So I’m sick. Nothing awful; not The Swine, certainly. Just a very bad cold. Light fever. The sort of thing which makes you miserable, but which you can’t in good conscience complain too loudly about. I’m at my parents’ house, though, so good conscience be damned, I want my mom to make me soup and my dad to buy me Cinema du Look dvds (more about that later.) I’m complaining as loudly as I possibly can.
What else am I doing with my time? Drinking tea, mostly, and looking at magazines. Here’s my work area. To make it more aesthetically pleasing for the photograph, I cleared away the kleenexes:
Looking at magazines and lusting over objects I can’t afford, I should add. And no, not the Melissa shoes by Vivienne Westwood; I accepted a while ago that they are not in my future. Rather, I’m stuck on the new ROXY headphones. I read a thing about them a little while ago in Nylon, I think, and they were featured again in Nylon’s most recent issue:
That’s me, pointing at them to help you out.
I’d liked those headphones since I saw the first ads, but I think my passion was exacerbated somewhat when my dad brought home a dvd of Diva for me, that most excellent film about a French kid who illegally records his favorite opera star:
There’s some police cover-ups and car chases in there, too, and a millionaire who lives in a lighthouse. It’s pretty much my favorite kind of film. Anyway, this kid pours his small resources into his music equipment: his tape players, his headphones, his recording devices. Seeing his passion for music is what really made me want those ROXY phones. Well, that and thinking of the pleasing symmetry of listening to Roxy Music on ROXY headphones.
So, that’s how I’ve been coping with my illness, mostly. Looking through fashion magazines, watching movies. Oh, and enjoying the lush booklets which fall out of my newspaper, encouraging me to consider this or that film in all categories when I do my Oscar voting:
Sure thing, Disney – Pixar. I’ll consider your film when I go in to cast my Oscar ballot. When you guys are sitting nervously in the lobby pulling napkins apart, I’ll trot in and give you a thumbs-up, just to raise your spirits. You won’t be able to miss me: I’ll be wearing my Westwood Mary Janes, rocking out to some tunes on my brand-new headphones.
Ladies! Gentlemen! Cats! Suit jackets! Are you as tired as I am of the same old ‘Eye of the Tiger’ nonsense every time you hop on a treadmill? Could you brain the next person who offers you Pink as a soundtrack to your punch-bagging, sweat-spraying, obstacle-beating workout montage? WELL! Line up my Alternative Workout Playlist, and all your woes’ll be through!
- Rockit by Herbie Hancock
- Two Doors Down by Mystery Jets
- The Sailor In Love With the Sea by The 6ths
- Trains to Brazil by Guillemots
- Turn Tail by The Young Knives
- Goodnight and Go by Imogen Heap
- Iggy by Acoustic Ladyland
- Jungle Drum by Emiliana Torrini
- Save it For Later by The (English) Beat
This is a somewhat edited version of the playlist I listen to while working out. And when I say “edited”, I mean I took out all the Adam Ant. Looking back, I might’ve left on “Place in the Country”, but I think I judged correctly when I removed “Whip In My Valise”.
ETA: For the cooldown, try Your Hand in Mine by Explosions In The Sky.
Theater is an addiction, and don’t let anybody tell you differently. It’s an actual, chemical addiction, and if the public had a better understanding of this, then maybe I could have avoided undergoing some things which I’ve recently undergone.
You see, I’ve loved theater since I was a kid. Everything about it – I love attending plays, I love acting in plays, I love hanging around places where plays are put on, I love reading scripts, I love working backstage, I love auditioning, for crying out loud. For a long time I thought I wanted to be an actor as well as a writer. But around my junior year of high school, I thought “No, this isn’t the right path for me,” and I just sort of put theater to the side. I figured that was that. I moved on with my life.
