Happy New Year to all

Well, I am back in New York after a long vacation in California for the holidays.
I travelled back with my dearest friend Andrea who is now on a train going north to her new home in Montreal. We pulled her two giant suitcases through the streets of Manhatten during the first minutes of sunrise this morning and discussed the lovely phonetic quality of the sound "Monreal" just as we had of the sound "Hallelujah" a few hours before as we lay in my bed, both of us unable to sleep. So she is off and I am here at an internet station at Kinko's on 7th ave, waiting for the hours to pass before I have to go to work just a few blocks over. Presently there is a homeless man washing himself in the drinking fountain in the corner. He wished me good health and advised me of a drug store down the block because of my coughing. New York has been nothing but courteous and accomodating on all fronts in the two days I have been back. Despite my rather horrendous cough, the disaster in my room I left for myself to come home to, the fact that my two dear china-town turtles died, and the fact that I have so far only been able to sleep every other night, I have been surprisingly productive and in good spirits because of it. Even the wheather has been delightful. Hopefully the impending 8 hour work shift standing around trying to get charitable donations out of strangers in on the street (yes, that is what im doing now
) wont crush my momentum.
So its 2008 and the theme of this year so far has been "Kidnapping."
More on that soon, as I am hungry and feel like taking a walk before work, and as writing more on my blog is a goal of mine for the new year.

Hope you all are doing well.
all my best, Maggie

taxi driver

today i was paid to drive a new york city taxi from long island city, queens to times square in manhatten and back. i got honked at so much and so many people tried hail me to get into my car. more on all this later.

drawing strangers.

Today, after Andrea and I were kicked out of the subway for attempting to (me) draw people and (her) do spoken word (I think it was actually because we were sitting and had a hat out), I decided to sit in Union Square with a sign that said "Free Portraits, 5 minutes, Donations Accepted" and some sharpies and highlighters. My new job doesnt start until next week and I feel so out of practice when it comes to figure drawing, i figured I would see if I could get some practice in and make a few bucks. I drew about 12 people. They were slow coming at first but by the end i had a huge crowed of teenagers around me, and I would have drawn them all, but by then it was so cold I could hardly move my hands. I felt like I could feel myself slowly getting better as the say went on. My favorite drawing that came out was of this tough-looking deaf guy with a mustache and a NYC beanie and no neck. He read my sign and pointed to himself with his eyebrows up. When he sat down he frowned and kept his chin high. I tried to make him look powerful and put blue highlighter lines coming out from all sides of him and he seemed delighted with it. i got both a thumbs up and a high five. In the end, I made about 5 dollars, and got a free hip hop cd, and a free hair cutting/coloring coupon from some students at the fancy haircutting school, which is nice because i was just thinking that I could use a good haircut.
(these were some of the drawing of andrea (which some bum told me looked exactly like steven tyler), and unsuspecting people sitting on benches i did in the down time early on. by the end of the day, i was banging out psychadelic masterpeices in five minutes flat, honest.)





speaking of drawing, yersderday, i finally went to the Society of Illustrators jazz and figure drawing session I have been bookmarking for months that was in this classy old building on the upper east side with free coffee and a bar and these beautiful burlesque nude models doing 10-20 minute poses for three hours. And because it was through the society of illustrators so most people there were professionals and really really skilled, so it was good to watch them work. oh, did i mention the live blues singer and backing band? incredible.

also, we are trying to learn french. if anyone knows a good way to make that happen faster, let me know!

an elegy for midge.

for all of you that knew and loved the great midge, our little old pug who was blind and deaf (not to mention courageous) and had only one eye, i am very sorry to announce that she passed away today.

I loved Midge because she defied all laws of nature. We think she was born sometime circa 1994, and while her early years remain a mystery, and we have no idea what happened to her right eye, she came into our life via the guy that runs the gun shop/pug rescue center in Livermore in sometime in 2004 and she spent most of her days foraging for food in our living room with her heightened sense of smell (it really was her only sense that functioned) and sitting on the couch making fun pig noises while my mom knit and watched Law and Order. She was loved by all who met her and leaves behind a lifetime of memories that will no sooner fade from our minds then her pee stains from my parents carpet.

Im pretty upset about this, I think we all are. She was a warm and fuzzy little bitch with a heart of gold and was unlike any other dog on earth.

RIP Arrow Midgery Lucky Princess Muldoon c.1994 - 10/18/2007
Lil dog, I dont think we could forgert you if we tried.

