The One About Paint and Flowers
October 7, 2003

hi kids,

first of all it's Cookie Magoo's Very Famous Birthday today!
ok everybody! birthday song! in the key of G!
didja hear it cookie? we sang for you!

and for the other important announcement:
i will not be sending anymore weekly reminders via my own e-mail account as it is very troublesome and seems to take me forever. the cool thing is i will be sending out weekly reminders via my new, awesome, cool NotifyList thingie. all you have to do is type your e-mail into that box and click the button and kablooie! you're on the cool list! also, they will not send you spam or sell your e-mail address. so see? it's gonna be so easy.

so, to sum up the announcements, happy birthday cookie, and do the NotifyList thing or you'll never hear from me again and you'll have to remember to check the website on your own once a week and we all know you'll never remember. besides, george washington wants you to do it. and if you don't sign up then obviously you hate america.

ok, on with the weekly.

so i took the month of september off. and you would think that now i would have a plethora of things to share mit you. well, i don't. i have nothing.

i did promise Cowboy Zydeco that i'd write a weekly about why you should not paint flowers. and because i've been breaking all of my promises lately i feel like i should not, not, NOT break this one. but i feel that i am half breaking it by not writing the weekly totally about not painting flowers.

when i was in high school i took art class. why? because i always said i'd be an artist when i grew up. oh, the dreams of children, no? so i took this art class and laura-bo-baura's mom was the art teacher and so i got away with murder in that class i tell you what. i know i must've been the biggest pain in the ass in that class but i guess mrs. b must've liked me 'cos she never kicked me out. however, freshman year i was good as gold. i did all of my assignments that year, even the weaving. dear god, the weaving.

anyway one of the assignments we had was to pick a piece of fabric out of this box and draw the pattern. well, they were all floral patterns and none of them were cool to me. i hated them all, and i especially hated the one i picked. and it was then that i started despising flowers. i decided then that i would never draw another flower as long as i lived.
oh, the dreams of children, no?

then i went to college. i should have been a history teacher. i think i would have been pretty good at that. but at the time i thought that the only thing i could do was art. i thought art classes would be easy. i thought there wouldn't be anything to study or learn or read or to be tested on. i hadn't figured on those 6 art history classes, damn those were hard.

anyway, Drawing I and II came along and i had to draw flowers. ugh. for a grade. i remember doing a daffodil in oil pastel. i hated it. we studied flowers for what seemed like forever. i promised i'd never paint another flower. and i didn't. until 3 years later.

i took a watercolor class because i was majoring in painting and figured i ought to at least be able to paint in different mediums. and i must say, watercolor is probably the hardest (although i've never worked in encaustic and i'm guessing that's a pretty difficult medium). oils and acrylics do what you tell them to do. watercolor is a bitch with an attitude and does whatever the hell she wants to do.

i think water colors break down like this:
25% talent
25% science
50% serendipity

now, okay here's something, painting you see, is seasonal. it's crazy and i don't know why but for some reason acryilcs and oils are fall/winter paints and watercolors and pastels (oil and chalk) are spring/summer paints. look, it's true. check out a Dick Blick or Utretch catalogue. right now i'm looking at my Fall 2003 Utrecht book and there's oil paints on the cover.

and also, it is encouraged to use watercolors for painting outside. i don't know why for sure, i always assumed (uh oh) that back in the day painters liked to use watercolors on the go because they could paint next to a stream or other natural water source and that way it would be easier to clean their brushes and all. you know, instead of having to carry around turps or soap. but like i say, i don't know the real reason.

what i do know and what i've been trying to get at for the last two pointless paragraphs is that because it was a watercolor class we had to go outside and paint flowers. so there i was in the summer of '99 sitting in a professor's yard with 12 other students cursing to myself saying, "wasn't it 2 years ago i said i'd never do this?" but it's not like i could walk up to the professor and say, "hey man, listen. i made a pact with myself and i cannot paint those flowers. can i lift the hood of my car and paint the motor instead?"

so i sat in the grass and sketched flowers in water color. here, i scanned one for you:

i think it's a petunia

and after that, no more flowers.

now all of this is why i don't really like drawing/painting flowers. and actually i left a ton of stuff out, like The One About the Stupid Freak That Commissioned Me to Paint a Giant Painting With Flowers and Then Decided She Didn't Want It After All.
lesson learned: get the money up front.

ANYWAY. this was supposed to tell you why people paint flowers or maybe it was to be about why people shouldn't paint flowers. hell, i can't remember. if it's "why people paint flowers" the answer is they are easy as all get out. i think that even the roomful of Hamlet writing monkeys could paint flowers. you just cannot mess up a flower.

now, if this was supposed to be why you shouldn't paint flowers i think it's because unless your name is Georgia O'keefe or Vincent Van Gogh you have no business painting flowers. but don't take my word for it you flower painting hack.

also, if you do happen to paint flowers or, like me, find yourself painting flowers even though you know better, and this offends you, then please feel free to tell me to go to hell. you probably own two or more thomas kincade prints too, bastard.

wow. this took a lot longer to talk about than i thought it would. and it's not that funny. so here i'll leave you with this:

what do you get when you read a whole Time magazine, eat pizza for dinner and then watch PBS before you go to bed?

in my dream that night i saw osama bin laden sitting in an old wooden chair, he was hooked up to a dialysis machine and playing an old acoustic guitar. he was singing Hard Times (killing floor blues). and he was outside next to the mississippi river; his chair sunk down in the mud. he was tapping his foot in the muck. next to him was condoleeza rice in a business suit, her high heel pumps sunk in the mud and she was playing an upright bass. on drums we had the prez, wearing that stupid flight suit and he couldn't hold a beat to save his life. and then, like the bad dream it was, a voice over cut in and said, "K-tel presents....Osama Sings the Blues."

thankfully i woke up at that point and wrote on an index card 'osama sings the blues' so i would remember the dream in the morning. so anyway lessons we've learned in this weekly:
1. get the money up front
2. Time, PBS, and pizza just don't mix.

next week's epitomb: C-SPAN, The New Yorker, and tequila.

jaimie "back in the saddle, mostly" pickle