DBCV8: VT Sunset

Oh my, what a weekend. Is a new week really starting again...already? I need a weekend to recover from my weekend please! Sheesh, it seems I barely have time to have a weekend and blog and vlog about said weekend before a new week begins!? NOT FAIR!

Many thanks go out to the fabulous Seven Days crew for letting me tag along to my 2nd Seven Days XMas party (also thanks to my sister for bringing me!). Those cats know how to throw a damn fine holiday bash with tasty food (thanks Plan B), booze a plenty and a gift exchange to rival all others.

Just how does Diane the Santa do it: handing out gifts, engaging in witty reparte and keeping her drink fresh?! Duh, in leather pants of course! Tee hee!

Thanks Pamela and Paula! You guys and your gang are the best, no wonder your paper is so damn good!

A fun Saturday afternoon trip to a junk shop in Richmond lead to many musty smelling finds, some of which will be under the Christmas tree this year. Scott walked away with a bunch of Life magazines from the 20s and 30s to collage with. We marvelled at all the happy faces contained within - were people happier in the old days or were they just better at faking it?

I left decked out in fine jewels and laden down with many mildew covered books about the human body and true crime. Nothing like a day spent driving along snow covered VT roads and poking through dusty piles o junk that no one else wants (vlog to follow later, me hopes).

It is a funny thing about auditioning. It never gets any easier, at least, not for me. I can count on two hands how many auditions I have been to in my lifetime and they still fill me with apprehension. Even though I know and love Lois Trombley, my amazing and wonderful dance teacher, I was still dreading auditioning for her dance troupe, Speilpalast Cabaret on Sunday. Wouldn't staying in bed with a nice book and a cup of tea be a far better way to spend my time? Eh?

Of course, I was being totally silly because I auditioned for Spielpalast last year and had a blast. Definitely a fun way to spend a Sunday and far more fun than most uptight auditions, it is more like a happening dance class with improv to boot!

So after dragging my butt out of bed and down to the Rose St Coop, I was pleased to see that I knew most of the other people auditioning, small world! And we had an entertaining afternoon acting, dancing, singing, making funny faces and playing make believe. So thanks Spielpalast for the fun audition and I am glad I got my butt out of bed!

Finally, time to unwind after the auditioning adrenaline rush with beer and burgers at VT Pub and Brewery and then down to the waterfront in time for the magnificent sunset over Lake Champlain. And to commemorate, here is another vlog which is dedicated to Nelson Muntz of The Simpsons (who knew he had such a complicated backstory?):

"HA HA! I touched your heart!" - Nelson Muntz, The Simpsons

DBCV8: VT Sunset
12/10/06

DBCV6: Junk Shop

“Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window;
Why, why, says the junk in the yard”
Paul McCartney

In which Eva and Scott explore a junk shop in Richmond Vermont and find many obscure, mildew-covered goodies and ancient remnants of the past.

Best of all are the Life Magazines and their ads full of sickly sweet, forever-smiling happy people. Some of my favorites are the Camel ad which joyfully proclaims that "More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarettes."

Oh, you don't say! Not to mention the fact that Camels do not cause throat irritation. Lung cancer, maybe, but no throat irritation! Hurrah, pass me that butt!

And I especially love the bandaid ad which proclaims, "Never neglect a thorn stab." You would think the population was full of thorn stab holes! Perhaps we are? And of course, every fellow wants that "Just combed look all day long."

The great thing about these ads is that they are not all that different than the ads nowadays. It is all the same crap being sold: Coke, Bud, sugar, cars, bandaids, hair gel, underwear, shoes. And they are selling it the same way they always do: Your life is incomplete without this insert product here.

On that note, the junk shop is the ultimate weapon for the anti-consumer this holiday season. Junk shops collect all the worn out, long forgotten items that supposedly should have been thrown out long ago.

The old magazines, books, dolls, knick knacks and doo dads that you are supposed to replace with something new and shiny - if you are a proper Capitalist that is. I mean, COME ON, you want to get ahead, right? You want to be the successful envy of your neighbors - then get out your credit card Buddy!

As we shop ourselves to death this holiday season and buy bigger cars, smaller phones and even tinier IPods, you have to ask yourself, when will it all end?

In a big bloody Mad Max style oil crisis revolution? And long after this day comes, what will the residents of the future think of our sick consumer fascination with the "new" and the "better?"

In the future, perhaps only junk will remain. And the new things we currently hope so desperately to own will be piled high on our big pile o' junk. And the planet will be just one big junk shop with bartering and trade our only way of owning things.

The junk shop as revolution, dig it man:



Note to self, next time, bring my video camera and interview the cool old guy who owns the junk shop, or better yet, his neato wife!