Gloater/Bemoaner, Hard Sells and Phoenixes

Hooooooooooooweee!! A calm weekend that wound up feeling like a whirlwind. Perhaps I missed out by not lazing and soaking up the leisure, as it were, but man! Many more of my little ducks are in a row. They'll probably become stragglers as the week progresses, alarm me by blithely toddling into rush hour and become suddenly, curiously deaf to my entreaties, but as it stands this Sunday evening, they are primly lined up. They seem well behaved and hopefully not willful. So. Did a bit of freelance, organized the framed prints for Gifts of Art, caught up with all family members and even had tea with a good neighbor-friend (a MONTH of walking pneumonia, people count your health blessings.). I made that Island Pork from Gourmet around lunchtime today and while it could have been spicier, the flavor was sooooo warm and robust. It would appear that someone licked the remaining sauce from the plate. 

Yesterday mid-day I got hella restless and decided to see what Ginger was up to. Happily, he was game for an outing and we dropped into Vault of Midnight for their 826 Michigan benefit Covers -- local artists redoing book covers from loved books. While that was in the basement, we started in the store proper, as Ginger is all about the comics/urban vinyl/graphic novels. It's more his thing than mine, but there's always enough visual stimuli for me there. Plus this time, there was a wind-up ice bat, which cracked me up. And suddenly, mixed into the music, the following chorus could be heard:

Mistadobalina Mr. Bob Dobalina
Mistadobalina Mr. Bob Dobalina
Mistadobalina Mr. Bob Dobalina

I sought out G; his head also whipped around: we nodded at eachother, mouthing the chorus. Hah! How funny ! And great! Who even did this? Um, Del the Funkee Homosapien, apparently. I would never have remembered this. Yet again, thanks, Google, you're my trivia(l) savior! In any case, I challenge you not to find it catchy. So that was a pip. And it turns out the larger mix, called The Hard Sell, was a collaboration between DJ Shadow (who I've liked in the past) and Cut Chemist. I may have to snag that, am getting bored with my music these days...

The benefit itself featured a nice collection of work, attended by a fair-to-middling crowd. It's possible (and hopeful, being a fundraiser) that it heated it up after we left. Poster designer extraordinaire Jeremy Wheeler, who's usually a party in a box, was only just arriving when we left. C. Jason Pasquale's reinterpretations of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Of Mice and Men" made me happy -- always love his cartooning and wit.


I was also drawn to a collage piece by Morgan Daniels, done on a rough slab of wood; her chosen book was Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. I must confess I haven't read that one, but I liked her statement about it and the quote she used from the book (from a religious text within the book, "In order to rise/From its own ashes/A phoenix/First/Must/Burn.") She wrote the quote on a couple strips of birch bark, which she then tacked to the painted surface. These strips deliver a spot of light within an otherwise dark surface. Simple cut-outs of (charcoal smudged) house forms reside at the lower edge of the picture, on top of splashes of dark red, alluding to fires within the book. Nicely done! I wound up picking this up. And special bonus -- it was her first art sale! So, she was excited. How lovely to be a part of that, it's so validating. It can be too validating, certainly. But still! 
   

Well, hmm. You can barely see it. Over to the left.

Well, that's not much better. Trust me, it's cool.

 After that, we were off to Corner Brewery, to donate some canned goods to FoodGathers/Free Masons and to taunt each other over the Othello board.

Smack talk, even in the packaging.

ice bat, at attention before the first play

The first game goes abysmally. From the get-go, he's beating me and as it progresses (if you can call it that), I don't understand how it has been so unrelentingly unfortunate. I damn myself at every play. He gets one corner, then two. Then all. Horrid. It's possible I'm a bigger gloater than he is -- and I'm also a bemoaner, when the chips are down. Noisy at either end, I guess. He's nice enough that he's tossing encouraging words my way: "It could turn on a dime! You know that!"

And then it does. Weirdly, I win.

Neither of us really understand how that happened. We re-match, and woohoo, I wrack up another victory. Perhaps it's the breakfast stout. Perhaps it's the ice bat. So hoppy, with his flipflops.


And so, that's that. Or mostly it. I was hit with an attack of crabbiness and WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN ANYWAY this afternoon, before I came to my senses enough to sit on my deck. I listened to the geese honking overhead on their trek South, random barking of our various neighborhood dogs and the hollow plunk of a plastic bat against a wiffle ball. How does this make it all better? But it does, somehow. Time outside is like a reset button. And so readily accessible.

Happy Sunday night and a fine good morning to All!