Survelliance

Lately, in full game-design mode at job-job, I find myself people watching in earnest. This is my morning commute on the F. 

She Sure is {Totally Don Draper}

A few seasons ago I was on a date with a Weiden+Kennedy storyboard artist. He looked me dead in the eye and said "So basically, I'm Don Draper." Well, color me impressed! Sometimes the boys know just how to get those gams to fly head over heels. I think it may have been the hardest I ever had to work to keep my eyes from rolling to the sky. Considering my AP Calc teacher used to teach in Pidgen, that is saying something.  In recounting this story over brunch (or several brunches) it is clear women in NYC have had a fella' lead with this line before....

These Madmen posters have been making quite the buzz around town. As their popularity grew, it became apparent that my chance to return to my Clinton Hill, Pratt kid tagging roots just wasn't going to come. I started carrying a sharpie and loitering in corners.

Since good things come to girls who wait, they pasted one up at Carroll Street yesterday. Poised at the ready last night, I realized, "Who am I to steal this moment?" In the dark deserted station,
restless in anticipation, I turned introspective....

 I snake charmed an Italian man in to standing guard at my canvas. Some dollars and a run through CVS later, I found myself back downstairs, where I velcro'd a washable Crayola and some baby wipes to a wall with my twitter handle.

Here are my favorites thus far, because I am not Don Draper, but maybe you are ;). I'm a children's book writer and a K-3 animator, and I believe everybody gets a turn....well I guess that's Don's philosophy too, in a sense.

I don't know if you can make this out, but they've labeled that cow and pig. Genius.





 

Poems on an underground wall.

She Sure is {Sketchy} - Splish Splash

I stood there in the snow, the sand at my back and grinned. 

I take a huge stock in Birthday month. Birthday month is nothing to scoff at. On the last day of that birthday year that I get to spend as the age I am, I sketch like a madwoman and with real intent, my goal to freeze that day in time with a pencil. 

This year, I had to decide, what was I to do with this precious window of time?? It needed to be perfect. So of course in the dead of winter, I boarded the F train and made my way down to Coney Island, USA.  In the solitude and quiet of winter this part of Brooklyn is a spiritual experience of sorts.  

Friends offered to slough the day off of their job-job with me, but I declined. I wanted to commune in the best way I know how, just me, at the aquarium with my sketchbook.

This perfectly perfect day gave me 3 wishes that I have never had filled
in ways each wish was so wonderful that I didn't even know I had it until its criteria had been met.

#1) See an otter bang open a shell. I know we see this on National Geographic DVDs that we all watch religiously....anybody? anybody?  There's no way we get to see this stuff in real life. I was standing there, sketching this guy when a gigantic shell floated down from the aquarium feeding gods above. His delight when he caught it with his little paws was that of a boy on Christmas morning. He immediately went to work slamming it against the glass between me the two of us. He'd turn in spirals and then bang it against the nearest rock before stuffing it in his cheeks to gnaw at it. I was so overcome I barely had time to whip out my pastels. I got a few great gestures in. These two were my fave.

#2) See Sea Horses that are happy and not stoic and creepy in that 'pet store' way. I love sea horses, but somehow they always look so sad. The seahorses at the aquarium were CRAZY. When they are properly cared for sea horses are animated, they're silly, they're goofy centers of attention.

I had a long talk with a marine biologist while I was there, she was in charge of counting babies and making sure everybody got fed. How lucky to be there for feeding time! "Hey, I'm a children's book illustrator, what really important things do you know about sea horses from working here?"

-- "Oh they're the best thing in the ocean but they're dumb as hell."
The quotable biologist hipster (who I am currently designing a tattoo for) let me know that if I was doing a book on seahorses, they needed to look stupid, but lovable. I tried my best.

#3) Change an opinion I've had since childhood. I'm just going to say it. I've never been a fan of seals. Shocking, right? I've been called out on this before, so I'm used to the persecution that comes with abstaining from public mass hysteria for this particular water beast. 

