2012 in Review

Who's up for a recap of the past 12 months?

January

- Tony, Erik and Spencer visited us in Northfield. My calves hurt like a mofo for a week after they left, so there was probably a double-dutch tournament or a lot of jumpy dancing. 

- Ernesto and I flew to Miami for Debby and Yuziel's wedding, where Luis managed to set something on fire during the reception.
- Also in Miami, I learned that car eyelashes are a thing

fake eyelashes aren't just for guidettes

- The Current played "We Are Young" and I texted my brother that fun. is getting famous (there were several exclamation points). we r hipzturds. 

February

- Ernesto and I ate at a Chinese buffet and I opened a fortune cookie that had TWO FORTUNES.
- I took the GRE in Edina/Eden Prarie. After walking out of the Prometric center in tears, Ernesto bought me a sandwich at Subway and I ate my feelings.
- The amazing Hannah Jensen directed her cinema comps film, Last, where twentyish dancers performed her choreography in the Weitz Center. It was beautifuuuuul, watch it.

March

- I finished studio art comps and dayum it felt great. This was my studio by the end of the term:

je t'aime toujours, boliou

- I finished my Insomnia audiobook and was pretty disappointed that the Stephen King novel had nothing to do with the movie with Robin Williams.

- We spent spring break in El Paso.

- I joined Pinterest and have been wasting approx half of my life on it.

- March to the Reub happened, where I ate more than the appropriate amount of buffalo wings.

April

- Quality Bakery put up the freaking creepiest Easter bunny in their window shop on Division Street. I practically peed my pants every morning on the way to class. Bunnicula is real and it lives in Northfield.

Enjoy your upcoming nightmares. 

- Ernesto gave his comps talk, "DNA, I Hear You're Single.. Molecule Replication"
- We went to our first baseball game in Target Field with Natalia and Francisco, and watched the Red Sox demolish the Twins 11 to 2. Happy birthday to me!
- Ernesto and I tore the apartment apart looking for his Spanish passport.
- We celebrated his birthday in Chicago with Jenny and Tony (who somehow didn't know about the metal bean that everyone visits). We stayed at the (HAUNTED) Congress hotel and it was a good time.We went to a bunch of museums and whatnot, but my favorite part was seeing Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, this pretty cool experimental theatre place where the price of admission is whatever you get when you roll a die.

May
- We went to Madison and woke up to this beauty the morning after Mifflin:

Nothing like the smell of burnt couch in the morning

:(  

- The senior studio art majors had our final show, for which nobody could agree on a title, so it was called Untitled: For Reasons. It was dumb and I hated it UNTIL one of the juniors brought the following snack to the show opening:

Untitled (Four Raisins)

So good. Art in its truest form. 

- I had my final show with Whoa! Hip Hop Dance Co, which was emotional for obvious reasons. It was by far the best show we'd put on since I'd been at Carleton DESPITE being zombie themed, which is saying a lot. There were technical difficulties at the beginning of the show which delayed it about 20 minutes, which was great because my family was running 20 minutes late (shocker). 

I choreographed two dances for the show, but this one was by far my favorite. And it's not even a Justin Timberlake song!

June

- Ernesto and I graduated from Carleton College WOOOOOOOO it was great. 

- The day after graduation, we went to Mexico with my family and spent a week in Cabo with Tia Laura. Ernesto got a minor injury while diving after his sandals on the beach.

- Haley Johnson had her Rochester baby shower and I not-so-discreetly ate half a dozen cupcakes. 

July 

- I cried a lot on the road trip from Rochester to Dallas (where I saw a double rainbow for the first time!)

- Ernesto and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary with his parents and with Gustavito's family in Atlanta, where we ate Spanish food and danced a ton.

- We went to the Dali museum, which was crazy.

- I took his family to the art galleries on Lincoln Road that my family used to visit when we lived in Miami. 

- Luis changed our lives by introducing us to Breaking Bad on Netflix. 

