And the winner is... Uh...

So.  Remember the rather mortifying post, my dear blog, in which I listed the crushes of years past?  I added to the list when I turned 20 - but the 21 addition is long overdue.  Because I have a problem:  I don't have one this year.  I mean, I can come up with possibles, but there isn't an obvious choice - and that's the point.  I didn't even have to think when I listed the others, because when I went mad for them.  I didn't have to sit around going "I think I like so-and-so."  I just went mad.

But, here are the nominees.

1. Anthony Michael Hall, circa 1985

Appeal:  Funny. Awkward.
Problems:  He was probably shorter than me, definitely thinner, and I'm growing out of pathetic boys.  Thank heaven.

3. Adrien Brody

Appeal: Fantastic head.  I could look at his strange head all day.
Problems: He sounds like he's a method actor, which would be too weird.  What if he played a psycho murderer?  He might strangle or stab me.  And I think he might be too short.

4. Ian McShane in Sky West and Crooked.

Appeal: He was quite good-looking, and a gypsy, and (in the movie) falls in love with a nutcase, which makes my chances good.  And even though the film is way over the top, he still manages to be cool.
Problems:  Now he's, like, old.  And - this is a side question - why does he look so short now?  He seems about five foot in Pirates of the Caribbean, but normal-tall in this movie.  Did the man shrink?  Or did they just load him down with so much stuff - beads and hats and coats and things - in that last Pirates movie that it makes him look shorter than he really is?  I mean, he's gained a bit of weight (who hasn't? That's what I say), but how could it change the way you look on screen that much?

I've got a few more I could add, but it already feels like I'm stretching it here.  There's still a good many months till my 22nd birthday, but I'm getting worried.  What will I do if I don't have a defining 21-year-old crush to look back on when I'm old and drooling?

Sudden thought! Maybe I am becoming a mature, sensible, non-silly person and outgrowing film crushes!  What a strange idea.  It is going to take me some time to get used to this, I can tell you.

my glue gun lies cold

Every once in a while, I have an angst fest about the imaginary lives of other people.  In my mind, other people spend all their time making art and songs and poems, instead of (as I do in my real life) watching cruddy comedies from the seventies on Netflix.  And youtube videos.  And reading facebook profiles of such mind-numbing inanity (is that a word?) that I have to resist the urge to smash my head repeatedly against the table top.  Why do I even do Facebook?

But.  Anyways.

I feel bad that the urge to create, if I have it, is so lazy about its job. It ought to be telling me that the time wasting I indulge in is... um, a waste of time. Why is it not arresting my hand as it moves towards my laptop and turning it towards, like, yarn?  Or something, you know, with arty potential?

Urge to create, you're fired.

THE DOWNSIDES OF BEING AN ART STUDENT

DOWNSIDE: Early in your studies, the work is extremely tedious.   Presumably, projects where we actually have to use some, you know, creativity will come along.  But right now it's "make a perfect cross-section of two colors using the (perfect) 7-step value scale you did two weeks ago and have probably lost by now, you disorganized kid, you." After figuring out what on earth a cross-section of two colors is supposed to be, you actually have to paint the thing.  Basically, it was making different shades of a color match the values of a white to black grayscale.  Did that explanation actually help at all? I'm feeling doubtful.

Tip I wish I'd known 1:
When dealing with color value projects, holding your laptop precariously above your desk and using photobooth's black and white effect will save your life.   It is extremely difficult - at least, for me - to tell when you've got a yellow and a purple at the same value level.  Black and white pictures solve that problem.
The downside of using this handy tip is that it makes it clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that half your paint squares are wrong.  Which leads to the second downside.

The end result of that mess up there.  Some of it is still wrong, but I don't care. 

DOWNSIDE: Apathy.  When you, for example, use photobooth to photograph your project, you will find that at least half of it is wrong, and apathy sets in.  For a while, the desire to fix things, for perfection, will drive re-do's.  But, at a certain point, you stop caring.  Breaking into the not-caring zone is a bit of a relief, but it's also not entirely positive.

DOWNSIDE:  Even if you, by some miracle, retain your drive to attain perfection, you can never have it.  At least, not when you're working with cheap-o acrylic paint. See photo above.

DOWNSIDE:  I know that each major or field of study has it's own tricky bits.  But I think I can safely claim that art has the most potential for technical mishaps.  Meticulous execution and spotless presentation are required - in projects involving paint.  Paint.  And tape that pulls bits of paper off the surface of your illustration board after you've finished the project.

DOWNSIDE:  Your clothes get ruined.  You are never clean again.  I found paint behind my ear the other day.

DOWNSIDE:  You ingest things you should not.