Out in the cold for so long, I forgot all about the time. No one was really at the aquarium on a snowing 18 degree day, soooo no one came to kick me out.  I found myself there way past closing time. See? I told you, this was a perfect day. I was cornered in a segment that houses seals and not much else. When I least expected it, that's where I fell in love. This particular seal takes the prize for the most human behavior I've ever seen in an animal. It was a birthday miracle come true.

Wet and scruffy around the ears, he looked like a teenager dead set on growing his hair out. It stuck out in strange directions all over his head. I could imagine him running pomade through it while his mother scoffed at his vanity. He was perched on a rock overlooking the water.

When I was in the sixth grade we went on a family vacation to Las Vegas. It was there that my kid brother was formally introduced to two things, swimming pools without closing times, and the indomitable all-you-can-eat-buffet. Two days in and about 10 hours behind his normal sleeping schedule, full of everything he could eat in one setting I thrilled to realize he was falling asleep in his heaping bowl of ice cream. Having been allowed a place where there were no limits, he had become a lost boy. He snored into his strawberry with sprinkles, and to this day, I remind him of it when we are on a great vacation or when he's doing something as simple as splitting an ice cream sandwich.

So there he was. This seal was my kid brother, three sheets to the wind with a tummy full of rocky road. He was the kid in class who is trying with all his might to stay awake. I laughed and laughed all alone in the snow and the cold sketching to my hearts delight until I couldn't feel my fingers.

You know how you're next to the guy on the train who is drifting off against his will? That's this guy. He'd doze off, snout closer and closer to his chest until SNAP! He'd jerk his head up. "I'm awake! I'm awake, guys!" At one magical moment he fell SMACK! in to the water. The panic in his face when he jumped up and looked around was the same as a five year old who falls out of bed. "What just happened!?!?!" He calmed down, curled up in a fetal position in with his flippers interlocked, too exhausted to get up out of the water where he went right back in to his "stay awake! stay awake!" routine. Every once in a while he'd raise one arm high in to the air, the better to scratch his nose with.

It was the biggest delight in all my aquarium years, and  you know that's saying a lot. Happy weekend! I'm off to fantasize with people like me at this year's annual Society of Children's book Writers and Illustrators.
This month just keeps on giving! I told you birthday month was serious.

She Sure is {Classy} - Happy Birthday Nails

The nice part of living in NYC is the stuff that is just par for the course.
You have a birthday, you get your nails did.

 

  

That's how we roll.

She Sure is {Sketchy}: Walking in a Wonderland

This weekend was my kind of Brooklyn winter dayz. We tapped out at 52 degrees and I wore a denim jacket. It felt like the first day of Spring, the thing I always want for Christmas.

 I slept in (exhausted after an evening of pure bliss in Gowanus). I danced to Spoon in my pajamas -- A very important part of a balanced weekend. I put on one layer of clothing. I grabbed my en plein air kit and shuffled out of the Penthouse at 302 Court without a stitch of make-up or any semblance of plans. I rambled along Henry. I skipped along Sackett. After a long and ambling time I copped a squat at the park to draw some chillins dressed like JCrew models. It happened fast because they hadn't been unleashed without coats in so long their batteries were on full. These are speed sketches.

I read "my slutty book". In evening time I juggled a bit of nothing and nothing to meet a friend at Zaytoons -- the kind of friend that had a baby and moved to Jersey and craves grape leaves --which means I did not have to even leave my burrough (or my block for that matter) AND I ate Shwarma. Yesiree, never any day better. At the day's end, I danced to Spoon in my jeans. I did dishes. I baked zucchini-nut muffins like a boss. I made terse and hilarious innuendo with K. I took a shower hot enough to melt the paint off a Honda. I got back in my pajamas. I watched Felicity (the one where the Christmas tree catches on fire, you know which one). I worked on my new top secret animation project. I got a phone call. I changed out of my pajamas back in to ONE layer, people. I ran to Camp, for a nightcap where I met a man I haven't seen in many moons.....
oh and there were sparklers. Did I mention the sparklers?

This is Brooklyn. 

It is perfect.

She Sure is {Classy} -- Happy New Year!

