These downtown Chicago sidewalks expressed my mood perfectly on the gray gross day.
Absolutely I will.
Sugar.
Cards Against Humanity headquarters’ bathroom. Gender neutral, of course. 🙂
Indeed.
The Grouch must loathe this guy.
Got my nails done at a salon called The Cat’s Meow before our two-week roadtrip out west. I tipped in cash.
While I waited, I read this Georgia O’Keeffe fun fact and realized only someone who becomes famous making beautiful paintings as metaphors for vaginas can walk around the desert in a kimono-like coat and actually pull it off.
Our first stop was Lawrence, Kansas; second stop was Denver. We bought a joint. Legally.
We saw many signs politely telling stupid tourists to stop being so stupid.
An apple a day keeps the rabid diarrhea away. Theater bathroom in Austin.
Roots like mountains. Dive bar in Kansas.
But he HATES parentheses! Wal-Mart in Texas.
Just in case you missed it, we’ll tint your windows. New Mexico.
One of several hybrid names for cities along state lines that we saw. My other favorite: Kanorado. (Kansas + Colorado)
Denny’s mug. In Utah? Somewhere like that.
Another diner. This one called Banjo’s. Perfect for a short story set in Kansas.
No MSG. No aspartame. Food truck in San Antonio.
No MSG. No aspartame. Gift shop in Chicago.
This is in front of a shuttered and dilapidated storefront in our neighborhood. How I long to know what this lounge was like!
Isn’t this photo incredible? It’s from our recent roadtrip to Vegas and back. This is at Red Rock Canyon Nevada. We rented a convertible to take the “scenic drive” that winds through this brilliant, accidental mashing of plates and ended up there at sunset. I cried.
Not all our driving was so smooth though. Have you tried taking a speeding bullet down a Rocky Mountain in the middle of the night? I cried then also. But for totally different reasons.
As I embark on yet another trip–a flight this time, which is loaded with its own special brand of travel anxiety mostly rooted in my lack of control over timing and metal tin can speeding bullet–I pulled up these meditations I used on our roadtrip. Thought I’d share.
Key idea: The timing in your life is perfect. You’re exactly where you need to be.
Read: It’s OK if you don’t have everything done yet. You’re exactly when you you need to be.
Read: Yes, crying again.
You are safe. Where you are headed you will arrive right on time.
Don’t tell off the TSA agent.
Don’t tell off the TSA agent.
Don’t tell off the TSA agent.
I mean, how wonderful that you even have the opportunity and luxury to travel so fast in the first place? Even if your seat is right by the plane’s pooper. I can find something new and worthwhile in this experience.
Soda would be such a good last name for a short story character.
There he is… Don Soda
“I give this place a five star.” I’d like to change my vote to “Children.”
This was before their torrid love affair became public and the project’s funding ended.
I have so many good bathroom art pics in this series, but this is the most interesting thing in my office building bathroom. AKA Damp hands mean sick days mean 14-hour days trying to catch up. Wash your hands, you sick fuck!
What is the difference between a yard sale and a rummage sale? I want to attend the one most likely to sell Don Soda’s socks.
Spoiler: I already almost-finished this one and have some… thoughts. I was hooked until 3/4 of the way through when she switches to a new character and I checked out harder and faster than I ever have reading a book! The Goodread reviews confirm I wasn’t alone in thinking this. Egan’s writing is exquisite and she’s definitely a must-read. Just check this one out from the library before you buy.
I loved listening to Emil Ferris talk about her work at the Chicago Humanities Festival. The Chicago book community has been buzzing about her graphic novel, set in Uptown, for some time. I’m excited to finally read it and get lost in its illustrations.
I copped a book of Poe’s spookiest stories from my family’s dusty bookshelf a few years ago. I was attracted to its crazy weird illustrations and only recently started reading its even crazier, weirder stories. So fucked up and perfectly delightful this time of year.
Imagine my continued delight, then, when PBS posted its newest episode of American Masters to my Roku box.
“Buried Alive” looks at Poe’s troubled life, his messed up attraction to a 13-year-old cousin, his unwavering criticism of American literature which turned out to be the boost it needed to truly establish itself, his development of the detective trope that’s so familiar to us today, his alcoholism, his work ethic, his mysterious death… Spooooooky…
Andrew Wyeth artwork
Ugh. Chicago has been gray and overcast for weeks. It’s so depressing. Thus, my newfound attraction to Andrew Wyeth paintings.
