The elusive picnic basket

I would like a picnic basket just like this:


You would think it would be easy to find a simple picnic basket. It's not. It's in fact, very difficult.

A lot of picnic baskets that I've seen look like tiny wicker suitcases. I don't want to walk around looking like I'm in some sort of prairie mob, about to close a deal.

Also, a lot of picnic baskets come with a bunch of forks and plates and other tools for eating. Don't need these. Every time I've ever been on a picnic, I've simply removed my sandwich from it's plastic baggie and eaten it. I'm classy like that. If you need to lug a bunch of plates and forks and glasses out for your picnic, why don't you just save yourself the trouble and stay in your kitchen.

All I want is a picnic basket with no bells or whistles, that doesn't come with a bunch of useless crap, and opens from the top in two pieces like the picture above..

Apparently, I've asked for too much.

More crap I need...

Even though this isn't ceramic*, I need this for my house....


A cheeseburger drink coaster set! I have collected a lot of fake food over the years, and most of it has no purpose whatsoever. This cheeseburger is actually functional!

*I collect ceramic cheeseburgers. I don't know why. I just do.

Books and more books...

This weekend I went to the New England Mobile Book Fair with Myk and Allison. I hadn't been there before, and it was overwhelming. The place is huge and choking with books. A lot of the shelves have books BEHIND other books. Everything is discounted, which is great for cheapskates like myself. They have current titles there as well as lots of great out of print stuff. I saw a neat Robert Crumb collection sitting in the stacks, but I didn't adopt it because I already had a half dozen books in my arms.

It's not really all that organized, which means you have to hunt around to find things, but that just makes it all the more interesting. I could have spent several hours there, but forced myself to leave lest I bought too much.

I really can't express how amazing this place is. It really just needs to be visited to understand.

Sack o' fun

I wish they still made this product. It's so weird...

Hooray!

As of today, I am out of credit card debt. I have zeroed everything out. It's very exciting.

Now all I gotta do is pay off my house. In 28.5 years.

Honk Honk, Beep Beep.

Whenever I'm driving my car and I detect anything that smells remotely like it could be coming from my car, I freak out. I end up inhaling so deeply over and over again to try and determine what the problem could be that I nearly pass out. Everytime. It's odd because I know nothing about the mechanics of vehicles, so it's not as if I would ever be able to diagnose anything anyway. I'm not even worried about breaking down in the middle of nowhere, I'm worried about getting ripped off by mechanics.

Also, most of the time it ends up being a truck in front of me or another car or whatever. It's generally not even my car emitting the "bring me to the mechanic" odor.

Not this time, however...

As I was driving home from a show Saturday night, my friend Ray mentioned that he could smell burning rubber. I inhaled deeply with purpose and squinted eyes and could smell it too. But then it went away. Then came back. Then went away. Then came back. The smell was wafting in and out of my car like this for the entire hour long drive home from Wormtown.

So I dropped my car off at the mechanic's shop and told 'em to replace the two front tires while it was there. Ok.

I get a call later in the day. The mechaanic tells me there is good news and bad news. I opt to hear the bad news first. I ALWAYS opt for bad news first. I like to get it over with.

"well, you need all four tires to be replaced. Some sort of rod thing was rubbing against something and a bunch of crap needs to be replaced. We also had to remove some sort of plate near your bumper. "
(I paraphrased that. heehee)

"How much is that going to cost?" I ask, clenching the armrest of the chair.

"SIX HUNDRED AND THIRTY ONE DOLLARS."

"Shit. What's the good news?" I ask, feeling naseated.

"That'll get rid of the burning rubber smell!"

oh good. At least I won't be smelling burning rubber on my way to the market to buy Ramen Noodles. Because that's all I'm going to be able to afford to eat for the rest of the month!

What's that smell?

