A paragon of style and grace.

I would instruct you all to the Raven archive at this point to download my newest show, which is full of fluttery, violiny, songs to slow dance to, but do to some extreme misfortune, I can't say if things will be updated this week the way that they have been for the past few. I don't think it's automated. So you might just have to use your imaginations.
This picture is for La Fab, who often complains that she wants me to post pictures of my daily outfits on my blog for her pleasure. Usually they are nothing to write home about; this one, I think, warrants a little attention. I adore this skirt; it's from Anthropologie. It has a funny kangaroo pouch in the front. The top is Old Navy, and the color was what made me buy it. The shoes are eBay finds. They are painful to walk in, but I wear them anyway, because, look. If I am not the type of woman to sacrifice a little comfort for aqua patent leather, then what kind of woman am I, precisely? I thought so. And please forgive my lopsided hair. After I took this photo I fixed it, applied more lipstick, and put on black hoop earrings.

Listening:
Have you not been paying attention? Swoony big band stuff. Rosemary Clooney singing Tenderly is terrific in all sorts of ways. Also, I have played the live Bernadette Seacrest CD every night this week. And Elvis Costello's Blood and Chocolate is permitting me the peace of mind necessary to inhibit my murderous tendencies. Oh, and I am obsessed with Circus Contraption, which is an actual circus in Seattle. The music is marvelously creepy and highly addictive. I feel like a preacher, the way I've been singing their praises.

Watching:
I had a hankering to watch the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it was just as good as I wanted it to be. Netflix also sent me Mad Men, which is coming highly recommended from all quarters, and I rented Fight Club the other night and watched it all by myself, with a giant glass of wine. It frightens me how much I love that movie.

Reading:
Have You Found Her? a Memoir by Janice Erlbaum This book is kicking my ass. It is so painful and raw I can hardly stand to turn the pages. I've been working on it for more than a week now, because I can't read more than a couple of pages at a time. I will try my best, but I have that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that you get when you know womething bad is going to happen. I hate that.

Consuming:

I haven't had anything outsttanding recently, although L.'s adventures with beets are making me crave them something fierce again. The most discussable event involving comestibles recently was the purchase of a bottle of French Syrah a few nights ago. I went for a long walk, listened to a bunch of music, and then eagerly opened the bottle and poured a glass. It was not the pleasantest bottle of wine I've had. It was bright, raw, and fume-y, and rather too dry. I did not like it. I left it alone for a few days, and last night, as I was contemplating calling it a loss and dumping it down the sink, I gave it one more swallow. Silly me. Some reds need to breathe before you go swilling them back like Kool-Aid. I'll try to remember for next time.

Customer Service Mixtape

I am so fucking over this goddamn summer. I am ready to slap the next bitchy person who peruses our menu, decides they don't like it, and asks for a recommendation to another restaurant. I am ready to punch the next marble-mouthed Southern gentleman who calls me 'miss.' I am ready to cut the snide, entitled assholes who don't carry cash, talk on their motherfucking cellphones, and leave their napkins in the bottoms of their half-full cups. I don't want to spend another minute hopped up on coffee and too much sugar, waiting to go home and drink myself down with an iced whiskey or three.

In honor of my utter disaffection with the whole situation, I would like to make a little mixtape. As always, my darlings, I need your help. I have a tiny starter list, but I need all of you coffee-slinging, phone-answering, ice-cream scooping, t-shirt gathering, ranch dressing fetching drink mixers to add your words of wisdom. Add your favorite bitter fuck yous in the comments. If I feel ambitious, I might actually get these posted on Earfarm or Facebook or something. Don't hold me to my word.

Pixie, Ani DiFranco "just buck up and be nice."
Nugget, Cake "shut the fuck up. Right. Now."
Waitress, Tori Amos "I believe in peace, bitch"
I Wanna Be Sedated, the Ramones "hurry hurry hurry before I go insane"
Pouring Water On A Drowning Man, Elvis Costello "how much more can I stand?" ( I can't find a link to this song as sung by E.C., just James Carr and Percy Sledge.)

