YouTubesday (bonus) - The Backwater Gospel

Here's a little bit of awesomesauce:

YouTubesday - Perry Brothers

About 4 months old but still a fave.

Media Monday - ArtOrgy

About a month or so ago, we hosted a creative minds gathering & everyone worked on a project.

This is what it looked like.

Thank you so much for putting this video together, Willie. You rule!

Sunday Confession - WANT

How friggin' wonderful is this face? He wants to live with us, Matthew. I can feel it.

More info here if you wanna look.

I wonder how he'd do with our orange boys.

I want to put them in a pile and roll around on them.

Suckit Saturday - Dear Delta,

(Sent this to them yesterday - let's see what happens!!)

Today my husband tried to get a SkyClub membership and accidentally signed up under my SkyMiles account instead of his own.

He immediately called Delta to rectify his mistake.

After 2 hrs on the phone, numerous transfers & 1 "disconnection", someone was finally able to provide a fax number.

That's it? Really? I freakin' FAX #?

How does a $500 service have NO way of communication except a fax?

Sure is nice that they'll take his money, though. That's reputable.

So now we're stuck.

Him with no SkyClub service for work flights.

Me with access to something I won't use.

This is horrible customer service.

Highly disappointing.

We were fans of Delta before this experience.

I challenge you to turn this around & make it right.

How great would that be? For everyone involved!!

This is your time to shine! You can do it!

C'mon...all it would take is a few measly keystrokes, problem solved, everyone gets what they want and we all rejoice and laugh about it when we're telling our grandchildren the story.

I mean, its not like we're talking about access to some top secret uberconfidential highly secured reinforced room full of nukes.

We're talkin' access to a lounge......in an airport.

We hope you can find it in your hearts to do the right thing.

Thank you for your attention.

Karen

Michael Jackson - Bad

I'll give you a minute to stop laughing.

OK, now watch this.

If you don't have 10mins to watch the whole thing, the song starts at the 4:30 mark.

C'mon....there's a NOID in it.

My favorite bit is the dance battle with Spike, the rabbit costume.

One of the big reasons for posting this today was because my mother told me to.

Well, not exactly. It went more like this:

Mom: I need all of Michael Jackson's albums on my ipod.

Me: OK.

Mom: All of it. Its the only thing I can work out with.

Me: OK.

Mom: Really, I get on the treadmill and I close my eyes and listen and I start dancin' and singin' along and I don't care who sees me.

So, this a.m. I burned her a dvd & drew up a card to send it with, complete with instructions on what to do once she gets it.

Figured since I was already in the MJ frame of mind, today would be as good as any to post my favorite song from the Moonwalker VHS.

Awww man, now I have a craving for some Captain EO.

Shamone!

TT - First class review

I didn't realize there were grown-ups that didn't know that yellow & blue make green. Or that red & blue make purple. Or that red & yellow make orange.

You turds all knew this, right? or should I just go ahead and consider and/or accept that my standards of general adult human intelligence is too high?? Yeah, probably the latter.

*eyeroll*

And of course there's always one in class that drags everyone else down. I spotted this chick straight away. She looks like a cupie doll but with an awesome asymmetrical hair style I was rockin' 2+ yrs ago before I got lazy with my hair. And apparently she owns a place in town called "Rich Hippie"...some boutique she says is very "colorful". I'll swing through in the next couple of days to scope the joint.

When we first started playing with black & white values....she was all "I hate grey."

Towards the end of the class with at least 40mins left, we were working on shading and tinting* and she was all, "the class is almost over. this doesn't make sense [why we're still working on stuff]. this won't be dry by the time we leave."

I addressed her last concern and she was somewhat quiet after that.

She was also the first to jet out the door.

This woman will be trouble for the class.

Next week, I will not be set up next to her.

At first I was worried about the class being full of old people but there's a pretty diverse mix of folks in there.

And one dude. His name is Donald.

And our teacher's name is Sally Evans. She's pretty cool. She said we could bring in wine & that the class has been known to be somewhat of a happy hour.

