Rat-A-Tat-Tat...

On saturday, my friend Chet came down from New York to get a tattoo by my tattoo artist. I say "my" only because I've been getting work from him for 8 years and we've developed a nice friendship. I'm pretty much a walking portfolio of his work. If he ever retires, I'll lose my mind.

His shop is in Conneticut, and I'm in Boston-ish, so it's a nice drive to get there. I don't mind the drive at all. It sort of makes the experience special because I can't just go on a whim. The shop is far enough away that I need to plan a bit if I'm going to get a new tattoo. (Although on this trip, I'm not getting any new ink.. only Chet.)

At the shop, we set up a time-lapse camera and set it to take an image every ten seconds. This equals less frames per second than traditional animation, so the effect was pretty neat. The two hour tattoo became roughly a thirty second quirky little video, with the tattoo machine moving so fast that it looks as if Chet's arm is simply being sketched on with a marker.

If I can figure out how to add video to this blog, I'll post it here. I'm not that adept at coding or techie-type things, so don't hold your breath.

Queen of the Bungalow.

For the most part, I really enjoy living alone: I can talk to the cat in funny voices and no one looks at me oddly. I can make pasta and eat it directly from the pot I made it in, while standing over the sink. I can let all my weird little quirks flourish, because no one is around to squash them.

There are two instances in which living alone is less than desirable....

1. No one is around to hold open a garbage bag when you're trying to dispose of 17 day old meat that was hanging out in the back of the refridgerator. You'll end up trying to hold the bag open with one hand and heaving the fridge-dweller in, hoping that nothing will splash the parts of the bag that you'll have to touch to tie it up. ugh.

2. If you're fiddling around with the fuse box in the basement, trying to figure out which fuse connects to which part of the house, there will be no one upstairs that you can yell to as you're flicking fuses on and off. This will cause you to run up and down the basement stairs 47 times, checking what light went off when which fuse was reset.

There are many more positives than negatives to living alone, although last night as I was trying to heave a meatloaf of undetermined age into a flimsy garbage bag by myself, it really made me reconsider things for a minute. But that doubt went away as Dolemite slinked by and i called him "Doodlebug" in a squeaky, fake-mouse voice.

Note to self: Label fuses in fusebox.

Teeny Tiny.

These tiny foods are made by a Japanese company called "Re-Ment." I am mildy obsessed with collecting them. I really like replicas of things that are either wildy small or insanely large. With the exception of ordering online, I've only been able to find them for sale at a tiny toy shop in New York, which I trudge to everytime I'm in the city. The pictures above are of the most recent ones I've acquired. I threw a quarter there for size reference. It's amazing how detailed these tiny foods are.

The other day ! saw a commercial for Wendy's where one of the actors was eating a tiny fast food meal. It filled me with glee.

If Johnny Cash had one of these, he wouldn't have written that song...

It's a well established fact that my basement is creepy. For an in depth analysis of why my basement is creepy check out my post from October 25, 2006 on this blog. Did you read that? I told you it was creepy.

Soooo........

Here is the latest finding in my creepy basement:


It's a fire detector. Not smoke. FIRE. As far as I can tell, if my basement bursts into flames, the liquid in the canister will heat up. When the liquid reaches a certain temperature, it will rise up to the top of the canister and melt a wax ring. Once the wax ring is melted, it releases some sort of component that shoots up into the top of the contraption, which will then allow this relic to emit a repetitious loud noise.

It seems like it's not really a detector, per say, because by the time this thing turns itself on, the fire would already have to be consuming my entire basement. So rather than a dectector, it's sort of a "you're so screwed" buzzer.

I don't know how old this thing is, or if it even works. I don't want to test it, because there isn't any sort of instruction on it for turning it off. I'll see if I can find out more information about it.. because I'm curious about this thing.

Eight ounces of Theatrical RocknRoll...

This is the best tacky souvenir I have ever bought, anywhere...

