Ru-Paul and Other Distractions. (Blogstalking week 4 AND 5)

I hate traffic, my filthy windshield, and sunrise. Now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, let me tell you about what I love. What I love is things that are completely random. Like this weekend. This was a hella random weekend. Friday night I was out with Lucky. It was an entire night devoted to driving around to creepy places. Those creepy places included the most enormous cemetery ever to go completely unnoticed by everyone I've asked about it. This place is HUGE. I can't even begin to explain the extreme largeness. As a matter of fact it's actually two cemeteries that sort of run into each other and three mausoleums. One of the mausoleums is a three story building that at first we thought couldn't possibly be what it was, it was just too big. The other two are smaller two story deals though smaller is a completely relative term, they're still larger than most suburban apartment complexes in this area. The thing that's so crazy random about the place is that it's on two main roads and yet no one seems to know it's there. We also hit up an apartment building that Lucky says would be his top choice for locations to shoot a slasher flick in. I agree, the place is like a tiny Winchester mansion. The stairs alone are just bizarre (two sets right next to each other that never intersect and you can't see one from the other but they lead to the exact same spot) then you throw in exterior walls on the inside of the building, a rickety fire escape, all the blind corners (and by that I mean all the corners are blind corners, I bet it makes moving in and out a bitch) a great view of the city, and the fact that you never see any of the residents of the place and you've got yourself a movie. I wish I had thought to bring my camera but that's the theme of the weekend, randomness and me kicking myself for forgetting the camera. Saturday we went to the barber shop and they invited us to their anniversary shindig that night. Red Todd Kidd and I tried to find a sitter but couldn't so he bade me take up with Kaylee and go forth to this rockabilly show. So we did. Adventure ensued. First we went to the Tower Bar where this thing was taking place. They were playing the most campy and strange D-movies on the tv in the corner, almost everyone in the place was drinking tall boys of PBR, and the whole place looked like a casting call for West Side Story 2 (Which I'm sure would have the same basic plot as West Side Story except it'd be set in present day and the tension would be between hardcore rockabilly kids and apathetic emo hipsters fighting over who gets to be pretentious in the town's diviest dive bar. Then one pretty little cutting emo girl in horn rim glasses with no prescription and an outfit that probably cost $300 trying to get it to look like it came from a thrift store locks eyes with a vintage car driving, leather jacket wearing, James Dean wannabe who clearly spends most of his time on ebay looking for vintage pomade to rock in his pompadour and doomed romance blooms, I hate to spoil the ending for you but they both die, she slits her wrists with one of his vintage Elvis records then he puts her dead body in the car with him and drives off a cliff). Kaylee and I sat there, sat there, sat there, watched a reenactment of the Outsiders when a rumble broke out just near the door, sat there, sat there, sat there, got drinks spilled on us, sat there, sat there, and sat there. Since after all that sitting the band STILL hadn't gone on and it was damn near midnight, we took off. We had a mind to head to this piano bar Kaylee's been talking about but we never made it there. You see, we got caught up in a weird midnight traffic fiasco that was being caused by some random side street being blocked off. As we were stopped we heard an amplified voice ring out through the night, "Yes, hello everyone! I'm Ru-Paul Superstar of the world!" (or whatever the hell that catchphrase of his is) and we decided we had to find out if it was really him. So we parked around the corner and wandered back to discover some charity event drag show with Ru-Paul on stage in a wig he'd clearly gotten at Dolly Parton's last yard sale and more pink sequins than I thought existed this side of Key West. Spectacular. Truly. But we were hungry and our curiosity was sated so we left and stumbled on to a little 24 hour diner where we spent the next hour eating the most awesome sandwiches and talking to three complete strangers about porn among other things. After that I was drunk dialed by The Cowardly Lion who simply read me the definition of drunk dialing followed by the definition of a booty call. So we went over to his house and hung out with him and his wives for a little bit. Yes, I said wives, they've been watching too much Big Love over there. Sunday was for geocaching with the family which was pretty cool, actually. RTK's been on me to try it out for awhile so we got a GPS and went and did one. The kids loved it. I'd go into more detail but my fingers may fall off from all the typing. I'll blog some pics of that another day. Anyway, the three things I love (in case you don't get the pictures): October, my daughter trying to throw up the horns, and National City Municipal Code 11.68.050 which prohibits "cruising" and leads to those goofy signs all up and down Highland Avenue, it always cracks me up. Also you'll see my blogstalking week 5 assignment which requires I photograph a statue. I found this copse of angels quite by accident in the aforementioned giant cemetery when Lucky and I went back Sunday afternoon. Technically you're not supposed to photograph people's headstones but I cropped out the ones you could read. The statues stand out because the whole area they're in is plain as hell except this group of statues all crowded together like some sort of saint convention.

