OOJ: Frankenveggietato

impressive, no? created by the hard-working guys at new brothers restaurant + deli in danvers, ma.

OOJ: Frosty the Chicago Bulls Fan

credits: reina, leah, matty, jvz

Kids, Try This At Home!

credits: pooh, amy, + tiffany

materials needed to create your very own dunkin' donuts eiffel tower:

• 50 dunkin' donuts munchkins, assorted colors 
• about 12 coffee stirrers swiped from dunkin' donuts
• large plate
• optional: lego ppl positioned on top and around it
• optional: a sugary glaze to hold it together better

Travel Tip of the Day

do NOT wear a metallic sweater when flying- the gold threads in my sweater set off the machine + i got a patdown. on the other hand, if you want a patdown, now you know what to do.

tip #2: dallas fort worth (DFW) airport has birds living in it! go wait for the skylink shuttle that connects all the terminals + look up. you'll probably hear the chirping first; at first i thought the airport was playing bird sounds to soothe travelers. then i looked up + saw these little round birds hopping around the beams in the ceiling. i wonder if they're happy there, like maybe dfw is a bougie bird neighborhood. 

loss part II

this is what happens when you lose someone you love:

this someone you lost, i will call him/her "your person".

when you first lose your person, your mind + body are confused. suddenly someone who was so important to you is no longer interacting with you. for a while, your mind + body may try to fabricate new interactions, to sustain your person's presence in your life. you may catch glimpses of your person, usually in crowded public places, like airports or cafes. you see the back of someone's head, shaved high + tight, like how your person used to do. you hear a voice that could almost be your person, but then the voice continues to make noise, no longer sounding anything like your person. each time this happens, you realize you are looking at or listening to a stranger. the disappointment is crushing.

over time, the mental image you have of your person begins to dissolve around its edges. you find that you no longer have a crisp picture of your person in your mind. this can be extremely upsetting. after all, what else do you have left of your person besides your memories? photos, clothes, letters- these are really nothing more than objects that cue memories of your person. but ppl say memories betray us; in other words, memories- what are they anyway? molecules? firing synapses?- have no loyalty towards preserving what you remember of your person, which is the only way your person exists for you now.

loss

after a natural disaster- hurricane, tsunami, tornado- the to-do list consists of clear, concrete items to be checked off: assess the damage, clear the debris, rebuild. it can be an overwhelming list, but eventually most items will be crossed off the list.

after an unnatural disaster, such as a school shooting of any size, the lack of concrete needs can be unsettling, both to the families who are directly experiencing loss and to the people around them who are watching them experience this loss. these families aren't lacking in physical needs- food, clothing, shelter- but their aching need for the deceased family member to return is impossible for anyone to remedy. there are no benefit concerts or telethons to organize, just frozen lasagnas left on the doorstep and words that attempt to convey feelings about an event that never should have happened in the first place. there is no aid for this kind of rebuilding: the construction of The Rest Of Your Life. 

OOJ: When Do We Get To Stop.

explanation: santa is throwing berries to rudolf to keep his energy up. rudolf is tired because he is the only reindeer pulling the sleigh. he has a magic water bowl that flies next to his mouth. brilliant.

a song for my fellow grinches

i typically can't stand holiday music: the relentless cheerfulness, the outdated references (bells on a sleigh?), the blatant disregard for the stress + sadness that comes with the holidays each year for so many families. don't even get me started on the ridiculousness of the santa myth. but if there's one thing that can turn my frown upside down, it's the Roots. i just can't look at questlove (far left) and not smile. throw in some jimmy fallon, 4 cute kids, and ok, i guess you can join in too, mariah carey, and you have a production that even i will hum along with: "All I Want For Christmas Is You"

the day the music died

sundays

my sundays start with poetry:
alexie, giovanni- but not corral,
his book has a twisted mass of black snakes on the cover
no way that's coming near my bed

my sundays start in bed:
blankets like the earth's layers,
mantle, crust, outer core
myself, the inner core

my sundays start with clear blue sky:
this is albuquerque, after all
silence, sunshine, gratitude
refuge

turkey is so boring

all i want for thanksgiving is some handmade dumplings + meatballs.

and of course, dessert:

El Kookooee

every year on the last sunday of october, El Kookooee goes up in flames in south valley, abq. there's no wikipedia entry for "el kookooee", but i think it comes from "el cucuí", a bogeyman character who comes for kids who don't behave (the terror method of parenting). south valley's el kookooee is 30 feet tall, designed by a local elementary school student, and eats your fears. hundreds of ppl gather to write their troubles on slips of paper that are then stuffed into el kookooee and torched as everyone cheers wildly. i watched my fears vanish into ash in a matter of minutes.

