Tag: entertainment

free to choose my world

I told Tim I wanted to go into his apartment and photograph something that proved he was back home and he was all suspicious and said like what and I said I don’t know, anything, please, and he said okay. So I photographed these beautiful chests of drawers that replaced the ones that were drowned in the flood and that had once belonged to my parents and I’m sure that makes some people feel sad because after all, it was my late mother’s furniture but I just can’t hang on to all that and anyway, these are beautiful and have metal legs that keep them off the floor which I think you’re going to start seeing as the theme of replacement furniture in all the Houndstooth Hall dwellings.

Then I was going to let Penny help me take a photo of Tim’s groovy new coffee table that also has metal legs but something distracted me and when I later told Jim about the distraction he said Robert Pattinson, is he even a thing anymore, and I said I have the choice of living in a world of mythical vampires or a world of Trump which should I choose and he said point taken.

The End.

Transport Thursday!

There are several of us who at transport will sing to the puppies as they stop at our table to get their photos and transport stickers–always a song inspired by their names, like the time the entire table and the dog’s escort broke into, “My, my, my Sharona!”

Sometimes I feel like my colleagues are hoping to stump my musical memory, so the other day, I knocked out four in a row as the dogs came through before a lull.


For Miracle: I believe in miracles, where you from (you sexy thing) (Hot Chocolate, 1975)


For Joene: Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, woman, please don’t take my man (Dolly Parton, 1974)


For Josie: When Josie comes home, so good, she’s the pride of the neighborhood (Steely Dan, 1977)


For Jeremy: Jeremy spoke in class today (Pearl Jam, 1991)

That is an odd mix of songs, and they have some dark undertones. In the first, Sexy Thing has come along after the narrator has been lonely a long time, and it may sound upbeat, but he’s begging the new love not to leave, clearly already dreading loss and more loneliness. Jolene is heartlessly threatening the narrator’s happiness by stealing her true love, even though Jolene could have anyone she wants. As for Josie, it’s one of the more ambiguous homecomings in musical history. Josie sounds like she was a wild thing. Where has she been? Is this homecoming a celebratory reunion or something graver? Also, if you read the lyrics, they say Josie prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire. I always heard it as Josie “preys like a Roman with her eyes on fire.” Hmmm… And of course Jeremy is about a bullied, unloved child committing suicide in front of his classmates.

Cheery stuff, right? The puppies don’t care. They just know they’re getting some attention and it sounds happy.

The dates on those songs make me realize why none of our younger staffers and volunteers know what the heck we’re singing half the time.

scary lady heeds my fashion sense

I’m reluctant to post the photo below because it shows my fashion queen Anna Wintour with Harvey Weinstein at a Marchesa (fashion line of Weinstein’s estranged wife, Georgina Chapman) runway show. So I’ll say up front that it sounds like Weinstein is a pig who enjoyed a lot of success in the entertainment industry because his company has made some amazing movies with stellar talent. But he apparently used his success and power in a piglike way to sexually harass, belittle, assault, demean, and torment women. This is not new behavior, nor is it confined to the so-called Hollywood “casting couch.” It’s just that his are the accusers who have begun stepping forward–and that takes real courage–and now everyone who was ever in the same city as him feels that they must denounce him even as they say they were unaware of his piglike behavior, because boy, do humans flee the flames when a star begins his fiery descent to the pit of publicity hell to be finished off on a spit.

(Also, I’m sorry to insult pigs, who I happen to admire in a way I could never admire Weinstein, and I don’t like to see them on spits.)

All that being said, observe Miss Wintour, below. Do you like her dress?

Gary Gershoff/WireImage / / Mandy Moore, left, Harvey Weinstein, Anna Wintour attended the Marchesa fall 2017 runway show during New York Fashion Week on Feb. 15, 2017.

Did you like its reverse colors in November 2009 when it was designed by Becks?

Looks like we are both crafty women. But she accessorizes better. My Anna Wintour needed those boots.

Bonus photo:

André Leon Talley, Anna Wintour, and Grace Coddington at Becks’s 2009 final collection.

P.S. If you click on the link to my November 2009 post, you’ll see my soldiers in a nod to today being National Coming Out Day.

it’s an ill wind that blows no good

Saved without flood damage from the carport bins… a tome written AND illustrated by aspiring author Becky Cochrane. Very ambitious. And like so many works to follow, unfinished as those lips drawn by the young writer/illustrator whisper toward the flickering flame of creativity…

Perhaps some young pup will plagiarize an excerpt for a future Pet Prose submission.

I haven’t cracked open this gem yet, but I’m pretty sure nothing in it will measure up to my favorite thing on the cover: “To Edwin Harper–a friend not soon forgotten. Also to my 6th grade friends–who first read this book.”

While I do actually remember some of my sixth grade friends, I have not a single clue as to the identity of one Edwin Harper. Perhaps not soon forgotten, but forgotten all the same. Sorry, Edwin.

Button Sunday

I don’t know why this button makes me laugh so hard, but so be it.

Early afternoon one day, Jim and I were sitting in the office drinking coffee and talking when I spotted a female cardinal under one of our trees. Jim turned around to watch for her and was rewarded by the sight of her mate in his gorgeous redness. He’d never seen a cardinal “in person,” so hey, Houndstooth Hall is like a nature preserve. (We won’t talk about the sighting of the palmetto bug about the size of the cardinal…)

The day we went to Body Mind & Soul, I was studying the shelves of Tarot and other cards to see if anything caught my eye–and the animal spirit guide deck did. There was an open box for interested shoppers, and when I turned the deck over, the card on top was the Cardinal. Jim and I locked surprised eyes; Debby spotted an unopened deck; and Jim made a gift of it to me. Now I need to learn how to read and lay out this deck in my leisure time. (ha ha, leisure time, so funny)