August

- I kept finding different aspects of our Ikea furniture hilarious. Like.. look at these Poker Face Planks. They're adorable. Obviously I was a less-than- efficient furniture assembler. 

Poker Face Paulina hanging out with Poker Face Planks

- Ernesto and I lived the all-american summer camp experience that we'd never had during childhood at his med school retreat. 

- I taught a bunch of M1s the soulja boy dance and the lyrics to 'Call Me Maybe' for a contest that we later WON. You're welcome, future doctors.

- Ernesto officially started medical school.

- We caught up with Breaking Bad and started watching the latest episodes at Angelika Theatre.

September

- I officially started working at Onesimo Hernandez Elementary, and instantly fell in love with all 22 of the kids in my classroom. 

- Ernesto got an iPhone and WE DISCOVERED SONGPOP. 

- I heard this song for the first time and have had it stuck in my head ever since. 

- We went to a waterpark with Ernesto's family, and he lost his sandals. 

- It took me like 5 minutes to realize that the ticket booth guy at Angelika Theatres wasn't kidding when he said that Breaking Bad was over until July. 

- Dr. Mark Sloane died in the Season 9 premiere of Grey's Anatomy, and I had a minor meltdown.

October

- We went to the Texas State Fair and stumbled upon this..

Nicholas Cage: Rock Star Demigod

This alone would have been worth the trip. We also ate 4 different kinds of fried food.. it was a great night overall.

- I sent in a MN absentee ballot so that my vote would count for the prez election.

- We got to Ernesto's white coat ceremony 15 minutes late.

- On Halloween, Ernesto dressed up as Mona Lisa and I dressed up as zombie Dr. Sloane to get $2 burritos at Chipotle. 

November

- My classroom went on our first ever field trip, and I learned that a bus filled with 5-year-olds is the best kind of bus.

- Obama FTW! We celebrated. 

- The beautiful Kristen Vellinger came to Dallas for a conference, and we had her all to ourselves for a Thursday night! She introduced us to a place that has like 5 different kinds of pazookie. Friends let friends eat way too much dessert. 

Just like old times! Minus Jon and pajamas and overall Carleton-related misery.

- We spent Thanksgiving in Rochester, where we sang tons of karaoke and ate tons of food with my family and spent time with some of our dearest friends (e.g. Perkins ). 

December

- Ernesto took his last anatomy exam which is GREAT because now he won't spend as much time showing me gory pictures of people's faces that are 50 shades of terrifying.

- Jon Sands talked to me at a Google hangout and I about died. 

- Todd Anderson said he liked a poem I wrote and I about died a second time. 

- We spent the holidays in Ft. Myers and Luis showed me Grand Theft Auto for the first time.

2012, folks! 

It was a good show. 

2013 has gotten off to a pretty good start ever since I was introduced to Killer Karaoke. 

Four Things

Hey blogging world.

1. IT'S HALLOWEEN, and I'm really excited because (brace yourself for a letdown) this will finally be the year I watch 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. TNBC is pretty high up there on my list of things I awkwardly pretend I've seen, so this is going to be a life-changer.

Things I pretend I've Seen:
- A Charlie Brown Christmas
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- the last episode of LOST
- The Little Rascals
- The Goonies
- The Brave Little Toaster
- Rocko's Modern Life

 Growing up, my mom had a thing against anything that had to do with Tim Burton (why mami? whyyyy?) so all of my contributions to most of the The Nightmare Before Christmas-related conversations (there were more of them than you'd expect. There were enough of them to make me feel like a big fat weirdo for being the only kid in my class who hadn't seen the movie) were based on the 30 second movie previews that came before the feature film on my Thumbelina VHS. Mostly, the conversations went like this:

Friends: Blah blah blah.. like that one part in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'! Have you seen that movie?

Me: (stammers) (sweats a lot) Uh, y-yeah! Haha! Duh. Ha. Who hasn't? Haha. What a great movie. Ha. That guy's white pumpkin head is so cool!

