The Mother Courage of Rock
She was skinny, quick-witted, disarmingly unprofessional, alternating between stand-up patter, bardic intonations, and the hypnotic emotional sway of a chanteuse, and she was sexy in an androgynous way I hadn’t encountered before. The elements cohered convincingly; she seemed both entirely new and somehow long-anticipated. For me at nineteen, the show was an epiphany.
Springtime 1976, I was living in the cinderblock building on the glorified median strip there where they split Highway 13, and one day I went over to this one girl’s apartment, she lived right by the guy who dealt me speed, and she said, “Hey, you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Patti Smith!”
Gave her a possum grin I’m still grinning.
Cake Camouflage
Wild Cakes certainly lives up to its name with this sweet take on spaghetti and meatballs made with buttercream pasta, strawberry jam pasta sauce, Ferrero Rocher meatballs and shaved white chocolate parmesan.
More here from mental_floss. (Via @nypl_menus.)
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing
4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
(From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Via Brian Beatty.)
Fairies of Christmas Passed…Deconstructed
The Blue Fairies laid on the table from the tree en masse. These were created by a former greensman employee three or four years ago. I remember, as he made them, into a box-top in the backroom of the greensman offices, I entered the room he was working in. He said, as he shook the boxtop, “Look, they live! ” He giggled and grinned a grin somewhere between the grinch and the baby jesus. That vision will forever live in my heart.
Holiday light
This is my front door this year. It stars an artificial ivy wreath from IKEA embellished with LED lights, which are battery-powered and set on a timer. I added a few sprigs of fake holly the other day. Neighbors’ lights also show up, reflected in the glass door. I used a point-and-shoot camera with a mulish flash so you can’t really “see” how the wreath appears to be a circle of light floating in the doorway. But I wanted Rick to see it, and the bad photo gives a hint of the floaty.
I don’t do this, but I understand why people keep up their holiday lights all winter. They help.
text my mom sent
check out the bear with boobs behind jesus.
Hudson Bay inspired blanket
I am knitting this.
If I like it in its small form, I will also knit a much larger version. Almost everything I knit becomes a gift*, and every time I visit Deron and Amy I am reminded how special it is to surround yourself with your own creations. Thanks for the inspiration, friends.
* I get to keep the holey, mismeasured projects.
Wreath this year…
I didn’t do a wreath for DIFFA this year. This one, I did at a client’s house this morning.
I hope they like it. The feathery greenery, painted silver, at the bottom the wreath: I couldn’t decide if it looked like hoar-frost or Santa’s beard, but it seemed terribly original.
Strut
Après lunch at the sub-urban lesbian bar. My dear friend Miss Mindy struts her stuff.
Elin Thomas, Lichen and Mold
Elin Thomas crochets some incredible reproductions of lichen and mold. Here is her Etsy shop.
(via stellar)
parkour flip book motion reel
This is old, but if I missed it then maybe you did, too.
Tabling and Cutting Broom-Corn
Fig. 3 from Broom-Corn and Brooms. A Treatise on Raising Broom-Corn and Making Brooms, on a Small or Large Scale. Circa 1879.
I expect I will be working on rather a small scale.
Back to back on Twitter
So to speak.
Join the LA&M Women’s Leather History Project and Alex Warner on the road at Beyond Vanilla in Dallas TX. (From the Leather Archives and Museum.)
Do I know anyone who works with leather, in a book binding way? Here’s the info. (From clusterfriend Pete Ashton.)
I am a woman of many and varied interests.
Iowa State Fair Update
Gigantor: A one-pound hamburger served between two grilled cheese sandwiches and topped with macaroni and cheese will make its debut at the Bird’s Nest at the top of the hill at 3000 East Grand Ave., by the AE Dairy Stage.
from the comments
Reggie Craft made his own lunch box. It sports a padlock and speakers.
One Hundred Years of Butter Cow
The Iowa State Fair has boasted a “Butter Cow” since 1911. The origins of butter sculpting, however, are far older than that. Nearly 20 years before Columbus discovered America, Tibetan monks used yak butter to create figurines of animals and deities for worship. Since then, this humble craft has evolved into high art.
August 11-21, 2011. Des Moines, Iowa.
read my lips
I’m waiting for the elevator in a medieval-themed hotel in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, when the elevator doors open to reveal a heated exchange between a bald man in a Hawaiian shirt and a puppet shaped like a toucan.
The opening account of a trip to a ventriloquist convention.
Also, I need to go.
(via the browser)
tweet of the day
Mr. B.’s Vegas Posse
There, on the left.
spam name
Florinda Erinn.
No Place Like Here: Marfa, Texas
OFFER: pooh & tigger patch
Posted to Dubuque Freecycle group Tue Mar 1, 2011 5:17 pm (PST):
This was cut out from a worn child’s sweatshirt. Pooh and Tigger standing next to each other, wearing fall jackets. Cloth around is worn, but embroidered patch in great condition. Thought a crafty person might like to give it new life on a bag, clothing or something.
“Bring your monkey back to where it all began.”
An original one-of-a-kind event, the Sock Monkey Madness Festival, will return as a unique celebration of Rockford’s past by highlighting its once thriving knitting industry and boom of the stuffed sock toy made from Rockford Red Heel Socks which continues as a large part of America’s pop culture. The 9th Annual Sock Monkey Madness Festival hours are 11:00 am until 5:00 pm Saturday and Sunday [March 5-6, 2011].
headline of the day
Man Hit By SUV During ‘Frogger’ Game
Analogue hyperlinks for a book on dreams.
Maria Fischer. “Traumgedanken.” Final year project at University of Applied Sciences Augsburg. 20 × 28 cm. 76 pages. Japanese binding.
The book “Traumgedanken” (“Thoughts about dreams”) contains a collection of literary, philosophical, psychological and scientifical texts which provide an insight into different dream theories.
To ease the access to the elusive topic, the book is designed as a model of a dream about dreaming. Analogue to a dream, where pieces of reality are assembled to build a story, it brings different text excerpts together. They are connected by threads which tie in with certain key words. The threads visualise the confusion and fragileness of dreams.
(via @pruned)
