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London, Part 7.

Friday, February 25th, 2011

OMG, museums! Today it’s the British Museum. But I’d like to start us off with some random shots.

The weather wasn’t always glorious. Some days were exactly what you would expect if you went to England.

Cricket and I split up one day: I went to the V&A and he went to the Churchill War Rooms and Buckingham Palace. Right next to the Churchill War Rooms is St. James Park, which has a lovely assortment of ducks and geese.

And whatever this thing is. Its legs make it look like it’s wearing a black unitard with a skeleton painted on it. Odd little waterfowl.

Doorknobs in the center of the door. Europe – things are different there!

Okay, The British Museum. I think when it was originally built there were a bunch of buildings in the Grecian style around an open courtyard, and it appears that at some point a large rotunda was built in the middle of the courtyard and a glass roof was installed over the whole thing, connecting all the buildings without having to go outside. It really is huge, the rotunda, so I tried to make a rough composite shot of the space. It’s very impressive.

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the British Museum because a large portion of the exhibits are stolen or looted from their place of origin, like a goodly portion of the Egyptian section, or the stones off of the Parthenon (Greece really wants those back, they’re very cranky about it). But I was just excited to see all the historical things. For example, the Rosetta Stone.

And the plethora of Egyptian relics.

These ladies were terrifying. They’re about the same height as a man, and you can feel them silently judging you.

And they have so many dead things. Like mummified cats.

And a mummified ibis next to a mummified falcon.

And canopic jars for holding your internal organs.

And let’s not leave out Ginger, a seriously dead guy surrounded by his grave-goods. Ginger died in 3400 B.C. and is naturally preserved. And dead.

I really enjoyed looking at the hieroglyphics. I kept seeing this reoccurring slug hieroglyphic. I wonder what it represents. Or it could be a startled snake, with cartoon “startled” marks around its head. I also wonder what that would represent.

Aside from the Egyptian section, there’s a whole bunch of other neat stuff that we saw. They have an excellent collection of Assyrian wall art (probably stolen). I studied the Assyrian artwork in art history class. That’s where I learned something interesting about large guard-sculpture’s legs.

The stonecarvers wanted him to be able to look like he was guarding both to the front and to the side, so he has five legs. Go ahead, count them. Five.

I also had to study all these wall carvings with themes like lion hunts and battles and the like. Say what you want about the Assyrians, but they could relief-carve a lion and a horse like no one’s business.

Other things from the British Museum that caught my eye: The death mask of Napoleon.

An impression bead where the animals look like “Where The Wild Things Are” characters.

A Celtic helmet with horns.

And a Roman mosaic of a duck. I liked this especially because it used all kinds of random colors, but if you stand far away from it, your eye blends the colors correctly for you, totally anticipating Pointillism by 2000 years. Go Romans.

That pretty much covers all the musea that I hit up while in London. In the next few days I will finish up the remaining dribs and drabs of photos and then we can get back to business as usual (whatever that is).

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London, Part 6.

Friday, February 25th, 2011

More museums! Can’t get enough! But first, a couple of random photos.

Pret A Manger (or Pret, as it’s often referred to) is from England, and I found this window cling very pleasing for two reasons. One, I like alliteration, and two, I happen to know (don’t ask me how or why) that the tool used to stir porridge, the one you see in the bowl there, is called a spurtle.

I mentioned earlier when I was talking about the play Warhorse how creepy I thought it was to have war stories for children. Apparently Warhorse wasn’t enough, oh no! Let’s have a whole freakin’ exhibition of traumatic tales for tots! Nightmares for everyone!

Did everyone read the book The Witches by Roald Dahl? If it’s been a while, let me refresh some points for you. The witches don’t blend into normal society. They have long claws, so they have to wear gloves. They are bald, so they have to wear wigs. They have blue spit, which makes their teeth have a bluish tinge. And finally, they have no toes and their feet end in blunt stumps, making wearing modern pointy shoes extremely painful for them. I used to love that book and read it over and over, and to this day every time I see super-pointy shoes, I think about how uncomfortable those must be for witches to wear. Imagine my glee when I saw these shoes in a shop in Greenwich, in the land that the book The Witches takes place in.

This proves it! The story is true! Witch shoes!

This is a poster from the subway for a drug exhibition. I didn’t go, but I loved the words chosen for the poster.

