Unapologetically Mundane

What is Art?

Posted by katie ett on July 19, 2012 – 12:00 pm

Filed under arts and crafts, good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york is neat

I love art, and I love to make fun of it, too. When my friends Ellie and Kinard came to visit late last year, we went to MoMA one afternoon, and before we left, we had a long conversation with my roommate about who gets to decide what art is. I think his basic argument (and I’m sure he’ll lambast me in the comments if I’m wrong) was that the individual observer gets to decide; if it’s art to you, it’s art. I think Ellie‘s basic argument was that nobody gets to say that something isn’t art. I think Kinard‘s basic argument was, “Let’s go to Shake Shack again.” Just kidding; that was me.

But yeah, I’ll defend your art to the death, even if it involves throwing soup on a statue. Still, here are some of the pieces at MoMA that gave me pause:

Belgian Lion by Marcel Broodthaers

The placard for this said, “Found object in frying pan.” It was under glass, which makes it all the funnier to me. ART.

These are evenly-spaced orange squares. ART!

There was a great story behind these that I don’t remember. Some benefactor said he’d give some artist, like, 10 bajillionty dollars to paint him an original piece every year or something, and this is what the artist gave him. And he totally didn’t murder the artist after receiving the first one. ART!!

I don’t think there was actually a rifle shot in this wall. AAAAART!

I absolutely love this description: “Each site was photographed at the time the marker was placed with no attempt made for a more or less interesting or picturesque representation of the location.” NOT-EVEN-TRYING ART!

I actually kind of like this one.

And this one, too.

But here’s some more ART:

Robert Barry’s 90mc Carrier Wave (FM) “consists of radio waves generated by a hand-engineered FM radio transmitter installed in this gallery but hidden from view”. INVISIBLE ART!

While all of this is a little laughable, it’s all a little wonderful, too. And really, I’d rather be too willing to call something art than not willing enough. Take a look at Mark Rothko’s No. 10 and tell me you want to be the person described in the last sentence of the MoMA placard next to the piece:

“The irregular patches of color characteristic of the artist’s Multiform paintings of 1948 seem to have settled into place on this canvas, which Rothko divided horizontally into three dominant planes of color that softly and subtly merge into one another. Between 1949 and 1950 Rothko simplified the compositional structure of his paintings and arrived at this, his signature style. He explained, ‘The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.’ MoMA acquired No. 10 in 1952. The painting—the first by Rothko to enter the collection—was so radical for the time that a trustee of the Museum resigned in protest.

ART!

Khak Shir and the Brown Teff Garden

Posted by katie ett on July 18, 2012 – 12:00 pm

Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession

A couple of weekends ago, Kamran was reminded of a drink he had on his grandfather’s farm back in Iran as a kid. He remembered tiny orange seeds that stayed suspended when stirred into sweetened water, and Google confirmed that this is in fact a real thing–khak shir–and not just the Sunday afternoon hallucinations of a mad Persian. We went to his local health food store and picked up the seeds–called teff–because this is NYC, and you can totally just remember something from your Iranian childhood and then go buy it down the street.

We came back to his apartment, attempted to rinse the seeds, and promptly spilled half of the bag into the sink. Kamran then made a glass of khak shir (does anyone else think that should be pronounced like “cocksure“?) using warm tap water and not enough sugar, so it was pretty gross, and both of us refused to have any more than a sip.

And then he went to visit his parents in California for a week while a beautiful teff garden grew in his sink strainer.

Bad Girl Gone Good Gone Bad

Posted by katie ett on July 17, 2012 – 12:00 pm

Filed under narcissism

I started being a little hardcore in the gym a few weeks ago. “Hardcore” for me, of course, is a relative term, and you’ll note that my hardcoreness conveniently coincided with packing for the Jersey shore and realizing–oh, crap, a whole week in a bathing suit. I’ve been going to the gym off and on for the last few years thanks to Kamran’s prodding and the lingering guilt that comes with living in an apartment building that has a gym right inside, but I’ve mostly done as little as possible: using the stationary bike so I can sit, ramping up the resistance on the elliptical just enough that I have an excuse to go slow, anything else that’ll keep me from sweating. Because eww, sweat.

But then I got on the stairclimber the other day because all of the ellipticals were taken by those stupid girls who wear sports bras without shirts and then hold on to the handrails so they can move just their legs a hundred miles a minute. I have no idea what would compel someone to think that’s any kind of workout, but hey, it’s probably better than sitting quietly on the stationary bike and hoping no one notices that my legs aren’t moving at all, so instead of kicking one of them off of the elliptical, I just took the stairclimber. And then I sweated and sweated and sweated, because that shit is hard. And I. Felt. Awesome.

