virtual pictionary

So I'm in the middle of making turkey or stuffing or cocktails or maybe all of those things at once, plus the obligatory broccoli, but before any of that happened there was a simpler, happier time when we ate pizza and played board games. Last night, C&A joined me and my sister for Taboo, Apples to Apples, and Pictionary, and now you can experience some of our best rounds by playing along with a few of our choice drawings below.

Answers are in the comments; explanations are still under investigation.

1. Category: Difficult


2. Category: All Play

Team 1:


Team 2:


3. Category: Person/Place/Animal


4. Special Double Round!!
Top: Object
Bottom: Person/Place/Animal



5. Category: All Play


6. Category: Action


7. Category: Action


8. Category: Person/Place/Animal



Happy Thanksgiving! Wish you were here.
xoxo,
KO

classy lady book club

Um. Well. So.

I have been reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, the series that HBO's True Blood is based on.

The good news is that they are not shelved in the children's section, like the Twilight books. The bad news is that they are sold as those tiny trade paperbacks that signify to the rest of the reading world that you are retarded.

I caved to the shame-loss phenomenon long ago, so it's been interesting just how embarrassed I have been by the trashiness of this series. (I'm going to have to read some kind of respectable grim gibberish to restore balance to the universe--maybe Heidegger or Derrida?) The heroine buys her clothes at Wal-Mart and goes to the tanning bed. The fifth book has glitter on its cover.

I guess they are better written than the Twilight books, but then so are most things. Even so, there are some astonishing similarities. Here's a hint: in the fourth book, Sookie's New Year's resolution is, and I quote, to "not get beaten up." Ladies: little wonder the man's got us down.

I believe it was the third book in which the word "manhood" was first used to describe someone's penis. And that was the moment I realized that I am precisely two steps shy of eating bonbons, watching soap operas, and wearing ill-fitting stirrup pants.

For the time being, I am content to sip cocktails as I watch the television program Survivor.

diy or else

So my friend K used to date this guy who (after they split) started publishing a zine called DIY Or Else. When I was in grad school we used to stand around and read it to each other pretty much every weekend because it is the funniest thing in the whole world. See, this guy discovered Minor Threat in 2003 and began to write about them, not cognizant, I guess, that this was not a shiny new movement but something that started, you know, back in the eighties.

Also, he worked at the Gap’s corporate headquarters and had NO sense of irony.

Our favorite part was the poems. Many of the lines have been burned in my brain—I recall something about a “carcass of indecision” and also a piece called “Shelter House” that talked about someone who “always comes in through the back door.” Straight-edge buggery! Get it?

Anyway, DIY Or Else has been a source of unending delight for more than six years now. I still think about it often and sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I go to its website and read a few of the early issues for inspiration.

What better way to introduce a few things I have been working on recently, the first of which was an IKEA project I started some time back. I was shopping, high on Swedish meatballs, when I came across a diminutive chest of drawers that I thought I might take home and paint. As is my wont, it turned into an epic craft debacle…that I actually finished…eventually.

What I didn’t realize before I bought it was how much assembly and patience it would require. This is what it looked like in the beginning:

The evil Swedes devised this impressive torture craft, which involved putting together a frame plus nine little boxes (made of five pieces each) with tiny nails.
And this is what it looked like days later, when it was one-third of the way assembled:

I shake my fist at you, IKEA.
After several days and as many injuries, I had a lovely little chest, which I then painstakingly painted and decoupaged with an old map. Voila:

My box of pain looks rather terrific, IMO.
I was home with a cold this past weekend, so it seemed like the perfect time to start on a project I have had in mind for a long time: a children’s book about an ill-tempered girl who learns to love the world through the eyes of her cheery dog.

A children’s book needs illustrations, of course, but unfortunately my motor skills haven’t caught up with my imagination.

This is Gruntle in her umpteenth iteration:

Geisha Gruntle
She is supposed to be a child, but so far I have painted her as a middle-aged hussy, Betty Rubble, and a depressed geisha. Her dog is coming along slightly better:

Pip is a dog…a gay dog…who dances?
Maybe un-illustrated is the way to go.

And finally, I will leave you with something funny I found when I was digging through old pictures for a shadow box:

The thruster with her grandmother
As my mother loves to remind me every time we look through family photos, I was what is known as a “thruster” baby, which means that my tongue lolled out of my mouth like a re through the first months of my life.

Make that years:

The thruster with her mom

And then:

The thruster with bling
At some unknown stage (puberty?), I managed to retract my tongue and get rid of the silver tooth, but it was years before I managed to ditch the lisp. No wonder I'm so ornery.

dispatch from the epicenter

I recently returned from watching the election results at Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap, otherwise known as the epicenter of Hyde Park--the neighborhood where Barack Obama lives. Some people know this place because of the university where he made his name as a law professor; others might recognize it as home to the polling place where our new president cast his vote the morning of November 4.

We arrived early, before six o'clock, and drank pitchers of cheap beer, ate grilled cheese sandwiches, and played six rounds of MASH (asking that age-old question: mansion, apartment, shack, or house?) before we surrendered our attention to the televisions, the Internet browsers on our phones, and the newscasters who lit our dumpy bar so brightly that it resembled a movie set.

A few hours later, the air became wet and close, like a locker room, as hundreds of us listened to our neighbor accept the nomination for President of the United States. I haven't seen that kind of crowd or enthusiasm since the White Sox won the World Series, and lest you think I'm making light, let me tell you: people here went effing BANANAS back then. But even then they did not cry, or clap so hard and so long, for that other darling of the South Side, and you know how people are when it comes to sports.

We watched some of our other neighbors, hundreds of thousands of very excited people, in Grant Park (aka Election Plaza) dance around with Oprah and Jesse Jackson and whoever else, and while they looked like they were having fun and making history, etc., I'll have to say that I'm glad I am not waiting with them for a bus or a train.

Instead, I will be lulled to sleep by the sweet sound of drivers who lay on their horns as they zoom past my building and pedestrians who yell as they make their way home even now, just after one in the morning.

And while I believe that this was inevitable, that it was finally, finally time for people to do the right thing, that doesn't make it any less awesome.

Sometimes, things work out as they should.

Lesson learned.

pep talk

For what seems like a lifetime, Obama supporters have been superstitious to the point of compulsion, fretting as though his victory depends on whether or not they wear their lucky socks or refresh the Huffington Post page enough times each day. Almost everyone I know has been really nervous even though he has had a solid lead in the polls for a while now.

Listen, I get it. I was among the disgruntled, disgusted, and disappointed liberals in the last two elections. We have been through a lot, Karl Rove should be lynched, etc. These have been dark days.

But here's the thing: Barack Obama is going to win today by, like, a lot. (Nervous nellies take heart: since I am not actually a positive person, this prediction can't jinx the outcome.) I am not the least bit worried; my breath is not bated and my fingers aren't crossed. It's really very simple: there is no doubt that Obama is our next president.

D & I are going to a bar tonight to watch the outcome and perhaps join the awesome riots that are bound to erupt here in Mr. Obama's neighborhood when whatever network projects his victory.

I suggest you do the same, except in your neighborhood. You deserve it.

Deep breaths, people. Let's fucking do this.

Yours in the struggle,
KO