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Am I Blue?

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What is it about the holidays that make you curl up in the fetal position, listening to Lou Reed’s Berlin (hooray for those wailing children) or Television Personalities’ the Painted Word? Oh, everything. The cold and the darkness that is stretching out for the next two or three months, the looming problem of January’s rent. I lose interest in the question halfway through the answer. What are you people doing to remain cheerful? I am finding that bingeing on cookies is only a temporary fix that leaves one worse off than before. I think it was Baudelaire who first noted the loneliness that follows such debauchery. Although he was talking about drinking and having sex with diseased prostitutes.

Speaking of debauchery, we had our work christmas party yesterday and that was definitely a missing element. In the good old days, we had these galas in fancy bars and ballrooms and people would get dressed to the nines and drunk to the zeroes. The next day spent discussing who had photocopied their fanny or made out with so-and-so. Now we have a modest but nicely catered couple of hours in the office, no dancing, no tipsyness. But we did have “s’mores”- a toasted marshmallow covered in cookie dust impaled on a plastic pipette filled with soft chocolate that you had to suck out.

Is it wrong of me to want to rock in a corner, sucking chocolate out of a pipette, playing “Closer” until Christmas is over? I should have understood this would be my fate when I quit smoking and binge drinking. I regret nothing everything!

Ask Dr. Stupid

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Welcome to Part II of our series, Our Crazy Bodies, Our Crazy Selves. I have no idea how many parts there are to this series, that is just how crazy it is. Yesterday we touched upon the Imagine Diet. Today we follow up with Imaginary Ailments. Just as good as the real thing? You decide!

Every once in a while, something is just wrong. A pain here, an indescribable something there. I don’t like to spend $25 just to reel out bizarre complaints like, “No, it does not hurt exactly, but my Rachmaninov has not been the same, especially if it is cold outside.” Only to then be palpated and declared a medical marvel of normalcy. So I try to ignore my body’s little misfires as long as that is possible. Once acknowledged, the problem becomes unbearable, though nothing has actually changed. There is much room for torment in this scenario. Does it hurt, or am I just thinking about it?  I come to the conclusion that any part of the body hurts or feels weird, if I think hard enough about it.

This is how it came to be that weeks ago, my eye felt funny and I thought little of it. After a few weeks ha ha feelin funny, I casually thought I should be seen. I phoned the doctor for a next-day appt. and spent the rest of the day in an agony of twitching and blinking. Suddenly, it was unendurable. At the doctor’s office we had the usual description of “symptoms” of a highly fantastic nature, followed by the discovery that my eyeglass prescription needed an update. So there were a bunch of weird tests and blue lights and drops, and new glasses. And if my updated Rx does not fix it, there will be more tests. My right eye is wonky, but I was not emotionally prepared to be choosing new frames today! So lord knows what I have gotten myself into sartorially, to the tune of a couple hundred bucks that OF COURSE were just LYING AROUND saying “hey, what about us, we’re bored”.  A most ill-timed medical fugue, since I am still looking for someone to rent the studio.

My point here is that the mind is very powerful. Just two days ago, I sat at this same desk, twiddling my auburn locks ’round a pencil and wondering if I should have a bisque or a stew, oh and go to the doctor or not? Just one day later I can’t concentrate for the strange sense I am staring out of two unconnected holes in my face, one of which won’t play along, and the glasses won’t be ready until next week.

The lesson here is simple. Put you body out of your mind.

For clean minds only

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We are starting our New Year’s resolutions early around here! Mr. H recently was weighed at the doctor’s office, and when they started calling local vet offices for livestock scales, he got the point. Now I can stop leaving Post-Its and fortune cookies around, which is just as well because he would eat the fortune cookies whole and miss the message completely. Picture the treat tossing action at Sea World.

Oh, I am pulling your very shapely leg. He merely needs to practice a tiny bit of slimming for heart health, and since he is a man, this means he will switch to Cheerios for breakfast and stop drinking Snapple and magically drop 30 pounds in one week. I’ll wake up one day and wonder when I married Christian Bale in The Machinist. Then I’ll probably poke him in all his visible ribs. Wouldn’t you?

The New York Times, always on the cusp of trends like people having blogs or knitting or finding apartment hunting trying, has mentioned a diet long touted by Vomitola: the Imagine Diet. Lambchop cited this diet in 2004: Never Say Die-t! Lambchop 1, Science 0.

Lambchop and I have tried many diets over the years, including the Spit It Out diet and the Despair diet, and while all of those work, there can be downsides. What happens when you become just too attractive?

Once we tried subsisting on Brain Wash soda, a heady confection of sugar, stimulants, and jalapeño oil. It also came in the flavor red (not pictured). It burned as if you were being cleansed by God.

