new art (and some old[ish])

(Don't forget to click on the thumbnails for bigger versions!)

Here are my doodles and sketches from the past week:






L to R (in order of date drawn):

•TOP ROW
he is careless - 8/23 part of a new 'series' called 'handsome men made ugly by hideous truths [and my pen]'
rainy day - 8/24
full of himself - 8/25 also part of 'handsome men'
sunglasses - 8/26 just trying out a profile
miss mary - 8/27

•MIDDLE ROW
pug dog - 8/28
handlettered a - 8/29
handlettered r - 8/29

•bottom row
michael jackson lady - 8/29 some lady in an article in Vogue looked JUST like MJ, only... older. And alive, I guess.
turtle - 8/29 for my mom!
cock and hen and chicks - 8/29
in his shoes/in his footsteps - 8/30


So I drew some dudes and there they are, mixed in the mix. I'm not 100% happy with them, but oh well. That's what I get for drawing only in ink where I can make more mistakes and they're less fixable.

To prove that when I actually dust off a pencil and sit down and concentrate on things I can draw a face pretty well, here is one I drew last year or so from a Fringe [hair salon] ad.



And sometimes I can draw dudes. Ish. Although this was done entirely in pen and no pencil, so really I have no excuse.


There is a week's worth of doodles, plus some sketchies culled from my sketchbook! Enjoy!

From a Broken Gnome

Or, The Best Way to Break a Girl's Heart is to Destroy Something She Loves.

My mom shares my affinity for things odd and insane, for things that look like or could be construed as being other things, and for things missing important parts of their being, which is why one day, I came home and she excitedly proffered a garden gnome who looked like he was playing air bass.

"Why is that gnome playing air bass?" I asked, not really caring to hear the answer, because a) it was a gnome, and b) it was a musically talented gnome and I was already in love.

"Well, he's not, but he was holding a rake or hoe or something and it fell off and broke and so he was discounted!" she replied with glee.

For me! For me! A rocking gnome! The rockingest gnome I ever did see!

He held a place of honor in my room, along with Barnabas the light-up gnome I acquired before going to MSU (at State, light-up gnomes are considered proper room decor, it's true), and a few other gnomey friends*. Then when I went back to State for a second, equally fateful go-round, he came with me** and was revered and adored by all my friends and family and neighbors and acquaintances. How could he not be? Do you know any rockin' gnomes that like to air-jam out to Pink Floyd's "Money"? Seriously. He was bad-ass, and as such, never needed a name further than Rockin' Gnome. What would be the point? He'd already fulfilled his destiny, by losing his rake and gaining an air bass guitar, a name other than the Original RG would sully his reputation. So Rockin' Gnome he remained, to one and all.

My boyfriend at the time was sort of infatuated with RG as well. He felt he carried a certain... cachet, being a mythological woodland creature with a penchant for a mean bass lick. It's true. Gnomes are usually preoccupied with menial tasks like gathering food, growing food, attending to the growth of foodstuffs, sometimes building small houses for their small ilk, and once or twice I'm sure one has cracked open a book (probably about food or building , but generally they are an industrious folk, not so keen on the arts. Rockin' Gnome somehow rose above that and dedicated his life to the pursuit of playing along with the radio/cd/mp3 on an invisible, meaningless instrument. It takes chutzpah to dispel with such tradition and embark on the road to pleasure and play, I'll give him that.

Anyway, my boyfriend, who kind of looked like if Johnny Knoxville and Carson Daly had a baby, did some video stuff for a local band who happened to be friends of his, and somehow it was decided the the Original RG would make a special guest appearance in a music video for them***. This was fine with me, and I lent him to the filmmaker and as far as I know, he appeared in the video, which probably never made into wide circulation given that it was a local band and I'm not even sure why they were making a music video. Then, being the amenable and otherwise unoccupied fellow he was, Rockin' Gnome lived on in the filmmaker's van, accompanying him to various photo shoots and probably the bar, silently rockin' his way to fame and gnome fortune.

