Well, I'm officially surprised. I thought Angela would go through to the top 4 on Project Runway, but instead she's been eliminated. I have to say those pants she wears with the decorative inserts on the bottom circling around to the inside thighs are absolutely beastly - and woefully unflattering, too. Why not just hire a little pair of cherubs to fly around with you everywhere and they can suspend a big ribbon banner over your head that reads - "be sure to notice my wide ass--it's enormous." And if I see one more intercoursing "fleurchand", I'm going to run out screaming. I thought Laura should have won this challenge. I'm so glad Kayne didn't get sent home.

KAYNE SIGHTING - Last week Justin Timberlake played the Gypsy Tea Room in Dallas, and Kayne was there. Someone I know saw him, but said people were crowded around him. You can think I made that up, if you like, nein. It's a free country.

Someone recently made a production of saying they want to spend more time with me, and then proceeded to shoot down everything I said with contrarian statements. If more time together means better acquainting me with your jerky side, then no thanks. I've already met your inner asshole.

A friend brought a ticket by for the Gypsy Tea Room show Tuesday night, but I was so doggoned beat I had to go home. The bands playing were X and The Rollins Band. Now, if they had been the Cramps or the Damned, I would have been there, no question. Hot weather is crap weather for concerts, anyway. Give me blue norther and I'm ready to go to a show!

Incredible story I heard from an involved party tonight. Absolutely true.

Jerry Jones owned (owns?) the Dallas Cowboys football team and was expecting an exalted houseguest in the form of one George H.W. Bush, former U.S. president. Of course he's got scores of Oompa-loompas on staff bustling about and readying his palatial manse for the visit, when he calls up a Dallas sculptor to commision a poured stone base for an enormous heavy sculpture, demanding it be done overnight, as the visit was happening in 2 days and it would take one day to set up the sculpture. The artist quoted $500, and the man countered with a take-it-or-leave-it offer of $250. The artist agreed.

This enormous plinth for the glass sculpture was completed just as the workers were clearing away all the boxes and detritus from the major work that had been going on in and around the house.

Come to find out, the boxes full of the pieces of the $180,000 Dale Chihuly glass sculpture had been out on the verandah, but were now nowhere to be found.

The men clearing away the mess were questioned. Did they see the boxes? Well, yes, they threw them in the pile with the rest of the garbage.

Everyone was pulled off every other detail on the property and the employees scrambled to pull the boxes of the fragile glass pieces from the bottom of the garbage pile.

With the exception of one tiny 1 inch nick, all the glass pieces were pristine and unblemished by their airborne trips to the trash pile. The sculpture was assembled and nary a blemish was to be seen, to the relief of everyone.

When the base sculptor received the check in the mail, he noticed that rather than the promised $250, the check was made out in the amount of $249.61-- the employee of JJ who issued the check deducted the amount of the postage stamp. ???!!!

Anyway, sometime later the artist ran into the Jerry Jones contact and he mentioned with mirth the inexact amount of the check.

The embarrassed J.J. minion reached in his pocket, scrambling to give the guy the .39. The sculptor said not to bother - that he didn't even cash the check, but instead kept it on the wall of his office to prove his story.

The Jerry Jones employee laughed, relieved that the ripped-off local artisan wasn't pissed off. I suspect he was also relieved that he saved an additional $249.61. That should make the boss happy.

Oh, over at photonomad's marvelous Phoenix daily blog http://fotografiaphoenix.blogspot.com he has posted images of Phoenix' superb Good Samaritan Hospital. This is where my grandmother was cared for after less competent care elsewhere. I'm not bringing this up to be a downer, on the contrary: Good Sam and its staff of doctors and nurses administered the kindest, most dedicated care possible to my beloved gran. I'll be eternally grateful for the gentle way they cared for her and the comfort they were able to give her, bless them all.

As I've mentioned, I make glass beads on torch and I make jewelry, and being a creative, arty sort of person, I seem to be a weirdo/loser/kook magnet. Indeed, I find the loopy energy of the out-there lost-in-space artist type quite fascinating. To a point. One of the most out-there people I know came over to my house today with another artist.

He's classic short-attention-span-theater, and although he's mid-50s, he is childlike in some of the most perturbing ways. Anything you mention or that he asks you about, after you give an explanation, he goes on to say that he's done it better/smarter/faster. No one has such a superlative existence as him. *much eye-rolling here*

And he will ask a question only to interrupt you with a subject change 5 words into your response. Maddening.