Now (meaning for the past few days), I totally scorn everyone in the gym who doesn’t appear to be working as hard as I am. 80-year-old lady only doing eight reps on the chest press? I SEE YOU. Superfat dude on the spinning bike going negative miles per hour? I SEE YOU. Oh, you’ve already lost 63 pounds doing that? I STILL JUDGE YOU.

I’m also really excited about eating “well” right now. I’m reading Gary Taubes Why We Get Fat, and I haven’t even gotten to the part where he tells me to stop eating refined grains and processed crap, but I still spent most of Sunday afternoon prepping vegetables and fruits and multigrain crackers and lean meats to take in the teeny-tiny totally-not-enough-food-to-feed-a-real-human bento box that I bought years ago and then never used when I got excited about Adventures in Bentomaking for a very, very short time.

I’m also really excited about saving money right now. I make myself a yearly budget, and I generally stick to it so I don’t end up out on the streets, but I’m never very precise. Well, I sat down the other day and really figured out exactly how much cash I have to spend every week, and then I went and took this week’s allowance out of the bank. And when I bought my stepmom’s birthday present online today, I went and put the equivalent amount of cash back in the bank. I thought about buying a pair of jeans when I got home, but then I stopped myself and actually had superiority feelings about my self-control.

I know myself, though, and I know how short-lived all of this is. I’ll get bored of the gym and will go back to spending half my time there cleaning my weight machines and filling up my itsy-bitsy water cooler cup over and over. I’ll really want some chicken fingers and then some pizza and then some ice cream and then a whole week of burgers and fries. I’ll scrimp and save for months and then one day explode into a fireball of Forever 21 leggings and BareMinerals lipstick and Nikon macro lenses, all bought on credit. It’s like I’m only good so I can later be so, so bad.

The Jersey Shore Trip That Made Me Kind of Not Hate the Jersey Shore

Posted by katie ett on July 12, 2012 – 12:00 pm

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, holidays don't suck for me, just pictures, travels

So . . . the Jersey shore is better than the Hamptons. My friends and I went to Avalon, which we basically knew nothing about except that renting houses there is about $21,000 cheaper per week than in the Hamptons. And after I signed the lease with our rental agent, she told me that the house is “not new but very beachy”, which I assumed was a nice way of saying “old and full of the sand of a thousand old men’s swimtrunk crotch areas”. So I was worried.

But it turns out that the town of Avalon is full of the cutest restaurants and shops called things like Pudgie Pelican Cafe and Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, that the houses are just as impressive as Hamptons houses, and that the people are so nice they actually said hello to us as we passed them on the sidewalks, which I haven’t experienced since I left Ohio.

And we even loved the house! Mostly because this was in the backyard:

Along with these three ducks, two of which my blogfriend-turned-inreallifefriend Kim C. won from a claw game at a Wendy’s along the way down, and one of which was given to her by a little girl we cheered on as she pumped her mother’s entire paycheck into the machine:

And also this hot tub, which was never mentioned on our lease and which my roommate/landlord/co-worker/friend, Jack, was clearly . . . surprised by/pleased by/pooping his pants over?:

And many, many of these glowing-eyed owls, which were meant to either ward off rodents or predatorially ogle us in the pool:

Our joy over these things allowed us to forgive the fact that the house was this many degrees all week long:

The rental agent called me on our way down to the house on Saturday and said, “The air-conditioning isn’t working properly, so the house won’t get as cool as you’d like. They’ll be out to fix it on Monday or Tuesday.” And by that she meant the next Saturday as we were leaving. Even though I’m not the type to complain, I toooootally wrote a letter to the rental agency. Kamran said I should have had him write it on his special lawyer stationary to make it seem really threatening.

But I didn’t want to threaten, because really, we had the greatest time, as you’ll see:

Jeff, Nik, Beth, and Andrew sitting by the pool, pretending to make conversation for the sake of this picture. I think this should be used in a brochure for the Jersey shore.

Nik doing what Nik did for most of the week. I took this picture from the pool. Which means my $1000 camera was in the pool. I drank a lot of Smirnoff that week.

Beth, who was probably technically the first friend I made in NYC, posing with the shady pool owl, who was turned to face the trees many times throughout the week to keep him from watching her in her bikini.

A frog by the outdoor shower, clearly not dissuaded by the pool owl.

Kim making sangria. From box wine. That spilled out all over the sides of the pitcher as we filled it more and more full of fruits.

