Is it really August already?

Summer still by the

Calendar but one by one

Leaves fall softly down

Baby You Can Drive My Car

I swear The Pea is smiling! We went Autocross racing today!

I only rode shotgun - you don't really need a co-driver for AutoX - Merrilee drove. I'm still a little chicken and had already earmarked the cash the entry fee would have required for The Young Fresh Fellows show coming up later this week instead. I was happy to help navigate the course, hang onto the suicide strap and let Mer handle the power sliding 'round the turns.

Traction control very much off (as they say on Top Gear) it was a little damp when we ran and she actually got a couple controlled slides out of my front wheel drive, automatic transmission (but turbo charged) New Beetle.

Our number was 976!

No, I am not washing the car until at least one person asks about it!

Our sticker to show we passed the tech inspection and

yellow paint dots, one for each of four runs!

The race is put on by The Willamette Motor Club and is completely volunteer run, so if you race you have to work a shift chasing cones and spotting missed gates. That was almost as much fun as driving, plus we were placed by the most technical part of the course, so dammit, if money wasn't tight, I would have run in the afternoon Novice class! I got a good schooling on right and wrong lines, which gates were easy to miss, much easier to see what was what when not hanging on for dear life.

We critiqued all the cars and decided our favorite of the day was a black VW Corrado. Pretty. And fast! The ugliest car (in our humble opinion) was a Mad Max inspired 80's vintage Celica Supra in brown with black trim. Pretty gruesome. There was an early 90's Jetta GLI we dubbed "Skippy" coz she had a rear wheel in the air 'round every turn! Waiting in the parking lot to run the afternoon session were five Ford Fiestas all in a row.

There's more AutoX coming up. The Summer's only just begun! I will be racing - in the driver's seat - soon!

Soundtrack to Life #11

Bruce! Born to Run. But not the album version.

Mosaic Peggy Guggenheim

 

If I could be any historical figure, living or dead, instead of myself, Peggy Guggenheim just might be the one I'd choose.  

She was born on the poorer side of a family with great wealth. Lost her father in the sinking of the Titanic.  Worked in her cousin's bookshop as a young woman - for independence, not the money - then turned her back on it all to live a Bohemian life in Europe in the 20s after marrying Dadaist artist Laurence Vail  - meeting everyone who was anyone in the world of literature, art and culture.

She befriended artists Max Ernst (she was married to Ernst for a time), Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp and many in their circle, then rescued some of them and many works of art from the Nazis first with her gallery Guggenheim Jeune in London then in New York with Art of This Century, one of the first galleries to show modern European art in the US.  She went on to become the patron of promising post WWII American artists - notably Jackson Pollock - then packed up once again in 1949 and moved her formidable collection to Venice to her palazzo on the Grand Canal where she lived until her death in 1979.  

The palazzo is now the Peggy Guggenheim Collection museum and is one of my very  favorite places on earth.

Out of This Century is her own memoir and is an entertaining read and glimpse into the private life of this very extraordinary human being.

You Don't Have to Water Plasticine Flowers

  I've mentioned before my fangirly devotion to Top Gear presenter James May and he's just given me yet another reason to spread the love.  And yes I started this post a while ago.  It's been a week.  Facebook is just so much more facile for getting these things out quickly.  Without effort.  Hell.  At least it's not Twitter!

Anyway...  he won a special plasticine medal for his completely plasticine garden presented at the Chelsea Flower Show.  And presented Stephen Fry with a plasticine nosegay.  How very 'twee'!

I wish the plasticine Porsche competition had been open to non-Brits.  I could so get into that! I'd have at least come up with a plasticine Beetle.  Green, of course!

Soundtrack to Life #10

My Mom loved Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side - especially the part "and the colored girls go doot do doot do doot..." - until she really heard the lyrics for the first time.  After that she never mentioned it, but I think she still liked the song.  

Mom also liked Elvis Presley and a lot of cowboy singers from the 50's, her era.   She graduated Cathedral High School in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1956 then married my Dad two years later in an Italian wedding straight out of The Godfather.  (Minus the scene with Sonny and Lucy, I imagine.)  Even though my Grandparents weren't wealthy.  Even though she married someone from far away and not Italian.  Or Irish.  Or even Catholic until he converted.  Which was required to marry Mom.  No, they were very working class.  People did that in those days - big weddings.  

Mom got down to the business of being a wife and a mom and didn't really have a lot of time for music.  She brought the box of singles with her to Oregon.  We giggled at them in the 70's when they became uncool.  She got annoyed with us and put them away again.  They're probably worth a small fortune now.  Wherever they are.

We had odd albums in the house - Dominique by The Singing Nun; the soundtracks to The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins (which launched me into full on Julie Andrews fandom), the original cast recording of Hair, of all things, which came about when I asked for "Hair" from my other Grandma for a birthday present, meaning The Cowsills' hit version which I'd heard on a 45 while visiting my Mom's mom and her little brothers, my Uncles.   Grandma, not being used to buying singles, picked up the album.   Looking back on that, I'm really surprised Mom let me listen to it.   She didn't know that I looked up the word "sodomy" - the title to perhaps the most questionable song.  I looked up everything else quoted in the song as well.  And filed it away for later.

When the Uncles got old enough to road trip by themselves they came out and brought The Beatles, Cream, Santana and Iron Butterfly out with them - on 8 track tapes - and added to the musical soup that we'd brewed up on our own.  Mom liked Neil Diamond by then.  And Cat Stevens (though I was the one who owned the albums) and The Irish Rovers.  The Uncles stayed and added Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Pink Floyd and Seals and Crofts.

My brother and I were old enough to be adding our own collections to the mix - all of the popular 70's artists - and Mom had met and married a guy who brought along George Carlin albums so we learned the seven words you cannot say on television.  They were played openly at our house.

So it came as a small surprise when Mom stuck her head into John's door in protest at Frank Zappa's Catholic Girls, from Joe's Garage, streaming from his teenage bedroom.  Perhaps those lyrics were just a bit too much?  My brother, to his credit, did turn it down.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!  I miss you.  We turned out okay in spite of everything and I know you're proud of us.  I hope the music never stops where you are now and they play all of your favorites.

Soundtrack to Life #9

The Shins.  I love this song.  Their sound alternates between jangly pop-py cheerful things with high (male) harmonies alternating with beautiful minor key guitar lines tied to quirky poetic lyrics.  My kind of band!  

They're playing tonight at the Crystal Ballroom (2nd night in a row) and I'm too broke to go. 

Tried the Craigslist thing.   Here's my ad from this morning:

"It's late, true, and tonight's the last show and to top it all off I'm completely broke! But I so want to go! Is there anyone out there who would like the company of an engaging, short but cute, blonde Shins fan who could lie to you and say she's 39 (and you'd never know) but believes in honesty and will be glad to reciprocate with coffee, a show or ?? later, when the money's looking better, if the chemistry is right."

And I have to say I've gotten some interesting replies.  (This was posted to "Strictly Platonic", mind you...)

But the show is sold out and only one of the responders actually has tickets in hand. And he's got me completely intimidated coz he puts out such an aura of "I'm too hot for the likes of you" that he just might have to take the "lame co-worker" he referred to in his post advertising his availability.  Unless he manages to find someone bolder than I am.  He might. 

That's okay.  I'm home now and staying put for the night.