Next week, I'll bring wine.

I did learn how to keep my paints wet longer. Acrylics dry really fast which can be a little challenging depending on how big a piece you're working on. So, having them stay wet longer is a nice golden nugget of info I got to take away from last night. Also, kinda interested to play with glazing mediums, now that I know how/what they're used for.

Here's a picture of playing with black & white.

Did you know black & white make....gasp!...GREY!!?? *sigh*

Here's what it looks like when you mix colors only using primaries.

Did you know that red, yellow, and blue are primary colors!??! *facepalm*

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*shading = adding black to a color

tinting = adding white to a color

you're welcome.

WTH Weds - Back To School

I've recently been bitten with the 'back to school' bug.

Everyone keeps posting pictures of their kids in their 1st Day outfits and the friends that are in college are posting "back to it" messages about fall semester.

Even just saying "fall" right now seems slightly off because you can still hear the summer bugs outside making noise.

But then again, saying "fall" means my favorite month is getting closer.

*sigh*

ANYWAY, with that in mind, and with a ton of ideas for art projects coming up, I thought it would be fun to take an acrylics class at this place.

I've never had a formal art class before.

6th grade was the last art class I can recall.

Last night was the mad dash for all the procrastinators buying up supplies before classes start this week. There were a ton of people in ArtSystems just before closing. The staff was getting pissy that folks kept coming in when they were trying to close. I was in and out of there within that 10 minutes.

I even got a student discount. That shit made me giggle & saved me about $3.

Then I went to Michaels and got all the rest of the stuff on my list that ArtSystems didn't have or didn't have time for me to buy.

So, here's a picture of my haul:

OK, OK....I'll admit, a couple of those colors & brushes I already had.

But this is most of what was on my materials list.

Plus, paper towels.

Plus, a water jar.

Plus, one of Matt's shirts to wear backwards.

YouTubesday - Daywalt Fear Factory

anyone else ready for it to be October?

Sunday Confession - Not Frank-N-Furter

But I tried, dammit.

Man, I suck.

Sunday Confession - Emo Piece

Its taken me 2.5 yrs to complete this and it still isn't done.

But its close enough for me to post a photo of it.

"Silver Lining"

36x24

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ps. sorry for the crappy shot. I ran out of good non-glaring light.

Will try again tomorrow maybe.

The Knife - Deep Cuts

I like this song.

Pannacakes sent me a live version youtube video for it a year or 2 ago, I think.

I also like this song.

It makes me laugh.

There's no video for it.

Happy Friday, Turds!

You deserve a beer or 3.

Or whatever you feel like rewarding yourself with for making it through another week.

Except Broken Barn. They dropped off on Tuesday. No reward for them.

New Word

You know how Liz Lemmon says, "blerg"?

I find myself saying it occasionally, when/where appropriate.

More often than not, though, I'm simply saying, "fuck" instead of "blerg".

But recently, I've been saying "blarf" instead of "blerg" or "fuck".

And I think I like it.

Themeless Thursday - Book Review

Oh, man....It took me, what, like....7 weeks to get through this one?

That's HORRIBLE.

I suck at reading.

No, that makes me sound illiterate. Let me rephrase.

I suck at focusing on reading a book through to completion.

There are probably at least 2 or 3 books I can think of off hand that I read half of and never finished. This didn't happen much when I was a kid. Where the hell did I pick this habit up??

GAWH.

Anyway, just finished this one. You guys know I've been chipping away at it. Not that it was a shitty book or anything....it was good. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I just get distracted easily.

The book's narrated by a dude, an art journalist, who is fascinated by a beautiful & ambitious friend who gets sucked into the art world in pre-9/11 NYC. The book is basically his confession. He has to get this story of this girl off his chest and goes into telling about how she first worked at Sotheby's, networks, goes to work for a gallery, networks, sleeps with men, buys some art, gets tangled in questionable activities, sells some art, and decides, just before the towers fall, to open up her own art gallery. Its not so much that the story itself is enthralling, its the way Martin tells it, and how the story gets weaved and it leads to great imagery in your head while you're reading it.

