Smart Funny People

"We use 10 percent of our brains.

Imagine how much we could accomplish

if we used the other 60 percent."

-- Ellen DeGeneres

Barbie with a wiffle ball head 12-13-14

"The kind of humor I like is 

the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds 

and think for ten minutes."

-- William Davis

"We have enough youth. 

How about a fountain of smart?"

-- Unknown

Shrimp On The Barbie

"A phrase that NO Australian ever says. EVER."

or

"Normally the last words said by a dead-shit tourist

in Australia before someone hurts them."

-- Urban Dictionary

Shrimp and Barbies on the barbie 9-24-14

Lloyd:

"That's a lovely accent you have. New Jersey?"

Woman:

"Austria."

Lloyd: 

"Austria! Well, then! G'day mate! Let's put another shrimp on the barbie!"

Woman:

"Let's not."

-- Dumb & Dumber

I remember eating in an open-air seafood restaurant about 25 years ago that was somewhere by a river where they served giant barbecued shrimp in little galvanized buckets.

Everybody sat together, elbow-to-elbow at long picnic-style tables and ate with their fingers.

No tablecloths. No plates. No silverware. Bracingly cold beer in a bottle. Lots of paper napkins. Lots of licking.

I can't remember whether the restaurant was in Chicago or maybe Boston. But every now and then my memory of it triggers a serious craving for barbecued shrimp and cold beer.

So last night I made some for supper.

The beer was non-alcoholic, but it was definitely cold and definitely in a bottle.

The shrimp were medium-sized and served in a bowl, but they were definitely barbecued, definitely messy and definitely delicious.

It was a good way to end a g'day. Mate.

Exfoliation

"You've got to exfoliate, you know?"

-- ASAP Rocky

Exfoliated Barbie 8-26-14

"I think the biggest mistake people make is being heavy handed," says Henriksen.

"A little goes a long way -- let the exfoliating particles do their job."

-- Dana Oliver, 

"How to Exfoliate Your Face and Get Smooth Skin in 3 Minutes,"

Huffington Post

My "beauty routine" is pretty much a bar of Ivory soap.

But I do try to exfoliate a couple of times a week.

I don't waste my money on expensive, fancy-schmancy scrubs, gizmos and "systems" though.

My preferred exfoliant is a couple of headache powder packets. It's crushed aspirin with caffeine in it. But instead of ingesting it, I dampen it with a little bit of water and scrub my face with it to slough off the dead cells and stimulate blood flow to my skin.

The aspirin is anti-inflammatory and the caffeine kind of tightens everything up, for the moment anyway.

It's cheap. 

It's easy. 

It feels nice. 

It's good for my skin.

And it leaves my face as soft and smooth as a Barbie's bottom.

Meeting A Girlfriend For Drinks

"Girlfriends are therapists you can drink with."

-- Unknown

Drinks 7-18-14

"More important than the food pairing

is the person with whom you drink the wine."

-- Christian Moueix

Still Playing With Barbies, At MY Age

"You can't stop the future

You can't rewind the past

The only way to learn the secret

... is to press play."

-- Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

Self portrait 7-15-14

"She was not one for emptying her face of expression."

-- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?"

-- Satchel Paige

Yesterday I came face to face with my age.

Again.

It was my birthday.

Again.

So that happened.

Meatballs

"Meatballs are a fun form of meat."

-- Cesare Casella, 

"What Chefs Really Have to Say About Meatballs," Esquire

Barbie meatball sub 7-12-14

"IKEA is considering putting its horse meatballs back on the market in Swedish stores 

and is claiming there is no health risk associated with eating them."

-- Hunter Stuart, The Huffington Post

I make good meatballs.

They are perfectly nice top of spaghetti all covered with cheese.

But they're even better crammed into a meatball sub.

These ain't no girly freakin' finger sandwiches.

They're hot, tasty, juicy, hearty, saucy, cheesy, messy.

A meal with balls.

A Strong Guy To Do The Heavy Lifting

" ... but even strong women need an arm to lean on now and then."

-- J.D. Robb, Glory in Death

Leo and ballerina Barbie 6-13-14

"Strong people don't put others down. 

They lift them up."

-- Michael P. Watson

My son Leo goes lifting at the gym almost every day.

He goes there to lift heavy weights in order to get stronger for football so he can knock people down.

For the past several months, though, he's been doing a different kind of lifting.

He and his buddy, Mikey, signed up as danseurs for a mostly-girls dance academy that needed strong guy partners to lift the ladies in their season-ending show. 

Their show opened last night, and Leo made his dancing debut.

I was so proud of all the kids, and impressed as hell. But I was especially proud of and impressed by my big, strong, athletic boy who showed his brute strength in a softer, gentler, more elegant way as he gracefully lifted, held, supported and spun lithe, lovely dancers in leotards, satin toe shoes and tulle.