A 20th century realist, Wyeth’s work shows, with deft minimalism, the gray scenes of life that are somehow optimistic in their acceptance of #thestruggleisreal.
See also: Otto Dix
Maybe all that Poe and the, shall we say, stressful state of things in this country socially, has me drawn to images of the grotesque. This “Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden,” painted by the Expressionist Otto Dix in 1926, had me double take when I scrolled past it on Pinterest. I love the arresting colors, her war-worn face, her distracting fingers (that’s so Dix!), her Germanness, her “new woman”ness, her uglyness, her Bubikof (watch below), her drooping panty hose. Not to mention that color.
Learn more about her (spoiler: not actually a journalist, despite the title).
“The Madam,” by Otto Dix, 1923
Sincere Engineer and the Girl Punk Spotify playlist
Sincere Engineer is the band name of Deanna Belos, a Chicago musician who just released “Rhombitian” in October. Clashing and dark, but vibrant too. I love it. Check it out on Spotify. She’s performing Nov. 10 at Township Chicago to celebrate the album’s release. Throw ‘bows with you there?
Sincere Engineer’s sound has made me hungry for more savage punk girls. Enter: Girl Punk playlist on Spotify. Best Coast, Punch, Trash Kit, Whore Paint, Cyndi and Sinead, just to name a few. Thank you to whomever put that shit together. You’ve been keeping me sane in this Chicago fall fog.
GlitterMoneyyy
Also obsessed with the new album “Twurk for the Nation” by Chicago rappers GlitterMoneyyy. I saw these two perform at The Shithole and laughed my ass off.
No fucks are given as they skewer social commentary with a dildo. XOXOXOxoxoxoxoxoxOXOXXo. Do yourself a favor and listen to “Validate Me.” Or all of it, really.
Watching this Russian probe unfold
More terrifying than Poe. More dark than Wyeth. More gut-wrenching than a punk scream. Learning how much the world has changed when we weren’t even paying attention is a 21st century American horror story. It’s. Fascinating.
On this week’s Episode 47 of FemComPod, Justin and I disagree about the conclusion of the Atlantic article below but don’t disagree on how interesting the findings in it are. Listen to the article and then watch a live recording of the podcast below. Welcome to the brave new media world.
As the cold weather settles into your bones, settle in with these newfound documentaries about or by women who unlocked their voice and never apologized for it–despite the bouts of crippling creative doubt.
“Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” on Netflix
“The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self respect springs.” Joan Bad Bitch Didion
I’m obsessed with Joan Didion’s essays, and this documentary by her nephew Griffin Dunne explores her work, heartache and cult-like following, of which I am a book-carrying member. It debuted on Netflix streaming last week.
With a life cut short by brain cancer at 34, Eva Hesse’s mark on the postwar art world was nothing short of miraculous. Her abstract and humanistic paintings and sculptures are still relevant today, as is her wise-beyond-its-years self-mastery in a male dominated field rife with land mines. I was particularly stunned at her Jewish family’s devastating story of their escape from Germany when she was just a child–and the effect this traumatizing experience had on the rest of her life. This documentary further proves her rightful place in art and American history.
“Streetwise” by Mary Ellen Mark on YouTube
A friend of mine recently posted this find on Facebook. I knew the name Mary Ellen Mark sounded familiar, and of course, she’s the photographer who took that famously jarring black and white photo of the little girl smoking in a kiddie pool. The rest of Mary Ellen’s work is just like that — difficult to see, devastating, beautiful, a snapshot of the poor, forgotten and frustrating in a modern age. This 1988 documentary by Mary Ellen (soundtrack by Tom Waits!) follows homeless foster kids, teenagers and runaways who live on the streets. Their lives are crushingly sad, but Mary Ellen deftly balanced keeping their dignity and struggle for self worth and pride, ever present. Even as they sold drugs, turned tricks as teens and fought to stay alive. Innocence corrupted. Adult cruelty. Life captured. Violence, cycling. Heavy.
Wishful thinking. Though I love the #faceinplaces Easter egg in no_one.
More wishful thinking. Though I, too, want to live in that world.
More more.
Author and illustrator Emil Ferris at the Chicago Humanities Festival. Super pumped to read her graphic novel “My Favorite Thing is Monsters.” Some of my favorite Emil quotes from her appearance:
On Chicago “There are a lot of survivors here.”