OOJ: Have You Smiled Today?

spotted on the sidewalk at lead ave SE + harvard st SE

OOJ: edible art

this kid is not getting much nutrition from the school lunch, 

but at least she's developing her creative side.

courtesy of a 5th grader at pajarito elementary, abq, nm

i wish every day were halloween

me as troy polamalu, pittsburgh steelers strong safety:

i love having all that hair!

the real troy:

i really wanted a helmet, but they cost $70 :(

OOJ: Chocolate Rex

spotted along highway 4 near the jemez dam in jemez springs, NM: chocolate rex and friends!

Warehouse 21, Santa Fe, NM

spent an afternoon in santa fe watching "Mosquita y Mari", a sweet, sad film that was shown at Warehouse 21, a community center for under-21s, complete with a cluster of scruffy, skinny kids playing hacky sack outside the front door. Warehouse 21 offers arts programs for kids and has some great mural work (see below) on site. "M y M" stars a luminous 17-year-old (17!), Fenessa Pineda, playing a high school sophomore who perfectly captures the wide-eyed hopefulness of life at that time, maybe because she's at that point in her own life in reality. when i was that age, i was absolutely convinced that if i could manage to move out of home and get out on my own, my life would only get better. looking back, you could not pay me enough to be a kid living with my parents again, but for all the hurt of those years, it was the only time in my life where i felt like anything was possible if i worked hard enough. i guess i was lucky to have even had that feeling, no matter how brief- some kids have a hard time even picturing a life different from what they know. which is why places like Warehouse 21 are so critical for kids; check out their website!

OOJ: Technicolor Cake

an ode to the miracle of food coloring

OOJ: Mean Bao bakery, ABQ

clockwise, from top left: homemade pineapple cake, custard swirl bread,
green tea sweet milk roll, mango/coconut sweet milk roll, egg custard tart
(dan tat), char siu bao, sesame chicken bao

while abq has many charms, good asian food is not one of them. so when i heard a taiwanese bakery (Mean Bao) had opened on central ave, i ran to see it for myself as soon as the weekend came and bought myself one of almost everything (i passed on the whoopie pie- no, that's not a traditional taiwanese pastry). and while i might be able to find better baos in L.A., these treats were more than adequate to satisfy my taipei nostalgia.   

OOJ: Bruno Mars diorama

another stunning student project. 

you have to look closely, but those are little paper people sitting in all those red seats.

also check out the dope spelling of "morphine".

OOJ: edible revolutionary war diorama

this student masterpiece is his representation of the revolutionary war.

he was a little fuzzy on what's exactly going on here, but he says that

marshmallow in the upper right corner is benjamin franklin.

OOJ: Gangnam Style

tears pricked at my allergy-parched eyes as i drove home from work today. the reason: for the first time in my life, i was hearing an asian language pop song on mainstream US radio. it was similar to the moment i first saw a little white kid wearing an ichiro mariners jersey in seattle- after having grown up w/ppl telling me that asians were nerds/boring/unathletic/etc., here was a sign of recognition by mainstream society that, yes, asians can be cool. bruce lee, while undisputedly universally cool, is not exactly current. think about it: how many asian celebrities can most ppl name? and by "name", i mean actually state his/her name- not, "well, there's that asian guy on Lost." 

now we have Psy- a megastar rapper from south korea who logged in hours as a student at the berklee college of music and boston univ. Psy's "Gangnam Style" is "sweeping the nation", according to the perpetually tanned ryan seacrest . when ryan seacrest uses that phrase to describe your song, you know you've gotten your 15 minutes of fame (and a possible future slot on B-list celebrity reality shows). Psy even made an appearance at the VMAs, the freakin' epicenter of american pop culture- when else have we ever heard anyone speaking an asian language from the stage of the VMAs??? 

