Glitter not included . . .

So, I knit and crochet and do a mediocre needlepoint. One thing I have never done is cross stitch — regular or counted (I think there is a difference but I'm not exactly sure). When I was waiting in the airport one time, I was speaking with a woman who was doing cross stitch. It looked like so much fun, even though she was doing some religious-Precious Moment-themed bookmark. Then a week or so ago while I was knitting on a subway, a youngish man pulled a huge tapestry from his bag and started cross-stitching. He has clips and a tambour frame and everything. It looked like a Watteau painting. It was incredible to watch him.

I told Saint Jerome that I was thinking of teaching myself counted cross stitch. I looked online for patterns and kits. Gosh! One is worse than the next! How much Precious Moments/Disney/Christian/Faerie crap can one make? Or want  to make. I would probably have to design my own.

Anyway, yesterday I find this in my email box, forwarded from The Guardian's website, courtesy of Saint Jerome:

If I hadn't read the description or the excited headline, I would never have guessed who it was. It's Edward Cullen, aka Robert Pattinson. Now, I am not into Twilight or any of this vampire trend, but I thought that this was pretty funny. It's only shades of gray! Where are the colors? Where is the rainbow? Where is the glitter? Oh well . . . it kind of looks like him if you cross your eyes, squint, close one eye and then close the other.

The 27th Annual Itchy and Scratchy Show 9/26/2009

the 27th ANNUAL.

POISON OAK SHOW.

September 26th, 2009

A Presentation of the St. Charles Saloon

Schedule.

Entries

Accepted from 9am to Noon.

Voting & Judging

Between Noon and 4pm

Tropies Awarded

at 5pm

Aren't you just itchin' to participate?

11 categories:

Class 1: Best arrangement of poison oak.
Class 2: Best arrangement of poison oak and another plant.
Class 3: Best arrangement of poison oak and inanimate object.
Class 4: Most potent looking GREEN leaves.
Class 5: Most potent looking RED leaves.
Class 6: Biggest single Leaf.
Class 7: Best poison oak accessory or jewelry.
Class 8: Most original poison oak dish (recipe included).
Class 9: Biggest poison oak branch or trunk.
Class 10: Best Photo of poison oak.
Class 11: Best photo of poison oak rash (or in person?).
This event is like a traditional flower show, except, all entries must include poison oak!

Featured.

Musical entertainment from 1pm to 4pm.

For another fun site: Poison Oak I.D.

QUESTIONS?

Please contact the organizers below.

Contacts for more information:
John or Jeanne Hand
e-Mail: stcharlessaloon@yahoo.com
phone: 209-533-4656
Send an SASE to PO Box 1596, Columbia, CA 95310 for event details.

The Poison Oak Show is an annual festival in Columbia, California. Saint Jerome and I first became aware of the Poison Oak Show in 2007 when an article appeared in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/us/27oak.html

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/26/us/20070927_OAK_SLIDESHOW_index.html

The festival was celebrating its 25th year. Saint Jerome instantly called his twin sister in Sacramento which is about two hours away from the festival. Jill and her native Californian friends was completely unaware of the Poison Oak Show! 25 years and they never heard of it! Jill was intrigued and wanted to get to the next year's festival.

2008 came and she had to work so didn't make it to the festival. She did, however, call them up and got tee-shirts for Saint Jerome and me. I feel as if  I'm at the Filmore West, my head filled with Airplanes, Dead and Messenger Services (Jefferson, Grateful and Quicksilver, of course). Here is the tee-shirt. Very, very groovy.

Saint Jerome and I especially like the merge roll, which was the height of innovation in print-making in 1969. It's seems so in keeping with the whole thing. It sends Saint Jerome back to graduate school and me back to Campbell Elementary School.

Though I had been warned many times about poison oak and poison ivy, I've never seen any in real life and wouldn't recognize it if it reached out and bit me on the ass. I guess this is a good thing because I have sensitive skin and would probably break out in a rash before I even got within a mile of it. I have a rash now from just looking at the photos of the Poison Oak Show. It seems like a blast, though. Maybe one year if Jill doesn't have to work.

