I Am Art

postcards + contests + lemons

I just finished mailing the last batch of postcards and have about 20 more up for grabs. If you want one, email us your name and address then get ready to MAKE SOME ART and EXPRESS YOURSELF! We love seeing what you are all doing with the cards. This is so fun for us!

You know what else is fun for us? Contests and giving stuff away. On Monday, we're going to have another contest and the prize will be a Limited Edition Collector's Item version of Visual Chronicles! We'll even sign it and point out why it is so special. We didn't even know such an item existed until a few days ago and now that we do...well, let's just say we're turning lemons into lemonade. Or dough into donuts. We prefer the donut comparison.

ticks in New York and other stuff

*In a few weeks we are heading back to New York because we didn't get to sweat enough there last week and we are teaching at the Omega Institute. There may be a few spots left if you want to join us. All the people I have worked with at Omega are the nicest people I have ever not really met. So-so-so very nice and helpful. The beautiful Omega campus is in the Hudson Valley and we have a very important question:
ARE THERE TICKS IN RURAL NEW YORK? If any bug crawls on either of us then climbs into our skin, we will go crazy and need to be institutionalized. That might make our workshop very exciting but not something we want to find out about.  If there are ticks, how do we prevent them from coming near us? I'd google this but I am afraid a photo of a tick in someone's leg might pop up and send me into a tizzy. If you are taking our workshop, please email us. We'd love to know if you are bringing a digital camera (we may have an extra photo project if people are bringing cameras).

*Bloggers, you were ALL right! My beige neighbors all love my yellow house. Today while I was in the garage, a father was walking his son home from school and I heard him say to his son, your mother would love this yellow house. I could only imagine how much the boy's mom will love it when the front door is red.

*What do you think will happen on the last episode of The Sopranos?

the desert

When I was 15, we moved from Walnut Creek, California, to Palm Springs, California- a place people go to retire, work on their tans, then die. Everyone who lives there refers to it as the desert and t-shirt shops with PS: I LOVE U on everything line the busy streets giving tourists something to buy to prove they were there. In the last 20 years, the desert has become a trendy place to be. They've got good shopping, great restaurants, and it is still the place to go to work on your tan, then die. But to a sad and rebellious 15 year old (and still, for a happy 38 year old) all the PS: I LOVE U crap and all the deserts was just to much to take. So when I ran away from home and moved to Los Angeles at the ripe age of 16, my dear older brother quizzed me on the So Cal freeways then gave me his old Nissan Sentra so I could get to school. See, not all runaways end up as drug addicts or strippers. Some of is just become artists. Anyway, I got the car and right away expressed myself all over it in the form of a personalized license plate. A year went by and my younger brother, Tod,  got his license. True to Goldberg family form, I bought a new car and gave him the old Nissan Sentra, license plate and all.
Last week Tod and I had I had an OH MY GOD moment. He called to read me a passage in a book he is reviewing by an author we did not know, Antoine Wilson:

 

Her name was Patricia Stocking. Patty. P.S. Like the Palm Springs bumper sticker: P.S. I Love You, and the license plate I saw once on Palm Canyon Drive: PSIH8U.

Before there were blogs, there were vanity plates. And vanity plates were journals- at least mine was. This morning I dug the plate out of a box in the garage:

stuff we noticed

Stuff we noticed in New York:
*Everyone was wearing ankle pants. Not flares or bootlegs, ankles. Floods are making a come back!
*We never saw anyone eating a pretzel even though there are pretzels for sale on every corner.
*Lots of dogs but no dog poop. New York should tell Paris how to solve the dog poop problem.
*Black & White cookies everywhere (the sugar cookies frosted half chocolate half white sugary stuff). What is the deal with those cookies? Why are they so popular there?
*Line cutters. We'd be standing in line and some one would just cut right in front of us. This happened more than once. Are we invisible?
*Tourists freaking over the M&M store. Uh, people, you can buy M&Ms at the grocery store, gas station, and pretty much every vending machine.
*H&M stores right next to the Sephora and Starbucks on every corner. Like Sephora, H&M is hard to find here in So Cal, land of makeup and cheap clothes. That must be where everyone is getting their ankle pants.
*On every block there was at least one sad man playing a sad saxophone, just like on The Simpsons.

TB or OCD?

