Wexford Girl

The Pie

Ashli and Sherri came over Saturday night for some hanging out with chat, wine, and heat lamp on the back deck. As well as brownies, Ashli made this incredible savory pie, with zuchini, cherry tomatoes, and corn. It was utterly delicious. We all wolfed it down, and when Ashli was leaving, several hours later, I told her to take the sole remaining piece to have for breakfast on Sunday.

When Eric said goodbye to her, he spied the befoiled slice and said plaintively, "you're taking the pie?" whereupon Ashli insisted on leaving it for him. By the time I got up on Sunday, half an hour after Eric, he had already polished it off.

Thanks Ash! I need that recipe.

Paul and Joe at Target

I had a long and spendy trip to Target this morning. I generally don't mail presents home to Ireland for birthdays and Christmas, because the postage almost doubles the price of the gift. I wait until I come back for a visit, and bring armloads of stuff. I got all kinds of adorable outfits for the younger set (There are very cute clothes in Ireland too, but these will be one-of-a-kind over there.) Then I picked out teddy bears, action figures, Barbies, and lots more stuff they don't need, until I was driven out of the toy section by the endless whining and crying and commotion of all the kids there.

I made my way to the new Paul and Joe collection, by French designer Sophie Albou (I think designers from across the pond are going to be a Target staple, since Luella Bartley did so well). I found some great stuff, including these straight-leg jeans in hot gray denim.

I've tried on a million pairs, but the staight fit is not inherently as flattering as boot-cut, so it's been a fruitless search so far, but these are great, slim fitting and not too tight at the knee. They look looser here on the model than they are on me. Not surprising, since I weigh considerably more than 97 lbs.

This snap-front shirt was also very flattering and a nice fit. I never buy shirts like this because of the gape factor, and because I think a collar feels like there's too much going on around the neck, but this fit nicely with no gape, and I didn't mind the collar. The print says "Paul & Joe" all over. I love this shirt.

Then I tried this dress on. Looks great doesn't it, with the very au courant kimono sleeves? It was HIDEOUS! It made me look frumpy and huge. I couldn't take it off fast enough.

Harpoon Magazine

In 1992 I was waiting tables in San Francisco, and still dreaming of breaking into advertising as an art director. It would be a year or so before I went back to school to get a degree in English Lit from Berkeley and subsequently start working as a Web writer. So in 1992, I was still focused on advertising or illustration as a possible escape from coming home sticky and stinking of cigarettes and beer at 2:00 am (albeit with $150 in my pocket).

My friend Nick worked with a guy, Todd (Nemet, who was brilliant. I often wonder what happened to him), who wrote for Harpoon Magazine, a monthly comedy periodical. They were looking for someone who could do illustration and ad paste-up on a Mac using PageMaker. So I said, I'll do it. I hadn't much else going on socially. The job paid no money.

From what I remember, there were staff meetings every Thursday evening, mostly comedy writers, editors, ad salespeople, and the owners of the Magazine. Everyone sat around on the floor in the magazine's offices (above the Jack in the Box at 7th and Market, which I think is gone now), discussing story ideas and how ad sales were going. One frequent advertiser was Newcastle Brown Ale. They paid us in beer.

The main guy was Scott Zeller. He was funny, though not as funny as some of the writers who worked there. He was also a doctor, and this magazine was his dream. One day on my way to the magazine to do some ads I came off my motorcycle on Hyde Street. I was wearing shorts and got road rash pretty bad. Instead of going home, I continued to Harpoon. Only Scott was there. He went to Walgreens to get Neosporin and gauze and bandaged me up like a true doctor.

The writers at Harpoon were so funny and smart that I got tongue-tied around them, but they all seemed to like me well enough, and I learned quite a bit about PageMaker, a skill that I put to absolutely no use afterwards.

Around that time there was a competing comedy periodical in San Francisco, Might Magazine, which was magazine format, not tabloid like Harpoon. We all know what happened to the guy who started that.

It was a fun time to be in San Francisco. I felt part of something vibrant and exciting, sitting on the floor in a shitty office downtown, drinking warm free beer. I wonder what happened to all those people. I know the copy editor, Emily, went on to become copy chief at Wired, but as for the others, lost to the ether.

Red Wrestlers

Here is a painting I finished tonight. I'm liking the red background.

In other news, I am off to Ireland for two weeks soon, finally, after postponing the trip when I was sick earlier this year. I can't wait to have a pint with my dad and a cuppa with my mam.