Now, the V&A Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum of Art and Design is my most favorite museum in the whole wide world. If I lived in London, I would be there once a month. You simply can’t see everything, even after many visits. It’s a beautiful building in itself:

Which still has shrapnel scars all over from the bombings of WWII.

And inside is rooms and rooms and rooms of every kind of design you can imagine – architecture, garments, jewelry, housewares, armor, etc. Check it out.

You want a room full of Greek stuff? You got it.

How about Early Christian? Not a problem.

Medieval, perhaps? We have a room for that.

How about a long hallway completely filled with every kind of ironwork? Okeedoke.

Seriously, it’s intense. Here’s a picture of a giant super-snazzy Baroque wall of a house. You can’t appreciate it in the picture, But the red parts of the wall is transparent red glass over mirror shards, giving it that extra tackiness. Sparkly!

I decided to focus on the Japanese items on this visit (last time I focused on the art glass section). It was really dark in the Japanese wing, but I still tried to get some decent shots.

The Japanese traditional clothing did not have pockets, so the Japanese originally used little hanging boxes called inro, like little wooden purses. The toggle bead holding the cords of the inro together was called a netsuke. The inro and the netsuke were often exquisitely carved small sculptures made from ivory or hardwoods, accented by metals.

Often natural elements are used in the pieces, like wee beasties or plants. Here is a tiny curled-up rat netsuke.

And here is a snail on a leaf netsuke.

But my favorite, without a doubt, was this one.

A badger wrapped in a lotus leaf?! With a little rain hat? How effin’ cute is that? I totally squee-ed.

Interestingly enough, the thing that blew my mind the most in the museum wasn’t anything I expected. I was walking up to the fourth floor when I passed this enormous wall drawing. It had to be 10 feet by 14 feet. It was huge.

It was an isometric drawing of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Here’s the deal, though: Every single detail is in there. Drawn with pen. Probably a pen with a nib that you have to dunk in an inkwell. It might be one of the most humbling things I’ve ever seen. Since it’s so tall, I could only take pictures of the lower half, but you get the idea.

Woooooow. Here’s the info card next to the drawing.

I might have stood in front of that drawing for fifteen minutes. If you go to the V&A, make sure you check this out. It’s at the top of the stairs to the fourth floor as you enter the architectural section.

(And here’s a nice photo Cricket took of the Millennium Bridge with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background.)

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London, Part 3.

Monday, February 21st, 2011

We went to so many museums. One of the Museums we saw was the Tate Modern. I tend not to like modern art, but everyone everywhere said we had to check it out, so we did. The building was amazing (it’s a former power plant, and it is HUGE), but I still don’t like modern art. I can even pinpoint when I stopped caring for modern art. I was in college and since I went to an art school, there was art all over the place. My senior year the college acquired a whole lot of outdoor art. Some of it was clearly identifiable (like bronze sculptures), but some was not (like a shopping cart which had glass bottles filled with pink liquid in them). One day I was walking on the campus and I saw a giant pile of garbage. I immediately circled around it looking for an identifying plaque with the artist’s name, until it occurred to me there wasn’t a plaque because this was a giant pile of garbage. Just regular old garbage, the kind that goes in a dumpster. And it was like a ray of light came out of the heavens and I saw the light and had an epiphany. The epiphany was,

“I don’t have to play this BS game. If something looks like a pile of garbage, whether fancy people call it art or not, it’s still a pile of garbage. Art should require skill and talent. Most modern art requires a PR person to hype it. I’m done with this.”

And since then I won’t go to the Guggenheim or the Whitney or any of those museums. But I made the exception for the Tate Modern for two reasons: One, I was walking right past it, and Two, all the museums in London are free, so no money lost there. Cricket was ecstatic because it had free wifi, so he didn’t mind at all. They have a famous exhibit there right now, the porcelain sunflower seeds. An artist commissioned 100 million hand-painted sunflower seeds and poured them out all over the floor. It looks like this.

And there are signs like this.

And don’t think I wasn’t tempted. They made a little barrier around the sunflower seeds just a leetle too far for me to reach the seeds to take one, and there was a guard posted in the corner makin’ sure the peasants weren’t pilfering the seeds. Shortly after that (when Cricket was done checking his email), we left.

