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!!!!

a litte salt - revisited.

crappy letter
Originally uploaded by less like math

Things in Rissaland have been really crazy lately. I feel like every aspect of my life has crashed down around me and then built back up and then crashed again, just in the last 72 hours. There are so many people that I want to help and be there for and have a positive impact on and I'm not sure that I'm accomplishing that with anyone.

Seeing as I refuse to emote about my personal life in this blog I'm instead posting something that I love and that makes me think and that I didn't write. The following was written by my Summer Anne and I hope she doesn't mind my posting it. (You don't......do you?) The first time I read this I really needed to read it and I feel like I really need to read it today and I feel like some of you guys might feel that way too.

a little salt


A boy we’ll never know who’s locked himself in a cabin says what we’ve been trying to for years now: “I told you to be patient; I told you to be fine; I told you to be balanced; I told you to be kind. Now all your love is wasted? Then who the hell was I? Now I'm breaking at the britches and at the end of all your lines” Yeah, that’s it. There’s a mistake I make all the time in which I think that if you love a song that’s in the same shape as my heart, you might start to understand me a little along the way. It never works out like that. Music is just music, and that time I waited was wasted.


The asphalt on my feet and my phone hot on my ear asks “why don’t anyone’s relationships ever work?” I wish I had an answer to that question that isn’t one of the same things we’ve said a dozen times. I wish I had the answer she wants to hear. On the other side of town and the other side of my conversation, blue eyes fill with tears and Willie Nelson sings along.


Later, Hamilton Leithauser sings a Leonard Cohen song I’d forgotten. It goes “We swore to each other that our love would surely last. You kept right on loving me and I went on a fast. Now I am too thin, your love is too vast.” At least Hamilton and Leonard know what they have done. The weight of it all shows up in their eyes. Look for it.


“Why does it matter so much?”, someone asks or wants to. Someone who can fill up all the empty space inside of them by themselves, with words and pictures and songs and video games and ice cream. We reply or want to: it matters because we are vessels and we are water. We want to drink, and we want to be drunk. We are parched, and we are flooding. We have love that will replace the blood in our veins and stop our heartbeat if we can’t breathe it into someone’s mouth soon.


“Elliott says that most men just can’t be as committed as the women in relationships and that’s why it doesn’t work.” Thanks, Elliott. We all figured that out when our dad’s were gone on business for our entire lives, and the first time our first loves looked past our eyes when we were speaking and fixed on a foreign body, and we figured it out when we got left & left & left & left.


We wish we could love the rare exceptions, but it never works out that way because the world is too mean. The truth is that they’re out there. Way past the love we examine every day and all of the endings that make us wring our hands and tearducts, there’s a small army of boys who want us. They aren’t the ones we chose. When they’re asleep, we don’t stay awake staring and imagining ways for them to wake up to the world they want to live in. They’re just asleep, and soon enough we are too. When we kiss them because of whiskey, our bodies don’t change and the world doesn’t spin. When we try to explain, we’re sad -- but only because it reminds us of you (and you and you), and your explanations or lack-of.


We speak of silver linings. “Once you’ve had your heart broken once – really broken – no one can ever hurt you like that again.” But then you walk around in my brain for awhile and it all the knobs I’d switched to off get turned on again and suddenly we’re back where we started. It’s like you’re born over and over again every day, week, or year. You’re less beautiful each time around but my chest tightens it’s grip around my heart just the same and I’m too tired to notice anymore All I can do is love you, love you, love you, over and over, like a rat towards an electric current. Loving him is loving you five years ago. Loving you is loving you five years ago. Waking up is loving you five years ago.


They’re all the same. They’re not as special as we think they are, but writing that down feels like a lie and it won’t ever feel true. They could all be better than they are and they never will be. They will all miss us someday and be unable to figure out that they don’t have to. They won’t love anyone any more than they loved us, but that’s meaningless because they’re broken and the love they have to give is weak and pitiful.


When they are bored or lonely enough someday, they will take a pale photocopy of what they had with us to the altar. We ask them to call us up and let us have that chance, but the world doesn’t work that way and all we get in response is a distant stare -- someone we love’s eyes fixed on a wall that represents the future they don’t want us in because it’s all become too difficult and love isn’t supposed to be difficult. Except that it is.


It’s all arbitrary and meaningless. We find each other and we talk about it until our throats hurt, we talk to boys we pretend could replace you, we talk about those boys and encourage each other to pretend, and then we go home alone where we find you in a song or a computer screen or a memory. We lay down with it and we hold on. Sometimes we send words into space and hope that you’ll read them and hold on to them and maybe we’ll feel it somehow. Really we’re just vibrating on your bedside table, quivering and shaking like the night you left us, and you’re ignoring it, wincing, looking and looking away, dreaming of something bright and new.


“You deserve better,” says every boy who ever walked away.

“If I deserve better, why can’t I have you?”
“…”


The sun started coming out just as I was finishing this. The cheesy faux-significance of that is breaking my heart.