Eric and I have started to talk about starting a screenprinting studio at some point in the near future, providing limited-edition prints for artists, holding workshops, and having art shows. We're a good team, so I think we could give it a good shot and be successful. It's exciting to think about!

We had a lovely local evening last night. Eric walked up from our house (he worked from home), and met me off the bus from work. We tried a new sushi place, Balboa Teriyaki which got terrific reviews on Yelp, and it was amazing: fresh, delicious, and fairly inexpensive (Kabuto is great but it's pricey). Then we had a drink in Hockey Haven, our local (and only) dive bar.

Then we saw Little Miss Sunshine at the Balboa Theater. Great movie. I have a little crush on Greg Kinnear. And Steve Carell.

Three Artists

Eric and I stopped for a happy hour drink on the way home the other evening at Olive in the Tenderloin. Great bar, tasty drinks! We parked a few blocks away and walked down Larkin towards the bar, finding ourselves in front of a gallery that I had read about but had no idea we were near, White Walls Gallery, displaying a show by Mike Giant and Mike Davis. We wandered around the big airy space, enjoying the serendipity of stumbling upon such a great show.

Mike Giant paints large-scale urban scenes. His draftsmanship is incredible. I love how the clean lines of buildings and wires give way to the loops and organic shapes of the tags he "defaces" his buildings with. He was a tattoo and graffiti artist in past decades, and the specific styles needed for those genres are very evident in his work; he paints stunning girls as well as buildings.

Mike Davis, also a former tattoo artist, had some haunting work in the show. It reminded me of Hieronymus Bosch (he says his influences include Van Eyck and Bruegel). Some I liked more than others, but they were all inventive and technically brilliant. The one below was my favorite, and it was a pleasure last night to come home and find the latest issue of Juxtapoz magazine with this very image on the cover and an interview with Davis inside.

Richard Colman was not in the show, but he is another artist profiled in the magazine this month. I love this stuff, it's odd and funny and slightly stiff. I wish I had his imagination. He makes me want to draw men with ringmaster mustaches and ladies with giant buns of hair.

Humpty

When I met Eric he had this cartoon on his fridge. It's still there, yellowing and fragile. I think it's one of the best cartoons ever. It makes me smile.

Five Things Making Me Happy

1. Merriam Webster's Word of the Day:

saccade \sak-KAHD\ noun
A small rapid jerky movement of the eye especially as it jumps from fixation on one point to another (as in reading)

2. Latte Art on Flickr

3. Camilla Engman's amazing illustrations

4. This line in a Truman Capote story called "Shut a Final Door":

She was only so-so looking (her eyes bulged, there was always a little lipstick on her teeth, she dressed like a child of ten), but she had a hectic brightness which Walter found attractive.

5. The awesome teeshirt I'm wearing today from Boy Girl Tees, a local designer

Big Basin

This weekend we are going camping with friends at Big Basin Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz with friends. I haven't been camping in about five years, and that was at a densely populated music festival so it was hardly communing with nature.

I am looking forward to sitting around the campfire, eating s'mores, drinking beverages of the adult variety, hiking, cooking (well, Eric will be doing most of that!) and reading the short stories of Truman Capote, which I stole from Eric before he finished reading it.

I hope I don't come face to face with a mountain lion. I would not enjoy that.

Birthday Party

Today I spent the day in the South Bay with my dear friend Deedee and her family. We walked around the beautiful Hakone Gardens, and learned that parts of Memoirs of a Geisha were shot there. We had ice cream and then went back to her house where we both disappeared down a time warp while Nick made dinner and the girls played.

Deedee is organizing her photos, and because we've known each other since I moved here in '89, and were roommates until she got married in '94, I am in a lot of the photos. Such hairstyles we went through - long, short, straight, curly, red - and the things we wore! Remember the blazer/t-shirt/wide belt/shorts/tights combo circa '92? Or the denim overalls with leotard underneath? Classy!

It was a total trip, better than going through my own photos, because I hadn't seen most of these before.

I came home and took a look through my albums, to see my take on that time, and I found my very favorite picture of Deedee. There were other shots from this night in her photos, and we figured out that it was her 25th birthday party. Someone had given her that plastic necklace, and she's laughing so hard that the smiley faces are taking flight.

These were our twenties. We were figuring out life, wondering about the future, which was wide open and alternately thrilling and terrifying. There were broken hearts, empty checking accounts, rock-solid friendships, dizzying romances, a lot of parties, tears, and kissing. And there were nights like this, when the joy we felt threatened to lift us off the ground.