Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

…So I’m in the café line at IKEA after paying for my crappy new Billy bookcase. I’m already having a tough time deciding whether I should order the hotdog that I know tastes like rubber, or the sugar covered donuts which are always partially frozen, when I hear this kid start screaming in back of me. In pushy French fashion Mother and child arestanding barely 20 centimeters away from me so that the child’s wails of agony are goin directly into my left ear.

Just as I am about to convince myself to completely throw caution to the wind and order the new creepy-looking chicken sandwich thing on the brightly lit fluorescent menu, the kid lets out yet another long earth shatteringly loud scream that sounds something like it may in fact be dying.

And since at this point my bloodsugar is so low that I’m actually physically incapable of caring whether or not the kid is in fact dying. I don’t turn to look. Instead, I say to myself “If that F@cking baby screams in my goddamned ear one more time I swear to god I’m gonna turn round and smack it!”

Almost instantaneously, I hear this un-Godly noise that sounds something like:

“WRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHRFT!”

And with that, I feel a weak, yet surprisingly firm thwack on the back of my neck.

Yep. You guessed it.

A bitchy little French baby just sucker punched me on the back of the neck!

Now, It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. In fact, I was in a bit of a daze untill I heard the baby’s mother say “arrête!” (“stop”). Instinctively I turned around to face the mother and child. And here my friends, is where it gets that much funnier.

When I turn around, the French mom is desperately avoiding my gaze by looking up at the IKEA menu as if the answer to all the mysteries of the Universe were somehow embedded in that f@cker. Meanwhile L´enfant terrible that sucker punched me is glaring at me like I just stole candy from her or something!

I don't know exactly what to say about this experience beyond that. A baby punched me. A baby punched me and got away with it. I mean it's not like I could punch her back or call the police. I mean, what do ya do?

So, lesson learned. Be mindful of even your private thoughts because apparently some bitchy French babies can read minds.

And they will punch you...

and get away with it.

To Whom it May Concern.

To Whom it May Concern:

The purpose of this letter is to kindly inform you that 9-year-old boys don’t give a rat’s ass about the sights and sounds of Paris. They are utterly bored by views of the Eiffel tower and remain unimpressed by the grandeur of the Arc de triumph.

However, they do enjoy trying to karate pigeons and looking at dinosaur eggs.

Also you would do well to prepare yourself for the fact that they enjoy doing dangerous stuff like jumping over parking pylons and almost busting out their 2 front teef, climbing up safety barriers, and racing other boys up steep escalators and stairways.

In closing, I wish to advise you that no matter how hard you try to impress a 9-year-old boy in Paris, they will always be more impressed with something like playing video games with other boys...

or even just watching a car get towed from in front of your garage.

So....Good Luck with that.




Madame K.

Shut up about your f*cking kid.

We went to the zoo alllll day yesterday so I have nothing non-kid related to share, but that's not so bad...



Also, I didn't get a photo of the peacock that escaped its cage because I was too busy gawking at the gang of French toddlers chasing it around like it was a chicken dinner.

Total freak show.

Seriously, I have seen some bad parenting in my day, but encouraging your toddler to chase after a big-ass wild bird that has escaped from its cage in the zoo? This is worse than the time I almost ran over a 2-year-old in the McDo parking lots because her mom was too busy lighting her cigarette to notice she had wandered off.

Alas, Just one more piece of evidence to support my evolving theory that French parents love their kids a bit less than say......the Japanese.

Snips 'N Snails and Puppy Dog Tails.

So now that the busiest June is history is…history. I’m on to a month of July filled with guests. The first special guests to arrive this month are my mom and my nephew Tyson. After two wonderful flights, they arrived at the Luxembourg airport only to discover that Lux Air managed to lose my mom’s suitcase---again. In fact every time she has come to visit us, Lux Air has lost her luggage. At this point it’s just funny.

Anyway, yesterday was exhausting. I had a really tough time adjusting to having a kid in the house. Dude, the Barbie Dream House is NOT kid friendly. How could we have not realized this before? I spent the entire afternoon chasing after Tyson making sure he didn’t accidentally break stuff. And even if he did, who could I blame but myself? Which leads me to really good question: What kind of Yuppie Jack-asses build a house, then furnish it with furniture that’s as fragile and as rare as Fabergé eggs? Answer: Yuppie Jack-asses who obviously have no kids. If FrenchBoy and I ever do get around to making kids we will either have to sell the Barbie Dream House or keep them in cages. Mind you fragile and rare cages designed by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Oh, Oh! And the noise. The noise! Listen, I grew up with 2 brothers, but clearly I have forgotten the absolute avalanche of sound that even one kid playing solo can create. Yesterday my brain actually hurted. Of course my Mom thinks it's hilarious. She's having quite a laugh at me running around the house like a mad woman. Revenge is sweet I suppose.

The one quiet moment of the day was an hour or so when my Mom and Tyson decided to make some paintings. OK, Tyson decided. I taught Mom and Tyson how to mix 2 colors of brown from orange and blue and how not to let your acrylic paint go dry in your brushes. For one blissful hour we all painted. Quietly. It was nice.