About three years ago, I bought one of those Febreeze "ScentStories" smell-players, or whatever you want to call it. It seems like a dumb gimmicky gadget, but it's really great. I like to burn candles, but I'm always afraid that my damn cat will accidently light his tail on fire. The "Smell-Player" has all the fragrance tossing goodness of a candle, without the potentially cat-scorching flame.

Anyway, the discs for the ScentStories are very difficult to find in stores. I began hoarding them and figured that the product had been discontinued.

TODAY, I got an email from the folks at Febreeze (Yes, i signed up for the ScentStories newsletter, whatever.. I got coupons from it.) and Yankee Candle is now putting out the discs!




This makes me happier than it should.

Jalopy

I wish cars were still readily available in these colors...



My car is a boring color. It's that blue-grey color that Cape Cod artist's always use when they're painting pictures of dolphins on driftwood. It's boring and in a crowded parking lot, it's difficult to find my car because it's such a common color. But, I bought my car used, so I didn't have much choice. It was either the dolphin-mobile or another car that was black and had cigarette burn holes on the ceiling upholstery. I went with the former.

My car is in fine working order, but recently I've been obsessed with getting a new vehicle. I don't know why. My plan is to get a new (well, new to me) car in five years. So five more years with the dolphin. And I hope I'll be able to find a car in a color that isn't entirely dull.

Top Banana of Coney Island!

See the giant inflatable banana...?

I bought it. I had to.

Obviously.

Food Fighters!

I've been looking for these things for a while now. They were made in the late eighties. These don't seem to have had a very big production run.. it's proving to be very difficult to find any of them. I saw one on Ebay the other day. Just ONE. What the hell?

I think either Mattel only made about 73 of these things, or some weirdo in a basement somewhere is hoarding them. In this day and age of internet bidding sites and flea markets, I think it should be easier to find these toys.

Look at how funny this is...


I really like the fight scene on the package, although the tile looks like bathroom tile, as opposed to kitchen tile...

Heartbreak Hotel of Horrors...

I'm subscribed to an Elvis news mailing list because I'm a dork, and today I got a message about this Elvis robot thingy...


Creepy, eh?

It sort of reminds me of this monkey head robot that I saw at a Sharper Image last year. Here's a video I found of some guy talking about the monkey head....


The cheese-ball part of me wants to like the Elvis-bot. The sane part of me thinks that if I saw that thing in person, I'd recoil in horror. I don't know. It seems like something some idiot would buy and then have out at parties.

Uh, that being said... I have a tiny Dean Martin robot that makes appearances at shin-digs around here. In my defense though... the Dean-bot is a very cartoony version of Mr. Martin and therefore not nearly as creepy as the Elvis thing. Also, the Dean-bot is an entire robot, not a bust sort of thing like the Elvis.

"A shingle with a shimmy and a shake"

Last night I picked up three more vinyl and chrome barstools that i got off craigslist. They are in perfect condition. How fantastic.

A lot of people build tiki bars or midcentury bars in their basement "rec rooms".. but I don't drink, so I'm building a diner.

I hunt around for authentic midcentury furnishing for everything in my house, and stuff for the diner is no exception. I'm not opposed to repro stuff... my living room set is repro, but It's always nice to find authentic. These last three stools are repro, and the ones I picked up a few weeks ago are authentic. Luckily, they blend together nicely.

This diner will take a lot of work, Besides the actual construction of the lunch counter, I've got to rip up the carpet that's down there, throw down some tile and paint the walls. Some electrical re-wireing has to be done, as well as the addition of a sink, so that the space is actually functional as a "diner."

I like to throw shindigs, and this will open up a whole new area where people can mill around when I'm entertaining. Very exciting.

by the way... it's buttered toast with jam or jelly.

Jackpot!

Occasionally, I check the "for sale" section of craigslist.org for retro/mid-century style furniture. On friday I found gold in the form of diner chairs....


THREE CHAIRS AND TWO STOOLS FOR ONE HUNDRED BUCKS! AAAAANNNNNND.... they match my kitchen.
I called the number provided and left a message, squealing that if they were still available, I want 'em.

