More Soon

Well, I've had a pleasant couple of days. Patrick and I went camping this weekend (more later). I finally made it to my Stitch-n-Bitch on Monday night. With all of the WAM stuff and then family stuff, it had been at least a month. I missed my girls!

Patrick and I are going to turn up the heat on these home improvement projects. With the cold weather coming, there isn't much time left to do our outdoor must-dos. It will feel good to finish all of these half-done projects, like the bathroom walls or installing lattice to cover the crawlspace under the house.

Speaking of cold weather--how about those holiday gift crafts? I have pipe dreams of knitting and sewing all kinds of gifts. It doesn't help that the blogs I read regularly are written by people with an inhuman ability to churn out amazing projects at breakneck speed! How about you? Any gift-making in the works?

Old Lady?!? Old Lady.

Everyone has a moment when they feel old, right? My first came when I turned 27 and realized that I was no longer eligible to be on The Real World. Not that I ever wanted to be on it, but I always loved watching it. Once that birthday came around, though, watching it was never the same. They were just kids, using every opportunity to grope each other and fight about who disrespected whom (without any real sense of what respect is in the first place).

Now I'm 30. I'm good with that. I had a big party, we rented a dunk tank.

My ongoing project is to have my 12-year-old sister watch all of the movies my brothers and I loved while growing up. I made her her own queue in Netflix, and so far we've watched Walk Like a Man, Vice Versa, The Wizard, and as of last night, Gremlins.

In the opening scene of Gremlins, the camera pans slowly down Main Street of the town. Here's the bank, a shop, Burger King, the florist... My sis turns to me--wide-eyed--and with a hint of skepticism in her voice says, "You guys had Burger King back then!?!" Hence, the name of this post.

Actually, this has been the funnest part of the whole project. I have to interpret the 80s for her, or she won't get the jokes.

Like with Gremlins: the guy in the movie drives a beat up VW Bug. Nowadays the Bug is kind of cool again. But I had to tell her that back then the Bug was definitely not cool, and that the character, therefore, is not cool.

Or in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead: One of the boys steals some money and purchases a state-of-the-art entertainment center. All of the characters gape at it in amazement. When the camera turns to the center, though, it is laughable. There are about 15 components to the stereo, and the TV is about 25 inches. I had to tell her that back then that was a giant TV (I think the one in her bedroom is about 25 inches!), and the stereo was awesome. Nowadays, with flat-screens that literally take up an entire wall, the scene didn't make much of an impact on her.

Another issue is clothes. In movies, clothes are chosen by wardrobe departments to say something about the character. But really, clothes in the 80s were so fucked up--she can't tell who is a dork and who is cool. For example, the movie Can't Buy Me Love with Patrick Dempsey (McDoodle or whatever his name is on Gray's Anatomy). Dempsey pays the popular girl in school to transform him from dork to hunk. Here's the movie poster--what do you think?

Is this Dempsey before or after his transformation? Those glasses. The string tie. And Good God, the pattern of his shirt!

Here are the movies I have in her queue:

Short Circuit
Short Circuit 2
Little Monsters
Innerspace
The Last Starfighter
Flight of the Navigator
Explorers
D.A.R.Y.L.
SpaceCamp
Mannequin
Crocodile Dundee
Star Kid
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
Starman
Batteries Not Included
Willow
Labyrinth
Krull
The Beastmaster
Better Off Dead
Teen Wolf / Teen Wolf Too (Double Feature)
Splash
Big

Any others I should add? Ideas in the comments, please!

That's Right--BOOKS!

Historic Reading Posters - September - Back to Books

I love this poster. The bold design, the nostalgia of going back to school. It's part of a series of posters created in the 30s by the WPA that's now being reprinted. I'm thinking about getting it, but framing posters--is it too high school/college/I'm broke? Maybe it depends on the stock it's printed on?

Here's the post that brought it to my attention.

Sorry!

OK, OK, so it has been awhile. But I've been busy!

This year's Window Arts Malden project is up and running! Here's my post on last year's project. This time I took on a bigger role, organizing the Opening Celebration in front of City Hall. We had music, dancers, raffles and a Treasure Hunt for kids. Too bad it was 97 degrees and had we winds of about 500 miles per hour. As a result, we didn't have that much of a crowd.

http://www.maldenarts.com/

But the art really looks great. A great treat: head down to Pleasant Street at night. Kelvy Bird's pieces are in the big new apartment complex at 160 Pleasant and across the street from there. When they're backlit at night they are breathtaking.

http://www.kelvybird.com/art/eyes.html

So, now that the opening is over I can just relax and enjoy the installations.