Julie & Julia, or, The Life of Ashely the Artist

Tonight, for her birthday I went with my good friend Laura to see "Julie & Julia". I am inspired. We loved it. The movie was totally adorable, Meryl Streep is my new favorite actress and Julia Child is my new favorite cook (move over, Gordon Ramsay, you old coot). I completely identified with the movie version of Julie the blogger. I think we share a lot in common. We both started out as frustrated 20-somethings, created a blog, and besides a great body we do not both share (I'll let you decide who has the better), both made strides towards a goal. Where she has already reached hers, I am still searching for mine. It's okay. I am comfortable in my slightly ambiguous personal and professional life and my meager audience in the the blog-o-sphere. I'm...not jealous. My blog, instead of being a short-term journey to finish a cookbook and find oneself in the process, is more of the life's journey of someone who already knows who she is but just needs to find where she fits.

But back to the movie. Can I just say the relationship between Julia and her husband as portrayed by the movie was so endearing and sweet. I wanted to cry on several occasions and would have done so had I not been surrounded by a packed movie theater and one particularly bad breathed man sitting behind us. Poor guy.

In a nutshell, go see the movie. It's worth your $10.50. The only thing we didn't like was towards the end and fairly easy to explain away. I won't tell you what it is in case it doesn't bother you. I don't want to ruin it.

Meryl Streep will win an award for this movie. If she doesn't, I'll sue.

Oh, and just to keep this thing art-themed, here:



Bon appetit!

Endings and Beginnings

It's a terrible thing to be all inspired to blog, fired up and ready to go and then have nothing to blog about. My life is THAT. EVENTFUL. I'll see what I can muster.

I'm obsessed with a show called The Colony. Mainly because I would like to imagine if there was a global catastrophe I would kick everyone's butt with my cunning and resourcefulness. The reality would probably be me in a corner, clutching my stubbly drawing pencils and sobbing miserably.

I took that drawing class this summer so I would be forced to draw, and draw I did. A lot. To be honest, what I wanted to do was to skulk around in my pj's and watch Jane Austen while chomping on a crunchy carrot but instead I was elbow deep in graphite trying desperately not to move lest the angle on the still life I was drawing should become askew. Despite all that, I'm really glad I did it. I learned a lot and can see changes in my drawing style.

Here's the final project of the summer:

The concept was to take a landscape (a black and white poster, in my case) and then stick something oversized and out of place in it. I chose a sock. Not sure why. Seemed right. Sorry it's so dark. I'm far too lazy to actually turn on lights when I take pictures of these things.

I'll post more drawings later, I have to save some to build suspense.

One last thing: my friends had a baby last night! It's a girl and they named her Karis. They're the first ones from my circle of friends to take the plunge into parenthood and I'm so happy for them. I'm pretty sure they don't read this blog but I'm saying congratulations anyway (I'm screaming it into the internets, maybe they'll get it): CONGRATULATIONS GUYS! I'M AN AVAILABLE BABYSITTER!! WILLING TO SPOIL HER THEN SEND BACK!!