Portland Travelogue

Played this song by Belle & Sebastian to get myself in the Portland mood.....
hoping to post on the road. See you soon!

Reader's Refrigerators

or as my friend MamaZu likes to say, "I like to have a full larder."

As I prepared to leave town today and went through the house getting it ready for the housesitters, I was embarrassed by how empty I let my cupboards get. But I noticed there were several things that I always have a supply of.

So, tell me the five food things you ALWAYS have on hand. The truth, not the aspiration!

Mine are:

Red wine (Nero d'Avola,usually)
Sriracha sauce
Trader Joe's bag of southern greens
Olive oil
Butter
Now if only those ingredients combined into something edible...



photo seen on every blog this week from emersonmade via designsponge

You're probably a hipster if....

See the original "You're probably a hipster" list here!



....you use Mac Photo Booth instead of a mirror.

This week's hipster jab inspired by the reader formerly known as Moniquenocat.

Wild Nights, Wild Days

Wild Nights-Wild Nights! (229)
Emily Dickenson

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the winds –
To a heart in port –
Done with the compass –
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the sea!
Might I moor – Tonight –
In thee!


If you took a week and put it into a blender, you may get something that looks like my day so far.

Last night, jacuzzi full of hipsters and house full of spring-breaking pre-teens.

At 12:30 a.m. finally fall asleep.

At 1 a.m., "Mom, I'm not tired."

"Get in bed with me."

Repeat at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m.

In the morning, forget I had agreed to help photograph a new line of children's accessories for a friend in my studio.

Welcome, house full of reluctant toddler models and crying babies!

Quick with the snacks, cajoling, encouraging, and silly picture-taking!

Enlist goofy nephew to calm the diva model.

On to a tour of the treehouse while the mamas conduct a slap-dash picture editing tutorial.

Farewell baggies of animal cookies, before the babies do any more Godzilla-style damage to the pre-teen boardgame being played on the floor.

Quick, pretend to work.

Call to impromptu swim party... get your trunks...lunch??? Dang, knew I forgot something! Taco shop to the rescue!

Another visiting baby and mama-nurse, peek-a-boo, nose wipes, doggie licks, and a decision to embrace the chaos

HOUSE MARGARITAS (1 with salt, 1 no salt) AT 3:00

NACHOS AT 3:10

4:26pm, prepare entire family and business to celebrate the most important event in mankind's history and leave town for a week. Portland, here we come!

Litmus Test

If you like babies, animals, and this music then you're a-okay.
For my Eritrean brothers and sisters, who are still more beautiful than this beautiful, beautiful music.

Mulatu Astatke-Tezeta
from the Broken Flowers soundtrack
and For Me, For You

Looky-Loo

Alright all you deaf-mutes out there. Since all you like to do is look, this post is for you. Although, I have to admit you're all bummin' me out right about now. Five hundred hits a day and not even a lousy "hi there"? Mmmmm, we need to work on our communication.

Seriously. Post the color of your underwear (if you can do it for breast cancer, you can do it for me). The last words you spoke out loud. The medical condition you most fear. Your middle name. Your cat's middle name. All of them together. The last meal you ate. Your age. The celebrity you're most likely to stalk. Best/worst way to die. City you were born in. Breastfed or bottle-fed? Boxers or briefs? Religion. Crimes you've committed. Confess everything and do it anonymously. We won't judge.

Meanwhile, not that you deserve it, here are some amazing things to get you through the weekend with a broader mind, deeper spirit, fuller soul:

Do you suffer from wanderlust?
Are you a free spirit?
Got a bit o' the hippie in ya?
Own a copy of HOWL?





This artist and his friends have been riding the rails across the country and documenting it with (ugh, overused word) evocative photography. It's thrilling, truly.
Click here now.

And....
were you aware that there is a hipster explosion going on in the desert right now?
Not annoying "I wear Converse All-Stars with suits" hipsters, but real, authentic, youthful, Beatnik-y, subversive artist-maniacs.

Of course the phenoms blog about it, cuz who doesn't. This blog will blow your mind.



See especially this post about impromptu illegal cioppino gatherings in a pile of rocks in the desert. They call it culinary geocaching. No, wait. I call it that. Who's cool now, Converse-boy?

