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I bet you thought I didn’t make art no more! But you was wrong!

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

See? See? I’m still making jewelry. There it is. Gaze at it.

I will tell you, though, if the directions on the polymer clay say, “Hey, don’t spray this stuff with spray paint or Crystal Clear or nail polish because it will stay sticky forever,” LISTEN. Otherwise you have to spend four hours gently scraping each and every piece to remove the sticky undried substance and you’ll have to throw away half your pieces anyway. Not fun. But I bounced back (I’m a bouncer!) and made a festive array of new pieces using a different sealing technique which works and hooray, now I have that nice big pile of jewelry done. Going up in the store shortly.

So, pertaining to my apartment-buying, I went to Ikea last weekend for the first time. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME OF THIS EXQUISITE PLACE? I actively don’t like shopping, but I was happy there and shopped with a smile on my face. I bought a whole dinner set and some succulents and cactii and glasses, oh, so terrific. They have toys and one of their toys is a stuffed pillbug. How marvelous (or marve-louse, if you’d prefer. Har har! Bug humor! Never gets old.)

Now, until I saw this picture I didn’t know its mouth unzips and you can store things in him. This pillbug just gets better the more you know about him. Also, you can get a fountain drink for a dollar. A dollar! And the fountain drink cup is a decent size! You can’t get anything, anywhere for a dollar. I just pottered around looking at light fixtures drinking lingonberry juice for five hours. I highly recommend the experience.

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Bundt Jell-O and Fugu.

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

It was a lovely Thanksgiving. My momma made a typical authentic Thanksgiving meal with green bean casserole (wheee! French’s Onions! I love it!). And she also got creative and made a Jell-O strawberry mousse in a bundt pan, AND she got it out all in one piece. Impressive. I took a photo:

It was delicious too. Go Momma.

So everyone knows the Japanese are the masters of cute, right? They made this, and this, and also this. So walking past a restaurant naming Asuza, I noticed something interesting. First of all, they sell fugu. Fugu is a Japanese pufferfish. So what, you say? Oh, there’s more. Fugu pufferfish have poisonous toxins in their ovaries and livers and skin, so if they’re prepared incorrectly, you DIE. Like DEAD. From a food item you chose to eat. And a couple Japanese people die every year from improperly prepared fugu. I guess if you are a restaurant and you pay top dollar for killer pufferfish, you use all the (nonpoisonous) parts of the pufferfish. So I photographed the menu with an all-fugu all-the-time menu.

There’s fugu appetizers, fugu broth, fugu sashimi, grilled fugu – even sake infused with fugu. Okay, you know what, that’s too much damn fugu. But this is not why intrigued me about this restaurant. See, Japanese restaurants like to have plastic models of some of their more popular dishes in the windows of their establishment. But Asuza has very limited window space, so they made MINIATURE models of all their dishes. See?

Is that not precious? Everytime I think the Japanese can’t top themselves in the adorable-ness, they make whatever it is smaller. And rounder. And add sparkles to it. Brilliant, I tell you.

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My spam and my hair. But not spam in my hair.

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

1. I get quite a lot of spam comments on this site. Ummm, I think they’re trying to hawk medicine, maybe? I don’t know. It’s either written by someone from a foreign land (like Neptune) and they went through the New York Times and picked bits of sentences they thought were pretty, or perhaps some people were playing a game of Madlibs while on Xtasy. I actually took time out of my busy schedule to try and read this, and then I was like “whatever” and deleted it. But it bothers me still. A little. Not much.

