DA DA DA-DA-DA, DA-DA-DA DA-DA-DA!!

Click here to watch the trailer for Rocky Balboa

Many thanks to dooce.com for making me aware of this trailer.

Now, I am no movie critic. I'm not really into movies, like, at all. Unless they're art-nerdy- I think the last movie I saw in the theater might have been Pollock, either that or the Wilco docu thingy I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. I'm not big on boxing either. And Sylvester Stallone doesn't do much for me.

Movies in general don't tend to capture my attention the way TV shows and books do. There are rare occasions, and it's pretty funny that both these movies came out before I was born. (I think) Mommie Dearest ranks right up there, too, and I like comedies. But only two movies get me excited, chills and all-- one is Jaws, a movie that scared me and yet intrigued me from the time I was about 5.

The other is Rocky. Naturally, Rocky I is the best. As often happens with franchises, they get hokier and hokier as they move on. And this latest installment has the potential to really really suck.

But y'all, he came back to Philadelphia. He ran under the El in Fishtown/Kensington, (Not south philly like most people seem to think, der) through the Italian market and up the steps of the PMA. He's old and in bad shape and he is trying for another comeback.

He's Rocky. Oh my god, I am so excited for this movie.

If only she still linked to our own blogs...

OMG! Amalah answered my question on the Advice Smackdown! Yeee ha!

Right here!

Stalled out

This shingles thing is for the birds! THE BIRDS!!

It's weird, though. Everyone's reaction has been, oh my god! That SUCKS!

I don't hurt, though. I feel like I've been hit by a mac truck, but I don't have the owies. My FIL says that's later though. I don't know, what if I'm taking genital herpes medicine for nothing, though? What if I don't have shingles, but some exotic skin disease they haven't named yet? What if they call it Art Nerd Disease, after me??

I'm probably posting this so that I can then start hurting, and then get better. This sucks, but not for the reason that most people think the shingles suck.

I am so weird, and such a hypochondriac.

A pox on my house!

I. Have. Shingles.

What? Am I eighty and in a nursing home?

Why in the world do I have the shingles.

What's fun- going to Target to get an Rx for Valtrex. Valtrex "I have genital herpes" Valtrex.

What's neurotic, of me, to do- Loudly ask the pharmacist if taking oatmeal baths is okay, you know, when you have SHINGLES and not the herp on the gennies.

What sucks- wearing long sleeves in July. For at least a week.

Owwwwww

Your semi-regular dose of art

Clicky a-here.

If anyone has any extra money or frequent flyer miles they want to give me, the artist on whom I wrote my thesis is having a show. In Mexico City. And one in New York in the fall, but that's beside the point. I wanna goooooo to Mejico cit-ay!

And? My advisor, the second, the one I actually, ya know, like, called on Sli Li related business. And you know what she said? Do ya? Well, she told me about the part she liked best about my thesis. BEST! As in, there's more than one part she liked, but the one that beat out all the others, relatively speaking, was this one part.

She called it sensitive, y'all. And wonderful. WONDERFUL! Yessssh!

And? This means that she has re-read my thesis in its finished state. Actually, I won't consider it totally finished until I design the cover of it and have it bound at the library. And post pho-toes on my blog, of course. But anyway, she said she was reading up on the literature, and you know what that means?

I THINK IT MEANS THAT SHE CONSIDERS ME PART OF THE LITERATURE. OMG, you guys, I'm flyyyyying right now. Feeling like a real art nerd, baby.

When my first book comes out, I'll be completely intolerable, I can see it now...

I'm falling apart!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am falling to pieces. Literally. Well, kind of.

Besides the whole eyebrow incident, I have a rash on my forearm that won't go away. It's weird, because initially I thought it was a group of mosquito bites. Now, I 'm not sure. My boss had me convinced that I had chickenpox, and that I'd then get shingles, and then, well, just dye my hair blue and call it a day. And naturally it showed up late Monday night, because Monday at 12:20, I was at the dermatologist's office, getting a checkup and my eyebrow fixed.

Falling apart.

And my hair is a giant mess- I haven't gotten it done since the last time I complained. But I want to go to Kev's cousin's wife, but I'm afraid to call her. I don't think she'll know who I am. And it's worse, because I keep putting it off and my sister is looking to get her hair cut with me. So you'd think that would be the impetus to just frickin call already.