Here's the big stink bomb he laid on me today. He told me someday when I make a lot more money I need to hire him to landscape my pool. Seriously. How DARE he!

Now, I know there's one section of the garden that is drab, and the perennials aren't very large or established yet (it was the section I pictured here a few weeks ago), but it is evident in every direction of my yard that there is method to my madness.

I can understand speaking frankly, and I think I'm not terribly thin-skinned about things, generally, but that was so beyond the pale. If I had asked for his advice or what he thought, that would be one thing, but unsolicited advice lined with a cruel critique is downright shitty.

I might have responded that with the money from landscaping my yard he might do something about his distended abdomen or buy cleaning supplies so that his art pieces don't always reek of the bitter tang of cat piss.

But I would NEVER say something spiteful or hurtful just out of the blue. Just because I don't say mean things to people doesn't mean I'm not able to criticize-- I just don't like hurting someone's feelings - not my idea of a good time.

Call me fragile or pitiful, but I want the same respect paid me. I don't think I'll be inviting him over again any time soon.

Well, my beloved Deadwood is over forever. I've read that some people take issue with the florid speech of the characters (no, not the potty-mouth bits, the other bits), but I find this quite a likely form of address for that epoch.
Watch the Ken Burns documentary on letters between American Civil War-era soldiers and their loved ones back home. Personal address was obviously of a much more formal order then than what we see today, and taking that into account, I think the Deadwood writers nailed it. Besides, I love hearing the language so masterfully deployed. The current state of English address (or rather, American, at least) is like having access to a Lamborghini, but opting to take the Yugo everywhere instead. What a waste.

I looked Deadwood up on Wikipedia a few weeks back and saw that Al Swearengen and Seth Bullock were in fact real people. Seth Bullock went on to exalted place in Teddy Roosevelt's inner circle and was instrumental in the formation of the first US lands preserved in the form of a National Park. Swearengen ran several saloon/brothels in Deadwood. Sounds like he was a tragic character, actually.

I have to say that all my loathing in the show finally fell squarely at the feet of one George Hearst, who I dearly hoped would be dished up a goodly portion of lead to the brainpain in this episode. This was not to be. I was hoping he would be unrelated to THE American Hearsts, but, alas, George went on to father William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate, and great-grandfather of my favorite bankrobber Patty Hearst.

My favorite moment of this episode was Hearst's cook--Aunt Lou-- tidying up one of the town mental-defectives to bustle him out to vote against Hearst's interests in the election. Aunt Lou had been a devoted servant/assistant to Hearst, yet he had engineered the murder of her son(several episodes back), claiming it was a random robbery-type occurrence. Jerk. Anyway, it inspired Aunt Lou to get out the vote when the chips were down.

The show didn't end with the whole town burning down or anything, and there was plenty of unresolved tension. Final shot of Al is of him scrubbing the blood from the planks of his chamber floor after cutting someone's throat, the Nigger General is in line to vote, Calamity Jane is drunk and weeping for her dear lost Wild Bill Hickock, and George Hearst is riding high.

Not a jolting finish to this television masterpiece, but perhaps more realistic for the laborious creaking wind-down, and a harbinger of things to come for all the characters.

Just when I think I couldn't love Amy Sedaris any more than I already do, I come across this image, and yeah, I love her more. Ride 'em, cowgirl! It's the little details you have to love. Is it the purple rollers? The yellow latex gloves? I can't say. I just know she's been reading my dream journal. Fetch the saddle, Jeeves.

Golly, I really hate having to do this, but if you people had been on your toes and had given me shit when you should have, then I'd already have this embarrassing backpedaling taken care of in the comments of an earlier post. But NOOOOO. You let me sit there, my idiocy flapping in the wind for all to peruse, and now my humiliation is complete. I hope you're happy.

I made a fatuous statement that I'm now embarrassed to admit was written not under the influence of extreme inebriation, nor from an hallucinogen-generated fog. I said something extremely stupid in all sobriety. This, methinks, is a strong argument against sobriety.

What I said in the apartment management post was to the effect of your home reflecting your personality, and moreso than your car. blah blah blah. Please don't remind me specifically what I said - I'm taking pains to banish it from memory.

I would like to amend my statement thusly: HOW you live and how you treat other people is an infinitely more important and substantial measure of your worth as a person than where or what you live in, or what you drive. Or where you work.

Sitting in a cool breeze in the shade of another 102 degree Texas day, I realized as I so often do, what an irrascible moron I can be sometimes. I hope you can forgive me, for I still love you.

