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 Poll

Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Literature or Cliterature. 

Golden Thighs (cue the tights . . . )

My art teacher in high school introduced me to the wonderful tenor voice of Franco Corelli. For a girl with a penchant for baritones, Corelli was a perfect compromise — a dramatic tenor with a dark, very baritonal sound. His voice was pure, animalistic sex. Of course it didn't hurt that he looked like a god — over 6 feet tall and so good looking he could have been a movie star. He looked like Marcello Mastroianni, Rock Hudson and Gregory Peck all rolled into one. He also had famously beautiful legs, earning him the nickname "coscie d'oro", or golden thighs. He spent a good number of roles in tights.

He retired from the stage before I saw my first opera so I never got to see or hear him live. No matter, there are records, photos and, best of all, films and TV shows. He was on Italian TV a lot in the 1950 onwards.

When I started working at Rizzoli, I had heard that Corelli was in regularly to buy his newspaper. He lived down the street from the store near Carnegie Hall. If he came in, I never saw him. But one day, I just happened to be on the ground floor at the customer service desk when a handsome, older man walked past on his way to the newspaper department. As he passed me, he paused, smiled and nodded to me in greeting. FRANCO CORELLI!!!!!!!!!!! Finally, I saw my idol and he smiled at me! I was in heaven . . .

About a year or so later, I became customer service manager and was now located on the ground floor behind the customer service desk. I used to see Corelli almost daily with his little black poodle. He would always nod or say hello in greeting, except for the times he came in with his wife. Then he would look straight ahead while she looked right and left in suspicion. It was obvious that he knew that I knew who he was.

One day, I was at the front register and happened to ring him up. We greeted each other and as he was about to leave, he turned and said to me, "Tell me, do you sing?" I told him only in the shower until my neighbors tell me to stop. After that, we always chatted unless Loretta was with him. One of the nicest experiences was when I had just gotten back from vacation and was on a ladder putting books away when he came over, got my attention, asked me how I was doing, etc. It was a really nice chat.

He  always seemed a bit sad to me, not unhappy but "sad" — I really can't describe it. Then someone would recognize him and  he stand up straighter, puff out his chest and look like a god.

I would also see him on the street, usually walking his dog. He would always stop and say hello. That always gave me a huge thrill because he was such a opera legend and I was a big fan. I once saw him years later after I left Rizzoli. I was on 57th Street and he was walking the dog. He stopped and said "hello".

He died in 2003.

Corelli in the 1950s or 60s

An appearance from The Bell Telephone Hour 1962 "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca. Nice view of his legs.

Outfit of the Weekend: Sponge Bob Pajama Pants

Weekends bring out the strange wardrobe in people. Saint Jerome and I were walking down Broadway and were passing Duane Reade when three youths exited the store. They were about 16-20 years old. Two were dressed in the usual messy young adult-wear but the third was striking. Not only did he leap onto a unicycle as soon as he got out of the store, he was wearing a tee-shirt, crocs and Sponge Bob pajama bottoms. Boy, I wish I had a camera with me.

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.