Most of the girls in the program have been dancing for years -- some of them their entire young lifetimes.

But Leo and Mikey were first-timers. Beginners. Rookies. You'd never know it. They danced with poise, maturity, sensitivity, confidence and seemingly effortless strength. The girls trusted the guys' strong arms and athleticism to hold them securely, and they did. The two of them even busted out some pretty fancy footwork of their own.

Leo's strength showed the most though, in the tremendous courage it took to open himself to the unfamiliar, to step out and try something completely brand new, and to stick with it through months of long rehearsals in order to get it right, and then to do what he'd learned -- wearing nothing but a tunic and tights -- in front of hundreds of people. 

That's a kind of strong you can't get in any gym or weight room. That's the kind of strong that burns like a hot little blue flame in a magical mysterious place somewhere deep down inside some people. 

It was a beautiful thing to see in my son, and in every young dancer who took the stage.

Practice for the fall football season will start up pretty soon, and Leo will again shift his focus to knocking down the opposition. And that's cool. I am equally proud of him whether he's sacking a quaterback or carefully helping his partner hold a perfect Penché.

Either way, there's something pretty damned special about watching your own kid do something big and brave and beautiful. 

It's ... oh, what's the word I'm looking for?

Wait, I've got it.

Uplifting.

A Good Buzz

"I think they should have a Barbie with a buzz cut."

-- Ellen DeGeneres

Barbie with a buzz cut 6-8-14

"I remember when your head caught flame

It kissed your scalp and caressed your brain

Well you laughed, baby it's okay

It's buzz cut season anyway."

-- Lorde, "Buzz Cut Season," Pure Heroine

I've been cutting my boys' hair at home ever since Sam was a tiny tot.

After bribing him with Dum-Dums and dragging him kicking and screaming to the barber shop and dropping $15 every few weeks, I started paying attention to what the barber was doing. It looked simple enough. So the next time baby Sam needed a haircut, I went out and bought myself a $25 electric clipper, propped him in his highchair and tried it myself.

Sure there were a few scalpings along the way and I've nipped ears more than once. Luckily, tiny tots don't really care about their hair (but they will squeal if you clip their ears), so I had lots of time to practice before he noticed. By the time Sam was old enough to give a damn about how he looked, I'd pretty much nailed the basics and added Leo and my husband to my client list as well.

Now, I cut everybody's hair except my own. I cut Leo's yesterday outside on the patio listening to the ball game and enjoying a cool late afternoon summer breeze.

I've offered to send them to the barber shop or salon, but they all say they prefer how I cut their hair. The like the convenience. They like the price tag. There's no appointment necessary. I only need about 60 seconds notice and I can have them in the chair and the cape, ready to go. 

All three of them have their own particular style, so I have expanded my repertoire. In the summers, Leo wisely comes to me for his football Mohawk while the rest of the guys on the team imprecisely buzz each other's heads.

My $25 clipper has paid for itself hundreds of times over. It's how I earn my keep around here.

I can't do much, but I can do that.

So if you're looking to get a good buzz, I'm definitely your girl.

Listening To My Gut

"You must trust the small voice inside you 

which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide."

-- Ingrid Bergman

Headless Barbie 5-29-14

"Don't try to comprehend with your mind. 

Your minds are very limited.

Use your intuition."

-- Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time

"Call it intuition, a hunch, or a gut feeling --

if we followed it, we just might be happier."

-- Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D.

I had to make a difficult decision recently.

For me, it was an extremely difficult decision because it involved letting go of something good, something I really wanted to do, a good thing that I truly love.

I knew my gut was telling me, plainly and simply, what I needed to do, but I wasn't ready to listen.

My heart was also giving me multiple mixed up feelings about my options, while my head was shouting out its own tangle of conflicting advice and rationale. People were getting in through my ears and their voices were trying to out-shout those already clamoring inside me and the whole "conversation" was making me sick, literally. 

The more I struggled to supervise the arguments and counter-arguments, to reconcile and sort out all the "what ifs" and "yeah, buts," the worse and worse I felt in my gut. 

My gut was in such turmoil, in fact, that I became seriously, physically ill. I didn't fully understand why at the time, because there were other factors at play as well, but this decision over what I should do about this thing --  it was wrecking me.

And even though my gut was telling me exactly what to do, with all the other bickering going on, I couldn't hear it. More accurately, I didn't want to. Because my gut was telling me one single thing and it was the one thing everybody else was arguing so vehemently against. 

The most difficult thing. 

Long story short, my gut finally got my attention loud and clear by going on an extremely unpleasant and prolonged strike. It refused to budge until I finally broke under the pain, pressure, stress and exhaustion of it all.

My gut won the argument.

Miraculously, everybody else shut right the fuck up.

Turns out my heart and my head didn't really care as much as they were pretending to. They just like the sound of their own voices.

