I'm working on a vaudeville child star costume for myself. It now has puffy sleeves. I just need to attach all of the pieces together and maybe make an enormous bow for the back. This will undoubtedly take me 18 more weeks. I'm going to be wearing this in the golden retriever movie. Not as the golden retriever. I'm actually playing two parts, making this movie a perfect combination of Air Bud and The Nutty Professor, two movies I have never seen.
I made a wig to go with this dress, but it looked like a combination of a macaroni and cheese head and a fake dreadlock hat wearing guy. It was really bad. So I'm going to make a fall out of doll hair. Does that make sense to anyone who is alive in 2009? It is a partial wig thing.
I keep thinking "Why did I get rid of that half-used packet of doll hair that I had three years ago?" even though I have since moved four times and never until now needed half a packet of doll hair. This seemed ridiculous for an entire week, until I went to the art supply store to get a new packet. Unfortunately I went to the art supply store that is always out of everything, so they were out of blonde doll hair. They had black, white, and auburn. There wasn't even a space where the blonde hair was supposed to be. I guess I will order some from the internet, even though that seems incredibly stupid.
I recently read this book, which is about vaudeville child dance star and pack rat Doris Eaton Travis, who went on to appear in the Ziegfield Follies. She then outlived every other Ziegfield girl there ever was. She's now 104, I believe. It's a really interesting biography because it takes advantage of its subject's huge collection of newspaper clippings and photos and whatnot to tell her life story in collage form. The story is also pretty interesting with or without the wacky format. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in graphic novels, collage, or famous people from the 1920s.
Snowfakes will be playing on Thursday, May 7th in St. Louis as part of this:
Chataqua Art Lab MAPPING THE MULTIVERSE May 2-8, 2009 Temporary art and technology project founded by Eric Repice and Sarah Paulsen Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts space 3151 Cherokee Street, St. Louis, MO, USA
More info later. And here at Sarah Paulsen's blog.
The first membership packets for the Pals of Pillow and Pillow were sent out today. It's not too late to join if you haven't already.
Today I made this enormous moon guy. He's not finished yet. I have to add craters and facial features once the paint dries.
Then I worked on outfitting Barnaby. Doesn't he look dapper? I kind of hate this plaid, but it's the vestiest fabric I have, so I'm going with it. At least it matches the shiny material for the back of the vest. Plus I have such a huge amount of fabric that I can't really justify buying more.
I'm having trouble finishing anything today. Except the granola bars. I didn't eat them all, but I did finish making them. In fact, I should probably eat some more before Channing gets home.
I found out that audio recordings of the Oz books are available for free online. I've never read them before, so I thought I'd listen to them while I work on other things to prevent myself from checking my email 1000 times to see if my group project-mates have emailed me. The reader of this one is okay. Some of his character voices are slightly irritating, but at least he's known how to pronounce all of the words so far. I'm up to chapter 6. I think there are probably other versions available, but I'm satisfied enough to keep listening to this guy. Usually when I listen to audiobooks I fall instantly asleep, or try to fall instantly asleep but instead stay awake for excruciating chapters being annoyed that the person driving the car wants to listen to a stupid old audiobook. I guess it's better if it's a story I want to hear.
When I was learning to read my parents made me cassette recordings of my favorite books, like the one about the guy who rode his bike into a tree. They even used the toy xylophone to alert me that it was time to turn the page. Maybe it's just hard for other audiobooks to live up to that.
Speaking of nerdy things that are online for free, the Library of Congress has a youtube channel and a flickr page where you can look at lots of great stuff from 1904, or whichever olden year you prefer. I'm actually doing one of my final projects for library school about the LOC flickr project, so I spent a long time looking at the photos while attempting to do my research today. Life Magazine also has a huge archive of photos online in a somewhat less browseable format. Full episodes of the PBS series Art:21 are now available on Hulu. It's one of my favorite shows, although sometimes it's incredibly boring. It depends on whether the artists featured seem like genuine passionate people or like people who've spent a lifetime looking up words in a thesaurus trying to justify their artwork. Thanks to the internet, you can just skip the boring pompous people. I kind of like watching them, though, because sometimes it's fun to get mad at the tv. Actually, I think I usually just fall asleep until an interesting part comes on.
I'm really excited that Easter is coming. This year might be the year the Easter Bunny comes to ask for my hand! If you don't know what I'm talking about, this informative video will help you understand.
Did you know that Channing has a video blog where he (sometimes, unless he is taking a break) posts a story every day? The video above is from that (on a day when he was taking a break). So if you want to see Channing talking, usually about things that are funny, you should go watch him.