We also went to Greenwich, the home of Greenwich Mean Time. Here’s clarification for those of you that don’t know: There is longitude and latitude. There is a definite latitude line – the equator – to base location and time off of. But there is no definite longitude line. So people invented one, the 0′ line, and it runs right through Greenwich, England. It has been the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) since 1884. It is a completely man-made thing, but the 0′ point has to be somewhere, so it might as well be in Greenwich.

They have a lovely museum there with lots of cool clocks and astronomer’s equipment. They talk a lot about how difficult it was for sailors to figure out where they were, how they used the position of the sun at certain times of day or the stars at night. My favorite tidbit of information was one of the harebrained ideas for always knowing Greenwich Mean Time. Some scientist claimed he had the “Powder of Sympathy”, and his plan was to scratch a dog with a knife that had been rubbed with the powder. The dog would travel on the ship going to foreign destinations. Then, every day at noon in Greenwich, the scientist would plunge the knife into the Powder of Sympathy, and the dog, feeling corresponding pain, would yelp, so the sailors would know and adjust their clocks on ship accordingly. The exhibit wryly said, “This was proven not to work.”

This was the super-cool house the astronomer lived in next to the Royal Observatory.

And this is Cricket standing with one foot on either side of the meridian.

The British, much to their credit, are not Puritans, and they sell hard, soft and in-between liquor in the supermarket. This made us laugh. It is a glass of wine. Seriously. An individual glass of wine with a yogurt-style aluminum peel-back lid.

I don’t drink beer, but Cricket does, and he sampled several bottled beers back in the hotel room. Here are a few.

I made him buy this beer after we returned from Greenwich.

Beer ended up being a big part of this trip. I always insist on eating and drinking wherever the locals do, and that meant we were in pubs almost every night. Cricket then got to try two different on-tap beers every night. One of his favorites was the banana bread beer. I even tried a tiny sip, and doggone it, it did taste surprisingly like banana bread.

I tried to be a trooper, alcohol-wise. There was a menu advertising pear cider and the description was mouth-watering (“known for its strong fresh pear notes with a hint of vanilla”), so I ordered it. Unfortunately, it was carbonated, and I can’t drink anything carbonated, so Cricket, being the best boyfriend in the whole world, got a second glass and poured the pear cider back and forth, back and forth, over and over until it wasn’t fizzy anymore. Best. Boyfriend. EVAR. It ended up being delicious, by the way.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | 1 Comment »

London, Part 2.

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

And we’re back! So, London. Let’s start with the Tower of London. First of all, that’s a misnomer. There’s a bunch of towers in a walled area. It should be called the Towers of London. Plural. It feels good to get that off my back.

The weather was really, really good. I know! I was surprised as well. It made hearing all about the various horrible tortures and beheadings so much more pleasant. There also was a nice view of the strange London skyline. That building in front there is called The Gherkin.

The Tower of London is famous for housing The Crown Jewels. Sooooo pretty. This was one of my favorite moments of the trip. I showed Cricket the magical, magical shiny hats and asked him which was his favorite. He informed me that he really liked the door. Yep, the big giant steel door. Some of the finest jewels in the world were directly in front of him, and Cricket was digging the enormous steel bolts on the door. DUDE, BIG SHINY ROCKS! THE BIGGEST AND SHINIEST! THEY DON’T GET BIGGER! OR SHINIER! Fine, go look at the door. Sigh.

They also had a lovely collection of suits of armor. Here is Henry the Eighth’s.

Everybody assumes that the big bulbous codpiece is due to Henry being really, umm, gifted. I read somewhere that it’s actually because he had The Syph and anything touching his junk was really ouchy, so there was a lot of padding in there to keep Mr. Happy from bumping into anything hard, like a big metal suit of armor.

I also learned about Edward the First. He reigned from 1272 to 1307. He was 6’2″, which nowadays is pretty tall, but can you imagine in 1270? It must have been like being surrounded by Oompa-Loompas all the time. Anyway, it got him his nickname Longshanks and they had to build him a special bed because his whole lower half would hang off all the pre-existing beds.

Cricket was really excited about this gun. Once he explained it to me, so was I.

I might screw this description up a little, so please forgive me, I know close to nothing about firearms. Back in the day, you fired a shot and then you had to do this whole procedure with the powder and the musket ball and the flamey stick, it was a slow and tedious process. If you look closely, this gun has two barrels – and two firing mechanisms. You could fire one, and then quickly fire the other.

This was awesome. You know, if you went somewhere in the United States and they had a vermin problem, they would shut down until the problem was taken care of. In the Tower of London, they have signs like this.

