Happy Birthday, Mr. Gnome de Pluehm

Today is a Benigngirl Holiday because it is Gnome de Pluehm’s birthday. Well, tomorrow, November 20, is his birthday but today I am beginning bloggerly preparations. Coincidentally, it is also Nyal William’s birthday (tomorrow, again) and, coincidentally, both are loyal readers and commenters of this blog, so — all together now,

Happy Birthday Men!

I am out of town and making this post on my lazyass, wonky, POS laptop so please forgive the odd spacing and etc. My chillmat broke and it’s overheating and as much as I love these birthday men, I am not going outside to work, though it would solve my overheating laptop complications.

Happy Birthday, Gnome de Plue------ue---uem, ....

“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.”
Jean Paul Richter

The beaver’s powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America’s favorite birthday boy.

“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.”
George Harrison

Voltaire, half smiling, appears to be looking at his thoughts–perhaps at the tragicomic failings and follies of having a birthday.

“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age.”
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Although modern birthdays (especially in America) are mainly populated with horses, carousels from earlier periods frequently included diverse varieties of animals, including dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, and deer, to name a few.

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
Rabindranath Tagore

Whenever you walk into a room remember always that you are the least important person in that room, unless it is your birthday, or you are an angry Mime.

“My mother is going to have to stop lying about her age because pretty soon I’m going to be older than she is.”
Tripp Evans

By making a Bose-Einstein condensate in a particular isotope — rubidium-85 — and then changing the magnetic field in which the BEC is sitting, researchers can adjust the wavefunction’s self-interaction between birthdays and national holiday.

“You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”
Bob Hope

Blair: “There is a hopefulness in his contextural destruction, especially in his birthday work.”

“Age doesn’t matter, unless you are cheese.”
John Paul Getty

“I’ve pointed out to Gnome de Pluehm that he’s the person he is today because he came under the wrath of Bill Mitchell.”

To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have.
Ken Keyes, Jr.

Birthdays - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

So many candles… so little cake.

See the birthday clowns. From what do they flee, in their double-entendre wanders?

I Think I Only Have A Pair

(Ed note, I think I only have run-on sentences).

I have always loved the anonymous painting, Dogs Playing Poker and so I especially love Silas Kopf’s take on  it in the below masterpiece, “I Think I Only Have A Pair”.

After an exhaustive and exclusive interview with Silas – spanning days, weeks, decades perhaps, in which I followed him around everywhere he went (at times with leaves taped to my turtleneck, jeans, and  wooden platform shoes, [in keeping with the elements of his work], in an attempt to get some candid anecdotalities), even going so far as to hire muscle to forcibly hook him up to various thought-stealing apparatus’, lie detectors, intravenous truth-serum drips, and the like – I managed a rare act of brevity, summarizing all of my notes into the following quote  from Silas regarding his work and the insinuations in this article:

“Perhaps Mr. Munger sees more than I do, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t subliminal perspective.”

It is yet too soon soon to tell if he will succumb to suggestive thought suggestion tactics administered by said muscle and present this piece to Gnome de Pluehm for his birthday bash tomorrow- which I am overseeing in this blog – but we can all only hold our breath and hop (typo, but I’m keeping it).

From the on-line journal Art In Conflict

By Mr. Selwyn Munger

It is a fine line between Pop Art and kitsch. When Pop first made its way into the art world in the late 1950’s many regarded the movement as kitsch, basically mundane without any real artistic content. What are we to think of an artist who reverses the order, taking kitsch and trying to make it Pop? This is the direction of Silas Kopf’s entry, I Think I Only Have A Pair, in the recent Salon de la Marqueterie Biennial in Marseilles.
Kopf played off the famous painting by C. M. Coolidge of Dogs Playing Poker (1904) (sometimes called “The Bold Bluff”) and turned it on its head by using popular figures apparently involved in a game of cards. I say apparently because there is much more behind the imagery than a simple bit of gambling. At the table are the cartoon figures; Betty Boop, Mr. Peanut, and Daffy Duck. Seated between Duck and Peanut is the pop icon Marilyn Monroe. And does that shock of white hair at the bottom of the picture belong to