I didn't hear anything back so I assumed they had been scooped up by some other over-zealous hunter. Eh.
On monday I spent a few minutes cruising around craigslist on the one percent hope that they weren't actually sold.

AND THEY WERE LISTED AGAIN!

The phone number listed was one number off, so I called and ended up getting them! The woman selling them had mis-typed her number, so the message I left about the chairs on friday never made it to her. I had left an over-excited message about diner chairs on some random stranger's cell phone. oops!

The other amazing thing about this whole thing is that I was able to cram the 3 chairs and 2 stools into my crappy Chrysler Seabring.

All I need is some chrome polish and these beauties will be good as new.

Yes! we have no bananas today.

The above image is a section of scratch and sniff wallpaper! I love this. I really like food imagery and also simple repetition.. this has both!


the sniffy wallpaper can be found here...
http://flavorleague.com

What's that you say?

My kitchen NEEDS these Shag-designed shakers.

Pop Corn!

This bag is from a package of kettle corn. I love all the tiny amusing icons patterned on the bag. The box that housed this gem was fashioned and shaped to look like those old timey, striped popcorn boxes that you'd typically get at carnivals. The whole thing is great, actually. The popcorn is good too, which is odd for me to say because I'm not a big popcorn fan to begin with.

the website for this great stuff is: www.lesserevil.com
and if you do visit the site, you'll notice that the background of the webpages is the pattern from the inner bag, which makes me giddy.

Tub Flamingo

Although it's not a Don Featherstone, this "pink flamingo rubber duck" (what?) is doing quite well in his new home in my bathroom.

www.celebriducks.com is where you can get 'em. (Also where I snagged the image from)
The neat thing about celebriducks is that they have two flamingo versions.. A "lawn flamingo" version made to look like a Featherstone and a "flamingo in the wild" version, which is made to look a bit more like a real flamingo with whiter back feathers.

That Darn Cat

If there is something funnier than a cat standing upright, peeing on a telephone pole, let me know... because as far as I'm concerned this is the highest echelon of humor.



When I was in elementary school I had a book by Suzanne Green which uses these cat images. I have been enamored by them ever since and look for old copies of the books whenever I'm hunting around flea markets. I recently got my mitts on a set of trading cards and they're fantastically odd.

Here is the official site of the guy who "invented" this sort of cat photography. There is a neat section on how the cat trousers are made.... http://www.nameneko.com

And here is a site that has a bunch of information on the photos and things like the trading cards and books....
http://members.shaw.ca/pelorian/index2.html

Well, that just flew out the window....

I've got a cell phone, which I rarely use. I've never recieved a call on the thing, nor do I want to. I only use my cell phone for emergencies...like car accidents and me stupidly ending up in Maine, when I was only trying to find some diner in Northern Massachusetts. I think my monthly minutes roll over, which means I probably have something like 79 hours of free minutes. eh.

I don't give my cell phone number out for several reasons...
I don't have the thing on, ever. So calling my cell phone will never result in someone actually reaching me.
I don't know my cell phone number, because I don't ever give it out.

If I'm out and about, that's what I'm doing. I don't want to be interrupting my experiences out in the world by a cell phone call that probably isn't important to begin with. It's like an electronic leash. I don't need to be tethered to everyone i know, everywhere I go.

The most annoying thing is, people act as if cell phones are necessary for survival. They aren't.

All that being said.....
I want an iPhone.
And really, who doesn't?

I've been framed!

I have more than a few Shag prints that are in desperate need of framing so that I can finally hang them up. I have spots where these prints will be going as soon as I get 'em framed... meaning: I have a giant blank wall in my living room screaming for art.

Soooo.... the other day I was looking around for suitable framers to do the job and stumbled upon this:
www.framefetish.com

My tiki-god! They've got a rather large gallery of Shag frame-work. Admittedly, these framers are priced right out of my budget...but a girl can dream.