How freakin’ great is that? “Keep a lookout for my friends and family!” And an adorable Quentin Blake drawing! It makes the spread of pestilence so cute. Sadly, I saw no rats. Disappointing.

I did see ravens, though. The other thing the Tower of London is famous for is the ravens. Ravens are really, really large crows. Really large. Like small turkeys. I, of course, am obsessed with them. There are presently six of them living in the Tower, and I made friends with the green-anklet one. Here is a picture of Green-Anklet hanging out near my feet.

And here he is sitting on a cannon and saying, “Blaaaaah!!”.

If you are planning on visiting the Tower of London, you should know there are a million stairs. And not just normal stairs, oh no. Awful 15th century stairs, all weird heights and jinky angles and tight spaces. My calves were tender for two days after. Now, anyone who knows me knows I am about as far from an athlete as it gets, so chances are this won’t be as much of a problem for you, but still. Lots and lots of awkward stairs. Up, down, spiral – it’s like a stair fetishist’s dream come true. Just so you know.

Now, signs. Crickets loves a good foreign sign. Since he has brought it to my attention, I am now aware of signs. Here are a few.

I am very immature.

Tee hee hee. Also:

Snort. Giggle.

This was my favorite sign. It was often all by itself, so I had no idea what it was referring to. This was the conversation that went on in my mind when I saw it.

“DON’T DO IT!”

“Huh? Do what?”

“AT ANY TIME!!”

“I…I don’t know what-”

“JUST DON’T DO IT!!!”

“Okay…I’ll try not to?”

“NEVER!! NEVER DO IT! EVER!!”

And then The Mad Hatter and the March Hare tried to shove the Dormouse in the teapot.

At my job, the proofreaders often have a difficult time with documents that come from the UK, because even though we speak the same language, some of the grammar and punctuation rules are different. For example, they use commas way less frequently. There was this sign in the bathroom:

And Cricket had to listen to me yell,

“Guests are reminded to take care when standing or walking on wet surfaces. For additional safety COMMA! non-slip rubber mats are available in the bathroom and also from Housekeeping. Moisten the base of the bath first COMMA! then place the mat in the bath.”

Dating a Grammar Nazi is fun.

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Scrapbook.

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

One of the things I learned in college was keeping folders of inspiration. Before the Internet, during the dark ages when you couldn’t find anything you wanted at your fingertips in a split second, I kept a filing cabinet of inspiration. Everything I ever saw in a magazine that was of interest to me, I pulled out, labeled and shoved in its corresponding folder. Now with the beloved ‘net, I still do that, but on a much smaller scale. I now keep three-ring-binders of inspiration. Anything design-wise that strikes my fancy, I drop into a folder on my desktop labeled “scrapbook” and every month or so, I assemble them on pages, print them out and put them in my binder.

You’ll notice that just on these pages, we have: a book cover, a soccer ball, a wreath made of wire, logos, illustrations, a beer ad, graffiti, music posters, a pair of shoes, a web banner, etc., etc. Sometimes I’ll forget I liked something and I put it in there already, so I’ll have duplicates. I don’t berate myself. I like to that I liked it so much I put it in there twice. Like this crazy-ornate calligraphic letter (I think it’s an F).

Or this delightful Coca-Cola ad.

And even that freakin’ wallpaper I keep complaining about in commercials and music videos.

Now, if anybody thinks I use this for plagiarism, they aren’t really correct. What I do is when I am asked to create a design project and I’m not quite sure how to approach it, I ask myself, “Well, what am I trying to evoke in the viewer? Do I want them to feel a charming whimsy, or do I want it to feel like strong and powerful, or mystical and underwater, or bleak and sparse…?” Then I go through my scrapbooks and Post-It tag all the pictures that make me feel that way, and I assess why. I take those elements and incorporate it into my own project and hopefully I get the response I want. I use it as a starting-off point when I’m a bit stumped. And if you do anything like me, whether it is drawing or painting or designing or collage or embroidery or whatever, I highly recommend creating one of these for yourself. It takes that stress out of the beginning of the project.

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Washington D.C. – Roller Derby and the Zoo.

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

As you can probably deduce from the title, I went to Washington D.C. to visit a friend of mine, Moss. And we went to the Roller Derby. And the Zoo!

