This is me trying to overcome the need for the perfect layout-color sheme-header and just write instead. We'll see how long this lasts.
So, I've been quite busy with my internship and socializing this semester. Notice how I did not say classes. This omission was intentional. I only have 3 classes this semester: Issues in Contemporary Art: Installation and Environment, Issues in 20th Century Art: Purity in Abstraction, and my favorite: French for Reading. It is sad that my favorite class is my nonsense French class instead of my 2 art history classes and the only reason French wins out is because the teacher has us play games, gives us prizes and brings in candy and snacks. (Yes, I'm back in elementary school and I love it.)
The reasons why I dislike or disfavor the other classes is not important. What is important is my general ambivalence to the whole academic semester. I don't know if it's because it's Spring semester and I'm still wiped out from Fall...or if it's the classes themselves...or if it's because I love my internship so much that I just don't want to put the effort into school...or I just realized last semester that I can get away with a lot less work than I thought. No matter the reasoning, the ambivalence is not good, it needs to stop, and I'm at a loss as to how I can stop it.
Anyhoo, back to what I am excelling at! (Disregard the negative, focus on the positive!)
Socializing! This semester has been great in that I have been able to hang out with my fellow MA students a lot more and we've been able to do lots of fun things. Last semester, I think I went to the movies once with a fellow classmate and maybe went for a drink once or twice...THIS semester is a different story. Since the end of January I have done like 10 times that amount and it's been fantastic. This is the part where I bore you with my personal life...bear with me:
1. K-Rae's birthday party where her boyfriend Justin made fabulous hors d'oeuvres. My first experience with Guitar Hero (the band edition).
2. Brunch at a first-semester professor's house in the Upper East Side. Great apartment, company and crepes! Too bad I was not feeling the copious amounts of wine they were supplying due to my abundance of alcohol the night prior.
3. First NYC gay club experience at Mr. Black. The atmosphere was amazing (chandeliers the size of my bedroom), the music was great, bartenders were cute (got a gay bartender to give me, a girl, a free drink: Tequila Flower!), AND the one, the only Amanda Lepore was there. I have included a picture so you can see her in all her glory. And yes, we took pictures with her, and yes, she looks plastic in them.
4. Went and saw Coraline 3-D, which was a lot scarier than I was expecting and truly amazing for cinematography and graphic reasons. I highly recommend it even though it's no longer playing in 3-D. (And yes, I do feel slightly wrong posting a picture of Coraline next to Amanda Lepore--hey, art is art.)
Retrieved from Cinetopia Website6. Went to the opening of the EFA's show "Post Memory: Makeshift Memorials in Contemporary Art," which I thought was a wonderful, cohesive and well-executed show on just what the title suggests--makeshift memorials. There were memorials for persons ranging from the Native Americans to American soldiers in Iraq to insane asylum patients to Civil Rights movement leaders/activists etc. I want to do a whole post on this show so get ready for more on this.
Postcard Image, retrieved from EFA Website7. Just this past Thursday, Miles, K-Rae and I had high hopes of seeing the Shepard Fairey Lecture on Art and the Economy at the New York Public Library, but I guess once you make a campaign poster famous tickets to your lectures are bound to sell out. And that they did. So, instead, us 3 ladies decided to have a cultural experience at a wonderful establishment called 1-2-3 Burgers-Shot-Beer and yes, it is as wonderful as it sounds. If you're ever in NY on a budget, I highly recommend it. Next cheap-eats stop is Rudy's, where they have $7 pitchers and FREE hot dogs.
8. So after our fantastic time at 1-2-3, we decided to go to the Modern for one drink. It is super swanky and way too rich for our tastes but K-Rae's boyfriend works there so we thought we'd (meaning Miles and I) would at least check it out once. For those of you unfamiliar with the Modern, it is the restaurant directly next to the MoMA with the fun yarn/neon art piece in the window. Well, one drink (which for me was a Crabapple martini--so delicious) turned into 2 drinks and 3 desserts (courtesy of Justin, K-Rae's boyfriend). I was able to snap a photo with my phone, so the quality isn't great, but each dessert was to die for. Sour apple and basil sorbet with fresh blueberries and raspberries, beignets (I have linked this to the dictionary.com because I had no idea what they were until Thursday--such a sophisticted pallete) with 3 dipping options: lemon curd, maple ice cream, and/or warm caramel, AND pistachio ice gream over chocolate graham cracker covered in melted dark chocolate with dark chocoalte flakes. Yes, I died and went to heaven. And when I returned to Earth, K-Rae, Justin and I went back to drinking cheap beer and playing Rock Band.
