Staying up late, maintaining a journal, enjoying rollercoasters, reading all of the best tween series: when we were younger, Jackie could convince me to do pretty much anything. Watching Gossip Girl was no exception. During field hockey pre-season, I tore through three seasons to catch up to the live shows. Drama, sex, and designer clothes? A hedonist’s trifecta.

I eventually lost interest, and lost track of the show. You can only take the absurd debauchery for so long, and the writers were running out of pairs who hadn’t already slept together/cheated on each other/gone through some deep rift/all of the above. When I realized a few months ago that I hadn’t seen the final season, I was pretty sure I knew what to expect.

So I watched the whole thing in a few days.

But this isn’t really about the show. I barely remember what happened in this season, let alone the whole show. But what I do remember, was this:

This also has nothing to do with the weird plot-line where Chace Crawford slingshots from dating the British cougar to the high-schooler (seen above), by the way.

As soon as I saw the earrings, I paused the screen and grabbed my iPad. It was difficult to see them fully, but I sketched the essentials.

The length, the simplicity, the stones… I wanted them.

[Aside  I’d seen someone wearing the emerald, long pleated skirt I have been dreaming of since who knows when and it hadn’t crossed my mind to dismount my bike and ask her about it and then thinking about that skirt I got to thinking about emerald in general and thatsomehow, in the course of today, I decided it would be my new color (whatever that means), and then I remembered these earrings so I popped on my computer to do some digging]

It took me about five minutes of intelligent Googling a la Wiki Game:

> Gossip Girl Earrings

> Gossip Girl Wiki (Season 6 summary)

> Sage Gossip Girl dress

> Sage Helmut Lang earrings

> bingo.

Spotted: The Gemma Redux Green Agate Horn Earrings.

My “technical drawings” weren’t far off.

And an even greater discovery was afoot: that Gemma Redux is not only a total boss (working one of my many dream-jobs), but is/was also a Wolverine. Her work is nothing short of flawless. She melts chains which drip from frozen stones, she adds graceful static to the traditional form of a bracelet… I won’t belabor the poetry, but suffice it to say that the forms are just smart. It must be the maize and blue, right? And now I’ll be prowling for stones that can do a replica justice.

Whenever I imagined “cong you bing”, I pictured it spelled “tsong yo bing”. I guess that’s why I’m a waiguoren.

(Below is the direct transcription from a conversation with Mom on how to properly make a scallion pancake; includes interpreted and exact quotes.)

Get bing.
Roll flatter.
Spread vegetable oil thinly on just the surface of bing.
Sprinkle additional finely chopped scallions and a small, 2-finger pinch of salt.
Then roll it up, and coil around itself, with “open edge facing inside.”
Squash flat. And then you reflatten. If it’s sticking, add oil (not flour), and probably roll between wax paper or parchment paper (“know that bits of scallion will ooze out. That’s okay. But try to do it gently so it’s not just a total mess of scallion oozing”).
Get a teflon pan.
Bring pan to medium-low heat with a little bit of oil in the pan, and “you know, put your little cong you bing in there.”
Brown on one side and flip.
They will not be evenly browned: “it’s just the nature of the beast.”
Cut into 8.

We sat in a circle, legs crossed, passing around a flimsy sandwich bag of folded notes. I drew mine and waited. The boy next to me was already reading his: something with the word “Trashy”.

I opened mine.

All Big Releases

Like,

A yawn
A sneeze
An orgasm
Turning off the vacuum
When the wasabi stops burning
When you realize you’re all alone
Nighttime
Seeing a friend that you haven’t seen in a long time
Cutting the first slice of cake
Letting your hair down
Popping anything
Pooping everything
Falling asleep
Crying
Saying I love you
Breaking a rubber band
When the timer goes off
When the power goes out
When you lose
When you win
Saying goodbye
Showering off your sweat
Cracking a glow-stick
Blowing an incredible bubble-gum bubble
Jumping in
Coming up for air
Death
A deep breath

More as I think of them.

I almost imagine this to be what Alice saw.

Now take that concept, and span it across a two-hour walk: full of introspection and imagination.

I made a sign for the Food Forest.

I got carried away while cleaning the kitchen once.

I waited on Ross’ third-floor as cables gently whirred behind the elevator doors. To the left of every set of doors is a panel that can only be likened to shutter shades; it is backlit and a ring plays when that elevator will be the next to arrive. To the right of every set of doors is a floor length mirror. Like this:

As I’m sure nearly every Ross elevator-user is wont to do, I put myself in front of the mirror to study myself while I waited. And as soon as the doors opened, I realized that I had just done the following.

