I've actually been painting lately. Two nights I stayed up late after Merritt had gone to bed. He sleeps soundly enough that I can hang out in my studio (across the hall from his bedroom) and listen to music and paint. I did pastel backgrounds on the two pin-up girls, started a little orchid, and wasted time on a few other things. So nothing that I'm especially proud of was achieved. I've got big plans though, as usual. It would be nice to put a few new things for sale on my site. Eventually I'd like to start utilizing Lisa's printer to make two series of signed numbered prints, of Fille des Fleurs and Girl Salad specifically. The former because I already have a 300 dpi image of it on CD for the magazine and the latter because it's a painting that everyone seems to want but no one buys. So perhaps having prints at a lower price would make it more appealing, less of a committment.

Hilary Swank had by far the best gown at the Oscars:



It reminded me of a butt cleavage dress I wore out to a club once, what a night that was!

Even I am surprised at how dead on I was with my predictions for Project Runway. Jay's collection was A-R-T plain and simple. And I loved that he used so much blue:



The funny thing is that I would probably most likely want to wear something from Wendy's collection:



But Kara was just rocking way too much animal fur and skin for me:



I wonder if Jay will go on to become a successful designer or just another reality television star like Adrienne from Top Model who is now on The Surreal Life and will probably pop up on Fear Factor next.

"...the larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, the first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide...the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre... The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people... On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a moron."

--H.L. Mencken, writing in The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Tonight's the night...the Project Runway finale! My predictions for the designers: Kara will do something beautiful with a lot of earth tones, Wendy will do something wild with bright colors, and Jay's (winning) collection will be totally out of this world--so creative and original that it's impossible for me to even imagine. Needless to say I won't be answering the telephone from 9-11 pm (truthfully I rarely answer the phone anyway).

The magazine contacted me and said they are using my painting for the upcoming April cover...I won't believe it until I see it, it seems too wonderful to be true.

I just downloaded Peta's Vegetarian Starter Kit. Ideally I would like to stop eating animals when Merritt is no longer breastfeeding. My mind wants to but my mouth doesn't; I can't imagine never indulging in delicious things like crab or lamb or steak again. Although it would be an interesting challenge to become a meatless cook. And I would buy a juicer for vegetables so that I could insure I was getting enough nutrients. We'll see.

RIP Hunter S. Thompson. I must admit I've never read any of his books but I've always found him to be a compelling character. His demise will most likely invite a conspiracy theory or two--he certainly hated our president and could have dug up some good dirt on him. Although with as much as America has overlooked about George, it might not have mattered.

Films that should/could/would have been on my Top 50 list:

Easy Rider
Saturday Night Fever
Monster's Ball
The Doom Generation
The Terminator
Play Misty for Me
Glengarry Glen Ross
Goodfellas
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Pulp Fiction
Do the Right Thing
Boogie Nights
Mystic River
Scarface (1983)
A Clockwork Orange
Pitch Black

and

something by Hal Hartley

Three years ago on this date a rather amazing thing happened: I got married!! Happy Anniversary to us. And Merritt turned five months old on Tuesday. He is so unbelievably cute right now, the sweetest happiest baby in the world.

I sort of believe that everything happens all at once.
Past, present, future. We get confused sometimes when certain things
happen to us - but that's usually because we don't realize that it's
either something that happened to us in the past - or it's going to
evolve fully into another experience down the road. There are of
course truly genuine and original moments that are happening right
now (and will remain so) but the trick, I find, is to live in all
three at once. That to me, is living "in the now." Good art reflects
this. Great art manifests it.

--Dan Dorman

This was a hard list to come up with. I based it on what I love and what I could watch repeatedly. I noticed that while making this list that use of music and color seem to be defining factors for me. I also realized that many of these movies have one particular scene that I could watch over and over (example: the slo-mo Jumpin Jack Flash intro to Robert de Niro's character in Mean Streets).

