Kingsport, Tennessee, 1965?
Several years later, high-school Jimmy landed a gig as an actual DJ at the local radio station in Kingsport. This is possibly the best picture of dad of all time.
[See: DJ Jimmy Fresh, the early years]
He asked me not long ago if I could convert some of his old mix tapes to CD so he could enjoy the groovy tunes of yesteryear, and this is what he handed over:
Cutting edge of technology, no? (Also: my packrattiness is totally not my fault.)
Posted in family, Old-Timey Tuesday, pop culture, ROCK
This evening Jon and I got something in the mail from our mutual alma mater, Syracuse University. It wasn’t letter-shaped, so I figured it would be an invitation to some local event or other. Instead, it was a card. On the front:
And inside:
I MEAN. How excellent is that? This is the smoothest play for alumni money I’ve seen in a long time. I have to say, it made me feel pretty special — Jon dug it too.
Funnily, earlier this week I got an email solicitation from my undergraduate institution that was somewhat less endearing: the message contained an image bearing the filename “Young Alumni Faux Thank You Graphic to Nondonors.” Ouch, NU. Rename your graphics and step it up! Syracuse wins this round, easy.
Posted in graphic design, higher ed, social graces
I would be remiss if I let this day pass without noting its significance in my life. Twenty years ago today, Wayne’s World hit the big screen and forever lodged itself in my brain, for better or worse.
I went to see it with Abby and her family not long after it opened (possibly even on opening day); I remember her mom called my mom to get permission for me to go with them, since it was PG-13. Although Abby and I didn’t get much of the humor then, we still thought it was the funniest movie of all time.
Fished in! (that would be me & Abby)
If you’ve spent any time on this blog you know how frequently this movie comes up for me (and those links are only from the first couple weeks of posts). I try to keep it to a socially acceptable level, of course, but sometimes my Wayne’s World reflex can’t be suppressed. I might have a problem. Nevertheless, I’ve seen the movie several dozen times and it continues to crack me up.
I’ll end this tribute with an excellent link my sister called to my attention earlier today — a then-and-now cast slideshow. Click on the screengrab to check it out:
Wayne’s World, on your 20th birthday, I salute you. Scha-wing!
Posted in lowbrow, nostalgia, pop culture
The cafeteria at my high school, Atlanta, Georgia, February 2001
I might have mentioned before how I’ve always loved dressing up. Happily, my friends are just as enthusiastic about it as I am, and always have been. For this occasion — the Valentine’s Day dance at our high school during senior year — we raided the racks at Rave and Body Shop (not related to the beauty product store) for cheap, Valentine-festive getups, and apparently we were in a vinyl kind of mood when we did so. We didn’t stop at just clothes: As you can see, Abby‘s sporting some freaky rhinestone-stickum-eyelash things, and she and I both have rhinestone tattoos (aka stickers) stuck to our chests. (Mine says HOTTIE.)
Because you never know when you might need a red vinyl halter top, I’ve still got this among my dress-up clothes. I also bought one of the black tube tops Abby is wearing above — I think they were on super clearance for like $5 apiece. (Both of these were utilized at least once during college.) Too bad I didn’t score myself some maroon vinyl pants while I was at it, because those things are awesome.
I love this picture because of how happy and how ridiculous we look. Dammit, we are so cute! I have the best best friends. Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!
Posted in Old-Timey Tuesday, wearables
A couple weeks of ago as I was perusing the new inventory at Young Blood, a print I hadn’t seen before caught my eye:
(Illustration by Katrin Wiehle)
A kinds-of-German-sausage print? Is there anything my kitchen needs more? I couldn’t find the artist’s info and Googling led me nowhere when I got home, so the next time I was in the shop I asked the proprietor who had made the print. She said she’d look it up and pointed me to another of the artist’s prints hanging on the wall as she did. That one had a name on the back: Katrin Wiehle.
I looked up her website and was completely enchanted by all of her work. Originally from outside Hanover, Germany, Katrin Wiehle came to Atlanta in 2008 to study illustration at SCAD-Atlanta on a Fulbright scholarship.
Translation potion — the original. Speak and understand in record time
While she was at SCAD, her thesis project was a children’s book called “Professor Pfeffers tierisches Abenteuer” (Professor Pepper’s Animal Adventures). It has since been published, translated into French (“Les 99 animaux du professeur peperino”) and won a couple of awards. Here are some of the illustrations:
She has since returned to Germany, and her second book, “Was macht die Katze in der Nacht? (what does the cat do at night?) just came out. I think I need both of these, although I don’t know any German-speaking kids; Maybe my future progeny will learn German animal names. Totally normal, right? (Amandalein, you might need to take a delivery for me…) Here’s the cover of her latest:
If you want to know and see more, check out these interviews with Katrin and her website and blog. I’ll leave you with two more awesome things and let y’all seek out the rest for yourselves. I want to wallpaper my room with the last one!
food pyramid
(All images by Katrin Wiehle and used with permission)
Posted in art, inspirations, things German
Over the weekend I attended my first beauty pageant ever at the university where I work. Yes, my place of employ has its very own pageant that feeds into Miss Georgia, which feeds into Miss America! My coworker and I attended under the guise of providing social media content for the students, but we were actually pretty excited to go. (Plus, we got in for free.)