Sweet babies over for more Friday night pool frolics this week. That's 3 weeks in a row - FUN! Next week we won't get them. We're trying to wring as much fun as possible out of the pool before the water gets too cold.

I'm not feeling wistful about the end of 105 degree weather, but it does seem the merest moment between the end of the super-hot weather and the instant when I realize the pool is just too too cold to swim in. I usually eke out a bit of cold swimming even in October, and I'll try to suck it up and swim at least until then. However, I remember several birthdays of mine have been bitterly cold (Oct 8), and I always hope for that, as I crave nasty weather. Sweet!

It's s'posta be 95, 93 degrees by mid week next week, and that is a cold spell, baby. Let's hope it doesn't fall off too fast - finally got the house somewhat presentable and it's been great having pool parties lately. [ Somehow I just KNEW Kelly would be bringing some cooler weather with her. That's right: she's bad. She's nationwide.]

I know that I won't always have a swimming pool, but for this moment, it sure is sweet. I'm going to miss it some day. If you have a choice between a lawn and a pool, take the pool every time. Oh, and make sure you have a good camera on hand!

I actually hit upon an explanation for what I don't like about apartment management.

I DO enjoy showing my (unusually cool) apartments, and I enjoy the challenge of hooking someone up with an apartment that will meet their needs space- and feature-wise while helping them in some way discover and define who they are. (Ok, it sounds like a lofty concept, but I think where or what you live in is more indicative of who you are than is your vehicle).

I don't, however, enjoy the hand-holding that the 30-and-under crowd seem to need so very much of. I'm wondering if this is owing to the fact that their entire lives have been cradled in a world where safety belts were required for kids, all toys came with an age-appropriate rating system, and they always wore a helmet and pads when bicycling. They just seem so unprepared for life in the real world, and they are incredulous that every hard corner is not clad in rubber bumpers or something.

I'm a ripe old 40 years of age, and when I was a kid, we rode our banana-seat Schwinns sans helmet, and a whole shitload of us survived.

We had Clackers, a wonderful plastic ring tied in the middle of a long string with a transparent acrylic ball at either end. This was a toy. You would hold the ring and clack the balls up and down so they would smack together in an arc from top to bottom, top to bottom. Hours of fun, I tell you. Then some curmudgeon figured out that the acrylic ball fit neatly into the orbital socket of the human skull and was therefore likely to supplant the more desireable eyeball whilst in the process of swinging wildly about the head. Quicker than you can say Wham-O!, clackers were off the market. Wimps.

I've been thinking about it a lot. Most of these young men are terribly unmanly, needing lots of babying when it comes to wobbly door handles and changing light bulbs.

This very much makes me worry for the future of our country. Maybe our society is turning out people with too much specialized skill and too little general wisdom.

Maybe all college degrees should come with a complimentary copy of "Self-Sufficiency for dummies."

Note to self: author and publish "Self-Sufficiency for Dummies."

Another housekeeping post.

It was acting wonky and it's not been a top performer, but I was still surprised when my Maytag Neptune washing machine crapped out this weekend. Call me a cheapskate, but I reckon a washing machine you pay nigh on to $1100 for should last at least a decade, and not the scanty 6 years I wrung from its bony carcass.

Went to the Sears Scratch/n/Dent emporium to seek out a mis-matched mate for the old Neptune Dryer. Husband asked my opinion, and I said I want another front-loader, for the queen--she is short--and she'll have greater ease of access with the frontie thing, if she ever deigns to do laundry. Also, the front-loader tumble style washers are easier on the garments and more water-efficient.

Husband thought going uber cheap was the best way. I said "tell ya what: I'll let you pick this one out, and I'll pick out the next one, since this one is Mr. Right Now instead of Mr. Right."

...This next bit is Project Runway so maybe only me and Kelly will be interested, but here goes. I know things have been manipulated to make Angela seem even more annoying than she is IRL, but golly, her mom is irritating. I felt bad for Jeffrey, like it was crappy of her to stand there and trash his choices when he wasn't there to defend his design. I think there should simply be a moratorium on whining, and the whole damn planet would benefit.

Unless it's me - my whining is always justified. Actually, I don't whine. I unburden.

I'm sorry Robert had to go, but I'm SOOOO glad Vincent won one, because he's caught a lot of shit for his prior designs, and I actually think he's not that bad, that he has potential for creating accessible, wearable garments for women.