On whether she’s a political artist “I don’t know that anybody isn’t a political artist.”
On writing fiction “You can propose ways to solve everything in fiction. So why not?”
On being an unorganized artist “Everything goes to hell regularly. … I’m an Italian driver as an artist.”
On getting older “That’s the great thing about being old. You’re ornery. And you feel gratitude for everything.”
Thank you for your work/ being your ornery self, Emil!
Huzzah! NaNoWriMo is here! Are you ready? Doesn’t matter. Just sit down. Write. Write more. Sit down. You’re not done yet.
I’m writing this for you as much as for myself.
This is my first attempt at completing a book in a month. Except, I’ve chosen not to look at it like that. Instead, I’m approaching it as a 50,000 word first draft of something, anything. Even if I can only mine out one good nugget for a short story or, hell, my most perfect sentence yet, I’ll consider it a success.
Actually, scratch that. Success to me will be if I can get down 1,600 words every day this month. I’m working on consistency. To not be so precious about the act of writing.
Writing at that pace, being committed to a word count on a daily schedule, not “waiting for the muse,” is bound to cause some inner friction soon enough.
Here are some coping strategies for you (me) to reference when that friction hits. Just add them to your writer’s toolbox, which I’m sure you (I) spent a lot of time meticulously organizing instead of working on an outline. 🙂
Me. November 1.Me. November 15.
Read from “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
I love this book. It’s a super fast read, the chapters punchy and direct, which is great, because you have work to do. Reading from “The War of Art” is like getting a pep talk from your coach, ringside, after a round of battling it out on the page.
I especially appreciate Pressfield’s insights on how we trick ourselves into procrastination–and his tips on how to defeat that tendency.
“Art doesn’t have a finish line. It’s just a race. Against yourself.”
Remind yourself this is only the first draft… of the first draft
And those are always shit. Just ask Hemingway. Or any of the greats. Here are some quotes for you (me) to reference when the mid-month, mid-book, self-doubt storms start rolling in.
“You fail only if you stop writing.” Ray Bradbury
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” Terry Prachett
“The first draft of everything is shit.” Ernest Hemingway
“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that I can later build castles.” Shannon Hale
Puns! This is a drunk Jackie Mantey original idea and my favorite Halloween costume (and party) to date! I got so sleepy putting together this makeshift photo booth for my dining room, I had to take a cat nap before the party. Eeeeeeehhhhh?
This is super easy. Throw on something that looks like a cat costume, which you can fake really well with drawn on whiskers and some pointy ears. Hold your phone and pretend to make calls a lot. Also, say inappropriate things to your hot friends.
Lady and Gentleman Bug
Eeee. You know what they say. A couple that puns together… breaks up for a year or so then stays together.
This is another original and my favorite couples costume we’ve done together. It’s pretty self-explanatory and you could pull it off a lot of different ways; however, Justin’s black man leggings, top hat, homemade wings and monocle really took it next level.
Edgar Allan Ho
Scandalous and amorous, old Edgar Allan wouldn’t mind you adding some fishnets and heels to his look. Hit up a craft store to get a decor skull or raven/ crow (no one knows the difference) to hold so you don’t just look goth.
A Shooting Star
A cut-out star + water guns = giiiiit it?
Arthur Dent from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
Be honest, playing a helpless human won’t be that hard. Put your robe over your pajamas, throw on some slippers and grab your fave coffee mug. Roll up a newspaper or Scientific American and place it in your robe pocket for extra credit. Maybe tape a sign to your back that says “Don’t Panic”? Fellow hitchhiker fans will eat it up.
I love everything about this building… except those glaring “your” and “you’re” errors but I choose to ignore them.
Slut boy!
Foreign boy!
This poster looks so ominous because of its decay. Like some shifty Groupon lackey tried to remove it or scrape of its message in the cover of darkness.
It’s been three years since a Chicago policeman shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in the back 16 times. Black lives matter.
Get it?
These quotes about famous people’s perseverance are on the outside of a Family Dollar, which is a pretty perfect location to spread the message to never give up.
This is from a show at the Slate Arts and Performance space. Liu’s work is bright and immersive and reflects her narrative search for memory and emotional recovery following a terrible head wound. It’s interesting to see how visual artists find ways to express their story through color and form, not words.
And here’s the Slate bathroom. It’s glorious and this post series seems to be where I, ahem, dump all my good bathroom photos. You’re welcome.