First, Roller Derby. I had never been to it, and I’ve always wanted to go. For those of you that don’t know, to simplify it down to its raw basic nature, it’s a bunch of strong women rollerskating with other strong women pushing each other out of the way, often knocking each other down and getting points for their team in the process. While it’s similar to every other sport in the world, the thing I like about this particular activity is the sense of humor. For example, the participatin’ ladies all have really swell nicknames. And they pick numbers that are related with those nicknames. My favorites:

Ovary Action – 28 Days
Chinese Cheker – 5354
Hoova Dayum – H2O
Marion Barrycuda – 311 (remember, this is Washington D.C. – ergo, funnier)
Dyke Diggler – 13 inches

There’s also HaBitchual OffendHer, Rachel MadHo, Lois Slain (she’s a reporter in real life, so that’s extra-cute), Ivana Tripabitch, Peaches N Cruelty and Wham Slam Bambi. The warm-up round was “Grinches vs. Santas”. The regular players had festive holiday nicknames like Blitzkreig Blitzen and Thumpa Coal, and they came out before the game and were introduced by the announcers. The grinches (dressed all in green) skated around the track in the shape of a Christmas tree, and the Santas (dressed all in red) formed the shape of a sleigh. Even the lead skater had a blinking red nose.

I tried to take pictures of the “jams”, as they’re called, but those girls move FAST. So here are my shots.

The next day Moss and I decided to see the pandas at the Zoo, but first we toddled off to experience the magic of chili. There’s a place in Arlington called The Hard Times Cafe. They have four kinds of chili. And they will put any combination of those chilis on a variety of substances. I chose half Texas chili, half Cincinnati chili on tater tots. Excellent decision, I must say.

Outside the Mecca of chili goodness was an oldey-timey truck…

…with a statue of a horse on the back, wearing mittens on its ears and fake antlers, and this sign propped up on its side.

Which is awesome.

Moss also showed me The Spite House. Here’s the story: A guy owned a house. He also owned the seven-foot alleyway between him and the house next door. People used to cut through the alleyway all the time, which really cheesed his crackers. So, Grumpy Guy built a house in the seven-foot alleyway, which is supposedly the thinnest house in America. It is called The Spite House and people do live there.

Now, on to the zoo. We did in fact see a panda, but he was far, far away, so I couldn’t take any pictures of him. I had never seen a panda before, and sure enough, they look like a soft, pillowy, black and white bear-shaped object. Which is nice to know. We also saw Indian elephants, a tiger, orangutans and a male lion roaring, which I had also never experienced, even though I have been to Africa a bunch of times, so that was so very cool. It is astonishingly loud and the sound really carries. It reverberates in your abdomen. I found a video of a lion roaring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOaQmkAlhUA

Does anyone who reads this watch Dirty Jobs? There’s an episode when Mike Rowe goes worm-grunting. You shove a wooden stake into the ground, rub an iron thingie over it, and it makes a groany sound. This causes the worms to come to the surface. You collect them and sell them to fishermen. The lion’s roar made me feel like a worm being grunted.

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/dirty-jobs-worm-grunting.html

Here are some of the beasties I got to take pictures of. The bestest one was the red panda. Normally, when I see red pandas, they are in trees and they are napping. This was the first time I saw red pandas sauntering around, doing red panda stuff. I got some great shots of what might possibly be the cutest animal in all of creation.

So cuddly.

I was in the small mammals building, and there was a window casting a sunbeam right into the meerkat’s habitat. And a meerkat was standing right in it. It was precious.

And other meerkats were just standing around because, you know, that’s what they do.

There were also degus, which are small rodents that live in South America. They do a great deal of napping. And look, there’s a degu napping on another degu! Awwww.

In one of the habitats there was an armadillo being all invisible and buried underground, but if you looked up OMG burrow owls! Teeny tiny owls that live in holes in the ground! So happy!

Elephant shrew. Prehensile snoot. Lotta rooting around in the ground debris.

Poisonous froggies.

And the lamest scientific name ever. So not creative at all.

It was a lovely trip. I may have to swing by Washington D.C. again soon.

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All I want for Christmas is a nap.

Saturday, December 25th, 2010

Ugh. I keep forgetting that my work has ebbs and flows, and this time of year is always horrendous. I have had to work so flippin’ hard these past two weeks, I haven’t had time to blog. Or bathe. Or keep my sanity. I do apologize that my posts have been so slackerly, but hopefully the upcoming months will be less work-consuming. I hope.

