Just Saw..

..The documentary Grey Gardens. Little Edie is a trip and she's quoted in Rufus Wainwright's song called "Grey Gardens".

"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present."

She says this decked out in one of her "costumes". Brilliant. She's my new fashion hero. Assuming I had one before her. I thinks it's all in the sweater wrapped around the waist over the stockings. Or maybe in the renegade turban. Could be either, really.

elliot the model

fashion
Originally uploaded by th3ph17.

Elliot is a fantastic model, however, she doesn't get up for less than 10,000 dollars. Needless to say, Julie and I have A LOT of clothes to make and sell as we are now in hopeless debt. But, at least we got THE model of the moment. We wouldn't settle for less.

Wuv, Twue Wuv

A few days ago I went with Phil to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If anyone knows me they know that this was an act of true love. We walked home after the movie (walking is The Way) and my feet were hurting so horribly from the most horribly adorable shoes that Phil offered me his. While Phil HAS tried on a pair of my shoes, just to see how masochistic women really are (gender stereotype, I know, I have to balance out hyper-feminist-consciousness on campus with ignorant belligerence off), he was unwilling to put his feet in my death-traps-for-shoes to walk home. So, he walked home in his socked feet. This is our way of balancing out the universe; you see a movie you know you'll hate, I'll walk home in socks. It's like an hour of Kurosawa for an hour of Bertolucci.

Ode To Birds

Birds have been attacking people in Santa Cruz. I was one of them. I was walking home from Longs and I apparently came too close to somebody's love nest and was scratched on the top of my head by an evil bird. I have a history with evil birds. Let me elaborate.

The sleeping conditions one lives in when one sleeps in the same room as Phil and Tawny are less than stellar. We talk in our sleep, walk in our sleep, elbow each other, and encounter spiders dangling above our heads (I'll tell that story soon, it's a doosey). We also see evil doves. Or, at least, I do. I did. Once.

I was sleeping soundly when a stirring woke me up. I awoke to find an Evil Dove staring me right in the eyes. It was perched on the side of the bed, arching its little evil head towards me; watching me while I slept and plotting to pluck my eyes out. I immediately scrambled to the foot of the bed and hit Phil's legs until he woke up to find me balanced on my tip toes and my fingers, still on the bed, still staring at the Evil Dove as I shook like a leaf. Phil began to try to comfort me and coax me down from my perch-ed state when I heard a low, guttural moan coming from the depths of the dove's evilness. I was convinced that it was a battle cry. I was convinced that an Evil Dove had made its way into my home to terrorize me. I CANNOT EXPRESS TO YOU HOW REAL THESE FEELINGS WERE, HOW TERRIFIED I REALLY WAS.

SO, turns out that the Evil Dove was really a water bottle sitting on the nightstand, very near the bed. The cap was the Evil Dove's head and the body was the plastic bottle. The low guttural moan was a car revving its engine outside our apartment complex. Yeah, all that drama for nothing. Needless to say, I now have a special relationship with birds and the attack on Sunday was just the icing on the cake, the cherry on the Sunday, the cap on the bottle. Quick, Quick! Name one pet I will never have!!

Boobies

So, apparently when one wears a cotton shirt, bra-less in the morning cool on Pacific Ave. one might as well put a sign on one's chest that says; "Go ahead, berate me! I want you to! I love being ogled and called honey-lips!" I mean, don't we all? It's not that I'm some kind of beauty queen; I'm a little too intelligent to think they're struck by my ravishing beauty, rather, I think they just like making someone feel small and ashamed.

I remember being completely flabbergasted when men started cat-calling to me in public when I was around 12 (I was tall for my age). It was my first inkling of feminist consciousness; I realized what it was to have a body that was not wholly my own--men seemed to have access to it verbally as if I was a pair of shoes or a necktie--"nice shoes, where'd you get them?" "hey baby, nice ass, you gonna share with me?"

Besides, what's the deal? Do they think I'm going to say "YES! FINALLY! A man who knows how to talk to me! Let me run home and dump my husband so I can shack up with you!!!"?

Madly juggling my marriage and career (don't I sound fancy)

This Sunday is Craftalicious! I haven't spoken to Phil for days because I've been hovering above my sewing machine and sifting through vintage buttons while stamping away furiously with my new Armour sans Anguish stamp--it's been going on everything. I'm surprised I didn't send Phil out the door this morning (hey, I'm a good housewife, bite me) with a beautifully font-ed "Armour sans Anguish" right across his forehead. Good advertising, you know.

elliot

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Originally uploaded by graphics84.

Elliot was and is the original AsA muse. Apparently Southern California has swallowed her up, but I still think of her when I'm sewing or trying to speak Spanish. She is absolutely the reason I started sewing. She was like "ok, we've started a clothing company" like she was deciding to have tofutti for dessert, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I totally love her for that. I love that she's more interested in saving the world than making clothes and I love that she was cool with me making clothes as a way to save the world one sweatshop-free tutu at a time. I love that things worked out this way because Julie and I hooked up under AsA and things are a-rockin'. A picture of Elliot is on my fridge and she's wearing the shirt she made that says "paz con una pistola en la mano es guerra." It inspires me every day.

On getting Hitched

On the list entitled "The Most Trying Experiences Of My Life", right below "learning how to be a beatbox master" and right above "unlearning everything the Bible taught me" lies "learning how to be one half of a marriage." It fully freaks me out sometimes; the planning, the baby talk (oh, I'm starting mad rumors), the fighting. Phil and I don't really fight as much as we discuss things intermittently at elevated volumes. I take the volume thing back, I've actually never heard Phil yell. I'm the yeller. Just me. We're both pouters, we pout like crazy at each other over things like which movie to rent from Cedar Street Video where the video guy looks and acts just like Philip Seymore Hoffman. We both love him--ahh, agreement. We pout over what to eat for dinner because Phil would rather put his head in a meat grinder than utter a declarative sentence. We pout over the construction of www.armoursansanguish.com, seeing as it is a collaborative effort and we are artists (who call themselves "artists"...oh LORD) who have things called "visions." Our visions are bullshit excuses for arguments and disagreements because sometimes I think we secretly thrive on some good old-fashioned bickering. One thing we do not pout about is politics. This is key. My new mantra is "I want PEACE in my home!" and I shout this very unpeacefully at anyone who thinks it's passe that a person's political persuasion is reason enough to date (or not date) that person. I'm all for pre-nuptial political screening. I say we should strap our significant others to political-affiliation-detection machines and make sure that the future will not hold political pouting matches. Especially when you have dinner to argue about.