Not Irish

I'm not Irish. Not even a little bit. Nope. So of course last night I went out to celebrate St, Patrick's Day with the horde of other non-Irish people who use it as an excuse to drink copious amounts of all manner of booze and throw up in their friend's cars/lawns/beds etc. I didn't see a single person throw up this year so I consider it a majorly successful evening. I also remember most of the stuff that happened so another success right there. Of course I was dead to the world until well after 9am today but the kids didn't complain too much about their late breakfasts. Anyway, every two days after the ides of March one of my oldest friends both literally and chronologically, in fact for the blog here we'll call him Methuselah, throws a party to celebrate his drunken heritage. He happens to be Irish but he also happens to be a drunkard and that second thing is what he's celebrating before you get your hackles up and get all pissy about Irish bashing or some such (and by the way, Methuselah's little brother The Cowardly Lion also just as Irish and somehow never as drunk, I'm just saying). I see I've lost my point, has anyone seen it anywhere? I seriously doubt it but hell, it never hurts to ask. Oh yeah, Methuselah threw a party as he is wont to do. Methuselah's parties are generally the most random I've ever been to. You never know who you'll run into from what phase of your life. Sometimes that's cool but more often than not it's incredibly awkward. Occasionally it leads to Lucky Champagne having a throw down while Napoleon and I scream insults at people. I gotta tell you, that's some role reversal, Lucky is much more an insulter and Napoleon and I are not shy with the face punching. Moderately amusing aside, the throw down mentioned above took place for a number of reasons which mostly involved some idiot punching Lucky in the stomach for no real reason but also because Napoleon decided that some other idiot wasn't allowed to talk to or about me in the particularly insulting manner in which he had been. I find that funny because the last time I got into a fight it was partly because some bitchy girl was talking about Napoleon in a similar manner (also I punched her boyfriend for grabbing my ass and she was pissed about it, you know, like you do). See, this is why none of you six or seven readers would really want to know me in the real world, clearly I don't abide there. The more I blog about my life instead of my knitting the more charming I sound, right? So last night Red Todd Kidd, Lucky, Kaylee, Edina and I all head out into the unkown of Methuselah's place. I'm happy to report there was no fighting not screaming of insults and we all had a pretty good time. But then again, I haven't heard from anyone yet today and it's entirely possible that my version of events has nothing to do with reality, it wouldn't be the first time. I bet you're wondering what the hell this post is about and what it has to do with anything. Sadly, there is no point. I was just posting because I had a few minutes and it's been awhile and also if I ramble about this I won't have to dig out the pictures of RTK's socks I've been meaning to post for hella days. I hate loading pictures.

You can't take us anywhere.