So today, we are off to the Zoo or Aquarium, or whatever kid friendly location I can find around Metz. I just want him to see cool stuff and have some fun. (Any clues on what 9 year olds think is cool or fun?)

And I will do my best to chill out and not have a cardiac arrest the next time he slams his cup of water down on my lovely glass dining room table or somehow manages to fall over and completely topple one of the fancy matching leather chairs.

Double Exposure.

So in all my excitement about San Francisco I forgot to blog about the reason I went there in the first place. Here are the photos from the MoAD Double Exposure opening events. (If you want to see the entire set on flickr click here.)








MoAD is great, the opening events were fantastic, and the show itself was a huge hit. I had so much fun and met so many genuinely interested and interesting people. My head was spinning. Also Sunday afternoon I was on the artist panel, lead by artist Carla Williams, and I managed to not sound like a bumbling idiot. For me that made the whole trip a success.



The best part of course was meeting the other artists and finally having the chance to meet Lisa Henry the curator of the exhibit after having talked to her only by phone for the last....year.











So hip-hip hurray. My two pieces are on loan to the exhibit until 2011. Better to have the work out in the world on an extended loan than on permanent storage in my studio while waiting for a buyer. So here’s to hoping that the show gets picked up by a few more museums and perhaps even that date gets extended!

“Honey I’m home!” …. For real this time!

So… I actually got back from San Francisco a week ago. But I’ve been so busy that I totally forgot to blog. And by busy I mean 2 days of sleeping off my jet-lag and another 2 days of cleaning and running errands, followed by an entire weekend of family obligations. More on all of this stuff later.

First things first: I absolutely adore San Francisco. So much so, that I feel that I must have lived there already in a past life. The whole time I was there I had this weird familiar feeling, yet was acutely aware of experiencing everything for the first time. I used to feel like I was cheating on New York every time I fell a bit more in love with Paris, but now I feel even guiltier because I have a serious crush on San Francisco.



Dude, totally trippy.

Also during my trip I had the pleasure of meeting so many amazing people. Besides meeting all the artists at the MoAD events, I met up with the blogger formerly known as BuzzGirl and her daughter who I affectionately refer to (only in my head) as Baby Buzz.

In fact I had a wonderful day walking around the Mission district with BabyBuzz while Mamma Buzz was at work. Now, Baby Buzz is probably the coolest 13 year old you’ll ever meet. I just tried my best not to embarrass her with my dorky presence too much as she played tour guide.

We visited 2 art galleries, had fancy over-priced tea, and sampled Indian ice-cream before calling it a day. Oh and did I mention she speaks French comme un Français? I mean really. I was embarrassed to talk in front of her for fear she would roll her eyes and correct me.

Side note: Folks –you don’t realize how old you are until you’ve spent an afternoon with a 13 year old. All the walking around wore me out.

Later in the week we all met up again for some playing around town. Buzz rented a zip car and we rolled all around San Fran and I tried not to barf in it even though going up and down all those hills gave me crazy motion sickness. We did the obligatory Embarcadero and at pier 39 we all squeezed into a photo booth. It was good old fashioned giggly girl fun.

Buzz snuck us all into the San Francisco art institute to see the Diego Rivera. While there we also checked out an exhibit, and snuck into the sculpture studios…which made me drool a lil bit out of the left corner of my mouth. (So this is what 30 G’s a year buys ya?”) It’s like art heaven in there.

We ended the evening with a drive to Oakland for an oversized meal of Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, which recently had a falling out with Roscoe so they simply crossed his name off the awning but kept on serving the waffles. Hilarious!



Sunday I just spent the day walking around the mission again. When I die can I go to the Mission and spend eternity browsing used bookstores and dozing off on an over-stuffed coffee shop sofa with my laptop resting on my belly full of coffee?

Oh and how could I almost forget? Although like a dumb-ass I managed to schedule my trip to miss Gay Pride by only a few days, my friends Ina and AJ managed to grab us three much sought after tickets to the 2008 Fresh Meat Transgender and Queer Performance Festival. It was amazing good fun.

Photo by: Asha Leung, 2007.

As icing on the queer cake I had the honor of having Sunday brunch with one of this year’s performers Turner Schofield who is not only too damn good-looking for his own good, but also happens to mix a hoppin' mean Mimosa. Turner's performance was a huge hit, and I was lucky enough to snag a copy of his book Two Truths and a Lie, which he was nice enough to sign and make a little note in French no less! *swoon*

That night at the festival I also saw the Harley boots of my dreams being worn by a totally cutie who was nice enough to tell me exactly where to go buy them.



I also met her friend Idexa, from the very famous Black and Blue Tattoo on Guerrero and 16th street who turns out is a major celebrity in the international tattoo world. What luck?

Also-- Jasmine--I made it to 24th and Mission to eat at Farolito’s. Like you said, the outside is a bit sketchy, but I walked in and it was packed. The so-insanely-handsome-that-it’s-just-wrong guy at the counter greeted me with a “Hey girl.” and I had to keep my knees from buckling underneath me. Dude---why didn’t you tell me the carne asada super burrito is the size of a newborn? I could only eat half of it.

Anyway. San Francisco rocks.