Then we broke up, the filmmaker and I. Furious****, I demanded all my stuff back from his apartment (clothes, some owl stuff I'd bought him*****, some video games, and of course, the gnome. I was staying with my friend Emily for a bit because my dorm room situation was a mess and a half and I wanted to hide from him a little bit, so I had him drive to her apartment complex to give me my stuff back. And he did. He drove up in his van, and he threw the garbage bag full of my belongings at me, and then he reached into the van for the gnome. He held Rockin' Gnome high over his head, and my stomach lurched. The look in his eyes was venomous and full of hatred, and though I deserved such a look, the RG was but a pawn in the game and didn't deserve what I knew was coming.

"Don't--" I pleaded, more fearful for the plaster life of a garden statuette than for my own.

But he smashed the gnome on the cement, and he splintered into what seemed like a million little pieces, no relation to James Frey's monstrosity. I stood there, gaping at the mess and wondering what the fuck to do, and the filmmaker got in his van to drive away, and I retaliated by throwing a wooden owl plaque at his retreating van, which bounced off a tire in a most unthreatening way. As he drove away, I screamed at him, "YOU'RE JUST LIKE ANDY******!" Then I grabbed my garbage bag full of 3 months of my life (I know, right? All my little breakups prove to be this dramatic, and my long ones fizzle out rather stolidly) and ran upstairs to cry about my little gnome (not the breakup).

Emily comforted me while I called my mom to tell her about the bad news (again, the gnome, not the breakup) and mom tried to console me by telling me we'd find another rockin' gnome.

NEVER. There will never again in the future of gnomedom be a gnome brave enough to buck convention and "drop" his rake or hoe or whatever in the pursuit of rock 'n roll. He died so young, with so much promise.

I was, unbelievably, stricken with sadness. Over a gnome. True story. (Whether you want to use that as an analogy for the failed relationship that became of my inability to handle telling someone I don't like them anymore, that's your prerogative. I will continue to assume that it's because I have an unnatural attachment to weird things my mom gives me.)

I went back outside at some point, only to discover what had become of the remains of the Rockin' Gnome in the hour or so I'd needed to recuperate from witnessing his untimely demise. The filmmaker had picked up all of the larger shards of the Rockin' Gnome and used them to spell out, on the trunk of my car "I'm just like Andy?" with the gnome's mostly intact arm as part of the question mark. Were it not so creepy that he'd come back to do that, I would've found it sweet(ish). But really, it was super creepy. Right? I kept the question-mark-formerly-air-bass-playing arm in a paper bag and swept the rest into the trash. And kept that arm for rather a far longer time than was necessary or probably healthy.

But seriously, that was creepy, right?

And now for the part where Rockin' Gnome TRULY fulfills his destiny...

So, the next St. Patrick's Day, I got a card from my mom. Weird, right? Who buys St. Patty's day cards? Who actually sends them? Well, my mom does, apparently. I opened it, bemused that my mom had in fact become The Woman Who Sends a Card for Every Occasion (this turned out to be fiction, actually), and gasped when I saw Rockin' Gnome's visage on the front of the card, underneath the script "Have a ROCKIN' St. Patty's Day!" I gasped, I cried (not really), I nearly died (not really).

Fame achieved posthumously.

You gotta hand it to that gnome. He knew how to get things done.

Nevermind that my mom and I were probably the only two people in the whole wide world to find this card as touching and apropos as we did. That's fully beside the point.

*Uhm. I may have failed to mention that I have a thing for gnomes.
**Barnabas was pissed.
***Since he couldn't talk then and can't now, I'm assuming this is one of his life's goals, other than actually playing bass, but I never found one the right size. So sorry, Rockin' Gnome.
****Which is ridiculous, because we were breaking up because I cheated on him (first and last time). But I cheated on him because I didn't like him anymore and didn't know how to tell him. Hmmm. That's 21-year-old logic for you.
*****I also have a thing for owls. He did too. I thought it was meant to be. It was not.
******Probably the biggest insult I have ever thrown at a guy. Andy is this guy and the filmmaker knew all about him. Sorry, filmmaker.

close, but no cigar. Doesn't have quite the same cachet.

dewdles. by me. i dewdled theese.