A Tale of Two Locks

An old story, this, which I just found in my drafts folder;  the story of a housesitting adventure from July, gone awry, which I meant to post after I had a chance to tell the owner of the house as I figured she should be the first to hear it. And it’s much funnier as a verbal tale, but gosh, aren’t we all so busy? So this is how she will find out, rather than over drinks. ;-) And so it is written in present tense because I don’t have the energy, in the midst of my second move in one month (yet another drama), to change all the tenses. This is a tale of two locks. The tale of the two moves is for another day.

I am housesitting for a friend, a relatively benign thing, and yet things can so quickly change from the benign to the traumatic, to the hilarious, in the click of a lock.

I have housesat here before. I housesit a lot. I am in demand and it is high season. I am in demand because I don’t snoop, a common complaint about housesitters, so I am told. I must be told this because I’d otherwise not know it. I don’t need housesitters myself, as I have no house. And no longer have a pet.

I am super-obsessive about keys (and most things) when I am housesitting (and even when I am not) and if I go out for even a minute, I bring my keys. If I go out on the deck for even a piece of a minute, I unlock the door AND I bring my keys. But this morning was different somehow. Maybe I was not me this morning. Maybe my OCD let up for a minute. There are too many maybes to even ponder.

So, on this morning I let Girlie Girl (not her real cat name), the 18 year old cat who I am watching, out on the second floor deck for a minute and she immediately threw up all over it.  So I ran in and got water and soap and paper towels in order to clean it up, and a sudden gust of wind blew the door shut and locked behind me.I was stunned and unrealistically kept turning the knob, as though it would turn out to be somehow not true that I was on the wrong side of the door and that it was actually locked. But nothing changed.

This is not such a great ‘hood to be out in while wearing a skimpy and tattered t-shirt with no products from Victoria’s Secret or any other such purveyor of such things underneath, but then what ‘hood is? But this ‘hood does have some interesting characters running about in all manner of dress and with all manner of urgencies, running about at all hours, so perhaps it was the best ‘hood for such a spectacle.

Thankfully I had taken off the tattered shorts and thrown on a pair of jeans before that lock and that wind conspired to create this drama for me, but I had no shoes or sunglasses or keys or cell phone.

So I thought to run barefoot to my studio 6 blocks away where at the least  I have a spare car key and people to help me, and so I ran (ish), in my wobbly, disjointed manner, due to all those herniated disks and bone spurs and ever-spasming muscles, with eyes squinting against the very bright sun, arms crossed to cover the tatters and lack of said purveyed underthings, and as I ran, I realized that I much resembled a sort of not-so-uncommon local person of a certain type, and who might be perhaps experiencing some sort of drama due to some sort of deal, perhaps gone bad, or in desperate anticipation of some sort of deal which would very shortly go very well, if you know what I mean. I had been woken up at midnight-thirty the night before by someone yelling, “Hey! HEY! I don’t care what you do in your own home but I am NOT going to watch you beat up on a woman.” I had then looked out the window to see a bunch of of guys in a car below, passing some sort of illuminated thing, while the driver stood outside and beside his car yelling, and had heard one of the guys inside the car say, “She probably tried to rip him or or sell him some bad shit.”

When I got to my studio, with wild, unbrushed hair and unbrushed teeth, I had no key and so I banged on a window with a stray brick till the building manager let me in, and into my studio, for my spare car key. That was a start. Yet everything in my studio is in garbage bags for the ongoing and massive extermination (another traumatic story) but I dug around and found a tank top with built in sports bra, and the only shoes I could find; a pair of high heeled clogs. All in all a lovely ensemble, yet definitely some sort of upgrade. And it’s not like I care much about my appearance but I do generally cover myself and make attempts at cleanliness. I was somewhat horrified to be out and about in this condition.

