BUZZ BUZZ Once There Was...

Seriously. If you've got badwidth issues, this is NOT the post for you.

There are photos from:

1. The Cool Yule Arty Party
2. The Xmas tree I made out of plastic forks (cats as a subset)
3. The Awesome Museums we visited while Clare was in town.
4. The giant Baltimore Cemetery

December 12, 2009. The Interrobang Crew hobnobbed with professional artists and artisans in a Gallery Show. There were live performers and framed art and everything. ;)




Kevin and Sally (our yarn artisan...or Yarnisan, if you will) behind the table. Yes, that is a TMNT bedsheet from back in the day. We're classy like that.



Sally crochet'd us up a fresh batch of Spink plushes for the table. This set of four is a full-on Spink CRECHE, for those of you who've got the Christianity--but not a super-serious case.

I think in the interest of spreading the crass commercialization around to all the world's religions, we should consider alternative Spink dioramas. Spink Moses consults with burning yarn-bush. Spink Sanzo travels with four Spink companions to the west to regain the lost teachings. Spink Ganesh blesses beginning ventures. Spink Muhammad receives the Spink Angel Gabriel. Spink Cthulhu wanders the lost yarn city of R'lyeh.

Or not. Though Spink Ganesh would be too cute for words.

We've finally got a home big enough to put a tree in the living room... but my cats eat EVERYTHING. So to avoid scrubbing pine-needle puke from the carpets, I made our tree this year. From plastic forks.




So this is the Christmas tree. It's made of Styrofoam balls and clear plastic silverware.

I took a single picture with a flash to show it clearly, but the best part about this tree is its GLOWINESS. So all the following photos are flashless while I try to capture the SHINY.



See? No flash! The tree glows with its own inner light. ♥

Shiny shiny shiny oooo....



The tree stands about four foot high. Structurally speaking, it doesn't get much bigger unless I bought way more styrofoam.

It's still much bigger than the foot and a half tall tree we had hanging from the ceiling last year. My cats were bigger than it. If we hadn't lashed the thing upside down to the ceiling like a merry stalactite, we would have been retrieving the mini-tree corpse from kitty clutches at least 4 times a day.



The heart of the tree. It glows with love and electricity. If it weren't for the clearly visible forks, you might mistake it for the Christmas tree from Superman's Fortress of Solitude.

Finding replacement bulbs for Kryptonian lights must be a bitch.



Side of the tree, so you can see the glowing and the cutlery. Even the spoons make great ornament holders.



Also the side of the tree. The shot was framed better, but there's less glow. I couldn't choose which picture I liked better. You get them both. ♥

Double your webspace content with indecision!



This is the best photo from the whole bunch. The glow is at its brightest, the cutlery is clear, and you can get a good feeling for the shape of the tree.

Also, yes, that is a Carl's Jr. Kids Meal Plushie circa 1995 as our tree topper. We're classy like that.



Visas came over to check things out. Being blind and all, she's naturally drawn to fun sounds rather than sights. The squeaky 'tink!' noises of metal ornament hangers on plastic cutlery is apparently the best sound of all. See how happy she is?

P.S. If you don't know about my blind cat, here she is. No, her eyes do not open. Yes, I will go on about her at length if asked. I will spare you details for now. ;)




Yzma actually looks like a normal cat-thing here, but her head is far too small for her body. She's afflicted. With what, I don't know, but she eats dirt. And steel wool. And I caught her licking the underside of a (parked and non-running) lawnmower.

She's the reason last year's tree was on the ceiling and why there were forks this year. She made an attempt at a plastic butter knife while I was putting up the tree, but it did not satisfy. She's left the tree alone since.



Yzma and the Christmas Tree.

The Christmas tree is made of styrofoam and plastic cutlery. The cat is made of rubber bands and springs.



I was not content to merely decorate the tree. I also decorated Jade.



This is a tree molecule. Our tree is made of about 50 of them.



See how the tree molecules stack! No adhesives. No tacks or nails.

Unfortunately, I did discover the upper weight limit on them. For a 4 foot base, 4 feet up is as far as you can go.


While we had visitors, we hit the comic book museum and the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art. Who knew Baltimore had NICE THINGS in it?! No, no. Like world-class 'nice things.' I was shocked to find so many incredibly famous works of art hanging around in our museum. Free of charge. Just... there.




Behold! Kevin and a world-famous Matisse painting. The original, no less. Baltimore may love a good bootleg, but apparently the Cone family left a wealth of art to the BMA. Zounds!




Modern Art. This guy (I'm so terrible, I should have written down the artists' name) made an approximately 15' long and 12' high bead curtain. You're supposed to walk through it and play in it (and not rip it out of the ceiling). It just wasn't going to photograph well and video was forbidden. So i got a close-up of some of the beads. It rippled like water and felt neat to run your fingers on. It was my favorite modern art piece.



Metal Forest thing! Clare took this photo of Kevin and I frolicking in the tin arbor. Thank you, Clare!



Rich Baltimorons used to have snazzy glass hood ornaments. (Bling in an historical context). I don't know if this glass lady was meant to go sideways, aerodynamically, or if she was a tits-to-the-wind style of ornament. Either way, I really love this geegaw.



The BMA has an impressive collection of ancient Chinese funeral ceramics. Apparently there was a lot of 'burying you with everything you could ever want in the afterlife' going on back in the day. This is a statue of Quanyin, a mother goddess of mercy.

She wow'd me (and i've got special place in my heart for mercy goddesses) and she's my current desktop wallpaper.



