Frank Lloyd Wright Hates You

He does. He really does. 

I didn't know this of course.  I thought we were going to Scottsdale to visit with Broken Bow, Nebraska's crack medical team of Keith and Shaleah and touring the architecturally significant structure that is Taliesin West. I assumed it would be, er, more bucolic and awe-inspiring. Mostly I just felt like FLW didn't want guests.

At Taliesin we were led by our knowledgeable volunteer tour guide, Philip, around the property where he shared all kinds of anecdotal evidence of Frank's irritability. Wright was a true reactionary. Mostly in that anything that annoyed him created a chain reaction of design furies carried out by slaves, I mean architecture students.

The delightful firefly-like lights the guide your way in movie theaters and airplane aisles? Yep. The brain fury of FLW.

Apparently people were using flashlights to get to their seats during performances and PISSING HIM OFF.

The delightful siting of the property?. No. Not an organic approach to architectural design that reflects the gentle slope of the Arizona hills. He just hated the power lines the city put up so he flipped all the buildings around.

My mental image of FLW is a man with that mad professor look. Unkept hair (and eyebrows) and yelling a lot.

 

And he seemed to care nothing for safety. Every ceiling was low and made of skin-ripping concrete. The fireplaces, considered revolutionary by our tour guide, looked like dog/kid/drunk friend crematoriums with their "open" design.

There seems to be such a huge FLW following. So many groupies wanting to know where he slept, ate, created, and if they can touch his pencil.

I'm more impressed by such inventions as this spatula.  So maybe I'm not their target audience.

Then the next day we climbed Phoenix's South Mountain. 

This is an activity I suggest you do under the advisement of your doctor. I, feeling brave since I was with Broken Bow, Nebraska's crack medical team, nearly got to the top (totally out of breath the whole time) before getting nauseous and dizzy. 

By the time I finally caught up with the tall athletic threesome from Nebraska (who all practically skipped to the top while I struggled along behind) I found them sitting happily on benches taking in the view. 

Nearby, families also took in the view as they scrambled about and then drove back down the mountain. Couldn't help feeling a little a) pissed that they were all such weaklings that they had to drive and b) pissed I hadn't been given the option.

TOMORROW: Report on the 999 Eyes Freakshow. Exploitation of physical deformities? Yes please!

... and like a severed limb, my knuckles immediately began to burn ...

Does anyone else remember this delightful torture device? You put ice cubes under Snoopy, and while pressing really, really hard (as hard as, say, a six-year-old can) on the Snoopy, you crank a, er, crank on the back to "shave" ice (and turn your knuckles into hand meat) into the little spin-y barrel. When you have, say, a thimble full, you pour the syrup on it. 

Voila! Sno-Cone. And I recommend cherry flavor. Hides the blood.

It's All About the Outfits

I finally found a ballet class! 

It all started with the arrival of the spring Discount Dance catalog and all the pretty ballerina outfits. All of a sudden I was online searching in vain for a ballet class for adult beginners in Tucson. 

I mean, seriously, I found a class in Yuma, why can't I find one near my house in Tucson? The last time I tried I came up with nothing. So instead I went to the phone book and just started calling schools.

The very intimidating sounding Academy of Ballet had a class! The lady on the phone, apparently not one to lose a student, told me to come to class at 7:15 pm. 

Talk about instant gratification! Too bad there wasn't anyone I could convince to take the class with me a la Yuma.

So alone and armed with my little dirty canvas ballet shoes, I slunk into the ballet school right into a herd of anorexic high school senior bunheads all playing with their pointe shoes and talking smack about other high school girls. Of course! 

So feeling really out of place and kind of freaked (why are there no other adult people dressed in "I'm not really a dancer so I'm wearing sweatpants" garb waiting to slink into the studio for badly executed pliés?) I sit on the bench and wait.

Finally two ladies show up in above parenthetical outfits and I immediately glom onto them.

The class consisted of the three of us and some younger, less coordinated ballerinas (OMG so cute. They were about ten and they were terrible! So cheerful and excited but terrible! I think they will be my new best dance friends!)