The only person around at the building with a truck was presently underneath it in the parking lot gluing his muffler back in, so I ran next door to where my new stepfather works (husband of the biological mother I just met in the last year or so) and borrowed his mini van so we could load a 20 foot ladder and go climb in the one second floor window which I had just shut that morning, but not yet locked, thankfully.

So we – me and the building manager and his son – set the ladder against the wall. Yet the ladder stopped 4 feet shy of the window and we were all afraid of it and we were just standing there, staring at it for a moment, waiting for it to grow, and  just then, out of my peripheral vision, I saw a local sort of guy come along and next thing we know, he is climbing up our ladder and saying over his shoulder, “I am really good at this”.

For $10 you can be in a Kinks Reunion Movie

In a way…  click here.  See for yourself.

Geoff Edgers, in his Kinkumentary

Get The Kinks out (of scatter/splitdom)

One man is trying to complete a Kinks documentary and also get The kinks together. See that one man’s youtube video of work done on the film to date. Help that film. Read on…

Geoff Edgers, in his Kinkumentary

“Do you believe in helping in my bizarre but hopefully entertaining quest to reunite the Kinks – and to capture it on film? Or do you simply want to get your name on the thank you section as the credits of a film scroll down the screen? Here’s your chance. We’ve been filming my quest for almost year. We’ve filmed Sting, Zooey Deschanel, Brian Wilson, Paul Weller, Robyn Hitchcock, among others. But we need about $5,000 to finish filming and editing in the next few weeks. Anything helps! $2, $5, anything. And for $200, you’ll be listed in the credits.

Here’s a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mosQ3dp0pUY

You can paypal me at: gedgers@mac.com And thanks!”

Gay Penguins Become Surrogate Parents in China

I found this story today at The Daily Mail.

Fences make good neighbors; "The segregated penguin couple, right, are seen here in their own enclosure quarrelling with another male over stolen eggs"

It seems Zoo keepers have determined that these two penguins are gay. They were thrown out of their colony for stealing eggs. The crafty little guys would go up to parents and lay stones at their feet and then run off with their eggs.

“Wildlife experts at the park explain that despite being gay the three-year-old male birds are still driven by an urge to be fathers.’

‘One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite the fact that they can’t have eggs naturally, it does not take away their biological drive to be a parent,’ said one.

So the zookeepers took two eggs from “an inexperienced first-time mother” and are letting them raise the eggs themselves, a task at which they reportedly excel.

they have been separated from the rest of the colony “not because of discrimination, but so as not to disturb the colony during hatching time.”

This all came about because animal rights groups protested complaining that “it wasn’t fair to stop the couple from becoming surrogate fathers and urged zoo bosses to give them a chance.”

According to www.4clubbers.net (which I found while searching for wedding pictures and not because I am a clubber), “A Pair of Gay penguins are so loved-up they have been given a Wedding service.
The besotted male birds turned out to be such a great parenting pair their keepers thought they deserved a reward and let them marry.

They were once given the cold shoulder at the wildlife park in China for stealing heterosexual couples’ eggs to nest as their own.

But after being allowed to try out with eggs rejected by their mothers the couple have become the zoo’s best penguin parents.

Now keepers at Polarland Zoo in Harbin, north east China, have rewarded their devotion with a wedding day.

One wore a tie and the other was dressed in a red blouse – a traditional Chinese bridal colour – as they stepped into their icy wedding room to the music of the Wedding March.

Keepers then served them their favourite dish for the occasion – spring fish.

“They have been a good couple and deserved their reward,” said one keeper”

Who do we see about Pink Flamingos and Homelessness?