I bought this mug when I was in London last year. Actually, I bought 8 of them, but only have two left because I gave a bunch of them away to friends. I would have bought more, but it was really tough to walk around London with a bag full of mugs clinking around... It would have been really funny to have a full set of these poorly printed Freddie Mercury mugs.

This mug is so good, because it's so awful. The image doesn't really look like Freddie Mercury all that much, and his moustache looks weird. The shop where I bought this mug had a Queen (the band, not the Mum) tea set that I still kick myself for not buying.

Home Sweet Home...

I drew this a few months ago as part of a masthead for this here blog. Now if I could only figure out how to edit the code of this site to actually put the masthead up.. that would be the bee's knees. gah! Technology!

(and just to be clear, the foundation of my house IS that color pink, hehe)

So THAT'S my problem.....

...my priorities are out of whack.

I was reading a Thai take-out menu this afternoon and printed on the bottom in bright green type was this:
"Make it your priority to enjoy life."

Hmmm, I think I will.

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?

Someone dropped the ball...

I threw a party to ring in the New Year. Normally, I don't actually care too much about this particular holiday, but I like to throw parties, and this was a good excuse to host one. The big bonus of throwing parties is that at the end of the night, you're already home.

Some snap-shots courtesy of the best Mike I know: Myko,,,,,

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.

And then there was none...

Joe Barbera has passed away...

Some fitting words regarding his passing, as well as his life, can be found here....
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/16268963.htm

For those of you who don't know who I'm taking about, for shame! References to his work pop up all the time in modern cinema and pop culture in general.

His writing/producing/directing partner, William Hanna, passed away in 2001.

Housekeeping....

I've changed the look of this blog a bit, and I'm still working out some kinks... bear with me.

Ring-a-Ding-Ding

Happy Frank Sinatra's Birthday.

The Chairman of the Board would have been 91 on this fine December day.

Call ralph on the porcelain phone

Hmmm, so last night my toilet stopped working. I tried to snake the toilet pipe myself and ended up scratching the porcelain in the bottom of the bowl. Wonderful, now my toilet will constantly look unclean.

My snaking efforts were in vain so I call a plumber and ask if someone can come out that night. "For an emergency off-hours fee of $190.00 someone can," he says. I opt to make an appointment for Friday. He tells me that he'll have the "scheduling lady" call me in the morning to give me a time window. Oh great.. a window. There goes my whole day.

The "scheduling lady" calls around nine in the morning and tells me Craig the Plumber will be by between noon and three. She takes all my info and hangs up. I've been eating crackers all morning and haven't had anything to drink, to try and quell the need to pee, as my only bathroom is currently out of order.

Around one in the afternoon this phone call occurs:

Maryann: Hello, this is Maryann from ** Plumbing and Mechanical. Craig the Plumbler will be by in about 30 minutes, he's just finishing up a job from hell in the South End. What cross streets are you at?
Me: My street is between ** and ** Street. My house has a pink foundation, you can't miss it.
Maryann: Oh! How did that happen?
Me: I painted it.
Maryann: oh. ok then. Look for a big red truck.

Three minutes later, the phone rings again...

Maryann: Hello, this is Maryann from ** Plumbing and Mechanical, again. I just need to verify some information...
Is your name spelled B-E-C-K?
Me: Yep.
Maryann: Oh Ok. So this isn't a typo. Is that short for like, Rebecca or something?
Me. Yep.
Maryann: oh. ok. Look for a big red truck.
Me: ok. Bye.

Craig the Plumber arrives, along with some sort of plumbing intern. They think that it's probably just a clog of some sort and snake the pipes with an industrial heavy duty snake. I'm in my office, catching up on some Bag Lunch stuff, and for the next forty minutes all I can hear are the grunts of hard labor and the screeching sound of the super snake, working it's way around in my toilet.

Then Craig the Plumber comes out of the bathroom, wipes sweat from his brow and we have this little dooming conversation...

