triple tiny tragedy (reconstructed)

fafa the fish died yet again. now that coco is three-and-a-half, i believe she could handle the truth and learn an important life lesson. after all, i was about the same age when my pet turtle died, one of those little ones that are smaller than a soap bar, and we buried it the pot of a huge interior plant (we lived in an apartment at the time). that prepared me somewhat for the subsequent deaths of future pets: michael jackson, janet jackson and madonna the fish (mildly tragic), natasha the poodle (somewhat tragic), zico the airdale terrier (terribly tragic), uma the great dane (heartbreakingly tragic), coco lee the poodle (untragic, due to old age) and now, the fafas (slightly tragic).

the point is we would have told her, had it not been for the sudden absence of her preschool class pet guinea pigs, tom and jerry. once the pride and joy of room 1, they eventually became a burden for the teacher, who grew tired of carrying their big cage to and from her house on weekends (and, i have now learned, was unable to care for them during the summer). i thought this issue had been resolved by a weekend custody calendar she started for the furry fellas. so imagine my surprise when i saw item #371 on the school's fundraising silent auction catalogue: adopt tom and jerry guinea pigs, starting bid $20, value priceless.

when she asked me about it, i explained to the curious coconut that they had found a better home. why? weren't they happy in room 1, where pudgy little fingers would lovingly pet (i.e. push, pull & poke) and feed (i.e. shove pieces of fruit and veggies down their throats) them? yes, WHY? why were they taken away with only a few weeks left until summer vacation?

this changed coco's entire preschool ecology and we weren't about to do the same at home. so we welcome fafa number three, a smaller and shyer version of fafa number two, and hopefully healthier than fafa number one.

new broad in town

come winter 2012/2013 there'll be a new building in downtown LA: the broad art foundation(left image), a museum of contemporary art designed by new york architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro. the broad will be blatantly flirting with frank gehry's walt disney concert hall and arata isozaki's museum of contemporary art (moca), hoping to arouse attention and add urban tension to the bland grand avenue hilltop. you can read more about it here: new york times architecture review.

as contemporary as this extravagant design may seem, the porous skin enveloping the building is actually something that can be found in older modern buildings around the world. take the nearby the american cement building (right image), designed in 1960, with its permeable precast concrete exterior. although i personally prefer the unpretentious simplicity of modern architecture, maybe what this town really needs is a lady who's a tramp.

the return of the bucket

this holiday, a small christmas miracle happened at our home. the bucket that we "lost" at the park last summer came back to us. it appeared underneath our tree on christmas morning, bearing a delightful book, our california, in spanish. apparently during its half year absence, it developed eyes and tentacles and morphed into an octopus (flex, the octopus, to be exact). i wonder if santa, realizing that we don't have a chimney, squeezed the octopod through our door's mail slot and instructed it to wriggle its way to the tree and take a bite out of the dreidel-shaped sugar cookie coco decorated and left out with a cup of milk.

the real mystery is how santa deciphered the hieroglyphic letter coco left in our mailbox to be sent to the north pole, in which she specifically asked for a bucket and a book, no more, no less.