There are even PICTURES!!

Full color of some of the works being talked about in the story.

How he only picked those 20+ to include....a sweet smattering, instead of an art overload.....I would've like to have seen his process for that.

This one gets 3 out of 5 Warhol Flowers.

WTH Wednesday. BONUS

Man....all these bonuses. What did you turds do to be so lucky this week?

I must really like you.

Here's what it looks like when your back deck is torn up and being redone due to wood rot.
This is also progress.

WTH Wednesday. Update

This is what progress looks like.

YouTubesday - Barats & Bereta

same guys who did one of my all time faves.

Movie Monday BONUS - The Trip

Must be you turds are lucky. BONUS!!!

Last week, I also saw this

I've tried watching Cock & Bull and just couldn't get into it.

Maybe I'll give it another go after watching this one.

Have you ever had one of those types of friends that you find it difficult to have a real honest conversation with because they're constantly doing impressions or trying to make everyone around them laugh??

The Trip is mostly that. Two men (comedic actors, they play themselves) go on an adventure to different restaurants in northern UK.

It has very little to do with the food they're sampling and is more about their relationship and the differences between them and the choices they've made in life.

There's a bit of a downer ending that....just kinda.......leaves things......

.

Overall, I did like it and give it 3 out of 5 Michael Caine impressions.

I'll include the trailer here since I know most of you won't watch the flick & it contains most (not ALL) of the good bits anyway:

Movie Monday - Trolls & Apes

You turds get 2 movies today.

You're welcome.

Friday night, we did dinner at Rangetsu where we ate udon & bacon wrapped things & drank ginger blossoms and then hit the midnight showing of

Norwegians+trolls=SUPER FUN!!

It was made in a mockumentary style - some kids with cameras follow around an old troll hunting vet who has a reinforced hunting vehicle and armored suits so he can use himself (and goats) as bait to control the troll population. The trolls have been a secret kept by aforementioned vet and the head of the Norwegian Park Rangers (or whatever he was called). They cover up all troll incidents by saying they're caused by bears. The kids with cameras are trying to expose the truth behind the cover ups.

Goats and one of the kids die. Trolls are smelly and like to eat rubber and apparently, the bigger they are, the older they are. They don't like light and turn to stone. They also don't like Christians.

This movie was pretty rad.

I give it 4 out of 5 rubber tires.

Then last night, we went to this place and saw

I gotta admit, I wasn't jumping up and down to see this one.

C'mon. Its apes.

But James Franco is in it, it got a fresh tomato, & Matthew wanted to see it, so we went.

The beginning is just as you'd expect. Scientists doing testing on chimps they've pillaged from their homelands, testing goes awry, chimps die, science funding gets pulled.

James Franco is the main scientist who is working on a cure for Alzheimer's, which his father (John Lithgow) suffers from.

His prize, most developed chimp (the one that went awry) has a baby while being housed in the lab. No one has the balls to put it down like they did the rest of the lab chimps, so James Franco takes it home & studies it there, discovering the testing they'd done on it's mother was passed down genetically.

James Franco, John Lithgow, and the chimp, now called Caesar, bond and they're all a happy family until an asshole neighbor effs things up for everyone.

Caesar gets taken away and thrown into an animal control facility (or the Chimp Projects).

And this is where everything gets good.

Remember this guy? The guy who played him, does a fuckin' phenomenal job as Caesar.

I won't give away anymore story here. Go check it out for yourself.

I went in not too excited about it and ended up really diggin' it.

I give it 4 out of 5 chocolate chip cookies.

If you turds are lucky....maybe there will be a bonus later today.

Sunday Confession - Make It Work

Thanks to Matthew, this is how we've been sleeping since Thursday night.

Pretty sure we've completely adjusted.

I don't remember what it was like when the a/c was working.