The louder, the better, my sweets. Let's hear them.

Guess what time it is, kiddies?

That's right! I have made my decision on my Halloween costume, and the research has commenced. I was determined to have a gaping wound this year, and since I figured that my original idea, the gutshot cowboy, would prove sticky over the course of an evening, I decided a smaller, more localized trauma was in order. Bust magazine had good instructions a few years ago for slit throats, and the seeds of my costume were planted.

I was inspired by this story, which I think I probably read for the first time in one of those lame urban legend books that fall into your hands, usually via Scholastic book club orders, in the formative years of your youth. I remember that the young man in the story was a noble, maybe even a prince, and that the young woman insisted she was a commoner who carried herself like an aristocrat. Or maybe that is just a few too many Georgia Heyer books in junior high.... Anyway, I have been lusting after a mid/late-Victorian bustled evening gown (1873 is the magic year) for a really long time now. That in mind, I have made the decision to set my costume and thus the story in the Victorian era, and to give her a reason for her head to fall off: it was nearly severed from her body in a cruel and gruesome crime of passion.

I am so excited.

Here is what I think I'll need:
1)a new Victorian corset, maybe with a spoon busk if I can justify the expense
2) a bustle, either stiffened lace (a la the 1870's) or "hoopwire" (otherwise known as polyethylene tubing - I LOVE the hardware store)
3) a petticoat
4) corset cover
5) skirt and bodice
6) several yards - 2 1/2? 3? - of green velvet ribbon. I am leaning toward willow or loden.
7) hair extensions
8) neck wound prosthesis
9) latex, fake blood, miscellaneous wound makeup

I like the idea of using pink to underscore the green of the ribbon and emphasize the rosy glow of my slashed neck. I still have many yards of hot pink shantung that never became a holiday dress, so it may find new life. I have to think hard about matching it with the moss green. One solution may be making the base of the dress ivory or pale gold, and just accenting with the bolder colors.

I obviously am still in the planning stages, but I know that I will need patterns for the bustle and gown, and most probably the petticoat, too. That is where I plan to start. I have spring steel still from the MA corset, but no more tips. I will require a busk and about 300" of lacing for a Victorian corset, too. Oooooh, exciting. I'll try to be better about progress pics this time around!

Les Yeux Ouverts

I spent a little time this weekend doing something that I haven't done in a long, long time. That is, I got to strengthen a budding friendship by showing off the town that I love so much. I walked on a favorite beach that I hadn't been on in more than four years; I found a perfect huckleberry bush; I shared a few of my favorite quirks that would go completely unnoticed by the uninitiated. I did it because it has been a really long time since I met someone who was worthy of the information. I didn't even get to do some of the best stuff with him: stand in the record library at Raven Radio and inhale the scent of vinyl or hunt cloudberries in the muskegs on Gavan Hill or walk the docks and stare wistfully at the sailboats that have already been all the way around the world. Maybe he'll come back, and I'll finish off the list. I hope so.

In my infatuation last week with On The Street Where You Live, I downloaded Harry Connick Jr.'s 25 and now I am humming Stardust to myself and thinking about holding hands. I have long expressed my concern over the dearth of handholding in the world today. I aim to remedy that... Just as soon as our paths cross again. Until then, I am making a playlist that includes the Frank Sinatra version of One For My Baby, Tommy Dorsey's Stardust, and Louis Armstrong blowing his mournful way through Dream a Little Dream of Me. I promise that I won't grow too starry eyed, because I'm not a romantic.

Right?

Thursday, 1:53 p.m.

I am filthy. I smell like stale coffee and slightly scalded milk, I have whipped cream smeared suggestively on my thigh and a sticky substance that I hope to Jeebus is chutney on the back of my arm near my elbow. Although the day is a balmy and overcast 57, I have been sweating like I live in Alabama for the better part of the day. I wish I could say I look windblown or tousled or tumbledown, but the truth is, I look sweaty and blowsy and disgruntled, because I am.