Book Grabbing and Gorging: A Cautionary Tale

We went to the Strand bookstore this weekend. We frequently go and end up with bags and bags of books and auction catalogues.  Saint Jerome goes in and starts upstairs in the art department while I hit the $1 and 48-cent books outside. Well, my usual MO for outside it to grab and look later, which is exactly what I did. I grabbed a book about a true-crime that took place in Seattle in 1911, Rudolf Bing's memoir 5,000 Nights At The Opera (which I'm surprised I haven't read or owned already), a gem-cutting and jewelry-making book from 1938 which has very cool jewelry and metalwork examples and I grabbed a biography called E. Nesbit. I checked out the dance books looking for Guerrero and then went upstairs to hit the Fashion History section and find Saint Jerome. We leave relatively unscathed (though the Neue Galerie catalogue Brücke set us back some). We go to Little Poland to have lunch as we always do when we go to Strand and I pull out E. Nesbit. It is not a biography on Floradora girl, Stanford White lover Evelyn Nesbit but a bio of an author named Edith Nesbit. We walk along 12th Street on our way back to the 1,2,3 train and when we pass the outside carts at Strand, I carefully replace the book on one of the carts. It was only a $1 and I really didn't want to drag it home, only to drag it to the church thrift store. This will teach me to grab and go without looking at the content. And, no, you can't judge a book by its cover after all!

Eli's Coming

So, I get home tonight and I tell Saint Jerome, "I saw an Eli Wallach DVD at the 99-cent store today." "Why didn't you buy it?" I wanted to get home to you, plus I'm not exactly sure which movie it was, Samurai or something." So I look it up on IMDB and the only movie I can come up with is Il bianco, il giallo, il nero, the Canadian title of which is Samurai. All this time, Saint Jerome is talking about Laura Nero and the song, "Eli's Coming", telling me to Google it. I Google it and I find Three Dog Night's version on Youtube. I start playing it when the phone rings. The name on our Caller ID is [lastname], Eli! Who in hell in ELI [LASTNAME]?!! Some wavelength. We listen to the machine to find out who is calling. It's our doctor whose name is NOT Eli [lastname] calling about Saint Jerome's colonoscopy tomorrow. Our doctor took over a retired doctor's practice. A doctor named ELI! 

Stuff on My Wife

Napping (or trying to). Saint Jerome picks up a library receipt, sticks it between my legs and says "You've been parked here too long. You got a ticket." all because I told him not to let me sleep too long.

Guess the Corpse

I'm lying on the bed on my back. My legs are spread, slightly bent. My torso is slightly twisted, my arms up, spread and bent up at the elbows. I feel like Elizabeth Short circa January 1947. Saint Jerome walks through the bedroom, pauses and says, "That's quite a pose." I reply, "I feel like —" Saint Jerome interrupts "Wait! Don't tell me! Let me guess! You're in your Black Dahlia mode."

 "How did you guess?!" He smiles. "I know how your brain works." I laugh so hard, my neighbors could probably hear me through the walls.

Trying too hard or not hard enough

Late 1960s: Saint Jerome liked a girl named Jane when he was in High School, maybe junior year. He hung out with her and her girlfriends a lot. He liked her and he thinks that she knew that he liked her. He thinks that she also liked him. She ended up going to the prom with a kid from her German class — short with freckles who was about this tall (Saint Jerome points to his waist). Saint Jerome didn't go at all. Something happened, something awkward, opportunities missed and one day Jane came up to Saint Jerome and said, "You don't try too hard." and walked away. They never did go out.