Every year, just past the stroke of midnight, from the beginning of my memory, my family throws wax. Since I left home ten years ago, I have carried this tradition to every New Year's Eve bash I've rung out the old and rushed in the new at. Last night was no exception. It is my favorite part of new beginnings - something that never loses its magic and awe. There is nothing like a fortune cast in fresh white relief.  2012  will have dragons, or dogs... or something wild and animal like. Happiest of happy New Years!

I Cut My Heart on Paper

Never $plurge on something renewable. That is the life lesson I have learned from Sephora. This month of holiday cheer, when I am happier than yesteryear due to our brilliantly warm December weather, Sephora has reached into their hearts and given NYC their own version of a White Christmas.  I give you their show-stopping 5th avenue windows.

Paper, Silhouettes, Grand Scale, Birch Trees, Warm light and Girls! Girls! Girls! -- All my favorite things!

Now if I could only justify a life's supply of Hourglass...

A New York Minute

I would like to keep a journal, but I don't. Instead I now bullet point my life in NYC dot by little dot. Here's this week on the grid.
Disclaimer/Warning this post contains mustaches and nudity (incidentally if you are uncomfortable with either you should scale back the blogs that you read by people who live in Brooklyn)

•  I took a day off from job-job (running out of these) to join my European Fam Bam at the Bronx Zoo! 

• I realized that when it comes to one of my most vain personal goals, a manicure is the difference between sex kitten stems and tiny  finger nail crescent nubs
• I subsequently returned to Amy at Court Street Nails for a manicure. Now I'm ready to shake hands and get biz done again
• I rediscovered this go-to of my youth
  <--------------------------------------
   I had to search high and low at multiple establishments before I found these. I thought it was for naught. Fifteen minutes in to the pore process I remembered how it used to be before I lived above a spa and became a NYC version of myself. I once loved this approach to clean skin. I loved it the way I once adored fifty cent tacos, Troll Doll earrings and Kriss Kross. The entire experience was very montage-y to me. To cap it off...
• I shed a lone tear for the time lost without this once true friend (also because tearing these things off hurt like a mother)
• I had two of my favorite friends over for a lovely gab session about long term goals. I'm going through a personal renaissance these days. It is wildly reassuring to have friends to share the things nearest and dearest to your heart
• I watched my very favorite cartoon {Phineas and Ferb} with a new friend (I'm trying to fill the gaping hole left by the Duchess' exodus J/K J/K) for just the right amount of time (read: hours).
•  I listened to a hell of a lot of Adele, and I'm not just saying that because it rhymes
• I started reading 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett. 
• I subsequently and accidentally have started to slip into speaking like Aibileen. She is my favorite. 
• I done gone buy the greatest baby shower gift you ever saw. I can't tell you what 'cause baby mama done read my blog, but I can tell you where, one of my favorite NYC paper shops, and that is here: Papel
• I lost a pound and a half
• I was conned into going to see 'Friends with Benefits' with platonic but sneaky friend Mike. That movie is porn - If it were less porn-y and more story I would have liked it very much. As it was I am embarassed to admit that I liked it anyway.
• I supported a friend and attended a class on chastity. Pretty sweet weekend combo, eh?
• I was propositioned by the cutest cab driver I ever did see. He makes $1200 dollars a week and wanted me to know he could take care good-good of me. Somehow this was not at all creepy, just hilarious.
• I hung out with good friends until 4am in a backyard garden snuggled in Bed Stuy where brownies were noshed, plans were landscaped and guts were spilled. It was very Breakfast Club.
• I was a goddess in the kitchen and proved it at a tiny impromptu dinner party in a friend's kitchen only using the things he had on hand. My skills sported marinated pork chops and veggies roasted in a lemon/garlic rub.It was delicious. While the food was absolutely divine, it didn't quite compare with
• The steak and eggs I brunched on at Prime Meats
• I loved my standing acupuncture appointment more than most this week
• I laughed until I cried over a friend who snapped at me to chide 'eyes up here, Amber' when I became momentarily catatonic staring at his power tie
• I got very serious about scheduling everything down on my google calendar
• I also started using the Pomodoro technique. I'm going to blog about it next week for sho. So mark those google calendars
• I scheduled walks and outside time into my normal breakneck work schedule.
• On one such walk in my beloved Brooklyn I happened upon this:
  
