New Chella Strong Acquistions

The Vicente St. Gallery just ended their 100th brunch at 5:30 pm. Now it is time for dinner. And to unveil yesterday’s acquisitions from the Chella Strong Moves Back East Yard Sale.

Chella is one of the few people in Oakland that I could call crying and then crawl into her bed, so I am really at a tremendous loss. But she has reassured me that if I am sad I can always call her cell crying and she might just ask, “Wait, who is this again?”

I arrived at her sale late, and with uncanny timing it seems. Sarah and I were only able to snatch up last minute art student scraps that we will proudly install in the Vicente St. Gallery. She claimed that she sold more polished works to early birds. She drives a hard bargain.

Come under water with me.

Here is the sea cucumber that now hangs in our dinning room. Chella wants you to know that it is part of a larger collection, it is not really a stand alone, and it is “student art.”

Come kick your feet up on the coffee table with me.

Chella minis that are about geometry and nature, if you ask me.

The Haus of Citrus

Sarah is not an English Pointer. Her cute red foot is expressing her journey to California - from Indiana to Minnesota to the Badlands to Reno and just past the oranges on the coffee table.

Sarah and I drove to California in a Nissan Cube. Now we’ve reminisced about our journey in the comfort of our living room in Oakland – which has been “ours” for a year and a half now.

Last night, Sarah hosted and performed The Haus of Citrus: A process-based performance of the state of California.

Sarah’s piece was just a sliver of The (International) Home Theater Festival. The project’s mission has the word fuck over and over in it, which makes it both serious and likable. Like, “Fuck talking about making art. Make art.” Dropped some fucking knowledge on the internet.

My dad taught me that you shouldn’t overuse the word fuck because then no one will take you to be for real-zy, but you want to use fuck in such a way that everyone in the room looks at you and wonders if you’re homicidal.

I don’t want this means about the Home Theater Festival.

Sarah talks about the Joan of Arc painting in the Met and about the neighbor's backyard citrus tree. Sarah decided to fuck talking about making art and just make art.

The audience was mostly just our regular friends, plus Philip Huang, who is the project’s maestro. He was wearing those avatar shoes and described Sarah’s piece as a meditation on making a home and being young. He was sweet and he totally snooped in bedrooms and the medicine cabinet.

Watch him talk about a vaginal cathedral at Lake Merritt.

Watch Sarah make orange juice at our table.

And part two. Note the dancing in the kitchen didn’t get filmed because my Flip Cam died. That’s the quaint value of Home Theater. The best friend fucks up the filming.

Look at May pretend to do feldenkrais to me after the home theater. The home theater is never backstage at the Vicente St. Gallery.

May workshops workshopping my body via feldenkrais on the living room floor, which has the map of California tattooed to it with painter's tape.

This Is The Forest Primeval

My blog isn’t going in the same order as my life. It will now backtrack. Am I historian?  A documentarian? A blogorian?

Once upon a time, during a long ago three day weekend, I ventured to the Forest Primeval. It was near Santa Cruz and it was raining. We squired away in a cabin in the redwoods and I pretended to read a book by the not-yet-burning fire. When the rain took a break, we went for a walk.

I've never seen Zoolander, but I've been told this is my Blue Steel look. Steal? Steel? Steel Blue? Steal the redwoods.

In the morning we woke up next to the fern gnomes and sprinkled fairy dust on our eggs and English muffin toast. Then we went to the ocean.

Or rather the ocean came to us. At the end of the jetty were adventure bros in pursuit of gnarley waves. The waves pulverized the rocks and we doubted their strength.

At the end of the jetty are golden adventure surfer bros, sandy waves, and people holding paper cups of coffee.

As the surfer bros wiggled into the water, our interest piqued. Undaunted by the warnings of high surf, I looked closer.

And then got sucker punched by a giant wave, my winter jacket sopping, my little brown boots drenched in salt water.