Craig the Plumber: Uh, Beck... whatever is clogged in there isn't coming out. You need a new toilet.
Me: oh shit.
Craig the Plumber: No. No, that isn't what's in there.
Me: eh, I know.. I just... nevermind.
Craig the Plumber: Well, if it matters any, that toilet you have is really really old. I haven't even seen one of this brand in years. Now, we have toilets on the truck, but we charge a huge overhead on them. Are you near a Home Depot?
Me: Yeah.
Craig the Plumber: Ok. Why don't you go run and pick one up while I take apart this old one and we won't charge you for the snaking at all, just for the toilet installation. Ya know, it could be anything in there. Last week I had a job where we couldn't get the clog out. The whole toilet had to be removed and we took it outside and smashed it to see what the obstruction was. It turned out to be a tiny picture of Saint Anthony. Isn't that weird?
Me: Yeah, that is weird. How much do toilets cost?
(This is very nice of him to not make me buy on of his rip-off truck toilets, so I run to that big orange savior and pick out the cheapest setup I can find. Whatever.. I'll upgrade to a "luxury" toilet when I win the lottery.)

I come back with my economy crapper and he looks at the box, raises his eyebrows and says he hopes it will work out. He dissed my new John!

I go back into my office to work while Craig the Plumber and the intern install my toilet. I hear a cell phone ring and some hushed talk in excited tones. Craig the Plumber comes out of the bathroom...

Craig the Plumber: Uh, Beck... my wife's water just broke. I have to go, right now. We'll send someone to finish up the job. I'm sorry.
Me: oh! Congratulations!
Before I get out the "ulations", he's already back in the bathroom trying to quickly pick up all the packing materials from the cheapo throne. I run in there and tell him: "Go! Go! I can clean this up. You go!"

He thanks me and dashes down my front steps, his little intern clipping at his heels. The big red truck races down the street, leaving me alone with my half-installed toilet.

So right now I'm waiting for the relief plumber to get here and I hope he gets here soon, because I have to pee.

It's in a bucket on the porch...

This year, as a thank-you to my family for helping me re-hab the house I recently purchased, I hosted Thanksgiving.

I did everything myself, except for removing the bag of turkey guts from inside the turkey. I cannot handle sticking my hand inside a bird carcass. I even had rubber gloves and still couldn't do it. Call me a wuss if you like, but this wuss was not about to fist a fowl.

I decided, under direction of an Alton Brown Thanksgiving cooking special on television, to soak the turkey overnight in a brine. This worked well for two reasons... it made for a juicier turkey and also eliminated the need to bast the bird at all. (anything that eliminates a cooking step is okay with me!) I didn't have a pot large enough for the turkey to fit and be fully submerged in brine, so I had to buy a big ol' bucket from Home Depot. The bird/brine/bucket combo needed to be kept cool all night, so I ended up putting it out on the porch with the windows open.

Everything went well except for...
...the right side of the bird. Charred!

Luckily, he was dead before he got here, so he didn't feel a thing.

There is a worm in this apple.

Although fun, my New York trip did not go as planned....

What was supposed to happen: Travel by bus to NY Port Authority... meet Chet at 11am outside of Duane Reade, which is across the street from Port Authority... part ways with my mother... spend the day with Chet, doing goofy touristy things and treking to "Toy Tokyo" ... meet up with my mother for dinner ... the three of us go to the art opening .... say goodbye to Chet and catch the 10:45pm bus back to Massachusetts.

What actually happened:
Our bus got into Port authority half an hour early, which was nice. I gave Chet a call and it went straight to voice-mail, which was fine because we had gotten into town early. We decide to double-check the bus schedule for our return trip back. Oddly, there isn't a 10:45pm bus, as the printed schedule says exists. Wonderful. The next bus was at 4:30am. I'm too cheap to book a room anywhere, so my mother and I decide we'll just diner-hop after the art opening. The opening ended at 9pm... so we'll have about 7 hours to kill before our morning bus.

Eleven rolls around and I'm loitering outside of Duane Reade with no sign of Chet. After several phone calls and over an hour of waiting, I come to the conclusion that Chet is still sleeping. I leave a message and decide to spend the day with my Mother. It was nice of her to let me join her, as she likes to wander around the city alone and now she had the company of me forced on her.