Am I alone in my fear of cold calling people? I am also sitting on calling the doctor, even though today my rashie rash is so grody that I've worn a longsleeved tunic. In July. It's going up to 89ish today.

I just got over my fear of returning things. I have given away countless pairs of pants because they didn't fit right- ahem, Old Navy outlet, ahem, not the bargain you think it is when the pieces are all wonky. Anyway, talk to me, are you also afraid to call, for say, a pizza, an appointment, anything like that?

Adventures in Primping, pt. 2

So I talked to my dermatologist today. Apparently, ripping off part of your face is not included in their waxing services. So I will be going there from now on. Even though it costs $12 instead of $5. I guess it's worth it- if only to be able to wear makeup 3 days after the trauma. Owwww.

Adventures in Primping

This afternoon, after a rather nice if uneventful pedicure, I decided, Damn. My eyebrows look a hot mess- perhaps I will get them waxed while I'm here. So I trudged back to the room where the waxing commences, my toes wrapped up in toilet paper fashioned into toe separators. I lay down on the table-dental-chair-torture contraption, which, incidentally, justfrickinfits in the room, and onto which I justaboutfrickingfit. I'm only 5'8".

The waxing began normally enough, with me holding my breath while the lady applied the wax. I don't do this in anticipation of pain so much as I just don't think that the lady appreciates my breathed-up air all over her arms and hands. I wouldn't like it. But sometimes I almost pass out. Today was hot, and well, you do the math. The room got fuzzy, but I didn't actually pass out.

Until.

So for my male reader(s?) out there, first the lady puts on the wax. Then she sticks a hunk of bedsheet to it, and rips out your eyebrow hairs in clumps. And then she puts on Vaseline to help remove the extra wax, and to help her to pluck. out. each.and. every. individual. eyebrow. hair. that. the. wax. missed. This took about 4 hours today, me hyperventilating the whoooole time.

Then.

She used alcohol to remove the vaseline. OH MY GOD the pain. It felt like she threw hot acid in my face. My eyebrows! My skin! You just opened up all the pores by ripping out hair, and now you've sent them screaming shut in response to the burny burny alcohol, oh my god, lady, do I tip badly or something?

If I thought my head looked a hot mess before, take a look at this:



This is a hideous photo of my eyebrows, taken four house after the heinous attack they suffered at the hands of the nail salon lady. It's un-Photoshopped, except for a little patch of grody dry skin on my forehead that I must admit I retouches (cough cough, Britney in that magazine she just did nekked, ahem). Those are my eyes, my dark circles, and my scary damaged eyebrowal area.

But the shape is pretty good, no?

EDITED TO ADD:

This is my brows this am. Oh my gob, I'm hideous!

just for fun

what rocker should be in your bed

Angus Young, his boyish charms still rock
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From the ancient world

So, in keeping with my promise to keep bringing the art nerdery, here is a still life from a wall in the city of Herculaneum. It was buried, along with Pompeii, in 79 CE in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius. Herculaneum is really interesting because they were locked in ash rather than lava (as I recall) and therefore there is a lot of extant wood, ie furniture, that survived here but was destroyed in the lava of Pompeii. I also learned from a TLC special that the residents of Herculaneum, though once presumed to have escaped, were found relatively recently down by the harbor. They had time to get down there, but couldn't escape the heat. They said their brains boiled and 'sploded. EW! But I digress.

This painting, albeit a really bad image of it- the color is kind of off- just amazes me! Do you know how hard it is to paint glass? And the viewpoint is so interesting. They aren't supposed to have had any system of perspective, but who needs one anyway? This painting? Survives from the years that Christ walked the earth! Isn't that so cool? This thing is 2000 years old, and it's just. so. beautiful.

Shine on...

Syd Barrett died. He was one of the founding members of Pink Floyd. That? sucks.

Am now taking recommendations...

People, my hair? Has freaked the fuck out! It's rather frizzy , and with the flatness at the roots, I'm starting to resemble this chick (per my sister, Saturday morning):



So I'm listening- What do you use in your hair? Besides the obvious, I know I need a haircut (and highlights, gah the greys!) but until next week- when I get paid again- what can I do?