Okay so, hi. In lieu of actually making a productive, worthwhile, meaningful post*, I decided I will share with you some of my nightly doodles. At night, while being bored by network television and wishing I had cable and/or internet to occupy my time, I thumb through my extensive stash of magazines and draw from photographs and add words, or I draw things I see around my house and add words. Or sometimes I don't add words. One of them is a painting on a cardboard circle I found in a box at work (I have a few more of these to art up, wheeee!).

Here they are, in order of appearance in my life:

become a productive member of society


but every year is longer


he said he loves my hair


big gulp

even something needs nothing sometimes


boxer what

boxer big nose

i am going away

thank you to Thao Nguyen for those words.


hello, dog

running doggy

parsley and celery

side 1

side 2

As you will see, I hate drawing faces, so I just don't. I fill them with words, or, in the case of "side 1," I pencil in the face (something I don't do often - it's pen or nothing for me with these doods), decide it looks okay, pen it in, and then go "UGH. RUINED." So then it all gets blacked in. Such would be the case with my alien girl, whose profile looked like shit, so she got squiggles and fill-ins, and then I branded her an alien and made her feel like an outcast just because I'm the worst at faces. See?

she is obviously super sad. I did that.

Frustrated with my inability to draw noses, I once went through a magazine and drew every single nose I saw in it. It happened to be a smaller, not very thick magazine, and it happened to be one without a lot of models, but there were still thirty-some-odd noses to be drawn (I didn't bother with the ones so tiny a dot would suffice). This method seems to have helped my proboscis drawings, so I'll probably adopt it again for all other facial components. Stupid lips, especially. Grumble, grumble.

So, these are my doodles, and these are why I sometimes don't answer texts or return calls between 9-11pm, or 1-4am if I've gone out. SORRY.

BYE.

*something I have yet to accomplish. Someday. Probably not.

In Which The Girl Realizes She Won't Ever Be The Girlfriend.

There is no more Bossa Nova. No more new thing. It's just the same old thing over and over.

I saw him last week and had a spectacular time. Flirtations, ass-grabbing, contented sighs, warm hugs, hand holding: all ingredients for a nice night out; fold into one warm evening/early morning, let sit in the parking lot of a local bar for an hour; check back in one hour after you've taken leave of each other to give the girl a good night, a promise of a long-awaited Talk™ the next day, and an ASCII smile.

I was on Clouds Ten through Thirty. Million.

But if you know the story, you know he doesn't call. And stupid me, stupid me with a few PBRs under her belt the next night, and a friend who's too drunk to drive home just yet and wants to take a walk, stupid me and my not-stupid friend end up at Long Lost's house*, just a hop and a skip away, at 2.30 in the morning. Whereupon Long Lost exhibits behavior that is the polar opposite of that which he showed 24 hours prior.

Excellent.

There were moments of niceness, glimpses of the Long Lost I had come to be quite fond of, but mostly, there was prickish, terse, assholery behaviur.

Once all the revelers had either left to walk back to their cars, retired upstairs to sleep, or retired downstairs to do god-knows-what to the crooning of Lionel Richie, we were left alone, save for the elephant in the room.

The very, very, very large elephant in the room.

"So."
"So."
"What did you want to talk about?"
"What do you mean?"
"You said we'd talk tomorrow. It's tomorrow today. What's on your mind?"

I made the sophomoric mistake of thinking that he actually meant what he said the previous day - go figure. What happened then was an hour and a half long circular conversation in which he denied basically everything I thought had happened or was happening - including the trip to Chicago to see my hometeam play on my birthday, his suggestion. That apparently, was "just as friends." Because I know of so many dudes who want to go out of town for a weekend with a girl with whom they have had mutual romantic-ish feelings for: but just as friends.

