The Ole' Switcheroo

Due to no time lately, and lack of popularity, I'm switching my blog to tumblr. I won't have to type as much so everything is simpler, and there's only a few people looking at this anyway (thank you dad :p).

But, as a parting gift, I'll leave with a few photos.
Brunch:

Dinner:




Ah, parting is such sweet sorrow.


See ya on Tumblr, I guess!

Best Coastyyy

The Best Coast show two nights ago was AWESOME. Rad, as I believe they're calling it these days. First off, the first two bands playing were also amazing, and I was dancing to them just as much as for Best Coast.

The Babies, who are sort of an old fashioned supergroup of indie awesome, played first. They offered a free album to anyone who could guess the original band they did a cover of, but I didn't know. It was rockin anyway. In fact, I'm listening to Breakin the Law as I type this.
And The Bitters also played. I hadn't heard them before I went to the show, but I was definitely not disappointed by their grinding superfast guitars and semiscreamy female vocal. That lead singer gal was so intense and pretty it was intimidating. Since I got to the Knitting Factory about an hour and a half earlier than I needed to, I got to see both of them (and Best Coast) from the front of the stage, which was lucky because I'm short and there were a lot of people.

Unfortunately the batteries on my camera ran out, so inbetween The Bitters and Best Coast, I had to sprint across the street to the bodega, where they didn't accept cards and the ATM was broken (of course...there are never any street ATMs in New York City that work). He told me to go across the street, so I ran to the other store with some big creepy sidewalk guy chanting at me, "ROCKY! ROCKY! ROCKY!" I got there and they had a $5 card minimum so I had to buy two Snapples. Grr. I ended up giving one to my new show friend, Sam, so it was all right.

I got back in time (phew!) and BC came on. WOO! I got some great videos, but for some dumb reason blogger isn't letting me upload them, so here's photos of them playing instead.

(That's Ali from the Vivian Girls playing drums in the back)
Afterwards I got Bethany to sign a polaroid I received for Valentine's day, and she seemed to think it was a funny idea. My favorite is the little hearts. Plus, I got a photo with Bobb Bruno, who is like the cutest kinda awkward headbanging-hair-having asian dude ever to rock a disneyland shirt. Look at him and his beer belly!

All in all, it was a great night. THANK YOU BEST COAST! (and the babies and the bitters)

This just keeps getting better and better!

Seriously guys. I feel like this weather is going to lead to something awful because there is no other reason it would be so incredibly perfect right now. On top of all this, I now have tons of awesome stuff thanks to my mom (mostly cleaning supplies, but also Diet Coke, apple juice, and basically dinner for the next few nights).

Not only this, but the Best Coast concert is tomorrow!! I can't wait it's gonna be awesome! I bought my ticket as soon as I heard of the show. Plus I listened to the other two bands that are playing and they sound great too.

Plus! I'm up to 4 little memory drawings a day, so I'm staying sane and finishing a project at the same time!

Pillow Fight Day!

Last night we went to a great French restaurant called Les Halles. It's hard to find a bad restaurant in New York City, but this one really was great. Some French places just serve Americanized French dishes, but they had classic dishes like Boudin, Cassoulet, and Saucisse Alsacienne, which is what I ordered.


And today was that day of the year where everyone gets together for a HUGE pillow fight in Union Square. And huge it was...

I did not fight with a pillow, but when I went in on the action I had to keep the ole elbows out. Someone actually apologized to me because they couldn't see that I didn't have a pillow. But I got whacked in the head more than once without apology.

My mom, Elsa, Elsa's mother, and I went to Pinkberry afterwards, a much needed treat after all that pillow-ing.

(I got chocolate with Cinnamon streusel, cheesecake, chocolate, and mixed nuts)

We're going out tonight again because it's Elsa's birthday, and her last day in town. There'll be an update tomorrow.

AMAZING WEATHER

The last few days in New York had been rainy, cold, and just down-right miserable. But sort of yesterday, and definitely today the weather is beautiful! Hopefully it will stay this way the whole weekend like it's supposed to.

Elsa and her mother are in town, and so is my mom, so we're wining and dining all over the place. Today we had lunch at Soho Park on Prince and Crosby.

I had a helluva burger and fries, and we all shared some of their red-onion onion rings.


We also went to the American Indian Museum, which was pretty neat. After seeing all that handicraft I really want to make some of my own. I usually hate going in that area of town though, because everyone is either a business person (though they don't bother me too much) or a tourist. I hate everything about tourists, and I hate being a tourist, but the museum was pretty interesting, as I said, and the weather was just perfect, as I said.

But still, pictures like this:

taken with blinding flash, on the subway, in front of some building, next to a homeless person, in crocs/an I <3 NY tee/an NYPD baseball cap/those huge white shoes tourists ALWAYS wear, make me die a little inside.