Do you see the danger here?  It's unspeakably easy for your preoccupied brain to allow your hand to put a nice, painty brush into your tea cup.  Also, I tend to hold things in my mouth.  Using the old choppers to hold onto a pen is alright, but when you're sticking paintbrushes in there, things can get unpleasant very, very quickly. And grown-up paint isn't non-toxic.  If I'm dead tomorrow, Mom, this is why.  I tremble to think of the day when I start using turpentine.

DOWNSIDE:  You have to hear people rave about art that's about "the process" and "kinetic energy" and "a return to child-like enjoyment of mark-making".  If someone says to you, "oh, we should go to this show, it's all about the process of kinetic mark-making," run.  I mean, unless you like giant pages of scribbles or prints made by scraping things across wood.  Personally, I loathe that sort of art.  I think it's ridiculous.  I DON'T CARE about the artist's process.  I wasn't there when he made the silly thing.  Why does his process matter to me?  It's a cop-out, really.  Nobody judges a film or book by the process they didn't see and weren't a part of - they look at the results.   As you can see, this makes me get a little bit worked up.

But, I can't really just leave it like this.  As exhausted and grouchy as I may be now, I still have to admit that there are upsides.

UPSIDES OF BEING AN ART STUDENT:

UPSIDE:  You get to say you're an art student.  Even if you're to be the most boring, technical web-design person on earth, while in school you get to say you're studying art.  Which definitely ups your cool factor.

UPSIDE: You can wear weird things.  This can make up for the inconvenience of ruined clothes.  So far, my jacket, sweatshirt, black v-neck, polka-dot pajama pants and white tank top have been irreparably splattered, smeared, or spotted with paint.  But, because I can shrug and look embarrassed and say "I'm an art student" if anyone mentions it, it doesn't matter.  Though, I think the tank top is a goner.  It's got a big smear of red-violet which, now that it has dried, looks like a giant stab wound.

UPSIDE: You get to listen to your ipod in class.

UPSIDE:  I'm beginning to feel like a problem-solving god.  That's what you do, really.  Solve problems.  For example, every week for 2-D design, I have to represent the same item (one of my high-tops, to be precise) in a new way that corresponds with the things we're studying.  "How do I represent my shoe?" is a fairly simple problem I have to solve every week.  It sounds silly, but knowing I can get down to business and do a project is empowering. I feel like I can tackle almost anything.  Except taxes and flat tires.

UPSIDE: The people are weird.  Marvelously entertaining.  And you have to wonder how they decided to study ceramics or blacksmithing.

UPSDE:  You get to buy stuff at Art Outfitters (a wondrous place) instead of Textbook Brokers.

UPSIDE: In spite of the frustration, long hours (3:30 am is the current record for agonizingly late bedtimes), weeping and gnashing of teeth, it's pretty fun.

So I guess the ecstasy balances out the agony, in the end.
Bad joke.

please print name

A couple of weeks ago I asked my parents, in a nonchalant, lazy manner, "Hey, could I maybe, like, move my drawing table up to the wood room* and make it, like, maybe a craft room or something?"
Don't be fooled as my poor parents were by the offhand air this question exudes. It was a carefully calculated sentence.  To go into the intricacies of it would take far too long, but the main points I tried to get across were:
1. "could I" I was careful not to use the word "we" - thereby implying that I would do all the work.
2. A craft room.  Having a craft room has always been my mother's most heartfelt desire.  Whether my definition of "craft room" and hers were completely in alignment was a question I did not raise.

And you know what?  The poor dears agreed.  Muwah ha ha ha haaaaaaaa.

I asked, again casually, if I could put up decorations.

And again the poor dears agreed.

This particular piece of decor is actually a torture device.

I mean.  What kind of sadists are these Schaum people?  First they fill their books with hideous illustrations that are physically painful for the visually sensitive child to behold.  Then they force the already hurting children to play songs like "Penguin Polka" and "Hot Dog."  "Hot Dog" had particularly charming lyrics which, if I remember rightly, ran something like:

Frankfurter sandwich

Hot dog!

Spread on the relish

Hot Dog!

Let's have another 

Hot Dog!

Frankfurter sandwich 

Hot Dog!

My mother and sister would sing and perform an interpretive dance when I practiced this particular song.  And they honestly wonder why I quit piano.

I took a picture of this black portfolio because it is a sort of symbolic thingy, don't you know.  I paid 27 bucks for it, which for stoney broke me is a fortune, and it's the only attractive portfolio I've ever seen - and when I was contemplating the purchase I said nervously to my sister, "But if I buy it I can't change my major." I don't know why she laughed.  It's perfectly true.  Because of this black portfolio, I am stuck as an art major whether I like it or not.   You can't buy a nice portfolio and then switch majors.  It makes you a pretentious moron if you do.  And that is a lethal combination.

