The new Tablet Magazine is online - well, some of it is. The arts columns are, but the fashion spread still isn't. I'm going to go dig for a copy after work today.
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Yesterday I noticed that the glads I've left to naturalize in front of my rock wall have bloomed. I don't really take care of them, so it's a surprise to me that they keep coming back. They're an orangey-red, scarlet I think it would be called. I hope nobody snaps them off before they finish their cycle. Meanwhile the glads I've got sitting in windowboxes are still quite small. It's probably time for me to put all of them and my dahlias out.
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I've been sad about the lack of lunchtime possibilities since I started working on the eastside. Fortunately, however, I've got Friday off work, so I can indulge myself in some tasty downtown treats. High on my list is Salumi, which just got a very nice writeup in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I am especially amused by this closing bit:
Become a parent: For $150, you can adopt a prosciutto. You get to participate in the process and visit the prosciutto once a month. The price comes with a birth certificate. After 12 to 14 months, you get to take the prosciutto home.
I noticed yesterday as I was walking down the stairs in front of my house that the tiger lilies under the apple tree have started blooming. The rest of the yard is looking pretty dull right now ... it's time to get planting.
I had an extremely vivid memory of New Year's Eve of my senior year in high school this week. It was brought on by the thought of staying at work until the sun rose (which I'll be doing this Friday night), at which point we've been promised eggy dishes cooked up by the chef at our cafeteria. I was suddenly brought back to December 31st, 1994 ...
I was out in West Phoenix at Farrah's, a gay nightclub. I was doubtlessly hanging out with my friend Matt and his pal Biff (last names now vanished in the haze - but I think Matt's last name might have been Matusky). This was in my era of doing my Siouxsie get-up, although occasionally I would just go vintage and glam it up ... I remember that for a lot of my senior year I would stop by a certain vintage dress shop on 7th Street in central Phoenix and pick up a new dress every Friday. But who knows how I would drses ...
I don't know when we arrived, but we stayed all night, since the club promised they would stay open through last call to when it was legal to start serving again, so at 6 AM or so they opened the bar and started serving bloody Marys and mimosas - and cooking breakfast. I have never before or since been in a disco that smelled of scrambled eggs. After we got our free food we started heading toward the door. A nice young lesbian had kind of been flirting with me and wanted to know if I wanted to hang out with her some more ... but I told her that my girlfriend was the jealous type. The bald, muscle-y bouncer was kind of sweetly hitting on me too ... but even though I thought he was cute I found him very intimidating, and I was worried he'd find out my secret identity as an under-21 person and not let me in the club. So I didn't want him getting too interested in me. I then remembered that he drove me home last night, probably half an hour away from the club all the way to the trailer park on 7th Steet and Union Hills road. He must have known that I was underage ... I was only fooling myself.
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This is the rough draft of the story I'll be submitting to Tablet. It's 1000 words over the allotted length, so I've got a lot of cutting to do.
When the Henry reopened after a long remodeling, I thought, "At last! A venue to see modern art in Seattle!" The Seattle Art Museum seemed overly focused on presenting bland out-of-town shows that could keep the coffers filled, and I was not getting my fix from going to the local galleries. There was a hole that needed to be filled, and my hope was that the Henry would take care of Seattle's underserved contemporary art fans.
Several years later, I've come to enjoy the Henry, but I've found that they're not really providing enough art for me. They have a fairly small display space, and the exhibits tend to turn over slowly. This localized shortage is, I think, the reason the air is filled with hosannas now that the Western Bridge Gallery has opened its doors. I was initially skeptical as to whether it could Be All That, but eager to check it out despite the fact that doing so was going to stick me in SoDo during (shudder) Mariner's traffic.
I seem to recall that the first of June was marked last year by the blossoming of the Saint John's wort. Worthy Opponent was trying to mow it down a few weeks ago, and I told him to hold off as it would be blooming soon. He seemed skeptical, but as I walked down the stairs to go to work yesterday I saw the fuzzy yellow heads of this most cheerful flower springing out of their carpet of green. I've got a couple of weeks of nice flowers to look forward to, and when that's through we'll bring out the lawnmower.
I'm getting a team together at work to run the Furry 5 K (actually I'll be walking it) this year. So far about 10 people have said they will go. This should be a lot of fun! Seward Park is one of my favorite places to go any time of the year and it's extra nice to talk a walk for a nice cause like helping out the Seattle Animal Shelter. I'm going to send out a letter to everyone at work today and see if I can get a few more people to sign up.
I'm up to three movies at the Seattle International Film Festival this year ... plumping up my "movies watched in 2004" list quite nicely. I'm going to take a break from the festival tonight, though and go see one of the Cremaster movies at the Grand Illusion Cinema. It heartening to know that even if it is bone-crunchingly dull that it's only an hour.
Goddess, the 1933 movie I saw on Saturday, had a quite interesting history to it, so I'm attaching to this entry a story about its restoration that is no longer available on the website where it was originally published. Apparently they're also going to be showing the movie at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival - which makes me ask, why aren't we having one of those in Seattle?
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