Grillmaster Jeff, trying to be nice to the people who asked for their steaks well done.

Beth and Kim, our resident fashionistas, wearing actual clothes poolside.

I don’t remember what Beth is doing here, but this pretty accurately sums up her personality.

Nik deconstructing kebabs in the shade of the tree-fence by the pool.

Nik deciding to forego the deconstruction and just gnaw the hell out of the things.

Jack with his fancy Grolsch bottle, which we later used to capture and drown greenhead biting flies. The flies were the only drawback to Avalon, actually; apparently they live in the bay behind the town and fly over to the ocean when the wind is blowing that way. Murdering them made for some of my sweetest Avalon memories.

Kim K. kebab-stick-fighting with Jeff. No eyes were harmed in the making of this photo.

Kim C. posing in the bathing suit that showed me her boob.

I guess I should tell that story while I’m here, much as I’d just like to just mention her boob and leave it. So, the ocean was about two blocks from our house, on the other side of some woods with a path through them. Kim and I went one afternoon to jump some waves, and the ocean was a bit unwieldy. We were getting sucked under by the waves and then spit out on the shore over and over. The ocean was also really crabby, so every now and then when we’d put our feet down, a crab would clamp on for a second. Well, just as Kim was shrieking about a crab eating her heel, a particularly crazy wave knocked us both over, and when we came up, one of Kim’s boobs had totally popped out of her suit! So I screamed, “Your boob is showing! YOUR BOOB IS SHOWING!” And then another wave came and wiped us out again, and her sunglasses flew off her head and were gone forever (only someone who grew up in Cape Cod would wear sunglasses in the ocean, right?), and she had totally covered up her boob by the time we both recovered, so I didn’t even get to enjoy seeing it. She saw mine later, too, so we’re totally almost dating now.

I told Beth and Andrew to scowl at me. Beth is doing an amazing job, but Andrew looks like a friggin’ model.

On the 4th of July, we went to the beach to watch the fireworks just as the sun was setting.

It was my first time seeing fireworks on the beach (my hometown ones are set off in the high school parking lot, and I’m never on the waterfront for the NYC ones), and I love the way they reflected off the water and silhouetted all of us watching them.

The peanut butter and jelly sundae from Sundae Best Avalon. It was as good as it looks. Or better, if you think it looks like baby poo.

Kim C. in the pool, sippin’ on a lowball.

The Kims, looking ethereal in their bedroom on the first floor that was perfectly cooled the entire time because the air-conditioning actually worked down there.

Roommates Jeff and Nik, pretending to hate each other.

Roommates Jeff and Nik, pretending to like each other.

The whole group with the creepy owl, which we had forgiven for its lascivious ways and were feeling nostalgic about by the last day.

To say that this was our best trip in three years is like saying I’m mildly interested in getting Kim back into the ocean with an even less sturdy swimsuit. We spent approximately eight hours a day in the pool (and sometimes many more), the ocean was uncrowded and actually warm enough to swim in, every restaurant and store in town was run by sixteen-year-olds who were sweet and polite, there were places to kayak and paddleboard (which only 75% of us did, because eww, bay water), Jeff brought a projector so we could watch HBO on the living room wall, I wore nothing but tank tops and jersey shorts every day except for the night when we went to Atlantic City and ate Cuban food and I lost $3 on the slot machines but paid $5.99 to use an ATM, and I totally didn’t sunburn for the first time in three summers. I just got heat rash. No big deal.

JERSEY SHORE!

I’m Totally Not Kidding About Vacationing at the Jersey Shore

Posted by katie ett on June 29, 2012 – 12:00 pm

Filed under travels

Three times in the past two years, my friends and I rented a Hamptons beach house in a lazy part of town mere steps from the ocean. It was more impressive than any of our wildest dreams had imagined, and it was $900 per night the first two times and then $700 per night the last time because the kitchen cabinets were being worked on and we had to store our food ten feet from the counter instead of three feet. THE TERROR.

This year, I wanted to get an early start on things and wrote to the owners of the house in January to secure it. It was already booked.

Well, no big deal. There are hundreds of houses to rent out there, and maybe we could find an even better one with a hot tub and a pool table and a tennis court for us to admire and never, ever use. I started checking all of usual rental sites and found some really beautiful places right down the street from our usual house.

For $12,000 a week.

Also $20,000 a week.

And yes, $35,000 a week.

But only $110,000 for the month, so no big deal!

So we instead started looking for a house on the . . . dun Dun DUN . . . Jersey shore.

Not this Jersey shore: