Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

I’d read about The Pink Feather last week and got really obsessed with it. So by Saturday night, I was lobbying very hard for a visit even though it’s on the far southern edge of town.

This is the restaurant side, which was closed by the time we got there. The place was pretty empty. I only peeked in here on my way out and nearly had a heart attack.

These built-in frames were above a lot of the tables in the bar side, which was less interesting, but still not bad. There was a fireplace and nice booths. The drinks were really cheap. The lady that worked there was really friendly and Donna’s food was delicious.

When we left, we pleaded with them never to change the place. The bartended said the original owner’s daughter (now seventy) had no plans to change a single thing.

Otherwise, the Thanksgiving week of vacation was kind of a blur. Jeremy and I barely left the house, which was pretty nice. We ate mini tacos and spaghetti on Thursday. I also saw Ruthless People for the first time. I also enjoyed watching the film, Fame. It’s an encyclopedia of film cliches: the gifted student who cannot read, the naive young woman who gets coerced to take her top off at a ’screen test’ and line (delivered oompletely straight): “A beautiful thing is happening to me, mom, I’m growing up.”

Rob turned me on to Lisa Gidley.

Also, Christian Patterson has some nice new photos on his site.

Here’s the rest of the remodeling over at Donna’s.

Donna left me the key to her house while she was out of town recently, so I could bring her mail inside, but instead, a group of us decided to gut the inside of her house:

We had a video crew there from While You Were Out, but they left after the first few hours cause we were very extremely unproductive. There were lots of smoking breaks on the porch and discussing what was the best path and we wouldn’t wear the yellow team sweatshirts they brought. It’s weird that we kind of floundered at the beginning when you consider all the remodeling shows we’ve logged collectively. My favorite is that spin-off of a spin off that the geniuses at MTV came up with where some turd like Tommy Lee shows up at your house while you’re out and remodels your basement. And then there’s that awkward moment where the guy comes home and there’s cameras rolling and he’s like, “Tommy Lee… and new speakers…”

Anyway, I’ve been pretty fascinated by Donna’s place since she bought it because it’s been so preserved. The same old people lived there for over fifty years and probably didn’t do any major remodeling since the 1950s, which is strange and good when you consider what brutal years the 70s and 80s were for remodeling. This house was kind of an archeological treasure trove of old fixtures and especially wallpaper.
It saddened me to get rid of it. Then it saddened me even more when I realized how hard it was to actually get rid of.

We rented a steamer from Home Depot, which was kind of cool looking but not really the miracle solution it seemed like at the time. The most useful way to get rid of old wallpaper is to have some really good scrapers, which we got around to getting once the job was almost over.

This medieval mace-contraption came with the steamer rental and was supposed to perforate the paper and make it peel off easily. It didn’t work at all and then I forgot it in the house when I returned the steamer which made me scream. We named it ‘the friend fighter’. And here’s Katherine, crazy from wallpaper glue and primer.

Once we realized that we didn’t know what we were doing or had much interest in continuing, I convinced everybody that we should just throw in the towel and go eat pizza. So Jenny took a rock from the back yard and smashed a window in the back of the house to make it look all ‘forced entry’. I also stole Donna’s stereo to make this scenario seem plausible to Donna and the police.

Okay, this is where we left off on the first day: the David Fincher look. This might have been an interesting point at which to stop if Donna wanted her bedroom to look like a location from 7even or Fight Club.

Yeah, I screwed up and didn’t get any actual final pictures. I went back the next day with Jenny and we moved the bed and furniture back in and pulled off all that blue tape.

Thanks also to Leslie and Sally and Matt for all their hard work. Tomorrow I’ll put up some pictures of the Kitchen Dining room, which was even more extreme.

More photos from Stephen today. I think the shots above are from Vancouver, Canada, but I’m not sure.

This is when Leslie mentioned she had been to Mardi Gras and showed us all the beads she still had in her trunk.

Jeez, I found a bunch of good stuff today really cheap. These pictures above are from these 4×5 positive prints. I totally need a 4×5 camera right away! The detail on the film was insane. Plus, this guy is the coolest and I wish I knew what his story was.

God bless the sentimental collector!!! This was the big find as far as I’m concerned. Jeremy saw this cigar box full of early 1970s motel soaps. Some of these were even hand dated with notes about where the motel was. I stayed at the Circus Circus hotel in Vegas back in 1999 and don’t remember the soaps being this nice. Oh! And it also came with plastic motel cups still in cellophane. I love that someone would keep these for thirty years. This type of Warholian appreciation for the most banal aspects of American culture just choke me up beyond words. Most of the cups were from Holiday Inn. And who was the genius over there who got rid of that big crazy HI sign as part of their branding? When I was a kid, I would fantasize about staying at a Holiday Inn because I loved their sign so much. But I still use that as my only criterion for everything in life.

There were a bunch of old report cards from the fifties. On the back there’s a line where your parents had to sign it. I flipped through a couple of these hoping to find one with nothing but F’s in hope that the parent’s signature would be crudely forged. No such luck, but this kid did get a C in science.

Nice! Found a whole stack of Garbage Pail Kids cards (still haven’t seen the GPK movie, alas). Sadly, I discovered a few months ago that Viewmasters were made in Portland and everybody who worked at the factory got some weird kind of cancer.

Now I don’t think Tom really loves me cause I’d visited his crummy store before the election and was appalled to find ‘Yes On 36′ bumper stickers available there. But I admire his undiagnosed mania for the self-promotion of his scary Oz-like head. Plus, I like having a picture his face next to a guy’s naked butt. I read a Rechy novel years ago and was amused by what a jumble of gay self-loathing it was.

I got an email from the lady who created the Mr. Bingle fan site (this only makes sense if you’re from New Orleans).

Leslie stopped by the house this afternoon and we started talking about how we should just say fuck Christmas presents this year. Sorry baby Jesus. Don’t cry. It’s just that it seems like everybody has bought a house this year or they’re in school or saving up for a house or school. So don’t buy me any presents. Really! Unless you really love me and want to buy me a Graflex Crown Royal 4×5 Camera off eBay for $200. I also wouldn’t kick a Leica M7 out of bed for eating crackers.

So this just happened, quite a few months ago. But we’re all still chilled by the Rose and Sadie-ness of it all.

Click here, here, and here.

I unintentionally saw a show by a photographer named Aaron Lee the other night at Beulahland and really liked his stuff. The prints were really huge and beautiful.

I know, I know, webcams are so party-like-it’s-1999, but Jeremy just got one at work today and I couldn’t stop being delighted by asking him to dance and then seeing it on the little tee vee screen on the com-puter. It was like one of those GE commercials from the 80s where they showed what the future would be like. Or maybe all this amazement was varnish fume fueled.

We went to this restaurant on Saturday night called The Rogue and blah, blah, blah… there was free money hidden in the table.

You can see from the photo that the surface of the table was made up of all these loose four inch wood squares that were held in place by the edges. I started absent-mindedly playing with them and the first one that came loose had a dollar inside. I thought it was going to be glued to the surface in perfect Mad magazine fashion, but there was note scribbled on it about karma or something.

Then I became completely distracted by this gimmick and started removing as many squares as I could and found about four more bucks. They found some cash on the other side of the table as well, but I think I’m the only one who kept the free money.

Anyway, it was nice that I got to see Megan three times while she was in town but strange that she was here and then gone so quickly. We didn’t even get to do any tourist stuff.

And tonight I saw Tarnation at the Hollywood Theater. I was really knocked over by the editing of this film, which was so rapid fire and associative and quick and crazy. If you made a narrative film this stylistically berserk if would seem super pretentious (I’m looking in your direction Nicholas Roeg, Oliver Stone… Jean-Luc). And maybe this film is a little pretentious and in love with itself, but it had this one split-screen cross cut sequence that was so complex and fantastic that I was reaching for my invisible movie theater remote control to try to make the projector go back and show this sequence over and over again.
The sound design was also really amazing.

Also: The Williamsburg Bank building going luxury condo?

The main dining room of The Pagoda Restaurant on Sandy.

Here’s the car ride home from a night of karaoke at a Chinese restaurant on 82nd street from a while back and the last of the Katherine picture stash. Sadly, none of these people are friends any more.