And for your viewing and listening pleasure:

"I'm waiting for my man . . . "

I was meeting Saint Jerome one day after work. I can't remember what year or where we were going but I was meeting him near the Plaza Hotel and Saint Jerome was coming from Rizzoli. I captured these on the sly :)

 

 

Saint Jerome

Frieda the Wunderwiener

I love Frieda. Frieda is my mother's dachshund — a little 11 year old redhead smoothie. Saint Jerome and I were just visiting mom the other day. Usually, when we approach we hear, "barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (yes, she barks in exclamation points). We approach the apartment. Silence. I turn my keys in the locks. Silence. We enter the apartment. Silence. Are they not at home? I leave Saint Jerome in the foyer and go to mom's bedroom. There they are. Frieda starts barking and jumping all over the bed, overly excited to see me. I sit on the edge of the bed. Frieda doesn't know what to do first — lick me? flop on her back for a rub? run for a ball? She tries to do everything all at once. If I wasn't wearing my glasses, Frieda would have poked my eye out with her nose leaping at me. Mom is trying to show me where all her important papers are and Frieda is climbing all over the locked box that mom is trying to open. I need Saint Jerome because I will instantly forget where all the important papers are unless he remembers for me.I call him into the bedroom. Frieda hears in and instantly stops paying attention to me. Thump, thump, thump goes her tail against the bed and she practically falls off the bed in her eagerness to get at Saint J. Ditched by the bitch. "Barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" says Frieda as Saint J concentrates on mom. "Pet her for crying out loud, Jerome!" so Saint Jerome puts his hand out. Frieda instantly starts purring (yes, she purrs in addition to barking in exclamation points). Saint Jerome pets her. She is absolutely blissful!

Business taken care of, we are all in the foyer about to go out for brunch. Frieda brings us her deflated, chewed up, defuzzed tennis ball to throw. We are slaves to the catch for the next 15 minutes or so. The ball is tossed and lands with a bounceless thud. Frieda faithfully and energetically brings it back, stopping once or twice to kill it. Thud goes the ball down the hall. Frieda comes back looking for it. She looks at mom. She looks at Jerome. She looks at me. She trots back to mom and sniffs at her hand. Mom says, "The ball is right where you were! How can you miss it?" Frieda looks under the couch where mom is sitting. She looks down the other hall. We're all pointing and yelling at Frieda where the ball is. She finally goes back to where she started from, discovers the ball and brings it back. Mom makes the excuse, Well she is 77 years old and can be allowed to be a little senile. Anyway, we take the opportunity while Frieda is in the other room to get our shoes on. She knows now that we are leaving. We go out to lunch.

While we're walking to Viand on Broadway, mom says, "Frieda walks in the shade when it's cold and the sun when it's boiling. She's a perverse dog."

I love me a perverse dachshund!

The Crush Files Case# 187: Christopher Walken (cue the cowbell . . .)

According to Saint Jerome, I spent most of my childhood sitting in the dark. To a certain extent this is true because New York was filled with dance companies, musical endeavors and experimental theater. If we weren't at the ballet we were at The Public Theater seeing some god-awful, mediocre, or amazing play. One play we saw was Thomas Babe's Kid Champion. It was 1975 (and I am pretty sure it was the premiere run of the play in NY) and I don't think I had turned 10 yet. From what I recall, the play was about the rise and fall of a rock star called Kid Champion. Kid Champion was played by Christopher Walken. This was before Annie Hall and The Deer Hunter sealed his reputation as a creepy weirdo. I had never seen such a beautiful creature. He had beautiful platinum blond hair, long almond eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and a gorgeous red, rosebud mouth. Delicate, androgynous, but masculine. Slender, super cool and super sexy. Even at 9-years old I felt it.

I don't remember much about the play itself. I remember being fascinated by one of the female groupies whose costume included flowers painted on her face and on her naked breasts and being fascinated by depictions of drug use and what seemed to be real pot on the stage. The one scene that I remember most vividly, however, was the rock concert scene. Kid comes out and instead of performing, he begins a long, ranting monologue about people not knowing who the real "him" inside, they are only interested in the outer rock star persona and god-knows what else like that. He begins to strip — to expose the real person beneath the glitter that is "Kid Champion." Well, Christopher Walken strips down to a teeny, tiny metallic silver bikini brief. I'm sitting there having a heart attack terrified that he will expose himself and secretly willing it at the same time. Anyway, Christopher Walken-as-Kid Champion hooks his thumbs into the waistband, starts to pull down the silver bikini briefs to bare his soul and nether regions when the character is SHOT! Well that put the kabosh on that! I don't remember much else about the play. I must have had stars flashing in my eyes for the rest of it or maybe the rest wasn't worth remembering.

