Be it visual, theatrical, musical or written, I love the Arts. Creating or appreciating art is nothing short of a spiritual experience. I own some originals including my most prized masterpiece (shown above) titled “I’m Thankful for You”.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I suspect this was a collaborative piece. I doubt a chunky orange Crayola in the hands of a 3 ½ year old could have drawn the beak, wattle and legs on this turkey. I think a Master might have added finishing touches.)

All of this reminds me of a story I recently read in the New York Times.

There are these three twenty-something Frenchmen who own a company in France. They are a collective of artists and technology students who are programming computers to ‘learn’ art. In other words, they are working on the advancement of Artificial Intelligence, or AI.

For their most recent project they scanned 15,000 images of portraits painted between the 14^th and 20^th centuries. They challenged their computer to “study” these artworks and produce an original. The computer “learned” about art history portraiture then (ta-dah) rendered its own original portrait on the computer screen.

“Ooh la la!” the Frenchmen exclaimed.

Continue reading “Art and the Turkey”

 

…I left something irreplaceable in cab 804. Will you see if you can find it?

A few Fridays ago my husband was gone for the evening and I inherited full control of the remote. Turning on the TV, I perused my watchlist and queued up the first episode of Taxi. By the fourth note of the Taxi theme song, some kind of bizarre Hulu voodoo occurred. I found myself having…I don’t know…a transcendental experience?

I felt like I was in our first home, curled up in the corner of our pseudo swanky sectional. It was fall of 1978 and I was twenty-something. Suddenly I felt euphoric with that “happy butterflies in your stomach” sensation. This trance-like state persisted until I heard a woman say, “Goodnight Mr. Walters”.

Was the show that good? Did I have an unresolved crush on Alex Reiger? Did I eat something iffy for dinner? I watched the second episode hoping that sense of euphoria would return. Indeed it did return and continued to do so during the third, fourth and fifth episodes.

I watched the entire first season and realized that Taxi triggered a memory of the consistent bliss I felt in my twenties.

Where had that bliss gone?

What am I doing wrong that keeps bliss at bay?

Continue reading “Dear Sunshine Cab Company…”

I made up a song to remember four items I needed at the store. As I walked toward the office supply aisles, this little ditty played inside my head.

“Batteries, pens, tape and printer paper. On the way out I’ll grab a Necco wafer.”

Getting closer to my destination, the sound of munchkin voices jumbled my lyrics. I rounded the corner to discover that the office supply aisles had been transformed. The now “back to school” aisles were teeming with kids and their mothers.

I watched the kids select their notebooks, backpacks and iconic yellow #2 Ticonderoga pencils. Based on excitement levels I assigned each child to a category: those who were happy school was about to start, those who were indifferent and those who did not care one iota about scholarly enlightenment.

Then I watched the mothers. They fit into one category: moms who were overwhelmed. They were slumped over their carts. Their glazed eyes struggled to focus on the supply list at hand. As I wondered why they were not doing the back to school happy dance, I had a flashback to 1999. I saw myself writing check after check for school supplies, shoes, sport registration fees, yearbooks, haircuts and school pictures. I remembered that, for parents, back to school mathematically equates to:

 Family budget – Back to school costs = Eating spaghetti for the rest of the month

Continue reading ““It’s Late September and I Really Should be Back at School” – Rod Stewart”