I have come to the shocking awareness that Laura is a bottle-redhead version of Gwenyth Paltrow. And my goodness but she's fertile - the 6th on the way? My love for her was cemented when she said "6, 7, 8, I'll just throw it on the pile." Bless her heart...

For some reason, my DVR recorded that wretched trainwreck show about Hugh Hefner's 3 grandaughters. What? You mean they are sposta be his lovahs? That is difficult to feature, but ok. Anyway, as with an exploding port-o-sans, I simply couldn't tear my eyes away, and I watched as 20 year old Kendra truly arrives when presented with her platinum and diamond grills. Cause you know, you haven't lived until you gets yo teef crunked.

Oh, and as for Workout - I can't believe it took Jackie all season to break up with that infantile bitch Mimi. Annoying.

Carry on.

Click here for one more good reason why you have to love a Marine. This story warmed the cockroaches of my little heart.

You know, Dick, it's so funny you mentioned Mama's Daughters' Diner, since I photographed it today. So here it is, big as day, Not the best photo. The real glory is on the inside. Mama had a diner, and now her daughters run it, hence the name. It's gratifying to see an apostrophe properly deployed twice in one business name.

If you're ever in Dallas and get a hankering for home cooking, this is the place, over on Industrial near downtown. Their gravy is not bad, (but it's not Babe's, either). They have incredible chicken-fried chicken livers that will make you glad someone thought of eating organs. Oh, and pies-- have you heard about their pies? They have glorious meringue piled hip-deep. Good shit. Oh, and don't neglect to have a filling breakfast, at which they excel.

This is another death-row meal must, in my book.

Seriously, you can pick up your bags at DFW airport and be at Mama's Daughters' in 20 minutes, or maybe under 15 if you're with a skilled local yokel.

Oh, and almost all the waitresses have been waiting tables for decades, and they all call you "sweetie" or "hon." I LOVE that. There is one waitress named Suzy Q. No lie. And a couple of them will remind you of Flo from Mel's Diner in the tv show Alice.

There's one older lady (MUST be in her 70s) who wears lots of rhinestones, has piled-high hair the color of shoe-black, and always wears huge black sunglasses as she waits tables. She's a total rock star. I'll get her photo for you sometime soon - she's adorable.

Dick said to go there at 11 to be seated, because they DO get a considerable line around midday. However, table roulette is fun at this place - they'll seat you with a table of people you don't know and you get pulled into some of the most colorful conversations to be found.

Yeah, this is another thing to love about Dallas.

I double-checked with my dad about Rita's history as a pilot, and he said she raced planes around towers and that she had a bunch of trophies. If I can get hold of a photo, I'll show her to you so you can see what grit looked like. She also had that distinctive East Texas drawl, spoken in a slow voice, like she had all day to get the sentence out...

WTF is UP with sending kids back to school so early? People are always shrieking and hand-wringing about a lack of funding for the school systems in this country and yet they make the children attend during the hottest part of the year and they have to really gin the A/C systems to keep it tolerable in the buildings? What a load of horse shit! Unconscionable. School--at least in the south, should not start until the beginning of September. Seriously.

My house is more comfortable than most, and I'm having a $450 electric bill to keep it 80 degrees in here. We have double-paned windows. Someone with single-panes in the same size house just told me theirs stays about 90 degrees and their last bill was $750.

So not only are we paying for the electric in our own homes, we're buying super-cooled air for the school buildings as well. And frankly, it's too effing hot to learn or work on anything, anyway. I haven't lifted a finger to make jewelry in about 6 weeks, because it's too bloody hot to work on the torch. AND I have people who want more of my jewelry, but they'll just have to wait. Sorry. This is Texas. Call me in November...

Went to Babe's Chicken Dinner House at Belt Line and Garland Road Monday night. They have toe-curling fried chicken, and it's all served family-style where they bring the side dishes to the table and everyone just takes as much as they like of each dish. Mashed 'taters, green beans, corn. But even having some of the best fried chicken I've ever had (and that's saying something) did not begin to compare to the natural glory of their cream gravy.

If I'd been standing when I first saw that bowl of gravy, I would have gone all jelly-like in the knees. It has the most divine consistency - looked exactly like my Grandma Bertie's (my grandma who died in Arizona in June 2005). The faintest whiff tantalized my nose with what I hadn't dared to hope for-- it smelled like that marvel she always whipped up to complement her buttermilk biscuits. Heaven.

