Punch and Judy
A place for pictures of the “old rascal” himself, and his friends.
What We Did on Our Holidays
The vision of a lonely, myopic and mildly photo-sensitive child, memorialized.
Going to Hell
The world’s going to hell in a Hummer.
The world’s going to hell in a Himmler.
The world’s going to hell in a Harvester.
The world’s going to hell in a Heimlich maneuver.
So sez me and so sez Cooper.
Thank you. That is all.
Speaking, as we were, of the circus
and of circus tradition . . .
The stone mansion at 10 St. Nicholas place in Upper Harlem, near 150th Street, was built in 1886 by circus legend James Bailey. Original, animal-themed stained glass windows decorate the façade, and inside the crumbling interior (it was once a funeral home and has fallen into decay), there is a warren of bright rooms and narrow corridors. The back garden is spacious but overgrown, and some people call it a “modern Grey Gardens.” The mansion is full of features from the original construction, but needs several million in repairs. But for a gorgeous historic stand-alone mansion that includes about 8,250 square feet of interior space, the price tag is a lot lower than you’d ever guess.
(New York Magazine via a reversecowpie tweet)
Previously Kinetic Art
If you choose to look, note the substitution of a dry leaf for the missing head of the first of the two dead birds.
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On the Lam (Another Random Episode)
She got what she wanted, but she lost what she had.
September Song | Jimmy Durante | 1955
I could do without the choral woo-ooo-ooohs, but aside from that, I really like this version of the Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson chestnut.
Everything You Need to Know
Figurine. Calcite. Circa 10,000 BCE. (Mesolithic.) Found/acquired: Ain Sakhri. Small cave in the Wadi Khareitoun, south-east of Bethlehem in the Judean Desert.
A clustercommenter introduced me to this Mesolithic figurine, now held by the British Museum. I thought it might get buried in the great midden-heap of commentary, so I reckoned I’d bring it to the surface.
“Awesome and humbling,” says the commenter. I concur.
On the Lam (Another Random Episode)
Cam-phone photo. June 25, 2009. LG VX11000.
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Hamlet. Act II. Scene 2.
Michael Jackson Meant Nothing to Me
This is the post that will get my ass kicked outta this place.
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Collecting
Daryl’s remembery, sparked by Phil’s post, really got me. It really got me. Now.
Religious views: I got a million of ‘em.
So me and a friend from the wayback days had plugged back in thanks to The Google and to clusterflock and we had emailed for a while and then it dropped off but then I got one of them Facebook requests.
Let’s be friends. We know we’re friends, but let’s make it official. Like one of them civil unions or gay marriages.
(Damn Facebook. I love it. I hate it. I love it. I hate it. My sister. My daughter. My sister. My daughter.)
Eh, well, here is something I really like from what they call his profile.
Religious views: I got a million of ‘em.
(A gloss for the youngsters: This is a reference to a catchphrase associated with the American pianist, actor, comedian, composer, and singer Jimmy Durante, who was old before my time.)
Dear clusterflock: Mastic ambrosia
Ephemeral and insubstantial food of the gods.
“It makes you immortal,” says Flickr contributor ghostbore of this exquisite confection.
Is there an almost extinct treat that drives you mad with desire and longing?
Will he ever return?
Maybe, like the unfortunate Charlie of the Kingston Trio’s “M.T.A.”, Jesus is riding forever ‘neath the streets of Boston.
And he will never return.
Update: Everything you might want to know (and more) about the saga of Charlie and the M.T.A. may be found here.
On the Lam (Random Episode)
Camera-phone photo. LG VX11000. June 25, 2009. More to come.
Update: I’ve added a few images of life on the lam to my Flickr photostream and created an “On the Lam” set.
on the lam: moving from place to place to avoid being found or caught. She got in trouble in the 70s and was captured after 23 years on the lam.
Usage notes: usually said about someone who is avoiding the police
Related vocabulary: on the run
See also: lam
Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms. Cambridge University Press: 2006.
For Aaron Winslow | Collectible
Given unlimited resources, Aaron would collect statues of animals dressed as butlers and holding trays.
The cat is not dressed as a butler. It is quite nekkid (and disturbingly furless). But etched into the platter is a mousie-wreath design.
The object on the platter is not a rodent part. But I have taken a photograph of a whole dead mousie on that platter.
“I got no strings to hold me down”
Even Half-Witted Rust Belt Muffler Men can become Real Boys.
(”When you wish upon a star . . . “)
Foyer of the Irish-American Section of Heaven
Camera-phone photo (LG VX11000). June 23, 2009.
We’re not kids. We’re artists.
When I was 22 and living in an apartment in Madison, Wisconsin with my soon-to-be husband, our resident building manager, Byron Blotky, came by one evening to look into some problem or other we had phoned him about.
I was in the kitchen, where I had just heated a straightened-out coathanger over a gas burner till it was red-hot, and I was using it to shave off portions of a 45 rpm vinyl record (”Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks) and shape it so it would fit into an Art Deco toaster I had bought at the Good Will downstairs from the apartment.
Byron peered into the kitchen and hollered, “What in the heck are you kids doing?”
“We’re not kids, Mr. Blotky,” I said. “We’re artists.”
I don’t want your bourgeois accolades.
I scrabbled about as fast as ever I could to meet Doc’s clitoral challenge, yet I missed the 8:00 PM CDT deadline. So I scrabbled again, and the result is what you see above. And still it was past the revised deadline of midnight.
Down below is my first desperate race-against-the-clock attempt.
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Orange Crate Art: Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks
From I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times (1995), directed by Don Was.
Mortal Remains
We have been speaking of mortal remains.
This, the tail-end of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, has always just shredded me.
I take it personally.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Lena
was out all night in the stick-a-burr place, and she came home just studded with hundreds and hundreds of burrs. She looks and feels like a clove-studded ham. No, she looks and feels like a green peppercorn- or caper-studded (furry) ham, except that she is not shaped like a ham. I did, however, feed her half the contents of a jar of Gerber’s ham baby food. Cooperative grooming has now commenced. This could take a while.
A school of thought about . . . herring
from Life in a Scotch Sitting Room (Volume 2, Episode 6). Ivor Cutler.
“Scotland gets its brains from the herring,” said Grandpa; and we all nodded our heads with complete incomprehension.