Then, this year in college, I signed up for a course which I thought was an English class focussed on Shakespeare, but which turned out to be a Shakespeare performance class. And there I went; completely sober for about three years now, then a monologue or two just throws me right off the wagon again. I advise everybody to just avoid theater altogether, because once you start, I swear to Siddons, you will never completely stop.
So, I won’t try to describe my thought process, but while I was writing this, I started imagining what it would be like if I were a film actress in the 50’s. I figure I’d get cast as those vaguely ethic types who wear gold hoop earrings and make speeches about The Working Man and frequently get beat on by The Working Man, because, I don’t know, it’s the 50’s. I went so far as to do some drawings of my most famous hypothetical performance, of a chick named Maria or Ruth or Kathleen, girlfriend of a dissatisfied laborer or something. Here I am defending my boyfriend, while cleaning what was meant to be a mug but which looks instead like a gigantic pitcher:
Then Brucie gets shot in a labor dispute, and I scream at his killers about the nature of humanity:
So then Maria or Ruth or Kathleen gets shot! Good, huh? I think I’m going to call this film Children At Play. My performance will be called “passionate” and “dynamic” by 50’s critics, and “vivid” and “necessary” by modern critics. But no one will actually like the movie, because no one actually likes American movies from the 50‘s about labor disputes and badly-lit kitchens, people only pretend to.
I’m twenty! I had a minor freak-out on my birthday, then a gentleman in my poetry workshop said “You’re just having a quarter-life crisis,” and he gave me chocolate, and everything was uphill from there, really.
Here I am in a birthday gift shirt, looking glam:
And – wait for it – in BIRTHDAY GIFT COWBOY BOOTS!
Now when I tell people (as some ladies can testify I have begun doing lately) that I want to beat myself to death with my own cowboy boots, I’ll have the correct props with which to pantomine!
So, what am I doing now that I’m twenty? Well, the same things I’ve always been doing, really. Today I went to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena to see Ingres’ Comtesse d’Haussonville and to hear a lecture by costume scholar Aileen Ribeiro about Ingres’ relationship to fashion. The lecture was incredible, and deserves its own post, which I’ll perhaps write tomorrow. Today, content yourselves with some sketches I did at the museum.
They’re not perfect, but as my artist pa is always telling me, museum sketches aren’t for perfection, they’re just reminders – somewhat better than photos, somewhat worse than owning the piece of art yourself. They’re so you’ll come on your little sketchbook in a couple of years and say “Oh, yeah. I remember that day. I remember that painting. Cool.”
TWENTY YEARS OLD IN COWBOY BOOTS LOOKING AT ART! IT COULD BE WORSE, BABY!
If you’re anything like me, you’ve wondered what would happen if you viewed the music video of the Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot duet “Comic Strip” twelve times in a row. Well, what happens to me is I begin to draw things like this:
Back when I lived in Chicago, I frequented the Milwaukee Art Musuem, the Midwest’s secret best art museum. One of my favorite pieces at MAM was Pies by Wayne Thiebaud, pictured above. As it turns out, Thiebaud is strongly associated with California; I didn’t know that back then, one year ago, when I was still living in Illinois.
It was a real surprise to me when I found that the Pasadena Museum of California Art – situated right near by my parents’ new home in Los Angeles – is doing a big Thiebaud show this month, organized by the man himself. It feels like I am being followed by my favorite art, but I guess that is a little bit like saying I feel like I am being followed by the moon.
So I went to see the show today, and it was great, of course. Thiebaud’s paintings are poppy and colorful – his shadows are blue, his whites are Renoir rainbows – and real thick with impasto. Lots of different subjects: some lovely huge fanciful San Francisco cityscapes, a couple of bathing-suited figures, and of course his famous desserts. I bought a post card, but if you can’t see the texture in person, you’re really missing two-thirds of the fun.