The sum of today's nutritive intake is comprised of the following: six shots of espresso, most of them liberally doused with hot whatever-milk-is-at-hand foam but at least one of them straight with no coddling, and half a boysenberry muffin. The result is that my skittering heart is far outpacing both my shaking hands and my stuttering intellect. It feels like there is a beast in my chest, poised to leap forward and consume the drink that I am mixing like an automaton. I can't remember the name of it, or who it belongs to. I plan on handing it to the hopeful patron waiting at the end of the counter, whether or not it belongs to them. It may even make them stop staring at me.

One more day of this and then blessed rest, loosed from captivity.

This, my friends, is why you tip your barista.

Admit it, you always wanted a MONKEY

I freely admit that I have questionable taste at times. It is very, very rarely indefensible, but today I was embarrassed in my own home, by iTunes.

You see, I have a playlist of guilty pleasures. Everybody's got 'em. Some contain, say David Archuleta and Michael Buble, some the Spice Girls, and mine... Well, mine's got a little song by the Barenaked Ladies. They write some subversive stuff, even if they are the worst kind of earworm pop. Anyhow, I purchased If I Had A Million Dollars at 11 p.m. one lonely evening and added it to my g.p. list. And this morning, when I went to buy a song or two to flesh out my radio show, iTunes #1 recommendation for me was HOOTIE AND THE BLOWFISH. I couldn't believe how quickly I recoiled. It was like I'd been stung by a bee. Then I realized that it was a fairly accurate assumption, since my guilty pleasure playlist also contains this gem:



By the way, Huey Lewis and the News are NOT on my list of guilty pleasures, because I feel NO shame in loving that man or his music.

All the cool kids are doing it

It's shameless self-promotion time, kids! Did you know that if you go to the Raven Radio website, you can listen to this week's shows? It's for true! And, coincidently, I just did my show, so if you really love early jazz and pop, or if you're missing the sound of my voice (aww...), you can go to the program schedule page, and click on Anything Goes, and there I'll be. Well, as soon as Steve turns over the archive. But tomorrow, probably. I think.

And for the radio geeks 'round these parts (yeah, I'm lookin' at you) here's the playlist:

On The Street Where You Live - the Swingin' Fireballs
Ain't Cha Glad - Benny Goodman feat. Jack Teagarden
I'm Telling the Birds, I'm Telling the Bees - Jack Smith (with piano)
Give a Little Whistle - The Victor Silvester Orchestra
Delta Bound - James Dapogny Chicago Jazz Ban
Piccolo Pete -Ted Winges Band
Goody Goody - Billy Randolph and the Highhatters
Don't Bring Lulu - Jan Garber and His Orchestra
Radio Rhythm - Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
The Cream In My Coffee - Nat King Cole Trio
Ja-Da - the Famous Castle Jazz Band
I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire - Bon Bon and his Buddies
Kansas City Kitty - The Rhythmic Eight
Glad Rag Doll - Ted Lewis
Sugar Babe, I'm Leavin' You - Blue Steele and his Orchestra
What'll I Do? - the Zzymzzy Quartet
Up A Lazy River - the All-American Jazz Band
Whoop & Holler Blues - New Orleans' Own Dukes of Dixieland
The Bell Gal's Careless Blues - Emma Barrett
City of A Million Dreams - Fidgety Feet Jazz Band
Swing It, Mr. B! - the Swingin' Fireballs
One O'Clock Jump - the Count Basie Orchestra

Here's some cool stuff to listen for: a marimba, 40's style electric guitar with a 30's style muted trumpet, weird DJ talk about mics in the studio in the 1920's, a Disney tune, me squeaking my mic by accident while talking. Well, that's not cool, but it's in there. Also, if anyone finds out anything about Thelma Terry or Mary Longfellow, please let me know. I'm kinda interested in them.This right here is Thelma Terry.