Drive Up This Street All You Want

The past seven days have been fantastically bad. Like, seriously bordering on the most unbelievable fiction of all-time, even for Atherton Bartelby’s life, in which nothing occurs that is not a cyclone, or a train wreck. Anyway, because of this, I have not been too adept at focusing on anything even remotely happy or uplifting, and consequently have no new blogging material that does not involve heavy doses of depression, oversleeping, chain smoking, and binge drinking. Therefore, I have not been blogging at all, to spare if not myself then at least my readers from the gratuitous badness that is my life this week. However, I did feel that I should check in very quickly to remark on the fact that as of last Thursday I am no longer at The Agency and as of last Friday I am no longer at The 500.

At least the new year is being kind by getting the major hits out of the way within the very first month, n’est-ce pas?

I will return to blogging on a more regular (not to mention uplifting) basis after I get completely settled in my new abode and the proverbial ball rolling on the job search. Until then, fair readers, be well, and mind the interwebs until I return.

Also, this weather can suck it. Check it, Honolulu: if I had wanted to live in freezing cold, windy, and rainy Seattle, I would have moved there, NOT here!

Filed under: Blogging , defining moments, emotional landscapes, epic rage, hawaii, home, honolulu, oahu, office love, omgwtfbbq

Photoblogging My Oahu

There was a day during the recent holiday season, when my fabulous roommate’s fabulous parents and fabulous boyfriend were all visiting Hawaii from the Mainland, on which said fabulous roommate invited me on a “Circle Tour” of Oahu. Because my emotional state during the holiday season is always rather tenuous even in a good year, and because “Circle Tours” of Oahu used to be one of my favorite pasttimes with a once close friend who no longer speaks to me, I politely declined on account of, “Dude. Thank you. But I think it would be too much for me. Right now.”

A few weeks later, however, when another of said fabulous roommate’s fabulous friends flew in from the Mainland to have a fabulous time in Hawaii, and I was offered the same invitation, I somehow managed to think to myself, “Eh. New year. New experiences. New contexts. Sure, why not?”

So I hopped into the back seat of a rented-for-the-day automobile of choice (not a convertible Mustang, thank you very much; what do you think we are, tourists?!), a Jeep Wrangler, and vaguely wondered to myself if I shouldn’t have brought along my ski sweatshirt, as well, lest I end up contracting pneumonia from the cold winds and such as I did when I did the same Tour in the same rented car with Gavin and Remington nearly five years ago to the day. (ZOMG, FIVE YEARS?! Christ I am old.) But I had (duh) a fabulous day, with two fabulous women, and learned that, although I opted out of several stops along the way, choosing instead to sit smoking in the Wrangler, capturing images from a purely stationary position, sometimes a new perspective, a new context, and new eyes, change everything that you see.

And make them somehow a little less painful…and a little more beautiful.

(Even if you might just be seeing them for the last time, before you return to Chicago before the end of the year.)

I also loved that, at one stop light in Kailua Town, a local sistah yelled out of her car to us, “You like go around da island? You gots ta turn left!” Obviously, she was giving us friendly advice based on the fact that we were three haole girls in a clearly rented vehicle due to the beginning license plate character. But it gave me extreme pleasure to be able to turn to her and smile at her confidently, ash my cigarette out the back window, and reply, “No worries. We know where we’re going. We live here.”

And we drove, not left, but straight, the correct way, into the light and the rain of the island day.

+ + +

(I love this one, because I managed to capture both my visage and that of my t-shirt, a holiday gift from my fellow blogging roommate, in the mirror and lens, across my face. Way wicked awesome.)

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Food, Photography, Relationships, Travel, Writing , a-list, chicago, defining moments, emotional landscapes, hawaii, home, honolulu, humor, linkage, lonely planet, memories, needful reminders, oahu, photoblogging, pimpage, retail therapy, rumormongering, self-portraiture, what would jackie do

Bringing Bad Design To Justice

My friend Isaac introduced me to this fabulous little site yesterday morning. As we are both design and typography geeks who become enraged every time design standards are breeched, one can imagine, even if one is not a designer, how humorous the downloadable “Visual Enforcement Kit” actually is (and also why he printed the entire kit out yesterday on labels, as I am doing this morning, in my office, while waiting waiting waiting for meetings and appointments to occur, for full-on use with the non-designers’ proofs submitted to me at The Agency).

I have a photoblog of The Epic Oahu Circle Island Tour that occurred this week in the works, but as I am currently at The Agency (and blogging), one cannot fault me for waiting to upload that until I return home this evening. (Because my images of this week are at home, and also because if one is going to be blogging at work, that blogging had better be work-related. And this is.)

So have a little laugh at this in the interim (and click on the image to access the entire “Visual Enforcement Kit”):

Filed under: Blogging, Design, Typography, Web Design , a-list, grammar, humor, linkage, office love, pimpage

Big Shoulders

I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.
- H.L. Mencken

“Where are you going?”

He had run into me on a Downtown cobblestoned street, looking as beautiful as he ever looked, green eyes shining under the glare of the late afternoon sun.

He looked pointedly at my luggage.

Looked back at me as we both lit cigarettes and inhaled.

“Home,” I said, exhaling widely.

“Home?” he repeated, exhaling widely himself. “I thought this was Home.”

I smiled wryly at him. Took another deep drag.

“No,” I said, winking at him. “Not anymore.”

I watched him as he pulled a pink hibiscus from his black Prada messenger bag.

Handed it to me, taking my left hand in his and forcing me to close my fingers around the blossom.

“Where is Home?” he asked me, green eyes sparkling into my own.

I smiled.

“You know where,” I said, cherishing the feeling of my fingers wrapping one last time around the hibiscus’ moist, sweet-smelling blossom.

“Where?” he persisted, teeth clearly biting the insides of his lips, a nervous habit he picked up years ago, in his youth.

I looked at him, wiped some tobacco from his chin, and smiled at him. “Where we’re from. Where our family still lives. Where we were always happiest.”

He took my hand from his chin, looked at it, looked back at me, and kissed it.

“Well,” he said archly, stubbing his cigarette out beneath his Gucci loafer. “Let’s go.”

I smiled archly in return, retrieved my hand from his, took hold of my luggage once again, and replied, “Yes.”

“Let’s go.”

And we walked, as one, into the light of the setting sun, along the Downtown cobblestoned street.

Filed under: Books, Writing , chicago, defining moments, emotional landscapes, family, home, memories, what would jackie do

Photoblogging My Waikiki

No words today.

Just images.

Of Home.

Filed under: Photography , a-list, hawaii, home, honolulu, oahu, photoblogging, urban appreciation