Part of my original plan was to walk over to an obscure toy store that I visit everytime I'm in New York. My mother, the saint that she is, said she wouldn't mind going. I'm horrible with directions so we end up walking 127 blocks to get there, which in actuality took us in a giant backwardy path. It should have only taken us about 15 blocks to get there. In my defense, the several other times I've been there, I've walked there from "Kid Robot", and I only know one way to get anywhere. Heehee.

Chet finally calls and we meet him at the gallery. The opening was fantastic, obviously. Then the artist shows up...
In general, I have no problem speaking to anyone with any amount of celebrity, but for some reason, I get really red in the face and star-struck in the presence of Josh Agle. It's odd.

At the last opening of his that I attended, I rambled on to him about whether or not he found it irritating to be referred to as a "retro" artist. (For the record, he says he's used to it, but that he himself doesn't think of himself as "retro" or "throwback").

At this opening I end up rambling on about his use of color and some questions regarding a set of paintings which are a departure from his regular work. Then, I actually told him I was nervous to be speaking to him! Fantastic. Fantastic. How stupid. He's really gracious, and I assume it isn't the first time that some idiot fan gushed over him and his art, so he took it in stride, thanked me and drew me a little martini glass on a gallery postcard. I could feel my face turning crimson. We spoke for a few more minutes and then my mother, Chet and I got the hell out of there for fear I would throw up from embarassment. Thankfully, I did not.

We ambled over to a diner, as my face slowly returned to its normal, near translucent paleness. Since we had seven hours to kill, we ate very very slowly. Chet and I walk around Times Square to people watch, while my mother decides to sit in a theater lobby.. something about her feet hurting a bit because of "that freaking long walk just so you can buy some tiny plastic food." eh. It was a really warm night for this time of year, so Times Square was really crowded. We saw 2 people dressed as Spiderman for no apparent reason. Chet eventually left to catch the subway back to Queens.

I met up with my mother and spent the next 5 hours killing time by watching a movie, eating and then just sitting in Port Authority, listening to the audio book of "The Kid Stays in the Picture" on my Ipod. We shared a pair of earbuds.. how cute.

The bus finally arrived and I'm pretty sure we both fell asleep before it even left the station.

Put the Lime in the Coconut...

My yard needs this thing. Not only is it really neat looking, but a cooling mist rains down from the top of the palms, where a fine mist generator is hidden in one of the fake coconuts. I could waste many a Sunday afternoon lounging around in this thing.

Hey Frank.

This weekend I'm going to New York which is really great for several reasons...

1. I'm going for an art opening of works from one of my favorite artists. (I say "one of my favorite" because I find it alarming and weird to claim something as your number one favorite anything, but trust me, he's up at the top of the heap of artists I like.)

2. I'll be meeting up with a friend I haven't seen in a year, the last time being a funeral. It'll be nice to see him in happier times.

3. The abundance of street vendor food possibilities makes me giddy with anticipation. Sure, we have food carts in Boston, but not nearly as many or with the vast variety that the carts in New York City offer. Hmm, although we do have "The Sausage Guy," but that's another story. Last time I was in New York I walked the perimeter of Central Park and grazed all the carts on the sidewalk, resulting in my eating 5 hot dogs in roughly forty minutes. I wish I was kidding. Takeru Kobayashi, look out.

Recent Things of Note...

the house across the street from mine caught on fire • found a few more pieces of "Blue Heaven" dishes at a tag sale • my kitchen sink has been fixed, although now there is a leak in one of the pipes • candy corn is still gross • the grocery store near my house has stopped carrying my frozen pizza of choice, which is more devastating than you would think • for the past week I have poured roughly 200 lip balms a day • i've been having re-occuring dreams about Coney Island, which is odd, as I've never been there • the world juggling competition was on last night, and it was oddly compelling • rainy weather really compliments breakfast foods

Cat on Refridgerator.