Girls! Girls! Girls!

This entry came about because I recently called someone a Breck Girl and realized she was probably too young to know what I was talking about. So I posted a picture of a 1970's Breck Girl.

Notice her paleness and her long, straight hairiness. This was typical of the Breck Girl. Usually blonde almost always white. There were 300 Breck girls starting in 1936. After a minimum amount of research, I've come to find out there were two black Breck Girls. I've found a picture of one of them.

Notice the lack of long, straight blonde hairiness. Fight the power, black Breck Girl!















This got me thinking about all the "Girls" throughout the last century or so. I went searching for my favorite one, the Mucha Girl. I LOVE art nouveau and Alphonse Mucha painted the (pronounced with a long eeee) art nouveau girls with long, flowing tresses and dresses. Plus flowers. art nouveau was all about stylized nature.

Interestingly enough, Mucha died in 1939, just in time for the Breck Girl to be a thing.



These girls a cute and a little sexy, amirite? Well, they got nothing on the Ziegfeld Girls. This is one from about 1909:

Note her very close to nakedness. I didn't know women could get this naked in 1909. I thought their clothes were permanently hot glued to their bodies. Also, a minimum amount of research tells me the Ziegfeld girls arose from the Florodora Girls.

I knew of the Florodora Girls but didn't know they were a real thing. You see, I watched a whole lot of Our Gang (at the time I watched them, they were called The Little Rascals). In one episode, Our Gang put on a show. Alfalfa sang a terrible rendition of The Barber of Seville and the audience started chanting "We want the Floridories! We want the Floridories!" I didn't know they were chanting for this.

Further minimal research (really, it's amazing what you can find out by typing words into Google) found that the Florodora Girls were in response to The Gibson Girl. Specifically to "loosen her corset". And if a girl ever needed her corset loosened, it was The Gibson Girl.















And here I ran out of Girls. I'm sure there are other types of Girls as they are pretty popular even now. I bet all of them find Jason Momoa pretty hot.

Starts Out Superhero, Ends Up Girlie

This is Jason Momoa as Aquaman. Why the most beautiful man on Earth is playing the lamest super hero to ever have his own comic is a question for the casting gods. How Lisa Bonet escaped the Huxtable rape house and ended up married to him is a story for the romance writers at Penthouse.

Here are a few facts that you didn't know about the most beautiful man on Earth. In 2008 he got into a bar fight with a 21 year old guy on probation. Realizing he could not best him with fisticuffs, the young man decided he could bring him down and ruin his modeling and acting career by smashing Mr. Momoa in the face with his beer glass. After reconstructive surgery and 140 stitches in his face, Jason came back as Khal Drogo.

Those were his real dreads in Stargate: Atlantis. When they first hired him, the producers of the show asked Jason to cut off his dreadlocks but he declined. Four seasons in their weight was giving him headaches, so he cut them off. The producers did not like that at all, the fickle bastids.

He named his son Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha. Apparently Lisa Bonet was too dumbfounded by his pecs to object.


Next time I'll do an entry on a person it'll be a hot movie chick, to even out the girlie.

Went To My Favorite Place, Had The Worst Time

Freeport's Nautical Mile is one of my favorite places to go and when Vacation Dany said, "Hey, why don't we get in the car and go to Freeport?" I was all over that shit like fish smell on a five day old catfish. I prepared myself for hours of spending a lot of money to see boats, hear live music and eat seafood-- three out of four things I enjoy doing.

Things started off badly. We parked in the municipal parking lot and wondered at the large gathering of perplexed women at the entrance. They were all gathered around the muni-meter. Muni-meter? We have to pay for parking now? Bummer! Oh but wait, it's only 50 cents an hour with a 14 hour max. Not a problem, I'm all for municipalities making a buck and taking care of business. 50 cents an hour was a very small price to pay. The only problem was was that they lied about the 14 hour max. The crowd around the meter formed because 1) WTF, meters?! and 2) Can I please have more than 2 stinking hours on this ticket, PLEASE!!???