• I promised a friend that she could have my new-to-me torn 9x10 autographed Burt Reynolds glossy
• I fretted and regretted that choice
• My roommate Kayleigh and I again discussed what the apartment wants when it comes to our lives that run parallel. Kind of spookly, kind of magical
• I took a plethora of late-late-late night phone calls
• I got overly frustrated by a bad cell connection with a witty friend who lives out in coyote town USA
•  I realized the bouquet of late-late-late night calls contribute to the things that keep me on a 4-5 hour a night sleep schedule. I'm ditching that ish. To prove it...
• I set this week's major goal which starts today and is this: I'm not taking phone calls after 11pm. My Hawaii/West coast connections are going to balk 
• I ate at Chipotle. This might not seem of note to you, but it was a beautiful experience, and I'd like to remember it.
• I recommitted to She Sure is Sketchy's regular posting schedule, didn't you love how breezy things were here in the month of June? I know you did. You said so.
• I sent personal snail mail x4
• I opened a new business bank account to save my dollars for my top secret.
• I managed to work myself all the way to the beginning of the last season of Ugly Betty on netflix streaming. Finishing the series is going to break my heart in two all over again
• I anticipated the breaking of my heart as caused by the all too near future end of Ugly Betty
• I solicited you for other great series I need to watch... tell me in the comments.

That's my week, the long and the short of it. I liked it. 
What did you do this week that you L-O-V-E-D?

On a Boat

If you squint you can just barely see me and my kid sister eagerly anticipating our turn to board the ship we spent our Fourth of July 2011 on.(JK, this is a film still from 'The Titanic).

Joking aside, watching this movie approx. 20 times the Summer I turned fourteen was the best preparation for the seven hour tour we embarked on that afternoon. OK, OK, Leo screenings were probably the next best -- there were those middle school mornings spent trading my father half hour stints on Gilligan's Island for Saved by the Bell.

NYC has elected to steal our fireworks and instead show off for Jersey.

I don't know if you're aware of Jersey's ever rising prestige on the reality television front but if you are, sit back and ask yourself... "WHERE IS THE HUMANITY?!"  At any rate, I had a fun, but relatively uneventful Fourth last year. I spent the evening running through Prospect Park with friends, sure that there was some kind of mistake and that any minute the sky was going to alight. Later we followed up with root-beer floats and the Boston Pops in front of the telly in Park Slope.

I decided to pull an Ursula and take matters into my own tentacles. This year I was going to go on a cruise and catch me some  fireworks. I was browsing the internet the way Meg Ryan would in any Tom Hanks movie when I got a gmail alert from my favorite discount shopping site, Living Social.

For half the cost of a normally $300 cruise, you could find yourself sailing on Jersey's luxury Cornucopia Princess on the Hudson for the holiday. Voila! Obviously this was meant to be. That is how (well plus a very shady windowless Time's Square office with ticker tape on the floor and bars on the door) I came to be the proud bearer of two tickets to a prime firework seat on our Nation's birthday. 

Note: Later I realized that this Living Social deal greatly spoke to the hilarity of our time at sea. The ship's passengers were widely varied, consisting of people who paid full price, $600 a couple, or in some cases much more for a family intermixed with people who had pooled all their money to afford the half price deal. 

There were little hiccups along the way, but what cruise doesn't have hiccups? Sure, we were supposed to leave at 3 and didn't board until 4:15, but we were going to be on a boat, and that was all that mattered. 

We were instructed upon boarding to immediately go to our assigned seats at beautifully manicured tables in a grand ballroom.  Oh yeah, this was going to be good. "Behind me I heard a "Oh this shit be FAAAAAANNCY!" So that's where you see the note I made about a range of social class start to play out.

 By now you have learned that here at She Sure is Sketchy, we have authority problems, and why, friends, would we go directly to our seats when we could climb to the dock and marvel at the skyline?