Lo and behold, it tasted remarkably like her gravy. My nose began to tingle, and I feared for an instant I might weep, so I started prattling on about something incredibly silly to distract myself. It's not that I'm so in love with gravy as a particular food - it's just the power of association. The tremendous release of again smelling and tasting something I thought lost to me forever was overwhelming. Of course, it's only the tiniest bit off, but it is as close an approximation of her gravy as I ever dare hope to experience.

Funny thing is when I was waxing orgasmic here over fried chicken 6 months or so ago, Big Dick told me to hie to Babe's in Roanoke. You were totally right, Dick.

So for anyone who comes to Texas to visit, Babe's is an absolute requirement. We're talking death-row last-request meal, here. It's that good.

...a friend of my family died Sunday. She was a salty, lonesome sad person, but one I liked very much for her determination to live life on her own terms. My folks were probably the only genuine friends she ever had. She was roughly late 60s , early 70s, not old, but was a heavy drinker in years past, and a lifetime chain smoker, and those habits coupled with poor diet are what I am sure were the cause of her early demise. She looked much older than she should have. Apparently one of her kidneys stopped functioning some time ago and was absorbed into her body, leaving no evidence it ever had been there.

She never married, never had children, and I don't know of her ever having had a romantic relationship. She was like a 70 year old tomboy, tougher than a pine knot and a formidable foe, if the situation demanded. I think her father was violent and abusive, and that she never recovered from the cruelty of that meanness. She insulated herself from people by keeping her distance with a ready arsenal of the quills that are the stock in trade of emotional porcupines the world over.

She would come to my dad's shop and sit around for hours and talk to dad or folks who came in for car repair. Sometimes I'd call dad there and she'd answer the phone. I know she used to be a pilot, possibly a stunt pilot. She was a hard person to know, perhaps because she learned being vulnerable to other people was a dangerous thing to do. I'm just glad that at the end of the day she had in my parents and particularly my dad, a friend who was loving and supportive rather than dealing out judgment - someone to take her at face value and simply respect her as a human being, expecting nothing in return.

I find myself wishing I had taken more time to get to know her, to find out what exactly she did with airplanes-- just to know what she did in all the stages of her life. I know she struggled, but I think hearing about her journey would have been very interesting. I'm sad for her isolation, for her aloneness, but I'm glad that I had a chance to know her at least a little. Like I said, I have a great admiration for the people who set out in a new direction and blaze their own trail.

There won't be a funeral service for her. Her body won't be buried because she donated it to a local medical research facility. No family would come and the only friends being my folks, my siblings and me, there won't be a funeral. Mom suggested we could get together for dinner and just remember her that way. I think that's a lovely idea.

So, in some small way, this is my tribute to her, with respect, admiration, and yes, a little sadness for the pain life afforded her. God bless Rita Tittle.

Today a colleague and friend of husband's is coming for lunch and swimming with his wife and four sons. I'm not really looking forward to this event, but I'll suck it up and deal.

They invited us to church with them, oh, hell, must have been about 10 years ago, or 11. They go to a non-denominational church that's a wee bit on the puritanical side. The women wear a doily over their heads during church service. They didn't inform us of that in advance though (good thing) so I wasn't sporting crochet that day. We didn't go back, either.

Anyway, the wife used to work with husband and her man, but when they started having children, she became a stay at home mom and now home schools their boys. I'm not critical of home schooling - I completely understand that impulse - but I think women with that many children who home school should get paid vacations and shit. I mean, how exhausting - to never get a break!

Recently their old work group gathered (they do this every 6 months or so) and I asked husband if the wife was there, and he said her husband said "oh, well, if she came, all the boys would come, and then lunch would cost me $60." Mind, he just got a new motorcycle, and that's not frivolous, but giving the wife a lunch break out with the old colleagues is too much of a splurge. I just wonder if she ever gets any time to herself? It seems like slave labor, the brood-mare thing, and this kind of stuff makes me think of that woman in Houston who killed her 5 kids. Pathetic.

A couple years ago she hosted a candle party - I hadn't seen her in about a decade - and I thought I'd be a good sport and go. At some point I was in a group (that included her) having a conversation about their sworn duty to submit to their husband and never question his decisions. I said that should be granted only to a man who has an acute degree of common sense and sensitivity, otherwise, fine, burn me at the stake, baby. Needless to say, they were gobsmacked that I would say something so incredibly-- what?-- sinful, I suppose.

I could not get out of there fast enough. Anyway, They are coming. Pray for me.