I recently indulged in a couple books by Tasha Tudor. For a bunch of reasons, really: nostalgia (for my childhood), nostalgia (for hers), gigantic Corgi Lust, and most of all a kind of professional curiosity--I wanted to kind of take another look at her as an adult, at her whole career as an illustrator, esp. as one of those world-creating ones. Her stuff can be so dead-sappy, depending on how you approach it. Very Holly Hobbie if you want it to be, only it's not, really, when you look at her work in total. Not only that, what strikes you really hard right away (I had forgotten this) is what an old Yankee tyrannix she is. Barely under the surface of all that watercolor and pastel shines through this rock-hard woman. I remember thinking this, even as a child, and there it is again, in the smallest of her works. This kind of absolutism and fierceness and this rejection of the world as well as acceptance of it. A very raw kind of peace. Also in interviews, anything. There is a hilarious interview with her on a publisher website that answered questions (they were filtered through her son) with sentences such as: "Tasha Tudor cannot explain the instinctive creative process" and 'Tasha Tudor has no interest in current events." Hilarious. Not only THAT--I recently finally read more about her background and it turns out it was totally dissolute. Snobby, bohemian, incredibly well-connected, but also scandalous. Shocking, really--her parents, her upbringing, etc. Very interesting. Wonder if it pisses off all the people that want to cutesify her flax-spinning and garden-tending and autre temps, autres moeurs. There is no Holly Hobbie here.

Nixon in China finally being performed in Chicago for the first time. I love the music, but am not sure I want to see it (why?). Weird. Bet it'd be cool. Got to give props to my parents for turning me onto that--I'm probably the only person I know whose mom sent them Einstein on the Beach in college. Or Steven Reich. Or Arvo Pärt. Well, maybe, who knows. Either way, I've always enjoyed lazily tracing their forays into new music.

I love Doris Day, but the color scheme in With Six You Get Eggroll almost gave me an aneurysm last night. It's so horridly orange and yellow and wicker and brown, with that dreadful depressive lighting. Also had a short bash through Mildred Pierce (got a lil Amazon order yesterday). Eyebrows. Joan Crawford. Eyebrows.