I'M EVERY WOMAN, IT'S ALL IN ME....

Yes, I tried the AI photo thing. My friend Misty put me up to it, but honestly I didn't need much convincing. This shit is fabulous! 

You have to submit a ton of pictures for the AI thing to really work its magic, which was initially a problem for me. You see, I had rhinoplasty back in April and most of the photos I have of myself are pre-nose job. I remedied this by making sure I uploaded a shot of my new profile, which seemed to work, as the AI program was able to incorporate my brand spankin' new, bought-and-paid-for schnozzle into most of the images. (Don't worry, I won't be writing a post detailing my rhinoplasty journey.* Nobody cares about anyone else's nose; it's only meaningful to the person who has the procedure. Well, and their plastic surgeon, hopefully.)

1940's Me.
John says it looks like a postage stamp.
I think I kinda look like a blonde version
of the Sun-maid Raisins girl. 

Ancient Greek Me.
This one is John's favorite, probably because
I look vaguely like a wood sprite.

Ottoman Bride Me. Random, but I like it.

Cyborg Me. I thought this would be John's favorite, 
since he's a big sci-fi guy.

1950s Chic Me. 
Not gonna lie, this set rules.

1950s Me, the non-chic version. 
They used my old nose here, but whatever.
I still like it. 

WWII Nurse Me. I think the uniform is cool,
but what the hell is going on with my mouth? 
I have never made that face before in my life.

Egyptian Queen Me.
YASSS QUEEN!!!

1970s Me, looking very Gloria Steinem.
I dig it, but where are my eyebrows? 

Okay, I fucking LOVE this one.

1980's Punk Me. My absolute favorite.

 
*Question: has anyone else noticed that everything is a "journey" now? It's all, "my pregnancy journey," "my weight-loss journey," "my colonoscopy journey," "my ingrown toenail journey," et cetera. The fucking Oprah-speak is everywhere these days. I wish George Carlin were still alive, because I'd love to hear his rant about this. He was so good at deconstructing and skewering that sort of bullshit. 

As long as I'm showing off pictures (and since I don't have much else to post at the moment), here are some paintings I did this year.

Stevie was my inspiration, although I didn't attempt to capture her floofiness.

I really enjoy painting fruit. I can see why it's a popular subject for artists.

Watermelon, watermelon.

This one is titled: There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon).

Sabrina is a freelance art critic.

Below is my latest work, painted two nights ago when I randomly woke up at 2:30am completely wide awake and realized I wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon. Inspiration struck, and I had a sudden urge to paint the Colorforms logo. I loved Colorforms. They were one of my favorite toys as a little kid, and they kept my sister and me entertained on many a long car trip back in the day. 

If you're unfamiliar with the creators of Colorforms, read about them here. It's one of the best starving artist success stories ever. The guy who ended up designing the logo itself was also quite interesting, a graphic artist from New York who also did the logos for IBM, ABC (the network), UPS, and tons of others. Brilliant dude. 

Anyhoo, here's my stab at recreating the Colorforms logo. It took me a lot longer than I anticipated; the hardest part was getting the proportions exactly right, which I think I did. It's still not perfect, but fine for a spontaneous, wee-hours-of-the-morning project.

And because lately I've been ending all my posts with videos, here is a random sampling of songs that I listened to a lot in 2022, according to Spotify:

As you can see, I kinda got into Habibi this year. They're rather brilliant. 

     

Lost and Found

I've been looking for an ancient children's book called Colors since the early days of the internet. Over the years I've perused ebay, abebooks, and hundreds of specialized blogs devoted to out-of-print books, but no dice. Turns out that there are about 8 billion children's books titled "Colors", and none of them ever turned out to be the one I wanted. 

Then I had an epiphany. I Googled "Colors" + 1970's 3-D puppet book. It led me to a curious site called The Trash Collector. I scrolled through the entries and stopped halfway down the page. My jaw dropped to the floor. After searching all these years, there it was--my old Colors book! I was ecstatic. 

I noticed that the artwork is credited to Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata, so--armed with this new information--I did a search on Amazon and whaddya know? There it was!

Of course, the book has been out of print for decades, but luckily there were some independent sellers that carried it. I ended up ordering two copies--one for $13 and one for the bargain price of 73 cents! I bought two because I want to use one for a future crafting project and keep the other one intact.    

I have fond memories of this long-lost tome from my childhood. My parents started reading to me when I was a baby, and Colors is one of the very first books I remember. I even have a photo--dated September 1975 (I would've been two years old)--of me and my cousin Jon huddled in my grandmother's armchair reading it together.

Cute little 1970's moppets!

I was thrilled to find this book, and not just for the nostalgia factor. The main reason is that I sincerely love the artwork: gorgeous color photographs of poseable puppets set against painstakingly rendered backgrounds. The effect is strange, beautiful, and somewhat creepy. 