Now, things I have seen in my travels in New York. But first, there was this sidebar on Buzzfeed.

I thought it was magical. I didn’t click it. I like the version I have in my head better.

I work across the street from a Mrs. Field’s Cookie-Procuring Facility, and in the window they were displaying this.

Yeah, taking a heart-shaped cookie and flipping it upside-down to make Santa’s face isn’t working. His beard looks like a butt and the blob of red twisty frosting representing his mouth looks like a very special holiday sphincter. Next time, use an oval-shaped cookie.

I also work down the street from Koreatown, where many restaurants and bars and karaoke lounges. One of them had this sign outside.

I think they meant “Happy Hour”, but every time I walk past the sign it feels like a frat boy is yelling at me. “Come in here! You’ll be happy all friggin’ night!!”

In keeping with our wordy theme, I often complain about the unnecessary use of apostrophes, but recently I came across the absence of an apostrophe and it made me equally sad.

Awww. Unhappy emoticon here.

This dress caught my eye and made my day.

It looks like a regular black cocktail dress, but through the use of expensive ruffled ribbon and oddly-shaped sequins, it became beautiful and unique. Hey! People at home! Pay attention! A little elbow grease can turn ordinary garments into fancy-pants evening wear! Heed my words! DIY clothes need not be horrifying! Thank you!

I was on my way to Times Square, and I passed a pop-up Sanrio store in the middle of Broadway. And parked next to it…

It’s a cute little Smartcar covered in Hello Kitty heads! And a truck covered in other characters! So adorable!

Anyway, Merry Christmas to you all. I’m off to have Chinese food, as is the way of my people.

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Macy’s Christmas windows.

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

I tend to only get excited about Saks Fifth Avenue windows and Barney’s windows, but this year I was super-pleased to read this article:

http://theater.lohudblogs.com/2010/11/17/proof-of-purchase-at-macys-windows/

That’s my alma mater, y’all! Since I graduated from the Theater Design Tech program at SUNY Purchase with a degree in Set Design and I work across the street from Macy’s, I felt obligated to check out my former classmates and their activities. So the other day I sauntered across the street and checked out the windows. Here are some pictures to give you an idea.

They built the whole thing out of paper, which I think is a great idea. I think they did a swell job with the forced perspective and all. They even did the animatronics as well (we’ll get to that later). It bothered me that the characters they built didn’t match the style of the environment at all. I also think that while there are spots where the paperwork is spectacular, there are some spots where they didn’t push far enough with the material. That being said, I can’t judge them at all because who knows how much time they were given or if some Macy’s bigwig came in and gave his opinion and even though it was crap, they were forced to follow it. I don’t know the politics behind the making of the windows. So I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. Here are some of the more beautiful paper details.

And there was one window that gave me chills because it looked EXACTLY like draftings I had to make when I was a sophomore. I mean, uncannily similar. And since these people took the same classes as me, it’s very possible that it is taken from those draftings. I had a really rough time at college (entirely my own fault, but still) and it took me right back there, like a ‘Nam flashback.

Ahhhhhhhh.

Each window had some form of animation, things sliding into frame, things sliding out, etc. and my favorite was the village with the tree in the center.

The whole village lifted up, but if the tree didn’t move forward, the hole cut out for it would scrape the paper off the tree, so they have the tree tip forward when they lift the set. It was neat. I made an animated gif for your enjoyment.

Ah, it was delightful. Here’s a picture of the wee children enjoying the experience with their eyes full of wonder.

Hopefully this week I’ll have a chance to run over to Saks Fifth Avenue and see what they have goin’ on window-wise.

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A whole pile of random television-related items.

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

1. I do not like football, but I love the little Fox robot that dances on the side of the screen from time to time. If I am forced to watch a football game, the robot is usually all I enjoy.

Robot doin’ his thang.

I have just found out the robot’s name is Cletus. This only further endears him to me.

2. Remember back when I complained about the wallpaper in the Eminem video? Here’s the entry. I guess there must be a discount on that wallpaper for TV decorators, because I’ve been seeing it everywhere. I was watching Scrubs, and there it was. And a few days later I caught a JCPenney’s commercial, and whaddya know, my nemesis Beautiful But Too Expensive Wallpaper is in the background. We meet again. *slitted eyes*

3. I was channel-flipping and stopped upon Hoarding; Buried Alive, and while they were interviewing this woman, I couldn’t stop staring at the thing behind her.