as Psy makes the rounds of american talk shows, i'm a little worried that he is nothing more than a momentary pet of the fickle american media, an exotic creature from overseas who does a funny dance and makes ppl laugh. when the media tires of him, he'll go back to being a superstar in south korea. but for now, while there's a korean pop song (which really sounds no different than any LMFAO track) in the rotation on an abq radio station, i'll feel like there's something on the airwaves that represents me. 

listen for yourselves:
"Gangnam Style" by Psy

Song of the Day: Lianne La Havas, "Is Your Love Big Enough?"

it's been months since i've heard something that grabbed at my insides, but here is young (23) British songwriter/guitar player Lianne La Havas, who's playing with Alicia Keys at the London iTunes festival. oh to be young + gorgeous + talented + noticed. 

"Is Your Love Big Enough?"
"Age"

i hate listening to white people talk about cultural competency

today i gritted my teeth through a mandatory "New Mexico Cultural and Linguistic Competency" training. while i'm all for ppl not acting stupid towards other ppl, i hate how theoretical and depersonalized these trainings are. we are told that racism happens (*gasp*), but we aren't asked to consider how we ourselves commit racist and oppressive acts against others. i put my time to good use though: i punched out a few sheets of paper stencils and used the scraps to create this lovely piece of art.

OOJ: Uh, is that a milk jug on the highway?

found this smack in the middle of the villanueva exit ramp off I-25S.

i'm dying to know the story of how it got there. 40 minutes later it was gone.

Hatch Chile Festival

this past wkend, we made the 3 hr drive south to Hatch, NM, home of the beloved Hatch green chile pepper. we watched with mouths open as trucks carrying chile worshippers from TX, AZ, and CA lined up to buy sack after giant sack of chile peppers, their truckbeds lined with open coolers waiting to receive roasted chile goodness. Hatch residents claim their tastebuds can tell a Hatch green chile apart from other (lesser) green chiles, that it has a different flavor from other peppers. i don't know enough about peppers to confirm this, but i know i've never seen so many ppl drive from so far to stock up on one specific food. 

chile ristras- decorative clusters of peppers found hanging outside doors of homes throughout NM 

OOJ: Roadrunners are real!

they're real! but this one didn't say "meep, meep!" 

POD: Word Poem by Nikki Giovanni

pastels, Art Stix

lately, i've been feeling weighed down by numerous things: the inescapable ABQ dust; stories ppl tell me about their struggles; earwax, bellybutton lint, even the grease in my hair. at times like these, my energy tends to get sucked into thinking about absences in my life- mostly ppl i miss, but also things i haven't done or things i should be doing better. to combat the weight, i've been making more art + working my way through The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. 

Word Poem (Perhaps Worth Considering)

as things be/come
let's destroy
then we can destroy
what we be/come
let's build
what we become
when we dream

OOJ: Dirt Art

abq ppl call this time of year "monsoon season", which means most afternoons, the sky lets loose and dumps tons of water on the city for 30 minutes. if i were a monsoon, i'd be insulted that these intense but brief thunderstorms are called monsoons. it's nothing compared to days of nonstop rain in other parts of the world, but i guess if you live in the desert, any sustained rain feels like a monsoon. the happy part is, at least we have some moisture in the air now. in june, we were at 7% humidity. these days we get a whopping 29%. when it rains, it floods, and then we get a ginormous puddle/mini-lake at school, which dries up in a few hours, leaving interesting dirt patterns on the ground. i have no idea how the dirt curls up like that, but it makes for a great sculpture.

OOJ: Chile Roasting Season Begins!

lovely New Mexico chiles + a propane-powered chile roaster

there we were, driving down the street in abq on another hot summer afternoon, when suddenly, we saw what we'd been waiting for all summer: large black iron mesh cylinders parked on the side of the road, givers of roasted spicy green chile goodness. tires squealing, we u-turned and pulled in alongside the chile roasters, rousing a guy who'd been snoozing in the shade, hat pulled down on his face. he gave us a choice of regular, extra hot, or "XXX"- of course we picked the hottest one. as i got back into the car, i felt like a "real" New Mexican. one year in abq, woot!

OOJ: Big Wheels

seen at a gas station in Espanola, NM. 

if you look closely, you can see the toy car is strapped down. 

there was an additional grownup 4X4 to the left of the green one in this pic, 

which made the contrast even funnier. 