There was another show going on right next to Thiebaud’s, of work by Frances Gearhart, who was evidently one of America’s premier color printmakers. On seeing Gearhart’s prints of pretty children at play, I was tempted to holler not as good as Kate! but when I calmed down I learnt that Gearhart is famous for her beautiful California landscapes:
After my visit to PMCA, I zipped over to Vroman’s, a cool independent bookstore in Pasadena, and bought Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, a novel about an Indian-English teenager in London’s south suburbs in the late seventies.
The first chapter read well, but I suspect that the book’ll devolve pretty quickly into lots of English orgies, and as much as I like the English, I think history has proven satisfactorily that they cannot get orgies right.
So! Quite a day. Quite a year. Moved to Los Angeles in September of 2008. Might be someplace else next year. Will more of my favorite art follow me? Will the moon? Yes, I think maybe. I hope so, at any rate. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
To read another post about the Thiebaud exhibit (this one written not by me, but by a gentleman a portion of whose genes are shaped an awful lot like mine) go here.
November is a special month to me; I was born in November, for one, and so was my father (but a couple years before me). And in Chicago, November is a neat seasonal cut-off: the first half of November is autumn, and then the second half, it snows. Everyone in Illinois knows that winter begins in November.
Here in Southern California, autumn blends pretty unrecognizably into winter until January, but I still consider November an important landmark. November is my time for making plans for the new year.
SO – DOROTHY GUEST, WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS NOVEMBER?
A series of oil paintings meant to look like old Roman portraits! The first (unfinished) one, pictured above, is of nobody in particular; I was worried about finding sitters, and figured I’d just make everybody up. Then a gentleman from one of my workshops volunteered to sit for me, and since then I’ve found that people are flattered, not frightened, when you ask if you can paint them.
I’m working on a new novel! I have high hopes for this one.
I’m researching schools for next year! I’m thinking of transferring, and hoping to go to – but no, no, I’ll jinx it if I say more. I’ll have to keep you in suspense for now, okay?
I’m listening obsessively to Bowiesongsonloop. I blame my father, who won’t stop singing that one damn Cat People song.
That is what I am doing this November; that is what I will be doing for many months to come. Wish me luck. Or if you don’t want to do that, just go and read the most recent installment of Going to College With Dorothy Guest.
As you all ought to know by now, I am a born-and-raised Chicagoan, living in Los Angeles for college. I started this blog initially to talk about how funny my situation is; the Midwest and the West really are like two different countries, and I’ve undergone some major culture-clashing in my time here so far.
Of course, this blog quickly became a place for my cartoons and photos of my dorm room, but let’s get back on topic, shall we? Let me tell you about
Things Californians Make Fun of Me For:
- My adding “Man” to the ends of all my sentences: “Hey, man!” “C’mon, man,” “Are you kidding me, man?”
- My being righteously indignant that you cannot buy good pizza, bagels, or hot dogs anywhere in Southern California.
- My accent. Mostly I talk in a soft, vaguely Midwestern, vaguely Eastern accent, but now and then I slip and go Chicago. “Yeh gahtta be kyeddin’ mee, mayn!” imitate my amused friends.
Things I Make Fun of Califorians For:
- Their turning all sentences into questions.
- Their putting on winter coats, scarves, and boots when temperatures hit the mid-60’s.
- Their accents. “Ya gohtta beh kodding meh, I mehn, dee yuh knuh?”
Mid-60’s. The mid-60’s! For me, this is like the balmy pink-blossomed springtime. I mehn, yuh knuh?
Issue no. 3 of Going to College With Dorothy Guest! Today we examine decisions I have not yet made, but which, based on the decisions I have made lately, I am likely to make in the near future (click on the thumbnails):
After you sign his contract, Satan sloughs off his handsome hipster guise, and reveals himself as he truly is: a drugged-out jackass wearing brothel creepers. Here he is in his proper form, hanging with Michael the Archangel:
Michael: C’mon, Luce, the club’s closing.
Satan: In a minute, Mike. I’m, uh, I’m, too much – cups? You know?