Friends: You mean Jack? He's not a pumpkin. He's a skeleton.

Me: (stammers more) (on the verge of tears) What? Haha. Oh yeah! I absolutely know who Jack is! Ha. And that he's a skeleton! I just love this movie so much and sometimes it's hard to talk about things you love and I think I hear my brother calling me so bye! (runs far away before they realize what a fraud I am and refuse to go trick-or-treating with the loser who hasn't seen The Nightmare Before Christmas)

My childhood Halloweens in a nutshell, people! Enough nervous laughter and lying to last a lifetime.


2. Taking a break to talk about non-seasonal items of business: I'm still ginuwinely (wait for it) upset that I dropped 400 SongPop points on the so-called Modern R&B playlist (geddit?!) (but seriously, I'm upset). I thought it would be all Craig David and Ashanti and Blu Cantrell (those three make up 95% of what I listened to during all of 6th grade, so there was a lot of emotional baggage going into this playlist), but the playlist doesn't have any of them. I don't know who it has. Obviously. Given my abysmal scores every time I play the stupid playlist.

3. I've been doing a really good job of meal-planning for the past two weeks so that my next grocery trip won't be until after Halloween is over so that I can stock up on clearance Count Chocula and fun-sized Kit Kat bars. My. Glamorous. Life.

4. Halloween is all about choosing to be terrified for fun, which is a great segway for me to mention that NaNoWriMo starts in 6ish hours and I still don't have a main character. Any volunteers?

22B422 Pt. 16: Now You're Just

Well hey there. A week ago I made the huge mistake of listening to Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know," so obviously now I'm super depressed and/or have lost all faith in humanity. A while ago I wrote a list of goodbye songs that aren't really saying goodbye, and this one just tops them all. 

To deal with my all of my complicated feelings regarding this song, I made a bunch of advice animals and took some liberty with Gotye's lyrics.

Alternate Endings to The Chorus for Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know."

Now you're just somebody's lawn I used to mow.

Now you're just some money that I used to owe.

Now you're just a neon sign that used to glow. 

Now you're just the pottery I used to throw. 

Now you're just the sculpture that I used to sew. 

Now you're just the cleavage that I used to show. 

Now you're just the bubbles that I used to blow.

Now you're just the season when it used to snow.  (MN WINTER 2012!)

Now you're just the sea monkeys I used to grow. 

Now you're just the college where I used to go. Seeyuh, Carleton.

22B422 pt. 9: Books J.K. Rowling Should Write

J.K. Rowling recently announced her new novel, The Casual Vacancy. According to Rowling, the "blackly comic" book will be a departure from the Potter series, focusing on the events of a small idyllic town. While this is a perfectly reasonable narrative for an author to pursue, I think J.K. Rowling isn't doing this right. The past decade of fame and fortune following the UNPARALLELED WONDER that is Harry Potter allows her the freedom to write absolutely anything she wants for this next book. No matter what, people are going to read this first non-Potta book, because they'll want to see what non-magical things she has to offer.

Think of the possibilities, J.K.
The possibilities are endless, J.K.
J.K., but seriously. (geddit x3)

Books J.K. Rowling Should Publish Instead of "The Casual Vacancy"

Sixty-One Different Ways to Fold A Sock, the story of a half-Japanese adolescent girl who reconciles her heritage with her individuality by repurposing lost socks into origami figures. 

My Favorite Crayola Colors in Reverse Alphabetical Order, Wisteria, Wild Blue Yonder, Unmellow Yellow... what comes next? Read to find out.

No Pain, No Gain: Reforming Education One Spank at a Time, one woman's take on Education reform.

Even Eva Excitedly Electrocuted Erin's Excellent Essay, a collection of 26 short stories, each dedicated to one letter of the  English alphabet.

Who, Who, Who?, where the author expands on several theories about who let the dogs out.

When Everyday Is Hobo Day, the heartbreaking account of a girl whose old, tattered sweatpants chemically merged with her skin.

