Johanna Writes

Greenpoint

Never before have I noticed how many paintings of naked people and various forms of transportation there are hanging in the MoMa. Cars, trains and naked ladies- they're everywhere! Yesterday as Nico and I wandered around the museum, he insisted on stopping in front of each painting that depicted a nude or semi-nude person. "Ahhhh, bap" he'd say knowingly. "Oh you think they're about to take a bath?" I'd ask. "Bap" he'd say again with authority and then march on to the next naked person. Sometimes the nude figure would be about to get in the "showa" in which case Nico tended to state it more as a question; "Showa?" he'd ask and look up at me for affirmation. "Hmmm yes, I think you might be right. Definitely on their way to the shower" I'd reply. The cars, bus and train paintings were a bit more tricky because Nico insisted on standing in front of each of them for a minimum of 10 minutes each, all the while making a running commentary of everything he saw and then in turn, everything that everything that he saw reminded him of. "Car. Car. Car. Car. Bup (bus). Bup! Banana. Choo choo? Car. Bup! Kuck (truck). Kuck? Car! Chugga chugga choo choo!" I've decided that I'm really not fond of transportation themes in art.

While at MoMa we saw my old friend and roommate John. Seeing him reminded me of those days many years ago when life was simpler and more substance fueled. I met John through an ad in the Voice and we lived in the same apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for about 6 months- a time during which I consumed enough alchohol to pickle all of South America. We shared the apartment with a guy named Jason. Jason is rather difficult to describe but for lack of a better comparison, imagine Austin Scarlett from Project Runway. Now, imagine a much more annoying, much less endearing Austin Scarlett. Now take that Austin Scarlett and make him psychotic and that would be the closest approximation of Jason that I can give you.

I can no longer remember many details about Jason. He was milky white and thin as a rail. He was very effeminate but claimed to be straight and spent a great deal of time applying nail polish while lamenting his inability to find a good woman. I would feel badly talking about him this way except for the fact that one time he referred to my complexion as being "doughy" and I'm not sure about you, but I think that once someone says that you're doughy, all's fair.

Life with Jason started out normally enough. I didn't see him all that often and when I did he was usually busy pursuing his twin goals of becoming either a showtune singer and/or personal assistant. He never seemed to get very far with either ambition but he had enough to pay the rent which was all that concerned me. As time went on however, things began to change. We started seeing less and less of Jason and although we'd often hear the strains of Judy Garland emerging from the crack under his door, days began to go by when we wouldn't see his face at all. We began to worry. Not because of Jason's disappearance but rather because over time, our dishes and silverware began to disappear as well. There was a day when things came to a head. Upon going to get a fork with which to eat his pineapple upside down cake, John discovered that there was not a single fork or spoon left in the entire kitchen. Jason had made a rare public appearance that morning when he announced that he was going into Manhattan in order to meet his boss's cat (???) Neither John nor I knew he had a boss in the first place but that didn't matter. The important thing was that Jason was not at home which meant that we could do a bit of investigating.

As soon as we opened the door to Jason's room we knew that things had gone terribly terribly awry. The room stank of cat shit and it was obvious that he hadn't emptied a litter box in weeks. In addition, there were plates of rotting food all over the floor. We were disgusted but not nearly as much so as when we opened the door to Jason's bathroom, where much to our horror, we saw all of our dishes sitting in a bathtub filled with brown water. I screamed and then screamed even more when in the next instant, John grabbed a sword that was leaning on the wall (again- ???) and smashed the full length mirror on Jason's wall to bits.

Oddly enough I have no memory at all of what happened after that. I don't remember if Jason came home or never came home or what. As for me, I moved shortly afterwards to a different apartment with a different set of crazy roommates. These days I am a mother and John is married. We can stand together in Barnes and Noble while enjoying a coffee and watching Nico rearrange all the books and we can laugh about that insanity that we once shared. I really don't miss it at all except for sometimes...

Prepster

Here I am in my newly finished "Prepster" jacket from the Happy Hooker. If you have any interest in the details of the thing you can see below. In the meantime, I'm a bit worried about my hair. I've always really loved wearing it in braids wrapped over my head but now I'm concerned that since we're moving to Switzerland, it might not be such a good idea anymore. Maybe it's going to seem as though I'm trying too hard you know? Like running around Paris in a striped shirt and beret while brandishing a baguette and shouting "Oooh la la!"... Will the Swiss people laugh at me and ask me where my lederhosen is or will I fit right in? About the Prepster- It was my first crochet project and to be honest, I'm not thrilled with the way it turned out. There's something about the neckline that bothers me- it's too wide or something and I'm not happy with the way I attached the sleeves which is totally my fault because I've never really learned how to do that properly. Also, the body was too bulky and I had to do some shaping with the scissors and the sewing machine. It was the first time I've done that and it actually worked out pretty well. I first safety pinned it together the way I wanted it. Then I basted it with a contrasting yarn before sewing up the seams with my machine. I pulled out the basting yarn and then properly stitched it together right next to the machine stitching (so that the from the outside you only see the yarn stitching). Finally I cut the sweater right inside of the sewn seam to get rid of the bulk. The yarn I used was Cascade 220.

New Year's Eve (finally!)

For New Year's Eve my brother invited me to come to Las Vegas with him where he was doing the makeup for a certain celebrity who I shall refer to as P.A. After finishing with P's makeup, he did mine. If my before and after photos are anything to go by, I think we can all assume that the majority of stars do not wake up looking like they do in the magazines. Here I am wearing enough makeup to camouflage a troop of leprechauns marching through the Sahara. I even had makeup on my knees (although P had it on her ass which made me feel better because then I could go around all night saying to myself "Well at least I'm not wearing makeup on my behind, hmpff..")

 

I arrived P's hotel suite around 6pm to find my brother standing in a bathroom surrounded by piles of blond hair extensions which wafted around the floor like so many tufts of sage brush. As I waded around them to get to the vanity table, scores of minions flitted about in a concentrated effort to get P ready for the big party. P herself wandered into the bathroom periodically to assess her hair "looks too much like Jenny McCarthy," her body "all pale and totally pasty" (Helloooooo! Scottish descended WHITE WHITE WHITE person sitting next to you with makeup on her knees so as not to blind anyone", and her makeup "I don't want it too draggy ok? But totally outlandish and glam if you know what I mean? But not tooooo crazy right? Ok?" 

As the hours floated by, the in-suite party became more and more animated- perhaps due to the fact that most of the participants were busy inhaling anything smaller than marbles into their perfectly contoured noses. This woman showed up and so did this man and this one. Nobody said more than a friendly hello to me except for a sweet gay porn distributer with whom I spent a happy hour discussing our mutual love of games such as Scattergory and Pictionary. Then he took some Ecstasy though and became entirely too sweaty and affectionate for my taste. He kept referring to me as "adorable" and although that's very nice, I don't think anyone wants to sit next to P.A. in front of a makeup mirror all night and then be called "adorable" 16 times. Or maybe that's just my hangup.

The party itself was held at Tao nightclub and was actually pretty icky. Too crowded to dance and too loud to talk which basically meant just sitting there and hoping that my lips weren't being washed off by all the Red Bull I was swilling in order not to pass out from exhaustion. I did perk up for an instant when it dawned on my that I was standing next to Usher and I spent several minutes dancing with him (okay okay, next to him) while forcing my brother to snap pictures for Nico's baby book.

By about 12:30 my brother and I decided that we'd had enough fabulousness for one year and that it was time to retire with our inner grannies to the hotel room. As I was leaving the club, my new pal the porn distributer enveloped me in a flurry of kisses and whispered board game chatter. I'm not sure what sort of conversational banter I expected from a fabulous celebrity studded Las Vegas nightclub party but it definitely wasn't "We so totally HAVE to play scrabble together sometime!"

Hey- no judgments please. It's rough being an international sex symbol! In case you're confused, I'm the one who looks as though she's still capable of making a ham sandwich.

Me and my bro.

Next to Usher. Why has no one ever told me before that this kissy dancing face that I always thought must look so sexy makes me look just so, um, really really dumb?

 

Bluggish Days

Here I am, it's January and I seem to be going through my annual mid-winter bout of bluggishness. This is a new word that I just made up to describe the sluggish attitude towards my blog that I seem to have developed of late. I have plenty to write about- in fact there's been an almost finished post about a crazed New Year's eve in Las Vegas which has just been sitting there for two weeks. But for some reason I'm just rather apathetic about the whole thing. Does this ever happen to you other bloggy people out there?

A bit of news in the meantime. We're in NYC and I'm staying in my old apartment in Astoria, in my old room, with my old friend/roomate and all my old stuff (still here after four years!) In the meantime Nico is staying across the river in Manhattan with Mr. D and my mother-in-law in an apartment the size of a cracker jack box. In the past I've stayed there as well but this time I opted for something different. Mainly because of space issues but also because after five weeks of single parenthood (while Mr. D traveled in India), I figure I deserve a bit of a break. I still see Nico everyday and he stays over here with me sometimes but for the most part, I'm having more freedom than I've had in the 20 months since Nico was born and it's FUCKING GRRRRRREAT!!!!!!!

Since arriving in New York I've been busy knitting the shrug from the cover of the new winter Vogue Knitting. Busy that is, until last night when I discovered that despite being halfway done with it, I'm going to have to start over. I've done all the cables wrong. That's cool though cause I'm a pseduo-single gal with all the time in the world! I've also been buy making Nico a Denyse Schmidt quilt. I'm going to do the quilting by machine so this last weekend I took a class at The City Quilter on how to do it. It was very informative and I'm glad I took the class despite the teacher being totally scary and mean. "Excuuuuuuse me- trying to TEACH HERE!', her sarcastic voice would periodically boom out whenever she judged that some of her students were perhaps socializing just a wee bit too much for a serious class such as machine quilting. Nervous titters and furtive side glances would ensue and 20 adult women would all be hushed into mass of quivering third graders. Towards the end of the class I was so nervous about being yelled at that I pretty much stopped talking to anyone at all and would instead respond to conversational overtures with a series of nods and facial expressions that were meant to say "Um, yeah that's really interesting and funny what you just said but just now we're taking a MACHING QUILTING class and I'm very busy LEARNING right now so could you just BACK OFF? But, um, I hope we can maybe still be friends later ok?" Nobody talked to me after the class so I'm not sure how well that came off.

The next items on my list of things to do in the city are to visit the Sodafine shop in Williamsburg and to meet up with Gleek and her friends at the Point for a bit of caffeine fueled knitting. Should be fun!