Stiggy Stocking Stuffers

Grrrrr...

The Top Gear UK site has great Stig key rings for a very modest GBP2.50 (actually only GBP2. if you buy three of them) but they won't ship to the United States.  Or they won't ship that item to the US.  A very nice customer service rep named Neil had just assured me that Marks & Spencer (who handle this part of the Top Gear merch ) will ship to the US.   So I set up my online Marks & Sparks account, picked out my merchandise - 2 key rings and Stig bubble bath! - and went to check out and pay and in big RED letters it said 'we're sorry but these items cannot be shipped to your country" or something similar.  

I e-mailed that to Neil and am waiting to hear what he says.

Meanwhile I am bidding on a toy car boat - James' Triumph Herald sailboat - on eBay UK, but that just went over GBP5.50 - US$13.75 before postage - and I'm sure there's somebody out there with an automatic bidding program bidding against me.  

Is this not cute? & of course it was James' which makes it the best by default.

Dang!  I just lost that auction - it went for GBP7.  There's another one up there - gotta go bid on it!  

Seemingly disparate things...

Lou Reed singing Sweet Jane.  Had this song stuck in my head for days last week.  This vid from NYC in 1998. 

One of my Mom's favorite songs when I was a kid was his Walk on the Wild Side.  Until she really heard the lyrics.   Until then she liked the part:  "...and the colored girls sing doo doo doo...".  

So while I'm stuck on childhood memories, over on Livejournal there's a poll of what character from a children's book would you be?  And Malcolm the kitten with the blue trumpet pops into my head.  Seriously.  I hadn't thought of that book for years. Probably hadn't thought of it since the last time I sat in the Ellis Parker Elementary School library reading it.  I even thought I might have dreamt it into reality because I couldn't find anything about it up on Wikipedia and precious little (after a HUGE search) on the web at all.  But I found a couple copies on eBay and bought a near mint copy of Malcolm Softpaws, copyright 1958 by Joe Bascom.  

 
This was the first "Malcolm" book!  This tells the story of how he got his blue trumpet.  The one I remembered was Malcolm's Job - where he played at Coney Island for the tourists.  There's a couple copies of that one floating around eBay and Amazon too, but they want $30.00 for them!  Yikes!  Revisiting childhood can be expensive.  

Hee! "Toot toot purr..."

When it came in the mail yesterday, I was surprised at how small the book is.  I swear it was a LOT bigger when I was 6!  I wonder if the author is the same Joe Bascom who is an artist known for crumpled paper bag paintings? Anybody know?  Who would you be if you could be any character from a book you liked as a kid?

On a more serious note, this week also marked the 45th anniversary of the day that President Kennedy was assassinated.  His funeral is the first thing that I really remember watching on t.v. That or perhaps Astro Boy cartoons in black and white.   

Some say that scent is the thing that will immediately transport one to places in the past.  For those of us born as late baby boomers or in subsequent generations media is going to turn out to be the mode of transportation back to our childhoods.

 

Cats & IKEA Frogs & Mice

Warning!  Cute overload pic coming up:

The Tabby Boys have taken to napping in my laundry basket.  I've got two things to say about that:  Thank heavens it's the dirty laundry and OMG we've got fleas!!!

So no more 'outside' privileges for Spencer & he got a dose of over the counter "Advantage" flea repellent.  Been combing out and drowning fleas found on Salvador.  He's 17 and 1/2 years old and much too old to be dosing with insecticides.  Gotta wash everything they've been on lately - cushion covers, throws, my bedding, their bedding.  Already washed all the laundry in the basket.

About to post these off to my new grand-niece.  Hell!  I knew I was a "great aunt" but I gave my little brother all kinds of sh*t for becoming a grandpa - now I find out I have a grand-niece.  I feel so old all of a sudden. 

Isabelle - born on October 6th. 

IKEA baby stuff!!!  I wish I'd bought more of the mice.  They're so cute!  & they were only a buck fifty each!   Could get a room-full of them for not very much money at all.

Here's Spencer trying to ignore three mice hanging out on his cushion.

NOT confiscated by Customs after all...

So I finally had to know and e-mailed James May's agent, a very nice lady named Fiona, who e-mailed back and said that yes indeed the Catnip Wrench (insert copywright symbol here) made it to England and has been handed off to Mr. May for his cat, Fusker.  

...I know he's incredibly busy and gets tons of fan mail he can't possibly answer, but I would be over the moon if I had a picture of him with Fusker and his wrench.

Birds, The Byrds, The Beatles & Hitchcock

Dang!  Spaced out the logo...

