argentine nights gone wild (breast first) -

we'll get to these in a minute . . .


so though we spend every day in a van running around the whole city trying to find things like, oh, the perfect stairwell, or something we could make look like a service station, or a copier machine (you know, as an aside, that could all sound like we were making a porn movie. which is not true. HONEST.) in a tight little van with mediocre air conditioning, and tons of traffic because the whole city was on strike in one way or another (garbage workers, then train workers, then escalator drivers. . . i don't know, i stopped keeping track), we try to make up for it every single night, by hitting the buenos aires nightlife.

so, we eat outside along the docks on the river, at amazing steakhouses:


loving up the magret wines:

and a personal favorite the caipirinas made with cachaca :


or, perhaps, going to sucre, for some of the best food in the city, with the stunning backlit bar:


and dishes like pumpkin risotto with garlic and prawns, laced with arugula and crumbled almond shortbread. you heard me. there are no cookies in YOUR ears:



or Olsen, for scandinavian food and, well, more caipirinhas:


julia finally joined us out on this night:


and kira had her friend sascha join us:





and we suprised ed when bebe brought in the cake for his bday.

(personally, i think richard and sara trumped us all by filling his hotel room with a hundred gold mylar baloons in homage to the finale of madonna's confessions tour . . . but i don't have pics of that, so you'll have to do with the cake thing.)



oh no. not over yet.



start using those gams ladies. cab time. bar hopping begins NOW:


first, 878 for some drinks and flirting with the random assortment of brazilian bartenders eddie and sara had picked out for us to view.


god. check bebe's jawline. how bergen in the making:


oooh, we were ready to ROLL:


then we were fueled to hit pacha, for the BIG GAY DANCE NIGHT. i know. suprise.


but my fondest memory of the trip
will be those intimate "lift and push together" moments
i shared with kira:

julia francioni - our argentine muse

while choosing locations, we had to pick everything from the actual space, to how we place the people. where the camera might sit. how the light has to fall. enter our unsuspecting p.a., julia.


the light seemed to find her, following her stillness from room to room. i loved photographing her. she would move, and suddenly, i saw the shot.


she walked, and the street became a backdrop.


sure, she kept our life rolling in a foreign land.


but the muse, she became a friend as well.

palacio duhau, buenos aires -

what happens when you mix an old palace
with a new hotel?





you find a new place to stay when you return to buenos aires.

again, like i have to tell y'all these things.

been here a few days already,
anything you want me to bring back for you?

shout out to TIM -

this one goes out to you : timothy m. johnson,
my love.

because YOU should own the patent on the coke bottle for the amount you consume.

PIT BULLS ARE SCARY:

oh, no, wait.

that's a FOO dog. foo dogs are scary.

never mind.

go about your business. nothing to see here. move along.

google searches i didn't see coming :

so for those of us a leetle too obsessed with our own blogs
(don't play coy. i KNOW who you are.)
trackin how people find your site is fun. obsessive. fun. obsessive.

so while there were like,
a bajillion people who searched for "puppy in the old navy commercial"
and hit this here site over the holidays,
today's searches kind of took the cake.

witness:

01/01/08 15:39:14	who`s gonna drive you home tonight (Google)
01/01/08 15:29:17	reasons to be jealous of china (Google)
01/01/08 15:17:27	fun size patent blog cock ring (Google)
01/01/08 10:09:29	MACARENA KAPOOR (Google)
01/01/08 01:43:35	florence faivre (Google)
12/31/07 19:05:19	song from old navy holiday commercial (Google)
12/31/07 18:56:19	matt loewen gifts that play (Google)
12/31/07 17:43:01	who's gonna drive you home (Google)
12/31/07 17:15:47	Who's Gonna Drive You Home, Tonight (Google)
12/31/07 15:53:09	OLD NAVY COMERICAL WITH THE PITT BULL (Yahoo)

i really don't know.
i don't.
is my favorite "macarena kapoor"?
or "fun size patent blog cock ring"?

one sounds like the name of our next dog.
the other sounds like saturday night. i mean obscene. OBSCENE!

the chinese symbol for "togetherness" -

this was scrawled on our window shortly after we moved in,
it's apparently the chinese symbol for "together" or "with".


we wondered how it got there until we remembered that
in french, that roughly translates to "avec".

a black fly in your chardonnay -

so you know how ikea is really freakin big?

doesn't matter where you go, it's big. and you walk through every one of those freakin little fake room displays while people with strollers and those odd little carts (which have a name like FORKENLOLLER) and all you really want it to buy your freakin closet system and GET OUT of there, but you're tired and you're finally through it all, and you get to the check out, and then you have to arrange delivery and you're PARCHED and you go the vending machine because you don't want to wait in line for the scandanavian lingonberry soda and you press the button for gatorade because you have to rehydrate, like NOW, and this happens:


i can't remember if this is technically irony,
or if it just SUCKS.

