Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Well, sorry I haven't been posting. It's been a bit nuts lately. But you may rest assured that I am, in fact, back in the Boston area and I am, in fact, in most of one piece. Anywho, long blog, and probably boring as all heck. You know you love it, in Reality.
The end of the year involved a lot of work, and not much sleep. I wrote and got in my ADP final paper with some degree of ease... it ended up being on the history of the dog in art. Which, while not particularly fascinating, was at least not overly difficult to research. The final test for that class went tolerably, better than the midyear, anyways.
My final english paper took a very long time to write, and probably wasn't that good when I finished it. It was on how comic books dealt with the Western myth of genius. I used Batman in the '40s, Batman in the '80s, and the Watchmen as my examples. Blargh. Horrid. In fact, I'd really rather not think about it right now, so that's all you'll hear about it.
Er, then there was 24 hour comic day, which meant a lack of sleep and, ironically, a lack of good comic book drawing. Oh well. I know what to do differently for next year. High on the list of things to do is Giving Up on the Goddamned Crosshatching.
Then I had to pack up all of my stuff, which ended up being far more traumatizing than I had anticipated, mostly because I had managed to accumulate a startling amount of stuff. I hadn't realized that I'd bought quite so many books. I need to stop being able to read quickly. In fact, I now need new stuff to read, so if anyone's got suggestions they'd be quite welcome.
On Saturday my dad came to Ann Arbor to pick me up. We barely got everything into the car (the station wagon... my car, actually, now that my mother has the new Lexus. huzzah!) and had a small moment of fear when it seemed that a few things were not going to fit in. The back window was entirely blocked up, and there wasn't a inch of give anywhere, but by golly we got it all in.
Then, it being a nice day, we went down to the fabulous Starbucks on State Street, where I had spent much (probably too much) of my time this year. When we wandered back my hallmates were mildly angered because they thought I'd snuck off without saying goodbye. Lawd bless 'em.
That's probably the one main thing that does stink about leaving school for the summer... saying goodbye to my hallmates, and my art school buddies, and the few varied other kids from my LS&A classes (i.e. bio and english... I didn't talk to anyone in chemistry). Meh. I got to see lots of folks before I left, though... obviously I saw all the hall kids, I made Kevin stop by (he also took most of my extra food, which was useful), I went out for ice cream and a walk around campus with Heather, I had dinner with Helena, Joe stopped by for a lovely chat (causing my hallmates to titter mercilessly... yes, I mean you, Beth and Amanda), I hung about in Starbucks with Tom and Josh... and I ran into various art folk at random times. Lovely folks, all. IT'S A PITY NONE OF THESE PEOPLE LIVE IN BOSTON.
miss you already, first jo!
Enough of that malarky. That night my dad and I had dinner at Buddy's, which is very good pizza. The Redwings game had just ended (the one with the awesome fight against Calgary), and lots of the people there had Redwings jerseys on. Delightful. Then I actually got to sleep, which was, at that point, something of a novelty for me.
The next day we went to the Tigers/Indians game at Comerica Park, which was a pretty good time, despite the fact that the Tigers lost. They still won that series, so I guess it was OK. The people behind us had all sorts of wisdom to impart during the game... for instance: "So when he's got three balls up and no strikes, I like to say, 'Here comes the chicken!' Like right now, see. HERE COMES THE CHICKEN.'" or "This is much better than old Tiger Stadium... here you worry about if it's gonna rain or not. There you never knew if it was rain or the pipes leaking. Like, is that rain, or did someone just flush?" All of this, of course, in a midwestern accent. Oh, and of course there was a hot dog salesman who was doing opera. Wonderous.
That night we went out to dinner with my Bubbie, Uncle Al, Aunt Suzi, and cousins Sam and Joey. We went to a kosher restaurant in their JCC (Jewish Community Center, for those who don't know), which is about a million times bigger and fancier than our JCC is. I mean... restaurant! In the JCC! Apparently they also have some sort of art gallery, and a massive multi-level gym with, I don't know, an indoor track and other stuff. Madness of the highest degree.
Then we went to sleep (early) and got up again (very early) so we could get on the road by 5:45 am (it ended up being 5:55, but hey, I tried). We didn't have any trouble at either of the borders. The drive through southern Ontario was painfully boring, as it always is (so damn flat), and New York was long, but less boring (mountains!).
We amused ourselves by having Highway Birdwatch 2004. We saw several hawks, most of which were unidentified (one was either a Cooper's or a Sharpshin, but I can never tell the difference), a couple of turkey vultures (big, big scary vultures), about 8 million redwinged blackbirds (mostly in Canada, for whatever reason), one owl (sitting in a tree, watching the road), and one very big, very surreal-looking wild turkey (they just shouldn't exist in the wild!). My dad also saw a fox (!), but I was zoning out so I missed it.
There were also, of course, a few horses in some scattered farms, and for a stretch in Canada (er, or maybe it was New York, I'm not positive on this) we saw ALL THE COWS. Oh, and there was a lot of roadkill in Detroit... not squirrels, big roadkill. I think a lot of them were raccoons, which is sad, because I really like raccoons. *sniffle*
It started raining pretty hard somewhere in New York, which wasn't too good for driving. It stayed drizzly all the way into Massachusetts, but I was quite happy to get back anyways. You in-state folks have no idea how seriously excited you can get driving along Lynnshore Drive when you've been away for two or more months. All that ocean... ah, 'tis heavenly, even on a rainy day.
We made quite good time, so the drive (plus stops) took a little under 12 hours, which is great. Then I had cats, and My Own Room, and my mother made her ambrosial macaroni from scratch. Aaaah yes.
That's about it. Today I met Jess at Fanueil Hall in Boston for lunch, which was delicious and enjoyable, as the weather was good, and it was of course lovely to see Jess again. It was good to drive out to Wonderland, since I hadn't really driven in ages. After lunch we immediately reverted to our usual mode of operation, which is "What do you want to do?" "I dunno, what do you want to do?" "I dunno, what do you want to do?" and so on ad infinitum.
We ended up heading down to the Aquarium to say hello to the seals, who were sunning themselves and generally being painfully cute. When the number of small children got intolerably high we left. Having nothing in particular to do, we decided to go on a Great Peregrination.
We wandered randomly and somehow ended up at the old federal court house (now the state court house... the federal court house got moved to that big new building fronting the harbor). Then we wandered around to Downtown Crossing, the Public Garden/Boston Commons, and Copley. Covered most of the city, as you can see. Good times.
I later realized I hadn't photoshopped anything properly in eons, so I knocked out this pleasant little critter just to see how rusty I was. Not bad, but not great, apparently. Oh well.
Hee hee hee. This is so true. And therefore funny.
So. Apparently Corey's animation is going to be showing at the ICA in Boston on May 8. Eh, the tickets are a slightly steep $20, but but but! The ICA! That's a big fucking deal! If you're in the area at all and have the slightest inclination towards going, I think you ought to go.
Eeep, OK, this has been long enough. Until the next, mes amis.
9:05 PM
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