Where The Wild Things Aren't, including but not limited to: Thursdays on First, Mai Fete, under the bed, in the passenger's seat, and so on.

Standing Ovations That Weren't Deserved, recounting the author's long history of being too generous with her applause, and the disastrous results that followed. 

Read This To Feel Cooler Than Me

Ernesto has been out of town on another one of those nErD cOnVenTioNz (i.e. medical school interviews) (i.e. paths to an actual future) since Thursday, which means I've had the entire apartment to myself to go crazy. Carpe diem! Git'er dun! Just do it!  Here's how I've seized the day so far:

1. I woke up promptly at 11, after staying up until 3:30 a.m. the night before for no apparent reason other than to watch The Office while eating choco-banana muffins.  (It was actually only one muffin.. I ate it slowly so it would last the entire episode. I'm not sure whether that makes my night more or less pathetic.)

2. At some point while singing/washing the dishes, I came up with "I ain't no challah-back girl" and thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world.  Like, I couldn't get past the chorus without giggling uncontrollably, which was probably a good thing because I wouldn't have been able to come up with more dumb food puns for the rest of the song. Honestly, I still think it's the most hilarious thing in the world, partly because "challah-back girl" conjures up this delightful image of Gwen Stefani using a loaf of challah as a track baton in a 4x400 relay, while "hollaback girl"only makes me think of Gwen Stefani in a cheerleader outfit. You decide which one would make a better GIF. 

I just got 245,000 results after Googling "challah back girl," so it's probably too late to use it as my original catchphrase. Under most circumstances I might get a little depressed, BUT I also found this site, where I can still feel like it's my original catchphrase by purchasing "I ain't no challah-back girl" business cards at the very reasonable price of 7 cents each for each order of 1000! Never mind the fact that I, 1) am not Jewish, 2) don't have a company. The last time I checked, I live in Amurrika, where I'm free to buy 1000 business cards that have my full name printed on every line.

I'm, like, 5% tempted to actually do this just to spite Ernesto, who is probably stuffing his face with challah at some charming bakery on Brookline Ave. as I type this. You think you can just fly to Boston without me and shrug it off?! Think again, sucka. 

3. Speaking of healthy communication in relationships. Today I decided that my New Year's resolution will be to not suck at texting. There are two specific ways in which I am the worst texter I know. The first way only applies to Ernesto, because only Ernesto would put up with it. To sum up a very long, heartbreaking story involving a comatose Blackberry to which I never got to say goodbye, my old  phone broke and now I have a touchscreen piece of crap that puts up a hissy fit every time I try to unlock it to DO anything, but somehow manages to call my house whenever the fabric of my pockets or the dust particles in the air of my apartment so much as brush by the screen. Which they like to do between 2 and 4 in the morning, at least once a week. The phone also insists on typing 5 different letters when I very clearly only pressed one, and the autocorrect is a joke. 

SO as an act of resistance, I refuse to correct my spelling whenever I text Ernesto, which may have something to do with the fact that he MADE me get this phone (yes, at gunpoint) (obviously not at gunpoint.. in case social services or someone is reading this) instead of the perfectly acceptable Blackberry with actual buttons, all because the non-Blackberry was $70 ish cheaper. Well, I can use those $70 to buy 1000 personalized business cards now, so I think we know who really won that battle. 

Well, no one won that battle, because everything I send Ernesto looks like a drunk text (see Figure 1) AND I'm still stuck with this touchscreen phone that takes 3x longer to text with than a phone with actual buttons (so if the things I text you don't look like they're straight out of a Ke$ha music video, FEEL IMPORTANT). Also, I still don't have 1000 challah-back girl business cards. Lose-Lose.  

Figure 1: Paulina Lopez's texts to Ernesto are 80% incomprehensible.

