Come heavy or don't come at all.

Yart!
Originally uploaded by less like math

In case you somehow haven't heard, or you forgot, or you just can't get enough of hearing about it:

Yart Sale!!!!
Sunday May 3rd (this weekend)
Birdhouse Gallery
1304 E. Cesar Chavez
9a.m. until 9ish p.m.

Here's a very incomplete list of people who will have wonderful pleasers for sale:

myself, of course
Summer Anne
Bopnnie Rue
Jeff Freeman
Kathleen Noble
plus:
Amarin Enyart
Kevin Foote
Michelle Foster
Flip Solomon
Clayton Kalman
Patton Quinn

and oh jeez, lotsa other people too!!!!!

There will be lots and lots of lovely things to buy. We're having a Tito's sponsored Bloody Mary Mix-off at noon. (Open entry, bring your own ingredients, we supply the vodka, bring enough to mix for three judges, more if you're feeling generous).

There's an art raffle going on all day and we'll draw winners at 6 p.m.
There are cupcakes and cookies and sweetie treats in the works, and otter pops, and beers, and artsy craftsies, and maybe a hand-over-mouth kissing booth, and whatever else we can think of to entertain you between now and then.

I'm really excited about this and you should all come and bring everyone you know. My mom is going to be there, if that's a selling point for anyone.

It will be a total circus and it will be really really super fun!!!!!

So come to Yart! Do it do it do it!!!!

Christian the lion and a lesson about friendship.

This is pretty much unbearably awesome to me. On just about every level that I have. There are plenty of versions of this same video/story on youtube that aren't set to the heart-curdling refrains of I Will Always Love You, but I can't imagine why you would prefer them. The song makes it. And if you don't think so then I don't even give a care. We can friend breakup if we need to. But then I'll just watch this video again and tearfully ask you if you're ready to reconnect.

YES!!!!

YART YART YART!!!!!

Just in case you haven't heard about it elsewhere, I am putting together (with a lot of help from a lot of people) a YART sale!! It will all happen on Sunday May the 3rd at Birdhouse Gallery (1304 E. Cesar Chavez) and it'll be going on from about 9 in the a.m. until whenever Kevin makes us all go home.


This is your advance notice.


I'm not generally a planner of things. I occasionally have good ideas but I generally like to just pass them off to other people to accomplish. I'm trying to do better here and so far it all seems to be coming together nicely. The basic plan is simple, part yard sale part art sale. There will be a lot of people participating so there will be all sorts of different things for sale. There will be lots of art, of course, and there will be clothes and music and toys and baked goods and popsicles and beer and at least one kiddie pool and a polaroid photobooth. The latest edition to the days festivities is a Bloody Mary Cook-off, sponsored by Tito's (that part isn't quite finalized, so fingers crossed!!).

In short it is shaping up to be one of the best days ever. We're still looking for people to participate so if you're reading this and have yard sale wares or art or better yet BOTH, you should email me and get on the bus! Everyone else, you should just plan on attending.

I'll remind you about a million more times before the actual day, don't worry. I'll also have more firm info on the Bloody Mary Cook-off very soon if you're interested in participating in that. I'll also have fliers that weren't created using Microsoft Paint pretty soon too. I think we're all looking forward to that.

Damn flier.

And there'll be sun sun sun all over our bodies...

Hey you guys!! Guess what!!

Summertime has made it's way to Austin, TX. And it's only April! Thank you global warming. Finally getting a little return on those Aqua Net years.

For seriously serious though, summertime is my favorite time and summertime in Austin just can't be beat. Ever since I was a little girl I've always looked forward to summer with stomach churning anticipation and that's still the way things are today. Holla back, summer babies.

Last year I made a list of summer '08 official things and while it's a bit early to make my list for summer '09, I do want to post last year's winners. We'll see a little later in the season which ones hold up.



the official yellow shorts of summer '08.

a few more:

official adult beverage: vodka & blue powerade
official song: 5 Years Time by Noah and The Whale
official everyone beverage: water
official passtime: swimming in pools that aren't yours
official vehicle: trucks
official grooming habit to give up: washing your hair
official confection: two ball screwball (mo!!!)
official bedtime: never, apparently.
official comeback: taking pictures of oneself


I can already tell you that the vodka/powerade combo (since named Blue Ruin) has some stiff competition from Paul's homemade margaritas. And the Noah and the Whale song will most likely be beat out by the Chad VanGaalen song Cries of the Dead. I'm almost ready to just go ahead and call that the official but it's a tight race between that song and Phosphorescent's cover of Pick Up the Tempo so we'll just have to wait and see. The official yellow shorts, as much as I love them, will sadly not be the official shorts of this summer because at thrift the other day I picked up a killer pair of blue and white American Apparel running shorts that are perfectly short and say "JELLYFISH!!" on the booty part. There is absolutely no way around them winning official shorts. On the sub-topic of summer time garb, I will have to make a new category so that this amazing skort can be an official. Maybe just, official article of clothing!!!