When the difficult decision was done, over, I was so relieved, because the difficult thing turned out to be the exactly perfectly right thing. I haven't questioned its rightness for even a minute since.

I'm pretty sure my heart and my head knew they were wrong all along. In fact, I'm sure they knew they were wrong when they said yes to this "thing" months ago, this thing they ultimately had to give back because my gut said so. 

I'm also certain that my gut was already speaking months ago, but back then it was in a whisper and I wasn't willing to trust it until it shouted louder than all the rest and knocked me over like a wrecking ball.

My head tries to convince me with its intelligent, articulate, thought-out arguments.

My heart tries to break me with its passionate, emotional pleas. 

But my gut? My gut simply knows what's good for me and what isn't.

Plain and simple.

If only I'd learn to listen.

Planning A-Head

"Always plan ahead.

It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark."

-- Richard Cushing

A quart jar of Barbie heads 3-17-14

I am neither a planner nor a prepar-er by nature.

My husband is in charge of our retirement planning, which is absolutely a good thing because for me, planning for the future means making sure the DVR is set to record Ink Master, and somehow I usually manage to fuck that up.

But every now and then I get crazy efficient and responsible and plan ahead. Like when I stock the freezer with homemade soup. Or when I preserve strawberry jam or applesauce.

Or Barbie heads.

Cuz you never know when you're gonna need extra Barbie heads. So it's a good idea to have some on hand.

We've gotten into a bit of a Sunday afternoon at the movies routine around here, but sometimes a later matinee makes it difficult to get supper on the table at a reasonable hour.

I mean, we can't eat Chipotle every time we go to a movie can we?

So yesterday I got smart and prepared all of the essentials ahead of time. We were having tacos (take that Chipotle), so I did all of the slicing and dicing in the early afternoon and had everything waiting on a shelf in the fridge for when we got home. It was a good thing, because all I had to do in order to get supper on the table was turn on the rice cooker, warm the tortillas and re-heat the meat.

Fifteen minutes later, presto!

It looked like I'd spent a lot of time preparing the meal -- which I had. I'd just spent it earlier in the day. And thanks to my strategic pre-planning, I got to spend the afternoon hanging out at the movies with my boyz.

As a fun bonus, while the rice was steaming, I had time to can a quart of Barbie heads and shoot this photo. I was going to do a lame picture of some industrious ants, but the Barbies-in-a-jar idea hit me on the way out the door to go to the movie. And because of my super-smart pre-planning, I had just enough time to get supper on the table and create the shot all at once.

Yep. I photograph Barbie heads in canning jars.

Now do you see why I'm not the one in charge of our retirement?

Sun On My Skin & Wind In My Hair

"For what is it to die but to stand naked

in the wind and to melt into the sun?"

-- Khalil Gibran

Barbie 3-11-14

"If you wish to know the divine, 

feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand."

-- Buddha

March's lion momentarily yielded to her lamb-ish side yesterday and it was glorious.

The joggers were wearing shorts. A couple of motorcycles were out. I heard the sounds of children shouting and laughing outside for the first time in months. Large, open patches of grass and Earth bloomed and spread like dirty green stains between islands of receding snow, releasing a sweet Spring aroma of possibility. 

On my way to get the trash cans from the curb, I lingered in the driveway and let the stout but sun-warmed wind work away at my inner cobwebs as I watched flocks of birds dip and soar along the thermals and updrafts. 

I inhaled. I exhaled. I uncoiled and expanded.

The lion is prowling again this morning. I knew she would be. She's never been one to go without a fight. But her knees are buckling.  

Having A Doctor In The House

"You'll never be a proper doctor. 

I want to marry a proper doctor."

-- "Stella," Doctor In The House

Barbie, Joe, and a big syringe 3-3-14

Being married to a doctor definitely has its benefits.

I can't even count how many trips to the emergency room we've skipped because my husband made the diagnosis, administered the medicine, removed the lesion or stitched the cut right here at home.

Like Sunday when I thought I was having an aneurysm. 

I was working at my computer, feeling normal, when my vision started to blur and I felt a little dizzy. I thought maybe I was sitting funny and cutting off blood flow or something, so I stood up for a few seconds, which made me dizzy-er, so I sat back down.

I tried to keep working, but the harder I tried to focus, the more things got steadily worse. I called my husband out to the computer room and there were two of him. In fact, there were two of everything.

I got up and made my way to the couch, walking like a drunk sailor after too many spins on the Tilt-A-Whirl. I sat there a little while but the room kept spinning and I kept seeing double. 

My husband looked at my pupils with his doctor-looker-light-thingy while I tried to follow his finger with my eyes. They were all jumpy and not tracking right. He had to take a phone call because he has other lives to save besides mine, and that's when my arms went all tingly and my chest closed up and I was pretty sure it was The Big One.