The answer was "No." You can only buy up to 7:30 AND NO MORE! So we set our phone alarm for 7:20 so that we won't get our car towed.

That was frustrating. This calls for immediate ice cream action! Pipps it is.

Homemade ice cream with a nautical theme. Whodathunkit? I ate my Graham Central with relish. Not the condiment relish, the adjective relish. Little did I know that my lactose was just about to get Fred Phelps level intolerant.












We meandered. I didn't get to a shop to buy some cheap sunglasses and we ended up at the Scenic Pier. That's the name. They couldn't come up with anything better. It is pretty scenic.

Did some people watching. Got a shot of the best damned legs on the pier. Eat your hearts out, he's taken.

Also watched about a half a dozen young men move a massive amount of liquor, beer, projection screens and equipment onto this boat:

Party over here!

Spent a lot of time watching people frolic in the water and thinking 

There is one thing I really, really want to do. 

More than anything in the world right now.

And that is. . .

To go to the bathroom.

It took the ice cream less than two hours to do it's evil work. I don't know why the ice cream decided to roil my insides. Perhaps it was the the graham crackers. Perhaps the Central Station. More likely the whipped cream on top added to the mayhem. But I really, really wanted to go to the bathroom in my house where I could be alone. But that was not gonna happen. Also, the alarm went off. It was time to feed the meter.

We walked back down the mile and passed this fun looking place: 

And this sedate looking one

When we got to Otto's I had to stop. They have benches out front I sat and told Dany to PLEASE HURRY!!!!!!

15 minutes later our plan to go back to the fun beach party place were nixed because that's how long it took for Dany to mess with the damn meter. He did wrangle three hours out of it that time. But we weren't walking anywhere. We were going straight into Otto's so that I could BLOW THEIR BATHROOM RIGHT THE FUCK UP!!!!

But Otto's paid me back, big time. Firstly, the clams on a half shell were gritty with sand and pieces of shell.

Me to the waiter: Do you have hot sauce?

Waiter: There is cocktail sauce on the platter.

Me: Do you have hot sauce?

Waiter: Will Tabasco do?

Me: Yes, as that is hot sauce.

Secondly, Dany ordered the catch of the day with green beans and carrots. He was given a floured fillet on a bun with french fries. I ordered a broiled lobster with a baked potato. I did get a lobster.

Me: The catch of the day is a sandwich?

Waiter: That's how it comes.

Me: He ordered vegetables. I ordered a potato.

Waiter: Oh, that kitchen! I'll be right back.

We did get to watch these guys dock right next to the restaurant and get served in their boat. Their waiter was far superior to ours.

Me: Thanks for the potato. Do you usually serve it unopened?

Waiter: Yeah, that's how we do it here.

Me: And with tartar sauce?

Waiter examines the plastic cup he just put in front of me: Oh hey, that is tartar sauce! Oh, that kitchen! I'll be right back.

Also, the lobster was like rubber. You're a sea food restaurant, how do you ruin fucking broiled lobster? The clarified butter did go good on the unopened baked potato. Otto's Sea Grill, I would certainly go back there-- to shit.

Still, always pleasant to walk the mile and see the sights.

America's Most Terrible

Here it is just like I said. My terrible painting fails.

First up is Cymbalta Daisy. With it's out-of-proportion petals and drab, depressing coloring, it was the first of my terrible paintings to get the gesso treatment. Only I didn't have any gesso at the time so it actually got the white paint treatment. P.S., my son could not believe I painted over it. Had I known he enjoyed it, I would not have. Also, had I known this was the best flower I'd ever paint, I may have re-thought painting over it.

This terrible cardinal was painted before I realized you could trace shit. This is my attempt to free-hand paint a bird. I tried correcting his weird shaped body but all that did was leave a reddish tinge surrounding his stiff, oblong body. He has not gotten the gesso treatment yet but I plan on re-visiting the cardinal in flight and when I do, bye bye not-so-aerodynamic bird.

My attempt at one stroke flowers. This one I blame on cheap paint and canvas. The technique involves putting two different colors on the paintbrush and making a swooping motion to get a petal. The canvas was too rough and the paint did not cover well at all. This, of course, has been geeso'd and no one complained.