Everyone is broke. Of course they are, the economy is terrible. I had to sell my imaginary yacht and stop taking imaginary private jet trips to Paris and to the Scientology Center In Florida for higher learning classes. Gone, gone, GONE, I tell you,  is the  imaginary nose job and spa treatment in Switzerland. Even my daily imaginary sushi is a distant imaginary memory. I have tightened my belt. No more imagination; no mo’ Chanel logos painted on every fingernail, no mo’ designer clothes to wear to the studio, no mo’ cleaning person or butler. Who do I see about that?

When John Waters came to Northampton a few years back and did a stand up thing at The Academy of Music, he said that a man had once approached him saying, “My family saw “Hairspray” and we loved it. Then we rented “Pink Flamingos” and were totally disgusted. Who do I see about that?” and JW replied, “Well, I saw “Witness” and was completely offended by the barn-raising scene. Who do I see about that?”

And speaking of things we don’t like to look at, (like what Divine is doing in that still from Pink Flamingos), who do we see about homelessness?

Sadly, social services get cut faster than luxuries and times get tough; tougher for some than most of us will ever know. With this weather the homeless feel those cuts too, as shelters and services run low on funds. This morning at Michaelannland was posted a bit about wanting to collect gloves for the homeless. So I cleaned out my closet, and got my neighbor JR, who(m?) I was about to take to the supermarket, to clean out his as well. I then raided the free pile we had set up in the lobby of our building and filled the car and drove to Arise for Social Justice, which Michaellann Bewsee co-founded, and dropped off a bunch of stuff.

They told us that they go out (in this weather!) and find people to give the clothing to. This is what is known as outreach and in this weather that’s truly above-honorable. They go find families temporarily living in Motels (which reminds me of people who say, “My idea of camping is to go to a motel”) and give them clothing and offer to help them find services.

And check out Michaelann’s hilarious post about the epic poem, “Make the Pie Higher”, underneath the post about gloves for the homeless. It makes the trip all the more worth the clickety-click.

So long, Fred Knittle. Gosh, you rocked.

UPDATE: For my radio show this week, 8-9 AM Wednesday, January 7, at WXOJ-LP FM, streaming at www.valleyfreeradio.org, I will be repeating an interview with Jean Florio, John Larereo, and Diane Porcella from Young at Heart Chorus, which first aired on March 7, 2007. They were hilarious guests and it was a great show. That show can be downloaded here. (scrolling down to almost the bottom is necessary. Look for the giant graphic of the Y@H poster).
Condolences can be emailed to the Knittle Family at knittlesknest[at]gmail.com
______________________________________________

Dear Fred, “Look at the stars, See how they shine for you…”

Fred Knittle made Coldplay look good so I think they should write a song for him.

I just found out that Fred Knittle died on New Years Day.  You know, I still remember the first time I ever saw this video, which went on to become a youtube sensation. I was lucky enough to have met Fred once and he seemed as nice as you’d have expected.

Fred Knittle, "I Will Fix You"

Click the links as tribute to Fred. Maybe in *Heaven” stats come through as love links:
Boston Globe Online
Hampshire Gazette Article
The famous video

Rest in Peace Fred. Gosh, even men admit to crying while watching that video. What a wonderful impact he made with that single song.

More YouTube clips of the Y@H, courtesy of Tony Shannon, who made them:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dedots&search_type=&aq=-1&oq=

I WILL FIX YOU
When you try your best but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can’t replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you’re too in love to let it go
But if you never try you’ll never know
Just what you’re worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I

Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Living La Subterranean Las Vegas Vida

As salmony-pink as the living room is beigy-beige, such is the bedroom in the underground house.

ALL IMAGES HAVE BEEN SCANNED WITHOUT PERMISSION BY MY ANONYMOUS MONKEY ASSISTANT AND FOR WHOM I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE, AND HAVE NEVER MET.

As published in NEST, A Quarterly of Interiors, Spring 2003

What with the weather and all that, it seems like the perfect time for an underground house. While snow or tornados and other extreme weathers swirl above, you could be comfy swimming in your non-chlorinated pool (for algae does not grow underground) and having a cookout while the smoke is funneled out through the pipe that runs up through the fake hollowed out ‘tree’ behind it.