2. My hair. I have had the same haircut since I was eleven which is: some semblance of “long”, one-length hair tied back in a ponytail. That’s it. The “long” part has varied over time (down to the small of my back, brushing my shoulders, etc.) but it has always been one length tied back in a ponytail. Then last year I thought, “Bangs! Bangs will add excitement to my mundane existence! Wheee!” Then I did requisite research in Us Weekly and People magazine and found a style of bang I liked, tootled off to the hair-hacker and got me some bangage. My hair wants to curl up and frizz, so on mornings when I don’t give a rat’s patoot about dealing with hair I put on a headband, but when I feel like attempting prettiness, I try to wrestle my bangs into prettitude using water and straighteners and wax and slime and bee armpits and whatever other hair products I’m told will fix this. Those who are looking for a hair loss solution may try Batana products. To keep your dreadlocks clean and moisturized, make sure to use hair oil for dreads.

If I don’t use much goonk, it does this little peppy flip at the end, so I look like a Farrah Fawcett rollerderby Xanadu wannabe, and if I use heaps of goonk, I look like something between a drowned cat and Adolf Hitler. The next person who gives me helpful hints on my appearance will receive a detailed description of “that time I thought it would be a good idea to get bangs” plus a kick in the shins to punctuate the tale.

P.S. Another reason I got bangs is that I have a big ole pale forehead (it’s so big, it’s a fivehead! Har har har!). Cricket likes to say it’s a “billboard they can read in Zimbabwe”. I grew weary of the giant white expanse so I thought instead of getting a tattoo on there (I was thinking M•O•M and an anchor), bangs would be the way to go. So technically they are serving their purpose, but they’re doing it so… not fashionably.

* Really. I’m not making that up.

Posted in Stuff, Teh Intarwebz | 1 Comment »

Frog’s wedding.

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

I got a phone call in Mid-October. “Hey!” said my super-longtime friend Frog (we’ve been friends since she was eleven and I was twelve). “I’m getting married to Tex!” I was delighted. And then she sprang an interesting tidbit.
“Would you like to be my bridesmaid?” She said.
“Sure!” I said.
“Good, the wedding is in three weeks.” Frog said.
“…” I said.

But luckily she wasn’t doing that whole crazy matching bridesmaid dress thing, and I was actually the only bridesmaid in the whole wedding party, so no biggie. She gave me some color options and all went well. It was a delightful wedding. Call Cynthia Lissau, M.S., LPC, LMFT for marriage counseling Roanoke.

If you and your partner are navigating through challenges or simply seeking to strengthen your bond, consider exploring couples counseling Seattle for support and guidance.

Awww. Look at Frog in that picture. Doesn’t she look beautiful? I’m the purple creature with the sunflower bouquet. While this is a lovely wedding moment, I included it especially because of the groom’s hair. Yeah, that looooooong brown tail hanging out of the back of his head? That’s his hair. He can floss his butt with that thing.

The wedding took place at a mill in Pennsylvania (note mill-wheel in background). Actually, it took place in the heart of mushroom-growing country. This had me concerned. You know what mushrooms grow in? No, not poo, that would be too easy. They grow in compost, which is hot bacterial poo. And it smells mighty ripe. And this was an outdoor wedding. However, I was assured that mushroom season was over and indeed, the wedding smelled terrific.

The bride sported white combat boots. The piece of blue mylar was the “something blue” that brides are required to have. It’s some kind of joke between Frog and Tex. I was too lazy to find out what that joke is.

Dy, my favorite guest. All the guests pretty much looked normal and boring, and then there was Dy. He was wearing a suit that was half-black and half-white and he had spiked his mohawk with a considerable amount of hair-glorp. The best part was the koala doll attached to the top of one of his mohawk points.

You know, sometimes after a rousing round of dancing, one needs a Mountain Dew…

… and some smoky treats. Nothin’ prettier then a bride hittin’ the cancer sticks, I’ve always said that.

Okay, this was awesome. It was a Halloween/autumnal-themed wedding, and the cakes were Carvel cakes! With ice cream and Oreo crunchies inside! I’ve never been to a wedding with that before.

Important note: When stuffing ice cream cake into your bride’s face, make sure none of the chilly ice cream falls into her cleavage, because then she makes this face, and later on she kills you and feeds you to the cats. Just so you know.