OOJ: Nathan Adrian

i know, i'm a day behind on the Olympics- there's just so much to watch. 

today's OOJ is possibly the most beautiful man at the 2012 Olympics:

Nathan Adrian, a 23-year-old cutie from Washington. 

forget Lochte/Phelps- i wanna see more of this one.

Ewww of the Day

i usually have a pretty good poker face when it comes to kids + the stuff they show me, but i gotta admit i had a strong reaction when i saw these two dried out frogs sitting in the palm of a third grader's hand. what a way to go.

OOJ: Fish I Have Loved

while i don't like to eat fish, i've always felt happier when looking at fish. besides just being inherently cool + zen, fish are also culturally cool for me b/c "fish" in mandarin sounds like the word for "luck", which is why ppl bust out tons of fish during big holidays. "fish" in mandarin also sounds like the last character in my chinese name- more points for fish. lately, i've been gifted with lots of fish prints- from pajama pants to a fabulous red carryall bag (look closely: the mouth is a zipper!!!), which my PR immediately pronounced "the most useless bag ever", which just proves how un-fishworthy he is.

OOJ: High As An Elephant's Eye

i know nothing about nature. i came up on paved streets + malls- i can name maybe 3 kinds of trees (maple, fir, pine- wait is fir + pine the same thing? oh, birch! birch is a tree) but i can rattle off 50 chain clothing stores. i definitely didn't know sunflowers can grow to over 10 feet tall. i found these sunflowers in the school garden, which owes its existence to Mr. Goss, 4th-5th gr. special ed teacher, who spends his breaks teaching kids how to grow stuff. (he's also the one responsible for the Matilda sculptures from an earlier post). 

my south valley kids, who live in a world of fields + ditches (every story they tell me seems to involve a ditch- "we were down by the ditch when..."), know so much more than i do about the natural world. some of it is accurate. one kid showed me how to pluck sunflower seeds from the middle of the flower- you can eat them straight from the plant! it's weirdly wet. another kid scoffed at me when i referred to these as "giant sunflowers". he claims he's seen ones that are as tall as a house. 

here's another find from school. this one freaked me out a little. 

i still can't look at the photo for very long. the kids say it's a crayfish, but how in the world did it end up on a bone dry, rocky patch in an elementary school? don't these things live in water? it looks like a lobster, so it must live in water, right? but scorpions do too, kind of, but they live in desert. is it a scorpion?

NFF: BWI Airport, Concourse C, Hanover, Maryland

sunday, 15 july 2012
12:46 pm

the most eerily empty airport concourse i've been in yet. there were maybe 7 ppl in line for security, so i found myself at my assigned gate an hour early. in a concourse with 16ish gates, only 3 were open. the other gates didn't even have chairs in them- just huge expanses of carpet and windows. two girls took advantage of the space to play a shrieking game of tag. i claim an empty gate for myself, feeling like a rock star- so much luxurious room to stretch + journal + reflect on the past weekend in maryland, where i spent sweet times w/old friends. after almost a year in a new city, it's a kind of relief to hang out w/ppl who know where i came from, both geographically + psychically. i don't have to explain myself.

another little girl in pigtails clomps by with all the arrogance that comes with being 4 years old. something is off about her gait; i look down at her feet and realize she's wearing a pair of high-heeled women's clogs. she is followed by a 10-year-old boy and a bag-laden woman with only brown socks on her feet.

view from airplane on the approach into abq

7.10.1981

grainy flashes, reel-to-reel
coconut cream frosting
my dirty nubby dress
you: silent
me: silent


evolution: spiky soft hair to high + tight
nursery rhymes to Nas
soft bone to hard muscle

i left you behind with violence.


i'm so sorry.

baby boy
come back

OOJ: Assvengers Assemble

Mark Bolk's brilliant re-rendering of a Marvel's Avengers cover illustration.

props to Mark Bolk, a Washington, D.C. illustrator, for spoofing Marvel Comics' Avengers by drawing the men in classic comic book female poses. i especially love the expression on Black Widow's face- "WTF, guys???" Bolk's version of Hulk is also endearing. brilliant stuff.