It will be eerily quiet in the house once it gets fixed (possibly this week?).

If you're ever looking for an emergency a/c unit - these little Frigidaires are about $100 at Lowe's and spit some serious cold air. We even had to cover up with a sheet cuz we got chilly.

Its pretty much saved our marriage.

Saturday Doodles

These are from the ArtStudio (ipad) tutorials (thanks, pannacakes).

Between these and trying to get this done....my weekend is delightfully full.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

I have a lot of favorite songs on this album, too. This was the first song I heard and gets stuck in my head a lot.
My other favorite song is "Home" which is now being used in a commercial or 2. That song brought tears to my eyes the first time I heard it. (shut up, I'm a girl. its allowed when something is that stinkin' sweet.)
I think "Janglin'" is in another commercial, too.

That's what happens, you know.
You love a song so much, you get smothered by it with marketing until you love it a little bit less.
So far, the love for these songs hasn't worn off yet.
They have a new album coming out soon, as well.
Advertising folks will be thrilled.

These are probably my very favorite damn dirty hippies.
If you saw them on Conan or any other shows they performed on, you know there's like 12 folks in the band and they have dreads and beards and wear sheets for pants.

We missed seeing them at The Social last October - it sold out pretty quickly by the time we found out about the show. That venue is pretty small, so I bet after the band got in there, they only had room for like, 3 other people.
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IN OTHER NEWS:
We're either going here or here tonight and then to see this.
So, look forward to reviews & shit over the weekend and then for Movie Monday.

Themeless Thursday. Blah.

You turds tired of hearing me bitch about not having a/c?
Yeah, me too.
So here's a picture of our bananas from a few years ago. I just found it on an old thumb drive.

WTH Weds - Still No Air

So I called the a/c folks yesterday morning and they said they had parts on order for us (new compressor) but it would take 3-7 business days for it to come in and they would call and schedule with us as soon as the delivery came through.
There is no ETA.

This company is USHAC.
Do not use them.
You see that bit on the website where it says "24hr Emergency Services"? Yeah, when I asked them about that last week when we were trying like hell to get someone to come help us out before the Bomb.....the chick said, "Oh yeah, we don't have that. Sorry, we're completely booked. You're scheduled for Monday."
Later on that day, we rec'd confirmation that we actually had a Saturday appt scheduled.
One of the lead techs came out Saturday, Steve, and was a very nice fellow and most helpful - stopped to point out things, explained what he did, what needed to be done next, & answered our questions without making us feel like we were keeping him from being some where else.
Everyone else at the company has done nothing but cause frustration.
I've written a bad review for them on yp.com.
It made me feel only a little better.

On the plus side, my skin has never felt better. Cold showers and sweating as much as I have the past week has really done wonders for my skins. Buffalo Bill would be proud.

Also - its nice to know so many of our friends have open doors for us.
We're choosing to tough it out in the evenings so far because it's good training for the zombie apocalypse when there will be no power. So, we'd have to be acclimated to it then anyway. This is just prepping us for that.
We've also had some nice storms roll through that have cooled things off so its been quite pleasant the past couple nights.

YouTubesday - Fresh Perspectives

Summer Bomb Highlights (that I can remember)