And this one is a nice, gentle little blog about girl motorcycle riders and cactus and good, cheap beer and cats and Mid Century thrifting. Very well-rounded. It's where I learned about the train-hoppers above.

So, I've shared a lot with you. The lines are open, folks. Share something with us.

The Pretty Girls With Nerdy Glasses Appreciation Society

To go along with my last post....
Oh yeah, this really exists.

Right here. Proof that if it exists, it's on the internet. And that I was right:hipsters DO love to take lots of out-of-focus pictures of themselves.

You're probably a hipster if....

See the original "You're probably a hipster" list here!

I've been taking it easy on the poor little fellas lately. I even had a petulant complaint from some little waif in Brooklyn about my "hatred" of hipsters, and thought I'd give these moving targets a break.

But, I've just received a reader request that said simply, "More hipster posts, please."

O.K., if you insist. It's not like I have a bunch just waiting to share with you. I've barely even thought about it. I only have this one, and I swear I just thought of it to make my reader happy. Refresh your memory of the others by clicking here, here, here and here.





You're probably a hipster if....

....you spent more on sunglasses than healthcare this year. Oh, hush. You KNOW you did!

Moller, how I do love thee....

Remember way back in the olden days when I posted about these chairs? And you were like, uh huh, whatever? Well, they're all done and ready for auction and I think they turned out beautifully. And I have to say, they were the find of the year.

(NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

And as a personal side-note, I require some advice. The cocoa apple cake I've got in the oven is permeating the whole house with it's crazy-good aroma, and let's just say this is a strategic point in the month to have some dessert. But alas it is for the school bake sale. Can I just buy the cake from myself and eat it? Now? Am I required to donate previously tithed desserts? Can't I donate my cake and eat it too????

SOLD

Man/Child

I ran into a friend’s husband a while back (in the wine aisle at Costco, where it seems we’ve made a non-verbal agreement to meet up monthly). He was being heavily flirted with by one of the better-looking sample ladies I’ve seen. I mean, I think she was taking her basal body temperature and checking her ovulation chart while I distracted him with a hug. She was definitely twisting the hair that had escaped her plastic hair net, and seductively stroking her latex gloves. Oh, wait. Let me explain: he’s a cute fireman and he had his baby daughter and little son with him. It all makes sense now, right?

Just to mess with him, when I heard her ask, “Have you tried this?” I shouted from several aisles away, “OH YEAH, he's tried it! He's got some at home. Hey Tim-how’s your wife?”

So what’s the deal with men and babies? I mean, biologically speaking, a man with an infant should signal to a woman that he has just RECENTLY procreated with someone else and is therefore VERY LIKELY not available. A possible clue that he wasn’t mysteriously and tragically a single parent? The children were clean and healthy-looking. I mean, what was this woman thinking? That he had hired a surrogate to bear two adorable children for him because his life felt incomplete, so he had to take matters into his own hands until the sample lady of his dreams came along?

Why is man + baby the universal symbol for “stop drop and flirt"?

Why is a single woman with children a "liability" with "baggage" and a single man with children "sooooo cuuuuute" and immediately more desirable???

I actually think this phenomena is a major strike against the theory of evolution. I mean, if propogation of the species was at work here, then the most popular people on the dating scene would be single women with LOTS of kids, right? Think about it: there are no other men to fight off and she's proven multiple times that she can successfully bear children. She's like a biological supermodel. If evolution were true, then naughty men's magazines would have graphic full-page spreads of Labor and Delivery rooms. Mechanics would have calendars on their walls with pictures of fetal development and tired women with breastpumps. Fashion magazines would airbrush stretchmarks ONTO the models.

Our day is coming, ladies. Until then, fight the urge to make googly eyes at the man with the Baby Bjorn. They're onto us...he probably dusted himself with baby powder to heighten the effect. It's probably not even his kid.

Playing it Cool

"Mom, I know what I'm going to name my son when I have one."

"Oh really. Let's hear it."

