PuffyAmiYumiYummy

I’ve been wanting any PuffyAmiYumi CD for a while, but music and wine are indulgences I’ve cut from my domestic budget for the rest of the year. So imagine my delight when I discovered Thomas had PuffyAmiYumi’s An Illustrated History in the pile of give-aways for our Trivia Night last Friday. I felt a slight bit of guilt in lifting it, but he assured me it was okay. Tonight, on my way home from the Chocolate Bar (AFTER working at Mad Art AFTER working at my corporate job) I had a chance to listen to it in its entirety, due to a serious car wreck on highway 44 around midnight. (Car wrecks are the only occasion when I display the sign of the cross. I’m not even Catholic, but when I come across a wreck I feel so helpless and so badly, I don’t really know what else to do. So I do the cross thing. My other weird superstitious car habit it avoiding black cats. Once, a black cat crossed my path on 12th Street so I turned right onto Lami and took 13th down to Lynch to get to Mad Art. I figure if there’s an easy alternate route, why chance it?) So…to get back to PuffyAmiYumi. This is good stuff. Sort of a cross between ABBA, Book of Love, and ELO. I know that whole “a cross between” thing is the cheap, easy way out to music and movie criticism—but music, like movies and wine, are topics that I have always wished I knew more about. I enjoy them all so much, but they are topics so vast. I know my mind cannot take up scholarship at this level—not at my age. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the art, literature, and pop culture that I love. So I know just enough to get by. And PuffyAmiYumi is music to get by with—pure indulgent fun that reminds me of a million other things but yet sounds incredibly fresh and fantastic. I especially enjoy Puffy De Rumba (track 7). So I highly recommend this CD and also apologize that this review is like a page from Nicholson Baker’s Mezzanine, rift with parentheticals, footnotes, and personal anecdotes. But since this is one of my favorite books, I suppose it isn’t such a bad thing either.

52nd City

I don’t think I mentioned my involvement with 52nd City on my blog, although it is elsewhere on my website. So…Thomas Crone, Stefene Russell and I are commenting on variety of local pop cultural topics which can be found at www.blog.52ndcity.com or through stlsyndicate.com. We are working on several other projects, such as the 2nd Annual Kick Ass Awards, which will take place November 11th at Urbis Orbis, and a print magazine, which will launch in January 2006. We are raising money for these efforts at the upcoming Mad Art Trivia Night. We have just a few tables left, so gather some friends and join us.

What a Beauty!

I purchased a vintage ANSCOFLEX II camera over the weekend. For $20 I got the camera, carry strap, leather case, flash attachment, six flash bulbs, instruction booklet, and six rolls of film (marked 33 cents and dated 1955). It is a beauty! Inside the camera was a roll of exposed film, which I learned from Creve Coeur Camera must be mailed off to someplace in Colorado for developing (how exotic!). I shot two rolls of the 1955 film that came in the case just to see what would happen. My brother has a new ATV-type thing so Lindsey, Karen, and I took it out to the pasture for a cow and cloud photoshoot. Those will be back on Monday. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out. While I’m pretty confident in my eye, the science and mechanics of photography intimidated me for a long time. I’m too impatient to deal with F-stops, film speed and the like. But the Holga I bought last summer really inspired me to experiment more and I’ve had satisfying results. And now the Ansco II. I'm really jazzed. And there are a plethora of toy camera sites that keep me going.

www.Toycamera.com
http://www.makinghappy.com/archive/holga.php
http://www.theholgasmers.org/#
http://www.geocities.com/gheedon/Holga/

Sloggy Days

I’ve been sloggy all week—a cross between slothful and groggy. But I feel good about behind the scenes progress on 52ndcity projects. This morning I’m taking a quick breakfast break before heading to my parents for the weekend. My parents live in Cole Camp, a small town about 15 minutes away from Sedalia, host of the Missouri State Fair. http://www.mostatefair.com/. So I plan to attend and anticipate some great people watching. I imagine thick blonde adolescents carrying paper plates of fried twinkies to the bleachers to watch truck and tractor pulls, dusty-faced cowboys wearing stiff wranglers in the heat, and all over the midway--meth heads with misspelled homemade tattoos. I CAN’T WAIT! I have packed 8 rolls of film and plenty of it for the Holga. I need to buy another Holga because so I can have one loaded with color and one with black and white. Ok…I’m headin’ out.

Hair Today

When it comes to hair stylists, I just can’t be true. Over the weekend, I cheated on my super cool stylist of over two years, Amanda. She hadn’t grown complacent or unappreciative. She was still giving good style. But the temptation of something better lured me to The Electric Chair on Hampton, across from Bartolino’s. Maybe it was the edgy name. Maybe it was the cheeky pinup girl logo. Maybe it was the swell of admiration and jealously every time I ran into Jess over the last 6 months. When I marveled at her hair for the millionth time, she confessed she’d been going to the Chair, so I made an appointment with Andrea (same name/good sign). The décor was fun, the girls catty as hell. They are young, like to drink, and are highly entertaining. It really did feel like a cheap one night stand, but I’ll be back. I got a great haircut at the Southside price of $20 plus tip. At those prices, I can afford to go more than twice a year.

I asked Thomas if he gets his hair cut at an old school barbershop or at a salon and he admitted that recently, someone came to his office to cut his hair. I found this very funny and sort of out of character. Maybe if TC were a high-paid busy executive or J-Lo, I could understand an office call. He got embarrassed and befuddled when I pressed him for more information, so I let it go.

More to come on the hair topic.