Breakfast of champions.
Early arrivals.
Balloons for the bounce house.
Worried about the costumes going on easily due to being sticky from no a/c.
A/C repair guy: "you're fucked. 3-7 biz days"
Testing the slide for quality assurance.
Testing the keg for quality assurance.
Getting dressed.
Taking pictures & LMAO with IronFist & Weezy Cage (aka Power[wo]Man)
Not being able to see through my mask.
Poison Ivy's eyebrows.
Ash's chainsaw.
Venom adjusting his cup.
Pool shots of washington apple dripping into my ear.
Orgasmic carrotcake balls.
Cool clouds/sky & threat of rain.
Butt spanks.
Jesus smoking & drinking.
Batmanties.
Spidermanties.
Losing beer pong.
Wonder Woman in boottops & flipflops.
Black Widow.
Floating keg.
Catwoman doing the splits.
Spiderman with no batteries.
Toe shots of tequila.
Snoop chillin' at the pool with us.
Gag reflexes being tested by Bomb Pops.
Crotch grabs & cleavage pictures.
Cake shots in the kitchen while Catwoman was still doing splits.
Catwoman unmasking while doing the splits.
Finding Jesus behind the couch.
Cousin phone call.
Waking up in the bouncehouse at 3:30a.m. with the sprinklers on.
Waking Matt up to bring the inflatables' fans in.
Black Widow passed out on the couch infront of a fan.
Watermelon stabbed through with the big knife.
Changing into pjs & passing out in bed with 3 fans on.
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Somewhere in there that I don't remember, was a laughter filled romp in the bounce house with Black Widow, a chat with Dr. Manhattan, and a demand for SAMMICHES!!
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Morning After Finds:
1. 1 Jesus costume with hair and beard.
2. 1 flip flop
3. 1 pair of roxy flip flops.
4. 1 Batman shirt
5. 1 blackfist afro pick
6. 1 olive green & white striped towel
7. 1 set of platinum/diamond wedding bands
8. 1 Michael Kors watch
9. 1 red headband
10. 8 cigarette butts (in my flower pots)
11. 1 Green Lantern ring
12. 1 pair of fuzzy Catwoman gloves.
13. 2 Poison Ivy vines
14. 1 half drunk bottle of red zin.
15. 1 half drunk bottle of margarita mix.
16. a skinny boy's swim trunks
17. Aforementioned Spidermanties draped around the Rockband drumset
18. 1 pile of mayo in the grass
19. 1 7/11 lighter
20. 2 Dr. Shots syringes & one sippy bottle with 1/5 remaining washington apple.
21. 1 defiled bag of Doritos
22. 1 pool key missing it's key ring.
23. 1 busted industrial toilet seat used for redneck horseshoes

Best No A/C Care Package Evar

Effin Friday

I would be happier about Friday but being without a/c for 3 days during the hottest month of the year (& just before you're supposed to have a giant summer party)......has kinda put a damper on my mood.

Here are my observations:

1. Cold showers are nice until you grab a handful of shampoo and it feels warm.....that's fuckin' weird.

2. This is an absolutely miserable way to live. I wouldn't wish it on anyone & if I ever joined politics, this would be my platform. Surely, a/c should be considered a human right.

3. You don't really stop sweating until sometime between 5:30 and 6 a.m.

4. People still ring your doorbell even when the front door is wide open.

5. I have no idea how anyone ever "settled" or lived in this place before electricity. The real estate boom obviously happened after people figured out how to live comfortably. If it had been me back in the day, I would've been all "the Indians can effin' have it, man".

6. You know what you feel like doing when you're hot and sweaty all the time? NOTHING. Absofuckin'lutely nothing. Except maybe finding errands to run so you can jump in the car and get some relief there.

7. Sleeping is impossible. Sleeping on a towel is a little more bearable.....so you don't stick to the couch that you've moved down to cuz its too hot upstairs, even with 4 fans blowing directly on you. (see #3 & #8 & #9)

8. Everything sticks to you. Ev. er. y. thing.

9. Moist is a constant state.

10. I feel like a giant ham curing. Salty, meaty, fatty. Ham.

11. The cats have melted on the floor. I've been calling them the Jonestown kitters cuz even they don't feel like moving & every time you see them, they're laying flat on the floor - either on the tile or in the hallway where we have fans set up. Fur puddles.

Today the home warranty people told us they've escalated and are considering this an emergency. Yesterday was 97. Today is only supposed to be 96, oh goodie.....a temp drop.

Wish us luck.

WTH Weds - Too Hot

Its too hot to type.
Our a/c went out.
I'm grumpy.

So there.

Talk to you tomorrow when/if its fixed.

Grmpf.

YouTubesday - Pogo