sing it one more time
February 28, 2010
Who owns hockey? Why, I believe that would be Canada.
You’d think this shot was from the women’s gold medal game if the score wasn’t different.
Posted by jodi on February 28, 2010 at 6.34pm
studio video!
February 27, 2010
Today’s video was supposed to be cutting a woodblock, but the wood gouges were forgotten at the Monastery. So instead, more drawing.
I’m trying out a new method for counting lines: instead of counting in my head how many lines are drawn in each section and adding up all of those numbers, I’m making a tally of every group of five lines. This way maybe I can watch cartoons on the laptop while I draw, or talk with Peter on Skype (will try it out tonight and see if the drawing and the conversation interfere with one another). Five is a number I can feel with my hand instead of keeping it in my head. I think.
Yes, I am listening to Ozzy Osbourne while I work. I realized while drawing today that I added Ozzy’s “Bark at the Moon” to my blip.fm playlist more than once; not sure what that reveals about me but there you have it (full disclosure: I have the LP too). A song, of course, is only as good as its bridge, and as you can hear in the video. . . well. Other cheesy songs I’m embarrassed to admit I like but which can probably be found more than once on my blip.fm playlist include Peter Murphy’s “Cuts you up” and Murray Head’s “One Night in Bangkok”. Don’t judge.
Posted by jodi on February 27, 2010 at 6.53pm
turn on the waterworks
February 26, 2010
The second and third periods of last night’s hockey game were dead boring, what with all of the scoring happening in the first few minutes of the game. But, whatever. We won!
That guy with the “GOLD CANADA GOLD” sign had a white helmet on his head with a flashing police car light on top. Somebody on flickr said that he was in the front row at every game, always with the same helmet and different signs. Hilarious. He must have spent a fortune on tickets.
I always feel so sad for the team that loses, though, because I am a sympathetic crier and can’t see people crying on the teevee without joining in (it makes no difference whether or not I’m actually moved, and in fact television doesn’t really move me very often and I’m mostly cynical even about the few shows I like; the crying’s just a visceral reaction. Or whatever the viscera of tear ducts are, I guess). I wish the Americans could have felt happier in celebrating their silver, but they all just looked so crushed that the medals ceremony was hard to watch. The Finns, on the other hand, were ecstatic, jumping around and making kissy-faces at the camera. So cute. Anyway, it was nice to see some people in the stands wearing Canada jerseys holding up American flags and shouting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” after the silver medals had been given out. Okay, actually that might have made me cry a little too. I’m a big old crybaby this week. Y’all should have seen me hoofing it up that snowy hill to work yesterday in the wind and blowing powdery snow. I was crying up a storm then, I tell you what.
Another thing frequently seen on the teevee these days that never fails to make me cry:
The Tim Hortons “welcome to Canada” ad. For the record, I’ve never cried over a Tim Hortons commercial in my life before, no matter how overly sentimental and mushily patriotic they are. This one, though, I can’t watch all the way through with dry eyes. Good thing all this hockey will be over soon and I won’t have any more reasons to watch teevee.
Awww.
Posted by jodi on February 26, 2010 at 5.51pm
i’ll show you mine
February 25, 2010
A comment thread on another website got me thinking: did I ever share my favourite pickup line story with y’all? I might have, but it’s short and sweet so here it is again anyway:
It was, I think, the summer of 1986; I was 14 years old and loitering around the playground of my old elementary school around 8:00 in the evening with a boy named Joe. Joe was a year or two older than me, 16 maybe. He hadn’t lived in our town long, having been recently shipped to the other parent while on probation for something about which I don’t know the details. The setting must have inspired him, because he suddenly, in the middle of an otherwise normal conversation, came out with the very juvenile suggestion “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. Then he whipped down his fly and displayed his junk, indistinct in the fading evening light and the shadow of the school building (thank goodness; teenager penis is something nobody ever needs to see). This was immediately followed by what is still one of the best lines I’ve ever heard: “Now that we’ve seen each other’s genitalia, maybe we should introduce them sometime?”. So smooth. Never mind that he hadn’t even seen mine.
Ever the deflector, I said “Don’t you have a curfew?”. To which he looked at his watch, swore, and lit off across the field and home.
In retrospect I’m surprised that boy even knew a big word like “genitalia”. And I wouldn’t be at all shocked to learn that he’d heard that line in a bad movie.
Posted by jodi on February 25, 2010 at 9.39am
student drawings
February 24, 2010
I’m a bit behind in posting student work and now have a rather large pile in my office waiting to be marked, photographed and handed back. Guess this weekend is for grading.
These are a few of the self portraits my Drawing II students did last month. For more you can check out the class flickr set.
Emily Evans
Nick Scarfone
Erikka Molenaar
Posted by jodi on February 24, 2010 at 9.13pm
in progress
February 22, 2010
A terrible photo, but you get the idea; a few of the drawings from last week. These will all have layers of woodblock printing on top of them. Of course.
They’re not meant to go together but I kind of like them stacked like this now that I see them together.
Posted by jodi on February 22, 2010 at 9.57pm
travel day
February 21, 2010
The French word for “take-off” is “décollage”. I love this. Coming unglued, or unstuck, from the earth’s surface.
Today was a good day for taking photos out an airplane window, but I only shot film today so gratification is not instant. This takes some getting used to. The icy Northern lakes, under a smooth white layer of snow criss-crossed with networks of tracks (snowmobiles? trucks?) were lovely from the air; not sure yet whether my sweet new lo-fi camera will be able to capture that detail.
The only digital photo of the day was this one, taken during an arse-numbingly long layover at Pearson Airport: Legwarmer #2, almost finished. It’s half a repeat longer than #1, and the longer length is better. It seems there is always a certain amount of rip-and-redo.
Posted by jodi on February 21, 2010 at 8.45pm
tacos are happy to see me
February 19, 2010
Posted by jodi on February 19, 2010 at 5.42pm
and all i wanted was a cut and blow dry
February 18, 2010
Posted by jodi on February 18, 2010 at 10.06pm
in which our heroine rides a wave of nostalgia and harbours wistful thougths for an evolving english language
February 17, 2010
I have nothing important to say. So let me show you something I bought!*
This is the same recipe box that my mom had when I was growing up. It’s also the same recipe box that Peter’s mom had, although unlike my mom, she never got rid of hers (my sister-in-law** has it now). I’d been keeping my eye out in secondhand and vintage stores for pretty much forever until I realized that everything ever made can be found online. And what would you know. I got one that’s in better shape than either my mom’s or my mother-in-law’s were (from this Etsy seller). It’s not even a rare thing, so I was able to pick and choose for quality and shipping costs. Yay! This brings me one teeny tiny step closer to my dream kitchen.
So one of my little projects for this summer will be writing out our favourite recipes (and some of the old family staples I’m always losing and having to phone my mom for, Mom can you tell me one more time how to make rhubarb pie/pumpkin bread/whatever-I-promise-I’ll-write-it-down-this-time?) onto cards so I can get rid of my overflowing binder and my floppy manila envelope of photocopies and the heavy stack of slips of scribbled-on paper stuck on the side of the fridge. The box did not come with the little section dividers I remember my mom’s box having, but that’s just as well, as most of those old 1970s categories are useless in a vegan home. Making my own dividers with letraset means I can have a whole section dedicated to TOFU! if I want. And a whole section dedicated to salsa. Hell, yeah.
Those Marina Jaques banana bran muffins are top notch, by the way. Not that I follow the recipe much, what with my picky eating habits and all.
*an old joke about a group of friends Peter and I used to hang out with a lot whose conversations (in which I wholeheartedly took part) seemed often to revolve around shopping adventures and the occasional “my new techie toy is better than your new techie toy” pissing contest.
**there has got to be a better set of words for extended family members gained through dedicated long term partnership that is quite deliberately NOT marriage. It feels like having made the life choice not to partake in the patriarchal institution of marriage dooms one to either using the “in-laws” terminology and thus being constantly thought of and mistaken for married OR having to use terms like “boyfriend” and “boyfriend’s sister’s long term partner” to describe people who, by dint of lifelong commitments made without the interference of state or church, are more than that. These words, much needed by contemporary families, should be:
1) short and to the point;
2) NOT trite and/or cutesy;
3) most definitely not a bunch of silly made up or pastiche words that any thinking person should be embarrassed to utter aloud (like, for instance, “ridonkulous” or “printstallation”).
Posted by jodi on February 17, 2010 at 8.23pm