Rooftop show, The Opera House, 9/9/07

So this here is a photo journal of the amazing show that happened on my roof on 9/9/07. its also a little bit of me showing off my digs here in brooklyn, The Opera House:
heres my flyer:


this is my living room/kitchen/hallway and Tory of Cartoon Monster.

the show begins on my roof, with The Blanket Truth. check out the skyline, the projects, and old glory in the backround:


this is the Blanket Truth, from Seattle/T.O. with Hoshwa on drums:


Rebecca and Josh as Watercolor Paintings, strait outta Thousand Oaks/Isla Vista, CA:


next was Cartoon Monster of Portland OR, playing behind a barbeque:


This is the Peach Colored Jog Smugglers, from all over CA, specifically "the Chad Shack" note that the boy on the end is not in fact playing air guitar, but rather, the spoons.


more of that fine spoon action:



this is madame flodd: two amazing girls, from Eugene, OR playing klezmer/gypsie music on a fiddle and accordian



they also brought the dance party:


this is Brooklyn's own The Lil Hospital, playing a killer set in my living room. about ten seconds after this picture was taken 'The Man' made us stop the music and break up the party. Boo Man. regaudless they were great.


afterwards everyone hung out in the courtyard of my building and had a fine time:


that night nine extra people slept in my tiny house. my four roomates are pretty amazing to put up with me, at the time of this show id only lived here a month. here we are hanging out with my new york bff, and fifth roommate, vinyl the dog


she got a little vicious... check out those beautiful teeth!


and then in the morning we went to the soul food buffet down the street (its 4.59 a POUND! for good food) and then we took this picture and said goodbye!


and that was it! hooray. it was pretty much the best night ever. hooray music, friends, and brooklyn.

no, please, tell me all about it:

one of the best things about new york (file under: perks of being nocturnal) is the way weirdos sit around and kvetch.

no, really.

as is my nature, i often find myself staying awake all night in a 24 hour cafe in manhattan (my favorite yet is the esperanto), drinking tea, working on projects of some variety and every single time, come four or five in the morning, I wander outside to get a look at the sky turning to blue, and i find the oddest assortment of people, usually all strangers, sitting around, all in a huff about some topic that somebody must have pulled out of a hat.
(says the big bass player in his thickest new york accent) "my mother always said, 'marraige is the biggest admission of a lack of self confidence a person can make'. discuss."

tonight the huff was about: motorcycles (specifically: motorcycle safey education, near death expiriences, the coolest bikes they have seen on craigslist) traps that bosses set to test their employees, marraiges of convenience (all the reasons why its a bad idea), and draft dodging (did you know: "during 'nam you didnt have to go all the way to canada! just go to Minnesota, like in Fargo, and nobody'd bother you there!") with a slight sidetrack somewhere in there about how marraige in general, was for fools.

invariably, if you are awake at this hour, and are spotted outside of a cafe, someone pulls out a chair and says "sit down, honey!!" and then you get sucked in. these people are not crackheads or bums. they are artists and actors and barflys and hotel clerks and forign nationals and the strangest array of people. they talk to you like you are an old friend. while I have also expirienced this odd sort of random stranger kvetch-sesh during the day, I feel like I am in some sort of secret club when it happens at night, for i am quite certain nocturnal new yorkers are by far some of the friendliest and strangest people alive.

goodbye my coney island baby.

Tonight I went to Coney Island (which is less of an island then I had imagined) and met up with old friends (the kind I hadn't seen in years) I rode the Cyclone, which is a rollercoaster that just had it's 80th birthday, and is, apparently, a UN national heritage site. it is as rickety and horrifying as you might imagine, and more so. I walked under carnival lights. I ate fried clams and drank beer and caught up with friends and looked at the Atlantic ocean (realizing this may have been my first time really seeing it from US shores.) It made me think of the last time I stared into the Atlantic, while flying over it more then a year ago now, coming home from Ghana, and all of the things that any ocean, Pacific or Atlantic came to symbolize for me when I was first home. I would stand on the cliffs of Isla Vista and think: Sacrifice, Dependance, Poverty, Labor, Slavery, Danger. Children still in diapers throwing nets out into the ocean for a days eats, or being offered up to the ocean as human sacrifice. I got annoyed when the people around me looked at the same thing and saw nothing but an elegant backround, or a place to play, or something calming and non-specifically poetic. In my first few months back, hearing the waves crash out my window every night would drive me mad. It exahsted me to think that they never ever stopped. It exahsted me to imagine all of the people lacing every shore on every side of the world toiling to dump things into it, or pull things out of it or move across it, and how it all came down to what side of the ocean you came out of the womb on. But as I looked out at the ocean tonight, it wasn't until relating a travel story to this friend whom I hadnt seen since before I left and came back from Ghana that I realized, at some untracable moment somewhere in Isla Vista, I had come look at the ocean and see peace again.
On Coney Island, the ocean was just a pretty black and sparkling backdrop to a fun night on the peir catching up with friends, and a subtle, and wisely ignored urge for some nightswimming. The transition must have been so slow that I hadnt been able to feel it. Its a relief, but not without the wonder if I have been trying to forget something I really ought to remember. I think now, that maybe I can feel both things simultaniously.

It is an odd feeling, to know a group of people in a way that is very attatched to one particular time and place, in this case, Isla Vista, California, circa 2005 and then suddenly several years later, after having only minimal contact, realize you are all in the same place at the same time again, only somehow, this time, it's Coney Island, New York, and then spontaniously reconveine. It's an odd way to measure what's changed and what hasn't changed. It never seems to be the things you think it would have been