What the hell is that thing? I thought it looked like a startled Uruk Hai. Uruk Hai, in case you don’t know, are these profoundly icky war creatures from Lord of the Rings. Here’s a picture of one.

Still don’t see it? I photoshopped the original image to help you out.

Now? With the ganked-up teeth/buttons? Well, I have no idea what this woman was saying because I spent the whole time saying, “IT’S LOOKING AT ME. MAKE IT STOP LOOKING AT ME.”

4. A while back Snorth introduced me to this playwright named Edgar Oliver. Edgar has the most bizarre speech pattern. I was like, yeah, whatever, he’s a big hairy bucket of odd. And then, I was watching a show called Oddities on Discovery and poof! there was Edgar. It was like a switch was flipped. I am obsessed with him now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmIq3paht2U

It’s such an unhealthy obsession, I have made an mp3 of all of his dialog from this episode where he rents a strait jacket for his play. I want to turn it into a ringtone or something. Especially when he says, “Yes,” around the 46-second mark. So, so very creepy and awesome.

Edgar at Obscura

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Meet the Breeds.

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Back a few months ago, before work took over my life, I went to an event called Meet the Breeds in the Javitz Center in New York. It was supposed to have 140 breeds of dogs and 60 breeds of cats. Alas, that was not true: they had closer to 50 breeds of dogs and 25 breeds of cats. AND they didn’t have my favorite breed of dog, which is the Borzoi or Russian Wolfhound. Also, it’s only the second year they have done this, so it was quite chaotic. But I got to meet a whole bunch of doggie breeds I previously didn’t know, and that was exciting. Here’s a brief and extremely late recap.

As I came in, I was greeted by cat agility, which caused me to giggle. Note how well it is going. The cat is just looking at the hurdle. It ain’t jumpin’ for anything. This could take days.

I went up and down the rows, dogs first, then cats, and I came to the realization that both dog and cat owners are equally insane. They owners were allowed to decorate their display space any way they wanted, and some people went as far as they could go. In the Saluki booth, they had an entire Saharan tent, with leather poofs to sit on and carpets and everything. I imagine if they could bring in a camel, they would have. The owners often dressed up as well. We’ll get to that.

I went late in the day, so many beasties were starting to get tired. Like this itty-bitty teeny tiny Chihuahua. It must be hard holding up that giant bulbous forehead.

One of the breeds I was introduced to was the Cirneco d’Etna. Etna is an active volcano in Sicily (when I went to Sicily, Etna was oozing black goop and ash, very thrilling).

Here is a picture of the Cirneco d’Etna. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but his owner is eating a sandwich, and the dog is very interested in the sandwich. I think he is willing the sandwich to float over to him. COME TO ME, he is saying. I MUST EAT YOU.

Another new dog I was introduced to was the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno. I love that name. Alliteration makes me happy, and this name has it in spades.

And there it is, the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno. It was a long day, and the doggie was tired. I might recommend to the owners next year not to match everything to the color of the dog. You don’t want to camouflage your beast, you want it to pop. Perhaps next year, a deep blue-green petrol color garment and pillow. Just a suggestion.

The third breed I was introduced to was the Xolointzcuintli (pronounced sho-lo-intz-queent-lee), the hairless Mexican dog.

“Hairless” is a bit inaccurate, because the dog (which is really sweet, by the way) has a tuft of white hair on the top of its head.

Now, concerning the dressing up: People wanted you to be excited about their breed, so often they would dress up to something pertaining to their breed. For example, there is the Corgi. The Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, loves corgis. So, if you look in the background, you will notice a woman dressed as the Queen in front of a fake castle.

And there is a breed of cat called the Ragdoll. So this owner dressed as, well, you know.

Where I draw the line is dressing up your beast. There’s some breed of cat that is related to the Wild West or cowboys in some way, and this is what the breed aficionados decided to do to them.

Okay, I don’t know much about alotta things, but one thing I do know – you do not put a tiny cowboy hat with an elastic head-holder-thing on a cat AND a kerchief AND then perch it on a saddle for long periods of time. If you do that and the cat scratches all the skin off the soles of your feet while you are sleeping, then the cat is completely justified. In fact, I would suggest we give the cat an award for showing self-restraint and only flaying your feet and not all the way up to your knee. Good kitty.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, New York, Stuff | 1 Comment »

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