I had moved myself out of the way of the doors (and thereby a potential out-goer’s way) without thinking! My ego had nudged me to the left just a couple of feet, and someone had designed it so. Cool.

p.s. FiftyThree never ceases to amaze. Sketched these up on their new phone app, and am still mid-exploration of the new iPad-version features.

I have been asking these questions for-seemingly-ever to seemingly-everyone without satisfactory reply. Riddle me these:

1. It is socially acceptable to wear underwear in public, IFF it’s waterproof.

2. Adding an egg to a food turns it into a breakfast food (*see breakfast burrito).

3. The word “hardly” doesn’t make sense.

Meghan Trainor is a goddess, her style makes retro relevant again, and the timbre and range of her voice is amazing. And more power to her that she can be a role-model for positive body image. I am a fan.

And when I figured out the chord progression to My Selfish Heart the other night, I wasn’t even disappointed to find out that pretty much the entirety of Title (her debut album) can be played with those same four chords. Because a) what pop song can’t? And b) I can now play all of Meghan Trainor’s songs on the piano! I recorded this discovery immediately on my phone, which is what I’ve attached above.

Poster series for Filmic.

We’re in the thick of recruitment. I’ve been coordinating and simultaneously acting as temporary graphic design lead. Definitely not a sustainable long-term system.

Take some jelly.
Take some fish.
Look at that sandwich: delish.

I’ve been dreaming of a mermaid-themed birthday party for a while. I partially realized that dream, though lighting for all photos was kind of dismal.

The cake was a coral reef cake: vanilla buttercream frosting, vanilla sprinkle cake, topped with pirouline chocolate wafer cookies, dark chocolate, caramel popcorn, and crushed honey graham crackers. Lulu and Deenosaur were my souss. Souses? How does one pluralize sous? I can only think of sous-chefs.

If I were an art professor, I’d make a “Watermelon Project.” The students would walk into class and see a table piled high with watermelons and a spread of kitchen knives of various sizes and styles. They would have the whole class period to use their watermelons to explore shape and space, and they would have to present something to the class at the end of the period. Some students might build structures, some might experiment with geometry, some might paint watercolours with the juice, some might carve stamps out of the rind, some might photograph themselves eating it…

I baked a Vander-family coffee cake recipe that has been passed onto us from an old neighbor, Mrs. Needleman. I never met her, but I am 100% sure she knew how to make a mean coffee cake. Still, I’ve made a few edits of my own: reduced whipping time; added vanilla, nutmeg, and molasses (for homemade brown sugar); substituted mango-oj glaze.

Rana pointed out that coffee cake actually has zero coffee in it; it is meant to be eaten alongside coffee, and was probably termed as such because of its sweetness. That “coffee cake does not actually have coffee in it” seems like one of those things that you learned later in life than you’d care to admit.

Stuck in my head today.

Loving my new fountain pen.

When The Outer Layer is Practically The Best Part
- Pie
- Muffins
- Brownies
- Pizza
- Rolls
- Bagels
- Mac and cheese
- Fried chicken

When The Outer Layer is Way Worse Than What’s Inside
- The butts of a loaf of bread
- The cheese rind

First rainy weekend in Seattle.

While this isn’t a new recording, the autotune is a new addition. Sifting through files, I uncovered this snapping cover from a couple of years back. The key limiting roughs out some of the edges of the old phone recording, and it only bleeps out that one ‘have’ (in the original I didn’t quite hit it…), but the effect is so overdone that I actually kinda like it. Missing my snazzy Yeti and dreaming of non-generic sound-editing software.

This is not like a Hunger Games’ kind of dystopia where anachronisms crop up in a futuristic America. Fat is set today. The only difference is that America believes that it’s better to be thick than thin.

All guys want fatter girls.
All girls want to be fatter.
And all people have it ingrained in their skulls that fat is best.

Skinny girls stand in mirrors and curve their backs to puff out their tummies. They go to Shake Shack every day for a double and fries, fighting their whip-fast metabolisms. They wear clothes two sizes too small, and they cake on shimmering face powder to round out every edge they can see.

They are skinny girls like Amalie.

Fat is the story about beauty in all of its shapes and forms.
And I haven’t written it yet.

First round of Thank Yous. Rule 21: red, yellow, blue.