He checked my blood pressure with his arm-squeezer-pumper-upper, and it was normal, so he told me to lay down and rest. But he sat in the chair and watched over me, which concerned me a little.

I must have seemed OK, because he wandered out to the kitchen to fix supper, which I was in no condition to do, when the puking began.

And kept going.

And going.

Someone brought me a trash can and my husband sent our son racing to his office to get a vial of some stop-puking medicine. By the time the medicine arrived I was still dry-heaving and pretty delirious. Then I felt a pinch, a jab and a burn as the syringe released its magical contents into my ass, and soon, the nausea stopped and I fell asleep on the couch, in my clothes, for the rest of the night.

Diagnosis: Inner ear infection. 

He knew it all along.

By morning I was fine. A little woozy and very tired, but fine.

If I'd wound up in the emergency room, I'd have had a CT scan of my head, an EKG, the magic medicine, an IV, plus a hefty bill for all that alphabet soup -- all for the same diagnosis that I got right here in the comfort of my own home.

"Is there a doctor in the house?"

You bet your ass. And it's a damn good thing there is.

A True Friend

"The more you try to crush your true nature,

the more it will control you.

Be what you are.

No one who really loves you will stop."

-- Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

For Jill, on her birthday 1-16-14

"To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong,

is more admirable than the easy cowardice

of surrender to conformity."

-- Irving Wallace

For the past couple of years, on her birthday, I have created special photographs for my friend Jill.

It's my way of saying, in the most personal and expressive way I can think of, how much I love this quirky, kinky, hilarious, courageous, intelligent, wry, adventurous, multi-talented, traveling, against-the-grain woman.

Jill came into my life 10 years ago, and sometimes I wonder how I survived all those years before we met. You know how there are some people who just "get" you? Who seem cut from the same cloth? Cast from the same die? Who don't make you feel stupid for crying at the end of Black Swan, but who cry along with you, and then sit with you in a coffee shop for hours afterwards talking about why it was so goddamned beautiful? Who will eat her weight in your homemade rhubarb crumble? Who'll travel all the way to Australia and buy you a Devil Bride Doll ("with Jellybeans!") in a creepy deserted candy shop because it made her think of you, and because she figures you might be able to "use her for some kind of art."

Which is exactly what I did. I used the doll Jill sent me (stripped of her sassy pink capris, but still wearing her red t-strap pumps), along with one I found at the thrift store (which came naked, except for the pink fetish boots), as well as a bunch of naked Barbies, to illustrate our friendship as I see it. (Note: Jill and I don't actually look like these dolls. I'm being figurative here, not literal. It's an illustration. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Jill has those boots.)

Anyway, Jill isn't like anybody else I know, which is an enormous part of her charm. She inspires me to be as fully and completely and unapologetically myself as I can possibly dare to be, because that's exactly what she does. And I wouldn't have her any other way.

Now maybe you can see why a Hallmark birthday card would be way too ordinary.

All I can say is, knowing Jill is not just a good thing, it's one of the best things. And if you're lucky enough to have a friend like her, then you're lucky enough.

How come whenever it's her birthday, I feel like I'm the one who got the gift?

Playing With My Food

"Them thighs come with that shake?"

-- Bun B, "Cake"

Barbie legs with ketchup and a burger 1-6-14

"Sometimes I pray to Cod for the veal-power to stop playing with my food words,

but I fear it's too bread into me. For all I know, the wurst may be yet to come."

-- Mark Morton, "Arts & Scantlings," 

Gastronomica, Fall 2006

"My last name's McDonald and I don't make dresses out of french fries."

-- Bradon McDonald, Project Runway (Season 12)

If you followed my previous blog  (A Face A Day 2013) for even a minute, then you know I play with food, and Barbies, a lot. So even though it's a new year and a new 365 days project, some things will remain the same.

Since last year was all about faces, this year I hope to explore some other aspects of Barbie's personality.

I spent the better part of an early afternoon collecting and assembling the necessary items for this shot. 

Special thanks to Leo, for driving me to the drive-thru, and then for taking me back through the drive-thru again because I forgot to ask for ketchup and salt the first time. He also took two perfect bites of the burger for me. (It's time he learned that it's a photo assistant's job to do the dirty work. Hey, I paid him. With the rest of the burger.)

 He and my husband also bravely polished off the large order of fries so I could have the empty sleeve. 

Tough duty, I know.

If that ain't love, I don't know what is.

And then I got lost in that happy place I go to when I'm making something. Call it a groove. Call it flow. Call it being swept away. It's that place where time flies and suddenly an hour or two have blitzed by, and I realize that poor Leo is still waiting patiently at the table for the rest of his burger, which has gone stone cold.

And he eats it anyway. Without even warming it up. And when I ask him how it tasted, you know what he says?

"Good."