Also, she wangs the cake into your mouth so you have white icing all over your mustache and you look like you just walked out of the bathroom in Studio54 with a mirror and a razor blade.

It was an excellent wedding. Lots of love and family and friends. All weddings should be like this.

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A horribly delayed “The Police” Concert entry.

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

This week has be cah-ray-zee. I’m trying to buy an apartment (we will discuss this later when I actually have more information on it). And I’m trying to make product for my online store. And I’m trying to build my online store on the computer (soooo much more complicated then I anticipated, must leave lots of time for that). And I’m trying to move out of my beloved tiny Manhattan apartment. And I’m trying to do all these thing RIGHT NOW, which means I am running out of time for things like blogging and breathing and bathing. But enough with the complaining. The Police! I saw them at Madison Square Garden! And it was neat! I will give you a succinct review right now: Their music continues to be awesome, but because they are old (by punk standards), they don’t have the fire that is required to really bang that music out. I must say, though, that all three of them are consummate musicians and while I originally came to see Sting, the real star of the show was Stewart Copeland (the drummer). He was working the kettle drums and these wee chimes that go tingy tingy and a gigantic gong. He was spectacular. And the guitarist Andy Summer was also amazing, but he has the personality of wet dead fish, so however good he is, he is still difficult to watch. It was Halloween and it was no shocker he was dressed at Charlie Chaplin. Now he can use his costume as an excuse to not talk or really move around. Good choice. Sting was dressed at a harlequin with a yellow and black diamond pattern and a festive glittery codpiece, lest we forget his tantric eight-hour love-making sessions. Stewart was dressed as a zombie with an Egyptian headdress (a cobra I think) but since he kind of resembles a zombie to begin with, not much of a stretch there for him. And now the pictures.

On every seat in the whole freakin’ arena (30,000 seats) they put masks on each armrest. Because it is Halloween. Isn’t that nice?

Close-up of the mask. You can’t appreciate it in the photo, but it’s a sparkly holographic mask. Oooooooh.

They has some of the best lighting design for this show. They had lights all around the edge of the oval stage and then lights that moved up and down behind them. And, AND, they had the required screens so people in the nosebleed section could see Sting’s face. Underneath that they had another screeny thing that projected patterns. It this particular picture you can see the 80’s style lighting they chose to open with.

In this picture you can truly appreciate how dead Stewart Copeland looks. He’s on the screen on the left.

And then they had lights! Lights all over the audience! Whee! Lots of lights! Can’t remember what song this was for, but it worked with the big white lights flashing all over the arena.

And then they sang “Roxanne.” The lighting designer heard the phrase, “You don’t have to put on the red light” and all he heard was RED LIGHTS! LOTS OF RED LIGHTS! The photo above is only the beginning.

TURN ON THE RED LIGHTS! TURN ON THE GODDAMNED RED LIGHTS, ROXANNE!

Then Sting took off his harlequin mask and sang “Every Breath You Take” which is my favorite song from the 80’s and one of my favorite songs of all time. And it was LAME. You need a certain sexy psycho stalker vibe going on when you sing that song, and Sting is old and has like ten kids and he’s over the stalker crazy thing, so he sang the song like a stinkin’ lullaby. I was sad. And that was the end of the concert. I would say it was good and I would recommend that you go because the three of them are amazing musicians, but don’t expect the same fire and vigor that they had in their heyday. But worth going to.

Posted in New York, Stuff | No Comments »

Four totally unrelated items.

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

1. I was driving this weekend to Expo, the Home Depot design center (fancy tiles, rugs, curtains, etc.) and I drove past Walter’s in Larchmont, NY. It is a Chinese-style building from 1919 that sells… hot dogs. And all the wealthy locals drive up in their Lexii and line up for the hot dogs. Cricket and I just had to try it out. Because I avoid meat (I’m not a die-hard vegetarian, but I make an effort) Cricket got a hot dog and I got potato puffs (fried mashed potatoes, like little croquettes). And we got sweet spuds to share (tempura-battered sweet potato sticks). I can only comment on the tuber-foods, but the potato puffs were excellent and the sweet spuds were delicious, melt-in-your-mouth good. I don’t know if I would drive all the way to Larchmont just to relive the experience, but if I passed by there and I was hungry, I might partake in the deliciousness once again. Now, photos.