which was also alanis' problem with that song.

spicy chorizo meat package -

so evelyn and i are walking through bristol farms
(kind of a high-end grocery store downtown)
and passed a case where they have all their custom meats.

now, normally, i'm all for anything called "custom meat".
seriously, it just speaks to me.
but there was something slightly off-putting about the chorizo display:


i dunno.
maybe i just like my meat shrink wrapped and without EYEBALLS.

you know, or in denim, with a good set of big hands.

the "pit ball"

who knew there was a name for this?


both the girls curl into "croissants" when they sleep,
and apparently it's something the breed just does,
and it's called (now we know, and so do you) a "pit ball".

get it? pit bull / pit ball? get it?

just sharin the wealth of knowledge.

thank me later.

ADVICE - january edition

in the midst of all the resolving and resolutin' going on in the blogworld,
i got to thinking about the two single most powerful pieces of advice i have ever heard.

i find these two quotes may help you this year,
they save me quite often:

after 911, joyce carol oates gave a speech.
in it she started by saying that years hence,
when children or grandchildren asked her what it was like to watch the towers falling,
she would only tell them that "it was like watching the moon fall from the sky".

and that after,
the only thing she would tell people,
the thing that would get them through no matter what,
was "action is the antidote to despair".

i LOVE that. i USE that. i say it OUT LOUD TO MYSELF when times are hard,
and it chills me and makes me push on through and get to it.

and,
when i had just broken up with a model i had been dating (gorgeous, made sheep look smart), and was despairing of ever finding love,
my younger sister (who was SIXTEEN at the time)
had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years.

i asked her why, and she said

"well, i decided it really only came down to two things:
does he make me happy? and does he treat me well? and if i could say yes to those two things, nothing else really mattered."

made the whole list of things i wanted in a guy kind of . . . stupid.
so i thought i'd try it. you know, put it out there.

and damn her, if two days later i didn't meet tim.

just some grist to keep in the mill as you ponder this year.

CUTEST PIT BULL PICS EVER!

but i may be biased.

may-be.

no.

now that i've thought about it, not biased. that IS the cutest pit bull ever.

some holiday highlights -

in no particular order:

- we decided to forgo the tempurpedic mattress (four thousand dollars, who knew?)
in favor of the large flatscreen
(less, because they are on sale. and not made of "memory foam".
four thousand dollar memory foam.)
coming in january: flatscreen prettiness.

-found a bag. don't need it, but . . .
you know. maybe just to carry some stuff around in.
groceries, whatever.
what do you think? green good, right?
it's all about "green" these days. . .


- i unpacked and propped the new home.
now it is pretty. i feel MUCH better.
boxes make me jumpy,
i keep thinking :
"wait, what the hell is in THAT ONE? what have i forgotten about?"

- saw the golden compass.
be forewarned, i AM going as mrs. coulter next halloween.
why? hello, gold hand-beaded gowns / elizabeth-montgomery blonde bob /
large golden monkey?
it's practically already done, people.
i just have to add lip gloss. and a monkey.


- ate potato chips. and ice cream sandwiches. and sushi. all on the same day.
hello fabulous self-indulgent nausea!

- tanned. there, i said it. fake baked. whatever.
sometimes that just feels so freakin good, and i know, i know,
but i don't smoke, barely drink, and haven't had an illicit drug since . . .
since. . .
funny, why can't i remember. . .
well, anyway. . .
it felt good.

- saw atonement.
key takeaway:
keira knightley and james macavoy must breed.
mainly for my amusement, but also for the continuation of obscenely gorgeously jawboned human beings with posh accents and glittery eyes.
there's an acronym in there somewhere.


- downloaded spanish lessons.
cause i'm going back to argentina.
and should probably learn to order my own food instead of leaning over to julia
and saying things like "mmm. and one of those."
and hoping she translates
rather than rolling her eyes and telling the waiter to spit on my steak.

- saw enchanted.
delightful! amy adams, amazing . . . shockingly for a disney film.


- oh, bliss. snuggled with the puppies, snuggled with the puppies.
taught avec "settle" so she doesn't jump so much.
started to teach them "sleep" so they sleep on their own beds.
so they stop sleeping ON me every night.
sweet as their snuffling is.

- saw Juno.
course, could have skipped all the others in favor of this.

it's brill.

or, as they say, "wizard".

- ran into this at saks.
i think it's the perfect way to sum up the year:


adieu, 07.