And here we have an enormous desk, on which is the homework I am supposed to be doing.
So.  That's that.  I spend almost all my time in here.  It's very nice.

*This is the only room in the house that has wood floors.  In a moment of mental abstraction (Miss Prism) I called it the wood room, and the name has stuck.  Gah.  It's not even very easy to say.  And I have yet to think of a better name.   I'm trying, but drawing a blank.  "The studio" sounds moronic and pretentious, nobody appreciated a sort-of Dr. Seuss/hotel/school plan to call this "room 1" and the guest bedroom "room 2", and I'm out of naming steam.

I wish I actually, like, composed posts thoughtfully instead of going me me blah blah band I like blah blah. But oh well.

 *

So... I still like my school.  How weird is that?  So far, I've only met one moderate creeper, two weird-talkers (those people who whine about things semi-under their breath apparently to no one - and also sort of to everyone within hearing distance at the same time.  And if if you make eye contact you just know they will talk to you.  You know the type I mean?), and one foot jiggler who also makes moist noises with some part of their face. I didn't look to see which part because I didn't want to know.
But besides that - and that's not even bad at all - the people have been truly delightful.   Though, I have noticed that at least 90 percent of the guys are shorter than me.  Dash it, at least 90 percent of the men in Arkansas are shorter than me.  I'm not kidding.  The male portion of the population is just abnormally diminutive.

Citizens!  Hark! A new law has been enacted as of right now forbidding short women from marrying tall men, because then tall women have to marry short men and consequently feel like galumping giants for the rest of their lives! So! That's all!

Actually, I don't care that much.  I'm going to marry Adrien Brody, so it doesn't matter.

Anyways.  I like my French class, and considering my woeful encounters with French classes in years gone by, it feels like little short of a miracle.  My drawing class is getting better - we had to draw the negative space around a chair today, which was challenging and very good for me.  2-D design is even harder, but I worship my tattooed teacher, and am going to work my rear off.  My art history teacher is possibly the most tactful woman on earth.  The most boneheaded remarks you can possibly think of?  Not a problem! She manages to disagree without actually saying so in so many words.

I need to keep chanting, "it's okay to be a beginner" to myself every time I feel like flinging inanimate objects.  A beginner at art, a beginner at reading the Bible - just a beginner. "Ohmigosh I need to be reading, like, Augustine's Confessions and sketching magnificently every hour of the day!"  Seems to be my internal monologue on a regular basis.  And that's just not fair to my poor self.  I'm taking basic classes and I'm a newbie Christian - I've got to give myself some grace.  And I've got to get you into my lie-eef!

Well... I did my French homework, so I'm going to bed.  

* If I ever wanted to be a real art student and got the obligatory tattoo...

Good heavens.

Now I understand.

If I made movies, I hope they would look half as perfect as this one did.

the kids are alright

Okay! I have something to add to my band daydream of the other day.  I knew what I wanted to do with myself - now I know how I want myself to look, too.  I'll be a complete person before you know it.

I have been listening to an awful lot of the Who lately (I've sung la-la-la-la-la-la lies - just that bit of the song - about eight hundred times today), and then there was this editorial in vogue, and I've wanted a Vespa for forever (though mom says, "I couldn't convince my dad and you can't convince me.  We both scraped too many motorcyclists off the side of the road.") - so I have decided to become sort of a mod.
It's the exact sort of clothes I like, and I'd get to have a scooter and be scornful of people who get drunk.  It's perfect.

I just want to look like that.  That's all.

The only possible problems I can forsee are:
1. I do not have the figure for A-line or boxy clothes, and I'm not likely to get it anytime soon.
2. I do not plan to engage in the whole "recreational amphetamine use" thing.  I need sleep.  I'm trying to think up a way of changing that line from Captain America (which I have seen twice and enjoyed thoroughly both times - have I mentioned that?), "a weak man knows the value of strength" into something to do with insomniacs appreciating sleep, but I can't.  I'm too tired.  Har har, what a bad joke.
3. I don't want to get into fights or be an existentialist.

But otherwise I think it will be fantastic. It's quite convenient that The Who is sort of a mods band, because I have the feeling that I'm about to go slightly mad for them.
It's like the time when I got my ukulele.  All of a sudden, ukuleles were all over the place - in a magazine article, on youtube, at church, at school - and I took it as a sort of collective sign.   This time I bought The Who's first album, and was googling Vespas, and then I got the September Vogue and - pow! - there was a whole editorial on mods called "My Generation".   It all adds up.