It was designed by the lovely and talented Bonnie Rue and it's your lucky day because they are up for sale on her website right this very minute. Go getcha some at Model Citizen Clothing! While you're there you might want to put some serious thought into picking up a few other fancies cause she's got lotsa new stuff up and it's all pretty much too awesome to be believed. (Hint: Bake & Destroy t-shirt / secret cupcake recipe combo!!!!)

Back to summertime and how great it is? Okay!

"I would rather be swimming" and "I would rather be laying out" are pretty much constant mantras for me during the summer months. A bathing suit, a body of water, a cold Lonestar and the smell of suntan oil make me a happy happy girl. I spent years of my life hating on the concept of "laying out". This was ridiculous on my part. Totally ridiculous. There are very few things in the world that feel better than the above described scenario. Some of my favorite childhood memories involve being at the lake in Cisco, Texas and hanging out with my mom and my aunt while they were laying out. They would make this concoction of baby oil and iodine and grease up and hang out in those awesome plastic tubing lawn chairs for hours, with me right there alongside (properly sunblocked, i'm sure). For the life of me I can't imagine why they added the iodine to the baby oil and neither of them can remember either. Seeing as it's not the 80's anymore I would recommend taking a pass on the baby oil and going for my favorite summertime product:


It has a little bit of SPF, which is better than none I guess, but most of all it just smells like summertime. It is the official smell of summer. Every summer.

So here's to summer time y'all! Here's to swimming and sunshine and crazy heat and margaritas and shorts and Barton Springs and not washing your hair and zinc on your nose and happy songs in your speakers and flippy floppies and anything else you love about it!!!

I Want To Do This With You. (and you and you and you and you and you...)

This is a new (?) T-mobile commercial that obvs originally aired in the UK. I suppose it's not actually that "new" but it's new to me and it'll prolly be new to at least a couple of my many thousands of readers. Okay, so yeah, this is probably where you remind me that it's an advertisement. T-mobile spent a lot of time and monies to make this happen so that hundreds of people would pull out their cell phones and take pictures and videos and send them to lots of people and then we see that and we're like "oh yeah!! joy happens because of cell phones, I almost forgot!". They're manipulating me into buying what they sell. But, you joyless naysaying hater of fun, T-mobile is already my cell phone provider so I'm not really being manipulated here. I can just enjoy it.

I can't stress enough how much I love the concept of lots of people seemingly spontaneously busting a move. The first time I watched this video this morning I cried a little. Then a little more the second time. By the third time I managed not to cry at all but I do feel like crying a little as I'm typing this. I am not joking, it just makes me REALLY REALLY happy. When was the last time you cried from joy? Think hard. I bet it was awhile ago. If you're anything like me, it's probably about to happen again. Watch the video. Then we can learn this dance together!!! Or we can make up a different dance!!! And we can teach it to a lot of people!!! And we can just up and start doing it somewhere one day!!! We will need a boombox!!!

We are going to do this. Me and every last one of you. I mean it.

The Sweetest Songs...

Fact: I am creeped out to some degree by almost all 50's and 60's candy coated pop songs.

For a long time I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized that I'm creeped out by the genre because for as long as I've been old enough to appreciate movies for reasons other than whether or not they feature one of the Coreys people have been using these songs as the soundtrack for horrific things happening onscreen. Maybe to you this seems obvious and not really something that one would have to "realize" necessarily, but I was pretty proud of myself. It all makes perfect sense, of course. All of those songs, especially the ones bemoaning broken hearts, are so sweetly melodramatic. You can't really pull that off anymore. These days if you're making a song that is supposed to say "you leaving me has put me in a really dark place and now there's no telling what I might do" you basically just have to say it. Back then you could say some really dark stuff but shroud it in taffeta and backing vocals and hairspray and make the Top 40. I find that really appealing. If Tragic Twee had a soundtrack it would all be 50's and 60's pop music. I'm listening to a lot of it today and you should too. Later maybe we can get together and hang ourselves with our ex-boyfriends' letterman sweaters.

some personal favorite examples:
(feel free to contribute)

Of course:


had End of the World by Skeeter Davis



had Bang Bang by Nancy Sinatra

and last but not at all least


had Without You by Harry Nilsson


I want more!!!!