2. Not like anyone doesn’t know this, but there are crazy people in New York. Lots of them. And many of them have so very much to share. They desperately want to tell you about how the aliens planted a probe and now they know the truth about 9/11 and Iran because they can hear the government’s thoughts. One lady handed me a piece of paper with tiny tiny writing on it about… something, her mother being raped in the seventies and pictures of her mother’s driver’s license, I couldn’t figure it out. There’s another guy who hangs out in Midtown with big placards, maybe seven of them, just COVERED in text about how he invented the cooling thing in the refrigerator and how the patent was stolen from him and how he is owed 25 billion dollars. Well, in my neighborhood, I have my local crazy. He posts collages of stuff with his comments written on them. I don’t know if this makes me a bad person, but all I can think of when I see them is, “He may be kookoobee, but he’s got lovely penmanship.”

3. There’s this poster you see around town for a food thing. It’s a woman, all seductive-like, posing with a crawfish on her shoulder. Here’s the problem: the crawfish has little eyeflaps, like little eyelids, that curve down in the center and make him look really really angry. So the picture is of woman cooing to this furious crawfish.
“I think you’re handsome.”
“I AM FILLED WITH RAGE!”
“Your claws are sooo sexy.”
“IT IS LIKE A FIRE THAT CONSUMES ME!!!”
I think perhaps they should have picked a different food item to rest on her shoulder. Prawns look pretty benign, although a little surprised (“HUH?!??”). Here is a picture of the ad.

And here is a close-up of Livid Crawfish.

It probably doesn’t help that he looks like a demonic alien to begin with.

4. Update on the hideous rat ornament: It now has a bandanna and dreadlocks. I don’t think it’s helping.

Now it’s just a rastafarian nightmare. I can’t wait for Halloween to be over.

P.S. Tonight I’m seeing The Police in concert at Madison Square Garden. Oh, this is so exciting!

Posted in Advertising, New York, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 1 Comment »

More tile ads and a truly hideous Halloween ornament.

Friday, October 26th, 2007

1. I did some nice-looking ads for NewCastleNOW. I’m particularly proud of my JV Volleyball one. It looks like an ad you’d see on Yahoo or Amazon. I’m a professional graphic designer, like the big boys! I can go on the big slide!

180Ã—150-jvvolleyball.jpg

468Ã—60-sneakers.jpg

I’m also pleased with my banner ad for the sneaker drive. The only concern I have with it is all the text on it. People, if you’re reading this site and I build ads for you, please remember that these tile ads are small. Really small. Super-wee-small. If I put a whole paragraph of 6 point text on there it will cause your viewers to squint and say to their spouses, “Spouse, can you read this to me?” And the spouse will say, “Get up and get your glasses, what do I look like, your servant?” and then your viewer will get up, not noticing the internet cord on the floor and they will trip over it and hit their head on the bookshelf and get a nasty bump on their head and hate your website forever. Just something to think about.

2. I walk to work every day. I was walking past Ricky’s on 57th and was startled by this atrocious Halloween decoration.

I assume it’s supposed to be a rat. I’ve seen rats often in my travels around Manhattan, and while I can understand why some people don’t like them, they’re not revolting. They’re kind of big-butted and they snuffle around trash heaps looking for nibbles and keeping to themselves. This thing, first of all, is really big. It’s three feet tall. And it looks like a sloth mated with a tazmanian devil and their offspring fell into a vat of nuclear waste mixed with thalidomide. If I was seven and tromping around my neighborhood gathering sweeties and I sauntered up onto a porch with this displayed on it, I would run screaming from the house and develop an unhealthy and irrational fear of large-assed rodents (That includes beavers and porcupines). Trauma for years to come. So while a fan of most Halloween beasties (and real rats), this particular specimen is wretched.