My 50 Favorite Films of All Time (in no particular order)

Some Like It Hot
Foul Play
What's Up Doc (1972)
Breaking the Waves
The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover
Hardware (1990)
Reckless (1984)
Risky Business
Solaris (remake)
The Wizard of Oz
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Hellraiser
This is Spinal Tap
Reservoir Dogs
Lady Liberty
Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back
American Beauty
Sixteen Candles
Secretary
In the Cut
The Piano
Natural Born Killers
Blade Runner
The Godfather Pt. 1
The Godfather Pt. 2
The Graduate
Bugsy Malone
Young Frankenstein
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Mean Streets
Betty Blue
Camille Claudel
The Planet of the Apes (original)
Apocalypse Now
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
Being There
Animal House
Pink Floyd: The Wall
Cube
Cube 2: Hypercube
American Graffiti
Chasing Amy
Kill Bill Pt. 1
Spun
Like Water For Chocolate
Purple Rain
Dazed and Confused
Boyz in the Hood

I am doing my part to enhance the Ego Machine art project by David Sullivan. This article explains what the hell I'm talking about.

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or
architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

-- Samuel Butler

My list of favorite films is now up to 54 and rising. At some point I will cut it down to 50 and leave it at that.

The past two nights Merritt has woken up in the very early AM and had problems going back to sleep because he rolls over and can't return to his comfortable sleeping position. I've read this can happen when they discover a new skill, so we have bouts of this to look forward to as he learns to sit up and stand.

My parents are in town this week to furnish their new condo in St. Augustine. Last night they slept on their floor even though we offered a bed.

I gave Andy several pairs of boxer shorts for Valentines: hearts, frogs, chickens, pigs, and stripes. He'd probably get annoyed if he knew I was writing this in my blog.

My gifts from him were a heart-shaped box of chocolates that I picked out the last time we went grocery shopping, and a guy he paid to come and clean all of our windows that haven't been done since we moved in three years ago. The glass is so clean and clear you would mistakenly believe there is no window at all.

Merritt has a doorway jumper and he has finally figured out how to make it jump, currently he is going to town in it. Unfortunately some doctors discourage these toys.

Correction: it's the final three who get to show their collections on Project Runway. And as of last night's episode they are Jay and Kara as I expected, and Wendy. I have to admit as much as I dislike Wendy I am a curious to see what she comes up with. I loved Austin's designs but I could probably guess what his collection would look like. I will be so sad when this show is over.

I decided to make a list of my top ten favorite films of all time. So far I have 26 and I'm not done yet.

Our little baby has begun to mobilize. He rolls from his back to his belly as soon as you set him down. He doesn't return to his back without help, although he's been unintentionally rolling over that way since he was a week old. He grasps things in his hands very well although he hasn't perfected reaching out yet. He especially likes to hold tightly onto clumps of Mommy's hair and laughs when he does so.

We decided to go top of the line for his new carseat and ordered a Britax Marathon in electric blue.

I finally got around to adding Merritt's fourth month pictures to his website. My plan is to post photos for every month of his first year and then after that I'll get sporadic about it. He will be five months old in a week. I'm still exclusively breastfeeding and will try to do so until he hits six months, although I did buy a box of rice cereal just to keep in the pantry.



His hair looks so funny from the back.

Strange Love = Disturbing Yet I Can't Look Away



Looking forward to seeing Wendy the wicked witch get eliminated from Project Runway. Too bad she had to be an insecurely competitive bitch rather than let her designs speak for themselves as the other contestants did. I think it will be Jay and Kara in the final two showing their collections at Fashion Week; I can't imagine Austin will be able to get ahead of either of them but I've been wrong before.

Velvet, velour, velveteen--whatever you want to call it, it's my favorite fabric. Anytime I come across baby clothes in it, I have to have them for Merritt. I guess I am a very tactile person, or overly sensory in general. For myself I recently got two new pairs of stretch velvet jeans in slate blue and chocolate brown. Will probably end up wearing them so much that they will literally fall apart, like my black velvet jeans did. Although once my proportions go back to the way they were before pregnancy, which is supposed to happen a year after the birth, then these might be a bit large. I am back to 135 lbs. though, my pre-pregnancy weight.

Got sucked into what I thought was just a movie called Odyssey 5 on Showtime last night, probably because the intro music was Coldplay's Don't Panic. Astronauts witness the earth being decimated then go back in time five years to figure out what happened and try to stop it. Really enjoyed it and then was totally confused by the ending. In fact it bothered me all night, kept asking myself what the hell happened? Then when I looked it up on IMDB.com I realized that what I saw was actually the pilot for a series. So now I have to find a way to see the episodes that followed.

Currently enjoying the art of Augustos Bordelois: