Full Name: kathleen colette o.
Age: 26 ½
Location: brooklyn, new york
Occupation: administrative assistant at an architecture firm.
Hobbies: drawing. writing letters that i rarely send. re-arranging the furniture in my apartment (on paper).
Pets: i had cats growing up, but brooklyn apartments can hardly house people let alone pets. i think about fish.

1: the heavy part
Where are you from, originally? What was it like there?
orinda, california, the inspiration behind the made-for-television film “a friend to die for,” starring kellie martin (of "life goes on" fame) and the irrepressible tori spelling.

How did you end up in New York?
during high school and a little after, i was a ballet dancer. i came to new york for two summer programs, first with the joffrey ballet school and the next year with the school of american ballet. when i retired at the ripe old age of 20, i went to college at barnard (they have a good dance program, though i eventually studied architecture). being in new york for any extended period of time always makes one think that it's a good idea to go back.

What's this about tending bar in Cambodia!?
whoa, hey! that was not in the other interviews ... okay, okay. my sister’s been living there for several years now, running a bakery & cafe that raises money for disenfranchised people who can’t receive aid from the cambodian government. i went for a visit after she’d been there about a year and a half. my stay was supposed to last three months, so i got work right away hoping to earn my keep. but my sister, her boyfriend at the time and myself grew tired of going to crappy bars and restaurants. don't think i'm an imperialist pig: it was the expatriate establishments with which we took issue. the owners were often living in cambodia in order to support a certain lifestyle (living for cheap on the beach), not because they saw opportunities to run a successful business there, and few of them really cared whether their businesses did well or failed. we knew that we could do better, and so we did. we offered books, booze, and vegetarian brunch. (one of our slogans was "decent vegetarian food for decent vegetarians.") i was the night manager, and since most people came for books and bulgur wheat during the day and drinks at night, the majority of my duties involved mixing delectable libations, which suited me just fine. i make the best bloody mary this side of... well, cambodia.

Describe your situation in life.
being not entirely sure what you mean by this question, i’m going to assume the broadest possible interpretation. for the past several years, i have been in denial about the fact that i am not on the road to becoming a famous architect (or even an infamous architect). the reasons for this are many, but primary among them is my suspicion that i'm better at representing ideas graphically in two dimensions than i am at building them in three. i loved the study of architecture, but the study of it is an entirely different animal than the practice of it, and i’m learning quickly from my place of work that i might really be miserable as an architect. i would be better suited for graphic design, but the ramifications of that (another degree, the application to get that degree, the application to get the funding to get that degree, etc.) are doing my head in. why don't schools just come to me? schools??

Ideally, what will your life look like on New Year's Day 2005?
ideally, i will wake up from the couch of a good friend's apartment after helping host a mid-sized and very lively party. (note that, ideally, the party will be at someone else’s house.) we will collect bottles and cans, do the dishes, and sweep while singing along to hank williams, gladys knight and jonathan richman. then, we shall all find an open restaurant and gossip about who didn't hook up with whom and why not.

Have your early to mid 20s been like you imagined? Why or why not?
well, when i was ten, i imagined that by the time i was in my twenties i'd be a painter. at fifteen, i imagined that i'd be dancing for a major ballet company. by the time i was twenty, i imagined i'd be a hard-working and well-respected architect. i turned twenty-five in cambodia, but the cambodia thing never really came into view until i was already there. so, um ... no. but i always thought that i would surround myself with good, close friends and go about my life in an interesting manner. in that sense, my early-to-mid-twenties have been precisely how i'd imagined them to be.

Which was the best year, for you, of the aforementioned early to mid 20s? Why?
much like junior high school, where you don't realize how miserable it all is until you've gotten out, i think i need some critical distance. ask me when i'm thirty-six.

We understand that you draw rather well. What is Criminal Carnival?
oh, go on. well, if you must know, criminal carnival is the publishing company started by a friend of mine, joshua mandelbaum. i am illustrating a comic book written by joshua, who has harbored an interest in carnival sideshows for several years. really, if you think about it, comic books are the perfect format to use for stories about the carnival -- mass-produced, cheap, and filled with larger than life characters and freaks of nature -- but i digress. the book is a superhero comic in which sideshow performers (snake charmers, half-men and –women, sword swallowers, etc.) are the superheroes. they use their "superhuman" abilities (ability to commune with animals, physical prowess compensating for missing parts, ... errr, ability to hide weapons in their tracheae ... ?) to save humanity from itself. the comic book is called "sideshow," and it's chapter one of a larger project, the details of which we are still working out. we have previews of the first book and general news about it all at here.

You spent many years as a ballet dancer. Does any one moment stand out in your memory as a highlight?
dancing is hard to write about, but i'll give it a go. in the spring of 1997, i was dancing with my friend john. dancing with john was pretty easy; we were often paired together, and you kind of get used to the way a person moves when you’ve dance with them for a long time. we were both better in performance than in rehearsal; all the kinks that i struggled with in front of the artistic director tended to work themselves out when i got on stage (which was harrowing for the artistic director; she never knew if i needed more rehearsal time or less). at one particular performance that spring, we were both completely on, and we knew it. i felt free to make of the piece whatever i wanted. there could have been an audience, or not. it didn't matter. and the confidence i felt about my ability to perform fed on itself, making the technical aspect of the performance better still. it was amazing. i felt like i could do anything.

2: the not-heavy part
Describe a good night out...
i would like to have criteria for this, but i'm usually not so terribly fussed about it. it's the company that makes a night out good, and, i must say, i tend to keep pretty good company.

And a good night in the apartment?
ibid.

Current favorite ethnic food and, if possible, dish.
i have an eating disorder that i call “the indian food problem,” which manifests itself like this: i savor every bite and eat until i’m full, but then i want more of it in my mouth again because it tasted so good. i continue on like this until well after i’m full. i will eat the roti off your plate if you're not careful, and there’s nothing i can do about it. i may eventually seek therapy.

What have you been listening to?
well, sir, i should think that you know already, since you lent so very much of it to me. early zombies. late pavement. mid-era beatles. the carpenters. my own contribution to the playlist: the magnetic fields. the fall. buddy holly. serge gainsbourg (only in my head, because that cd was stolen some time ago by some punk architecture student with a thing for french pop). shrimp boat. cambodian rock music from the 1960s.

Was hast you been reading?
recemment, j’ai lis... oh, sorry. i've been reading the new yorker and I.D. magazine. i am trying to educate myself in the realms of new literature and graphic design, but it's a slow process. i just bought a set of six books (clearly from a bigger series of volumes -- they are all over the timeline and the map), and i'm looking forward to tucking into vanity fair by william makepeace thackeray. i guess that would qualify as less-than-new literature, but i've never read any of thackeray's books before. so it’s new to me. sure.

What have you been watching on TV?
in the absence of bunny ears for my t.v., i've been renting a fair amount of movies. see below.

Seen any movies lately? What did you think?
the most recent movie i saw in a theater was end of a century, the ramones documentary. it was solid. i thought that it gave a pretty accurate view of the band members, where they came from, and what happened to them at the end of their career together. i found johnny ramone’s interviews nearer the end of the film to be fascinating, as everyone else had been talking about how controlling he was, and he did not apologize, nor did he dispute this assessment. perhaps it was owing to this trait that they made such good music. r.i.p. johnny ramone.

as for renting, i just rented the great gatsby, the royal tenenbaums, dial M for murder, and american splendor. the first was the least impressive of the list, mostly because i was distracted by gatsby's house: it should have been art deco, not "old money" victorian. the stylist really dropped the ball on that one.

3: the cocktail party
So you’re having a cocktail party: list five A-list guests, other than Jesus, me and your friends...
george balanchine (russian-born choreographer and founder of the new york city ballet); eero saarinen (he designed a fine church or two); werner heisenberg (on principle); djuna barnes (she makes me want to have been a young insomniac in 1920s paris); steven joerg (my sister's ex-boyfriend's former boss, who is just about the most fascinating person i have ever met).

What drinks will you serve?
bourbon and ginger ale is a good all-weather tonic.

What will be on the stereo?
since we’re in the realm of the impossible already, i might as well allow that i’ll have all music ever recorded in my apartment and a really fine sound system. i’ll allow my guests to alternate playing at dj. i am certain that they will surprise and delight. if they get lazy, i’ll throw down some post-modern composers and see where they lead the conversation. ligeti, schopenhauer, john cage, etc.

Conversation topics will include…
i am continually surprised by the conversation topics that sprout from the mouths of people that i know very well. i wouldn’t venture to guess about a crowd that consists mostly of people i've never met.

How will the evening end?
in an animated, tipsy fight about ligeti’s formal intent, with werner hitting relentlessly on djuna. he’s such a cad.