Imagine calling up your friends and saying, “Come on over for the weekend and stay till they plow us out above. We have a well-stocked fridge and a new recipe for shish-ke-bob that will amaze you! Bring the scrabble, grab your bathing suits…”. And yes. there isn’t often snow in Vegas but this year they did have snow and, as things go, that snow stayed in Vegas.

This all may or may not be what Gerald Henderson was thinking back in the late 60s when he began construction on his underground home, which is accessed by an elevator that takes one 25 feet underground via an old mineshaft. Above ground all one can see is a wrought iron fence and a rock garden and then one enters a small ‘house’, which (it is not exactly clear from the article) appears to be mainly an above-ground door and hallway, leading to the elevator.

The Underground Las Vegas House with view of the patio. Click for larger view.

Gerald Henderson was a longtime board member of Avon, and “a pioneer in the nascent Cold War-era discipline of subterranean architecture.” He was a bit paranoid, did not much like people and feared radioactive fallout. He built two other such homes in Switzerland and Colorado which are reportedly no longer standing. There is no mention of why those other two are no longer standing however, and I wonder at that why behind dismantling such an architectural feat, particularly since there are times when being underground seems such a great idea.

The Underground Las Vegas House with view of the yard and pool. Click for larger view.

Anyway, according to the article, algae does not grow underground and so no chlorine is needed for the pool. The walls are murals painted to resemble Gerald’s childhood home in New Jersey as well as his sheep ranch in New Zealand. The muralist, Jewel Smith from Plainview, Texas, lived in a cottage in

She’s the kind I like to flaunt, and take to dinner

THE FOLLOWING POST HAS AN IMAGINARY SOUNDTRACK SO IF YOU ‘LISTEN’ CLOSELY, YOU’LL HEAR, “SHE’S A LADY”, BY TOM JONES

World’s Tallest Snowman Made In Maine
By David Sharp, Associated Press
BETHEL, Maine (AP) — The world’s tallest snowman is no man. (Thanks Joe Ringey, for the link)

The “snowwoman” towering over this village features eyelashes created from discarded skis and bright red lips made from painted car tires. She wears a giant red hat and a 100-foot-long scarf, and her blond tresses are made from rope. She gets a little bling from a snowflake pendant that’s 6 feet long.

With the temperature in single digits, several hundred people including busloads of schoolchildren turned out for Friday’s dedication of the 122-foot-tall mountain of snow.

Mark Bancroft, who donated the 150-foot crane used during the project, noted that it has been a tough winter with high fuel costs and nasty weather.

“What does Bethel, Maine, do when it gets tough? We build a snowman!” he said to the muffled applause of mittens and gloves clapping together.

“Olympia,” named for Maine’s senior senator, Olympia Snowe, stands nearly 10 feet taller than “Angus, King of the Mountain,” who was
dedicated by the town in 1999. That snowman, named for then-Gov. Angus King, was created by the same folks responsible for Olympia.

It took more than a month, dozens of volunteers and tons of snow to create Olympia. Jim Sysko, a civil engineer, oversaw design and construction.

To get an idea of scale, Olympia is about 30 feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty (without the base). Her arms consist of 27-foot-tall evergreens.

Her “carrot” nose, painted by schoolchildren, is 8 feet long. Her eyes are made from giant wreaths.

She was built with a series of concentric circles. The crane dumped the snow into frames, and volunteers climbed in for long hours shoveling and packing the snow.

“The best part of it is how everyone in town pitched in and made it happen,” said volunteer David Lynch. “It got hairy up at the top. I only made it to 80 feet.”

The final product is the talk of the town. People especially liked the lashes created from old skis donated from the Sunday River ski resort.

She’s got style, she’s got grace–she’s a winner

FULL ARTICLE…

LYRICS…