Okay so these aren't your usual 6 degrees sort of links.  They're a little oblique and undulating. The KatBox contribution, at Beth's invitation, to The Six Degrees of the GMMP 

Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians' 1991 Perspex Island, "Birds in Perspex" for the pretty Byrds-like guitar bits (I almost wanted to invoke "Turn, Turn, Turn" but it sounded stodgy and dated after all these years) played by Robyn himself with Andy Metcalf (an original Soft Boy) on acoustic - Peter Buck was (is?) an Egyptian, but he doesn't play on this track.

So, birds?  Pretty guitar bits?  Credited to Lennon & McCartney, "And Your Bird Can Sing", from Revolver, 1966 by the Fab Four was really John's songwriting credit alone and of course he sings the lead.  I love the interplay of George's and John's guitars - sweet little riff - more than you really wanted to know about it here.  I could have flipped these two songs -it's Robyn who sometimes channels Lennon, not the other way around - but I liked the way they sounded in the playlist with Robyn's first.

Cascading guitar runs and this time it IS Peter Buck.   R.E.M.'s "Pretty Persuasion" from 1984's Reckoning - right in the thick of their jangle pop period - love that chiming Rickenbacker and Bill Berry's driving, urgent beat - this sounds as if it could get away from them - but it doesn't quite and that just makes me love this song all the more.  Minor key changes, obscure lyrics, this is possibly my favorite single R.E.M. song (even if New Adventures in High Fi is still my favorite album). 

It's on 2004's In Rock, The Minus 5 covering "The Little Black Egg", The Nightcrawlers' mid 60's hit - I sure don't remember them, but then I was 6 in the mid 60's.   Links?  Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin - one official and two 'additional musician' members of R.E.M. who moonlight as The Venus 3 to back Robyn Hitchcock.  Musical links? Another great jangly guitar pop song, but this time it's Scott and former Model Rocket, current Tripwire lead singer John Ramberg playing the riffs.  I wish I had a pony for every time I've heard them sing this live.  Actually.  No. I don't.  But I still love this song.

More Lennon, but I was really thinking of Hunt Sales' drum intro and machine gun outro of Tin Machine's 1988 cover of his "Working Class Hero" on their eponymous first album.  The song as John Lennon sang it is quietly outraged, powerful.  This version gives it (bigger) balls and Bowie. 

More driving drums (Bill Rieflin this time) and a Beatle-esque Robyn sounding very Lennon (especially the line "...that'll do nicely, step this way sir, after you") "The Authority Box" from Ole Tarantula, 2006, Robyn Hitchcock and afore-mentioned Venus 3.  The song also contains one of the strangest/best lines in rock "F*ck me baby, I'm a trolleybus!" This is contemporary Hitchcock at its most wry and fun, but it wouldn't sound out of place on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

  

Barack Obama is the President Elect of The United States of America

YES WE CAN!

This is AWESOME!

& damn she's good! Doing better than Madonna did on this tune (but Antonio Banderas as Che was an inspired piece of casting IMHO) Actually.  That's not fair.  I really did like Madonna in Evita.

Work in Progress

...kilnformed glass can start out more like an exercise in collage.  Given the challenge of coming up with a 'demo' piece for my company's website featuring some new products, I first grabbed a bunch of random sized and colored circles of Uroboros System 96 thin transparent glass* and attached them to a square foot of 12-56-96 Black Streamer Bits on Clear (also Uroboros System 96 Fusible) in a pleasing pattern.  Note - the piece is upside down at this point.  I attached the clear 1.8mm thick circles to the 'bottom' of the Black/Clear because I want the depth of the clear on top.  I'll flip it to fire it.  Also.  I'm not. Done. Yet.

The entire 1 square foot piece.

A detail shot.

Hot glue works great for temporary attaching of elements to be fused.  It's sturdy enough to withstand some schlepping around of the piece - as long as you are reasonably careful.  I don't know if it's visible in the detail (it does enlarge if you click on it) but the glue is applied like sewn stitching of the circles onto the base glass.

In the next picture, I have 'flipped' the glass an am now working on the 'top' surface.  I have so far assembled (but not glued yet) "Noodles" and "Stringer" of glass in mostly clear as another layer of the piece.  I'm thinking of a textile-like final appearance.  So I'm not done yet.  These will be attached on one side only with the hot glue gun and then I'll see if I can 'weave' another layer at a 90 degree angle to the horizontal lines.  'cept I seem to have run out of clear Noodles...

The entire piece with first 'top' layer laid out.

& a detail of that.

Got a little gluing project ahead of me, but first I've gotta get outside to take care of the leaves in the yard before it starts raining again.  

*random sized circles don't just 'appear' of course - others are also working on demos and had cut some out & I cut some more too.  I'm all about the mini circle cutting tool!