool and Jay H. Matternes is damn talented.

Having seen the dinosaurs we stopped at Shake Shack and relaxed (unironically) in the park on our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we didn't get to the exhibit we went for until after two hours of "look at that! Look at THAT!"

In all, it was the kind of fun little day that I wouldn't usually think to have. It can be fun to wander through museums with no agenda, & I've been trying to be more calm about that whole schedule thing (it's not working). And even though working and figuring out how to pay the bills and doing dishes and setting mouse traps kind of sucks, being an adult can kind of rule sometimes. I lazed about in the park with my boyfriend, & played cards all night with Schmemma & our boys, drinking beer I bought with my own money. Cool.

What I Wore: The Brooklyn Edition

Since moving to the city, my style has been experiencing some changes. Turns out that if you wear whatever you want to work (unlike wearing whatever you want to School), you get fired. Boo.

It hasn't been too difficult for me to figure out what is appropriate/isn't, but it does mean that on my days off, I get in my closet and really roll around and go crazy.

Is this what being an adult is all about? Hiding during normal hours until you get to go out & have some fun? Nah. It's just what having a job whose only purpose is to make ends meet is about. Once I've started doing what I want to do, I'll be dressed up with all the cool kids.

Like Ya do.

****

Oh, I also haven't been posting too many outfit photos because there isn't a location in my apartment that doesn't backlight to me, and I am loathe to set the self-timer outside. Paranoia about stolen cameras and all. BUT! I bought new shoes, and the fire escape made them look like easter eggs:

That is all.

My SuperArts Weekend!

After a long stint in the waiter grinder (8 shifts in 5 days, y'all!), I actually got to cut loose every day this weekend.

First up, on Friday night was the Pratt Draw-a-Thon. Held once a year, a $10 ticket gets you 12 hours of drawing models in 7 different rooms, as well as pizza, soda, cookies, fruit, and fabulous prizes being handed out all evening as well as a raffle in the tired morning. My $10 also bought me lots of good conversation. Everybody was there to have a good time, and as the late night stretched into early morning the hum of conversation was the only thing keeping some people's eyes open. Well that, & the possibility of winning $100 gift certificates or a french easel.

After sleeping all day on Saturday I met my parents for dinner & the National aCapella Championships at Lincoln Center. The gents in the video are Vocal Point, who came in second, (and are the cutest ass-shaking Mormons you've ever seen!) and my favorite team, St. Louis' Vocal Point was TOTALLY ROBBED.

On Sunday I went to see my friend JKapp perform in the Comedy in Dance festival at Triskelion Arts in (yes) W-Burg. I discovered a few new artists to follow, and an awesome new space where I can see good clown stuff all the time. And who doesn't like to laugh?

Things I Saw in NY Yesterday

♥ Flowers blooming on Park Ave

♥ Impossible Lines in Grand Central It must be passover! 

♥ A Man Proposing to his Girlfriend on a Park Bench With a Sapphire the size of the hope diamond. She burst into tears & everybody around applauded.

The Gypsy Years

Photo Courtesy NYPL Flickr Stream

I've taken a Costume Internship at the Chataqua Institution that goes from June 10 - August 20. This is a good thing- Chataqua is a well-respected BEAUTIFUL place full of intelligent, successful people who want to tell me about it. It's like Artist/Intelligencia Summer Camp. I'm super excited to swim in the lake and ask 1,000 questions and listen to Morning Lecture when I'm not working my tail off inside the shop and learning every damn thing I can, by hook or by crook.

I will miss being in New York- part of me feels like I just moved here and can't stand to miss a thing. I'll miss having my own apartment and going grocery shopping whenever I want to. I'll miss my friends that are down here, and I'll miss being able to visit my parents. I won't miss the stink of garbage on the street in August or the hell of Weekend Service Changes. I will still worry about EVERYTHING, but I am less than one year out of school. Unless you graduated before the implosion & signed a contract right out of college (you bastard), unemployment is not news, it's normal youth. I almost wish I had done a year of job-hunting and worrying right after High School, but 18-year-old-Beth absolutely lacked the emotional maturity to handle something like that. 18-year-old-Beth could barely figure out how to feed herself, and she lived 500 feet from the Dining Hall.