Clare at the Comic Book museum. She's happy! Baltimore has made her HAPPY! :D



Jade is a girl of the timberclaims: A primordial girl who plays a man's game in a woman's way. Here she is, "putting some speed" into Kevin.

Taken at the Comic Book Museum, which is actually an entertainment museum and rocks in many, many ways.



Jade was not pleased. I'm not sure why. Perhaps she objects to being 25% off.



SMUFFRAGETTES!

An awesome pin from the 1970's collection at the museum. Smurfette is all about equal pay for equal work.



The Yellow Kid rules. That is all.


We finally walked around the old cemetery off of North Avenue during visiting hours. Album complete now... the first two photos will be reposts, but I'm a complete-ist.





Clare at the Comic Book museum. She's happy! Baltimore has made her HAPPY! :D

Took a trip to the Baltimore Cemetery.

The graves are from the mid to late 1800's and in terrible shape. It's clear that if there is any surviving family, none of its members are visiting. However, the neglect goes further. The drainage in the cemetery is abysmal and all the gravestones are settling. Many are cracked in half, and from the moss growing, have been that way for ages. Others are piled in marble stacks, pipes jutting out from underground, rusting against the white marble. The thin grass squelches underfoot and the constant suction of the mud at your heels sparks superstitious uneasiness.

The photo was taken in the middle of the day on a high and bright winter afternoon. I was like a kid in a (spiritually guilty) candy shop. Eager enough to see it all that I completely forgot to note down whose graves I was photographing.

I will be going back and I will find out this girl's name and dates. That kind of thing is important and respectful.



From the Baltimore Cemetery.

I'm fascinated by aging statues. Especially statues that were erected with so much love and expense. The graves I photographed were long-since given over to the perfunctory efforts of the graveyard caretakers. There's no one left to remember the person. It makes the hills in the cemetery feel very lonely.

I could not make up my mind about Mary at the cross. It was hard to tell if she was tired, but glad of its strong support--or if she was exhausted by holding it up. Either way, the sensation of an interminable wait, whether for visitors or for God, made me take her picture.




Some of the pictures just look better in color. I love the deep brown of the dirt, and the hazel of the moss across the break in the stone.



That same waiting statue, but from another angle. Again, I thought this one was helped by color. Without the blue of the sky, she washes right in.




This one came to life in black and white, though. I didn't like the picture at all in color. Yet, in grayscale, the reflection of the stone in its puddle is nice and sharp and the grass takes on a hew texture.

Thanks to Kevin for spotting this pair of stones. He's got a good eye.



Nothing says 'unsettling' like bare feet in a graveyard. This is an extreme angle of a statue of a woman kneeling in front of a pleading with a cross. She's positioned on an unevenly shaped boulder with the cross towering above her.

Far from being a comforting image, the whole statue seems designed to make God the only potential refuge in a terrible and impersonal world. With the harsh lines of the cross, the images of crucifixion echoing in the composition, and the pleading posture of the woman, whether or not God is listening is very much in question.

I've included another straight-on shot of this tomb in this album for context. I may try to photograph this one again. I want a photo that shows all that without me having to write it or provide source material.



Context to the crazy-foot photo. The words on the cross, "Simply to thy cross I cling."

Not really a headstone of comfort and mercy. I wonder if she was on good terms with the folks who picked it out for her.



The gates to the Baltimore Cemetery are impressive, to say the least. They sit on the top of a hill right at the end of a long, straight, wide street: North Avenue.

Sadly, North Avenue is not somewhere you go unless in a large group. Even then, perhaps you ought to reconsider. In order to get the whole gate and the hill, I would have had to go down into the neighborhood.

This is why you've only got the front gate. No hill. No street.

Look for a detail from this photo later in the gallery. The lurkers deserve comment.



Remember how I said the stones were all settling? The overall effect of sinking stones really gives the whole graveyard a sense of abandonment. Even though there's still two gentlemen on duty in the gatehouse.




This is the pile of headstones with pipes. I could not make up my mind whether or not I liked it in color. The black and white suits the mood, but the color shows the rust better.

I posted both.



Rusty pipes and flooded graves.



I couldn't leave the puddles alone. The reflections of the markers in the water was so 'life/afterlife', duality, boundaries, tangible/immaterial.



Also, I couldn't help but think that if any of these folks had died of drowning, they might not appreciate the irony.



I asked them to "go lurk by the gate." Clare understands lurking. She's had some practice. That is a smooth, professional lurk.

Kevin and Jade look like rejected extras from a Monster Beach Party movie. C'mon people! WORK with me! ;)




Mary with her cross again. From below this time, b/c I wasn't sure if her face would come out in the other one I took. I had to leave this one in color b/c of that blue behind her. She pops more--and blue's all symbolic in terms of Catholic color schemes.




My home-made panorama shot didn't work out quite like I'd hoped, but you still get a feeling for the size of the place. Now imagine it continues to the left another 3 photo-lengths.

I'll make another attempt at this next time I go. The place is huge.



Again, in color b/c I love the blue and the reflections. This was one of the first flooded graves we'd found. Silly me, I thought it was rare, and got down on my knee in the mud to get this picture. I'm glad I did--it turned out well. I just wish I'd tried it later in the hike so i didn't go around with a wet pant leg for the rest of the visit.



The clover growing right up to the sinking stone caught my eye. I wish I had more to say that didn't sound like I was trying too hard. Mostly, I just liked this.




They're buried in a pair of buckets. Ha ha. Um... Gallows humor? No? Too Soon? Right.


Taa DAAAAH!



Also... The video sucks, but the song is made of win and youTube lets me embed it. Oh Arrogant Worms, I love you.