I did pretty well. The instructor only came over and fixed my arm and my foot a few times but mostly just smiled at me with pity — a success! And some of the mommies who were watching their less-coordinated ballerinas talked to me after class and told me how graceful I was!

Well, ballerina-bow to that!

The Internets Are Down!

I don't know what most of Tucson did last night, but it wasn't watching The Suns on TNT or clicking on their favorite fashion blogs if they had Comcast.

Apparently a flat-bed trailer with a backhoe on it crashed into a pole and somehow severed the magic cable that makes it possible for me (and 40,000 others) to connect with virtual life.

I had a newsletter due, celebrity news, cute animal news , the ramblings of a Hollywood writer that often makes me shoot coffee out my nose Tammy K's blog and other assorted things to keep up with. BUT NO!

The Internets Were Down. 

FOR HOURS. 

Apparently the tragic severing happened around 2 pm, but it wasn't until around midnight that we had service again.

So what do you do? You watch a little Mystery Science Theater 3K and go bowling with law students.

And of course Jeffrey has a shirt for that.

I had a few strikes and came in third of eight players. Not that impressive since most of them were drunk and kept yelling "woooooo" and making X-arms and smacking into each other every time they got a strike (when the justice system collapses in a few years, I'll know why). Jeffrey and his Shirt rocked our lane with an impressive 150 or something. 

Not bad for a guy who spends most of his time hunched over giant books or perusing NBA highlights online (which was probably why he agreed to go bowling. THE INTERNETS WERE DOWN!)

Decorating my Hair

On Sunday I finally got my hair cut.

I had been putting it off out of fear. My last haircut in December was horrible. Although I had never met the stylist before, she seemed to take revenge out on me via her scissors and it was not good.

Especially because my hair is short.

So on Sunday I got a GREAT haircut at Gypsy off of 7th in Tucson. We watched a little Galaxy Quest, she razored the hell out of my hair, and then we sipped some tequila.

My haircut is really well done, maybe a little short, but wicked cute according to those who love me.

One of the nice things about it, is I can decorate it because it isn't sticking out in weird blobs all over my head anymore.

I went on etsy.com to track down adorableness for my hairs, but came up short in the "fake flower attached to clip device."

So I made my own!

I went to Michael's and bought cheapo daisies, then dismantled them and attached them with hot glue to some bend-and-snap hair clips I had hanging around in my I-Once-Had-Long-Hair-and-May-Again-so-I-Won't-Throw-This-Stuff-Out box.

I think they turned out pretty well!

We've Moved! Again!

OK, I haven't physically moved, but the Web site where I was blogging was driving me crazy. So instead of Kat Fancy, it is now called I Like Carrots because that's what kind of mood I was in this morning.

I'd like to say that I don't care whether it is pronounced VAYgan or VEEgan. I just don't. It's stupid either way and frankly I don't care. There is no way you cannot eat stuff that doesn't have alive things at the cellular level. You eat bread made with yeast; you murdered something.

I especially don't care when I'm discussing the concept of me making a vegan some VEEgan cupcakes (that are apparently taking over the world) because I thought it would be nice for her to participate in the baked goods revelry that often happens at small offices where people like each other and share baked goods. And have really cute cupcake cups.

But no. Someone was not down with pronouncing in VAYgan which is how I had always heard it pronounced by my high school friend Serena. Serena was Indian and her family was Jaine and they were vegan and pronounced it VAYgan. Like ayurvedic is pronounced ah-yure-vay-dic. Of course her mother pronounced a lot of things in Hindi really loudly that always sounded like a lot of yelling and Serena would yell back and then Mrs. Ganwal would hand her a new DVD player or something because Serena was a true Indian Princess. I never bothered to look up whether they were pronouncing it correctly.

Second item of the day:

I'm dress shopping. I want cute sundresses for spring/summer so I don't have to coordinate my clothing everyday when it is hot and I am late and just need to throw on some wedges and look cute and go: hence needing a dress.

Also, the Student Bar Association my lawyer-to-be husband is a part of at U of A is hosting a prom thingy and I think I'll need some kind of cocktail dress. I looked around online, but wasn't excited about anything that cost less than one million dollars.

If anyone knows where I can get a vaguely inexpensive party dress that doesn't have tulle coming out the bottom, let me know!