MET day

I went to the MET today with my pal, Dan, to choose two pieces to compare for an art history paper. I think it was a little easier to find similar subjects this time because it's on European art.
I chose a piece by Jean Honore Fragonard (a pretty famous Rococo painter) called "A Shaded Avenue,"

and a piece by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (LOVE him!) from his series on the four seasons called "The Harvesters"

What I love about both of them is that they could include such detail at a small scale. The Fragonard is physically a smaller scale (about 6x10" maybe), and the Bruegel is fairly larger, but they still have a lot of information. To highlight this I circled a little house way in the background, some sailboats in the background, and a bird in a tree in the foreground.



You can look up at the original to try and find these little details, almost like an I Spy.

After the museum I got some food to go (Penne with mozzarella and roasted peppers, yum!).

Oh Happy Dayyyy!

Reasons I am having an amazing day:
1. The weather is SO INCREDIBLY nice today. It makes the street smell like hamburgers and hot pavement rather than frozengarbagesmoke.
2. I had drawing today and handed in this:

I wasn't too proud of it coming in, but my professor really liked it. Here's my awesome drawing professor:

And this here is his website.
3. I also made a hilarious mini collage today (I'll put it in a later post today) and in drawing our next assignment is a schematic drawing
4. I found the most hilarious book at Strand which has been added to my slowly growing collection. It's called "Margaret's Cooky Book" and it's full of cookie recipes. This is Margaret:

5. I didn't have 2-D today(that's not the good part), but I ran into my 2-D professor, Paul, on the street. It was completely random since we were no where near the school! This may seem like nothing big to anyone reading this that lives on an actual college campus, but because my campus is basically all of Lower Manhattan (well, at least let's say from around Chelsea to Alphabet City since those are approximate limits of the different dorms)so it was a little weird and funny. He's also awesome, and his blog is right here.
6. The song "Happy" came up on Pandora (also completely random). This second in time describes my day.

Hope everyone's day is just as great as mine is!

BLANKET FORRRRRT!!

So that same night Molly and I pretended it was her birthday, we were so stuffed we had to take the subway home those four or five blocks, and we got all sleepy and took naps. This was also because we went to a BLANKET FORT PARTYYYY in Brooklyn.

First, I must say, getting there kind of sucked. We had to take the L to 8th ave, then wait forever for an A train. Then the ride on the A train took about an hour. We folded paper and spaced out mostly. Also the place was kind of sketchy when we got there. Just a little. A guy who actually lives in the apartment where it was held said there's a toy factory downstairs. But more on him later. Now pictures.



We didn't really talk to anyone that interesting and it was a little awkward until we spread out my furry blanket and found some face paint.


Then we used the facepaint in our journals to make little drawings. Molly did some awesome ones!



There were people who set up a twister mat right next to our blanket and random people just started joining in. I spun the spinner for a little while. After a while though, around maybe 3 am, we started to get hungry. And so with two girls from NYU we had just met, we made the tater tots of some guy who lived there.




At about 4 am we decided it was a good idea to go home. And so did a few other people I guess, who were a little partied-out.

The Drawing Center; Molly's "Birthday" at the Chat n Chew

For my drawing class (which I'm beginning to absolutely adore, thanks to my awesome professor) I had to go to the gallery "The Drawing Center" in SoHo to see the show on Iannis Xenakis. The man is crazy. Crazy awesome. His processes of composing were basically mathematical drawings, and his architecture then followed suit and imitate the shapes in his drawings. The show is going on until mid-April, and unfortunately I couldn't snag a photo, but I did sneakily take one from the outside of the other building across the street that had a smaller collection of drawings, which were also incredible.


After that excursion, I went with Molly to the Chat n Chew (my ole favorite) because she had never been. We previously had made a list of things we wanted to do, and visiting the Chat n Chew was one of them, so we went. Thinking we'd get free dessert out of it, I told our waitress it was Molly's birthday, though they didn't give us any free dessert, all they did was stick a candle in the one we ordered. But boy was it delicious!



Aaaaaaand...thanks to this little guy that I drew on my plate with ketchup:

I have an idea of what I want to do for my final project in drawing class! Yay!

Vena Cava talk; Shopdropping

A few days ago I saw the girls of Vena Cava talk at the Parsons building on 40th and 7th ave. One of the many perks of going to Parsons (I guess the New School in general) is that you get to attend talks and events like this with famous alumni. Plus they're so cool! The yesterday we had "Crashlab" instead of our usual lab classes. Much like lab, this day was mostly some spontaneous happening with little point, but it was pretty fun anyway. The whole idea of shopdropping is that you make art and put it into a store (grocery store, book store, not necessarily just clothing store) to make some kind of statement. I made some macaroni box sleeves with inspirational messages. These are a few: Then you slyly place them into the store somewhere where they will eventually be noticed. I went with Ian (who made a cereal box) to Whole Foods where we dropped our stuff off. Here's a video of Ian and I IN ACTION!