Good times

On his visit this time, Ben brought Max the Zuni Cafe cookbook as a gift. In return, Max made some scrumptous items for dinner last night. Appetizers inlcuded Parmigiano-Reggiano Crisps with Goat Cheese Mousse, Raw Portobello mushrooms with lemon aioli and parmesan cheese and for the main course, gnocchi with a goat cheese and parsley sauce. A cheese lovers dream dinner.

Ben and I spent the weekend working on our piece for the Piñata Party Show by It Can Change at Gavin Brown in New York. More on our piñata later this week, including pictures of the artists hard at work. In the meantime, a sneak photo of the masterpiece in process.

Man's best friend

The weather in the city this week has been unusually hot. According to Max, it was 90 degrees in Berkeley yesterday. Hot weather in the summer is expected, if you live anywhere other than San Francisco. Up until this point, I have spent most of the summer months in a turtleneck it's been so cold. But thankfully this hot weather is dry, not humid, and so it's been bearable. The only real downside is that homes and stores are not air conditioned, for the most part, and so our place is like an oven when we come home at night.

In our bedroom there are two windows. One that slides across to open, and one that opens out onto the emergency stairwell landing. The second one has never been opened because when they repainted the back of the building, the painted it shut.

One of my best friends, Ben, is visiting from New York right now. Last night he climbed out the working window and jumped across to the stairwell. Something that neither Max nor I would ever do. In fact, when Max discovered where Ben was, and realized how he'd got there. I thought I was going to have to give him a bag to prevent hypoventilation.

Ben stood outside the non working window with a knife for quite some time, cutting through the layers of paint, and then Max finally kicked it open. Ah! Sweet fresh air, blowing into the bedroom. Within half an hour, the room was literally 5-10 degrees cooler. We heart Ben.

Deborah and I went for the lunch this week, and passed by this dogwalker. He kindly offered to pose for a photo, and even made them all sit together, on command. (minus the stubborn bulldog - go figure!) Unfortunately, the one I found the cutest is completely hidden by the black dog closest to the front. A super cute white French Bulldog. Although the rest aren't too shabby either.

Easy Street

We are back from Hawaii, and had the most amazing time. There is lots more to follow on this, but we are waiting for photos to come back...

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Today Ruth and I went down to the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery to drop off our work for the Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships Exhibition. It was the kind of experience I have always dreamed of: make work, get work in a show, drop off work and someone else will take over from there. Someone else is actually going to do all the hanging, lighting, publicity and reception. It was like a dream. We walked out of the gallery and got in the car. Ruth turned to me and said, 'Well, that was easy..." and we both started laughing.

The gallery Director asked us to make sure we are there by 6pm next week for the opening, as there will be an award ceremony with certificates handed out. Most details for the show are on my main site, so hopefully I'll see some of you there. As an incentive, please note that my work is new!

Opening Reception and Awards Ceremony for the Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts: Wednesday, September 1st, 2004. Curated by Courtney Fink, Rene de Guzman, Steve Seid.

The Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts are annual awards sponsored by The San Francisco Foundation to assist students in funding their final year of graduate studies. Bay Area colleges and universities represented by the twenty-nine 2004 award recipients are the California College of Arts, Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Jurors for the 2004 awards were Courtney Fink, Executive Director of Southern Exposure Gallery; Rene de Guzman, Visual Arts Director; Yerba Buena Center fort the Arts; and Steve Seid, Video Curator, Pacific Film Archive. Media represented in the show includes film and video, painting, photography, sculpture and installation.

La Isla Bonita

We are off to a tropical vacation for a week. I can't wait! New posts and a possible new blog design when we reurn.

Sweet piece of pie

Look at this gorgeous piece of apple pie my friend Melissa gave to me. I think we can establish that the way to my heart is definitely through my stomach.

You must see this movie!

After reading Dooce for close to a year, I was sure that she was the coolest thing to come out of Utah.

WRONG!

Enter Jared Hess and Jon Heder. Most recently noticed as the Director and Leading Actor in Napoleon Dynamite. Without a doubt one of the funniest and quirkiest movies I've seen in years. Awesome drawings, a llama, funky dance moves and possibly the best way to roll credits at the beginning of a film, that I have ever seen. I will definitely be buying this film when it comes out on DVD and I can't wait to see what Hess does with his next project.

If you see this movie for no other reason, then do so for the phenomenal dance performance at the end of the film.

Heder: I didn't train [for that dance], practice or do anything. I just got up and danced. My experience with dancing is a few really small talent shows that my friends put on.