We were but neophyte sommeliers, so we used to try gauche little pairings for our beverages all the time. Gummy worms really brought out the undertone of civet cat musk, and Sour Patch Kids brought out seizures. Swedish fish dialed up the shoe leather and berry notes. Pop Rocks caused an actual blackout. Combine this with a regimen of occasionally nipping at the steam trays and frozen yogurt machine in the Warren Towers cafeteria and marching from Chinatown to Allston while hallucinating vigorously, and we were fit as fiddles!

Oh, to be young again!

The Bride Stripped

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I was asleep in NY when my divorce was finalized in a Berlin courtroom on Friday morning, but my ex-husband assures me that my attorney, Herr Danne, is as handsome as ever. It is too late for the divorceé, the jaded slattern sucking on Nat Shermans and Hendricks. I’ve worn out that pose long ago and am far too busy playing the struggling artist. So there was no champagne uncorked or letters burnt. Just a sad, hollow feeling, and a lot of things to do, as usual.

Saturday was a fine day for a bike ride up to Madison and 77th, to see the John Currin show at the Gagosian. Currin is an old fave, but I must say his work used to be weirder back when the bearded lady men were ogling the balloon chested blondes. He is still milking the “master technique” to great effect, but the facility is starting to feel purely showy, like Sargent. Yessir, he sure can paint the dang drapery. There was enough eccentricity there to make the trip worthwhile. I do come away with the satisfying feeling, though, that I would not have to be ashamed to hang my best work there.

Everywhere on the streets are lots filled with pine trees. I breathe them in as I pedal by, along with clove and cinnamon ringing the parks. I turned into Central Park for a lovely view of the pond framed by bare branches. Unfortunately, it was also Santacon. Behold the far less picturesque occasion of 1,000 drunken, roaring santas and their skanky “helpers”.

Chelsea was miraculously Santa-free. I ran into a guy a know from the street around my studio. He draws faces on the sidewalk. One time I came to the studio and the faces all the way down the block were talk ballooning, “Hey Heather, how come you never call me?” Felix was drawing faces from 20th street to 30th street along 10th avenue, including in the crosswalks, dragging himself along on a milk crate as he drew. I bought him a coffee to keep his chalky mitt warm, told him not to bust my chops, which he did anyway. I ran into friends at Joes. What a nice feeling to run into people you know in the middle of the city! Maybe this is common for you cosmopolitan types, you who are known at book readings and bathroom queues alike. But I am not Tina Brown, so I find it pretty cool and unusual.

Miss K. and I toddled off to see the Anselm Kiefer show at the Chelsea Gagosian. Glorious despair, tactile violence and decay. Similar to Kiefer’s big room at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. The New York Times put it marvelously, “Anselm Kiefer has become better and better at making Anselm Kiefers.” Roberta Smith, you’re a caution! Needless to say, I was arrested by the sight of the decayed wedding dress in the glass and iron case, shot through with giant shards of broken glass. Hello, there.

I am yet in the throes of trying to get an opening in my studio rented before Christmas. And there is a similar overturn possibly happening on the home front. I don’t know what is going to happen, I am just reaching for the antacid and hoping for the best. Maybe I’ll be joining Felix on the sidewalk.

Dee Lusions, American Beauty Queen

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As a symptom of existentialism, I have taken to berating myself for not accomplishing X or Y. Why haven’t I sold a screenplay yet? Oh, you have to write one first. But I have so many ideas! Can’t people just sense their genius and fill in the blanks?

So I have lowered my sights. I am going to do absolutely nothing with my life. This, now this is meat I can sink my teeth into. This is a caribou, freshly killed by a Palin. ATTACK!  Right now I am in bed, eating chocolates, without a care in the world! It’s amazing what adjusting one’s expectations can do. I had best expect not to gain weight from these chocolates. Life’s a beach!

Killer in the Home

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Two thirds of my household has been stricken with a plague, much like our poor Lambchop, and the other third has been stricken with large capacity existentialism.  As a result, we all very much want to lie down, thank you. Except the child, who prefers tearing around, no matter how high the fever. Her brain must have already melted, poor little sprocket.

Maybe our problem is actually carbon monoxide, not mono. I have detectors propped in each bedroom since I was all worried about the fire department’s inspection of our construction, but the guy didn’t even look at them, so I never bothered to add batteries. Deceit!

Finally, a poll: Who thinks marsala mushroom sauce is a good idea to pair with filet mignon? Answer: not me. But that could be the existentialism talking. And talk it does! On and on in my ear.  Nothing seems like a good idea, and since I typically trade in bad ideas, this should not be surprising, yet somehow it is a handicap.