And along the way, I found myself apologizing for things I had no apology jurisdiction over:
• my feelings
• my interpretation of his feelings, as dissected and discussed by myself along with others
• my being confused because he has been confusing ever since I've known him
• my being an asshole
• basically, me.

Four days later, after a couple of ill-received apology texts from me to him (what. the. fuck. How am I still apologizing?), it hit me. I have nothing to be sorry for, other than the fact that I should be apologizing, readily, steadily, and unceasingly, to myself for putting myself, my brain, my heart, and my emotions through the wringer repeatedly.

At one point that night I told him he was being a dick to me, a statement which, as you can imagine, was probably not the highlight of his night. He got angry and mad and stomped around, but he didn't seem to argue with me. I don't think. I don't know.

I don't need to go into specifics for any of you to understand that I Am Done, of the Stick A Fork In Me varietal. It may have taken me months from the first go, and four nights from the last go, but it's impossible to keep hanging on to this thread. I hope he apologizes to me someday for treating me like one of those fuzzy mice my cats used to love, but I won't expect it; it won't come. I am always wrong in his eyes, he is always right. That's bad enough, but when he has me thinking I'm always wrong, that's a no-fly zone. This isn't an attempt at villainizing him, or victimizing myself: we are both at fault, though right now I'm more inclined to think that my fault was giving him chances too many.

I can't delete the bossa nova tone from my phone (stupid preloaded content...) but I did delete him, or at least his contact info**. I can guarantee this: I will always wonder; but I won't wait anymore, and I won't worry anymore. He means a lot to me, but I mean a lot more to me.

*We did forewarn him that we were stopping by, a fact he seemed not displeased with. But apparently I read all things wrongly, so I am stupid and wrong.
**Not that it helps, because I know his number by heart and every single time I've deleted him before***, he has texted me within a few days - which is how I know his number, from seeing it pop up so frequently.
***Countless times.

Rebecca Is Not That Kind of Girl. (Or is she?)

I went to an awesome party on Saturday, held as a scholarship fundraiser/memorial for a friend's sister. I hung out with a handful of great people I already knew, met a lot more great people I'd never met before, and was around even more great people whom I didn't necessarily meet. Drank a lot of awesome drinks, ate some amazing food. I had a superb time.

I was also, apparently, That Girl.

Because I am easily frustrated, self-dissuading, and extremely impatient, and because the rest of the world does not move at the same blisteringly superhuman pace to which I am accustomed to moving, I was at a few points on Saturday convinced that nothing was going to ever happen with LL. Ever. I talk about it like it is, and I severely hope it is, even though we've both made mistakes where the other is concerned (personally, I have probably made more with him than I have with all other guys ever in my life. Okay, probably not, but it feels like it). And I was even telling a friend at the party about some things LL said to me when we hung out last week, things that giddied me to the core, made me more hopeful than ever (and have the utmost potential to let me down/destroy me).

But, a few whiskey sours and a few jello shots later and I was on the hunt. I might as well tell you now and be upfront about it, but I'm a flirt. A big, flirty flirt of a flirt. I don't care if you're male or female or somewhere-in-between-ale. If you are capable of holding a conversation with me, replete with humor, intellect, and hopefully a few references to Lebowski, you will be subjected to my flirting. I'd say it's no different when I'm drunk, as you'd think I'd still be Miss Willy Nilly Flirty Filly, but it is a little different, as I have a target, an objective in mind. Minds out of the gutter, my dears, not quite that far. I just like making out, okay?!

So with that being my goal, I like to hone in on one person, and devote my flirtations to them. It doesn't mean that if others flirt with me I'll turn away and deny them that chance. No no. In that regard I am equal opportunity. In fact, in addition to the one person I flirted the most with, there were at least three to four whom were in flirt periphery zone. If they flirted with the flame, the flame flirted back. But I didn't seek them out, I let them come to me. It's how I operate.