We shot the movie in 22 days and the dance was one of the last days. I thought maybe I should choreograph something but I don’t know how to do that. My dance experience is after a shower I put on Jamiroquai and dance. I’m a huge fan of music like disco and funk, anything you can dance to. When it came down to it I just went up there and felt the music. It was one of the hardest things to shoot because when the cameras started rolling I got nervous. More...

Phuckers!

My darling Max worked his ass off this week, staying up most nights until 2am and getting up at 7am, in order to get all his work done so that he could fly to the east coast for the last Phish concert. He gave his class their final on Thursday evening, and directly after the exam, got on the subway and headed for the airport. He took an overnight flight to Boston, arriving Friday morning to meet up with our friend Art. Max and Art then drove from Boston, heading for Coventry Vermont.

It is early Saturday morning, and I just got a very sad call from Max. They drove all day, and hit the expected traffic (25 miles worth) fairly close to the venue last night. They then edged their way towards the entrance over a 16 hour period... (insane) At which point everyone was told that unless you were already on the grounds, you were please to turn around and go home. Apparently the rainy weather has turned the venue into a mudslide, and they are not letting anyone else go in. Apparently only about 5 thousand of the 70,000 made it in on Thursday before the rain. That's a lot of unhappy people.

Poor Max and Art!

Stymied By Mud, Police Turn Back Phish Fans

Tell the Terminator

If you live in California, please check this out. And please tell all your Californian friends about it too.

Take a moment to email Governor Schwarzenegger and tell him this is the moment for courageous, visionary action. Tell him that only he can make the sun rise from the west.

Subtle joyous moments

I sometimes forget to look out for the subtle things beyond my little universe. Artist Matthew Ritchie said that people consider themselves as the center of their own universe, and don't often think about the whole universe, or the 'real' universe. I sometimes catch myself being this way. Forgetting about what else is out there, and only focusing on my concerns.

Two moments that happened in the last 24 hours brought me back to a place that reminded me people do care.

The first was an email yesterday from my friend Sean.

i thought that you might appreciate this photograph. i did. it is of a woman in minnesota adjusting her home made ufo detection device....i wonder what the
keyboard is for?

It's so cool when someone remembers what you care about, and thinks of you in that way. The email made me really happy. Sean is an amazing photographer, and a really nice person to boot! An art star in the making...

The second thing that occurred was so quick, that afterwards I wondered if it really happened. I was on my way to school this morning, and as I came out of the subway on the escalator I saw the bus getting ready to leave. My bus. The bus I needed to catch or I'd be late for work. So I ran as fast as I could (which isn't very fast because penguins aren't meant to run or rush for anything!) I made it just in time, and squeezed in on the front of the bus. No seats to be found, I grabbed hold of a pole just in time for the bus to jerk away. I have a big lunch box that I bring my food in, and this was making it difficult to hold onto the pole. I had my headphones on, so I didn't hear the man sitting right in front of me. He touched my arm, pointed at my lunchbox, and basically inferred that he would hold it for me. I was so touched by this! He held it on his lap until I was ready to get off the bus.

Things like these just make all the difference in the world.

Let's name our first son Keller

This weekend was a cooking extravaganza for Max. He was inspired to make not one, not two but three incredible meals. And the digital camera was left at work over the weekend, so no photos were taken! Almost criminal if you ask me.

My brother bought Max the French Laundry Cookbook for his birthday. Chef, Thomas Keller, is a real genius. Max explains that the ingredients aren't extravagant, or that out of ordinary. In fact most of the groceries are ones we buy already. Instead, it's the way in which he infuses the flavor, and puts things together that make it amazing.

Friday night, my brother and I were spoiled by the Sweet Potato Agnolotti with Sage Cream and Brown Butter. I had to hold myself back from licking the plate. Heavenly. Yesterday Max made an eggplant lasagna without noodles, and a variety of calzones. Both the dough and tomato sauce made from scratch! Again, heavenly.

I am not a cook. I am an infant in the kitchen. But I love to watch. And I clean a mean dish. Max likes to make food, and have me there to chat while he does it. We spent hours in the kitchen while he made all these things, and then enjoyed a delicious dinner of left over sauce and noodles from the Agnolotti dough scraps.

We are planning to save up for a few years, in order to have dinner at the French Laundry Restaurant. This will help us to determine just how close Max's meals are to the original. Consider it research.