This picture does a poor job capturing how soaked Peter is. His backside is a significantly darker shade of gray. He had to change his underwear in the car behind the amusement park. That's wet. His coffee was wet before the wave crashed, but it was lightly salted after.

Second Annual Easter Brunch

Yesterday we celebrated Easter. Everyone did a lousy job dyeing eggs, but we’re blaming the chickens. And no one really delivered a sermon. We’re blaming the creative muses and the mimosas. People did an excellent job chatting and wearing pastels.

I look on, bemused and pleased to be wearing my leisure suit during the fledgling stages of spring break 2012.

While the sermon contest was a flop, I did share my 12 Bad Haikus inspired by the stations of the cross. The other Caitlin was also subjected to multiple stations of the cross experiences as a young girl in Massachusetts, only she was an altar girl and had to lug that big cross around while everyone said the prayers.

After doing some not-so-careful internet research, I learned that Pope John Paul II added two more stations of the cross. So what now – do we have to add more stained glass windows and etch more wooden depictions of the Passion? Oy.

Here they are for you, dear internet people.

14 HAIKUS FOR THE PASSION OF CHRIST.

1. You help everyone.

No one helps you, def not Pilate.

You’re condemned to death.

 

2. Take it like a man.

Accept your cross and hug it –

on to Calvary.

 

3. The cross is really

fucking heavy. You fall down.

Soldiers yell: get up!

 

4. You feel so alone.

Then you see your mother’s face.

She suffers with you.

 

5. Soldiers grab a man

to help you. It is Simon of

Cyrene, Africa.

 

6. Veronica wipes

the blood and sweat from your face.

You leave your image.

 

7. Still really heavy,

damn cross. You fall down again.

That makes 2, lug on.

 

8. You pass some ladies

in Jerusalem. They look

sad. Grimace, give thumbs up.

 

9. You fall down – that’s 3.

You struggle, get up, and keep

going.  Heavy crown.

 

10. Soldiers see your nice

cloak. Throw dice for it. Tear wounds.

Do a miracle!

 

11. Stretch you on the cross.

Drive big nails in your hands, feet.

This is the passion.

 

12. Hanging on the cross,

you forgive everyone and

you die, wait – surprise!

 

13. Now, lamentation.

Brutal death, but you come back

to your mother’s lap.

 

14. Sweet – Joseph donates

his tomb. Big rock locks you in.

Soon: Resurrection!

 

Bad Haiku Games

I did nothing photogenic this week, though I did see the Hunger Games and I did eat poached eggs. And I did write a lesson for my butterfly unit and I did read The Very Hungry Caterpillar before bed.

And, of course, I wrote some nasty bad haikus.

***

Bad Haiku #42

You can be filled with
dispair, but it is still no
excuse for no cake.

***

Bad Haiku #43

And beware of the
Ides of March – for students may
request green jello.

***

Bad Haiku #44

A week of indoor
recess makes me want to roll
on the floor and scream.

***

Bad Haiku #45

I don’t like orchids
because they are big show offs.
But an exception.

***

Bad Haiku #46

Sometimes I am too
absent minded to keep track
of post-it haikus.

***

Bad Haiku #47

Skittles and iced tea
easily mistaken for
weapons – alarming.

***

Bad Haiku #48

Between Hunger Games
and Girl with The Dragon Tat,
j’adore badass chicks.

***

Bad Haiku #49

The caterpillar
ate through one nice green leaf on
Sunday, with coffee.

***

Guest Haiku by Layton

today i woke up
new slogan in my head, it
says, “no rain no gain.”

***

Guest Haiku by Grend

Do not forget the
Chosen one. The first queen of
Asskicking – Buffy.

A Mechanique Dream

Yesterday I went to the Musee Mechanique on Pier 45 in San Francisco. It was my friend Shosh’s birthday and she wanted to be a tourist for the day. It is hard to be a tourist by the ferry bulding on St. Patrick’s Day in SF, but our group persevered. What follows is photo footage detailing our experience at the antique arcade, where all the games are actually a quarter and actually pretty problematic, which was a hipster’s dream come true.

