Author Archives: Natasha Shapiro, ATR-BC, LCAT

I made these today while watching college football; Dartmouth devoured Columbia- yay! And Harvard reduced Princeton to “a maelstrom of misfortune “. That phrase was uttered by an ESPN play by play person, unfortunately male, as football continues to shy away from giving non cis-males the Big Guy job, and keeps them as sideline reporters and injury follow up updates; not to malign those jobs which involve often interviews with coaches and players.

Anyway that lovely phrase sent me back to looking up the insanely hilarious phrases concocted by Moira’s character in Schitz Creek. There are lots of ten best of her delightful turns of phrase that send people to their “dictionary “, ie. Google. The consensus seems to be the moniker she gives to her son, “David, stop acting like a disgruntled penguin,” one of her least cluttered sentences. My preference is “cornucopia of trauma”. Also,

“How mercurial is life… We all imagine being carried from the ashes by the goddess Artemis and here I get a balatron from Barnum & Bailey.”

Balatron: buffoon

Not enough evidence of the word’s use to put it in the commonly used dictionary, hence you will get the red dots underneath it, as probably, you will be beset by, were you to look up more of her epiphrases.

I did want to use this opportunity to go off on a tangential rant, about the unequal representation of lesbian erotic scenes when the lesbians are key characters just as the heterosexual people; the producers likely congratulated themselves on the great character in Jessica Jones played by a very famous actor. However, every time there’s a man/woman hot and heavy scene I cringe. There was an occasion in the latest episodes I’ve watched where the woman walked around in her underwear in an obviously post fucking scene; however, they ruin a sexy moment between 2 older women during cello playing when they show the 2 in bed obviously post “coitus.” One has a black strap from a slip peaking from under the covers and the other has her bra on. It seems so idiotic that they couldn’t be seen as obviously naked under the sheets, still PG, just no underwear please. Women meant to be around 50. Come on. The same woman in another season having an affair with her assistant and they couldn’t have a hot sex scene on the office desk. That show was made in 2015; no adult watching Jessica Jones in 2015 would object to some equal lesbian to “straight” sex scenes and states of deshabille, as Moira would call it.

You could go through the show and see how many seconds it takes for them to start up an obvious fuck scene before cutting away or how many scenes of couples obviously naked while covered. At least Jessica Jones’ scenes are mostly suggestive. They have that nice cutaway to the ceiling fan looking down on a pair of humans in the midst of starting up something; the scene I most recently watched.

So their score on the timid clothed lesbian scenes as compared to woman on man isn’t terrible in terms of how much of the man/woman stuff they show. I’m just sick of scenes where lesbians have to be in underwear post sex. Come on! And it’s not to be pinned on Jessica Jones which is pretty decent with their hotness stuff; the cello scene is arguably the best lead up so it wins points with that. I saw a horrific movie recently made in 2023 probably and they so obviously put a lesbian wedding as the backdrop to an enemies to lovers straight people horrible romantic comedy. They had the gall to show the soon to be wedded couple wearing pajamas in bed. Whilst they do a scene of woman entering shower for a fuck. That non couple frolics through the movie with the most pornography imitation scenes.

Anyway, it’s long past time to stop this ridiculous prudery around 2 woman, bisexual, lesbian, questioning, whatever. I thought everyone loves watching 2 women except gay men. What is up with Hollywood. If you want to throw main characters who happen to be attracted to women into your show, just have the decency for equal opportunity sex and post sex scenes, not just in terms of wardrobe but also how many seconds we get of whatever is/will be going on or of what is obviously, as Moira would say, “post coitus”. Hollywood, what the fuck? All audiences would be fine or more likely enjoy even equal “quality” suggestively titillating yet tasteful scenes like the above.

Ok. Back to Jessica Jones, Season 3.

Can you use paint pens layered to a point where you could make the piece look like oil paint?

Not sure. Gave up on this one for now. It’s tiny and in my journal..,

Drawing for the day:

Now that I’m brushing my teeth and drinking hot lemon water every morning and night, I must do art every day; it used to be medication, so now that I haven’t done drawing for what seems like months, probably ten days of sick, it’s time to draw. If I can brush my teeth for 2 minutes and not eat afterwards, I can make a drawing every day.

I’m very tempted to write a whole post about the Harvard alumnae Red Book. Someone write a novel of that title about lives of several alums falling apart.

Like a lot of things at Harvard, the Red Book is unique to us. None of the other schools have something anywhere close to this. There’s an editorial board and publishers who work on it. Looking into it more deeply, I realized it’s like a lot of things in life that feel like an annoyance or seem too difficult or unnecessary, as well as embarrassing. The people who write nothing might just have addresses and what house they lived in.

There’s a lot of stuff I had no idea about as I didn’t notice or care.

Anyway I should be asleep right now.

I really should have committed to doing a long video without all the moving around. The voice I chose is quite funny and goes with the dry presentation:

This is how I archived my altered books to then store them.

I downloaded this TikTok video of the one I made when I left the last studio bu building; 59 Franklin St.., My best Studio.

I did a bad job of filming the book because it was on my TikTok and anonymous account where my Dolls talk in weird voices about everything. I should’ve made a separate video of it. Here’s the one I have:

First book: really annoying the camera moves around it’s hard to see etc.:

The movers were great except for my own stupidity. Instead of paying the invoice and paying more later I told them I think I needed to pay more and paid more than the estimate and paid extra again. I don’t even know why I did it.

I also didn’t read the itemized lists thoroughly until today after the move. Instead of 100 boxes, it was about 50. We brought home a table. I saved $150 on taking down the bookshelf as my knight in shining armor did it all this am before they arrived. Even going there on the subway was quick. The storage space is huge, plenty of room for stuff from home.

Boring…

Got home from Queens around noon and fell asleep. Now I have to go back one trip. There’s a ton of stuff left to take home. It still hasn’t hit me how weird this is. Tomorrow I’m working I guess not “from home”; from now on it’s “at my home studio/office.” I’m so worried clients will hear noises. I don’t like them to know anything about me except what they see in my studio. I don’t even wear a wedding ring for other reasons but I don’t mind if they assume it means I’m not married. A few of them are parents and know I have a kid. A bunch of them know I have ADHD for really good reasons.