Here are a few images from Colors, along with the accompanying text (the first copy arrived in the mail yesterday), photographed by yours truly.

Easter eggs to color--what fun it is to do! 

We'll paint them pretty colors, like purple, pink and blue.

The big yellow sun shines its light all day

But a small pink parasol keeps the brightness away.

On a shaggy green carpet, chasing a bright red ball,

A playful orange kitten has the most fun of all.

There were several 3D puppet books with artwork by Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata published between the 1960's and the 1980's. Unfortunately, there is precious little information online about the artists themselves. I'd love to learn more about them, and I'm curious to know if they have art that predates the work they did for the children's books. 

Here is some more info about the books, courtesy of The Trash Collector blog: 

Introduced in the 1960s, 3-D Picture Books were a popular import from Japan. These books featured full-page photographs of the action utlizing poseable puppets, many bearing the large eyes popular in Asian children's fare as well as in contemporary American pop-art. 

Although Colors is the only 3D puppet book I owned as a child, I do have recollections of other books from that genre, some checked out from the library, some belonged to friends. Many of them featured wicked cool lenticular (hologram) placards on the covers, like this one:

Izawa and Hijikata also did a series of fairytale books that I remember vividly, including Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and (my favorite) Snow White. I found some images online of the latter, and holy shit--they're absolutely stunning.

***SPOILER ALERT***

She ends up with the handsome prince.(Sorry if I ruined it for you.) 

It's ironic that I've spent years going out of my mind looking for Colors and I end up finding a copy on Amazon, the most prosaic of places. In fact, Amazon has a ton of the Izawa/Hijikata 3D puppet books. Some are outrageously priced--one copy of Nursery Tales is listed for $506.01 (???) but most of them are reasonably priced at under $20, and some go for under $10, depending on the condition of the book.

Of course, I'm not going to buy up all of them. For one, John would totally freak out if I spent all our money on old out-of-print children's books. Also, we don't have the space. 

I did break down and order that copy of Snow White, though. It was only nine bucks.    

For International Women's Day

In honor of International Women's Day, I present to you my friend Misty Rowan: poet, activist, artist, badass. She blogs at MissTeaTree. 

THIS is something you need to see today. 

Oh Lena Dunham, I love you so hard.

I have mixed feelings about the mainstream success of Lena Dunham and her brilliant TV show, "Girls." On one hand, I think it's awesome that such an edgy and authentic program with an unconventional (and occasionally unlikable) female lead character has caught on with the public. On the other hand, I worry that its popularity could cause the show's writing and storylines to take a more conventional, "safe" direction over time. It's like when you sort of "discover" and fall in love with the work of a quirky author or a singer or band completely on your own, without anyone else's endorsement or recommendation--you just find them and you're like "YES! This is what I've been looking for! THIS speaks to me!" and then six months (or six years) down the line "your" band (or singer, author, etc.) becomes HUGE and you're happy and excited, but it's also a letdown, because they're not "yours" anymore and now everyone knows about them and things are never the same.

I'd rather be happy about it, though. I'm definitely happy for Lena Dunham, because I really love her work and what she's doing with "Girls." Perhaps I am blinded by my love and (as a writer) I could be dissecting the series too much, but one of the things that delights me about "Girls" is that it's like a big metaphorical middle finger to all the cliched crap Hollywood keeps pooping out that's supposedly aimed at women. One of the things that drives me nuts about romantic comedies these days is that they'll take a beautiful size-2 actress like Katherine Heigl and give her an impossibly gigantic apartment and a high-powered career and an expensive wardrobe and then they're like--"Wait, she needs some sort of flaw so that she's 'relatable.' Let's see....Oooh, I got it! Make her clumsy! Holy shit, that's genius!" Seriously, have the Hollywood committees who crank out that kind of bullshit ever actually met any women, or any human beings for that matter?

It's bad enough that they made her act with Ashton Kutcher

Then you have Dunham's "Girls" protagonist Hannah Horvath, a disheveled, tattooed ball of not-size-2 insecure awesomeness who can't keep a job, drinks too much, says things like, "My shoes match my dress! Kind of!" and seeks solace in awkward sex with her odd, emotionally distant sort-of-boyfriend/hookup who "treats (her) heart like it's monkey meat."

And did I mention that she's a frustrated writer?

Yeah, I have no idea why this character resonates so much with me.

I can't wait for season two. I sincerely hope that "Girls" (and Dunham, since she is also the show's creator, writer, director and executive producer) stays true to Hannah and the supporting characters, resisting any pressure to sweeten them up and make them more palatable to mainstream audiences. Seriously, I've had it up to my ass with palatable heroines.

Change we can believe in.

*******OBVIOUS BOOK PLUG GOES HERE*******