In the single most intelligent move of the year, April and I dragged an iron-rod table from the back of the boat, where there was no view, to the front of the boat where there was all view. There we sat. Soon other rebels joined us. On our boat, that I would later learn housed close to 2,200 people, a lucky ten managed chairs and tables up on the deck. Keeping with our Titanic analogy, this clairvoyant move is what later separated us from steerage.

We laughed. We felt the wind in our hair. We read. We sketched. It was simply lovely. Meanwhile, down below the deck, things were getting dicey. This is where I would cinimatically  pan from an exterior shot above to an interior shot down near the water.  At this point we were still blissfully unaware that anything was amiss. It was at this point that I started collecting quotes. 

My favorite quote of the evening, and there were plenty to choose from, was issued by a wildly enthusiastic muscle-bound Jersey boy -- complete with sky-high shellacked hair who offered this gem: "My whole life, yo. My whole life, I been sitting in my uncle's balcony on this day every year and watching the boats go by over here, and NOW I am ON a boat! That's right BITCHES! I am ON a boat!" (i wrote this one down in my sketchbook. I wanted to be sure I kept the nuance.)

Slowly people started making their grumbly way on deck, "what bad attitudes," I thought. "Don't they see how beautiful it is here?" Meanwhile, April and I bask in the glory of the sea.

 Hunger sets in as the sun sets. Eager to make it back to our primo seats in time for the big show I leave the sissie and head down into the hull, dinner tickets in hand. My animator roots take hold as I descend the grand staircase overlooking the ballroom. A long line circles the dance floor. I sense an overall vibe of seething anger. Also, people are drunk. I went to Pratt freakin' Institute, an art school in Clinton Hill where the five spot used to give you 21 free shots on your 18th birthday. I know the difference between drunk and durnk. These people are the latter.  Nor are they happy drunk. They are collectively angry drunk. I wait in line for my food and make "friends" with a grabby boy who likes boys but in his inebriated state is willing to also like my boobs. 

The line takes forever. Somewhere in the distance a table is turned over. There is yelling. Hmm... this does not bode well. When hosting my adorable little sister thousands of miles away from her home, my chief concern is to always keep. her. fed. Little miss April can go from strawberry shortcake to the Incredible Hulk faster than I can Scarlett O'Hara blink my eyes. After years of practicing my Vivien Leigh we are talking fractioned split-seconds. 

As the line snaked longer, I start to panic. What if she gives up our front row seats to come find me? What if she gets too hungry and loses it? What if there is no vegetarian food left for her when I get to the front of the line?!  Take heart, I tell myself, the menu on this ship's masthead was elaborate, organic, gourmet. They will have plenty of.... BURGERS AND HOTDOGS?!

Correction. They will have NO burgers or hot dogs. They will have nothing. They will eat fists. This picture was taken while my gay boyfriend held my place twenty minutes down the line. By the time I got there there was a tub of greasy floating hot dogs (I swear i have never been so disgusted. It was barfaroni casserole) and nothing else. At the end of the line a crustal bowl held a solitary packet of mustard next to an empty bottle of ketchup. 

In amazing news, I arrived right when this situation really heated up. I got to witness a punch and a duck worthy of Ralph Maccio. There was yelling. There was crying. It was magical.

Gay boyfriend transitioned from slightly odd to truly crazy. He picked up a cold hotdog and waggled it in the manager's face. "This is frozen!!! THIS IS FROZEN! Feel this!" The manager takes it in his hand and throws it back into the dish. "I JUST TOUCHED THAT AND NOW YOU PUT IT BACK IN THERE!?!? WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU BEEN DOING TO CONTAMINATE THIS "FOOD"."

Seriously, the air quotes GBF was sporting made me wish I had only manicured the index and middle fingers of my hands. I have a problem around people with Southern accents or girls speaking Japanese at the salon. I want to mimic, not to tease but to study. To my right several girls and their pimp cousin skipped their index fingers and communicated in other ways with their hands. I watched a hamburger fly into a man's head hurled with surprisingly great aim from a woman who looked to be in her seventies. To my left, I thrilled at a rousing game of "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you". Sigh. Good times. For about ten minutes, I thought that maybe I was waiting for more food to be cooked and brought out. No, I was waiting for mutiny on the bounty. There was no "food" (that's for you GBF) to be had. 

P.S. Who among us can't help but stare while someone yells "THIS IS ME BEING NICE, ASSHOLE! YOU WANT ME TO GET MEAN, I CAN GET MEAN!" all the while pointing a three inch bedazzled finger nail millimeters from a man's eye?

I soon realized that the reason everyone was drunk was because the ship, in addition to boasting a worth-$300-gourmet-menu also boasted an open bar. In true we're going to party like it's America's birthday form, those who could not eat, made up for the cost of the cruise by drinking. I tip-toed over a fallen reviler and up the stairs to rejoin my little sister on the dock. 

Wonderfully, I was met by a smiling kid sister. April had waited, happy as a clam. Thrilled to be out at sea with the wind in her face and Macy's fireworks on the way. "You missed it," she let me know. "People have been going crazy." Tee hee.

Once we realized we were going to be starving until we docked we both tapped into our upbringing. Last week I read an article saying that if you were raised a certain way before 1992 you were raised 'right' and if you were raised the same way today you were 'abused'. April and I are well brought-up children of the 80s. We know that if nothing's going to change you might as well have a good attitude so nothing worse happens to you. We put on our smiley faces and happily inked the petitions that the angered fall-downs were bringing around as written on the ship's linen napkins.

Later it was revealed that the mass of champagne and wine bottles couldn't be opened because corkscrews had been left on shore and things really got intense.

As the night fell, people pulled the table cloths off tables downstairs and busied themselves by dragging forty pound dining room chairs up to the deck to better pad their livingroom forts at our feet. We had a clear view of Manhattan to one side and this to the other:

When a formation of 8 helicopters flew overhead and the mass begin to yell "SAVE US! SAVE US" 

April and I caught each other's sober eyes, raised our hands and high-fived. We knew who was winning this holiday. Well, we knew who was winning until the yacht ran out of waterbottles and cups.  We are Hawaii girls though, and we know how to deal, eh?

Then the fireworks started and the oohing and awwwwwwwing really got under way. For a perfect twenty minutes everyone forgot that they wanted to 'EFFING CUT THE EFFING MO-EFFING CREW" 

The most patriotic moment of the whole day, and mayhaps the entire year came in the gathering of ships in the harbor who leaned on their fog horns blasting Yankee Doodle Dandy and the Star Spangled banner. Their passengers, all merry by the look of them, waved jovially, jumping up and down  anscreaming 'HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!! to us. The feeling of  Americana radiated the air. 

The adorable Juliard trained girl next to me, said, "It is so cool they're playing John Phillip Souza" The guy next to her said, "Who dat?" 

And so, on the fourth of July, 2011, I stood hanging over the rail of that crowded deck of the ironically named Cornucopia Princess. I got a taste of what it might be like to be united against a common enemy, forced to take matters into your own hands. Maybe there was no water, not a drop to drink, and maybe everyone wanted to strangle our captors with their bare hands, but in the end we all were able to set aside our differences for the common good, a very kick-ass firework show. Afterall, dear friends, isn't that what this patriotism thing is all about?

Later, as I watched the crew argue with my sister as they wrenched her cup of self-rationed water from her lovely little hands while we disembarked and saw our new friends-in-distress kiss the germ-ridden NYC cement, I looked to the beautiful smokey sky, glad that I had decided to spend our Nation's special day out at sea. 

---------epilogue-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the fifth I decided that the true crime was that the ship had sailed away from shore knowing that they A) only had crappy burned/frozen food to serve and B) didn't have enough of either to feed the thousands on board, I decided to call in and let someone know. Livingsocial picked up the phone on the third ring. 

"Hello, I'm just calling to register a compl..." 

--"Were you on the boat last night?" 

"Um, yeah."

--"Give me your name and email address please."

--"The cost of the cruise in full is refunded back to your account. Please accept our sincere apology."

And so I write this account of a topsy-turvy holiday to you, from where I sit in my studio, proud to be an American.