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Friday, April 29, 2011

Get Ready...For What?

I came across the word "Gothabilly," today and I had no idea what the hell that was. After about three seconds of research (thanks interwebs!), I feel I have enough information to make a judgement about it (thanks self-serving blog!). So apparently Gothabilly is also Hellbilly, which I've heard of before, and is this mixture of Goth culture and Rockabilly Culture, which results in something like The Horrorpops (Chicagogigs.com had a lovely image).

I've mentioned before, in a previous post, about really identifying with Goth Culture and really enjoying looking at men that like to identify with the Rockabilly culture. So, it's only obvious that mixing the two together would be totally mind-blowing? Right? Meh.

blackwaterfall.com does an amazing job of categorizing the many goth sub-cultures with adorable photos and easy to understand descriptions. They describe Gothabilly as,

"What do you get if you mix Elvis Presley, The Cramps, a bunch of old horror movies and a splash of lounge?  Bizarrely, you get Gothabilly - a rare and exotic breed of Goth with rather eclectic tastes in both music and wardrobe.
With styles originating from “Rockabilly” (American 1950s rock n roll) and “Psychobilly” (1980s punk with a heavy rockbilly influence), Gothabilly is visually and musically a play on retro, kitsch aesthetics - but with a dark twist.  Like Deathrock, which often shows many overlapping traits with Gothabilly, the  music and imagery is frequently tongue-in-cheek and deliberately cheesy.  As such, many Gothabilly bands sport such creative names as Nacho Knoche & The Hillbilly Zombies, Cult Of The Psychic Fetus, and Vampire Beach Babes.
Gothabillys tend to be some of the brighter Goths out there, with their vivid tattoos, cherry accessories and ubiquitous polka dot clothes."

So now I have a name for all of those people with the halter polka-dot tops that always look as though they've taken nine hours to get ready to go out for three hours. I think, more than anything, I'm mystified as to how anyone actually manages to have time to get ready and go anywhere with a makeup and clothing regimen like this. While bands like The Horrorpops have a staff of makeup, clothing and hair people (alright, they're not THAT famous. They probably have someone that at least gathers everything up for them and does their laundry), how does the average Joe Vampire Hillybilly Zombie-Cool keep it all together?

Another amazing character springs to mind when I consider people and their unbelievable visages: Leigh Bowery. To describe Leigh Bowery is kind of impossible, so I'll let Wikipedia do it (let's face it folks, I'm being a little lazy this evening),

"Leigh Bowery (26 March 1961 – 31 December 1994) was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, actor, pop star, model and fashion designer, based in London. Bowery is considered one of the more influential figures in the 1980s and 1990s London and New York art and fashion circles influencing a generation of artists and designers. His influence reached through the fashion, club and art worlds to impact, amongst others, Alexander McQueen, Lucian Freud, Vivienne Westwood, Boy George, Antony and the Johnsons, John Galliano, the Scissor Sisters, David LaChapelle, Lady Bunny plus numerous Nu-Rave bands and nightclubs in London and New York which arguably perpetuated his avant garde ideas."

In the documentary, "The Legend of Leigh Bowery," one of the films that Bowery and his fellow promoters/actors/models/designers/whack-a-doos starred in was primarily about, "getting ready." It showed each character in various stages of undress with various stages of Bowery-esque makeup and hair (find more images from this awesome flickr photostream). One would comment on how that frock was just the right thing for the evening, or how, perhaps, that frock wasn't right at all. If it wasn't right, they would take it all off and begin the arduous task again. I think I remember them saying that sometimes you would get ready to go and you wouldn't go anywhere.

Although I've taken great strides to improve my appearance in the last few weeks, I'm already over the ten extra minutes my new beauty process is taking. Having the patience to construct a persona like these seems more work than it's worth. While you are fully expressing your personal desires and opinions with these living portraits, you're cutting into valuable party-time.

While visionaries like Leigh Bowery created influential and lasting fashion empires out of their frocks, our average Gothabilly enthusiast is most likely wearing something that someone else has designed and getting makeup tips from someone else that has worn this Pinup girl look before. My ultimate question/dilemma is, ten years from now when you look back on the experiences that you've had...are you going to remember your frock? Are you going to cherish the time that you spent in the bathroom drawing on your eyebrows or the time that you spent painting the town red?