Take me back

When Max first bought a Coldplay album, I couldn't stand the hit song "Yellow". It just drove me nuts. I thought... 'here we go again. another one hit wonder'. But then at some point I heard another song of theirs, and that was it. I just fell in love with the band, the music, the lyrics and particularly Chris Martin's voice. His voice sometimes makes me cry. He is also very easy on the eyes. [In fact he reminds of a certain someone I know!]

I realize all of this sounds cheesy, but it's true. I normally tend towards music that is folky and tells a real story. While the likes of Britney, Jay-Z and Madonna may be fun, I am much more interested in work that has meaning: Bob Dylan, Shawn Colvin, Chris Whitley, Jeff Buckley, Stevie Wonder. I tend to rank my favorites according to whether or not I would want them available if I were stranded on a desert island and I only had 10 albums to choose from.

I recently heard a live show of Coldplay, where they covered A-Ha's High and Low. It was incredible how quickly it took me back to my childhood. I can remember hearing that song, reading the lyrics, including it in my scrapbooks, and taping it from the radio to my cassette recorder. Hearing the song was this weird meshing of present and past. It is, in essence, nostalgia. And I love it. And I love Coldplay even more for it.

To hear it, click here. It takes a few seconds.

Things that make you go blech!

The only thing more dangerous than unbridled passion is the truth. But the truth can get you killed.
- Sandra Brown

Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that.
- Britney Spears

I am a lot different from what people read about me. Writers write mean things about me and this is just not how I am. How I deal with it now, I don't pay attention to it. I just get so upset, so I stopped reading. But I am very different from what people read.
- Paris Hilton

Tell me about your relationship with Nicole Kidman? Would you ever get back together with Nicole Kidman? But what about you and Nicole Kidman? Never in a minute have you thought of getting back with Kidman? (Cruise: "What do you say? No. I mean, you know".)
- Diane Sawyer

In the contest, 'Legs of a Goddess', Hillary Duff will single out women with "shapely and toned legs, and a confident and enthusiastic attitude". The winner will win a "Goddess Giveaway" worth 30,000 dollars.
-Hillary Duff

The gift that shows they don't know you

Last night I had dinner with my brother at his best friend's house. Jeff is a newlywed, and he and Denise just moved into a house. After dinner, Denise mentioned the pending visit of his parents. She discussed the gift they had sent a few years before, that was awful, and had remained in it's box. This gift was more awful and thoughtless than we ever could have imagined. A large ceramic cookie jar of a teddy bear, with a retractable head. We talked about gifts we have gotten from people, which we have hated. Gifts which immediately reflected how little they know us. Gifts that clash with our home and our personalities. Gifts that hurt and make us want to cry. Even the dog disliked the cookie jar, and tried to eat the head.

(All pics were taken with my brother's spiffy camera-phone)

The noise that makes me cringe

The neighbors upstairs are fighting. Or, the guy upstairs is yelling at her. It's been going on since I got home, and they have been moving from room to room. He is yelling loud enough that I can make out some of what he's saying, so it's pretty bad. They once had a fight at 2am, and it woke me. It was horrible. I hate that kind of noise and vibe.

Max and I just never fight like that. If I imagine what the neighbors around us must hear, it's a lot of laughing, singing out loud and movies being played with the volume too high. BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY I LIKE TO WATCH THEM. The sounds that emanate from our home are mostly joyous and funny. And it just makes me cringe when I hear him stomping around and berating her.

I have known people who like drama. Who enjoy the occasional fight. Who enjoy the passion during and after the argument. But we just aren't those people. I think we feel like there is enough obstructing us outside the house, that it isn't necessary to bring indoors. I tell Max I love him every morning when I wake up, and before we go sleep at night. Perhaps this is just enough...

When we use the car

It's Sunday. Which means we actually get in the car, and use it. That annual $28 permit fee is finally being put to use. We eat breakfast somewhere, even though it's usually time for lunch because we've slept in and chatted the morning away... And then we go grocery shopping. You love it when we walk through the aisles together, picking delicious things to eat. Normally I choose things that require no preparation, like dried mango and heirloom tomatoes. And you choose yummy spices, breads and teas. Today was a real find: peanut butter toffuti cuties and a new cheese. Daisies for the entrance and some good wine. Last night we stayed in. You made a delicious tuscan white bean tomato soup, while I painted with my favorite brown ink, at the table in the kitchen. And now we are home, I've unpacked the groceries and you threw the trash and recycling away. We are about to start doing our respective projects. You have found a new spot to work in the apartment, and you love it.

When I was younger, I got the worst depression on Sunday nights. I called them my Sunday Blues. No explanation, and not necessarily for any reason. Over the years with you, this has happened less and less. I really love Sundays with you...