9. Yesterday, Saturday, I thought I was going to lounge around the house all day until Facebook-stalking paid off. Miles was off to see 2 movies and I wanted in! It just so happened that she was seeing 2 movies I've been dying to see: Milk and The Reader.
We went to a little theater in Port Jefferson and made a day of it. From 12:55pm to 6pm, we were captives of cinema (and only for $5! Yes, some sneaky Double Feature action did take place). Both of these movies were phenomenal and both Kate Winslet and Sean Penn deserved their Oscar wins. I didn't anticipate a common theme between these films--with one being about an illiterate female Nazi that has an affair with a 15-year-old boy and the other being about a 40-something-year-old gay man trying to make a difference in the Gay Rights movement of the 1970s in San Fran--but there was. In both films, the audience was made to feel compassion--for the persecuted and the persecutor. Compassion is a very difficult trait to come by, which is perhaps why it is such a valued characteristic, but I believe to practice compassion is to be that much closer to love and respect--and what can be wrong about a lil love and respect. [Steps off soap box]
So, as you can see, I have been busy. Busy with nothing but fun activities with some truly awesome people. Hopefully now it is clear just how much I am avoiding school and all work associated with it.
To conclude my longest, most personal entry to date, I shall announce that in under a week I will get to see Mark (my fiance, for those of you just joining us)! And in that time I plan to write a review/summary of the EFA's Post Memory show, do another AYSK and perhaps one more post if I am so moved. 2-3 posts in a week shouldn't be that hard, but knowing me, we'll just have to wait and see!
Pip pip cheerio!
8. So after our fantastic time at 1-2-3, we decided to go to the Modern for one drink. It is super swanky and way too rich for our tastes but K-Rae's boyfriend works there so we thought we'd (meaning Miles and I) would at least check it out once. For those of you unfamiliar with the Modern, it is the restaurant directly next to the MoMA with the fun yarn/neon art piece in the window. Well, one drink (which for me was a Crabapple martini--so delicious) turned into 2 drinks and 3 desserts (courtesy of Justin, K-Rae's boyfriend). I was able to snap a photo with my phone, so the quality isn't great, but each dessert was to die for. Sour apple and basil sorbet with fresh blueberries and raspberries, beignets (I have linked this to the dictionary.com because I had no idea what they were until Thursday--such a sophisticted pallete) with 3 dipping options: lemon curd, maple ice cream, and/or warm caramel, AND pistachio ice gream over chocolate graham cracker covered in melted dark chocolate with dark chocoalte flakes. Yes, I died and went to heaven. And when I returned to Earth, K-Rae, Justin and I went back to drinking cheap beer and playing Rock Band.
9. Yesterday, Saturday, I thought I was going to lounge around the house all day until Facebook-stalking paid off. Miles was off to see 2 movies and I wanted in! It just so happened that she was seeing 2 movies I've been dying to see: Milk and The Reader.
We went to a little theater in Port Jefferson and made a day of it. From 12:55pm to 6pm, we were captives of cinema (and only for $5! Yes, some sneaky Double Feature action did take place). Both of these movies were phenomenal and both Kate Winslet and Sean Penn deserved their Oscar wins. I didn't anticipate a common theme between these films--with one being about an illiterate female Nazi that has an affair with a 15-year-old boy and the other being about a 40-something-year-old gay man trying to make a difference in the Gay Rights movement of the 1970s in San Fran--but there was. In both films, the audience was made to feel compassion--for the persecuted and the persecutor. Compassion is a very difficult trait to come by, which is perhaps why it is such a valued characteristic, but I believe to practice compassion is to be that much closer to love and respect--and what can be wrong about a lil love and respect. [Steps off soap box]
So, as you can see, I have been busy. Busy with nothing but fun activities with some truly awesome people. Hopefully now it is clear just how much I am avoiding school and all work associated with it.
To conclude my longest, most personal entry to date, I shall announce that in under a week I will get to see Mark (my fiance, for those of you just joining us)! And in that time I plan to write a review/summary of the EFA's Post Memory show, do another AYSK and perhaps one more post if I am so moved. 2-3 posts in a week shouldn't be that hard, but knowing me, we'll just have to wait and see!
Pip pip cheerio!
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