Our group of birthday revelers arrives at the Musee Mechanique, I sponsor a pack of candy cigarettes so we can smoke inside while we play vintage pinball.

So vintage arcade games are usually really racist, like the game called “Opium Den” that features vague interpretations of Chinese people in an opium den hanging out with dragnons, skeletons, and people with spinning heads. Other games make you arm wrestle really strong statues.

Sarah takes on a champion arm wrestler statue. She only pressed the button for the "fly" level, which is the weakling level, but she was still defeated.

I had the photo opportunity of any hipster’s dreams, wielding my bouquet of flowers for the birthday girl, a sense of irony, and a comfort with the reality of death.

Getting executed? Want flowers? Comfort? A final kiss? Red lipstick on your collar?

Real pinball is a lot harder than virtual pinball.

The shock, the horror, the dollar down Indiana Jones's pinball drain.

As a young girl I was addicted to Skee-Ball. So addicted that my grandfather spent 300 dollars one summer in Maine so I could win enough tickets for a giant pair of sunglasses three times the size of my face. Drunk on passion, I found myself re-infactated with Skee-Ball at the Musee Mechanique. I only spent 8 bucks though.

My face is thinner, my aim less accurate, my passion equal to that of my 8-year old arcading self. Something about the sea just makes me wanna huck balls into holes for tickets and cheap prizes.

Friends became rivals in the ring.

Shosh and Sarah face off with mechanical tin boxers. Sarah took all, Shosh was dismayed, the machine rendered useful for matches of dominance, restraint, femininity. Sarah hit her with a left hook and all was lost.

Oceans mean bulk candy.

I am distressed by the overwhelming choices at the arcade candy store. And the problematic statue adorned with lollipops. And the fact that salt water taffy always disappoints me and would make better jewelry than candy/filling remover.

After watching the panorama of buffalos mourning the loss of a Native American by dragging one foot in the dust at the Inquest, we pose and say goodbye.

Thanks be to Mount Holyoke's founder Mary Lyon for uniting our souls in San Francisco. No thanks to the alumnae club.

Golden Snails Dragging Haikus Along

Yesterday I took a personal day to increase my commitment to a work/life balance. And it seems that blogging is neither work nor life, just simply internet.

So I deliver this majestic iPhone captured image from my visit to the SF MOMA on a Monday. Imagine my delight as I lazily watched traffic captured in those LSD lighty balls hanging by the entrance, imagining my students biting the substitute teacher, punching each other in the back, and hitting themselves in the head in my absence. But good news – no sub showed up at all and no skin off my back, or anyone else’s, or however that platitude goes.

Meet my new favorite art. I don't know who made it. I don't know what it is called. I do know that it is golden candy wrapper tails, a broken disco ball, a golden bike seat, and an electrical plug. Or, a post modern snail. I want it to slowly, slowly, slowly sloth into my living room. I like it 1. because it is gold and 2. because it is a trash heap charade-ing as important non-trash. Thanks to Peter for snipe-ing this photo rendering for me, despite the watchful eyes of non-professional police wards.

Time to cue up my bad haikus.

***

Bad Haiku #34

Hey, you wearing shoes?
You wanna race? I wanna
tickle you, cootchee.

***

Bad haiku #35

I need a new brush
for my teeth and some new socks
that don’t have toe holes.

***

Bad haiku #36

Ask a six year-old
who made him king? And he’ll say,
God. So, why bother?

***

Bad Haiku #37

Why do you always
ask me to tie your shoes? ‘Cuz
you smile at me.

***

Bad Haiku #38

Tom’s shoes at weddings,
and Ugandan viral vids.
Capitalismo!

***

Bad Haiku # 39

The deep genesis
of collective amnesia
is under my bed.

***

Bad Haiku #40

A personal day
means big hoop earrings will not
get ripped from my ears.

***

Bad Haiku #41

I am the woman
in the color blocked outfit.
You are in dark jeans.