Overall it was an entertaining evening. Swimsuits were so-so, if a bit awkward; evening gowns were fine; onstage questions were inane and answered with basically one sentence each; and the TALENT — my goodness was it grim. “Monologue” was a surprisingly prevalent talent: some were historical, some were original, many were depressing and one was called “Abortion Cycle 1.” Yippee, hooray! I thought I might die of vicarious embarrassment throughout, a feeling that morphed into to straight-up pain as we neared the last of the contestants. One of the instrumental performances was just — I honestly can’t remember the last time I encountered anyone with such a bad ear. If they hadn’t announced what song she was playing, I never would have figured it out.
Apparently, though, they saved the best for last. The final contestant’s talent was listed as dance, but in reality it was AERIAL SILKS. No shit! At this point basically all she’d need to do to take the talent competition was climb up on those things. She had a short routine — 90 seconds is all the time they have — but it gave her enough time to do some impressive splits and twists.
I mean REALLY. How could that not win? This girl also swept the preliminary awards for swimsuit and evening wear, so it was pretty obvious what the outcome would be:
She’ll go on to the state pageant in a few months, and then who knows — maybe her aerial silks routine will carry her through that competition as well. As for me and my coworker, we’re already looking forward to next year’s pageant!
Posted in events, things southern, Whaa?
Kingsport, Tennessee, sometime in the early ’50s
Here’s my dad, little Jimmy, hanging out by his fancy record player in his footie pajamas. I think the turntable is independent of the clown cabinet, but it may be that it was all one awesome setup. So hip! Also, JUST LOOK AT THAT FACE.
Posted in family, Old-Timey Tuesday
My sweet, unsuspecting Little Man (pictured in his teepee) is having surgery tomorrow to remove a wee tumor. The only way to know the nature of this particular kind of mass is to remove and biopsy it, and, after talking with my vet and getting a second opinion from another vet I know, I decided I’d rather take action than risk it and wait around to see if LM became seriously ill. It’s a fairly quick, routine procedure, so I’ll get to take him home at the end of the day. Please think good thoughts for Little Man and his awesome vet, Dr. Carlson!
[Oops! Forgot to publish this one on Friday...]
Last night my favorite shop, Young Blood Gallery & Boutique, hosted an event with Meg Keene of A Practical Wedding, the blog and now the book. While I’m not a daily reader of A Practical Wedding (as I write this I have 54 unread APW posts in my Google reader… so very behind on so many things), I am a frequent one, and I was interested to go and hear her speak — and, yes, to buy her book. I figure I’ll feed my interest in weddings for the moment, and I’ll lend it and One Perfect Day out to my marrying friends in the future.
As it happened, the event had very little to do with weddings at all, beyond Meg’s initial spiel about how odd it was that this book hadn’t been written already. The rest of her remarks and the subsequent discussion were focused on female entrepreneurship. It made sense, I guess; most folks there were already married.
There was, however, one question from the crowd about submitting weddings to be featured on APW. A theme that ran throughout Meg’s response was that you shouldn’t write about your wedding with the sole purpose of landing yourself a feature on a popular blog like APW. You should write about your wedding for you, for any number of reasons: to chronicle the process; to stay organized; to recollect; to ease the transition from single to engaged to married; the list goes on. (I wish I had written down whatever Meg actually said — I’m certain it was more concise than that.)
I kept a wedding blog from about 11 months out from the big day on. It’s already been interesting to look back over what I wrote and remember what life felt like or what was going on at any given stage in the process. I’ve never been big on keeping journals, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve found myself writing about significant travels or transitions so I can recall them with some detail later. In addition to serving as a memory aid, my blog was a repository for ideas and a way to keep myself sane. (I also like to think of it as a resource for Google-happy Atlanta brides.) Some of my friends and family followed along; many did not. I never shared the link on Facebook because I didn’t want the random people I’m friends with all up in my business for the sake of more page views; It may also have been a teeny bit because I didn’t want my coworkers to get wise to the fact that I was planning my wedding and blogging about it from my desk. Ha!
The other recommendation Meg had that I really liked was to write about your wedding (for yourself) before you get the photos back from your photographer. Sift through your own memories while you wait, because, lovely and intimate as they can be, the images will only tell the story of your wedding from an observer’s creative perspective and can color what or how you remember once you’ve got a disc of photos to click through. Write down the things that stood out in your mind from the day so you can hang onto them over the years. (I’m sure it helps put the photos in context when you look back, too.) Even if you don’t fancy yourself the writing type, this seems like a worthwhile exercise. I hadn’t thought of it in these terms before, because it was something I was doing anyway.
I haven’t cracked the book yet, but I’ll be interested to see how it differs from the website. Have any of you out there read it? Thoughts?
Posted in deep thoughts, grown-up stuff, weddings