I should find a copy of Kid Champion and read it to see how it jives with my memory. And just to show you how gorgeous:

 

and the best scene from an interesting movie, Christopher Walken as a pimp stripping down to boxers and not bikinis in Pennies From Heaven:

Dreams (the sleeping kind)

It seems as though my dreams really are influenced by my reading materials. Every time I tell Saint Jerome that I slept badly because of bad dreams, he says "Look at the stuff you read!" (Though when I tell him I had weird dreams he says that all dreams are weird.)Anyway, I've been in a true crime phase. I've read about four Ann Rule books in a row, then an Agatha Christie to cleanse my palette (My the Pricking of My Thumbs) and then Robert Kreppel's The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer. My dreams for the past few weeks have involved dump sites. Not so much serial killing but the burial grounds and I'm trying to figure things out. Yuck. What I want to know is, how come when I read a ton of cliterature, my nights aren't filled with erotic dreams? Shouldn't it work that way too? Anyway . . .

I'm now on the verge of reading My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan by Liane de Pougy. Maybe I'll have dreams of fantastic dresses, amazing jewels and sex with old, fat rich men.

Counter Culture (or is it counterPOINT culture?)

I was still living downtown in 1997 but getting ready for The Big Move, otherwise known as moving in with Saint Jerome (that was before he attained sainthood). It was July 4th and I ran by my place to grab some stuff. We decided to eat breakfast at Polonia, my favorite Polish diner in the neighborhood at the time (now we only eat at Little Poland when we're down there). Well, there were NO available tables so Saint Jerome insisted that we sit at the counter. I didn't want to sit at the counter. After a fuss, we sat at the counter. I was whiney because we weren't even under the air vent, but in front of the grill and I was hot and sticky. Anyway, a few minutes later a young guy sits down on the far side of Saint Jerome. He looks familiar. In fact, I knew who he was. I whisper to Saint Jerome "That's Martin Santangelo from Noche Flamenca." Saint Jerome whispers back, "Why don't you say something to him?" We go back and forth and Martin Santangelo knows something is going on with the strange couple sitting next to him. He looks at us so I say, "You're Martin Santangelo!" He confirms the fact and I tell him how much I love Noche Flamenca (he's the director and star) and that I've saw them in previous years but I couldn't afford to go because I had just seen Sara de Luis's troupe from Seattle in Homenaje at Columbia University. Martin Santangelo asked for our names and said he'd leave tickets for us!

When we got to the Pearl Theatre at 80 St Mark's Place, our names, indeed, were there on the comp list! It was a fantastic performance. Soledad Barrio (Martin Santangelo's wife) is an amazing dancer. Better yet, Sara de Luis was in the audience so I got to tell her how much I enjoyed her company the night before (indeed, they did a multi-couple Sevillanas with the women wearing bata de colas which was fabulous!).

Martin Santangelo was injured at the time and didn't perform but it was still wonderful. Saint Jerome always tells me, "Aren't you glad we sat at the counter?" I'm a counter culture convert!

a little bit of Noche Flamenco with Soledad Barrio and Martin Santangelo

Indian by way of Italian and Japanese (with NO thanks to the Singing Nun)

I've never entered a radio contest. I've never known ANYONE who has entered a radio contest. Until last week.

My brother-in-law Michael (who is married to Saint Jerome's sister Jacqueline) was listening to WBEN (home of Sandy Beach from whom I first learned of "pizza arms" by way of Michael of course) when he heard this:

There were three #1 hits between 1958 and 1963 that were totally in a foreign language. Name two.

Michael, a font of information, dragged two from the back recesses of his brain and Jacqueline dialed the phone. Did they get a busy signal. NO! The phone rang and rang and rang. Did they eventually get through? YES!!!!! What were two of the three #1 hits between 1958 and 1968 that were sung entirely in a foreign language?

Volare (Nel blu dipinto di blu) and Sukiyaki

The third was Dominique (nique, nique) by the Singing Nun.

