So many people are coming to my blog looking for info about the photo shoot. Email me or post a comment if you have questions, and I'll be happy to write more about it.

In the Naked City...

This weekend, Bee and Rebecca and I went to Grand Central Station at 2 a.m., took off all our clothes and got photographed by Spencer Tunick. This may have been the strangest experience of my life, especially when we all ran naked in a big crowd down the hallway that I walk down every day on my way home from work.

People who saw us naked:

447 other naked women
Spencer Tunick and his assistants
HBO film crew
Other reporters
Quite a few police officers
A couple of guys hanging out on the catwalks in the windows
Two of the happiest Transit Authority workers I have ever seen

Other items of note:

The floor was extremely cold
I think I'm going to cut my hair short again after the wedding.
Rebecca stepped in gum. Then I did.
At one point we got to lay with our toes against the big clock in the middle of the station.
By the end of the naked hour, we pretty much didn't feel self-conscious any more.
Spencer had to stand on a ladder with a megaphone to give us all directions, but it's a big cavernous space with lots of echoes, so we were still quite confused most of the time.

What I learned:

Most women don't have elaborately groomed pubic hair, although some of them do.
There are a lot more tattoos in the world than you think
When you see people in clothes and then you see them naked it's hard to tell who's who.
When you look at a photo of yourself among 450 naked ladies, you can't figure out which one is you. Your hairy butt/blobby stomach/tiny boobs/bad hair/overbite/slight moustache do not stand out in a crowd. Maybe you should stop worrying so much.

I'm on the left in this picture with my toes against the clock.

If you found my page by searching for "Scarlet Johannson", you may find it helpful to know that she actually spells it with two "t"s, one "n" and two "s"s.

There is a picture in the New York Times Magazine that I can't stop looking at. It is of a "mass game" in North Korea, a choreographed performance put on for Kim Jong Il's 60th birthday. There are hundreds of girls holding up red pom poms in a darkened stadium, and behind them, a crowd is holding up colored placards to make an enormous picture of mountains and clouds. There is a gigantic piece of scenery blocking the view from part of the crowd, so I'm pretty sure they're performers too and not there to be spectators. I think Kim Jong Il is pretty much the only spectator. One of the girls is standing a little sideways and pigeon toed.

There is so much to wonder about in this picture. I think there are at least 1,000 girls in the picture, and there are more off the edges. Who are they? Who made their thousands of pom poms and their little pink dresses? (On the next page there is another picture of a diferent routine with a different set and costumes. Are there whole factories devoted to making costumes and scenery for Kim Jong Il's dancing girls? The caption says that the games involved more than 100,000 participants.) Who choreographed them and did they all rehearse together, or did they practice separately at first and then rehearse together for the first time in the stadium a couple of days earlier? Are they enjoying it at all? What about the people in the crowd?

Does anybody outside of North Korea even know the answers to all this?

And then after I paint a matrushka doll and make a sock monkey, I will draw some imaginary maps. Or maybe I'll just buy this awesome-looking book.

Erica has a good link to these ladies who paint customized old-looking maps.

Kind of want to make some sock creatures too. At least a monkey!

Good art of the day: these artist's matryoshka dolls.

I know you can buy the unpainted dolls. Now I really want to get some and paint 'em up!

I think Bee and I are going to do this. I am a little scared, but I can't wait.

These are some things I want to see:

The Paper Sculpture Show
"Twenty-nine artists have been asked to design a paper sculpture to be cut out and assembled using very basic materials. Visitors will be encouraged to 'complete the artworks' by cutting out and assembling the sculptures of their choice."

The Colors of Berlin
"The practice of continually turning an attentive, even meditative eye to color provides us with a strategy to free us from the blinders of dominant ways of looking at Berlin."

The Rose

I am madly in love with Pat Kiernan. I'm so glad he's getting the appreciation he deserves.

Would it be wrong of me to spend $35 on these toys? I do love them so.