Hump Day Happy

While going through my Barbie cases, I found all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with Barbies. One of those things included this goofy plastic dog, given to me by my first real boyfriend.

The years have been hard on Little Yellow Dog. Still, though he’s missing one of his legs and his tail, LYD is stoic and can find you something to be happy about from this book. Just give him a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, if you’d like to play along.

Yellow dogs: For some reason, they seem to stay a part of my life in many forms. 😉

Who could top the Edith Head collection?

Mattel and little girls’ moms, that’s who. Since Barbie celebrated her fiftieth birthday this year, I thought I’d bring out some of my vintage fashion for Mark G. Harris. In honor of your birthday, Mark, though you are much younger than Barbie, my Twelve Top Models want to remind you that being a classic has nothing to do with age. Poise, nerve, style, maybe a dry martini, and you’re set.

I’m putting photos of each outfit behind the cut, but anyone who wants to read more about the clothes–all of them are from the 1960s–can see descriptions on my public Flickr set.

Click here for more photos.

Random Roundup

Lynne has gone back to the Old Country for a few days (i.e., the Deep South), so we get to enjoy the company of the Green Acres dogs:


Little Blind Sparky and Minute the Great Armadillo Hunter.

Tom obligingly went through bins in the attic and garage looking for Barbie stuff OTHER than dolls. I’ll be posting about some of that later, but in the meantime, I found this scrap of honest-to-goodness 1970s fabric. I don’t know what I’ll use it for–it’s not much material–but I’m sure you’ll eventually see it on one of the Mattel Top Models.

Last week–or maybe two weeks ago–Tim and I were running errands, and I unexpectedly discovered a trove of fabrics for WAY cheap. (In fact, when the associate checked me out, she was exclaiming over one of the remnants that she’d missed when she was going through them. She and some others use them in quilts they make for the children at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Since I always run into the kindest people when I shop, it seems like I’d enjoy shopping, but I don’t.)

The picture below doesn’t feature the fabric she liked, but is one I bought that night. I decided to use it for a Barbie dress from a pattern circa early 1960s. The price is vintage, too: I made this dress for less than fifty cents. Doesn’t Tamala wear it like a million bucks?


Last party of the summer.

Count Your Cows

Back in the days when Lynne and I were young girls and joined each other’s families on trips, she taught me how to play Counting Cows. I’m sure everyone has their own rules and points for this game, but basically, every cow I saw out my window was worth a point. A gray mule equaled twenty cows, and a white mule was a hundred cows. If we came to a cemetery on my side of the car, Lynne could shout, “Bury your cows!” and I was back to zero. Or vice versa. The point was to DISTRACT your opponent so she didn’t see the cemetery, because once past it, your cow points were safe.

These days, since I live a mere mile from downtown Houston, I’m sure most people wouldn’t guess that we actually have a herd of cows on the The Compound. Nobody can accuse us of being all hat, no cattle.

Today, while shopping, I found a cow with three legs for three dollars. (This reminds me of a terrible joke my brother once told me about a Valiant Pig, but I digress. As I should. I’m a SOUTHERNER.) Now who wouldn’t buy a cow for three dollars? Especially when its missing leg came with it. I wouldn’t have to trade this cow for a handful of magic beans. I could do cow surgery!

So now Vincent Van Cogh has moved onto The Compound and been restored to good health.

Click here to see VVC.

New Orleans Notes, No. 10

Back when I was a wee young teen reading books from my parents’ library at a voracious rate, I loved any fiction or biographies that were about writers or artists or performers or crazy kids struggling to make it in the big city.

Everything seems romantic and exciting when your life experience is limited. Writers living in near poverty in Paris, gathering for drinks and conversation in a favorite little bar or bookstore. Artists bumping against each other in New York, competing for gallery space and reviews, little dreaming that together they were reshaping the entire concept of art. Actresses stunning the world in roles of a lifetime, then going mad for the love of great actors. Musical prodigies dying of disease and starvation at the hands of rivals who could never measure up to them. All of these brilliant, talented people with their connected lives, inspired and destroyed by one another–it was dazzling and enticing and larger than life to Wee Me.

Now that I’m older, I realize that most of those people–the real ones–probably had no idea what big lives they had. They probably got just as worn down by daily reality as anyone–the frustration of a colicky baby, the need to find enough fuel to get them through a harsh winter, the dozens of rejections that made them feel their work would never come to anything, physical limitations, familial obligations.

But sometimes the magic is so strong it breaks through our perspective of life as ordinary, mundane.