He won a $25 gift certificate to an Indian Restaurant! You'd think that having to come up with foreign language #1 hit songs from the dark recesses of memory one would win millions of dollars (or at least $1,000), but they were lucky to get through, much less win. They've never had Indian food before so we suggested Tandori chicken (which is the restaurant's specialty) which is enough to convert anyone.

For your listening pleasure:

Saint Jerome Quote of the Day: Timbits

We went to Tim Hortons for breakfast today and consumed our daily allotted amount of calories in one fell swoop. Anyway, we bought 10 Timbits, which are the Tim Hortons version of Munchkins, and took them home with us for later.

We get home and Saint Jerome opens the box, looks at the donut holes and says, "I wonder what they were thinking. They call them TimBITS and they're little balls."

Stuff on My Wife volume 2

I was innocently taking my nap one Sunday when Saint Jerome had an epiphany! The yarn I was knitting with matched the color of my hair. So he decided to adorn my sleeping form . . .


No Brazilian waxing for this 60s guy.

The Little Honda that Could, or whack-a-car

Ahhhh! Life goes on and it is good. The little neighborhood Honda that was damaged in the storm has been back, parked across the street as usual. Today the owner came by with a friend who worked a minor miracle, turning Riverside Drive into a body shop (catching the attention of the police and all!).

The guy took some kind of clamp and whack, whack, whack, ratchet, ratchet, ratchet lifted out the dent to the roof. With the foam sealer stuff and the plastic replacing the broken back window, my little hatchback is almost like new!

The Dangers of Parking on the Street, 2000s edition

Parking on the street in New York can be fraught with dangers. Each decade seems to have its own trends.

• In the 1970s, your window might have been smashed and the car broken into for a broken umbrella on the back seat, a few coins or a bag of trash on the floor.

• In the '80s, your battery could be lifted or the lock mechanism on your door drilled through and your car almost driven away except that the thief can't drive stick.

• The '90s — The whole car disappears and is dismantled at a chop shop destined for parts and cars unknown.

As we approach the end of the the first decade of the 21st Century, the dangers seem to have changed (though with the recession there seems to be more and more glittering puddles of tempered glass at the curb). The new danger seems to be:

EXTREME WEATHER

In the past few months, there have been several severe storms which have downed many trees which in turn have downed many cars parked along Riverside Drive.

This was about a month ago:





(Of course in typical NY fashion, the car remained parked there for about a month!)


This was just a week or so ago:



Now this one was particularly sad because I love this little neighborhood Honda Civic hatchback and was just saying to Saint Jerome earlier that day that it was looking a little more worn than usual. It wasn't badly injured because only a large branch broke off and landed on it and not an entire tree. Anyway, the owner came by, assessed the damage and drove off.

Saint Jerome Quote of the Day: Fat and the donut

I just accidentally took a photo of my bare fat belly, navel and all. Saint Jerome looked at the pic and said, "You know what this looks like? One of those Tim Horton Maple Dip donuts." Ummm, thanks.

Saint Jerome Quote of the Day: There are two kinds of novels my friend . . .

To paraphrase Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, there are two kinds of books I read, classics and junk. If I read one James Baldwin or Wilkie Collins novel, I have to follow it up with three times the amount of junk (though Collins, with his sensation novels and mysteries, WAS junk his day). My junk consists of true crime (the older the better), pulps like Erle Stanley Gardner and Ellery Queen (pre-1960s for both), historical romances (or hysterical — take your pick. The latter adjective is a good substitute for the former) and the contemporary romances by the same authors. I also read a lot of stuff that falls into the gray zone like Winston Graham's Poldark novels, Georgette Heyer regencies and Lolah Burford historical novels. I usually avoid chick lit and Oprah choices.

Well, I tend to leave my current reading materials around and Saint Jerome frequently takes a peek and is frequently amazed at how explicit some of the junk I read is (it's always mildly amusing to me, especially the hysterical romances, which I read for the costume descriptions).

So one day, he comes out of the bathroom with Beaumarchais's Figaro trilogy in one hand and some bodice ripper in the other and says to me, "You know, you only read two types of books — literature and cliterature."