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Thursday, April 28, 2011

T'Pau is More than Just a Crappy Band

"Amok Time"




...Dun Dun DA DA DA DA DA DA Dun Dun DA Da...
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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Precocious Photography

As with any person that gets a new toy, I've been obsessing over my new camera and carrying it with me wherever I go, like some kind of wacky tourist on their first trip to America. I'm already kind-of over taking photos of the newly bloomed flowers, but I'm still not taking photos of random architectural feats...maybe next week.

I brought the camera to my aunt's house and my smaller cousins ventured outdoors with me to look at what I was taking photos of. She asked if she could take a photo with my camera and I had to say no: I feel like maybe I'm not old enough for this camera and she's five. She was good-spirited about the denial, and ran in the house and came back with her own camera. She shooed me out of several shots and made me pose for several others. Then pointed out the highlights of those photos on the "view finder" of her camera. Annabelle is probably the most precocious child I've ever met. At five years old, she's said some amazingly hilarious things that continue to catapult her status as "The Most Hilarious Kid I've Ever Met."

Today, for instance, I received a telephone call and went out to the porch to talk. She proceeded to sit right next to me and mimic my conversation in a perfect display of extravagant sarcasm: complete with hair-twirling and eye-rolling. She's a cross between Jackie Mason and Ethel Merman inside of a tiny little girl with, "popular hair," (at least that's what she told me it was).

When I took her older sister, Hannah, to the store to buy a present for her birthday, Annabelle's only reaction to what her older sister had chosen was, "You betta not get me dat for my birsday."

Although I'm not cut-out for motherhood, I can see, in times like these, why people would want children. Not only is it about an extension of your marriage or whatever new-age parenting crap people yap on and on about, but it is also about having the chance to take part in the life of a really cool person that enriches the lives of everyone around them. While there are plenty of children that do nothing like that, the few that do seem to be that much more preciously endearing and fun to be with. Best Blogger Tips

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Guilty Pleasure Tuesday: Picket Signs

I spent a lot of my growing-up time living in a log home. I wouldn't necessarily say "Log Cabin," because when I do, for me, it connotates some kind of living-on-the-land situation with Abraham Lincoln and a fireplace where you dried your clothes and made toast with a wrought-iron plate...or whatever. My parents still live there, whilst they dream of setting it on fire and living in a camper in Arizona. That's the retired person's new American Dream, isn't it?

Anyway, when I was a preteen, I hated the idea of "country living," and dreamed of some kind of high-rise urban dwelling like I saw Whoopi Goldberg robbing in, "Burglar." A place where there were long-stemmed Calla Lilies resting in glass vases with colored water, leather sofas that no one ever sat on, and fancy high-tech answering machines with snappy-ass messages like, "It's me...you know what to do."

As I got older, went to college and then returned back for a life of career success in Western Pennsylvania (I'm still waiting for that last part), I grew to really the idea of rural settings and dwellings. Let's not get excited, though. The "need" for the things that suburbia offers, a coffeeshop, a place to buy slightly-fancy shampoo and an Ikea, is still something that I feel is kind of important in my life, but having those things within a 30-minute drive isn't out of the question. Having all of the benefits of urban living fifty minutes away isn't that bad, either. Basically, I want it all.

When I was a kid, I hated the idea of a little bungalow with a white picket fence and a garden, but now...as long as I didn't have the sign the mortgage, it's not such a bad idea. I know that this severely reduces my street-cred, but a white picket fence is kind of adorable.

That's what Frou Frou Shit is all about, isn't it? The insanely adorable things that catch my attention. The things that I love. The details I adore.

I took this photo on the way to the Post Office today...with my new camera: A Nikon Coolpix L120. I hate the "Coolpix" moniker, but I'm having a great time with this camera. I'm sure that I'll like it even more when I know how to use it.

I wonder if my appreciate of rural life isn't just my way of dealing with getting older. It pairs nicely with my comfort shoes and my outdoor performance clothing. Who knew aging would be like this?




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Monday, April 25, 2011

My Own Private Blog of Note

I'd like to take the time to send a shout out to Bessy T. and her blog, The Hippie Housewife.

Such a lovely part of the interwebs from a lovely lady. Visit her etsy store, too...aptly titled Each Peach Vintage.