The only thing is, I had no right to flirt with my main objective, and for two reasons:

•Ostensibly, I am wanting to be with LL, and thusly shouldn't be wasting anyone's precious time by flirting and/or wanting to make out with him.
•(that this is second in the list to me speaks volumes) This guy has a girlfriend.

Major party foul.

I am not That Girl. I have made it my life's course NOT to be That Girl after an unfortunate months-long escapade* in which I was, and felt shitty about it the whole time and for months after. And even in the case of LL, when I found out the lines between him and me and his ex were all pretty fuzzy and blurry, rather than try to duke it out with some invisible opponent, I withdrew from competition, though rather ungraciously/ungracefully.

(If you are wondering, I have also been The Girl Who Cheated, once in my entire life and never again. I gave myself the worries so bad that I had a stomachache for a week. And all I got out of it was a broken gnome**.)

But because I was pretty tipsy and in the company of new and newer friends, I felt quite brazen, so the flirting was shameless, relentless, and, might I say, not ill-received. Even after it was apparent to us, and to others, that our flirtations were perhaps the subject of much ire from a certain woman, we didn't stop. I can't say anything for him, as I'll probably never be allowed in the same room as him, much less talk to him, but I was a flirt-snowball rolling down the hill, picking up momentum and purpose every inch of the way. And I don't know why.

Yes, he was adorable, and awesome, and we had a lot in common, but not so much as to be creepy. But he has a girlfriend. And having also been in the position where a girl was hitting on my boyfriend, it is not a fun thing to behold, and I know that, emotionally and intellectually. I knew all this, I knew all this and more and it didn't stop me. (Or might I add, him) Was it because I honestly didn't expect anything more to happen, and thus felt secure enough in that to let the flirting continue? Or was it because I honestly thought something (negative) might happen between them and I would walk away the victor, maybe not that night but the next, or next week, or next month, or next year?

I wish I knew the answer. The truth is, I'm no better off today than I was four or five days ago; I don't know any better why I did it. I know that if I had a boyfriend like that, I wouldn't be mad at him all the time; but if I had a boyfriend like that, I would be mad at any girl that tried to get with him; but if I had a boyfriend like that, I'd treat him so nicely that he'd like me so much that he wouldn't flirt back; but who knows? I don't have a boyfriend like that - or any boyfriend - so all I'm saying is mere conjecture and random rambling.

Do I want to be with LL? Yes. Even if it doesn't last, I need to try it. Does that mean I'll keep waiting forever? No. Even if, as my friend Eric said, I need to move slowly with LL, like a glacier. He says glaciers always win. Win what? Win the game of having ships run into them and capsize and lots of people die? That game sounds unfun to me. Let's play Mille Bornes instead.

Do I think I could have had a shot with Mystery Guy? Well, that's a tough call. I'd normally say that in different circumstances - for both of us - yes (or at least a maybe), but then who knows what those circumstances might end up being. And maybe that's just magical thinking anyway - I want to pretend this could happen in my magical little world, because I know it won't, because he has a girlfriend.

My point is that I'm, in the words of the Pernice Brothers, "waiting for the wait to stop." And until the wait stops, I'll probably end up having little fits of this here and there. I hope it doesn't always turn into me flirting with girlfriended guys. I hope it never turns into that again!

Good lord, do I want this wait to stop.

*It was a case of "I'm not happy with her, she's not happy with me, you make me happy, but I can't break up with her right now." Which, I know, is the pre-marital version of "I don't love her anymore, she doesn't love me anymore, I love you, but with the kids and the new house we just bought... I can't just leave now." Rather, I know that NOW. At some point, I surely thought that he was going to leave her for me - when he was ready. Right. In any case, it was months of waffling before we did anything, and when we did I felt evil, which is a feeling I don't like to feel. I'm generally a pretty sweet person, though I have my moments erupting into sailor-or-truck-driver-worthy swearing on the road or playing video games.
**Which is definitely a story for another day. I mean it. I can't believe I haven't told the story of the Broken Gnome yet. It's a life-changer.