Sunday, April 26, 2009

Cookie Monster Model

Okay, now Cookie, you're going to stand here and pretend you're the letter F in front of this brooding model. Fur is the new skin, people! And Monster with No Name (who are you, anyway?), you're going to pet his titties. Beautiful! Work it, people, work it, I'm loving it! Give me more! Now Vogue!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Guy in armpit

This is a very important collage, done circa 1999. I'm sure it will be remembered long after I'm gone for its ingenious use of scale and proportion. Look at how that model uses another model as an armpit crutch! That's what you're allowed to do when you're rich and fashionable.
What you can't see was the high-heeled shoe on the right was attached to a head of Britney Spears (but no body, just a head coming out of a leg), and also somehow the head of Patrick Swayze was attached in there too. But I had to do some serious cropping to get the armpit shot into view.
This also probably infringes on copyright by using pictures of models without any kind of creative manipulation to the images. Way to go, me! I'm so creative it hurts sometimes.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Piano lessons

I've been teaching an 8-year old beginner's piano lessons since July or so; it's great to see her progress, though sometimes frustrating when I don't know whether to babysit her or try and teach her about dynamics, or if I run out of ways to describe what an octave is. I think she secretly soaks up everything I say, though, as sometimes if she plays something screwy one week, she'll play it near perfectly the very next week and I'll know she was listening.

I'm also glad to see that she wants to be creative with music, so sometimes we'll make up improvisations, or write "songs" together. Once she wrote a song all by herself (and notated it!) and it was called Fiesta. She even remembered to put in a time signature, though none of the measures had anywhere near the right number of notes (nor were barlines relatively vertical, but we're working on it).

Today we had to stop the lesson a little early as I just couldn't get her to focus on the song at hand–she was just too excited about writing a song down on some manuscript paper I copied for her. The song is to be called A Day in Life and the Times of Egypt. Her mom asked her to do something else, but she snapped back, "But I forgot to put in my staccato markings!!"
And that's when I teared up a little inside with composer's pride.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Washington DC Cherry Blossoms

Last weekend I went to Washington DC for a friends' wedding and I also experienced the Cherry Blossom Festival at its peak. The wedding was as beautiful as the blossoms.
There were also plenty of places to pee. This particular row of portable toilets adds a nice contrast to the delicacy of those light pink flowers sort of obscured in the distance.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Crazy People on the Bus

Boyfriend and I took the bus to and from a friends' house last night and every part of the trip had eventful commuters.
1. Guy on the bus who told someone that he tried lighting a cigarette while wearing an oxygen breathing tube, and lit his nose on fire.
2. Drunk men trying to walk to their car, but fighting (almost too scarily) the whole way, turning around, throwing their hands up, walking back to the bar in anger, and turning around again to walk back toward the car. Repeat 10 times.
3. Drunk girl on the way home shouting "I'm going to karate chop her in the nose! I'm going to karate chop her in the throat!"
Always a good time on mass transit.