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Stop, Collaborate and Listen.

I was driving to work yesterday and I heard, "Ice Ice Baby," for the first time in years. This song and I have a long history, because it is the first thing that I remember that I bartered with my mother about. I was the kind of kid that instinctively got good grades. I mean, you're in school, you're in there all day, so why not make the best of it? Anyway, when Vanilla Ice's album, "To The Extreme" came out in 1990, I wanted it. I remember envying the cassette at Kmart. After an awesomely stellar report card, my mother bought me the cassette, and I kind of wish I still had it, but I also think that I may have listened to it so many times that it stopped working. That was a while ago.

When I heard the song on the radio during a "Flashback Weekend," or whatever, I listened for a while and then I found myself saying out loud, "Shut the fuck up." It was at that moment that I realize that this song had graduated from my self-invented five-step program.

Step One: A song is super popular and everyone can't get enough of it. It's on the radio every five minutes and everyone sings along with reckless abandon.

Step Two: The overplayed song becomes a pariah and everyone wants to stab themselves in the face every time their hear it. They can't change the station of the radio fast-enough.

Step Three: Obscurity. The radio isn't shoving it down your throat anymore, and you've already sold that album to The Exchange, where it sits with the seventy-thousand other copies of Avril Lavigne's "Let Go."

Step Four: Irony! People adopt a song back into their lives because they love how ironic it is to love it, or they enjoy the camp value. This song, specifically, will probably never leave this phase, nor do I really want it to.



Step Five: This is the aptly titled "Shut the Fuck Up," phase. This is obviously where "Ice Ice Baby," lives. Whether it's because Vanilla Ice (aka Robert Van Winkle) will not accept his forced retirement with grace (I think he's on some kind of home improvement show now or something), or because the culture that surrounds that song isn't all that exciting or "retro," it's the kind of song that just doesn't hold it's own the way that "Looking For Love In All the Wrong Places," has years and years after the release of "Urban Cowboy" to DVD. What a great movie! It's got it all and it has it before John Travolta became a weirdly plump Scientologist. But I digress...

Take every song that you've ever liked or hated, and you'll find that it fits somewhere on this scale.






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Twenty-One

I haven't slept in twenty-one hours.

On Thursday, a little boy came into the candle shoppe and pointed at me and said, "Lady go night-night." I'm not sure whether he just didn't want to deal with me and my obligatory ridiculously over-the-top customer service (which the company demands from me and pays me for), or if he could see in my eyes that I've not been sleeping right for the last...oh well, who can remember?

These are the things that my sleep-deprived mind is thinking about.

Tofurky. I really don't like lunchmeat and I really hate turkey lunchmeat because it gets slimy and weird about ten minutes after you get home from the grocery store. On the other hand, I really love things with any kind of a dumpling-ish texture. In fact, I love and hate a lot of food based solely upon their texture (i.e. hating mangoes, carrots and jello molds), but we marry the best qualities of both of these items and voila!


The two seasons of "Father Ted" that are going to be in my mailbox on Monday. A brief Wikipedia synopsis:

Father Ted is a situation comedy produced by Hat Trick Productions for the UK's Channel 4 and written by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan. It aired over three series from 21 April 1995 until 1 May 1998, including a Christmas special, for a total of 25 episodes.
The show follows the misadventures of three Roman Catholic priests who preside over a parish on Craggy Island, located off the west coast of Ireland. Father Ted Crilly, Father Dougal McGuire and Father Jack Hackett live together in Craggy Island's parochial house, along with their housekeeper Mrs Doyle, who is often wanting to serve them tea. The three priests answer to Bishop Len Brennan, who assigned them the Craggy Island parish due to different incidents in their past: Ted for alleged financial impropriety, Dougal for something only referred to as the "Blackrock Incident" (resulting in many "lives irreparably damaged"), and Jack for his alcoholism and womanising. The show revolves around the priests' lives on Craggy Island, sometimes dealing with matters of the church but more often dealing with Father Ted's schemes to either resolve a situation with the parish or other Craggy Island residents, or to win games of one-upmanship against his arch-nemesis, Father Dick Byrne of the nearby Rugged Island parish.



This Guy. xo. I miss Mister Dustin a lot today.














Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
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