I have no knitting to show off today. I need to finish the Clown College (aka Auspicious Coincidences) Sweater by Sunday but I hate working on it so I have no idea if that will happen. I've been adding an inch to the sleeves for the past two days but that means they're only 3" long now. Too many ends. Never again! Since I have no knitting to speak of I'll tell you about my weekend in Maryland a few weeks ago. I went out to visit my friend Tonka who's going through a hellish divorce. The blonde in the picture with him is his cousin who for the duration of this story shall be known as Syrrah (she's from Texas, as is Tonka) because throught the story I'd like to tell she was hammered, though you could probably tell by the fact that she's trying to do bunny ears on him from like 25 feet away. Anyway, on Saturday night Tonka decided we should all just drink. That was the plan. I am not good at adhering to any plan no matter how simple. In order to foul up this very simple evening I got another friend of ours who lives one state over to drive down and hang out with us, Garrison Keillor (so called because of his very soothing almost condecending NPR type of voice). That in and of itself didn't ruin Tonka's evening in the bottle, it was the fact that GK arrived hungry thus forcing us all to go eat something which involves driving, an activity that is notoriously incompatable with drinking. Well, Kaylee (a lightweight) and Syrrah had both had a few drinks before we left and Syrrah only weighs about 12 pounds so she was tipsy, add to that some kind of fruity pink drink at the restaurant and you have a recipe for entertainment value. Especially at the place we went to: a Japanese Hibachi place where the chef cooks the food at your table. If you haven't been to a place of this type I'll describe it for you: The hibachi table sort of 'C' shaped and the chef stands inside of it at the grill which is a stainless steel sheet. Around the outside edge is a counter/bar where the patrons sit. There was room at our table for eight people, since there were only five of us another (unfortunate) couple had been seated at the other end. The chef will make all of the food with great showmanship, spinning and cracking eggs with his (butcher's) knife and chopping up an onion and stacking it so it looks like a volcano (they spray something flamamble in it and fire shoots out the top). Seating chart: Veggie Lady, Veggie Man, empty seat, Kaylee, GK, Me, Syrrah, Tonka So we're all sitting at this table with some people we've never met and come to find out that the couple is vegetarian and won't eat anything that touches our food because it ours has meat in it. Kaylee mocked those people for the rest of the night. I'm not sure whether or not they heard her. Now you as readers of my blog, know that I can be an asshole, what you don't know is that Kaylee is never like that. She's sweet and wonderful and generally the kind of person that you want to hate for her multi-multitalented ability to do absolutely anything but you can't hate her because she's just so damn wonderful. It would seem that hard cider really takes care of that because she was just merciless with her comments all night. Made funnier by the fact that she was using a poor stage whisper to say them which I couldn't hear since she was on the side I don't hear well from so then GK had to repeat it all for me. Meanwhile, Syrrah is sucking down her fruity pink drink. As the chef, a terse but otherwise pleasant Japanese man, finished up our food and packed up his cart to move on to the next table Syrrah says to him, "Uno mas onion volcano!" in her flat voweled Texan accent. The confused chef looks at her bows his head and keeps going so she shouts after him, "UNO MAS!" and continutes to shout it about three or four more times as he walked away prompting me to turn to her and remind her that he probably doesn't speak Spanish as GK and I laugh uncontrollably. For the rest of the night we randomly shouted out "UNO MAS!" whenever things were getting dull and started cracking up all over again. After dinner we gathered at Tonka's place for the drinking to commence and ended up playing Asshole, a drinking card game which no ammount of explaination could make Syrrah understand. I won't go into the specifics of the game but if you've played it you know about the ranks and everything. She was the asshole for most of the game and just couldn't stop running her mouth to the President. I think she went and passed out at like 9:30. And that's what I did on my summer vacation.

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!

God I hate sewing. I hate everything about it. I hate cutting out patterns. I hate not being able to find the good scissors. I hate cutting out the fabric with the teeny-tiny scissors that for some reason are the only ones that can cut fabric. I hate lugging the sewing machine out of the top of the closet. I hate trying to find the bobbins. I hate winding bobbins. I hate trying to sew around a curve. I hate having to iron all the seams. I hate having to start all over because I did something stupid 15 minutes in to a three hour project. I hate sewing. I think this is because I'm not any good at it. I have no formal training. I have no innate ability. I also have a friend who is a sewing godess. She called me this evening and in the course of conversation revealed that she made a Victorian bustle skirt in one night, without a pattern. I'm sure it's perfect, or at least looks it. She probably looks even taller and thinner and more fabulous in it too. Because she's just one of those people that's good at everything and always looks fabulous. If I didn't love her, I'd hate her. But you can't hate Kaylee. She's too awesome to hate. In fact, if she were here she'd have made this whole damn Leia costume for me in a half hour without so much as a complaint. I'm alternately wistful and bitterly jealous. Especially when the first thing Red Todd Kidd asks whenever I start any project that isn't knitted is: "Did you call Kaylee?" Regardless of how valid a question it is or how poor my sewing skills are or how much I hate sewing it still bugs me that he thinks I can't do anything without her help. So what if it's totally true! He shouldn't know it and he certainly shouldn't say it! What a jerk. As you may have guessed. I drafted out my paper bag pattern for the Leia costume. Twice, as a matter of fact. The first time I didn't account for seam allowances. Yeah, I totally rule. I've gotten so far as cutting out the fabric pieces. Tomorrow comes the ever more entertaining task of ironing all the pieces and sewing them together. Sigh. I wish Kaylee was here...

Kaylee is Tempting

Oh yeah, that's it. It my finished Tempting as modeled by it owner, Kaylee. I'm very pleased with the way it fits. I was worried it was too big, then worried it was too small but look, it fits just right! Here's a detail pic of the pin I used instead of a bow. Okay, I have important moving to do (as you can probably see from the boxes in the background).