Been a while since...

Hey, isn't, like, "art", in the title of this blog? Haven't written about it in a while, have I?

Well that will change, thanks to Teacher Lady . She got me thinking about my favorite paintings.

I say it in the plural, because really, it's an evil question, like which cat is your favorite, or which appendage. I like all of my appendages for different reasons.

It's even more difficult for me to choose, because there are some works that I like because I'm a painter (not really an artist, not now, since I haven't done anything in a year. but still, BFA and all...) One artist that comes to mind in this realm is John Singer Sargent, whose paintings, oh my god, are so. incredibly. gorgeous. in real life. His fabrics, ahhhhh, so sexy. That's what they are, juicy, sexy, sensual paintings- but ultimately society portraits that I don't know how much more can be read into them. To be honest, I haven't looked too far into it.



There are also works that I like because I have some deeper knowledge of them because I studied them. For instance, Michelangelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel. That painting fascinates me not only because it's amazingly populated and complex, but there is just so much going on. And the time in which it was created was right after the Council of Trent, when the Church up and changed the rules about images, and sweet merciful crap, it's just fricking amazing! Look!





And then, there's Manet. His famous paintings, God are they good. In both senses- I respond to Manet's modernism, his flatness and surface obviousness. But his late still lifes give me an art history boner. I wish I could own these paintings. He made the first, and when the man who bought it paid more than the asking price, Manet sent him this second, with a note that his bunch was short a stalk. How can you not love that?!





Am thinking of adding at least one art image a week. And also instituting Confession Wednesdays, in which I confess to something weird or bad or most often lazy that I've done. Pastly or presently. Oh I am branching out people. Look out blogosphere!

Geek Heeellllpp!

I want to design my own "skin" for my blog. Any suggestions? How how how?

To sum up a week's worth of happenings...

Am sorry about the no-blogging in a week thing. There have been "things" happening. For instance:

1. The iMac is back! Complements of CompUSA, our iMac now functions, and we only lost about a month on it! Sigh

2. We have added another cat to the mix. His name is Jack, and the only one who seems even mildly perturbed about his presence is Sophia. God bless the inventor of the Feliway atomizer! Bless him!

3. Have had the worst migraine, going on five days now. Actually, today being the day I called the neurologist's office in tears, I feel a little better. Though a friend once told me about a migraine she had where she didn't notice the pain, and it went into her throwing up and passing out at a soccer game in college. This will probably happen to me.

My neuro is a good doctor, but like a lot of my docs, he has the personality of a wet dishrag. He sounded mildly concerned about my head, and I can go get a new Rx for something different tomorrow. The receptionist put me on the cancellation list, which I feel mildly guilty about. I mean, it's a neuro's office, doesn't he deal mostly with stroke victims? I feel like if I get an appointment sooner than my existing August 8th spot, it's because someone died. And that's just not in my protocol, to benefit from random strangers' deaths, even if I have made them up, ya know? And even if my headaches have gotten worse, and started to bridge a spectrum of fun! new! symptoms! Because the searing-hot pain in my eye-al area wasn't enough, no no. And the occasional nausea and sensitivity to light and scent was getting a little lonely. Flashing lights, facial and hand numbness- all new, and so fun, I swear!

4. Oh, and the old car needed a new battery and alternator. Lesson learned- Lauren, do not try to recount the last time you called AAA. It will happen again, and it's so worth your money. Shut up and pay it!

The fourth was fun. I mean, as fun as the summer holidays get. I don't really care about fireworks, but Lionel Richie was playing at the Welcome America festival jammy this year. Would have liked to see him singing in fake Swahili, that could have rocked. I got a killer migraine, complete with almost-barfing at the BBQ we were at. And we went home before the fireworks, since Kev had to work at 3 this morning. Poor guy, I hope he gets normal hours soon.

I feel like I've been on the downswing since my speeding ticket. And while driving to our friend John's house yesterday, Kevin revealed to me a fine little nugget of info. When driving on 95, I mused aloud as to what the speed limit is. "Well, we're in PA, it's always 55, unless you're on the Turnpike." I shit you not, people, I almost killed him. Honestly, he couldn't have shared this two weeks ago?!