There’s a crowded little bookstore in the Faubourg Marigny where creative voices are always welcomed and nurtured by the owner. A reading is scheduled for a sultry May night. The usual smells permeate the streets of New Orleans–the river, the bars, the sweat and urine and sick of tourists, the droppings of mules. Dough frying and crawfish simmering. I’m a little tired and overheated after a long day, so I persuade my friend and writing partner Timothy to take a cab with me to the bookstore. Earlier, we saw our friends walking. They decide to stop for drinks along the way, so we get there just before them.

The store is hot, even hotter because we all stand close among the stacks, or get brushed by people on their way to the back of the shop, where a few bottles of wine have been opened. A couple of red plastic plates hold crackers and pretzels. Most of those will be eaten by two or three men who probably missed lunch and are overdue for dinner.

The reading is kicked off by the dynamic Theresa Davis. She mesmerizes me. Others I can’t hear because late arrivals whisper and rustle and cause people around me to shift, blocking the opening that allowed me to see and listen to the readers. A couple of writers reinforce my conviction that I should never read my work aloud–some of us just don’t have the voice or the skill to do right by our stories. As the event ends, the air is so thick with humidity and performance anxiety that I have to get out of there. I can’t breathe.

I stumble outside, inhaling, craving air conditioning, and hear someone call my name. Catty-cornered from the bookstore is a restaurant with benches on the sidewalk around it. Without my glasses and in the dim street light, only my familiarity with their voices enables me to recognize Rhonda and Lindsey. I cross to them. A waiter has come from the restaurant and persuaded them to accept a hookah. It’s my first experience with this, though I decide it’s really not that different from the water pipes of my distant youth. I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, but I enjoy the scent and taste of the hookah’s sour apple tobacco.

The mouthpiece is passed among us. Not all of us smoke. We’re passing time, waiting for Trebor and Timothy. We decide we’ll all meet at a Middle Eastern restaurant around the corner. I go with the first group, and once inside, I sit with Rob, Melissa, ‘Nathan, and Dan. The restaurant is busy, but not too noisy, and it’s easy to hear their banter. I’m laughing a lot, as anyone would be with this group.

Lindsey and Rhonda come in with Mike and Jeffrey. They put two tables together–close to us, but not close enough for our conversations to intersect. There are bursts of laughter from their table, and I feel utterly content to know that all these people I enjoy and admire are getting to know one another and form new friendships.

Trebor and Tim finally enter the restaurant. This is a dinner we’ve tried to have for two years, and I join the two of them at our table. I’m enchanted all over again by Trebor. We jump from subject to subject, and he always has something intelligent, provocative, or entertaining to share. Occasionally I throw in a comment, but really, I’m happy to sit back, savor my grilled vegetables and basmati rice topped with feta cheese, and listen to two people who make me think and laugh and feel wonderful life from the ends of my hair to the tips of my toes.

It’s only later, much later, that I step outside the memory of those moments and realize that they are, in fact, made of that big magic that some biographer or storyteller of the future might put in a book. I have no idea which artist or writer or photographer or musician among us will be the principal and who makes up the supporting cast. But I dream that some young reader invited into this night will have lit within her the vision of a life made of creative work that she loves and gifted friends to illuminate the path to her dreams.

Performance artist and poet
Theresa Davis.
Poet and fiction writer Trebor Healey.
Poet, artist, and photographer
Lindsey Smolensky.
Writer Jeffrey Ricker.


Writers Mel Spenser and Timothy J. Lambert. Writer and photographer ‘Nathan Burgoine with his husband, photographer Dan Smith.


Writer and photographer Michael Wallerstein. Writer Rob Byrnes. Photographer Rhonda Rubin.

Hump Day Happy

 


One time when I was traveling on business, I had a two-hour layover in Philadelphia. It was exciting to be in the birthplace of the U.S., and I wished I could actually explore the city instead of only passing through its airport.

As compensation, I visited an airport gift shop and bought the charm you see hanging off the HDH book to add to my charm necklace: the Liberty Bell. On this day, July 8, in 1835, the Liberty Bell cracked again. I love the bell’s history, and personally, I’ve always found a significant lesson in the fact that something considered “flawed” is one of our country’s most recognizable and beloved symbols.

That’s all I’ll say about that. If you want something to be happy about, please comment with a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, and I’ll tell you what the 14,000 Things To Be Happy About book has to offer you.

P.S. I timed this to post at 04:05:06 a.m. on 07.08.09. Thanks, Rob.