We can't believe so many people are complaining about being on an airplane with a guy who has what turns out to be a not really easy to catch case of TB. They have no idea how good they had it.
Yesterday, we spent almost 7 hours in hell. HELL. On our flight back from New York, because we are us, we were seated with 3 men with the grossest cases of bodily functions OCD we have ever seen. EVER. Seated next to Karen was a guy whose routine was pick his nose- bite his nails-blow nose on sleeve then repeat every 3 seconds for 7 hours. I'd show you a picture but it was too gross to even look with a camera as a barrier. Seated to my right was a guy whose routine was: take off shoe- put shoe on-take off shoe- put shoe on. Every few seconds there was a very smelly sock almost in my lap:

Seated directly in front of sock guy was a business man whose routine was: Twist piece of curly hair- pick nose - twist hair-pick nose-twist hair- blow nose- twist hair. How this guy was not totally bald amazed us.

The constant rapid flutter of hands and fingers and smelly socks and the nose stuff grossed us  out so bad that we spend most of the flight (and the 2 hours on the tarmac) like this:

We have more details and photos from New York to share but we are busy trying to recover from yesterday.  No need to send us hate mail, we know those guys are suffering, too. It can't be easy having those types of disorders. It's also not easy to sit next to it.

Day Two in New York Citaaaay

Before we get to all the events of the day, we must clarify that our new buddy Kyle Cassidy, author of Armed America, has lots of cats. He loves his cats, he's a great photographer and a funny guy.  He would never ever eat one of his cats. Or shoot one. A good guy, that Kyle.

Day Two was just as sweaty as Day One. We started the day with the required trip to Dunkin' Donuts. Blech. Sorry, people, we prefer Krispy Kreme. We experienced Global Warming at the glass convention center. Al Gore was right- items under glass really do heat up and steam really fast. It was like a day at the Stock Exchange. You have to dodge people  left and right, papers fly everywhere, deals are being made in the midst of the frenzy, and everyone talks at once. We escaped the circus for a couple hours with uber editor Jessica Strawser and had our own edible adventure. We love her. Her luck is just as bad as ours...we couldn't hail a taxi, we couldn't find the restaurant and we all wondered if the restaurant we were dining at really served baby goat. Rosa Mexicano is a vibrant oasis in the middle of a bustling neighborhood. They have the best made-in-front-of-you guacamole ever. Mind you, we never really had guacamole we liked before. This was a TREAT!! YUM! We laughed and talked and ate. It was a great escape.

We were happy to see people from our own neck of the woods here- it was great to see Lita Weissman from Borders and the folks from the L.A. Times. We also met new friends and publishers who generously shared their new books and products with us:
*Elizabeth Yarnell~ Glorious One-Pot Meals (she is soooo cute and nice!)
*Malonda Richard~My Life Isn't Perfect But Thank God My Baby Is (a single mom with great energy and enthusiasm!)
*Scott Francis~Monster Spotter's Guide To North America (Scott is a creative member of the F+W family. He's really funny and so is his book.)
*The Anticraft Girls~Anticraft. Too bad we don't knit, bead, or stitch because they are really cool and different.
*Michael de Meng~ Secrets of Rusty Things. We see Michael at every event we're at yet we've never really talked to with him. We finally did! A very nice guy and his rusty art is amazing!
*We got to see a preview of Rice Freeman-Zachery's book, Living The Creative Life. Very cool. It features art, advice, and inspiration from 15 artists, including Linda! YAY!
*Moleskine has fab new travel journals!

It is so fun for us to see our book becoming a book and to be able to spend time with other creative peeps who totally get the same feeling. And when we weren't bonding with other authors, we bonded with the city. There's a Sephora on every corner here. EVERY CORNER! It's weird because people in So Cal wear a lot more makeup and a Sephora is hard to find. The other weird thing is that most of the employees at the Sephoras here are straight men. And, the other weird thing, is that employees everywhere we've been are very nice and helpful and not all annoyed and irritated and eye rolling. Everyone here gladly tells you exactly the address of what you're looking for then ends up being wrong.

We're ending the night with room service and tv and are getting up super damn early for a special treat. Hmmmmmm......

fading fast but read this!

We've been awake for two days. We are tired, we are sweaty, we love the way New York smells like pizza, and we are so excited by the enthusiasm over Journal Revolution that we experienced today. We totally love meeting everyone who comes by the F&W booth at BookExpo to say hello. It's also so cool to meet other artists and authors. Today we met the coolest photographer and author: Kyle Cassidy.  Order his book,Armed America. Right now- do it. You may laugh, you may cry, you may recognize your relatives. Either way, you won't forget this book and the stunning photography. And, Kyle is so funny and clever...he's gonna be a big, big, big star. Check out his blog, too. How could we NOT like someone named Cassidy?! Linda's hairstyles always resemble either David or Shawn, especially when it is humid.
We're going to bed so we can be well rested for our signing tomorrow, taking pictures, making friends, and re-enacting Karen's fall in the pool for all interested editors.
And Sunday.......we stalk Rosie.