Turkey Neck

Love the light on this "selfie"....OMG, I have a turkey neck!!

A few weeks ago I was watching my typical Sunday morning program, when I suddenly found myself adrift in that desert of afternoon programming that is daytime network t.v. Oh. That sucks. No "Kung Fu" theater, no monster movies, not even a funny workout program that I can mock, or maybe roll out my mat and follow along with. Like, nothing but ads. 

Oh, well. It was kinda funny. Rght after this fundamentalist preacher sales guy (supposedly, like, wayyyy holy and stuff), was a paid advertisement for neck cream. Yep, you read that right: in New York, in 2015, some weirdo guy pretending to read the bible goes first onstage, and then it's "Fix your neck with expensive snake oil, you silly old hag" time. Huh. Kinda jarring, you know? Or, was it?

It seemed strangely analogous to my explorations as a female artist who uses themes about the self through a series of ongoing self-portraits. Oh! Uh oh. I think I have it. I think I caught "aging", maybe in some public place like the library, because I'm 45! Maybe I need a surgical face mask to protect me out in public, like an Asian fearing SARS would, or I need to coat myself in way more hand sanitizer. I don't know. Maybe t.v. will help me!

But, no. That cream just for your fucking saggy neck costs an arm and a leg. I mean, that's totally why you work so hard all week, right? To buy some fucking neck cream that'll make an on-air doctor rich! Oh, wait....no, that won't work. I'll be broke and still 45, and he'll be totally rich, with or without the snake oil neck cream that enacts a miracle cure for all life on this planet earth that we live on.

It was eerily similar to the slick carnival barker of a "Suthin" preacher who came before him in the Sunday programming line up. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, dear reader, but first, send me a check for $45 made out to....at the following address....

It's cool. If "AMTM" has taught me anything, it's that you have to use your muscles when you pose. Done! Buh-bye turkey neck!

I practiced stretching my "Gobbler" from both angles, just in case a photographer catches me out in public unaware! Wait, that seems crazy...who cares?! I can't live my life like some out-of-it celebrity. No one will come up to me on the street from just the side, or underneath my neck. I think I'll go back to my regularly scheduled programming. Whew! The crisis is now officially over.

Come on and excel, human! Get with it!! I don't want to be alone anymore, because no man is an island.

Ash Wednesday

It's all uphill from here.

Last week, we celebrated Ash Wednesday on a beautifully sunny and bright winters' day. My life has been rather simple lately, and so, in the easiest, simplest way known to man, I actually walked (yes, I walk, for exercise and sometimes through economic necessity. I know, so weird!) my way to church for ashes, which was a journey in of itself, like so many of my daily walks are. See you soon, neighbor.

Blue glass garden ornament.

House with wrought iron ornament.

Hanging icicles, a bare shrub, and one large beige house.

Old wooden fence.

Yellow shed with ladder.

White houses on a snowy hill.

Old rusty garden fountain and spruces.

Me, Ash Wednesday* 2015.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday

Footprints in Snow

This week's snow (Pearl River, N.Y., January, 2015).

Old Cars: Thunderbird

Wow! Some car.

I've written prior about my love of old cars, for their great lines and cool designs, (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/10/old-cars.html), and I'm not someone who's typically into retro for retro's sake. It's just that the designs were simply better in the past. Anyway, since I see so few cars that reflect my taste, I become a big fan when I finally spot one I like. It's like discovering while channel surfing one day that you've always liked NASCAR but you never knew it. 

The perfect robin eggshell blue.

I don't, but that's the rare feeling I get when I discover an automobile that flashes "cool": I didn't even know I liked those kind of cars until I saw one in person. Great design, like great designers, achieve a kind of commonplace, every day immortality that's also shockingly stand-out different, too. 

Check out the lines...

Someone once wrote that a being famous designer is like being a famous dentist, and the same can be said about automotive designers: gifted, but not heralded in the same way as their work, like a clothing designer who sees you wearing their shirt as (s)he passes you on the street but says nothing. And that's the particular beauty about an anonymous kind of fame; it's quiet, gentle, but still very powerful.

The classic American Thunderbird.

Here's a pic of me, taken on Memorial Day.

Welcome back, readers. 

Memorial Day, Spring 2014.