Uh huh

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The slow start of my brain today reminded me of subzero mornings in Boston, rushing into the car, somehow feeling colder inside than outside the icy metal box and waiting for the heat to kick in. Waiting and waiting. I was never good at that. It was 12pm today and I found I had not done anything useful. Some guy randomly cold-calls and wants information on asylum seeking. I don’t have to help him since he is not a client, but I do and I wish him luck. I would like to seek asylum as well. A warm room with an easel where a slab of meatloaf and some mushy peas will be brought to me each evening, and I will have to think of nothing but how yellow do I want my yellow.

How yellow *do* I want my yellow? Pretty yellow, I should say.

Nonsense. Hello, reader, it is about time you heard from us germs, we are running the show over here now having taken over the organism. We are going to run it much more efficiently. We like warmth, food and self-replication. Don’t know if we get into this journal-ing business much. Please stop by and say hello to us personally. Come closer, you smell nice. Much closer.

Everything Apart From Sleep

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The Lord supposedly had his day of rest, and I have mine.  Unfortunately, mine includes an inability to remain asleep past 10 a.m. despite 5 a.m. bicycle trawls through a deserted and frozen Manhattan, work and a studio showing.  I have not had more than five hours sleep in many days, and I have an unpleasant floaty feeling in my head which tells me I am about to get sick.  Last month I caught a bad cold that followed on the heels of…not getting more than 5 hours sleep for a couple days in a row.  Hey, Sean T. Drinkwater was there for that one, too!  Like I always says, live and learn: not much.

What was I doing that could have possibly been worth the sacrifice of my health and sanity?  I did a visiting artist lecture at Hofstra, which was a smash.  It felt like a performance of my work, and a chance to throw out witticisms is always a good time.  The people seemed to like it.  If you are reading this and you belong to an institution that has a full program of famous and well-known artists, and you are tired of this and really want to scrape the bottom of the NYC barrel, I am AVAILABLE.

I also had the pleasure of a two day long celebration of the release of Freezepop’s new release, Imaginary Friends.  The listening party introduced me not only to the band’s newest and raddest, but also to the heretofore unknown to me musical stylings of Crispin Glover, circa 1993. Eeesh. On Day 2 Fpop played a show with Plushgun at Mercury Lounge. Even though my eyelids were springing around like Richard Simmons, I swilled the redbull and it was a great time.

Last night I caught a recreation Warhol’s Factory at Party XPO in Bushwick, it was really well done, all the silver decor and bouffants and beatniks. The only thing missing was maybe some mescaline. Twin Guns were amazing as the house band, the Velvet Underground. I love Twin Guns, seeing them always makes me feel like the lone stalker of the underground, like I am living in a Jarmuschian world where New York is still at its filthiest, its seamy underground alive.

I have to trudge on over to the studio. Goro is moving on to L.A. and we are seeking a new tenant. If you are reading this and you want to share studio space with the bottom of the NYC barrel, drop me a line. In the meantime, please enjoy Clowny Clown Clown, since I had to.

You gonna eat that?

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The Hungry Thing, one of Lambchop’s favorite childhood books

I have recovered from the Nero-like consumption of the profusions of Thanksgiving.  Watercress and grapefruit, thank you very much!  Surely, I do fancy a bit of sorbet.  But the triumphant feelings brought on by my ascetic atonement could not last. I scalded my palate and my hand most scandalously from a few drops of soup at dinner.  How dare they! Don’t they know we have law(suits) in this country?!  My solicitor has demanded a photo of the pink crescent shape branded on my skin, but that is probably only because he fancies me. 

I was to have lunch today with my boss, for a belated birthday celebration.  Outside it swirls with rain and howling wind.  On the 30th floor, the windows are shuddering and the building is creaking and shrieking like Ricky Gervais’  laughter.  Scary! After a  brief consult it was determined that my hairdo would not be benefitted by a  trip out of doors, and it had better be put off for another day. 

This weather is a sorry omen to remind me that I should not be here.  That I should be in Miami, unshowered and besotted with all the other New York artists descended upon Art Basel.  I have ambitions!  But that was not in the cards and mainly not in the coins for this year.  I have contented myself by applying to a few exhibitions.  One of them is here, and you can star my portfolio if you choose.

I trucked on down to the cafeteria for lunch to watch the gales.  I had some fennel and apple, a bit of quinoa, and some grilled asparagus.  My coworker had a crock of macaroni and cheese, at the bottom of  which she left a spoonful or two.  I feel I got a great workout, holding myself back from lunging at those bitefuls with my fork  for the ten whole minutes we sat chatting.  Think of it!  All that blah blah BLAH while those starchy morsels lounged there uneaten, just bathing in their gooey sauce.  With what anguish did I watch her place her tray on the conveyor to the dishwashers?  Goodbye, goodbye, waved the bright yellow streak of last of the macaroni and cheese!

Now I know how Godzilla felt.