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You ‘member the Bloomsburg Fair? ‘Member that?

Monday, October 15th, 2007

A few posts a-previous, there was an entry on the Bloomsburg Fair. I briefly mentioned the deep-fried festival of food there. Here’s another picture I took at the fair.

I told quite a few people about the plethora of fried goodness, often involving a stick, as in “______ on a stick”. My favorite one on that list being sold at the fair? Pumpkin cheesecake on a stick. Snorth once told me of a fair that had deep-fried spaghetti and meatballs on a stick, and Lord knows I looked for it at this fair (how do they get the spaghetti not to fall off the stick? Does the stick have little prongs emerging at intervals? I have questions.) I didn’t find anyone selling it. I truly thought I had explored all the variations of stick-food. I was wrong.

http://www.lastappetite.com/french-fry-coated-hotdog/

Koreans are all about pushing the envelope there, corn-dog-wise. I’m impressed.

On a vegetarian-turning note, my friend went to Thailand and they had chick on a stick. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Baby chicks, fluffy bits and all, rammed onto a stick and deep-fried. I have a rule about my food: I actively dislike when I can identify it. Like when I receive prawns with antennae and legs and whatnot at a restaurant, I have to turn them around so they are not facing me and cover their eyes with a lettuce leaf so they’re not looking at me. A deceased chick with its beak and feet sticking out at odd angles would fall smack-dab into that category. *Shiver*.

Posted in Activitays, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

The Bloomsburg Fair.

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

I had been complaining to my co-worker A. that there were no state fairs around here where I could see livestock. He mentioned that near his hometown in Pennsylvania is the Bloomsburg Fair, and it has livestock and rides and food and a variety of other country-like activities that one does not get to experience in New York City. So on Saturday I went with Cricket and Neenernator and B. to the Bloomsburg Fair. Which is three hours away. I hope you appreciate my devotion to seeing a fair. From the moment we arrived, it was exactly what I had hoped for. You had to park pretty far away since the ENTIRE POPULATION OF PENNSYLVANIA showed up, so they had bench-things on wheels attached to tractors which would go from the parking lot to the front gate. Tractors! I was thrilled. As I entered, I had to take a picture of what greeted me.

Yes, come to the fair and get grilled bologna and onion sandwiches! Just reading the sign made me taste bologna and onion for days. Also, note the giant apple vendor selling deep-fried apple slices. The phrase “deep fried” became a critical part of the day.

This was a booth where they would tell you what your name meant and try to get some God in your life. They had this super-convoluted map on the side of their booth. The lady in the picture and I stood there and tried to figure out what the goodness gracious was going on, but we couldn’t gather heads nor tails of it. We’re somewhere between the cross and the damning hellfire all the way on the right. And then it was on to a truly righteous and godly activity, the demolition derby!
For those of you who do not understand the finer nuances of demolition derby, please allow me to clarify. You line a group of suicidal cars and their enabler drivers up, back to back.

Then there’s a countdown, and the cars slam into reverse and whump into the cars behind them. The cars continue whumping and smashing and having critical components break off and occasionally catching on fire until only two cars are able to drive and whump. They are the winners. Here are some of the finer photos.

Then it was on to the livestock. They had award-winning rabbits! And chickens! I was ecstatic.

This chicken* just stood there in the sunlight posing for me. I can truly say I have met the most photogenic chicken on earth.

This chicken fell asleep with its big chickeny butt in the air. It’s tough, the life of poultry.

This chicken was all up in my grill like a crazy paranoid chicken on Law and Order SVU. “I don’t have to let you in my apartment! I know my rights!” It also helps that this was a super-tiny psycho chicken. I was very intimidated once I stopped laughing at it.