Second (and this applies to everyone), I take somewhere between one hour and 4 days to respond. Sometimes I don't respond at all. So.. my apologies if that's happened to you. I'm not trying to be a jerk. Usually, what's going on is something like this scenario (my thoughts are in purple):

(recieved text) Friend: blahblah insert funny thing here

(attempting to text a response) me: hahahaha wait how many 'ha's are too many? just one sounds sarcastic, whatever I'll go with three. although.. three seems a little much for something that wasn't exactly the most hilarious thing Friend has ever said. I have to make them work for my 'hahahas', don't I? Otherwise I'll have to add another 'ha' onto the actually funny stuff and that's gonna take forever to type out. lskjlfkjs ahh whatever I don't text Friend that often anyway that's  real funny god I sound like a hick really funny that doesn't seem sincere totes funny wait will this person get that I'm making fun of abbreviations or does it seem like I'm actually abbreviating? Cause I'm trying to make fun of abbreviations here. I only sincerely abbreviate when I text Other Friend.. although now that I think about it, does Other Friend get that I'm sincerely abbreviating and not just making fun of abbreviating? 

Aaaand that's how what should have been a very simple response never gets sent because I'm the most awkward person in the world. 

(relevant at this point in the post:)

I Can't Believe It's Not Art

I've never gone to an addiction recovery program, but I've seen enough episodes of The O.C./Grey's Anatomy/Arrested Development/other shows featuring well-to-do alcoholics to know that the first step is admitting you have a problem. 

There are a couple of instances throughout this blog where I hint at my obsession with all things food-related, but even I didn't grasp the extent of my infatuation until recently completing a sculpture assignment that, as it turns out, is the fourth consecutive food-related artwork that I've made in the past 2 months.  Below, I give you the artistic manifestations of my troubled, food-addicted subconscious:

Let Cake Eat Them. Felt, thread, zippers. 

Prompt: Make a piece about connection. 

This guy took me 2 weeks to finish, so I spent a looooong time daydreaming about real desserts during the process. 

Putrescence. Satin, Sequins, Thread. 

Prompt: Make your favorite word.
An excerpt from a future art history textbook that will undoubtedly be written about this work: "Much like Picasso went through a depressive Blue Period (or how Van Gogh went through an entire depressive career), this piece sheds some light on the more painful aspects of being in love with anything: having to say goodbye. The juxtaposition of fine materials with forms that reference a clear state of putrescence manifests the artist's inner struggle at this crossroad; by looking at the piece, the viewer can almost hear the artist whisper to the bowl of fruit, 'You are beautiful, no matter what they say,' before tossing it into the dumpster to avoid yet another fruit fly infestation."

 Concessions at Weitz Cinema. Fake popcorn, fake coke, fake candy bars, fake nachos, fake pretzels. 

Prompt: Make something site-specific. 

I sincerely believe that more people would attend movies at Weitz if they could buy overpriced snacks. I know I'd rather pay $5 for a jumbo box of Sour Patch Kids than for a 2-day old parfait at the Sayles Cafe. (count the rhymes, imma poet)

I Keep On Fallin'. Flannel, Satin.

Prompt: Make something else that's site-specific.  

It was in the making of this piece (at 2 in the morning while watching Arrested Development) that I realized all of my art was about food.

So now, I'm going to follow in the footsteps of Kirsten Cohen, Chief Webber and Lucille Bluth and weasel my way out of any interventions that threaten to separate me from my one true love.

1. It's not really a problem to think about food all of the time if food is my muse. Some people get The Dark Lady, some people get Yoko Ono, and I get the food pyramid. Potato/Potahto. (but no one says 'potahto,' so more like.. Coupon/Kyoopon)

2. This entire dilemma only exists because I initially denied food the condition of Art with a capital A to begin with. Luckily, people like Marcel Duchamp and Laurence Weiner have paved the road for making Non-Art into Art at my very whim. So.. food, I now declare you to be Art. Which makes my food-related sculptures actually art-related sculptures. Which in turn makes my art self-referential and snooty and fit for inclusion in fine institutions like ARTFORUM and the MoMA! Below, I present you just one of many works of art handcrafted by moi that you now have the privilege of admiring:

Enchilovin' It?