My flower problems continue. These flowers were so terrible, I didn't bother to paint the stems. Some of the smaller brush flowers aren't too bad, but those large flowers are beyond terrible. I gesso'd the fuck out of this field of mutant daisies.

This picture of my painting of a tree looks much better than the actual tree I painted. If you look closely, you can see the failed one-stroke flower petals in the background. This means I'm not only terrible at painting, I also suck at painting over paintings.














Believe you me, there were many, many more fails. I would show them all to you except I usually don't think, "Wow! That's fucking terrible! Let me take a picture of it." Usually.

Some Of My Least Terrible Paintings

As I have mentioned before, I've been painting terribly. A lot. Mostly in the middle of the night because I'm so bad at it, it's a crime. Some of my paintings are more terrible than others. These here are some of the less terrible ones.

This one is called Coward (yes, I name my paintings. I have even started signing them. Someone has to take responsibility for this crap). It is called Coward because, when I started painting it I envisioned a dark, sunset-y scene with a flock of silhouetted birds flying across the sun but when I was done with the sunset part, I was afraid I would ruin it with birds. So I didn't paint the birds. Because I'm a coward.

Since painting from my own head was yielding such terrible results, I tried painting with step-by-step instructions from an expert. The Art Sherpa would surely chastise me for calling my paintings terrible. But look at her beach wave and look at my Beach. The waves in my painting are just terrible.

Back to painting from my own head. Since I already had a sun, a moon and The Milky Way painted, I tried my hand at Mars. My terrible, terrible hand. After I finished it I realized that the shadowed part of Mars should not have stars in it. I am not only a terrible painter but a bad astronomer. Not The Bad Astronomer mind you, but bad enough not to realize you can't see stars through a planet.

Moon Cat shows that I was correct in being a coward with Coward. I had a nice moonlit landscape going that I originally wanted to put a cat in. When I was done with the moonscape, I talked myself out of chickening out and painted the cat. The terrible, lopsided, too fat cat.

This is Night of the Triffids. Why did I paint this? I don't know. Alls I know is it can't be terrible because I made it up in my head so this is exactly what a night of triffids would look like.

This is Paper Birch. I don't have anything bad to say about it since I quite like it. Although two people thought it was a painting of bamboo.

















Maybe someday I'll post pictures of my more terrible terrible painting. Maybe Charles Barkley will comment on their terribleness.

Went Hiking. It Was Nice

What I did shouldn't be called "hiking". Meandering is more like it since I do not hike, I lumber. Firstly, I'd like to say what a beautiful, mosquito and gnat filled park is Valley Stream State Park. I felt like Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yokel the way the swarmed my face. Did not occur to me to use bug spray.

Secondly, I have never seen a barbecue area so empty.

And then I realized I'd never been to a barbecue area in a park at 10 am on a Tuesday. Apparently, nobody else has either.












Thirdly, look how gorgeous this park is:

 This is the soccer field. This park abuts the Southern State highway. You wouldn't know it to look at it.












The trail is very deceptive. It feels as if you are in the deep forest but there is one point where these are the two views you see by turning your head just 90 degrees.

There is a playground in the second view.










Still, there is a point where all you see are views like this all the way around:

I was looking forward to finding the creek that was on the map. Alas, this is it:

Hubby thinks it dried out. I say it was filled in with sand. Dry creek beds usually have different sized smooth boulders and pebbles, not sand. My take is that it was filled in because us bumbling city meanderers kept falling into it.

Finally, the state park knew I was coming because they left this right in the deepest part of the trial.

For You, My Love

Recently in this blog, I called my husband a big, farty baby. Or that he sleeps like a big, farty baby. Whichever. Why did I do that? Because I can get away with it. He doesn't read my blog, he told me so. Says it's too "girly". I have made this blog entry especially for you, my love.

A huge explosion

War movie footage

A fancy car

Cowboys and Indians

Fighter Jets

Boobs

And because I know you really, really like them, boobs

Love you, Dany.