"Ringo Slater." (favorite Beatle + favorite surfer = mucho playground butt-kickings)

"Wow, that sounds great." (pretend not to care, pretend not to care, or he'll really do it)

"And Mom, I know what I'm going to put on my license plate when I get my first car." (wow, this kid has some really specific future plans)

"O.K., what?"

"P-R-N-S-D-R-K-N-S"

"Prince of Darkness? As in Satan???" (I might have had a small stroke at this point)

"No-as in Ozzie Osbourne when he was young."
(Note to self: speak with guitar teacher about choosing age-appropriate music)

"Hmmm, well it might look kinda funny, this happy, outgoing, freckly kid named Sunny cruising around with "Prince of Darkness" on his license plate. Also, Ozzie Osbourne can't string two words together. Little Ringo is going to need you to set a better example than that." (I am playing it SO cool right now)

"Can we stop for a Slurpee?"

That's more like it.

That's MISTER CHAIR to you

There's a lot of internet bellyaching and ballyhoo-ing about Mid Century furniture fakes versus knock-offs, and man can some purists get mighty prickly about fiberglass versus plasic, veneer quality, the holy refinement of the "original" and the "less refined" repros, etc.

Really, some of the best persuasive academic writing I've ever read has been on discussion boards dedicated to the subject. Which is possibly a misuse of talent.

Plycraft infamously knocked-off the Eames lounge, but who cares? They're both extremely comfortable and, in my book, slightly fugly. I have some friends who just picked up a Plycraft version from Craigslist and they were sort of apologizing for it. I think it's great that people who like the style can get it without living off ramen for a year. But not everything Plycraft produced was a knock-off.

Enter Mr. Chair. It was designed by George Mulhauser, who first worked for George Nelson and is credited with the design for the uber-rare and collectible coconut chair. Is it an upholstered lounge with a bent-ply back? Yep. Doesn't make it a knock-off. I actually (GASP!) prefer the two-piece wood body of the Mulhauser design over the five-piece Eames. It looks much more sculptural to me. The untufted upholstery seems more graceful and the bentwood starburst base less industrial.

One more benefit of the Mulhauser design? It wasn't produced for very long, and never went into reproduction. It's a rare and beautiful original design and a fabulous, comfortable piece of furniture. Frankly I think it deserves to step out of the shadow cast by the Eames lounge to have its own place in American Mid Century design .

SOLD

Mud-lucious

in Just-

by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

In Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

Mooning

Well, if this just isn't the way we feel about our babies long after our arms can encompass their length this way.


via Marvelous Kiddo

Embarrassment of Riches, or My Cart Runneth Over

This week the thrift store was good to me, and the back of my car looked like a Moroccan bazaar. That's right, this is from a mere two visits to the "thrifter" as we call it here...and I didn't even include the giant abstract that landed in my dining room, or the authentic women's GUCCI tuxedo jacket IN MY SIZE found quite on accident for $3.95 in the boy's suit section.

I didn't want your heads to explode.

My favorites are the hippie hanging chair, the vintage 1950s crazy quilt made from Hawaiian barkcloth, the nautical tray, the adjustable Mid Century hanging brass lamp...oh, and the 1st year edition of All Quiet on the Western Front.

Is your head still there?

But the burning question these days is "Where to sell?"
I've been chatting back and forth with this blogger/seller about going to the Rose Bowl flea market, renting antique store space, or even selling directly from this blog. I really don't like putting small things on Ebay anymore.

So, what do you think? Do you want to buy things directly off this site?

"All You Can Print" Free Art Buffet

You can thank me later...this is a crazy-cool resource for old prints, typography, pages from antique books, old menus, etc. You know all those ancient school physics and astronomy posters that are so hot? Or the vintage medical charts people go to Paris flea markets to find? Yeah, they've got those.

They even have the entire library organized by colors...so you can search under "turquoise prints" for instance, if you need to match something specific. There are even rad medieval illuminated manuscripts with the text removed, so you could insert your wedding info and use them for ready-made one of a kind invitations.

Trust me, once you click over you'll want to spend the rest of the day browsing. This was a true "stumbled upon" source. I was googling for photos of a specific vintage lamp, and somehow came across this site. Everything is free and high resolution for enlarging and printing.

Hands off the Native American moms....I'm going to print the entire series for my office.