This is a photo of the softest rabbit ever, possibly. I wanted to scoop him up and book it out of there, but having a couple thousand angry Pennsylvanians running after me waving tractor parts as I made off with their rabbit was not appealing, so this story does not end with me as the proud owner of this rabbit. However, it also doesn’t end with me in the hospital with tractor parts wedged into my orifices, so that’s good too.

There were some seriously attractive cows there. These are two of them. Bored and beautiful cows – it’s just like being back in New York! Har! Har har!

Now this picture I tastefully cropped. The cow on the right had what looked like sausage casings hanging out of her, and before I could give it a great deal of thought, Neenernator pointed out the little baby calf curled up next to her! Awww, baby cow. It’s less than twelve hours old.

Closeup of baby cow.

There were all kinds of neato fair things there, but the ice cream machine run by an 1903 John Deere engine was pretty awesome.

I took pictures of the award-winning pumpkin and the canned goods and a variety of other things, but I will spare you those pictures. There’s only so many first-prize squashes you can look at before you just HATE SQUASHES. That night we went to the tractor ‘n’ truck pull, which, I must say with all honesty, is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen. I’m not even going to explain it in detail. There’s a tractor (or truck) and then there’s a big weight, and whoever pulls the weight the farthest wins. And the winner gets to club the woman of his choice and drag her back to his cave for a good ole-fashioned Neaderthal matin’ experience, most of which she will be unconscious for. I mean, really, people – I let my butt go numb on the bleachers for this? But on the whole it was a great experience and I highly recommend it for people who live in the city all day every day. It’s definitely a break from the norm.

*Yes, I’m well-aware that that’s not a chicken, it’s a cock. I have issues with saying that. Like every time I watch a dog show with my mother and they say, “That’s a stellar bitch out there, Bob” and I get all uncomfortable because, you know, I’m watching WITH MY MOM.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 2 Comments »

Starbucks, mezuzah and the cactus. Also, Peppy.

Monday, October 1st, 2007

1. I was at Starbucks the other day picking up a grande soy no whip hot chocolate (stop that, I don’t judge you) and you know how they hand-draw those signs on the wall? “Try a pecan walnut mocha bar with your pumpkin latte today!” Those signs. The one in the Starbucks I was at was this cool Edward Gorey ribbon with text on it. I was very impressed. I took a picture.

Go Starbucks on 52nd Street with your gothic Victorian-ness. You rock.

2. I finished the mezuzah this weekend. I also went to the Bloomsburg Fair, this mammoth fair in Pennsylvania, on Saturday and I will upload pictures soon. Back to the mezuzah. It looks awesome. I’m so very proud of myself. Check it out.

So apparently I have designed the first and only Halloween mezuzah. Spoooky mezuzah. The copper leafing turned out well and the colors are still strong. I’m a happy camper. Now on to the next project.

3. Do you remember the giant freak cactus I mentioned previously? The one where they grafted one freaky cactus to another freaky cactus and created the Megatron super-cactus? Here’s a pic to refresh your memory.

Well, I went to Home Depot this weekend to buy some Dremel parts and they had a mini version of my cactus! OMGLOLBBQ! The major setback in purchasing the giant cactus was that it was $150, and I don’t care how awesome a plant is, I’m not paying over a hundred bucks for it. So I got my wee 6-inch cactus, and I will love it and pet it until it gets big and that will be fine. Here are pics of my new bestest cactus friend (along with a pony tail palm tree that I also had to have).

4. Occasionally I will pass a newsstand and an old man will be there. Accompanying this old man is an equally old dog named Peppy. Peppy was once at some time peppy, but now he is sendentary. And sweet. I always pet him and make cooing noises at him, probably that he doesn’t hear because he’s deaf. I finally walked by when he was there and I got a picture of him. Enjoy this moment with Peppy the (no-longer-accurately-named) Pomeranian. And do not fail to notice the incredibly screwed-up teeth on his lower jaw. This dog needs braces, yo.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, My Art/Design/Business, New York, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 1 Comment »

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