Besides, Chataqua has a lot of things that drew me to New York. I'll be able to walk or ride my bike everywhere and there's a ton of entertainment cheaply available.

Actually, I've kind of missed the rigor and scheduling of School, and I need to eat my pride about getting paid for my work & realize that I still have a ton of shit to learn. After these few months I'll KNOW whether or not Wardrobe is something I like.  Mostly, the part that listened to my trusted advisor squeal "you can't afford to not do this!" knows that it will be good for me, and is excited.

The next part is all finding a sub-letter and working my little tail off at my as-yet imaginary job so they don't evict Rommate while I'm gone and put all my furniture out on the street and I lose all my friends and go bankrupt and have to move back in with my parents. Because in my mind, it is possible to be a complete failure at 22 and not, like, a normal direction-less human being.

Spring is Here

In NY State, we have this fantasy that we can never let go of.

Every year, as the black snow melts away from the side of the roads, we think "spring is on its way." When the Groundhog hides, and March 22 goes by, the hippies get excited to twine flowers in their hair and dance around a bonfire to celebrate the re-awakening of the Earth Mother.

And every year, we're disappointed. March comes in like a lion and goes out like a.... lion. April showers bring May showers. It's not freezing any more, but it's grey for six days of the week, and when it rains it means it.

June is usually clement, but this form of "spring" only lasts until the July humidity takes over and makes us all want to hide at the bottom of a lake.

We don't really get to have a spring. The flowers grow, and lambs are born, and we get a vernal equinox, but the sun does not shine. Children do not frolic with bunnies in the grass. They frolic with wet dogs in the mud and want hot chocolate when the come inside.

So enjoy it, New York. Get over your little fantasy of nice weather. Go outside on every nice day before July, because once that comes around I know you're going to be cranking the A/C & guzzling Mojitos.

Dear New York

I visited the fabled Wo-Burg for the first time today, and as a semi Non-Native New Yorker I have but one question :

What the Fuck?

What's with selling the kind of stuff I would see on the street and not think twice about? You have some cute stores: Sprout Home was nice & had friendly staff, and I stopped into a gallery where I didn't like any of the art but appreciated the effort. But mostly you're vintage shops full of stuff I wouldn't buy for $1 at the local goodwill. I could be biased based on my shopping diet, but on a beautiful Saturday afternoon it was the opposite of enticing.

Places to eat were plentiful, although this is New York, so I would be shocked if they weren't. BBQ, Mexican, & Coffee seemed to be the main choices. I get it: you're full of young hipsters. That stuff is drunk comfort food. I enjoy it too.

But seriously hipsters? What the hell are you all wearing? And why are you all white? For women, the generally accepted shape is skinny jeans with some kind of loose-fitting top. I can understand going for comfort & "damn the patriarchy!", but there are lots of much more comfortable things you could wear that are equally unattractive. For men, the generally accepted form seemed to be out-of-the-closet-Country-Club-boys. I'm okay with that: hell, I think it's damn cute. But when I see a normal-ish guy in a motorcycle jacket and jeans standing on the corner & think 'how refreshingly normal,' we have a problem.

Oh, and I know they got there first, but what the hell is up with all the (white) parents? It's nice, I guess, that the world is going to be peopled, but that doesn't make the sidewalks your personal playground. I saw a guy walking down the street, bent over and holding both hands of his toddler as the kid took uncertain steps down the pavement. Are you being ironic, holding up traffic like that?

The whole place just aggravates me. The architecture is just as hideous as my neighborhood, but because there are about fourteen places to buy clothing somebody else has worn before, everybody wants to walk up and down Bedford Street.

Maybe it's a good place to be drunk.