It is that time of year again. I note you are tense with excitement, but National Underwear Day has already passed. Could it be Have Sex with an Ugly Person Day? Heavens, no. We have already made our charitable contributions this month. I gave a hotdog to a homeless that admittedly had way more mustard on it than I care for, and Licketysplit promptly loaned me three dollars so I could buy another one. Two birds, meet one stone.

It is not even Bastille Day but it is still pretty good because it is the season for my second annual birthday self portrait. The inaugural edition actually featured a birthday as the subject. There I am, beatific and slightly naughty on my anniversary, befouling a pretty nasty strawberry cake I bought at the mexican bakery, whose fruit was covered with a shiny, clear goo that pooled around the bases. That’s me to a T, shining, resplendent, and entirely suspect.

This year’s painting depicts me regarding the contents of a kooky room.  Patterns, naked paintings, disembodied limbs, dolls in dusty nooks.  I might as well be in the furniture of my own brain. And there is also cake! I baked cupcakes just for the purpose of popping a few into the composition. Of course you can’t just bake a single cupcake. (OMG single serve cupcake kit…we are going to be rich. Rich enough to pay someone to tell us to stop eating single serve cupcakes.) Even with a small batch you get around a dozen. By the time my spoon had scraped the bottom of the bowl, I had 23. But my they looked festive with whorls of vanilla butter cream and pastel sprinkles, a candle jutting pertly from each center. I ate three of them while decorating. An artist friend joined me for one at the studio and I implored her to take a couple. I brought a dozen to a birthday party at a bar. Happy Birthday everyone, everywhere, not just me. Oh yes, hurrah. Like a Basquiat tweaking in dessert form, and other inspired geniuses before me, I ate 10 cupcakes.  For art’s sake!