OOJ: Brave

today's Object Of Joy (OOJ) is Pixar/Disney's new animated movie, Brave, which stars Merida, Disney's first truly badass princess. ever since Snow White in 1937, Disney princesses have been ridiculously powerless- trapped in death-like sleep (SW, Sleeping Beauty), mute (Ariel), or more commonly unable to solve their own problems and reduced to following other, wiser people's instructions (Cinderella, Jasmine).  Mulan was tolerable, but she had to prove her strength by hiding her true identity and pretending to be a guy. Pocahontas was a terribly eroticized, exoticized revision of history (no joke, turn off the sound and watch her first few scenes when she's running through the forest: you see a woman with a body like Beyonce's in a skimpy dress that looks like it's going to fall off her any second, whipping her hair around in the wind). Tiana was spunky and had career ambitions of opening her own restaurant, but still gave up her dreams in order to save a boy she loved (similarly to Belle, who sacrificed her life for her father). these movies all typically ended with a kiss, if not a wedding, as the princess and her true love (always a boy) lived happily ever after, seeding millions of children with the holographic truth that life success = smooching a light-skinned boy.

how can pixels create hair that looks like this???

enter Princess Merida, who acts entitled, as princesses are, and self-centered, as teenagers are. the story is driven by her quest to fix a mistake that was born out of her entitlement and self-centeredness. my favorite moment comes early in the movie when Merida shows up at an archery tournament (where the winner wins her hand in marriage, of course) and declares to the crowd: "My name is Merida and I'll be shooting for my own hand!" oh, i whooped big when i heard that! and also promptly started crying because finally, finally, here is a girl who does not need a man to feel whole or loved. even more incredibly, the movie ends with nary a kiss- in fact, male characters are mostly sidelined, existing mostly as buffoons or spectators. 


i am not naive enough to think that this movie marks a new beginning in heroine movies. but it is enough for me, for now, that it exists and that children will see it, this new heroine who has both the confidence to break with tradition and the humility to take responsibility for poor decisions.

eating hot dogs in a thunderstorm

wildfire hazed sky

strange times in abq. yesterday afternoon, a wildfire erupted in corrales, about 15 miles away. it's still going on, 100 acres strong (is there another verb for wildfires besides "raging"?), cloaking the sky in a thick, brownish haze that turned reddish as the sun went down tonight. and then to make things even weirder, the sky suddenly cracked upon and dumped football stadiums full of rain on our bone-dry city (ok, not the right metaphor, but i couldn't think of a bigger water holder than a bathtub). once it started pouring, there was nothing more for me to do than roast some hot dogs in the toaster, sit back, and watch the lightning show.  

OOJ: Taos Pottery

before this weekend, i never would have claimed to be interested in pottery. sure, i'd seen pretty plates and cups before, painted and glazed in controlled decorative patterns, but that kind of pottery did not get much of a reaction out of me besides, "that's nice." 

then i went to Taos, NM for a weekend to flee the ABQ heat. it was almost noon; i was in line for ice cream at Taos Cow ice cream behind two people who were taking a very long time deciding which flavors they wanted. i gave up on ice cream and wandered across the street into Rottenstone Pottery studio. suddenly i was in a room full of pottery as i'd never seen it before: powerful, roughly shaped pieces that somehow managed to evoke the desert landscape. looking at one of these pieces was like staring out a window. Scott, the owner, explained how it works: the pigments and patterns on his pieces don't come from colored glaze, but from the ash of the wood that feeds the kiln. wood from different areas give off ashes that produce distinctive effects. my favorite pieces had earth-colored ribbons that resembled a landscape, like the mug in the bottom left corner of the photo above. Scott said those pieces had been fired with wood from Kalamazoo, MI. twice a year, he loads up his truck with clay and drives up to Kalamazoo to create pieces there. i love the idea of art pieces that carry geographical imprints of where they were created.

Scott also carries work from other local artists. i fell in love with these owls (center photo), carved out of found burnt wood by Duane O'Hagan, who also carved the other spirit birds shown. 

and finally, a sign from the Taos Gorge Bridge rest area. i love it.

OOJ: stump face

when school is out, i make lots of home visits to keep in touch with my kids. 

i found today's OOJ in the front yard of one of my kids' homes.

the kids said they found it in the ditch last week and rolled it home.

in many of my kids' stories, there is a ditch involved.